II
THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH
UNFORTUNATELY for the fame of Diocletian there is one indelible blot
upon the record of his reign. He attached his name to the edicts whereby was
let loose upon the Christian Church the last and—in certain provinces—the
fiercest of the persecutions. Inasmuch as the affairs of the Christian Church
will demand so large a share of our attention in dealing with the religious
policy of Constantine, it will be well here to describe, as briefly as
possible, its condition in the reign of Diocletian.
It has been computed that towards the end of the third century the
population of the Roman Empire numbered about a hundred millions. What
proportion were Christians? No one can say with certainty, but they were far
more numerous in the East than in the West, among the Greek-speaking peoples of
Asia than among the Latin-speaking peoples of Europe. Perhaps if we reckon them
at a twelfth of the whole we shall rather underestimate than overestimate their
number, while in certain portions of Asia and Syria they were probably at least
one in five. Christianity had spread with amazing rapidity since the days of
Domitian. There had been spasmodic outbreaks of fierce persecution under
Decius,—“that execrable beast”, as Lactantius calls him,—under Valerian, and
under Aurelian. But Aurelian's reign was short and he had been too busy
fighting to spare much time for religious persecution. The tempest quickly blew
over. For fully half a century, with brief interludes of terror, the Church had
been gathering strength and boldness.
The policy of the State towards it was one of indifference. Gallienus,
indeed, the worthless son of Valerian, had issued edicts of toleration, which
might be considered cancelled by the later edicts of Aurelian or might not. If
the State wished to be savage, it could invoke the one set; if to be mild, it
could invoke the other. There was, therefore, no absolute security for the
Church, but the general feeling was one of confidence. The army contained a
large number of Christians, of all ranks and conditions, officers, centurions,
and private soldiers. Many of the officials of the civil service were
Christians. The court and the palace were full of them. Diocletian's wife,
Prisca, was a Christian; so was Valeria, his daughter. So, too, were many of
his chamberlains, secretaries, and eunuchs. If Christianity had been a
proscribed religion, if the Christians had anticipated another storm, is it
conceivable that they would have dared to erect at Nicomedia, within full view
of the palace windows, a large church situated upon an eminence in the centre
of the city, and evidently one of its most conspicuous structures? No,
Christianity in the East felt tolerably safe and was advancing from strength to
strength, conscious of its increasing powers and of the benevolent neutrality
of Diocletian. Christians who took office were relieved from the necessity of
offering incense or presiding at the games. The State looked the other way; the
Church was inclined to let them off with the infliction of some nominal
penance. Nor was there much difficulty about service in the army. Probably few
enlisted in the legions after they had become Christians; against this the
Church set her face. But she permitted the converted soldier to remain true to
his military oath, for she did not wish to become embroiled with the State. In
a word, there was deep religious peace, at any rate in Diocletian's special
sphere of influence, Asia, Egypt, and Syria.
It is to be remembered, however, that there were four rulers, men of
very different characters and each, therefore, certain to regard Christianity
from a different standpoint. Thus there might be religious peace in Asia and
persecution in the West, as, indeed, there was—partial and spasmodic, but still
persecution. Maximian was cruel and ambitious, an able soldier of the hard
Roman type, no respecter of persons, and careless of human life. Very few
modern historians have accepted the story of the massacre of the Theban Legion
at Agauna, near Lake Leman, for refusal to offer
sacrifice and take the oath to the Emperor. According to the legend, the legion
was twice decimated and then cut to pieces. But it is impossible to believe
that there could have been a legion or even a company of troops from Thebes in
Egypt, wholly composed of Christians, and, even supposing the facts to have
been as stated, their refusal to march in obedience to the Emperor's orders and
rejoin the main army at a moment when an active campaign was in progress,
simply invited the stroke of doom. Maximian was not the man to tolerate mutiny
in the face of the enemy.
