The Emperor Valerian, in an earlier decree which he fulminated against the Church, had endeavoured to put Christianity down without bloodshed. The method which he adopted was the separation of the Bishops from their flocks by a perpetual banishment. His experiment was a failure, for the simple reason that, so long as the Bishops were only in exile, an epistolary correspondence could be kept up; and also because little pains was taken to subject the Priests to the same treatment, so that they were still left to keep the enthusiasm and faith of the Church alive. Diocletian’s aim was not quite the same as Valerian’s; for though he was bent upon weakening the Church, and even demolishing it so far as its outward presentment was concerned, his measure against the Clergy wears every appearance of being only a temporary measure of precaution. He did not mean all Clergymen henceforward to be liable to special penalties, as Valerian had: he meant to put them out of the way of abetting a present conspiracy. In this design he hoped to succeed, not by banishing, but by casting into the strict surveillance of a prison, not Bishops only, but all those who were in Holy Orders, even down to the Readers and Exorcists. Christian hopes of rebellion would be crushed by so tremendous an exhibition of imperial power; while Christian aspirations after martyrdom would be cooled by the positive refusal of gratification.

And yet Diocletian was not wholly wise. This temporising shift was well suited, indeed, for the immediate purpose; but it could not permanently cripple the great Body. There were only two ways to prevent the Church from doing mischief in the end :—the one was, to follow to its full consequences the policy on which he had acted towards her all through his reign:—the other was to cut and stab and burn and trample the life out of her altogether. And if the last great Emperor of Rome had been aware how nigh he was now to the innermost penetralia into which the corporate life of Christianity had been hunted back, he would have been glad (it may be) to take every Bishop in the world and put him to death. In all the persecutions,  special stress was laid upon the punishment of Bishops: but the pagan world only knew of them—as of all else in our system—in their exterior and official capacity. They killed or banished them because they were heads, ringleaders, persons of influence. They knew nothing of them in their spiritual capacity. If Diocletian had been told how the Catholic and Apostolic Church teaches (that which she has received), that only by the laying on of the Apostles’ hands is given the communicated Spirit, which is the Life of the Body, and that the severance of the episcopal succession is the severance of the historical bond between the Church and her Head, he would scarcely have been sorry to destroy the Bishops one and all, though they had numbered thousands. He had already, unwittingly, struck the two most telling blows. A third would have been the stroke of grace. He had destroyed the means of meeting to receive the Bread of Life. He had destroyed (he fondly hoped) the means of teaching the Word of Life. If by the annihilation of the Apostolic Order he had destroyed also the means of propagating the Life, Paganism would have triumphed gloriously, and the Church would have lain beneath his feet, a corpse. But our Redeemer has not founded a Church that is to die. Nay, it was written long before the days of Diocletian : “The fierceness of man shall turn to Thy praise; and the fierceness of them shalt Thou refrain : He shall refrain the spirit of princes, and is wonderful among the kings of the earth.”

 

 

CHAPTER V.

THE EXECUTION OF THE TWO EDICTS.

 

It is impossible to trace with any precision the progress of the persecution. The First Edict, followed closely—some times (as it seems) accompanied—by the Second, crept .slowly and fitfully from shore to shore, from city to city, like some hateful plague or cholera. Its movements, to us who watch them from afar, seem governed by no law. Many private and local causes tended to delay its publication. In the capital of Thrace, near as it was to Nicomedia, the proconsul, whose wife was a Christian, did not make it known until Epiphany in the following year. In Africa and Numidia it was posted in the months of May or June. It reached Caesarea, where Eusebius lived, in the end of March; “when,” as we are told with singular pathos, “the day of our Saviour’s Passion was just drawing on.” At Alexandria, if we may unravel the confusion of the dates in the Chronicle, the sickening news arrived precisely in time to mar the blessed joy of Easter morning.

This section of my essay will be an attempt to arrange our materials so as to show how far the several details of the edicts were put in execution, and what different aspects this first part of the persecution wore in the several parts of the empire. The attempt, I fear, must almost necessarily prove a lame one. In the first place, our documents are but scanty. Lactantius, according to the purpose of his book, leaves the history of the persecution almost untouched, and treats only of the more striking events of state. The eighth book of Eusebius’ Church History, for the purposes of a methodical review, is utterly worthless, from its exasperating lack of chronology: and though his monograph on the Martyrs of Palestine is, on the contrary, beautifully systematic, yet the scope is too narrow to give us a very complete picture of the condition of the Church, even within the horizon of Caesarea. The chief sources of information are the various genuine Acts of the Martyrs,—which are (of course) chargeable with the same defect: they describe the bearing and the. sayings of men when brought to trial, but they too seldom illustrate the social life of Churchmen during the times of persecution, and the ways in which they escaped the violence of the storm. We have scarcely any Acts of the Confessors. There are hardly any accounts of private occurrences. And it must not be supposed that we can even calculate the total number of martyrdoms under Diocletian by adding up the list of these Acts which are preserved. On the one hand many of the legends are quite untrue. And on the other hand doubtless an immense share of the documents has perished accidentally : but in many cases it seems that the judges themselves forbad the official report to be entered on the books,—partly out of spite to the Christians, who used to pay the clerks to give them duplicate copies of the record, to be recited afterwards in Church,—and partly because they were conscious that their cruelties were distinctly illegal, and feared to leave the full statement indelibly inscribed in the archives of their provinces.

And not only is the material scanty, but it is extremely perplexing. It is often difficult in the extreme to discover the true date of a martyrdom. Owing to the way in which the governors took upon themselves to alter the provisions of the law for better or for worse, or to delay its enforcement, a trial often turns upon points which at first sight seem to fix it as belonging to the earliest part of the persecution, while closer inspection proves it to belong to a later period. The legitimate working of an earlier edict is often crossed and hampered by the influence of later ones. And we are often forced to suspend our critical judgment upon the worth of any given record, from our unfortunate lack of detailed archaeological knowledge on such matters as the extent of the powers of proconsuls and curators. The original papers have suffered so much in the process of later redactions that it is well nigh impossible to determine what is old and what is later fable.

As soon as Diocletian had finally made up his mind to persecute the Church, letters were despatched to his western brethren, informing them of the terms of the edict. Of all the lost documents of the period, there are none—not even the edicts themselves—which the historian mourns after so sadly, as the missives in which the venerable Augustus hinted to Constantius how far it behoved the letter of the law to live, and urged upon Maximian the propriety of ‘transacting the business without blood.’

I. It was pretty certain beforehand that Constantius would share, almost to a nicety, the feelings and the policy of Diocletian. He was the man after Diocletian’s own heart. The crafty old Emperor had designed him to succeed to the primacy of the empire, above Galerius, wishing mind as far as possible to predominate over bluff force. Diocletian’s scheme for the balance of government was to have in each moiety of the empire, a statesman and a soldier, shield and sword arms of the administration; the statesmen to hold (as far as this could be secured) the first and third places, so that at each vicennial abdication, by the alternate precedency of East and West, a statesman might always be to the fore. On this principle Constantius, though Diocletian’s own especial favourite, had been given to Maximian for his Caesar and his son. When the soldier Augustus began to wax very bloody (which could not be helped sometimes), the statesman Caesar might be able to mitigate the effects.

Now Constantius was undoubtedly averse from the persecution. Both natural constitution and reflexion had made him merciful to all men. The judgment of the Church historians upon him might have been biassed by their gratitude to his son: but the heathen writers all give him the same character. “An uncommon man,” says Eutropius, “with very marked regard for other people: the inhabitants of Gaul not only loved but adored him,—and all the more because under his sway they had escaped the suspicious prudence of Diocletian as well as the bloody haste of Maximian.” Eumenius labours hard to make the cruelty of Constantine appear as politic as the gentleness of his father, with which he contrasts it. Constantine himself declares that he abhorred the savage characters of Diocletian and the two Maximians, and says that his father alone attempted to act with the consideration of a civilised man. It was plain therefore that persecution would imply nothing very brutal under Constantius. And in the particular case of Christianity, all his religious feelings were on the side of toleration, even more than Diocletian’s were. Although he was doubtless a heathen still, Bishop Theonas’ description of Diocletian, exactly fitted him: he was 'not yet enrolled’ on the Church’s lists. His son—a bad authority on the subject, it may be confessed—says that he “called upon the Father in all his acts with admirable devoutness.” Eusebius, whose exaggerations cer­tainly overlie a stratum of fact, avers that he knew of only one universal God, and condemned “the polytheism of the atheists.” Like Diocletian, he had filled his house with Christian servants. Like as Diocletian’s consort, Prisca, was almost, if not altogether, a Christian ; so, according to some accounts, Helena, the first wife of Constantius, was already a convert before the cold policy of Diocletian wrested their love-marriage apart. A persecution had doubtless often been urged in the imperial councils by the two Maximians, and as often scouted by their more prudent colleagues. Constantius’ knowledge of Diocletian’s mind in the matter would show him that there must be some overwhelming necessity in the present case, and so hinder him from rebelling altogether against the edict: while at the same time it would show him that a mere nominal persecution would accord with the wishes of the supreme Augustus, as fully as with his own wise policy and gentle heart.

And while Constantius was unlikely, from these private considerations, to press the law against Christianity beyond the least possible strictness, there was no public necessity in his quarter of the globe for carrying the matter farther. The Church was not so powerful in Gaul as it was in the East, nor were the Christians of that land so fiercely intolerant as those of Africa. There was little fear of an insurrection of the believers there: and the best way to prevent such a catastrophe was to dissever their interests from those of their Oriental brethren by not making them partakers of their sufferings.

Some doubt has been entertained on the question whether Constantius did not hinder the persecution from being oecumenical, by refusing to take any part in the work at all. The ingenious Henry Dodwell, in his anxiety to reduce our estimation of the sufferings, and therefore of the vitality, of our faith, endeavoured to prove that Gaul, Spain, and even the most of Africa, were under the government of Constantius, and therefore quite exempt. The few martyrdoms, as he counts them, which took place in Africa, were accomplished, he argues, not under the general edict, but by special local rescripts of Maximian. It is, however, an easy thing to prove a theory, if you may choose your facts. His indignant and orthodox opponent, Ruinart, goes too far the other way, and tries to show that even Gaul, at that time the acknowledged sanctuary of the world, was as fruitful of martyrdoms as any other country. The fact is that Africa was not in any way subject to Constantius, any more than Italy was: that the connexion of even Mauritania Tingitana with the prefecture of Gaul rests on very slight foundations: and that Constantius was not himself Praefectus Praetorio of Gaul. Thus, though “all beyond the Alps” had been committed to the superintendence of Constantius, he bore no actual rule over any region except that in which his personal presence was required. Such was the nature of the Caesars’ power: their jurisdiction was not separated from that of their Augusti by a line as strongly defined as that which bounded the East and West. They were rather the moveable representatives of their several chiefs, stationed with absolute power wherever a temporary cause claimed the closer inspection of supreme authority. Constantius seems never to have visited any other portion of the prefecture of Gaul in which he was seated, besides France and the Rhenish frontier, and Britain.

It is difficult to discover how far Constantius really par­ticipated in the persecution, but that he did so is plain, not only from the fact that the edict was now the law of the land, to which he must needs conform ; but also some positive statements in the Acts of St Crispina, who died at Teveste in 304, prove that in Maximian’s part of the empire, the name of the Caesar Constantius was officially quoted as countenancing the promulgation of the edict. There can be no doubt that he published this Test Act entire, but with the hearty acceptation of Diocletian’s saving clause, that no blood was to be shed. In spite of the counter-assertion of Eusebius, it is certain that all the Churches in Gaul, that were worth destroying, were de­stroyed:—these could be restored: but from the irreparable injury of God’s truest temple, the human body, Constantius shrank. Having thus observed the letter of the law, he did not proceed to the logical consequence of making all Christian assemblies penal: there is even some reason to think that he permitted—for a time, at least—the attendance of Christian Chaplains in his own household, who celebrated the Divine Offices within the palace-walls. No stress was laid upon the clause which prescribed the burning of the books. He did not attempt to wrest them out of private hands. Probably he made believe that the act was satisfied by the destruction of those copies which were found among the ministeria of the demolished Churches. At any rate, when Constantius’ son came into power, the African Donatists besought him that they might be tried by Galli- can Bishops, on the ground that these had never been exposed to the temptation to be traditors. With regard to the third clause of the First Edict, we may gather that Constantius at least published it, and took some steps—whatever they were—towards applying it, from the curious story which Eusebius had got hold of. To all the officers of his household, and even to those who held provincial governments, says this author, Constantius offered the choice of sacrificing or being dismissed. Some of the persons concerned preferred their faith, and some their posts. In the sequel, the worthy prince discovered to them what he had privily intended by this device. He drove away from his palace those who had served their God so ill, judging that their loyalty to the Emperor would be as light; but the conscientious persons he settled in all the most confidential offices in his house, declaring that no sums of money could be so valuable to him as these good men.

Even the Second Edict, ordering the arrest of the Clergymen, must have been promulgated by Constantius, because it alone explains the one martyrdom of that time, circumstantially related, to which the English Church can lay claim. A certain Priest, pursued by the Roman officials, made his way to the colony of Verulam, and boldly enter­ing the camp, claimed shelter from a young heathen legionary named Albanus. The young fellow was too good-natured to refuse, and kept him there for many days concealed. Observing his guest perpetually performing his devotions, he began to make inquiries concerning our religion, which the Priest answered in such a manner, that after some patience the soldier became a convert. Meanwhile, it came to the ears of the governor, that Albanus was harbouring this person whom the law was trying to hunt down; and he accordingly summoned him to answer for the misconduct. The novice (so runs the tale) presented himself before the judge, at the moment while the judge was sacrificing, clothed in the Clergyman’s caracalla, and was threatened with the same punishment as his friend should have borne. When he was asked his nationality, the young Roman soldier forgot his pride, and answered: “Why do you ask? I am a Christian.” To the question of his name, he replied : “ My parents call me Alban; but I serve God.” He was ordered for his unsoldierly contempt of discipline to be beaten first, and then beheaded. The sentence was executed that even­ing, outside the city, across what was then a very rapid stream, on the slope of the pleasant hill, where now stands one of the stateliest of English Cathedrals in the city which bears his name.

II. Constantius was the only one of the four Emperors concerning whose conduct in the matter there could be any doubt. Roughly speaking, Lactantius’ vigorous expression is correct:—“So the whole earth was agitated; and, Gaul alone excepted, from the East even unto the West was felt the savagery of three most rancorous beasts.” Maximian was only too delighted to obey the law. It is a strange but inexpugnable fact in psychology, that the sins of the flesh are always inwoven with the sin of cruelty. The Augustus of Milan was a most conspicuous example of the abominable alliance. His passions were so entirely beyond the control of his judgment, that not even the hostages, whom subject nations had placed beneath his care, were too sacred for his rapacious hands. And by the innate kinship of wickedness, he was bloodthirsty beyond the run even of his savage countrymen. His cruelty was not, like the cruelty of Galerius, sprung from religious fanaticism, impelled by a revengeful hatred, employed with a strong and intelligent purpose. Maximian was cruel for cruelty’s sake. Blood was his luxury. The intelligence that Diocletian had at last consented to a general persecution must have thrilled him with an intense delight; for his vulture-like instinct told him that the business could never be transacted without a sumptuous feast of blood.

The prefecture of Italy was his, including all from Regensburg and Vienna, to Nice and Cagliari and Malta. Here the edicts were thoroughly well worked. However African proconsuls might doubt about the application of the law, it was certain death to be sent on remand into that peninsula, as St Felix found to his satisfaction. Yet strange­ly enough, we have fewer Acts extant from Italy itself than from, any other land, save the immediate province of Constantius. I am inclined to think one partial reason of this phenomenon to be, that Christianity had not absorbed the whole population in Italy in the same way as it had in Africa. Thus in the year 304 one of the extremely rare notices of a popular outbreak—almost a riot—against the Christians, occurs at Rome, and seems to accelerate, if not occasion, the publication of the last, worst edict before the abdication of the two old Emperors. But Maximian was lord of a finer Aceldama than Italy. Africa had far the largest tale of martyrs. It lay entirely at the mercy of the rude Augustus. The vast population had all but universally become Christian: and the Christians of Africa, from Tertullian down, were characterised, above all others, by a fiery zeal, which developed into obstinacy and wilfulness even in saints,—among sinners into frantic heresies and sanguinary schisms. When we reflect on the intolerable pride and murderous bigotry of the Donatists, we cannot wonder that so harsh a government as Maximian’s found plenty of work for executioners. When St Austin’s holy labours at last put an end to Donatism and to Manichaeanism, he had accomplished also the death of the Catholic Church of Africa :—when nothing was left to be fierce about, Christianity itself died out. Such were the persons among whom Florus in Numidia, and Anulinus at Carthage, were set to work to put the law in force.—Spain too, although she was undoubtedly in the same prefecture as Gaul, and therefore more or less subject to Constantius, added a goodly contingent to the noble army. The town of Saragossa, alone, had the honour of furnishing eighteen in the course of two years’ persecution, of whom one was the magnificent young Archdeacon, Saint Vincent. All these deaths may be traced to the cruel subserviency of one Dacianus, who was made president of the province—as it appears from the Acts— not by Constantius, but by Diocletian and Maximian. It would seem as though the officers of government were not appointed by the Caesars, but by the Augusti; unless indeed we have here another case, like that of Lysias and Agricola . in the East, of a special commissioner sent forth for the occasion. Yet, though Constantius was unable to hinder the appointment of this cruel man, these same Acts seem to hint at some difficulty, which Dacianus experienced in prosecuting the wishes of his lord Maximian. He is forced to bide his time, and seize an opportunity. I conceive this difficulty to have been caused by the vigilant legality of Constantius the Caesar. The persecuting magistrate never dares to claim the authority of Constantius to support his violations of the edict: he only speaks of the orders of Maximian. And one of the men who had passed through Dacian’s bloody hands alive, the great Hosius of Cordova, writing afterwards, to the tyrannical Arian Emperor who was grandson both to Constantius and to Maximian, says: “I was a confessor even at the first, when persecution arose under your grandfather Maximian he leaves the other grandfather unmentioned. But the Caesar, notwithstanding his vigilance, was unable to prevent some martyrdoms even in Gaul itself. Thither, too, had been despatched a terrible personage of the same stamp as Dacian, named Rictius Varus, who is mentioned in many a Gallican legend. At the same time it seems pretty clear that Maximian himself was personally present at nearly all these French martyrdoms’. His capital was situated in part of what the Romans called Gaul; and he seems to have been fond of visiting the rest of that country. Constantius was not an independent sovereign, but merely an extension (as it were) of the person of Maximian naturally, therefore, in the presence of the Augustus, the Caesar became a subject and was powerless. Maximian was irresponsible, and might with impunity override the laws,

Maximian saw at once which parts of the edict it would be most useful for his purposes to press. There was no political suspicion against the Christians in Africa and Italy to draw his attention to the last chapter of the statute: degradations and civil punishments were of no avail in this part of the world. In Maximian’s territory the whole persecution turns upon the first two clauses. Not that we read much of the demolition of the Churches: this was probably done in many cases, but in the domains of the fiercer Emperors we find a slackness about these milder provisos, in proportion to their greater zeal to kill and torture. But the purpose of destroying the buildings was to stop the synaxis or assemblies of the faithful. African Christians were unlikely to desist from holding their meetings. Maximian did not beat about the bush to find his game, but went straight to work with all who gathered to the Christian Sacrifice, even in private houses. Unfortunately Diocletian’s law had not mentioned in express terms what was to be the penalty for such offences as holding the collecta or refusing to surrender the books. He had ordered that no blood should be shed; so that obviously he had intended that the punishment should be simply the loss of civil rights, in other words, that such offences would be no more than a confession of the crime of Christianity. Maximian chose to make them separate transgressions; and though he could not behead men for simply being Christians, he made a capital matter of these outward acts of profession.

