Inscription of Abercius

Prior to the late 19th century, scholars such as Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont and Jean Baptiste Francois Pitra tried to prove the authenticity of this transcribed inscription, while Ernest Renan regarded it as completely invented.

However, in 1882 the Scottish archaeologist William Mitchell Ramsay discovered at Kelendres, near Synnada, in the Roman province of Phrygia Salutaris (in modern Anatolia), a Christian gravestone dated to the year 300 of the Phrygian era (AD 216).

On a second visit to the site of Hieropolis, a year later, Ramsay discovered two fragments of another inscription, built into the public baths.

[4] The citizen of a chosen city, this [monument] I made [while] living, that there I might have in time a resting-place of my body, [I] being by name Abercius, the disciple of a holy shepherd who feeds flocks of sheep [both] on mountains and on plains, who has great eyes that see everywhere.

[10] Linguistic and paleographic details show that the epitaph of Abercius is as older than that of Alexander, i.e. prior to the year 216 AD.

[11] Abercius himself may be identified with a writer named Avircius Marcellus, mentioned by Eusebius as the author of a work against Montanism.

As the apostle, or rather his writings, became an important authority in the theological debates of the 2nd century, this remark could give an indication of the purpose of the journeys.

The vita of the saint suggests as well that Abercius wanted to defend the "true faith" on his travels and take action against Marconism.

[19] The inscription is cited as evidence of the following in second-century Christianity: The liturgical cultus of Abercius presents no point of special interest; his name appears for the first time in the Greek menologies and synaxaries of the 10th century, but is not found in the Martyrology of St.