But still there were many Christian victims of Maximian wherever he took
up his quarters—at Rome, Aquileia, Marseilles—mostly soldiers whose refusal to
sacrifice brought down upon them the arm of the law. Maximian is described in
the “Passion of St. Victor” as “a great dragon”, but the story, even as told by
the hagiologist, scarcely justifies the epithet. Just as the military prefects,
before whom Victor was first taken, begged him to reconsider his position, so
Maximian, after ordering a priest to bring an altar of Jupiter, turned to
Victor and said “Just offer a few grains of incense; placate Jupiter and be our
friend”. Victor's answer was to dash the altar to the ground from the hands of
the priest and place his foot triumphantly upon it. We may admire the fortitude
of the martyr, but the martyrdom was self-inflicted, and the anger of the
Emperor not wholly unwarranted. “Be our friend”, he had said, and his overtures
were spurned with contempt.
We may suspect, indeed, that this partial persecution was due rather to
the insistence of the martyrs themselves than to deliberate policy on the part
of Maximian. When enthusiastic Christians thrust their Christianity upon the
official notice of the authorities, insulted the Emperor or the gods, and
refused to take the oath or sacrifice on ceremonial occasions, then martyrdom
was the result, and little notice was taken, for life was cheap. Diocletian, as
we have seen, rather patronized than persecuted Christianity. Maximian’s inclinations towards cruelty were kept in check
by the known wishes of his senior colleague. Constantius, the Caesar of Gaul,
was one of those refined characters, tolerant and sympathetic by nature, to
whom the idea of persecution for the sake of religion was intensely repugnant;
and Galerius, the Caesar of Pannonia, the most fanatical pagan of the group,
was not likely, at any rate during the first few years after his elevation, to
run counter to the wishes of his patron.
What was it, then, that wrought the fatal change in the mind of
Diocletian and turned him from benevolent neutrality to fierce antagonism?
Lactantius attributes it solely to the baleful influence of Galerius, whom he
paints in the very blackest colours. “He was a wild beast, a savage barbarian of
alien blood, tall in stature, a mountain of flesh, abnormally bloated,
terrifying to look at, and with a voice that made men shiver”. Behind this
monster stood his mother, a barbarian woman from beyond the Danube, priestess
of some wild deity of the mountains, imbued with a fanatical hatred of the
Christians, which she was forever instilling into her son. When we have
stripped away the obvious exaggeration of this onslaught we may still accept
the main statement and admit that Galerius was the most active and unsparing
enemy of the Christians in the Imperial circle. This rough soldier, trained in
the school of two such martinets as Aurelian and Probus, who enforced military
discipline by the most pitiless methods, would not stay to reason with a
soldier's religious prejudices. Unhesitating obedience or death—that was the
only choice he gave to those who served under him, and when, after his great
victory over the Parthians, his position and prestige in the East were beyond
challenge, we find Christian martyrdoms in the track of his armies, in the
Anti-Taurus, in Coele-Syria, in Samosata.
Galerius began to purge his army of Christians. Unless they would
sacrifice, officers were to lose their rank and private soldiers to be
dismissed ignominiously without the privileges of long service. Several were
put to death in Moesia, where a certain Maximus was Governor. Among them was a
veteran named Julius, who had served in the legion for twenty-six years, and
fought in seven campaigns, without a single black mark having been entered
against his name for any military offence. Maximus did his best to get him off.
“Julius”, he said, “I see that you are a man of sense and wisdom. Suffer
yourself to be persuaded and sacrifice to the gods”.
“I will not”, was the reply, “do what you ask. I will not incur by an
act of sin eternal punishment”.
“But”, said the Governor, “I take the sin upon myself. I will use
compulsion so that you may not seem to act voluntarily. Then you will be able
to return in peace to your house. You will receive the bounty of ten denarii
and no one will molest you”.
Evidently, Maximus was heartily sorry that such a fine old soldier
should take up a position which seemed to him so grotesquely indefensible. But
what was Julius’s reply?
“Neither this Devil's money nor your specious words shall cause me to
lose eternal God. I cannot deny Him. Condemn me as a Christian”.
After the interrogation had gone on for some time, Maximus said: “I pity
you, and I beg you to sacrifice, so that you may live with us.”
“To live with you would be death for me”, rejoined Julius, “but if I
die, I shall live”.
“Listen to me and sacrifice; if not, I shall have to keep my word and
order you to death”.
“I have often prayed that I might merit such an end”.
“Then you have chosen to die?”
“I have chosen a temporary death, but an eternal life”.
Maximus then passed sentence, and the law took its course.