The story of the nine and forty martyrs of Abitina will shew how strictly the first clause was enforced in Proconsular Africa. The party had met in the house of one of the readers, under the lead of a member of the Carthaginian Senate named Dativus, and had there celebrated the Dominicum. They were all put in irons and driven off to Carthage, and brought before Anulinus, the well-known governor of that province. Dativus, being the chief, was interrogated first, in the presence of all the rest, and confessed himself a Christian, and pleaded guilty of having taken part in the service. His admission that he was a Christian made him ipso facto (by the new statute) an outlaw; and accordingly, senator as he was, he was placed on the hobby-horse to make him say who had been the ring­leader in the crime. Before, however, he could answer, another man, named Thelica, cried out, “ We are all Christians: it was we who held the meeting.” Thelica was now put on the rack and told to name the ringleader. “Saturninus,” he said (naming the priest who had officiated), “and all the rest.” When the torture had been vigorously plied for some time, Anulinus told the man that it would have been much better to obey ‘the Emperors and Caesars,’ and sent him to prison under sentence of death. As soon as the examination of Dativus was resumed, Fortunatianus, a young heathen advocate, stepped forward and laid a heavy accusation against him. Dativus, he said, had come into his father’s house at a time when his father was from home and he himself engaged in professional duties, and had Induced his sister Victoria and two other maidens to run away with him to Abitina, though he was a total stranger in the house, and had never entered it except on this scandalous occasion. Victoria, who was one of the prisoners, emphatically gave her brother the lie. “No one persuaded me to run away,” she said, “nor did I come to Abitina with Dativus: this I can prove by the evidence of the townsmen. I did it all at my own prompting, and of my own freewill. For I have always attended the meeting, and kept the Dominicum with my brethren, because I am a Christian.” The screws were turned to elicit a confession from the senator, but he circumstantially denied the fierce accusations of Fortunatian, calling upon Christ not to let him be confounded. When they returned to the question, who had been the prime mover of the eollecta, he at last cried out, “What have I done? There was more than one. Saturninus is our priest.” Anulinus turned to the priest, and told him it was an infringement of the commands of ‘the Emperors and Caesars’ to bring together a meeting. Saturninus, ‘prompted by the Spirit of the Lord,’ retorted, “We celebrated the Lord’s ordinance without a fear.” “Why?” said the governor. “Because,” he answered, the Lord’s ordinance cannot possibly be intermitted.” When Dativus had been sentenced and removed, Saturninus was examined with torture to see if he had summoned the meeting, but he refused to claim the honour, only admitting that he had made one of the party. A reader called Emeritus next tried to create a diversion by saying that he was to blame, and that the meeting had taken place in his house, but Anulinus took no heed, and proceeded with the evidence of his superior. “Why,” he asked, “did you act against the order?” The priest replied, “The Lord’s ordinance cannot possibly be intermitted. That is the Law.” The bewildered-magistrate again urging that prohibitions were made to be kept, not broken, ordered worse tortures. Saturninus began, to cry for mercy,—to God, not to man; still the proconsul caught at the hope that he would now acknowledge his guilt: but to the repeated question, why he had contravened the order, he only answered, “It is the Law. It is what the Law teaches.” Even in his torments the faithful preacher preached that holy code for which he was glad to be punished. And so, one after another, the brave men were tormented, and confessed. Emeritus the reader being asked why he had allowed the Christians to enter his house, answered that they were his brothers, and that he could not turn his brothers from the door. Felix, a son of the priest Saturninus, answered the judge’s question, whether he had taken part in any meetings, by saying simply that he was a Christian: the judge said, “Do not tell me that you are a Christian, but whether you have attended meetings an explosion of scorn was the reply, “As if a Christian could live without the Lord’s ordinance knowest thou not, Satan, that the Christian’s whole being is in the Sacrament.” Another brother, his father’s namesake, who held a reader’s dignity, was examined to see if he had any sacred books: he too only answered at first that he was a Christian, but when the knife, on which his father’s blood was not yet dry, was applied to his ribs, he cried out that he had indeed ‘the Scriptures of the Lord,’ but in a place whence neither inquisitor’s cruelty nor traitor’s cowardice could drag them;—“I have them, but I have them in my heart.” It was growing late in the day when the examination of the sisters began. Victoria having acknowledged her faith, her heathen brother contended that she had been driven out of her mind with unintelligible subtleties; but the girl answered, “This is my mind : I have never changed it.” “Will you go with Fortunatian your brother?” said Anulinus, too humane a man to enjoy such work. “ I will not,” said she, “ for I am a Christian, and my brethren are they who keep the commandments of God.” Anulinus, dropping his judicial character, condescended to reason with her: “Take care of yourself,” he said : “you see how anxious your brother is to provide for you.” “This is my mind,” repeated the intrepid girl; “I have never changed it. I was at the meeting and kept the ordinance with my brethren, for I am a Christian.” At last, there remained but one of the prisoners uncondemned, the youngest child of Saturninus, the little Saint Hilarian. His father, his two brothers, and his sister, a nun named Mary, had all been tortured and sentenced before his eyes. The proconsul, who wished to excuse him on the plea of having been misled by his elders, asked him, “Was it your father or your brothers who took you ?” But the boy would not incriminate them, nor throw away his own reward. The childish treble (as the old editor says) was an echo of the father’s tones, as Hilarian answered, “I am a Christian: at my own desire and of my own free will I joined in the service with my father and the brethren.” Anulinus kindly tried to frighten the child with ugly threats. “I shall cut off all your long hair,” he said, “and your nose, and your ears, and then turn you out.” He had miscalculated the bravery of a Christian boy. “You can do just what you like,” said the little fellow, “for I am a Christian.” Anulinus pronounced his sentence. The judgment­hall rang with the child’s loud answer, “Thanks be to God”

So severely were the fiery Africans visited for the simple act of meeting in a private house,—and that under the government of a humane and equitable proconsul. The next document which comes under our notice will show the way in which the officials set about their task of destroying the ecclesiastical buildings, but it will also shew a great deal more:—the intimacies between pagan magistrates and Chris tian pastors, which made it hard for the magistrates to enforce the law, and easy for the Christians to deal cowardly,—the way in which the cowards were eager to avert persecution by a gratuitous compliance,—the curious irregularity with which the storm burst in the different neighbourhoods. For other reasons besides the typical exhibition of the origin of Donatism, the minutes of the justification of Felix of Aptunga are among the most valuable historical relics of the time. Long as the fragment is, it is quite worth while to read it through, for the sake of the lively picture it gives of these times of persecution in Africa. The scene is the vicarial court at Carthage in the year 314. A person called Caecilianus, who had been in office at Aptunga in the first year of the persecution, is in the witness-box. The first part of the fragment consists of the recital by the clerk of the Acts of a preliminary trial of Caecilianus before the local magistrate. Agesilaus the clerk reads :—

Maximus. I speak on behalf of the elders of the Christian people belonging to the Catholic rule. Their Imperial Majesties are themselves to hear the case against Caecilian and Felix who are making every effort to overturn the supremacy of that rule. It is against them both that we seek to substantiate the charges against Felix. For when the persecution was announced against the Christians,—that is to say, that they must either sacrifice, or give up any writings in their possession to be burned, Felix, who was then Bishop of Aptunga, had given his consent to the surrender of the Scriptures by the hand of Galatius in order that they might be destroyed by fire: and Alfius Caecilianus, who has the honour to stand before you, was at the same time in office. And whereas it was an official duty at that time to make all sacrifice according to the proconsular orders, and produce whatever writings they had in obedience to the imperial law, and whereas Caecilian is (as you see) an old gentleman and unable to proceed in person to the imperial presence, my petition is that he be made to depose, whether he did write a letter which (as appears by a document proceeding from him) he had contracted to write, and whether the facts which he has stated in this document are true, and I beg that his deposition be entered in the minutes, in order that the proceedings of these men and their disloyalty to the laws may be unmasked in the imperial court.

Sperctius the Duumvir (to Caecilian). Do you hear the petition which is filed in this court ?

Caecilian. I had been into Zama with Saturninus to get some shirts; and when we had come back to Aptunga the Christians themselves sent to me in the praetorium, to say: ‘Has the imperial mandate reached you yet?’ I said, No, but I have already seen copies of it, and at Zama and at Furni I have seen Churches destroyed and books burned, so you may as well produce whatever books you have, in readiness to obey the imperial order.’ Then they sent to the house of Felix the Bishop, to bring the Scriptures out of it, that they might be ready to be burned according to the imperial orders. After this Galatius came to us and proceeded with us to the place where they had been accustomed to hold their prayers. We took out of it the Bishop’s throne and the epistles of salutation from other Churches, and all the doors were burnt according to the imperial orders. And when we sent to the house of the aforesaid Bishop Felix, the police brought back word that he was away. Now some  time after, on the arrival of Ingentius, the secretary of Augentius, who had been my fellow-aedile, I dictated to him at the request of my colleague aforesaid the letter which I wrote to Bishop Felix.

Maximus. I have it here. Let the letter be put before him, that he may recognise it.

Caecilian. That is it.

Maximus. Since he has recognised it as his own letter, I will read it, and I beg that it may be inserted in the Acts entire. (Reads the letter aloud)

Caecilian presents his humble duty to Felix.

Ingentius met my colleague, his friend, Augentius the other day, and inquired whether in the year of my duumvirate any scriptures of your law were burnt according to the imperial mandate. I told him no more than how Galatius, one of your co-religionists, publicly produced the letters of salutation out of your Cathedral. I hope you are very well. I enclose the signet, which the Christians (and among them you and the man who keeps the praetorium) had sent to me to avert punishment;—you remember your saying, 'Here is the key ; you may take away all the books you find in my stall and the manuscripts on the stone slab: only please be sure that the police do not take away the oil and the wheat! And I said to you, ‘ Do you not know that wherever scriptures are found, the house must come down and all?' You answered, ‘ What shall we do then ? ' And I said to you, ‘ Make one of your own people take them out into the enclosure where you pray, and put them down there, and T will come with the police and take them away! And we came there and took them all away according to the imperial command.

Since the letter has been read aloud, and he acknowledges that he sent it, we beg that what he has said maybe entered in the Acts.

Speretius. What you have said is taken down.

Agesilaus (to the Proconsul'). He has now looked over the letter again, and says that the remaining part which has been read is a forgery.

Caecilian. My lord, I only dictated as far as the place where it stands, ‘I hope, my dear and reverend Sir, that you are quite well.’

Apronianus (friend to Felix). That is just the way that these wilful Dissenters from the Catholic Church always go on,—nothing but falsehood and browbeating, and theatrical rant, and unscrupulous consciences. When Paulinus was here as Deputy Prefect, a certain private person was hired to go about for all the world like a postman, to bring letters round to the Catholic union and mislead and frighten them. The conspiracy was detected however. It was all a lie invented against the most reverend Prelate Felix, to make it appear that he had betrayed and burnt the Scriptures. Ingentius, I mean (for all that was done was most distasteful to the uprightness and religious feelings of Caecilian), was hired to come, with a letter purporting to be from Bishop Felix, to Caecilian the duumvir, and to make him believe that he was sent by Felix. May some one read the very terms in which this fiction was couched ?

Aelian (the Proconsul). Read.

Apronianus (reads). ‘Say,’ Felix says, ‘to my friend Caecilian that I have been lent eleven costly manuscripts of the Divine books, and as the time has come for me to return them, please declare that you burned them in your year of office, that I may not have to give them back.’ Ingentius ought to be examined with regard to this matter, how far this was a contrivance and a fabrication, and how far he wanted to make the magistrate the abettor of a lie in order to bring Felix into infamy. Make him say at any rate who commissioned him with this intrigue about a secret understanding with Felix, to detract from the honour of Caecilian. I know somebody who was sent on an embassy by the opposite party all through Mauritania and Numidia.

Aelian (to Ingentius). At whose command did you undertake the business you are charged with having done ?

Ingentius. Where ?

Aelian. Since you pretend not to understand the question, I must speak more plainly. Who sent you to the magistrate Caecilian ?

Ingentius. Nobody sent me.

Aelian. How did you come then to Caecilian ?

Ingentius. Soon after we had arrived here, during the trial of Maurus, the Bishop of Utica, who bought his bishopric, Felix, Bishop of Aptunga, came up to the city to take part in the discussion, and said, ‘Let no one communicate with him, because he has committed a fraud;’ and I answered him, 'Nor with you either, if not with him, for you are a traditor.’ For I was vexed on behalf of my old friend Maurus, for I had communicated with him abroad—because I ran away from the persecution. Then I went into Felix’s own country, taking with me two elders, that they might see whether he had really been a traditor or not.

Apronianus. That was not the way he came to Caecilian: please ask Caecilian.

Aelian (to Caecilian). How did Ingentius come to you ?

Caecilian. He came to me at my house. I was at breakfast with my workmen. He came there, and stood in the doorway. ‘Where is Caecilian?’ said he. ‘ Here,’ said I. I said to him, ‘ What is the matter ? is all right ?  ‘ Quite,’ says he. I answered him, ‘ If you are not too proud to have breakfast, come and have some.’ He said to me, ‘ I will come back presently.’ He came all alone. Then to my amazement he began to tell me he was my good friend, and to inquire whether the Scriptures had been burned in the year of my duumvirate. I said to him, ‘You annoy me: you arc an intruder, sir: leave my house ;’ and I spurned him out of the door. He came then again with the man who had been my colleague as aedile. My colleague said to me, ‘Our Bishop, Felix, has sent this man to ask you to make him out a certificate, because he has been lent some valuable codices and did not want to send them back : be so good as to write to him that they were burnt in the year of your duumvirate.’ I said to him, ‘Is this the Christian ideal of honesty?’

Ingentius. My lord, let Augentius be summoned too. I am a man of honour; but take all my honour from me, if we do not possess his letter.

Aelian. That is not the point on which you have to defend yourself. (To the policeman) Fasten him. (He fastens him to the horse) Now hang him up. (To Caecilian)How did Ingentius come to you ?

Caecilian. 'I was sent here,’ he said, ‘by our common friend Felix, to ask you to write him a note, “ because,” said he, “ there’s a certain fellow (worse luck to him !) who owns some most valuable codices in my possession, and I’m loth to restore them : so make me a note to say they’re burnt, that I mayn’t have to renounce them.’” I said, ‘Is that a Christian’s idea of honesty?’ and began to upbraid him. And my colleague said, ‘You will write it for our dear old friend Felix.’ And so I dictated the epistle which lies on the table,—so far at least as I did dictate.

Aelian. You will not be afraid to hear your epistle read aloud. Observe again how far you did dictate.

Agesilaus (reads aloud).. . I hope, my dear reverend sir, that you will keep your health for many years.

Aelian. Did you dictate as far as this?

Caecilian. Yes, so far. The rest is a forgery.

Agesilaus (reads). I enclose the signet, which the Christians (and among them you and the man who keeps the praetorium) had sent to me to avert punishment;—you remember your saying, ‘Here is the key ; you may take away all the books you find in my stall and the manuscripts on the stone slab: only please be sure that the police do not take away the oil and the wheat. And I said to you, ‘Do you not know that wherever scriptures are found, the house must come down and all? ’ You answered, ‘ What shall we do then ? ’ A nd I said to you, ‘Make one of your own people take them out into the enclosure where you pray, and put them down there, and I will come with the police to take them away.' And we came there and took them all away according to the imperial command.

Caecilian. It is all false from the place where my letter ends, where I say, ‘Good health to you, my dear and reverend sir.’

Aelian. Who do you assert interpolated your letter ?

Caecilian. Ingentius.

Aelian. Mind, your assertion is incorporated in the minutes. (To Ingentius) You are tortured to prevent you from lying.

Ingentius. I acted wrongly: I added to this letter in my vexation for my friend Maurus.

