The first mention of a person of African descent I noticed came in the form of Sabellius, dubbed “heresiarch” (ln. 659) in Stephen’s summary of heretical beliefs. Sabellius was a third century North African Libyan Catholic who rejected the idea of the Holy Trinity. He identified and accepted the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as parts of one larger being, not separate beings, “illustrat[ing] the trinitarian relation by comparing the Father to the disc of the sun, the Son to its enlightening power, the Spirit to its warming influence” (CCEL) As Stephen puts it, Sabellius “held that the Father Himself was His own Son” (ln. 660). In his book Ulysses and the Irish God, Frederick Lang equates this Sabellian heresy to the Catholic idea of transubstantiation. First, he cites a definition of transubstantiation as “the Great God of Heaven comes down upon the altar and take the form of bread and wine”(Lang 80), which in Sabellius’s opinion would be the Father Himself becoming His own Son.

Stephen’s description of Sabellius’s heresy is interesting to me in how similar it sounds to Stephen’s description of Hamlet. Buck Mulligan explains that within his paradoxical explanation of Hamlet, “he proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.” Sabellius claimed that the Father is the Son, and Stephen says of Hamlet that the son himself is the father’s ghost. Yet despite this slight parallel, Stephen expresses distaste of Sabellius’s heretical belief. I think there’s something interesting to discuss there.

CCEL, “History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A.D. 100-325.” – Christian Classics Ethereal Library. N.p., n.d.

Lang, Frederick K. Ulysses and the Irish God. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1993. Print.