On another occasion the Governor said to two Christians, named Nicander and Marcian, who had proved themselves equally
resolute: “It is not I whom you resist; it is not I who persecute you. My hands
are unstained by your blood. If you know that you will fare well on your
journey, I congratulate you. Let your desire be accomplished”.
“Peace be with you, merciful judge”, cried both the martyrs as the
sentence was pronounced.
The movement seems gradually to have spread from the provinces of
Galerius to those of Maximian. At Tangiers, Marcellus, a centurion of the
Legion of Trajan, threw down his centurion's staff and belt and refused to
serve any longer. He did so in the face of the whole army assembled to
sacrifice in honour of Maximian’s birthday. A similar
scene took place in Spain at Calahorra, near Tarraco,
where two soldiers cast off their arms exclaiming: “We are called to serve in
the shining company of angels. There Christ commands His cohorts, clothed in
white, and from his lofty throne condemns your infamous gods, and you, who are
the creatures of these gods, or, we should say, these ridiculous monsters”.
Death followed as a matter of course. Looking at the evidence with absolute
impartiality, one begins to suspect that the process of clearing the Christians
out of the army was due quite as much to the fanaticism of certain Christian
soldiers eager for martyrdom, as to any lust for blood on the part even of
Galerius and Maximian.
But what we have to account for is the rise of a fierce anti-Christian
spirit which induced Diocletian—for even Lactantius admits that he was not
easily persuaded—to take active measures against the Christians. It is
certainly noteworthy that about this time the only school of philosophy which
was alive, active, and at all original, was definitely anti-Christian. We
refer, of course, to the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria. Their principal exponent
was the philosopher Porphyry, who carried on a violent anti-Christian
propaganda, though he seems to have borrowed from Christianity, and more
especially from the rigorously ascetic form which Christianity had assumed in
Egypt, many of his leading tenets.
The morality which Porphyry inculcated was elevated and pure; his
religion was mystical to such a degree that none but an expert philosopher
could follow him into the refinements of his abstractions; but he had for the
Christian Church a theological hatred of extraordinary bitterness. The
treatise—in fifteen books— in which he assailed the Divinity of Christ
apparently set a fashion in anti-Christian literature. We hear, for example, of
another unnamed philosopher who “vomited three books against the Christian
religion”, and the violence with which Lactantius denounces him as “an
accomplished hypocrite” makes one suspect that his work had a considerable
success. Still better known was Hierocles, Governor at one time of Palmyra, and
then transferred to the royal province of Bithynia, who wrote a book to which
he gave the name of The Friend of Truth, and addressed it, “To the
Christians”. Its interest lies chiefly in the fact that its author compares
with the miracles wrought by Christ those attributed to Apollonius of Tyana,
and denies divinity to both. Lactantius tells us that this Hierocles was
“author and counsellor of the persecution”, and we may judge, therefore, that
there existed among the pagans a powerful party bitterly opposed to
Christianity, carrying on a vigorous campaign against it, and urging upon the
Emperors the advisability of a sharp repressive policy.
They would have no difficulty in making out a case against the
Christians which on the face of it seemed plausible and overwhelming. They
would point to the fanatical spirit manifested, as we have seen, by a large
number of Christian soldiers in the army, which led them to throw down their
arms, blaspheme the gods, and deny the Emperors. They would point to the
anti-social movement, which was especially marked in Egypt, where the example
of St. Antony was drawing crowds of men and women away into the desert to live
out their lives, either in solitary cells as hermits, or as members of religious
communities equally ascetic, and almost equally solitary. They would point to
the aloofness even of the ordinary Christian in city or in town from its common
life, and to his avoidance of office and public duties. They would point to the
extraordinary closeness of the ties which bound Christians together, to their
elaborate organization, to the implicit and ready obedience they paid to their
bishops, and would ask whether so powerful a secret society, with ramifications
everywhere throughout the Empire, was not inevitably a menace to the
established authorities, The Christians were peaceable enough. To accuse them
of plotting rebellion was hardly possible, though the most outrageous calumnies
against them and their rites were sedulously fostered in order to inflame the
minds of the rabble, just as they were against the Jews in the Middle Ages, and
are, even at the present day, in certain parts of the Continent of Europe. But,
at bottom, the real strength of the case against the Christians lay in the fact
that the more enlightened pagans saw that Christianity was the solvent which
was bound to loosen all that held pagan society together. They instinctively
felt what was coming, and were sensible of approaching doom. Christianity was
the enemy, the proclaimed enemy, of their religion, of their point of view of
this life as well as of the next, of their customs, of their pleasures, of
their arts. Paganism was fighting for existence. What wonder that it snatched
at any weapon wherewith to strike?