Aelian. His Majesty Constantine Augustus and Licinius, the Caesars, are pleased to show favour to the Christians but do not mean that discipline should be relaxed; on the contrary, they desire that that religious code should be observed and respected : so do not flatter yourself because you tell me you are a Decurion and therefore cannot be tortured. You are going to be tortured that you may not lie,—a thing which seems unsuitable to Christians. And so speak candidly, or you will be tortured.

Ingentius. I have already confessed without torture.

This narrative leads us on from the demolition of the fabrics to the burning of the books. In Africa, this was the hottest part of the whole battle. Diocletian had formed no conception how strong was the attachment of the Christians to their Bibles. Maximian had seen more deftly how the matter lay. To excite a still fiercer opposition, and to display more vauntingly his brutal power, he made it a rule, that the Church officers should themselves, in person, deliver up their treasures to the magistrates. The proposal with which Caecilian was charged, merely to take the books left in the enclosure, was something of an evasion of the law. The place where the manuscripts were usually kept was in some library adjoining the Church: but on the first news of the persecu­tion, in most places they were conveyed away and stored, generally, in the houses of those who read them at the service. Thus at Cirta, “when they reached the library, the bookshelves were empty. Felix, the perpetual flamen, Curator of the republic, said, ‘Bring out what Scriptures you have that you may be able to obey the precepts and bidding of the Emperors.’ Catulinus produced one roll of an extremely large size. ‘ Why have you given me but one ? Bring out all you have.’ ‘We have no more, because we are Subdeacons: the Readers have the books.’ ‘Point us out the Readers.’ ‘We do not know where they live.’ ‘You do not know where they live: then tell us their names.’ ‘We are not going to betray people: here we are: order us to be executed.’ Felix, the flamen, said, ‘Take them to jail.’ And when they reached the house of Eugenius, Felix said to him; ‘ Bring out your Scriptures,’ and he brought four manuscripts. Felix said to Silvanus and Carosus, ‘Show us the rest of the Readers.’ They said, ‘ The Bishop has told you already that Edusius and Junius, your secretaries, know them all: let them show you the way to their houses.’ Edusius and Junius said, ‘ We will show you them, my lord.’ And when they came to the house of Felix, the patchworker, he brought five books : and when they came to the house of Victorinus, he brought eight: and when they came to the house of Projectus, he brought five big and two little books. And when they came to the house of Victor, the grammar-master, he brought out two codices, and four books in five volumes each. Felix said to him, ‘ Bring your Scriptures out: you have more.’ Victor, the grammar-master, said, ‘If I had had more, I should have brought them.’ When they came to Eutychius’ house, the flamen said, ‘Bring out your books, that you may obey the order,’ He said, ‘I have none.’ The flamen said, ‘Your answer is taken down.’ When they came to the house of Coddeo, Coddeo’s wife brought out six codices. Felix said, ‘Look and see if you have not some more. Bring them out.’ The woman answered, ‘I have no more.’ Felix said to Bos, the policeman, ‘Go in and look if she has no more.’ The policeman said, ‘I have looked, and found none.’” A dull tale: but it shows that it was dull work, not so amusing to some minds as torturing prisoners; whence it was more unlikely that all the Bibles would be destroyed. And it shows that they went to work at Cirta very mildly.

This thought, that Bible-hunting was tedious and difficult work, explains a good deal of the leniency with which men treated the possessors of books. Thus good Bishop Mensurius, of Carthage, as we learn from a letter of his to the Primate of Numidia, left a number of heretical books of recent manufacture in his. Church and library, on the same principle as the excellent monks at Einsiedeln set up an old black block in the place of their venerable image when the French troops drew near. Of course the pagan officers, in whose nostrils heterodoxy did not stink, knew no difference, lhe ruse succeeded: and the persecutors, having found without any trouble what they wanted, did not make any further efforts or demands upon the Christians. But there were certain busybodies, members of the Carthaginian senate, who knew the pious fraud; and they went off and confided their important secret of state to the Proconsul, Anulinus: the genuine articles in request, they said, were in the house of Mensurius: would it not be better to send and fetch them and burn them ? The wise and timeserving Anulinus sent the meddlesome men away to mind their own business.

The Church of Carthage was still, as it had been under its princely martyr-prelate of the previous century, the school of moderation for Africa. Mensurius, walking in the steps of St Cyprian, had forbidden any honour to be paid to the memories of those who drew persecution wantonly upon their heads, by saying that they had copies of the Bible and daring the officials to take them away. He expresses a profound distrust of the characters of the men who acted in this manner. “Some,” he says, writing to Secundus, “are persons of criminal lives, or debtors to the exchequer, who either would be glad to take this opportunity of persecution to be rid of a life so encumbered with debts, or think they would thus expiate and somehow wash off their misdoings, or actually look to gain money by it, and to enjoy luxuries in prison from the reverent devotion of the Christians.” This reverent devotion was indeed likely to do harm not only by thus encouraging bad men to run the risk of imprisonment, but to the Church at large. St Cyprian had found it necessary in his days, to urge cautious rules for the visitation of the brethren, for the formidable organised troops of persons who went to the jail were beginning naturally to raise the dislike of the authorities. And in like manner now, the Archdeacon, Caecilian, made it his work to regulate the performance of these acts of charity, and to hinder them from being ostentatious. But fair and Wise as this conduct was, it is easy to see how, in the excited state of feeling into which the persecution had thrown the African fraternity, caution might be regarded as truckling. Mensurius was set down as a thorough traditor (although the Donatists never openly broke with him during his lifetime): it was said that he had lied with regard to the burnt books, and that they were Bibles after all. Caecilian, upon whom all the vials of Dissenting wrath are poured, becomes a far more frightful figure. It was currently reported, that he took his stand day by day, at the prison doors, with a gang of grim myrmidons, armed with leathern thongs and scourges ; and that whenever any one approached with food or drink for the martyrs, he was driven away grievously hurt: the viands destined for them were left for the dogs that roved the town, and the prisoners died of starvation in their dungeons, while the streets rang with the shrieks of the afflicted parents who were disappointed of their last farewell. Secundus, the Primate of Numidia, wrote to Mensurius in condemnation of his policy, and with vehement eulogies on some of his own flock who had refused to give up the Scriptures,—just like the woman of old, who would not betray to the persecutors at Jericho the two Israelite spies, types of the New and Old Testament. He boasted that when the local government had sent commissioners to him to beg for books, he had answered them, ‘I am a Christian and a Bishop, not a traditor;’ and that though they had pleaded but for a few waste scraps, he had not given them even this; after the example of Eleazar the Maccabee, who would not even pretend to eat the swine’s flesh, lest he should set an example of prevarication.

The history of the persecution in Africa would be very incompletely given, if no allusion were made to the “pious obstinacy” (as Gibbon calls it) of St Felix, the Bishop of Tibiura. His simple steadfastness is of a type quite distinct from the arrogant pride of Secundus, and yet it must be felt to be nobler and more touching than the shifty contrivances of Mensurius. The day that the edict was promulgated in his Cathedral city, the good man was gone into Carthage. When he came back next day, he found that one of his Priests and two Readers were in prison, because they had not given up the sacred books, of which he himself had the key, and that the persecution was begun. The mayor of the little town, who had doubtless long beheld its venerable Christian Pontiff with some awe, ventured to send a clerk to fetch him, and asked him respectfully: “Bishop Felix, give us some books, or, if you will, any parchments that you have.” It was a distinct toning down of the words as Diocletian had written them ; but Felix answered; “I have some, but I give them not.” “What the Emperors have ordered comes before what you say. Give us some books to be burned.” “It is better,” said the martyr, “for me to be burned myself than for the Divine Scriptures, for it is better to obey God than men.” The mayor sent him away with the request that he would reconsider the matter alone. But on the third day he had not changed his mind, and said that he should make precisely the same answer to the Proconsul. Accordingly, he was taken in chains to Carthage; and brought one morning before daybreak before Anulinus, who asked him, “why he did not give up some spare or useless books.” But again Felix refused to take a helpful hint: “ I have books,” he said, “but I am not going to give them.” Sixteen days more were passed in the deepest cell of the prison­house. On the sixteenth Anulinus sent for him at ten o’clock at night, and asked him the same question. His answer was the same: “I am not going to give them.” Anulinus did not know what to do, and sent him in chains to the superior governor, the Prefect of the Praetorium. The Prefect, equally perplexed, put heavier chains upon him, and after. a delay of nine days shipped him off “to the Emperors.” They were four days on the sea,—he, in his enormous chain, tossed about in the hold of a transport ship among the horses’ feet. His misery was so great that he neither ate nor drank all the way, until at last they arrived at Agrigentum. Thenceforward, his captors courteously entreated him, as Julius had entreated Paul. The brotherhood at Agrigentum were allowed to pay him the most emphatic respect. His passage through the old historic towns of Sicily,—Catania, Taormina, Messina,—was like a royal progress. From thence they crossed to Italy. At Venusia at length he found his liberty. The Prefect of Italy was determined to let him go, if the Bishop would suffer it. He ordered his heavy manacles to be struck off, and gently addressed him. “Felix,” said he, “wherefore give you not up the Scriptures of the Lord? or perhaps indeed you have none?” Not even the reverential tone in which the magistrate spoke of his beloved book could induce him to lie or to truckle. His answer was the same as ever: “I have, indeed, but I give them not.” “ Slay Felix with the sword,” said the Prefect. Felix answered, “Thanks be to Thee, O Lord, who hast vouchsafed to deliver me.” On the 30th of August he was led out to die. Then he spoke thus: “ God, I thank Thee. I have lived fifty-six years in this world. I have preserved my virginity. I have kept the Gospels. I have preached the faith and the truth. O Jesu Christ, Lord God of heaven and earth, I bend my neck as an offering to Thee, who endurest unto everlasting, to whom is brightness and splendour for ever and ever. Amen.” The simple Acts do not mar their period by adding that he was slain’.

Such accounts as these are an abundant proof that a persecution of the Christian Church in the fourth century was absurdly ill-timed. The government had no longer to deal with a few persons belonging to an obscure sect, who kept aloof from the rest of the world and might be extinguished without anybody feeling it. Christianity had worked like leaven into the whole lump of society. One pagan officer, charged with the execution of the law, writes to the local ringleader of the corporation to be extinguished, and addresses him as Parens Carissimus! Another pagan officer, speaking of the man who in his neighbourhood was the chief priest of the obnoxious religion, styles him to his pagan colleague Episcopus Noster. In order to stimulate these magistrates to do their distasteful work, the bloodthirsty Deus at Milan was forced to enact that any who let a sturdy recusant go scotfree, should lose his own head as the price of mercy. And yet African Christianity was not uprooted.

III. When the student turns his eyes from Africa to the dominions of Galerius, he is at first sight perplexed at observing that there seems to have been some backwardness in the persecution there, during the whole of the year 303. Though the Acts of St Agape and St Chionia who received the palm in 304 reveal that some steps had been taken in the previous year to destroy the books at Thessalonica, in other places the edict was not published at all till January. In the second year of persecution a strange and sudden crowd of martyrdoms appear. The fact is easily explicable. The hideous presence of the Caesar in his own provinces was first felt in 304: during all the first season he was in the East.

Perhaps the loftiest of all the pieces of Christian literature evoked at the time of the great struggle, is the Passion of St Philip of Heraclea. It is the only record from this quarter of the empire which can with certainty be referred to the time before the Fourth Edict, and it is of some special interest as bringing out once more the laxity with which the governors treated that part of the edict which bespoke the levelling of the buildings; and it again brings out the social complications by which the persecution was retarded. The city of Heraclea in Thrace, which lay in the general prefecture of Galerius, was the seat of a Christian exarchate; and this office was admirably filled towards the close of Diocletian’s reign by one Philip, who suffered martyrdom in the second year of this persecution. When the edicts were promulgated in the town, the Prelate happened to be in the Cathedral, performing some Divine Office in the midst of a great congregation. The news was brought to him that persecution was afoot. His friends, who knew the cruelty of Galerius and were aware of the special edict against the Bishops, besought him to flee at once; but he refused to leave the Church, and stood calmly there, prophesying to the agitated brethren that the intentions of the tyrant would prove ineffectual. It was the eve of the Epiphany ; and from this circumstance the holy Bishop bade them draw lessons not of hope only, but of triumph and glory. “While the blessed Philip was still thus discoursing, came Aristomachus, the Stationarius of the city, by the President’s order, to shut up the Church against the Christians, and seal it with wax and signet. The blessed Philip said: ‘ O man of a foolish and dreary creed, who thinkest that Almighty God dwelleth within walls rather than in the hearts of men, not retaining the words of holy Esaias, who said: Heaven is My Throne, earth the footstool of My Feet: what house will ye build Me ’. The next day, the Stationarius, having made an inventory of all the vessels and appurtenances of the Church and also sealed it, departed. Then all we brethren, giving ourselves up to sorrow, perceived into what grief and how great straits our city was come. The blessed Philip began to ponder very earnestly, with Severus and Hermes and the rest, what the present need required should be done; and leaning upon the door of the Lord’s House suffered not himself to go away anywhither else from the see that had been committed to him.” The next days were spent in precautionary measures, to prevent any possible panic from proving contagious in the flock.

“Afterward, when they had assembled in Heraclea to celebrate the Lord’s Ordinance, the President Bassus (arriving) found Philip with the rest standing by the portals of the Church. When he was sat down in the usual manner to administer justice, they were all brought in unto him, and he said to Philip and the rest: ‘Which of you is master of the Christians, or doctor of the Church ?’ Philip answered : ‘I am he whom thou seekest.’ Bassus said : ‘You have heard the law of the Emperor, who commands the Christians nowhere to assemble, to the end that the men of this sect in all the world may either return to the sacrifices, or die. Therefore whatsoever vessels there are with you, of gold or of silver or of whatsoever metal, or of skilful work, writings also whereby you either read or teach, fetch them that we may examine them with authority: else, if you shall think fit to demur, you shall be tortured until you do these things.’ To these words holy Philip answered eloquently: ‘If, as thou sayest, our torments give thee pleasure, our heart is ready to bear them : therefore that weak body, over which thou hast power, tear it in pieces with what cruelty thou wilt. Only ascribe not to thyself any power over my soul. But those vessels which thou demandest, whatsoever there are with us, thou shalt have them at once: for these things we easily despise when we are forced of you, for we worship not God with precious metal, but with fear, nor can the orna­ment of the Church please Christ any better than the ornament of the heart. But the Writings neither is it seemly for thee to receive, nor for me to give¹.’

“At these words of the holy martyr the President com­manded the torturers to be brought in at once. Then entered Mucapor, a creature without a touch of nature in him and with no knowledge of human feeling. The President then ordered the priest Severus to be brought into court: and when he could not easily be found, he gave instructions for Philip to be maltreated. But as he was being visited with a long and grievous punishment, holy Hermes, who was standing close by, said: ‘Though thou shouldest take at our hand all our Writings, dread inquisitor, so that there should appear no traces at all of this true tradition anywhere in the whole world, yet our descendants, taking thought for the memory of their fathers, and for their own souls, will compose and write greater volumes, and will teach yet more strenuously the fear that we ought to pay to Christ.’ This said, he entered (but not till he had been scourged a great while), where all the vessels and the Scriptures lay hid. Then followed him Publius, the President’s assessor, a man eager to thieve and in bondage to the love of robbery. So when this clever purloiner was taking off some of the vessels on the inventory, not knowing the punishment in store for him, when Hermes told him not to make the attempt, he bruised Hermes’ face, and even stained it with not a little blood. When Bassus knew the case, and saw Hermes’ face, he was wroth with Publius and ordered Hermes to be looked to. The vessels that were in the inventory, and all the Writings, he ordered to be given over to the police. Philip and the rest he ordered to be led, escorted by guards on either side, into the market-place, that the sight might do the people good and terrify all the rest who refused to obey.

“And while these were going to the forum, the President gave all the Scriptures to the soldiers to carry. Then he started with great speed for the palace, desiring to strip the Churches of all the worshippers that were to be found anywhere. The roof also of the Lord’s House itself was spoiled, all the ornamental tiles being thrown down. The men also who did the work were forced with the lash, to make them less backward to pull it down,’' The Bibles were all burned on a great bonfire in the forum.

The ensuing part of the story reveals the working of the second of the edicts which we are now tracing. While the flames of the burning volumes went up, the earnest Prelate addressed the pagans and the Jews (of whom there were large numbers in Thrace and Macedonia) in a long and learned sermon, warning them that the end of the world was drawing near, and that none but the righteous could be saved. Meanwhile the ministers of the heathen temples had entered the forum, with preparations for a feast in honour of the idols. Hermes the deacon saw what would follow, and told the Bishop that they were to be polluted with these meats. Philip answered, ‘ The Lord’s will be done.’ Presently Bassus came into the forum in state, attended by an immense throng of every age and sex. “ Then, as is always the case with a rabble, some were greatly distressed at the affliction of the saints, others were inflamed with a great folly so that they said that all the servants of God ought to be forced to sacrifice’,—the Jews, however, were foremost, according to the account given in the Scriptures: ‘ they sacrificed unto devils, and not to God.’ ’’ At last the President said to Philip: ‘Offer a victim to the deity.’ Philip replied, ‘How can I, a Christian, worship stones? ’ Bassus said, ‘It is quite proper to pay sacrifices to our Lords.’ Philip answered, ‘We are taught to obey our betters, and to pay homage to the Emperors, but not worship.’ Bassus said, ‘At any rate sacrifice to the tutelary of the city: you see how beautiful, how smiling she is, how affably she admits all the people to do her homage.’ Philip replied, ‘You naturally are pleased with what you worship ; but I cannot be led away from honouring Heaven by human art.’ ‘Surely,’ said the President, you might feel some emotion at the sight of the Hercules before you, so colossal, yet so exquisite.’ He only drew upon himself a keen harangue upon the vanity of stocks. Bassus, admiring his constancy, turned to Hermes; but Hermes said, ‘I never sacrifice: I am a Christian.’

