RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Commentaries Commodus
commercial people, nor was trade the occupation of a large portion of the population. Neither the earlier legislation nor the Deuter- 5. After onomist took commerce into conthe Exile, sideration or regulated it. The captivity, on the contrary, altered the entire condition of affairs. In Babylonia commerce was highly developed, and many of the exiles had no alternative but to take part in it. In Palestine, on the other hand, the Israelites were at first too poor to engage in trade, which was still in the hands of Phenicians, Edomites, and other foreigners (cf. Neh. x. 31, xiii. 15-22). Not until the Greek period did the Jews again become merchants; but during this epoch there were colonies of Jews engaged in traffic in Alexandria, Antioch, Asia Minor, and Greece, and even in Rome. For the means of transportation see Ass; Camel; Horse; Mule. I. Benzinger.
Bibliography: L. Herzfeld, Handelgeschichte der Juden des Altertums, Brunswick, 1879 (the one book); F. Buhl, Die socialen Verhdltnisse der Israeliten, pp. 76-83, BerUn, 1899; Sohurer, Geschichte, Index, s.v. " Handel," Eng. transl. Index, s.v. "Trade"; DB, iv. 802-806; JE, iv. 186-188; EB, iv. 5145-99 (exhaustive).
COMMINATION SERVICE: An addition to the usual service on Ash Wednesday in the Prayerbook of the Church of England, designed by the Reformers to take the place of the ceremony of sprinkling ashes on the congregation in token of penitence. It consists of the recitation of the curses pronounced by God against impenitent sinners in the Old Testament (whence its name, commination — " threatening "), and of Ps. li. and other penitential prayers. In the revised Prayer-book of the American Episcopal Church is a modified form called "A Penitential office for Ash- Wednesday."
COMMODUNUS, cem-mo-di-e'nus: Early Christian poet of the middle of the third century. His birthplace is unknown, but his close contact with Cyprian makes it likely that he spent at least his manhood in North Africa. By birth a heathen, after groping from one superstition to another, he was converted by becoming acquainted with the Scriptures. A manuscript calls him bishop. He is the oldest known Christian poet writing in Latin, and seems to have written for the common people. His form of verse, though externally hexameter, deviates from the strict principle of quantity in favor of accent, and his verse must have been painful to the educated. For that reason, no doubt, he is ignored by the Fathers, though heretical views might have had much influence, for he was a Patripassian and a Chiliast. Hence his writings are designated in the decree of Gelasius as " apocryphal" (MPL, lix. 163); nevertheless, this very disapproval shows that he still had his readers. The Instructiones and the Carmen Apologeticuvi are all that have survived. The former (of 1,259 lines, divided into two books of forty-one and thirty-nine [thirty-eight] separate poems, mostly acrostic in form) treats in book i. of the heathen, contrasting their religion with the Christian faith; at the same tune Christians are reprimanded for being too intimate with their heathen neighbors; the conclusion is a polemic against the Jews. The second
book has sober exhortations for all classes of Christians. Between the two parts are instructions which treat of Antichrist, of the resurrection , and the final judgment. The Carmen Apologeticum (of about 1,060 lines) begins likewise with the heathen and continues with a dogmatic-historical review of the Christian faith; in the second part is a description of the end of the world, containing among other things references to the invasion of the Goths (249 A.D.?) and the appearance of two Antichrists among the heathen and the Jews (though the Instructiones knew only of one). From his writings Commodianus appears to have been a Christian of strong principles and robust nature; he is never extreme and does not commend the aspiration for a bloody martyrdom; his diction is faulty, but his thoughts often border on the sublime, and at times he is successful in satire. Surprising are his aversion to the Roman government (cf. Carmen, line 887) and his leaning toward the Goths, as though he were aware of the coming union of Christianity and the German world.
(B. DOMBARTf.) Bibliography: The works are in MPL, v., and (best) ed. Dombart in CSEL, xv., 1887. Eng. transl. is in ANF, iv. 203-218. Consult: W. S. Teuffel, Geschichte der romischen Litteratur, p. 972, Leipsic, 1890; Harnack, Lilteratur, i. 731, ii. 2, pp. 433-449; Kriiger, History, pp. 317-320; KL, iii. 701-704; DCB, i. 610-611.
COM'MO-DUS (MARCUS AURELIUS COMMO- DUS ANTONINUS) : Roman emperor 180-192. The eon of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina, he inherited far more his mother's than his father's character, and spent his time in games and dissipation, leaving the government in the hands of his favorites. Utterly indifferent to religious questions, he left his Christian subjects in peace. At the beginning of his reign the effects of his father's policy were still felt; but before long persecution ceased throughout the empire, to which Eusebius {Hist. eccL, V xxi. 1) attributes the accession of large numbers of converts. According to Ireneeus (IV. xxx. 1) some of these were found even in the imperial household. Among these was Marcia Aurelia Cejonia Demetrias, who seems to have been responsible for the tolerant attitude of the government. She was the daughter of a freedman, but brought up by Hyacinthus, a Christian. Hippolytus, her contemporary, calls her {Philos., ix. 12) " the pious concubine {-aTilaul/) of Commodus," and mentions important services rendered by her to Christian exiles in Sardinia. Dio Cassius also speaks of her benevolence toward the Christians and her intercession for them with Commodus, " with whom she could do anything " (Ixxii. 4). In these days she was probably a catechumen; neither Christian nor pagan authors speak of her absolutely as a Christian. The difficulty of understanding her relations to the Roman Church in connection with that in which she stood to the dissolute emperor are lessened by recalling the fact that the regular concubinage in which she lived with Commodus at this time was not forbidden by either secular or ecclesiastical law, and that there is no evidence of her taking any personal part m the corrupt practises by which she was surrounded. After the assassination of Commodus, she married
Oommon Life