The personal attitude of Diocletian towards religion in general is best
seen in the edict which he issued against the Manicheans. The date is somewhat
uncertain, but it undoubtedly preceded the anti-Christian edicts. Manichaeism
took its rise in Persia, its principal characteristic being the practice of
thaumaturgy, and it spread fast throughout the East. Diocletian ordered the
chiefs of the sect to be burned to death; their followers were to have their
goods confiscated and to suffer capital punishment unless they recanted; while
persons of rank who had disgraced themselves by joining such a shameful and
infamous set of men were to lose their patrimony and be sent to the mines.
These were savage enactments, and it is important to see how the Emperor
justified them. Fortunately his language is most explicit. “The gods”, he says,
“have determined what is just and true; the wisest of mankind, by counsel and
by deed, have proved and firmly established their principles. It is not,
therefore, lawful to oppose their divine and human wisdom, or to pretend that a
new religion can correct the old one. To wish to change the institutions of our
ancestors is the greatest of crimes”. Nothing could be clearer. It is the old
official defence of the State religion, that men are not wiser than their
fathers, and that innovation in worship is likely to bring down the wrath of
the gods. Moreover, as the edict points out, this Manichaeism came from Persia,
the traditional enemy of Rome, and threatened to corrupt the “modest and
tranquil Roman people” with the detestable manners and infamous laws of the
Orient. “Modest and tranquil” are not the epithets which posterity has chosen
to apply to the Roman people of the Empire, but Diocletian's point is obvious.
Manichaeism was a device of the enemy; it must be poison, therefore, to the
good Roman. Such an argument was born of prejudice rather than of reason; we
shall see it applied yet again to the Christians, and applied even by the
Christian Church to its own schismatic's and heretics.
It was during the winter of 302 that the question was carefully debated
by Diocletian and Galerius, the latter was staying with the senior Augustus at
Nicomedia—whether it was advisable to take repressive measures against the
Christians. According to Lactantius, Galerius clamoured for blood, while
Diocletian represented how mischievous it would be to throw the whole world
into a ferment, and how the Christians were wont to welcome martyrdom. He
argued, therefore, that it would be quite enough if they purged the court and the
army. Then, as neither would give way, a Council was called, which sided with
Galerius rather than with Diocletian, and it was decided to consult the oracle
of Apollo at Miletus. Apollo returned the strange answer that there were just
men on the earth who prevented him from speaking the truth, and gave that as
the reason why the oracles which proceeded from his tripods were false. The
“just men” were, of course, the Christians. Diocletian yielded, only
stipulating that there should be no bloodshed, while Galerius was for burning
all Christians alive. Such is Lactantius’s story, and
it does credit to Diocletian, inasmuch as it shows his profound reluctance to
disturb the internal peace which his own wise policy had established. As a
propitious day, the Festival of the Terminalia, February 23, 303, was chosen
for the inauguration of the anti-Christian campaign. The church at Nicomedia
was levelled to the ground by the Imperial troops and, on the following day, an
edict was issued depriving Christians of their privileges as full Roman
citizens. They were to be deprived of all their honours and distinctions,
whatever their rank; they were to be liable to torture; they were to be
penalized in the courts by not being allowed to prosecute for assault,
adultery, and theft. Lactantius well says a that they were to lose their
liberty and their right of speech. The penalties extended even to slaves. If a
Christian slave refused to renounce his religion he was never to receive his
freedom. The churches, moreover, were to be destroyed and Christians were
forbidden to meet together. No bloodshed was threatened, as Diocletian had
stipulated, but the Christian was reduced to the condition of a pariah. The
edict was no sooner posted up than, with a bitter jibe at the Emperors, some
bold, indignant Christian tore it down. He was immediately arrested, tortured,
racked, and burnt at the stake. Diocletian had been right. The Christians made
willing martyrs.