‘What is your rank?’ asked the judge. ‘I am a senator’ he said, ‘ and I follow my master in everything.’ Bassus caught at the suggestion. If Philip will be induced to sacrifice, will you follow his authority?’ Hermes answered, ‘I should not follow him,—nor will he be persuaded.’ The President said presently, ‘Do but sacrifice, not to the gods, but to our Lords the Emperors : just say, All hail our sovereigns!’ Hermes turned to the Bishop, and said, ‘We are fast approaching life.’ As they were being led from the court some rough soldiers, who were standing by, struck the aged Prelate so that he fell upon the floor. The humane Bassus, for form’s sake, sent the holy culprits for a few days into the prison; but soon gave them a comfortable residence in the house of a private man named Pancras, near the jail, where they were allowed to preach and hold service to their heart’s content. They had already given up the ecclesiastical property in obedience to the First Edict;—the Second Edict only ordered their incarceration; and so they remained until Bassus’ term of office expired, and a fiercer President arrived, appointed by Galerius, and armed with a new and bloodier decree. The lenity of Bassus is easily accounted for, when we hear that for many years past his wife had been a devoted disciple of the Church, and must again and again have received the Bread of Life at Philip’s hands’.

The very first thing in this splendid history which strikes the Christian reader is the wide difference of temper between these enlightened believers, and their more headstrong brethren in Numidia. Though St Philip and his brethren were ready to die, and afterwards did die, in defence of the faith, they yet thought themselves at liberty in the end to give up even the Books. There was no hesitation whatever about abandoning the Chalices. About them there was nothing intrinsically holy: they were but hallowed,—like the gold of the Temple, or the gift on the Altar. This same distinction indeed was drawn even at Cirta. Two golden and six silver Chalices, as well as the less sacred ministeria, silver lamps and candlesticks and kettles, vestments of various sorts, even down to forty-seven pair of women’s clogs and nineteen ploughmen’s smocks,—all were readily tossed out upon the floor. But even that poor traditor who afterwards (by a curious irony) helped to consecrate the first Donatist Bishop, even he would not willingly give up the sacred books. These were holy in themselves. The Scriptures are to us like a homely Shechinah ever present. There is scarcely anything so bold in all Christian literature as the superb liberality of thought which could dare to think of a new and greater Bible, when our present should be erased from the memory of the world. The erasure would only prove that He who gave the first revelation, now deemed the world ripe for a still fuller. Other traditors were poltroons: but Hermes, as much a traditor as any, soars above all calumny or criticism, by the majestic loftiness of his conception.

IV. While it is impossible to discover any special characteristics in the persecution as it developed in the territory of Galerius, the persecution in the East is strongly marked with a political type. The ecclesiastical buildings were indeed destroyed, throughout the whole of Diocletian’s dominion. Eusebius saw it done, as well as the books burned¹. At any rate the larger Churches were so treated, notably the great metropolitan Church of Tyre, which made way for so magnificent a successor under Constantine. Smaller Chapels,—the Martyria and Confessiones,—were occasionally closed, and more or less carefully watched. But though these provisions of Diocletian’s law appear to have been exactly carried into execution, they are not (as in Africa) the central point of interest. No schism of Donatists was formed in the East to perpetuate the memory of the burning of the books. The name of traditor found no Greek equivalent. The history of the oriental persecution hinges upon the third portion of the First Edict, and upon the Second Edict,—namely, upon that part of the law which was directed against the personnel of the Church. And here we are met full by the difficulty mentioned above, that we possess scarcely anything but accounts of those who died under the persecution; which means, that in almost all the cases we know the regular working of the edicts was interrupted, that the law was violated by either the persecutor or the persecuted; either the governor exceeded his powers, or else the prisoner was guilty of treason. This latter case was particularly common.

However, so far as we are able to judge, the law seems to have been fairly administered. One mode, in which some judges tried to ensure the forfeiture of all legal rights by Christians, was to keep small altars continually in the law­courts, and to insist upon all litigants performing sacrifices at them, before they could obtain justice:—going to claim legal redress was tantamount to going straight into the idol temples.

If we look for examples of persons in high office forfeiting not only rank, but also all rights of citizenship, we have not far to go. Torture was illegal for Roman citizens, yet almost all the martyrs suffered torture before they died. Of St Philip of Heraclea and his two priests it was distinctly said, that they had ‘alienated from themselves even the name and style of Romans.’ And in that most important passage in Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, which contains his florid rescript to the governors of Palestine “we find persons of distinction treated in three ways. Some had been simply banished, or with the further refinement of being banished into islands,—a most aristocratic form of penalty; these favoured few seem to have incurred no civil disabilities. Some endured that temporary kind of infamia which was implied in becoming addicti of the local senates of colonies, of which (in many cases) they themselves had once been ornaments”: all their lands and goods, as well as their personal labour, being for the time at the disposal of these bodies. Some had fared worse yet, for their civil rights had been entirely taken away, so that they could not be called possessors of a single denarius, and these led a most dejected life, digging or begging about the scenes of their past prosperity, without any hope of restoring it in the future by their industry. It mattered not to their punishment whether their distinctions were military or civil, as will be seen by the story of the three Cilician nobles given below. Of course, with their other rights, they lost also that of bequeathing property: their children were as penni­less as they.

But what is even more important to notice will be found in the thirty-fourth chapter of the second book of Constantine’s Life. In our account of the edict, we have stated that all private Christians were to be reduced to slavery. This passage proves the point. It shews us clearly that some, who were not only of free but of illustrious origin ’, were cast down below the level of infames to downright slavery. The student must keep fast in his hand this clue:—it was official position, not birth, which made the difference between this class and the former. They became slaves of the fiscus,—the official property, that is, of the Emperor. If they were not wanted for the tilling of his fields, or the building of his sumptuous palaces, they were sold to any that would buy them. Many became involuntary operatives in large linen factories ; some in the service of baking companies. Others, whose looks suggested that refined and literary tastes had incapacitated them for coarse and menial work, were sent by their owners into those parts of the house, where the handmaids plied their tasks under the mistress’s eye, to help in the spinning and the weaving.

In these cases we see clearly the law of 303 acting steadily and undisturbed. Eusebius gives us to understand that there were ‘vast numbers’ of Christians, even of Clergymen, who helped to carry it regularly into effect, by obeying its commands and renouncing Christianity. But he gives us also, twice over , a vivid but not too highly-coloured picture of the way in which Satan tried to persuade himself that he was conquering, when he really failed. Naturally, it was a point of honour with the rulers to make as many yield as possible. Victory was sweeter than punishment. Some of the scenes we find presented to us in the Epistles of St Cyprian were represented at Caesarea. Sometimes officious friends of the Christian culprit cried out that he had already sacrificed, and if he held his peace, the magistrates did not care to inquire further. At other times, men and women were dragged by violence to the altar, and the unholy thing was put in their hands ; and though they screamed their loathing and rejection of the act, they were judged by their unwilling deed, not by their free words. Or again the mangled frames of those, who had been tortured till they could not stand, were dragged along the ground to that side of the court where stood the miser­able runagates. If any of these could gather voice to profess himself a Christian, the soldiers slapped him on the mouth and stopped the word from being uttered. Eusebius speaks of these things to exemplify the barbarity, as well as the folly, of the officers. In many cases, however, the motive may have been not so much the dislike of being beaten by the constancy of the confessors, as a real desire to save them from the miseries of a rigorous application of the law. Even for a man to carry a few scars upon his ribs, or to suffer some hours of torturous tension, was not so grave a thing as to die a slave in a foreign land, while his children begged about the streets.

All the martyrdoms which Eusebius himself witnessed in this year are political, and may be attributed to the unguardedness of the Christians themselves. The magistrates were undoubtedly on the alert to detect any signs of disaffection to the government. Two Clergymen, Alphaeus and Zacchaeus, died at Caesarea for shocking the Proconsul by saying bluffly that they acknowledged but One God, and Jesus as the anointed Emperor. A layman, Procopius, the first martyr whose death Eusebius saw with his eyes, when told to sacrifice to the gods, answered that there was but One God to whom it was right to offer sacrifice,—in the way He wished : then being urged at least to pour a health to the four Emperors, he replied with Homer’s well-known political verses :

“It is not good to have lords many:
Let One be Lord,—One King.”

Of course the pagan judge could not see the superb turn which our faith put upon the passage, and perceived in it only a disapproval of Diocletian’s admirable system. Anxious as he appears to have been to spare the Christians, he could not possibly spare the treasonable. Procopius’ immediate death, by decapitation, shews that this was the view the judge actually took. In our deep sympathy with the sufferings and glories of our own beloved brethren the martyrs, we sometimes lose sight of the sympathy we ought to feel towards the magistrates who sentenced them ; men, often not only honourable and loyal, but gentle and kindhearted, who endured with a patience which astounds us more than that of the martyrs, —inasmuch as it was grounded only on human not Divine strength,—insults and revilings and personal defiance at the mouths of the Christians, foolish allegorical answers to plain questions about name and birth­place, sometimes long and exasperating sermons.

The only other sentence of death recorded by Eusebius in the first year of the persecution (November 17, 303) is full of instruction. The terrible Galerius was superintending the work at Antioch. In his appalling presence, though there was no legal need as yet for men to sacrifice until they were accused, crowds of terrified believers streamed to the temples to put themselves at once beyond the reach of accusation. Romanus, a deacon and exorcist of Caesarea, who happened to be on the spot, was stirred with indignation at the spectacle, and openly and loudly rebuked them for their sin. He was haled before the judge. That minister of justice, acting under the eye of the Caesar, felt called upon to go beyond the law, and sentenced him to the flames. Romanus was tied to the stake, and the faggots were piled round him. Everything was ready, but the judge had thought fit to send up to the palace for Galerius’ confirmation of the sentence. The Deacon waxed impatient, and called out repeatedly: ‘Where is my fire? where is my fire?’ But death was not a penalty under the statute of Diocletian. No edict having been yet issued to compel all Christians to idolatry, Romanus had done nothing distinctly treasonable by dissuading them. Galerius, thus directly appealed to, was obliged to countermand the illegal order. He substituted a more cruel, though less showy, punishment. The unfortunate person’s tongue was cut to the roots, and he was put in prison according to the terms of the Second Edict. These are the facts which Eusebius records, but without noticing the counter-effects, of Galerius’ bloody personality, and of his impotence to go beyond the laws of Diocletian. Galerius was not the only person in the world who approved of his subordinates breaking state-laws, which from his high official position he durst not break himself.

The general legality and moderation of the persecution in the eastern half of the world, during the first year of the Church’s outlawry, is attested by the fact that there is but one other genuine Passio preserved from these regions that seems probably to belong to that date. The Acts of Tarachus, Probus, and Andronicus have not been altered since the day when Sebastus, the magistrate’s heathen clerk at Anazarbus, made out a second fair copy of them for the Christians of the place to send away to Iconium, for a price of two hundred denarii. They are well worth reading,  for they show exactly the kind of procedure which was followed (we may suppose) by most oriental judges in their trials of Christians, and the kind of answers which the prisoners were apt to give. Many of the points remind the reader of what we observed in the last chapter as being the state of affairs in the upper parts of Asia Minor.

The first trial takes place at Tarsus, St Paul’s birthplace. Maximus the President asks Tarachus his name : the answer is, ‘A Christian:’ the President bids them strike him on the jaw and say, ‘Do not make crooked answers.’ To the inquiry about his station in life, he replies that he is of military rank, a Roman by race, and that he chose to retire from the army because he was a Christian. Maximus said, ‘Yes, you were not worthy to be in the army: but who gave you leave ?’ Tarachus said that he had asked and obtained leave of Publion the tribune. When offered the kind notice of the Emperors, the man replied that the Emperors were grievously mistaken and deceived by Satan. This elicited some more rough blows, but the old man persisted that they were men and not infallible. Presently he spoke about a law, by which he was bound to disobey the imperial orders, completely puzzling the judge,—and still more so when he tried to explain that to worship God and Christ was not a form of polytheism. The centurion who was ordered to thrash him with rods, sympathizing with his fellow-soldier, tried to persuade him to sacrifice, but was rebuked as ‘a minister of Satan.’ The answers of his two comrades are precisely in the same vein, except that Andronicus, being a young man of a sharp temper, answers with considerable sauciness.

In the second trial, which occurred some weeks later at Mopsuestia, both sides become much exasperated. Maximus invents strange torments for his prisoners, putting mustard and salt in their nostrils, and hot cinders upon their heads. Tarachus urges the President and his Emperors to put away the blindness of their hearts: Probus pronounced an imprecation upon all idolaters, especially upon his judge. When young Andronicus, who had not been present at his brethren’s confession, was led into court, the judge tried a new trick. 'I am sorry for you,’ he said: 'the men who preceded you passed through innumerable torments before we could persuade them to pay reverence to the gods, but they did so at last, and are to receive important preferment from the Emperors. Now, you take my advice, and get off your tortures into the bargain; for I swear by the gods and by the invincible Emperors, I shall put you to extraordinary pains.’ The youth burst forth: ‘Miserable liar! why do you try to deceive me ? Nothing could make the confessors who went before me abjure their hopes in our God. I do not know your gods, and I fear neither you nor the tribunal on which you sit.’ For once we may speak of the horrors of an oriental law­court. The judge ordered them to bind the poor youth hand and foot to four stakes and lash his back with thongs of raw hide : Andronicus said, ‘ Surely this is not what you threatened! is this all that you can do ? ’ One of the apparitors said to him, ‘Your whole body is one great wound, my poor lad, and do you call that nothing? ’ Andronicus said, ‘ Those who love the Living God do not care for these things.’ Maximus said, ‘Rub his back with salt.’ Andronicus replied with a sally of wit worthy of St Lawrence or Sir Thomas More: ‘We shall want more  salt than that, if I am to keep.’ The President bad them turn him over and give him the bastinado on the belly, so as to open the wounds he had received at the former trial. 'You wounded me before,’ said the young man, ‘and yet, as you saw, my body was quite sound again: He who tended me then, will heal me again.’ Maximus turned angrily upon his men : ‘Did I not tell you, rascally soldiers, that no one was to go to him or nurse him, that when his wounds began to fester he might do as he was bid? ’ Pegasius the turnkey said, ‘By your excellency’s worship, no one nursed him, no one went in to him: he was kept in chains in the inmost ward: if you find I am lying, I have a head, and you are my master.’ Maximus said, ‘ How is it then that his wounds do not shew?’ The turnkey said he could not tell: but Andronicus knew. ‘Fool,’ he said, our Physician is a great Physician, and He heals those who reverence God, not by applying poultices and plasters, but by His word alone. Heaven is His home, but He is with us everywhere, whom you, senseless person, do not acknowledge.’ Maximus began to threaten him viciously. Andronicus replied, ‘Once and again I have said the same thing. I am not a mere boy. By this time perhaps you begin partly to see, President, that we are not afraid of you or your torments.’

The account of the third trial is so characteristic of the Asiatic persecution, that it seems wrong not to give it whole.

Maximus. Are you willing, Tarachus, now, in this respite from scourging, to give up your impudent profession ? Come and sacrifice to the gods, by whom all things consist.

Tarachus. Is it good for you, or for them cither, that the universe should be governed by them, for whom is prepared the fire and eternal punishment; and not for them only, but for all you who do their will?

Max. Stop your blasphemy, foul-mouthed fellow; do you think that such effrontery will gain you your end by making me cut your head off at once and release you ?

Tar. If I were to die quickly, it would be no great trial; but now do precisely what you will, that the excellence of my conflict in the Lord may be increased.

Max. You have suffered no more than other classes of prisoners who are tortured by the laws.

Tar. This is another proof of your folly and gross blindness, that you do not see that the workers of wickedness endure these things justly, but they who suffer for Christ’s sake obtain a reward from Him.

Max. Foul scoundrel, what reward do you receive after you die a miserable death?

Tar. You have no right even to ask about it, nor may you learn the recompense that is in store for us. That is why we tolerate your senseless threats.

Max. Scoundrel, is that how you speak to me, as if you were my equal in position ?

Tar. I am not in your position, but I pray God I never may be; yet I have liberty to speak, and no one can stop me, through God which strengtheneth me by Christ.

Max. I’ll take that liberty out of you, you ruffian.

Tar. No one can take away my liberty, neither you, nor your Emperors, nor your father Satan, nor the devils whom you misguidedly worship.

Max. My talking with you flatters you to play the fool, scape­grace.

Tar. You have only yourself to blame: for my God whom I serve knows that I abominate the very face of you, and certainly I never wished to answer you.

Max. Come now, consider what it would be to be released from tortures, and sacrifice.

Tar. Both in my first confession at Tarsus, and in my second examination at Mopsuestia likewise, I confessed that I was a Christian; and now here I am still the identical person. . Take my advice and recognise that as true.

Max. Unhappy wretch, what good will it be repenting, when once I have killed you with tortures?

Tar. If I had meant to repent, I should have been afraid of your first and your second stripes, and should have done your will: but now I am established, and care not for you in the Lord: do what you please, most impudent man.

Max. I have made you impudent by not punishing you more severely.

Tar. I said before, and say again, you have my body in your power: do what you please.

Max. Bind him and hang him up, to stop his foolery.

Tar. If I had been a fool, I should have joined in your impieties along with you.

Max. Now that you are strung up, take good advice, before you get your deserts.

Tar. Although you are not permitted to proceed to extremities with my body, and it is illegal thus to torment a man of military rank, yet I do not ask you to desist from your madness. Do as you please.

Max. A soldier is always rewarded for his religion, when he honours the gods and the Augusti, with largesses and promotions; but you were most irreligious, and were given a dishonourable discharge, therefore I order you to be worse tortured.

Tar. Do what you please. I have asked you to do so a great many times. Why are you so very slow?

Max. Do not think (as I said before) that I am so fond of you as to dismiss you from life in an instant I shall execute you bit by bit, and throw the remains to the wild beasts.