Soon afterwards there was an outbreak of fire at the palace. Lactantius
accuses Galerius of having contrived it himself so that he might throw the
odium upon the Christians, and he adds that Galerius so worked upon the fears
of Diocletian that he gave leave to every official in the palace to use the
rack in the hope of getting at the truth. Nothing was discovered, but fifteen
days later there was another mysterious outbreak. Galerius, protesting that he
would stay no longer to be burnt alive, quitted the palace at once, though it
was bad weather for travelling. Then, says Lactantius, Diocletian allowed his
blind terrors to get the better of him, and the persecution began in earnest.
He forced his wife and daughter to recant; he purged the palace, and put to
death some of his most powerful eunuchs, while the Bishop of Nicomedia was
beheaded, and crowds of less distinguished victims were thrown into prison.
Whether there was incendiarism or not, no one can say. Eusebius, indeed, tells
us that Constantine, who was living in the palace at the time, declared years
afterwards to the bishops at the Council of Nicaea that he hail seen with his
own eyes the lightning descend and set fire to the abode of the godless
Emperor. But neither Constantine nor Eusebius was to be believed implicitly
when it was a question of some supernatural occurrence between earth and
heaven. The double conflagration is certainly suspicious, but tyrants do not,
as a rule, set fire to their own palaces when they themselves are in residence,
however strong may be their animus against some obnoxious party in the State.
A few months passed and Diocletian published a second edict ordering the
arrest of all bishops and clergy who refused to surrender their “holy books” to
the civil officers. Then, in the following year, came a third, offering freedom
to all in prison if they consented to sacrifice, and instructing magistrates to
use every possible means to compel the obstinate to abandon their faith. These
edicts provoked a frenzy of persecution, and Gaul and Britain alone enjoyed
comparative immunity. Constantius could not, indeed, entirely disregard an
order which bore the joint names of the two Augusti,
but he took care that there was no over-zealousness, and, according to a
well-known passage of Lactantius, he allowed the meeting-places of the
Christians, the buildings of wood and stone which could easily be restored, to
be torn down, but preserved in safety the true temple of God, viz., the bodies
of His worshippers. Elsewhere the persecution may be traced from province to
province and from city to city in the mournful and poignant documents known as
the Passions of the Martyrs. Naturally it varied in intensity according to
local conditions and according to the personal predilections of the
magistrates.
Where the populace was fiercely anti-Christian or where the pagan priests
were zealous, there the Christians suffered severely. Their churches would be
razed to the ground and the prisons would be full. Some of the weaker brethren
would recant; others would hide themselves or quit the district; others again
would suffer martyrdom. In more fortunate districts, where public opinion was
with the Christians, the churches might not be destroyed, though they stood
empty and silent.
The fiercest persecution seems to have taken place in Asia Minor. There
had been a partial revolt of the troops at Antioch, easily suppressed by the
Antiochenes themselves, but Diocletian apparently connected it in some way with
the Christians and let his hand fall heavily upon them. Just at this time,
moreover, in the neighbouring kingdom of Armenia, Saint Gregory the Illuminator
was preaching the gospel with marvellous success, and the Christians of
Cappadocia, just over the border, paid the penalty for the uneasiness which
this ferment caused to their rulers. We hear, for example, in Phrygia of a whole
Christian community being extirpated. Magistrates, senators, and
people—Christians all—had taken refuge in their principal church, to which the
troops set fire. Eusebius, in his History of the Church, paints a lamentable
picture of the persecution which he himself witnessed in Palestine and Syria,
and, in his Life of Constantine, he says a that even the barbarians across the
frontier were so touched by the sufferings of the Christian fugitives that they
gave them shelter. Athanasius, too, declares that he often heard survivors of
the persecution say that many pagans risked the loss of their goods and the
chance of imprisonment in order to hide Christians from the officers of the
law. There is no question of exaggeration. The most horrible tortures were invented;
the most barbarous and degrading punishments were devised. The victim who was
simply ordered to be decapitated or drowned was highly favoured. In a very
large number of cases death was delayed as long as possible. The sufferer,
after being tortured on the rack, or having eyes or tongue torn out, or foot or
hand struck off, was taken back to prison to recover for a second examination.
Even when the victim was dead the law frequently pursued the corpse with
its futile vengeance. It was no uncommon thing for a body to be thrown to the
dogs, or to be chopped into fragments and cast into the sea, or to be burnt and
the ashes flung upon running water. He was counted a merciful judge who allowed
the friends of the martyr to bear away the body to decent burial and lay it in
the grave. At Augsburg, when the magistrate heard that the mother and three
servants of a converted courtesan, named Afra, had placed her body in a tomb,
he ordered all four to be enclosed in one grave with the corpse and burnt
alive.
It is, of course, quite impossible to compute the number of the victims,
but it was unquestionably very large. We do not, perhaps, hear of as many
bishops and priests being put to death as might have been expected, but if the
extreme rigor of the law had been enforced the Empire would have been turned
into a shambles. The fact is, as we have said, that very much depended upon the
personal character of the Governors and the local magistrates. In some places
altars were put up in the law courts and no one was allowed either to bring or
defend a suit without offering sacrifice. In other towns they were erected in
the market squares and by the side of the public fountains, so that one could
neither buy nor sell, nor even draw water, without being challenged to do homage
to the gods. Some Governors, such as Datianus in
Spain, Theotecnus in Galatia, Urbanus of Palestine, and Hierocles of Bithynia and Egypt, were noted for the ferocity
with which they carried out the edicts; others— and, when the evidence is
carefully examined, the humane judges seem to have formed the majority—presided
with reluctance at these lamentable trials. Many exhausted every means in their
power to convert the prisoners back to the old religion, partly from motives of
humanity, and partly, no doubt, because their success in this respect gained
them the notice and favour of their superiors.
We hear of magistrates who ordered the attendants of the court to place
by force a few grains of incense in the hands of the prisoner and make him
sprinkle it upon the altar, or to thrust into his mouth a portion of the
sacrificial meat. The victim would protest against his involuntary defilement,
but the magistrate would declare that the offering had been made. Often, the
judge sought to bribe the accused into apostasy. “If you obey the Governor”,
St. Victor of Galatia was told, “you shall have the title of Friend of Caesar
and a post in the palace”. Theotecnus promised Theodotus of Ancyra “the favour of the Emperors, the
highest municipal dignities, and the priesthood of Apollo”. The bribe was
great, but it was withstood. The steadfast confessor gloried in replying to
every fresh taunt, entreaty, or bribe, "I am a Christian." It was to
him the only, as well as the highest argument.
Sometimes the kindest-hearted judges were driven to exasperation by
their total inability to make the slightest impression upon the Christians.
“Do abandon your foolish boasting”, said Maximus, the Governor of
Cilicia, to Andronicus, “and listen to me as you would listen to your father. Those
who have played the madman before you have gained nothing by it. Pay honour to
our Princes and our fathers and submit yourself to the gods”.
“You do well”, came the reply, “to call them your fathers, for you are
the sons of Satan, the sons of the Devil, whose works you perform”.
A few more remarks passed between judge and prisoner and then Maximus
lost his temper.
“I will make you die by inches”, he exclaimed.
“I despise”, retorted Andronicus, “your threats and your menaces”.
While an old man of sixty-five was being led to the torture, a friendly
centurion said to him: “Have pity on yourself and sacrifice”.
“Get thee from me, minister of Satan”, was the reply. The main feeling
uppermost in the mind of the confessor was one of exultation that he had been
found worthy to suffer. Such a spirit could neither be bent nor broken.
Of active disloyalty to the Emperor there is absolutely no trace. Many
Christian soldiers boasted of their long and honourable service in the army;
civilians were willing to pay unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's. But
Christ was their King. “There is but one God”, cried Alpheus and Zaccheus at Caesarea, “and only one King and Lord, who is
Jesus Christ”. To the pagan judge this was not merely blasphemy against the
gods, but treason against the Emperor. Sometimes, but not often, the martyr's
feelings got the better of him and he cursed the Emperor. “May you be
punished”, cried the dauntless Andronicus to Maximus, when the officers of the
court had thrust between his lips the bread and meat of sacrifice, “may you be
punished, bloody tyrant, you and they who have given you the power to defile me
with your impious sacrifices. One day you will know what you have done to the
servants of God”.