Tar. What you do, do quickly: do not make promises without keeping them.

Max. Villain, you think that after death your body will be looked to by some silly women and anointed with spices: but I shall take order with regard to that, that your remains shall disappear.

Tar. I give you leave to torture me before I die, and when I am dead to treat me as you like.

Max. Come and sacrifice, I say, to the gods.

Tar. I told you once for all, stupid man, that I neither sacrifice to your gods nor worship your abominations.

Max. Take hold of his cheeks and rip his mouth open.

Tar. You have marred and disfigured my face, but it only refreshes my soul the more.

Max. Wretched creature, you exasperate me to behave very differently towards you.

Tar. Do not think to frighten me with words. I am a match for you, while I wear the armour of God.

Max. Curse you, what armour have you on, naked as you are, and all over wounds? speak.

Tar. You do not understand these things. You are blind and cannot see my panoply.

Max. I put up with all your ravings. For all your provoking answers, I shall not dismiss you summarily from your body.

Tar. What harm have I spoken in saying that you cannot see that which is about me, not being pure in heart but most wicked and a foe of the servants of God?

Max. I understand that you have long lived a bad life and as you stand before the tribunal they tell me you are a sorcerer.

Tar. I never was so, nor am now, for I do not serve devils as you do, but God who gives me patience and prompts me with the word that I shall speak unto you.

Max. They will do you no good, these words of yours. Sacrifice, and be rid of your tortures.

Tar. Do you take me for such a senseless fool as not to trust God and live for ever, but to trust you and get bodily relief for an hour and slay my soul for ever and ever ?

Max. Heat spits, and put them to his breasts.

Tar. Even if you do more than this, you will never make God’s servant yield and worship the figures of your devils.

Max. Bring a razor and take his ears off, and shave his head and heap redhot coals upon it.

Tar. My ears are gone, but my heart hears as well as ever.

Max. Take all the skin off his cursed head with the razor and put the coals to it.

Tar. If you order my whole body to be skinned, I shall not leave my God who empowers me to endure your weapons of wickedness.

Max. Take the hot irons and put them under his armpits.

Tar. God look upon you and judge you this day.

Max. Curse you, what God do you call upon? speak out.

Tar. One who is near us and you recognise Him not, and who will give to each man according to his works.

Max. I will not kill you simply, so that, as I said, they may wrap your relics in linen and whimper over them and worship them; but I give you a horrible death, and order your body to be burnt, and I shall scatter the ashes about.

Tar. As I said before so say I now, do what you please: you have received power in this world.

Max, Let him be taken back into the jail and kept for to-morrow’s wild-beast fight. Bring the next.

Demetrius (the centurion). He stands before you, my lord, if you please.

Max. You have reflected and given yourself good advice, Probus, not to fall into the same horrors which you yourself sometime ago endured, and which that unfortunate wretch who just went of court has now endured. I do believe and am convinced of this, that you, like a wise fellow as you are, have changed your mind and are willing to sacrifice, that you may be honoured by us and accepted as a devout worshipper of the gods. Draw near and do so.

Pro. We have but one way of arguing, President; for both Tarachus and I serve God. Do not think you will hear anything from me but what you have heard and learnt already: it will be of no use to punish me, nor will you persuade me by threatening, nor unman my courage by your blustering talk. Even this day I stand before you braver than I was, and despise your fury. Why then do you wait, madman ? why do you not make bare your madness ?

Max. Have you agreed together to be irreligious and deny the gods ?

Pro. You have spoken the truth; for once you have not lied, habitual liar though you are; for we did conspire together both in our religion and our contest and our confession: wherefore we withstand your malice in the Lord.

Max. Before you meet with uglier treatment at my hands, reflect, and put away this sort of foolery. Pity yourself. Obey me as if I were your father and pay reverence to the gods.

Pro. I see that you believe nothing at all, President: but believe me when I confirm by oath my good confession toward God, that neither you, nor your devils which you deludedly worship, nor they who gave you this power over us, will be able to turn aside our faith and affection toward God.

Max. Bind him and gird him, and then hang him up by his toes.

Pro. Will you not cease your impiety, most wicked tyrant, contending thus on behalf of devils like yourself?

Max. Take my advice before you suffer. Spare your own body. You see what horrors lie before you.

Pro. All that you do to me is good for my soul; therefore do what you wish.

Max. Heat the spits redhot and put them to his sides, to stop his folly.

Pro, The more fool you think me, the more prudent I am to God.

Max. Heat the spits again and put them well into his back.

Pro. My body is at your service. May God from heaven see my humiliation and my patience, and judge between me and you.

Max. Wretched creature, the God you call upon has Himself abandoned you to suffer thus, as your choice deserved.

Pro. My God is a lover of man, and wishes no harm to any man; but each man knows what is for his own good, and has his free will and power to act upon his. own calculation.

Max. Pour some wine upon him off the altar and put the meat into his mouth.

Pro. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, behold from Thy holy height this violence, and give sentence with me.

Max, You have suffered a great deal, wretched man, and yet see you have tasted of the altar; what can you do now?

Pro. You have not gained .much by forcibly pouring over me, as best you could, against my will, the unclean things of your sacrifices, for God knows my will.

Max. Stupid fool, you both ate and drank. Promise to do it for yourself, and you shall be taken down out of your chains.

Pro. It would do you no good, law­breaker, to overcome my confession. Know that if you were to empty all your unclean meats at once upon me, you will do me no harm, for God in heaven sees the violence I endure.

Max. Heat the spits, and run them into his shins.

Pro. Neither your fire, nor your tortures, nor (as I have told you many times) your father Satan, will persuade God’s servant to abandon the confession of the true God.

Max. There is not a morsel of your body still sound, poor wretch, and do you not yet understand ?

Pro. For this very purpose I gave my body up to you, that my soul might remain sound and unspotted.

Max. Heat some sharp nails hot, and pierce his hands.

Pro. Glory to Thee, Lord Jesu Christ, who hast deigned even to let my hands be nailed for Thy Name’s sake!

Max. So much pain is beginning to make you still more foolish, Probus.

Pro. So much power, and such immeasurable malice, O Maximus, have made you not foolish only but blind: for you do, you know not what.

Max. Foul blasphemer, how dare you call me foolish and blind, while I am contending for the religion of the gods ?

Pro. O that you were blind in your eyes and not in your heart; for now thinking that you see, you are but gazing in the darkness.

Max. Vile wretch, with your whole body maimed, do you mean to accuse me because I have still left your eyes unhurt ?

Pro. Even if through your cruelty my eyes should no longer be in my body, yet the eyes in my heart cannot be blinded by men.

Max. I shall put out your eyes, idiot, and then torture you.

Pro. Do not promise and leave it unperformed; you cannot frighten the servant of God. Do it indeed : you will not hurt me, for you cannot injure my unseen eye.

Max. Thrust his eyes out, that though he has not long to live, he may lack the light.

Pro. There ; you have taken away my bodily eyes, but, O most cruel tyrant, I defy you to deprive me of my living eye.

Max. Can you talk so well in the dark, wretch ?

Pro. If thou knewest the darkness that was in thee, most ungodly man, thou wouldest call me blessed.

Max. You are nothing but a corpse, you villain, and will you not stop this rant?

Pro. So long as the spirit stays in me, I shall not cease to speak in God who enables me through Christ.

Max. After all these torments, do you expect still to live ? You may be sure that I shall not even leave you to do your dying for yourself.

Pro. To this end I contend and wrestle with thee, accursed man, that my good confession may be made perfect, and that I may die, howsoever it be, at thy hands, thou pitiless hater of men.

Max. I shall destroy you bit by bit with stripes, as you deserve.

Pro. You have the power, overbearing servitor of tyrants.

Max. Take him away, and chain him with iron chains, and keep guard over him in the jail, that none of their gang may come in and make much of them for having persisted in their impiety before me; for I mean him after the assize to be given to the beasts. Now bring the ruffian Andronicus.

Demetrius. He is before you, if you please, my lord.

Max. Andronicus, have you even now taken pity upon the prime of your youth, and given yourself sage advice to reverence the gods ? or do you still observe the same mad rule as before ? It will do you no good, I assure you. Unless you will hear me and sacrifice to the gods, and also pay the honour to the Emperors which is needful, you will get no consolation and no pity from me. So draw near and sacrifice.

And. No good come to you, enemy and alien to all truth, that most shameless of all beasts, a tyrant! I have endured all your threats; and now do you think to persuade me to break the law in the way that you impiously, with your tortures, urge on the servants of God ? Nay, you shall never weaken my confession of God; for in the Lord I stand and wrestle with your most barbarous devices, and I will shew you that my mind’s wisdom is yet full of youth and strength.

Max. I believe you are mad and have a devil.

And. If I had a devil, I should have obeyed you; but now, not having a devil, I will not obey: but you wholly and entirely are a devil, and do devil’s work.

Max. The men who preceded you spoke very freely, just like you, until they were tortured; but afterwards they were persuaded by the severity of the punishments to be reverent to the gods, and have come to the right decision about the Augusti, and have poured to their healths, and are saved.

And. It is quite in keeping with your wicked mind to lie, for the things which you deludedly worship do not stand in the truth: for you are a liar like your father. Wherefore God will judge you shortly, minister of Satan and of all the devils.

Max. Let Him,—if I do not treat you as a thorough ruffian and bring down your lustihood.

And. I shall fear neither you nor your threats in the name of my God.

Max, Bring some paper and twist it into wisps, and light it and hold it to his belly.

And. If I should be wholly consumed by you and my breath could still be in me, you would not beat me, accursed tyrant; for the God whom I serve is at my side, enabling me.

Max. How long will you be fool enough to refuse? I wish you would at least die in your senses.

And. So long as I live, I will confound your wickedness. I am eager to be entirely destroyed by you, for that is my boast in God.

Max. Bring the spits redhot and run them in between his fingers.

And. Dull fool, and enemy of God, brimfull of all devices of Satan, when you see my body all inflamed with your tortures, do you still think that I am afraid of your devices ? I have within me the God whom I serve: through Jesus Christ I despise you.

Max. Ignorant dunce! do you not know that the man whom you are invoking was a certain common felon, and once upon a time under the authority of a President named Pilate, was fastened on a gibbet, of which occurrence there are Acts preserved ?

And. Be dumb, accursed spirit! thou art forbidden to say this : for thou art not worthy to speak of Him, most wicked man. If thou hadst the bliss to be worthy, thou wouldest not be dealing wickedly with the servants of God. But now, being alienated from hope on Him, thou hast not only lost thine own soul, but art trying to force them that are His, thou transgressor!

Max. What will you gain, you idiot, by ‘faith’ and ‘hope’ in that felon Christ of whom you speak ?

And. I have gained much already, and shall gain more; that is why I endure all this.

Max. I do not mean to use instruments of torture and make short work with you; but you shall be given to the beasts, and shall slowly die watching your, members one by one devoured by them.

And. Why, are not you fiercer than all other beasts, and more horrible than all other manslayers, because you have punished men who have done no wrong, and are not accused of doing any wrong, as if they were murderers ? Therefore, I serve my God in Christ,—I do not deprecate your threats. Bring any instrument that you think most formidable, and you shall find that I can play the man.

Max. Open his mouth, and thrust meat off the altar into it, and pour wine into it.

And. O Lord my God, behold the violence they do me.

Max. What can you do now, my fine fellow? you would not reverence nor sacrifice to them, and now you have eaten of their altars.

And. 0 foolish and blind and senseless tyrant, you poured it upon me violently and in spite of me. God knows, who understands the reasons of things, who also is able to deliver me from the wrath of Satan and his ministers.

Max. How long will you be a fool without understanding, and utter this unprofitable rant?

And. I expect to reap the profit from God, and therefore I endure all this; but you do not understand the things on which I gaze while I suffer.

Max. How long will you be a fool ? I shall crop your tongue, and then you cannot rant like this. You shew me that my forbearance has made you a greater fool than you were.

And. I entreat you to do it:—pray cut well away the lips and the tongue on which you flatter yourself you laid your pollutions.

Max. Madman, why do you still persevere in your punishments ? see, as I said, you have actually tasted of these meats.

And. Cursed be you, most bloody tyrant, and those who have given you this power, for touching me with your most abominable sacrifices: but you shall see what you have done against God’s servant.

Max. Do you dare to curse the Emperors, vile person,— the Emperors who have given so long and deep a peace to the world ?

And. I cursed them, and I will curse them again, for plagues and blood-bibbers, men who have turned the world upside down; and I pray that God with His immortal hand, not being longsuffering with them, may requite them for this their pastime, that they may know what they are doing to His servants.

Max. Put an iron into his mouth, and knock out his teeth, and cut out his impudent blasphemous tongue, that he may learn not to blaspheme the Augusti; and burn the tongue and the teeth out of his accursed head, and reduce them to ashes, and sprinkle it about, for fear some silly women of the gang of this abominable religion should watch for them, and take them home, and preserve them as precious and holy things; and take the man himself, and deliver him over and keep him in the prison, that together with his villainous fellows he may be given to the beasts tomorrow.—And it was done so.

Of these three men, Andronicus at any rate was justly  condemned for his treasonable language. But even apart from the maledictions on the Emperors, what wonder, when an almost irresponsible proconsul’s blood was up, that such stubborn confessions turned into illegal martyrdoms ? That was what the sufferers coveted. “ These Christ-wearing Martyrs,” says St Phileas of Thmuis, in a passage studded with magnificent misquotations, “coveting earnestly the best gifts, endured every toil and all devices of shameful handling, some not once but twice; and though the Emperor’s guards vied with each other against them with threatful words and deeds as well, they gave not in, because that perfect love did cast out fear".'

 

CHAPTER VI.

THE FOURTH EDICT, OR, THE PERSECUTION OF MAXIMIAN.

 

The next clearly marked stage in our history occurs in the last month of the year which had inaugurated the persecution. According to Eusebius, St Romanus, who had been mutilated on the seventeenth of November, 303, had spent a very long and weary time in his dungeon—for to a person in his condition a month might well appear so—when the birthday of Diocletian’s reign came round, the twentieth anniversary of the day when Carus died so strangely in the far East. No Emperor, since the dutiful and well-nigh saintly successor of Hadrian, had been able to look back over so lengthy or so prosperous a reign. It had long been the custom, even at the lesser festivals of Quinquennalia, to extend the joy and thankfulness of the sovereign down to the very worst and meanest of the population. And now, when Diocletian was seeing the outgoing of a fourth lustrum, assuredly the custom was not interrupted. On the day of the winter solstice, the edict of the Vicennalia went forth as usual, commanding all the prison doors to be thrown open, and the malefactors released. But the amnesty was not so full and free as at other times; for by the action of the Second antichristian Edict, instead of the murderers and grav­thieves who usually listened to the welcome proclamation, the dungeons were choked with Bishops and Priests, Deacons and Subdeacons, Readers and Exorcists. Such criminals were not to be let off so easily. Irritated as they might well be by their rigorous confinement, they might set themselves immediately at the head of the Christian conspiracy which a few months back had looked so formidable. A little note (which we call the Third Edict, because to Christian eyes it has worn the important aspect of an act of persecution,) was appended to the amnesty, to say that it applied even to these Clergymen, provided they would sacrifice; and that if they needed some encouragement to take advantage of it, any kind of torture might be thrown into the scale of freedom.

Dean Milman makes a mistake, however, in introducing his mention of this little codicil with a sentence which im­plies that it was an aggravation of the. war now waging. “Edict followed Edict,” he says, “rising in regular gradations of angry barbarity. The whole clergy were declared enemies of the State, and crowded into the prisons. A new rescript prohibited the liberation of any of these prisoners, unless they should consent to offer sacrifice.” He has taken the negative side, and exhibited it as the positive,—a process which in history, as well as in photography, converts white into black. He has made the prohibition the chief point, rather than the permission. The fact is that this clause of the decree of amnesty was intended as a special act of mercy to the Christian Church. It was a plain token that the Emperor believed the dangerous crisis to be nearly past. The Prelates might now be safely restored to their widowed Churches. But the statute which made Christianity illegal was unrepealed:—the Church still needed to have the curb held firmly. It would have been a stultification of the policy which had condemned all private believers to slavery, if the professed ecclesiastics had been allowed to walk forth absolutely free. They must be requested to go through the form of sacrificing before leaving their present quarters. If they refused to pay the paternal Government this little courtesy in return for its kindness, they were to be in no worse case than before: not one was to be killed: now, as formerly, Diocletian would transact the whole business without blood. It was important, however, to liberate them; and so the magistracy was advised to add to the natural desire of liberty the soft insinuations of the eculeus and the ungulae; but if they could resist these siren voices, nothing remained but to let them lodge where they were.

The prisons emptied with a distressing but natural rapidity. Some doubtless sacrificed at once; many after torture. Probably governors who befriended our religion made the exit easy. Others who wanted to get the prisons emptied, devised means to turn many of them out. For it was no slight expense to the Roman government to be maintaining the entire clergy in jail. It was the first instance, in fact, of a state-supported hierarchy; and yet the State was not reaping any benefit from its expenditure. It is there­fore possible to hope that not all who regained their temporal liberty, had fettered their consciences with sinful acquiescence. Some persons who were proof against torture, like St Romanus, were put to death,—of course illegally, unless they happened to speak treason. Others, like the famous Bishop of Cordova, or Donatus to whom Lactantius dedicates his book, were treated legally, and remained in their prisons, bearing through six long years the attacks of successive administrators who desired to be rid of them, until at last, like returning ghosts, they came again into the world of men, which was rejoicing in the remorseful death-anguish of Galerius.

But the publication of the so-called Third Edict was not the event which made this time so momentous to the world and to the Church. These Vicennalia rank among the most notable dates in history, for the reason that they virtually mark the close of Diocletian’s reign. The great festival was to be held at the city winch despite all Diocletian’s innovations was still the focus of the earth. The aged and anxious Emperor came from Nicomedia to Rome through his native province of Illyria, so as to avoid the discomforts of the sea passage to Brindisi. It was a long and fatiguing journey, and he performed it very fast. On the third of December he was at Burtudixus, not far from Adrianople; on the eighth at Singidunum, now Belgrade. He cannot have arrived at Rome before the fifteenth. As the high day was to be the twenty-first, the time was but short; for there was doubtless an immense amount of business to be talked over with Maximian. It was the first time the old colleagues had met since the outbreak of the persecution. It was the last time they were to meet before their intended abdication. They had to settle what day they should retire, and whom they should select to succeed to the Caesarships. The horizon was not entirely free from clouds. It is not improbable that Maximian began already to wince at the prospect of a speedy resignation, and gave symptoms to Hii antient friend of the disturbances he was destined to produce And besides all this anxious thought, Diocletian of course found it necessary to go through much of that wearisome routine of public entertainments, games, banquets, religious ceremonies, to which sovereigns are inevitably doomed Aged and infirm as he was, these things pleased him little especially when he was so intensely and gloomily pre occupied with cares of state. One stray remark of hisrecorded, which has a distinctly pettish ring about it an seems to suit perfectly with the present occasion. “I am censor,” he said ; “the games should be more chaste when I am looking on.” And the people of Rome, who ha only seen him once before during all his long reign, on the occasion of the Triumph, were very exacting. They pressed close to gaze upon the wonderful old statesman with irreverent curiosity. Diocletian, now long accustomed to the adorations and luxurious seclusion of his court at Nicomedia found their familiarity disgusting and intolerable. The great day of the festival, as we have said, was the twenty-first December. He was to be installed in his ninth consulship on the New Year’s Day. All Rome was looking forward to a fortnight of gaieties, with a grand pageant at the er But Diocletian could not endure it. He was sick at heart. He felt his nervous irritability rising to one of those strange crises which we have noticed before. Suddenly, without warning, he flung out of the astonished city, determined to return to Nicomedia, and got as far as Ravenna by the first of January, where he suffered himself to be put through the ridiculous form of an investiture. The winter was a severe one, and he had already caught cold from exposure to the rain in coming from Rome; but an excited, restless impulsegoaded him on again. He was so sick that he was forced to be carried in a litter, instead of the springless travelling-coaches of the day. But somewhere on the journey,—in all probability at Sirmium, where he had one of his many palaces—he succumbed entirely. His fine and sensitive system was shattered.

The remainder of the year 304 was a blank in the personal history of Diocletian. The paralysis affected not only his body, but his mind. That powerful and capacious intellect which had grasped and solved the problems of a world,—which had found the empire a chaos without form and void, and within twenty years had evoked a Golden Age,—which had carried, solitary yet stable, the weight of all the earth, as unsupported from without as the elephant of Indian allegory,—had so utterly shrivelled and collapsed, that though the empire was reeling to and fro with a new supreme concussion of the two greatest forces known, the only subject that suggested to it any anxiety was the opening of a new circus at Nicomedia.

For while Diocletian lay unconscious in his bed, or tottered vacantly about the warm garden or the new suites of his Sirmian retreat, the dread Fourth Edict had gone out, under his name and signet, to sort the world, man by man, woman by woman, child by child, whether they were on the Lord’s side or on Satan’s.

The date of the issue of this Fourth Edict is preserved to us in a certain account, which, taken apart by itself, would probably have seemed of little value, but is of surpassing interest when taken in connexion with the failure of Diocletian’s power. The Emperor Maximian, we are told, went down from his capital to Rome, and was present on the eighteenth of April at the games in the Circus Maximus. Suddenly there arose a cry from the assembled multitude (for doubtless all who attended these idolatrous shows were good Pagans), a cry so unanimous and well defined, that there could distinctly be counted twelve repetitions of the shout: “Away with the Christians!” The shout then changed its tone somewhat, and became appealing and personal: “O Augustus! no Christianity!” This cry was repeated ten times. In close sequence upon this popular demonstration, Eugenius Hermogenianus, the Prefect of the Praetorium,—or (according to another copy) of the City of Rome—to whom the mob referred the Emperor for an elucidation of their behaviour, introduced a motion into the Senate relative to the persecution of the Christians. That effete but venerable body welcomed his proposal; the Emperor graciously gave them leave to pass a resolution on the subject; and Maximian sent out a rescript, dated April 30, to the Augustalis of Tuscany, one Venustianus, containing just what we learn from other sources to have been the substance of the Fourth Edict.

Obviously the authority of this document must not be pressed too far. No other writing has yet been discovered which relates the same story; so that the account lacks explicit corroboration. And intrinsically, this Passio S. Sabini is not in the highest class of the historical relics of its age. It is not a mere transcript of official Acts, like those with which the last chapter closed. It is not (apparently) by an eyewitness, like the Passion of St Philip of Heraclea. It has probably been somewhat tricked up in the succeeding centuries, when Sabinus became one of the most influential of Italian saints. But neither is it of the worst description of legendary tales. The story has never passed through the constrictor-like mauling of a Simeon Metaphrastes. Such miraculous stuff as we find in it, is not at all inconsistent with a very early date of manufacture. All that part which is of consequence for the present purpose, is unaffected by any later additions. And lastly, as there is no direct corroboration of the story, so is there nothing whatever directly nor indirectly to disannul it.

Not only is it difficult to suspect the inornate narration,—the curious and purposeless details about the shouting,—the antiquarian correctness of the date of the games,—the reference to Maximian’s presence at Rome, as a thing not of every day occurrence: but that which at first sight looks most suspicious,—the decree of the Senate,—is really the greatest confirmation. Maximian was longing for leave to persecute in earnest. The heathen population knew it; and they knew also that Diocletian was not at present in a position to stop him. Now was their time, especially as Maximian was not often in the old city. A certain number agreed beforehand to raise in concert the shout that would charm their prince’s ear. But Maximian was unused to act­ing on his own advice, and Diocletian could not (even if he would) advise him to attack the Christians. He felt sure of Galerius’ support, but he was too far off to consult. He determined to see what the Senate thought about it. The Prefect of the city was of course but a creature of his own; and when he appeared in the Senate with his tremendous proposal, all the senators knew that it was an official measure. To have passed such a decree on their own responsibility, would have cost their heads: when the proposal came from such a quarter, it would have cost their heads to refuse. Maximian felt now that if Diocletian should recover and be put out by what had been done, at any rate he had got all the Senate (whom he detested) into the scrape. The situation is ludicrously true to his character. Now if this Passio were elaborately worked up like those which Simeon edited, we might have distrusted all the introductory matter, as mere lies for effect’s sake: but in this bald, plain narrative, to assume that so artful an inventor has been at work appears ridiculous. The details are not of a kind which the ordinary interpolators of legends devise: they add nothing to the glory of the saint. But whatever we may think about the truthfulness of some of the minor details in this story, two things at any rate appear quite certainly historical: (1) Here, and here alone, we have the exact words of a part of the Fourth Edict; and (2) For some reason or another, the Fourth Edict was begotten at Rome, and Maximian was the father of it.

We see then that the only direct authority we have on the origin of the Fourth Edict,—an authority so simple and strong, that to reject it would be disloyal to the laws of historical criticism,—ascribes the authorship of this horrible decree to Maximian alone, giving a train of circumstances as its occasion, which requires only a little care—no wresting—to develope into something like positive certainty. Now if the revered Head-Emperor had been politically alive, in spite of all the truthful appearance of the Acts of St Sabinus, we should have been forced to throw them away as worthless, because they entirely exclude any action on the part of Diocletian ; and without Jovius’ nod Herculius never acted. But another historian, who is most careful about his facts, though a miserable poor theorist, Lactantius, quite independently gives us strong reason to think that the revered Head-Emperor was politically dead,—as dead as Carus or Numerian. There is not a single thing recorded by any historian to shew that at this time Diocletian was politically alive, except that the Fourth Edict was so tremendous a measure as to make one doubt whether Max­imian could possibly have issued it on his own responsibility: and yet the only authority (and that a really good one) for the origin of the measure, imperatively requires that Maximian alone should have issued it. Lactantius therefore and these Acts are the two sides of an arch, neither of which would be very firm alone, but which together form the strongest support that art or nature knows. And that which our arch supports is the grand fact, which grows to new certainty and to new significance the more it is pondered over;—that in the Fourth Edict of Diocletian, Diocletian had no more hand than Adam’.

It is true that a recent German writer on the persecu­tion of Diocletian, in treating of the motives which led to Diocletian’s abdication, suggests doubt whether the Emperor’s sickness was as grave as Lactantius, Eusebius, Constantine, Eumenius, and Julian the Apostate conspire to represent it: but the mere roll-call of these varied authorities is enough to assure the reader that the account is substantially correct. That learned author is, I admit, less biassed than I am ; for he does not perceive how the Fourth Edict is affected by an admission that the Emperor had broken down. He is therefore driven to find a reason for the promulgation of that decree. The most cunning discoverer of Christian plots has not been able to spy out any fresh conspiracies which could evoke this rejoinder: on the contrary, the Third Edict shows that such alarms were growing fainter. Mr Hunziker therefore finds a very clever reason. Diocletian, he thinks, was profoundly struck with the result of the Third Edict. The multitudes of Christian prelates, who on. that occasion succumbed and sacrificed, were a palpable proof that the Church was thoroughly terrified. One more vigorous push, and the tottering edifice would fall. Now that so many rulers of the sect had conformed to the laws’ demands, the majority of their subjects would follow suit. The remnant would easily be extirpated with the sword. And so the old Emperor determined to crown his efforts at the restoration of the Roman Empire by the issue of the Fourth Edict. It will be felt however that this is but a theory, and quite contradictory to the facts.

If our own conclusion needed any buttress, we should find such in the Fourth Edict itself. “ We advise,” it ran, “that wheresover any Christians shall be found cherishing their superstition, they either be constrained to sacrifice to the gods, or, according to the table of penalties already fixed, die a grim hint of some little addition by Maximian to the First Edict—“and be dispossessed of their goods and chattels, and joined with the public rates in the same department of the Emperor’s private treasury.”

But how were they to know whether any Christians yet cherished their superstition? The method was simple, and Eusebius records it. “It was commanded, by an universal order, that in each town the people one and all, without exception, should both offer sacrifice and also”—one act did not make sure enough—“pour libation to the idols.” To be quite certain that no one escaped the compulsion, the same plan no doubt was followed as in the succeeding year, under Maximin, in Palestine. The local magistrates were charged to take especial pains to make the entire population sacrifice effectively once for all. To this end criers were to go down every street, and proclaim that men, women, and children were to repair immediately to the idol temples by order of the governor. None could plead that he was ignorant of the new command. Finally, centurions were furnished with lists of all the people in the town, and stood by the altars to summon every person, male or female, young or old, rich or poor, by name, singly.

Any one who seriously considers this diabolical document, cannot fail to perceive, how contrary it was, in several, nay, in all of its characteristics, not only to what we should consider Diocletian likely to do in the way of persecution, but to what we have in fact seen that he did. If it were really true that Diocletian himself had issued it, we should be compelled to feel that much of what was gathered together in our second and third chapters was either untrue or strangely at variance with the Emperor’s later attitude. But on the other hand, when it is found (quite apart from those preliminary considerations) that Diocletian s physical and mental state precluded him from the possibility of doing grave public business in the year 304, while trust­worthy evidence lays the guilt of the Fourth Edict at another’s door, we rejoice to find our original verdict conclusively ratified. This new measure was a recurrence to ideas and means long out of date, however clever a retrogression into the pre-Valerianic period of persecutions. It added nothing to the statute-book. It had nothing permanent and systematic about it, like the First Edict, upon which posterity were to act day by day, whenever a case of Christianity occurred, in as legal and regular a manner as with a case of adultery or theft. It was a mere violent, convulsive, unintelligent assault. Diocletian had not encouraged any plan of information against Christians, and had only with extreme reluctance consented to make the profession of our faith a statutable offence at all. But this Fourth Edict was for the very purpose of leaving not a Christian undiscovered, and of punishing them every one. And again, Diocletian had shewn a determination not to shed blood, which even the fierce and dangerous Galerius was unable to shake. But this Fourth Edict expressly sanctioned, as the recognised law of the whole empire, a private expression of the bloody will of Maximian confided in rescripts to his subordinates : it sanctioned death as a ‘penalty already fixed,’ not as a new thing; and it will be seen presently that even in the hemisphere over which Diocletian still nominally ruled, the one punishment which he so doggedly refused to admit, preferring even to risk a rupture with Galerius, was, immediately on the publication of this edict, again and again employed. Diocletian, though he might have wished Christianity safely abolished, feared the growing power of the Church, and dared not persecute (till he was forced), lest he should rouse her from her passivity. But this Fourth Edict was nothing more nor less than a loud alarum to muster the army of the Church: as the centurions called over their lists, it taught her the statistics of her numbers, down to the last child: it proved to her that her troops could endure all the hardships of the campaign: it ranged her generals in the exact order of merit. Diocletian, by an exquisite refinement of thought, while he did not neglect the salutary fear which strong penalties might inspire in the Christians, knew well enough that though he might torture every believer in the world into sacrificing, yet Christianity was not killed: he knew that men were Christians again afterwards as well as before: could he have seen deeper yet, he would have known that the utter humiliation of a fall before men and angels converted many a hard and worldly prelate into a faithful broken-hearted saint: and so he rested his hopes not mainly on the punishment of individuals, but on his three great measures for crushing the corporate life,—the destruction of the Churches, the Scriptures, and the Clergy. But this Fourth Edict evidently returns with crass dulness and brutal complacency to the thought, that if half the Church were racked till they poured the libations, and the other half burnt or butchered, Paganism would reign alone for evermore, and that the means were as eminently desirable as the end. Lastly, Diocletian had anxiously avoided all that could rouse fanatic zeal. The first result of the Fourth Edict was to rouse it .

About the time that the edict was published, Asclepiades, the Proconsul of Palestine who had sentenced Romanus, was succeeded by one Urbanus, appointed (no doubt) by Galerius,—a monster who not merely gave cruel judgments to curry favour with his master, but also to please himself. He had lately made the gratifying announcement to the pagan world that he had a Christian lady by him, whom he proposed to bring into the arena at the approaching games, to make sport with the wild beasts. It was the first time such a thing had been announced for many a long year; and the sensation throughout Palestine was immense. The Christians shared in the uncontrollable excitement, and with a most unwholesome effect. On the day that the show was to be exhibited, six young men,—all of whom (save one) were strangers at Caesarea, the scene of the occurrence, and so had avoided the roll-call,—tied one another’s hands fast, to prove (says Eusebius) their extreme alacrity to become martyrs, and running up at a great pace, just as Urban set foot on the stairs of the crowded amphitheatre, earnestly invited his attention to the fact that they were Christians, and offered to prove conclusively that the assaults of the wild beasts had no terrors for those who made their boast in the God of all. They had their evil desire. As soon as the magistrate recovered from the first shock of indignant surprise, they were at once shut up in the jail, and after a few days, with the addition of two others—one of whom seems to have been condemned merely because he tended their necessities in the prison,—were led out and beheaded k

But this distressing and morbid symptom was not confined to the East. On the 12th of August, 304, at Catana in Sicily, “the Deacon Euplius, standing outside the curtain of the court, cried out loud, saying: ‘I am a Christian, and for the name of Christ I long to die.’ Calvisian the Consular hearing it, said: ‘Let the man that shouted come in.’ When Euplius was come into the judge’s court, carrying the Gospels, one of Calvisian’s friends, called Maximus, said : ‘He ought not to carry such papers contrary to the royal order.’ Calvisian the Consular said: ‘Where do these come from? did they come out of your house ?’ Euplius answered : ‘I have no house, as my Lord Jesus Christ knows.’ Calvisian the Consular said : ‘ Was it you who brought them here?’ Euplius said: ‘It was I who brought them here with my own hands, as you can see quite well:—they found me with them.’ Calvisian said : ‘Read them.’ Euplius opening read : ‘Blessed are they that suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake, for thcir’s is the kingdom of Heaven.’ And then in another place, ‘Whoso will come after Me, let him take up his cross and follow Me.’ When he had read these and other passages, Calvisian the Consular said: ‘What does this mean?’ Euplius said : ‘The law of my Lord, which was delivered to me.’ Calvisian the Consular said : ‘By whom?  Euplius answered: ‘By Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.’ Calvisian the Consular, pronouncing a preliminary sentence, said : ‘Since his confession is notorious, let him be examined under torture: let him be delivered to the torturers.’ And when he had been delivered, the second trial, by inquisition , began.

“On the twelfth of August, in the ninth consulship of Diocletian and eighth of Maximian, Calvisian the Consular said to Euplius, as he lay on the rack: ‘With regard to your own admission made today, what say you of it now?’

Euplius, with the hand that was free making the sign of the cross upon his forehead, replied : ‘What I said then, that I confess now, that I am a Christian, and read the Divine Scriptures.’

Calvisian said : ‘Why did you keep these Lessons and not give them up, when the Emperors forbad them?’

Euplius answered: ‘Because I am a Christian, and might not give them up; and it is more expedient to die than to give them up. In these is eternal life. He who gives them up loses eternal life. That I may not lose that, I give my life.’

Calvisian, pronouncing the preliminary sentence, said: ‘Let Euplius, who did not give up the Scriptures according to the edict of the sovereigns, but reads them to the people, be tortured.’

And being tortured, Euplius said : ‘Thanks to Thee, O Christ. Guard Thou me, who suffer these things for Thee.’

Calvisian the Consular said: ‘Stop this madness, Euplius.’

Euplius said : ‘I worship Christ. I detest the devils. Do what you will, I am a Christian. I have long wished for this. Do what you will. Bring fresh instruments; I am a Christian.’