“Accursed scoundrel”, said the judge, “dare you curse the Emperors who
have given the world such long and profound peace?”
“I have cursed them and I will curse them”, replied Andronicus, “these
public scourges, these drinkers of blood, who have turned the world upside
down. May the immortal hand of God tolerate them no longer and punish their
cruel amusements, that they may learn and know the evil they have done to God’s
servants”.
No doubt, most Christians agreed with the sentiments expressed by
Andronicus, but they rarely gave expression to them.
“I have obeyed the Emperors all the years of my life”, said Bishop
Philippus of Heraclea, “and, when their commands are just, I hasten to obey.
For the Holy Scripture has ordered me to render to God what is due to God and
to Caesar what is due to Caesar. I have kept this commandment without flaw down
to the present time, and it only remains for me to give preference to the
things of heaven over the attractions of this world. Remember what I have
already said several times, that I am a Christian and that I refuse to
sacrifice to your gods”.
Nothing could be more dignified or explicit. It is the Emperor-God and
his fellow deities of Olympus, not the Emperor, to whom the Christian refuses
homage. During a trial at Catania in Sicily the judge, Calvisianus,
said to a Christian: “Unhappy man, adore the gods, render homage to Mars,
Apollo, and Aesculapius”.
The answer came without a second's hesitation: “I adore the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit—the Holy Trinity—beyond whom there is no God. Perish the gods
who have not made heaven and earth and all that they contain. I am a
Christian”.
From first to last, in Spain as in Africa, in Italy as in Sicily, this
is the alpha and the omega of the Christian position: “Christianus sum”.
To what extent was the martyrdom self-inflicted? How far did the
Christians pile with their own hands the faggots round the stakes to which they
were tied? It is significant that some churches found it necessary to condemn
the extraordinary exaltation of spirit which drove men and women to force
themselves upon the notice of the authorities and led them to regard flight
from danger as culpable weakness. They not only did not encourage but strictly
forbade the overthrowing of pagan statues or altars by zealous Christians
anxious to testify to their faith. They did not wish, that is to say, to
provoke certain reprisals. Yet, in spite of all their efforts, martyrdom was
constantly courted by rash and excitable natures in the frenzy of religious
fanaticism, like that which impelled Theodorus of Amasia in Pontus to set fire to a temple of Cybele in the
middle of the city and then boast openly of the deed. Often, however, such
martyrs were mere children. Such was Eulalia of Merida, a girl of twelve, whose
parents, suspecting her intention, had taken her into the country to be out of
harm's way. She escaped their vigilance, returned to the city, and, standing
before the tribunal of the judge, proclaimed herself a Christian. The judge,
instead of bidding the officials remove the child, began to argue with her, and
the argument ended in Eulalia spitting in his face and overturning the statue
which had been brought for her to worship. Then came torture and the stake, a
martyred saint, and in later centuries a stately church, flower festivals, and
a charming poem from the Christian poet, Prudentius.
But even his graceful verses do not reconcile us to the pitiful futility of
such child-martyrdom as that of Eulalia of Merida or Agnes of Rome.
Or take, again, the pathetic inscription found at Testur,
in Northern Africa;
“Sande Tres ; Maxima,
Donatilla Et Secunda,
Bona Puella”.
These were three martyrs of Thuburbo. Two of
them, Maxima and Donatilla, had been denounced to the
judge by another woman. Secunda, a child of twelve,
saw her friends from a window in her father's house, as they were being dragged
off to prison. “Do not abandon me, my sisters,” she cried. They tried to wave
her back. She insisted. They warned her of the cruel fate which was certain to
await her; Secunda declared her confidence in Him who
comforts and consoles the little ones. In the end they let her accompany them.
All three were sentenced to be torn by the wild beasts of the amphitheatre, but
when they stood up to face that cruel death, a wild bear came and lay at their
feet. The judge, Anulinus, then ordered them to be
decapitated. Such is the story that lies behind those simple and touching
words, “Secunda, Bona Puella”.
Nor were young men backward in their zeal for the martyr’s crown.
Eusebius tells us of a band of eight Christian youths at Caesarea, who
confronted the Governor, Urbanus, in a body shouting:
“We are Christians”, and of another youth named Aphianus,
who, while reading the Scriptures, heard the voice of the heralds summoning the
people to sacrifice. He at once made his way to the Governor's house, and, just
as Urbanus was in the act of offering libation, Aphianus caught his arm and upbraided him for his idolatry.
He simply flung his life away.
In this connection may be mentioned the five martyred statuary workers
belonging to a Pannonian marble quarry. They had been converted by the
exhortations of Bishop Cyril, of Antioch, who had been condemned to labour in
their quarry, and, once having become Christians, their calling gave them great
searching of heart. Did not the Scriptures forbid them to make idols or graven
images of false gods? When, therefore, they refused to undertake a statue of
Aesculapius, they were challenged as Christians, and sentenced to death. Yet
they had not thought it wrong to carve figures of Victory and Cupid, and they
seem to have executed without scruple a marble group showing the sun in a
chariot, doubtless satisfying themselves that these were merely decorative
pieces, which did not necessarily involve the idea of worship. But they
preferred to die rather than make a god for a temple, even though that god were
the gentle Aesculapius, the Healer.
We might dwell at much greater length upon this absorbing subject of the
persecution of Diocletian, and draw upon the Passions of the Saints for further
examples of the marvellous fortitude with which so many of the Christians
endured the most fiendish tortures for the sake of their faith. “I only ask one
favour”, said the intrepid Asterius: “it is that you
will not leave unlacerated a single part of my body”.
In the presence of such splendid fidelity and such unswerving faith, which made
even the weakest strong and able to endure, one sees why the eventual triumph
of the Church was certain and assured. One can also understand why the memory
and the relics of the martyrs were preserved with such passionate devotion; why
their graves were considered holy and credited with powers of healing; and why,
too, the names of their persecutors were remembered with such furious hatred.
It may be too much to expect the early chroniclers of the Church to be fair to
those who framed and those who put into execution the edicts of persecution,
but we, at least, after so many centuries, and after so many persecutions
framed and directed by the Churches themselves, must try to look at the
question from both sides and take note of the absolute refusal of the Christian
Church to consent to the slightest compromise in its attitude of hostility to
the religious system which it had already dangerously undermined.
It is not easy from a study of the Passions of the Saints to draw any
sweeping generalizations as to what the public at large thought of the torture
and execution of Christians. We get a glimpse, indeed, of the ferocity of the
populace at Rome when Maximian went thither to celebrate the Ludi Cereales in 304. The “Passion of St. Savinus”
shows an excited crowd gathered in the Circus Maximus, roaring for blood and
repeating twelve times over the savage cry: "Away with the Christians and
our happiness is complete. By the head of Augustus let not a Christian
survive." Then, when they caught sight of Hermogenianus,
the city prefect, they called ten times over to the Emperor: “May you conquer,
Augustus! Ask the prefect what it is we are shouting." Such a scene was
natural enough in the Circus of Rome; was it typical of the Empire? Doubtless
in all the great cities, such as Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Carthage, the
‘baser sort' would be quite ready to shout: Away with the Christians”. But it
is to be remembered that we find no trace anywhere in this persecution of a
massacre on the scale of that of St. Bartholomew or the Sicilian Vespers. On
the contrary, we see that though the prisons were full, the relations of the
Christians were usually allowed to visit them, take them food, and listen to
their exhortations. Pamphilus of Caesarea, who was in
jail for two years, not only received his friends during that period, but was
able to go on making copies of the Scriptures!
We rarely hear of the courts being packed with anti-Christian crowds, or
of the judges being incited by popular clamour to pass the death sentence. The
reports of the trials show us silent, orderly courts, with the judges anxious
not so much to condemn to death as to make a convert. If Diocletian had wanted
blood he could have had it in rivers, not in streams. But he did not. He wished
to eradicate what he believed to be an impious, mischievous, and, from the
point of view of the State's security, a dangerous superstition. There was no
talk of persecuting for the sake of saving the souls of heretics; that
lamentable theory was reserved for a later day. Diocletian persecuted for what
he considered to be the good of the State. He lived to witness the full extent
of his failure, and to realize the appalling crime which he had committed
against humanity, amid the general overthrow of the political system which he
had so laboriously set up.
III