After he had been racked a great while, the tormentors were told to rest for a space. And Calvisian said: ‘Wretched man, worship the gods; do reverence to Mars, Apollo, and Aesculapius.’

Euplius said : ‘I worship the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I worship the Holy Trinity, beside whom there is no God. Perish the gods that made not heaven and earth and that which is in them. I am a Christian.’

Calvisian the Prefect said : ‘Sacrifice, if you would go free.’

Euplius said: ‘I only sacrifice to Christ, who is God, and I myself am the victim : what to do farther, I find not. Your attempt is vain; I am a Christian.’

Calvisian ordered him to be tortured again more sharply. And being tortured, Euplius said : ‘Thanks to Thee, O Christ. 0 Christ, succour! For Thee I suffer thus, O Christ.’ And he said it somewhat often. And when his strength failed, he said with his lips alone, without voice, these, same things, or perhaps others.

“Calvisian, entering into the interior, within the curtain, dictated the sentence. And coming out, carrying the tablet, he read: ‘I order Euplius, the Christian, who contemns the edicts of the sovereigns, blaspheming the gods, and refuses to return to his senses, to be executed with the sword. Lead him out.’

Then the Gospel, with which he had been arrested, was hung to his neck, the crier proclaiming; Euplius, the Christian, the enemy of the gods and the Emperors.’

Euplius was merry, and said again and again: ‘Thanks to Christ the true God.’ And when he had been brought to the spot, kneeling down, he prayed at some length. And again giving thanks, he offered his neck, and was beheaded by the executioner. His body was afterwards taken up by the Christians, and, after being embalmed with spices, was buried.”

This strange lust after self-sacrifice takes almost a comical form in the instance immortalized by the tripping spritely third Crown-song of Prudentius. Saint Eulalia, the theme of the piece, was the daughter of an opulent Christian gentleman of Emerita in Spain. At the time of the issue of the Fourth Edict, she had hardly attained to the tale of twelve years, which was fixed by Roman law as the marriageable age. But she was in advance of her years.

“Long time had they that knew her known,

her face was toward the heavenly Throne :

from earliest years the maid had shown

she never meant to wed,—

had flung her little toys away,

and said as plain as babes can say,

 that it was very wrong to play.

If e’er upon her head

to place a rosy wreath they tried,

the tiny anchoret had cried:

the tempting goldstick she defied,

the glittering beads forswore.

So stem she moved and self-possessed,

that gray philosophers confessed,

 she mused as deeply as the best,

a moralist of four.”

There was a grave fear lest so austere a spirit should be obnoxious to dangers under the exciting influence of the persecution ; and therefore on the arrival of the general command to enforce sacrifice, St Eulalia’s parents had the prudence to leave the town and proceed to their country , house, at a great and (they hoped) a safe distance from Emerita. They took the further precaution of forbidding the damsel to show herself outside the door,

“lest doting on Death’s awful charms,

the fierce maid rush to reach his arms.

But she:—the place was dull as dull:

she could not brook to stay

 in ease and inactivity:—

 one night, when no one else could see,

she found the door, she turn’d the key,

and fairly ran away.”

If we may believe the poet, the Angels abetted her escapade, by affording her a light for her journey. Early in the morning she presented herself, with her feet bleeding and her garments tattered from her long rough walk, at the tribunal of Dacianus; and standing full in the midst between the lictors delivered herself of a withering denuntiation of all those who worshipped ‘‘scraped stones,” and of the Emperor Maximian in particular. She closed her speech with an invitation to the torturers to try if their vivisections could discover her soul. The Commissioner, usually so fierce, was apparently captivated by the picturesqueness of the situation, and after threatening Eulalia with a horrible fate, attempted to offer her a distinguished gallantry.

“But oh I wish before thy death,—
if such a thing might be,—
that thou, dear scolding little girl,
thy naughtiness wouldst see!

Thon’rt just of ripe age to be wed:

thou must not fling away,

like flowers mown before they’re blown,

the pleasures of that day.’

The magistrate added more in much the same strain.

“Never a word the martyr spake,

but roar'd aloud for wrath,

and even as the tyrant sat,

right in his eyes Eulalia spat,

next, scatter’d all the idols round,

and flung the censers on the ground,

and spum’d them from her path.”

These proceedings aroused Dacianus to a less complimentary view of Eulalia’s position, and the young lady at last expired under the infliction of barbarities worthy of her judge’s reputation.

These are samples of the mode in which enthusiastic persons now began to throw themselves voluntarily in the way of death, not observing the old rule of the Church, by which such martyrdoms were held to be unworthy of the name, and a disgrace rather than a glory. Such scenes became extremely common. At Nicomedia, according to the popular story which had reached Eusebius, whenever any person was condemned to the flames, numbers of men and women were sure to throw themselves into the burning along with him. But the most noticeable thing is, that now we find every person, who is proved a Christian, condemned to death solely on that account. The manner of the death depends on the pitifulness or the cruelty of the judge: but death in some form is the law. In that province where but a year back the fear of Diocletian had caused the reversal of a sentence of death without torture, in an aggravated case of defiance, a defenceless and innocent lady is exposed, without a murmur of disapprobation, to die at the paw of the lion and the bear, before the excited and gloating eyes of half a province. The truth is, that the whole East now, since Diocletian’s collapse, was lying bound and helpless, like St Thecla in the amphitheatre of Caesarea, before the Evil Beast himself.

And horrible as were such deaths as these, there were worse things yet,—a hundred thousandfold more horrible; and far more alien from the earnest morality of Diocletian. These foul Satanic Dacian boors, to whom Satan had given all the kingdoms of this world, had sent a rescript—the authorities are incontroversible—to many (at any rate) among their lieutenants, specially directed against that large and increasing class of women, who had devoted themselves— mistakenly it may be—to go for ever without the holy bliss of motherhood. Let any person read the story of St Didymus and St Theodora, one of the truest, simplest, tenderest stories ever lived through; and then say whether such a thing could ever have happened in the year 304, had not Diocletian, in his palace at Sirmium, been lying all through those sweet May days unconscious that his brother and his son were ruining the world for which he had toiled so well.

“ In the city of Alexandria, Proculus, sitting before the judgment-seat, said, ‘ Call the Virgin Theodora.’

The clerk answered from his desk, ‘Theodora is at the bar.’

The judge said, ‘Of what condition art thou ?’

Theodora answered, ‘I am a Christian.’

The judge said, ‘Art thou freeborn or a serving-maid?’

Theodora answered, ‘I have already told thee; I am a Christian. Christ came and set me free; for as far as this world is concerned, I was born free.’

The judge said, ‘Call the Curator of the city.’ And when he came, he said to him, ‘Tell me what thou knowest of the Virgin Theodora.’

Lucius the Curator said, ‘By your worship, she is freeborn and a lady too, and of a very excellent family.’

The judge said, ‘Then if freeborn, why wouldest thou not be married?’

Theodora answered, ‘For Christ’s sake. Coming in the flesh into this world, He withdrew us from corruption and promised us eternal life. Therefore so long as I remain in the faith of Him, I believe I shall remain intact.’

The judge said, ‘The Emperors have commanded that all ye who are Virgins must either sacrifice to the gods, or be thereunto incited by being abused in a brothel.’

Theodora answered, ‘I suppose that thou art aware that the Lord is a regarder of men’s wills: God seeth the will to be chaste. And if thou forcest me to do this, then is it no harlotry,—only a deed of violence done by you.’

The judge said, ‘As I learn that thou art of good birth, and as I feel compassion for thy beautiful face, I shall take pity on thee. But I warn thee not to trifle with me, for (by all the gods) it will do thee no good. The Emperors have made a decree that all ye who are Virgins must either sacrifice to the gods, or be thereunto incited by being abused in a brothel.’

Theodora answered, ‘I have already told thee, that God is a regarder of the will : for He hath foreknowledge, and He seeth the thoughts. Wherefore if I am forced to do this, I do not judge it to be fornication : just as if thou shouldest choose to cut off my head, or hand, or foot, or to cut up my whole body: these would be works of thy violence, not of my will. For I, for my part, mean to remain in God. For my vow itself, so far as that is concerned, is but a gift of God, for to Him belongs virginity, and also the power to confess Him. And He is the Lord, and He can keep His gift safe,  according as He will.’

The judge said, ‘Thou must never think of disgracing thy family, and being a reproach to it for ever. According to the witness which the Curator gave of thee, thou art freeborn, and worthy of respect, and of the highest birth.’

Theodora answered, ‘I acknowledge the Lord Christ as the highest, who gave me my free birth and my honourable estate, and who knows well how to preserve His own turtledove.’

The judge said, ‘Why dost thou make such a mistake as to trust a man that was crucified. Think not that when thou art delivered into the brothel thou wilt be preserved without stain. Therefore, for every reason, it will be madness to persist.’

Theodora answered, ‘I trust Christ, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, that He will free me from the hands of these enemies, and that He will preserve me without stain while I persevere in the faith of Him; and I cannot deny it.’

“The judge said, I am bearing with thy prattle, and have not yet put thee under torture; but if thou persistest in thy contradiction, I must have thee overcome like any slave-girl. I must cause the command of our lords the Emperors to be fulfilled, for an ensample unto other women.’

To whom Theodora answered, ‘I am ready to give up my body, over which thou hast power; but God has the power over my soul.’

The judge said, ‘Buffet her somewhat smartly with the palms of your hands, and say to her, Be not a fool, but go up and sacrifice to the gods.’

Theodora answered, ‘By the Lord I will not sacrifice, nor worship the devils, while I have the Lord for my helper.’

The judge said, ‘Fool, thou hast forced me to do an injury to thee who art a freeborn woman, to cast thee unto such a rabble as are waiting eagerly for thy sentence to be passed.’

Theodora answered, ‘I am no fool for confessing the Lord. Also what thou sayest to be an injury, will be an honour and glory to me unto all time.’

The judge said, ‘I shall no longer suffer thee, but do the bidding of our lords the Emperors. For I suffered thee, hoping that thou wouldest be persuaded, but if I spare thee now any longer, I shall be found contrary to the imperial decree.’

Theodora answered, ‘Just as thou art afraid, and hastenest to perform what is bidden thee, so I too hasten not to deny my Lord ; for I am afraid to despise the true King.’

The judge said, ‘Dost thou despise the command of the everlasting Emperors, and think me to be a fool? See (saith he) lest thou begin to feel by experience. Therefore I give thee three days’ space from now; and by the gods, unless thou dost consent, I will place thee in the brothel, that all women may see thee, and seeing thee may be convinced of the injuries which them­selves must undergo.’

Theodora answered, ‘God is the same now as ever He was, who will not suffer me to fall away from Him. Therefore I am ready to offer thee my body, for to me these three days are already as good as gone. Do therefore as thou wilt. But I beg thee, order me to be kept without pollution, until thou dost pronounce my sentence.’

The judge said, ‘I order Theodora to be kept three full days under befitting custody, if perchance she may repent and persuade herself to draw back from so monstrous a contumacy. And take heed ye offer her no violence, forasmuch as she is of a noble family.’

“So after three days, the judge, having taken his seat, ordered Theodora to be called.

The judge said, ‘If thou hast mended thy ways, sacrifice and go. But I tell thee, if thou stickest to thy purpose, thou shalt not be left a Virgin.’

Theodora answered, ‘I have already told thee, and ask no leave to tell thee again, that the gift of chastity is through Christ, the declaration of uncorruptibleness and the profession of faith is through the Lord Christ, and He knows how to preserve His lamb and His handmaid.

The judge said, ‘By the gods, for sheer fear of the command of the Emperors, I must pass sentence on thee, lest, if I do it not, I myself be accused. But thou shalt understand that it is thyself that hast put thyself into the brothel, by refusing to sacrifice to the idols. Let us see whether Christ, for whose sake thou hast persisted in thy contumacy, will keep thee safe?

Theodora answered, ‘God, who perceiveth all secrets and knoweth all things long before, and who hath kept me without stain unto this day because of His promise, He will keep me also from the foul and wicked men who are prepared to insult God’s handmaid? ”

And so the great heroine was led by the satellites of justice into the brothel. A peerless traditor, she had been willing to surrender even a nobler treasure than Hermes of Heraclea had surrendered. Nor was her confidence vain. The Lord whom she trusted had provided a means for her escape. It was not that those who dared to gaze profanely on her consecrated form were struck, as in the story of St Agnes, with blindness, and restored to sight by the Virgin’s prayer. No angel appeared to open the doors and lead her forth. Her deliverance was effected by a simple brave deed of human kindness. The amused rabble of Alexandria were standing by the house to watch who would first go in to seize the victim, when an officer of high rank, clad in his military garb, pushed his way through, and entered amid the laughter of the mob into the infamous den. Didymus the Christian had not been ashamed to feign himself one of the wicked, nor afraid to risk his life, if he might by any means save the maiden from less gentle hands.

“Fear not,” he said, as Theodora’s courage sank at his entrance; “I wear the Devil’s livery, but I am thy brother. Come, change raiment with me. Has not the Apostle said, I beseech you, be as I am?”

The great helmet was put upon her head, and the long cloak covered her figure, only showing the military sandals and greaves beneath. Didymus bad her hang her head, as men do who visit such houses, and to speak to no one at the door. The next person who went into the chamber was astonished to find only a grown man sitting there. ‘God’s turtledove ’ was flown.

Didymus was of course taken to the Augustal’s tribunal. Proculus asked who had suggested to him to do the deed.

He answered, ‘God sent me to do it.’

‘Confess,’ said the judge, ‘before you are tortured, where Theodora is.’

Didymus answered, ‘Where she is, by Jesus Christ the Son of God, I know not: but I know and am sure that she is a hand­maid of God, and that having once confessed Christ she remained inviolate, and God has kept her unsullied. The credit of what I have done, therefore, belongs to the Lord, and not to me ; for God did it for her according to His faithfulness, as thou thyself knowest, if but thou wouldest confess.’

The judge ordered him to execution. Didymus replied, ‘Blessed art Thou, O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hast not despised my device, and hast saved thy handmaid Theodora.’

It seems almost incredible that human beings should deliberately have put this hideous affront upon human nature in the sacred name of law. But it becomes more shocking still, when a closer inspection leads to the belief that the suggestion originated in the studies of the New Platonists. It was apparently about the time of the issue of the Fourth Edict, that the philosophic magician Theotecnus was appointed by Galerius to the chief magistracy of Galatia, having pledged himself to uproot the Christian superstition in his district. There he made his first experiments in those damned arts of persecution, which he carried to so high a finish later on under Maximin at Antioch. There he first tried the effect of sending St Tecusa, and six other nuns with her, to the house of shame . From that time, this devilish device became common. The wide spread of the practice proves the truth of the remark in the Acts of St Didymus, that rape became a legal weapon, by imperial decree. It was not a fortuitous coincidence that governors in East and West hit at the same time upon this cogent argument. While St Theodora suffered from the loathsome prank in Egypt, and St Tecusa at Ancyra, at Rome the queenly child St Agnes was subjected to the same discipline beneath Maximian’s lewd eye. At Thessalonica, the Virgin Irene was brought down from the cave, whither she and her sisters had retired since the First Edict was put forth in order to read the Holy Scriptures unmolested, and led by the common hangman to the brothel. The pages of St Ambrose and St Chrysostom abound with similar tales. If one thing more than another could promote the development of that primitive Order of Virgins, which filled the great Milanese Pontiff with such enthusiasm, it was the manner in which they were singled out to bear the most frightful assault in all the persecution. The fiends that sought to destroy the Church’s precious innocence, had over­shot their mark.

 

CHAPTER VII.

FROM DIOCLETIAN TO CONSTANTINE.

 

Thus angry had the strife become when Diocletian awoke from his torpor to find his abdication-day at hand. Ill as he was, they had found means to bring him to Nicomedia towards the end of the year 304, in time for the inauguration of the new circus. But the Emperor had been unable to take part in the festival. The journey from Sirmium had proved too great a trial for his enfeebled powers, and on the 13th of December, in spite of the litanies offered up in all the temples of the town, the woebegone looks of the palace servants and the adjournment of the judicial sessions conveyed to the 'world without the intelligence that the Augustus was no more. Early the next day, however, it was discovered that life was still present, and that what seemed death had been only a longer fainting fit than usual. But the bulletins which issued from the imperial chamber were so reserved, that many persons suspected that Diocletian was indeed dead, and his death only concealed for fear the troops should attempt some revolution before the expected arrival of Galerius. The suspicion spread and fortified itself for three months, and could not be convinced by anything short of the public appearance of the old Emperor himself, on the 1st of March, so ill and wasted as scarcely to be recognised, and still subject to the attacks of an intermittent imbecility.

It was not long after this occurrence that the Caesar appeared at the capital. He had come, according to agreement, to be admitted Augustus in Diocletian’s stead on the kalends of May; and he had no suspicion whatever that his father-in-law had suffered a change of mind upon the subject of his withdrawal. What was his surprise to find that Diocletian,—who had so strenuously maintained the doctrine of vicennial abdication, and had coerced Maximian into accepting the same view,—was now as loth as Maximian himself to surrender the helm of government! Such was the case. Diocletian was no longer looking forward to the 1st of May with the pleasant sense of an approaching holiday. Sadly and wearily he had come to the conclusion that for the world’s sake he must toil yet longer at his great task, and, if need be, die in harness.

No clear account has ever yet been given of the circum­stances which attended the famous abdication of Diocletian, although the seeming discrepancies between the original  authorities are susceptible, I believe, of being easily put in harmony. It is a fact, which cannot be disproved, that the great Refounder of the Empire had from the beginning meant to retire after his twentieth year of office, and to set thus an example which his successors were to follow. His resolution was not suddenly taken (as some elder writers appear to suggest) because an unforeseen and accidental sickness in the year 305 had made him feel unfit for work. It was the outcome of sagacious observation and long forethought. Few men can fill a very laborious and anxious post, with real success, for more than a score of years. After so liberal a trial, a bad ruler can make none believe his promises of improvement, while a good ruler runs the risk of being compared unfavourably with his earlier self. Better to withdraw into a distinguished repose, amid the astonished plaudits of mankind, than to be called by a single tongue a dotard on the throne. And in the empire which Diocletian ruled there was a further reason which made it prudent to retire. Men like the Em­peror’s hopeful heir-apparent might be content to wait many years for the peaceful reversion of the sceptre, if the date were fixed at which it would surely be their own; but otherwise, the temptation would be strong to fix at their own pleasure the close of a predecessor’s life. And now Diocletian’s ambition was more than satisfied. He had fully determined to resign his power on the twentieth anniversary of the day which had seen Maximian made Caesar; and he had thought to resign it with confidence into the hands of Constantius, with Galerius for coadjutor.

Yet Lactantius’ story is but exaggerated, not untrue, when he says that the Caesar came, not to congratulate his wife’s father on recovery from sickness, but to force him off the throne. Diocletian had undergone no change of view on the abstract theoretical wisdom of vicennial abdication, nor had his disorder reduced him to that vulgar jealousy which might make him cling to power, as dying men cling to life : but, since his interview with Maximian in December, events had taken place of which he had only just become aware, and which made him feel how fearfully dangerous it would be to relinquish the direction of affairs. During that period of derangement Galerius had given proof that he was capable of overturning all the good which Diocletian had done. Maximian and he together had shot abroad those two fell edicts, which ordered that every human being should by compulsion offer sacrifice to idols which half the race abhorred, and that every Christian Nun should suffer the extremest outrage which humanity can offer to humanity. The great Church was awake, and was beginning to lift her towering height in a furious and frenzied enthusiasm. Unless something were done at once to appease the mighty rebel, there was good reason to expect such a civil war as earth had never known. And Galerius was blind to the danger. Galerius could, and would, do nothing to soothe the Christians. Galerius was bent, not upon quelling a chance conspiracy in the brotherhood, but upon putting the whole brotherhood to the sword. Diocletian saw where the only hope lay. The ‘Second Augustus’ alone could cope with the emergency. A German writer of repute has tried to win him credit for tenderness of heart by arguing that he retired because he could not bear the cruelties of the persecution; but how far nobler and more magnanimous his conduct was, when the facts are known. Returning from the jaws of death, and still (from overwork) but half alive, he was ready to forgo his hardearned rest, the éclat of an abdication, and the home he had so long been preparing for his old age, rather than see the empire go back to the rack and ruin from which he had delivered it.

But the Evil Beast had no eye for the nobility of Diocletian’s self-sacrificing proposal. He began—so Lactantius learned from Constantine, or someone else about the court—civilly enough, making much of his benefactor’s recent sickness, and the benefits he would gain by the change to Illyrian air. But Diocletian was more solicitous about the health of the empire than his own, and stuck to his point. Then the Caesar waxed warmer, and spoke openly about his own expectations. The argument was indeed a fair one. Diocletian had promised him the succession, and felt that the argument was fair. It is said that he even offered to sacrifice his quadruple system as the price of retaining some control upon the administration. “There is no reason,” he said, “if you must needs be an Emperor, why all four should not be Augusti together.” He would hardly have suggested such a concession, had he been the strong man that he was once. Galerius saw that he was gaining the advantage, and followed it up. He vowed that Diocletian’s plan of an imperial college was the best that could be devised, and that he would never see it abandoned. But fifteen years spent in fighting savages on the banks of the Danube was as much exile, and as much drudgery, as could be expected from any man who was powerful enough to choose. In proportion as the worn-out Emperor shewed signs of coming to terms, so Galerius advanced in violence. He had thoroughly alarmed the old man two years before, and now it was easier to alarm him. “ If you, sir,” he said at length, “ refuse to oblige me, I must see how else I can better myself.” Perhaps Diocletian had felt throughout that it was but a forlorn hope. He turned once more to his omens and his oracles’, and he found the outlook dark. The answer of fate came back that a great crash awaited the empire. Diocletian felt that he could not withstand fate; he determined to abandon the Church and the world to the inevitable issue, and to betake the life which after all had proved a failure to the solitude, the homeliness, the religion of Spalatro.

But he had another disappointment to endure before leaving Nicomedia. There is no reason to doubt that Diocletian, having been successfully brought back by Galerius to his original design of abdication, was next driven against his will into altering the succession. For many years the old Emperor had kept close to his person the able and judicious son of Constantius and St Helen,—not as a hostage (as it has been stated), for Constantius was not a prince who needed such rivets to fix his loyalty; it would have been absurd to keep Constantine as a security for his father, while the son of the restless Maximian lived at large in Italy. Everything shews that Constantine in the palace of Nicomedia was being educated for the work Diocletian meant him to fulfil; he was learning the wisdom of the Egyptians. The Emperor had already advanced him to high military honours. Even if Diocletian had no immediate intention of promoting Constantine to the Caesar- ship at his own retirement, he at least intended him some day to take the world in hand; and all the world—especially the army—looked upon him as certain to occupy the first vacancy. With him, in public opinion, was associated the name of Maxentius, Maximian’s son. The young man bore, indeed, a hardly better character than his father; but, unless there were some strong reason to the contrary, Diocletian wished kinship not to be disregarded in the succession to the throne. His intentions in this case were very plainly declared by his having given to Maxentius for wife a daughter of Galerius; for the imperial ladies were far too valuable to be spent on men not destined to the purple. At a later date Diocletian incurred the revenge of Constantine and Licinius, because (they said) he had looked too kindly on the pretensions of Maxentius. But Galerius had no relish for the appointment of the pair. Constantine he hated with all the hatred of a jealous rival. On the religious question the two and he were utterly at variance; for while Constantine was theologically drawn towards Christianity in some degree, and most cordially echoed Diocletian’s political feeling towards it, Maxentius also was disposed to befriend the Church, having the wit to oppose his father’s policy in everything. Galerius had chosen colleagues who would be more supple to his will. Probably without great labour he induced the Emperor to set aside Maxentius for the present, in favour of one Severus,—a man unknown to fame, but (in spite of the debauchery which he shared with most of his contemporaries) a loyal servant and a fair captain. It must have been a harder task to make the old man disannul the hopes of his own young scholar ; and that, in favour of a creature so repulsive to Diocletian as the substitute whom he proposed. Lactantius, in his fancy sketch of the scene, well depicts the horror of Diocletian as Galerius introduced ‘ the young half-savage,’ Daza. “Who in the world,” he cried, “is this person whom you bring me?” Galerius answered that the sly-faced Caliban was a relation of his own. The old Augustus groaned aloud. “The care of the state,” he said, “cannot possibly be confided to the kind of beings you present me with.” “I,” said Galerius, “am satisfied with them.” Diocletian felt again that he was overmatched, and acquiesced, with words of ominous warning. “You,” he said, “you, on whose shoulders the government is falling, will have to see to this. I have had toil and thought enough, that the state might stand uninjured during my own reign. If any catastrophe occurs, the fault will not lie with me.”

The first of May came; and Diocletian gave up his purple,—in the presence of the army, but not to the army. The army had only elected himself because Jove had willed that it should elect him; and his successors were to reign by direct grace of Jove and of Jovius. On a high place, about three miles from Nicomedia, made conspicuous and sacred by a tall column topped with an effigy of Jove, under which Galerius had been invested with the imperial cloak, a dais had been erected. On the dais stood the Augustus and the Caesar, and with them Maximinus and Constantine. Beneath the dais stood Lactantius. As the great Emperor made his farewell oration, he was so affected. by the thought of what he was resigning the world unto, that the historian saw the tears upon his massive melancholy face. He told the audience that he felt his age, that he needed rest, that younger men would do the work better than he could, that he had fixed on new Caesars to take his room and Maximian’s. All eyes were fixed on Constantine; but, to the surprise of all, the names which Diocletian mentioned were those of Severus and of Maximin. The people present affected to believe that one name or the other had been bestowed for the occasion upon Constantine: but Galerius stretched his hand back behind the speaker, and fetched Daza to the front. Then, before the eyes of all, the ‘veteran king’ stripped himself of his own laticlave, and cast it upon the shoulders of the thing beside him, stepped down from the dais into his travelling carriage, drove straight through the city to the port, and took ship for his native shore. The same day, though not with so good a grace, Maximian at Milan had gone through the same ceremony in the temple of Jupiter, and had retired to wallow in the sensual pleasures of Lucania.

It will be felt that the main interest of the persecution is gone, as soon as Diodes is settled, an ex-Emperor, in his Dalmatian villa. Constantius was now first Augustus, Galerius second. But the reign of Constantius was so short that it is impossible to say with certainty what line he took with regard to Christianity. We have no material from the West which bears distinctly on the subject; and the West is the quarter where his influence would still be most felt, for he did not follow up his advancement by removing to Nicomedia, nor even to Milan, but stayed on the scene of his old activity. I think it probable that in his own immediate provinces he left the Christian persecution where it was. He did not formally stop it. It had, from the first, in Gaul and Germany and Britain been barely more than a dead letter, and only required to be left alone to die. In Spain perhaps he had to interfere on Christianity’s behalf more vigorously. Beyond these countries his power did not (except in name) extend. Even Italy and Africa, though belonging to the western half of the empire, were not beneath his rule. Eutropius, who is followed by Orosius, declares that he gave over those rich territories to Galerius. For my own part, I am persuaded that there was no formal transaction, and that the cession was not so voluntary as it would appear. But the statement contains a residuum of truth. The explanation is to be found in admitting the general truthfulness of Lactantius’ narrative of the abdication, as I have given it above. The Caesar who was thought to be the vicegerent of Constantius, was Severus; but Severus had been nominated, not (as he ought to have been) by his own chief, nor even by Diocletian, but by Galerius. He was in fact the merest tool of his patron; and Italy and Africa, under him, were much more truly a part of the dominions of Galerius than were Syria or Egypt, which the independent Daza held. To say the least of it, Constantius had no more command in them, than Diocletian had enjoyed. And so it came to pass that, in spite of what the Bishop of Caesarea says, the persecution did not fully cease in what had been the realm of Maximian, so long as Severus lived. And in the rest of the empire the Christians were liable to as much inconvenience as before. It is indeed just possible that Constantius had some slight influence upon his Eastern colleagues, and that they would have given freer play to their genius had they been untrammelled by fear of him,—and, to be sure, there is evidence that they acted more boldly on the news of his demise. But even during his lifetime no great attention was paid to his modest and legitimate desires. “Though Constantius’ name was obliged to be set first,” says the author of the Deaths, “ Galerius despised him.” And it is hardly to be thought of that the mild monotheist approved of the earliest imperial action of Maximinus. That action was to republish, in every particular, the bloody edict of Maximian.

It must not be said that this republication was an insig­nificant act, simply because the result in actual martyrdoms was not great. In the first place, it is (I believe) erroneous to suppose that Eusebius, in his small treatise, pretends to give an exhaustive list of the Martyrs of Palestine. He tells of no palms which were not won in his sight, or at least by athletes in whom he was not specially interested. But the horrors of a persecution (God knows) do not depend solely on the numbers of the slain.

“Fear hath a hundred eyes that all agree

To plague her beating heart; and there is one

(Not idlest that!) which holds communion

With things that were not, yet were meant to be.”

Yet it must be owned (and perhaps here we may trace the influence of Constantius) that Eusebius has but three deaths to record within that reign, and two at least take place in very extravagant circumstances of aggression. The first (which alone I shall relate) was of a young gentleman of nineteen, named Apphian, whom the Bishop describes as a ‘blessed and truly innocent lamb,’ the son of distinguished heathen parents in Lycia. His parents had sent him to accomplish his studies in the school of Beyrout, at that time a somewhat too seductive abode for youths who were not born ascetics. Apphian however was gifted by nature, and inspired by grace, with a philosophic temper, and ‘strange to say, even at Beyrout,’ proved superior to temptation; and when his education was complete, the boy determined not to return to his pagan mother, ‘but taking no thought even of his daily expenses, through his hope and trust in God, was led by the Divine Spirit, like one led by the hand, to the city of Caesarea, where the crown of martyrdom for godliness was prepared for him.’ The young gentleman became a member of the very household of Eusebius, and had dwelt with him the better part of a year, when the whole town was agitated to hear that the edict was to be at once enforced among them. With a boyish sense of adventure, St Apphian left the house without making any one privy to his purpose; and while Urbanus the governor was lifting his right hand to pour a libation, the audacious stripling rushed between the guards and griped him by the arm, and warned him to desist from his error, saying that no good would come to those who left the One True God and sacrificed to idols and to devils. His death was as horrible as might be expected; but the sequel of his death was less to be looked for. After many stripes and tortures, distributed over several days, the poor lad was flung half dead into the deep sea, far out from shore, and sank. The Bishop and all the inhabitants of Caesarea stand surety for that which followed. A tremendous roaring and motion of the sea immediately began, which shook the whole city; and in the midst of the strange noise and quaking of the ground, the body of the boy-martyr was seen, cast up by the indignant waters of the Levant at the very gates of the town. Calm and cold indeed must be the eye which glances on this fact (for the fact need not be doubted), and scorns the fervent sympathy which took the coincidence for a miracle.

The martyrdom of St Apphian took place on Friday, the second of April, 306. Galerius himself since his accession had been the less active in persecuting the Christians, because he was very busy persecuting the world at large. His whole attention was engrossed by the work of making the most vexatious census of his dominions in all Roman history. We may mention, by the way, in confirmation of the statement that Italy was virtually subject to him, that while it is certain Constantius gave no countenance to these oppressive ‘taxings,’ the commissioners of Severus or his Eastern master spared not even Rome itself, but goaded her to disaffection, and finally to rebellion, by their unrighteousness. But other public events were taking place, which greatly affected the Church’s welfare, and which led to the total cessation of the persecution in the West, and the fearful increase of it in the East.

It is needless to tell for the hundredth time the epic story of the elevation of young Constantine—how his father, disappointed by the slight which had been passed upon his family, and fearing lest worse was to follow, wrote again and again to Galerius, beseeching him to give his son liberty to come and join him;—how Galerius one evening, having no longer any excuse to forge, put the passport in his hand, but (knowing that the journey would be for Constantine’s honour, not his own) wished next morning to delay him;—how Constantine, expecting some such trickery, overnight, when the Augustus had gone to rest, started from the Asiatic capital and travelled as fast as the imperial post-horses could gallop right across Thrace and Illyricum, and Lombardy, and Gaul, and when the Em­peror’s men tried to pursue after him, lo! in all the public relays there was not a single horse that could go;—how the young hero found his father just sailing from Boulogne, and sailed with him, and helped him to defend our homes from the wild Picts;—how, when the north was quiet, Constantius went back to his good house at York, and fell sick, and how (as some say), a blessed Angel came and told him, as he lay dying, to proclaim his eldest son Caesar in his stead, though he was too wise and good a man to want Angels to suggest plans so obvious and right;—and finally how, when the messenger came to the Evil Beast and told him that the armies of the West had hailed their new master with delight, and shewed him in token the image of Constantine with a bay wreath on its head, the Evil Beast in his fury nearly pitched the image in the fire and threatened to pitch the bearer after it, but yet, in spite of himself, durst not deny what Constantine asked, and sent him back the purple robe, and acknowledged him as a Caesar under the suzerainty of Severus for his Augustus.

So far, all was fairly regular. That, which had undoubtedly been the design of the great Founder, and which had the emphatic (even if it were tacit) support of Constantius, I cannot call an usurpation simply on the ground that the troops greeted it with flattering raptures. But now came a trouble indeed—a trouble almost as troublesome for the student to disentangle, as it was for Galerius—now Head-Emperor—to surmount. Rome had gone mad against the taxers and their inquisition. The Emperor chose this untimely moment for breaking up the relics of the old Praetorian camp in the city. Determined to make a last struggle before allowing their once formidable name to be put out, the Praetorians rose. The old spirit of the Senatus Populusque seemed to revive when the soldiers took some of Galerius’ insolent emissaries and wetted the streets with their blood. Then, by a choice admirable alike for its prudence and its venturesomeness, the insurgents took for their chief the son of their ex-tyrant Maximian, and decorated him with the purple and the title of a Caesar.

The insurrection of Rome was more than a mere éemeute. No less a person than the junior Augustus was despatched, after a busy conference with Galerius, to put it down. He gathered his forces at Milan, and marched upon Rome. But the soldiers whom he led, were (as Zosimus significantly points out) the old troops which had won the victories of Herculius in Morocco, and Severus was a person to them unknown and of no esteem. Very possibly the mere fact that Maxentius was their old commander’s son would have been enough to win their affections, at any rate when the sentimental tie was reinforced by large gifts or promises of money: but their loyalty to Severus was quite discarded when the veteran Herculius threw himself upon the scene again. That aged, but still active, prince had only retired most reluctantly, when the rough menaces of Galerius had been added to Diocletian’s more diplomatic appeals; and now, whether his son or he initiated the movement, he returned with glee into the political world, robed once more with the purple, under the style of Bis Augustus. So profound was the effect of his name upon the imperial army, that at his approach Severus was left with but a handful of men, and felt the necessity of falling back hastily upon Ravenna, where he closed the gates and prepared for a siege. Strong as the place was, even here he felt not safe with Maximian under the walls, and fearful of treachery within the city, surrendered himself to treachery without. Herculius, no doubt, offered his kind offices as a mediator; and the unhappy Augustus, who would have scorned to give himself up to Maxentius, had no shame in laying his life in the venerable hands which, not two years before, had bestowed on him the succession. An imperial villa at the Three Taverns was placed at his disposal, and there he was interned until some agreement should be reached between the Italian and the other governments. But Severus did not live to see the agreement reached. When the news came to Galerius of the catastrophe which had befallen the first expedition, he gathered a new army, and prepared with his own doughty hand to overthrow the upstart empire and free the captive of the Three Taverns. Without a check he advanced into the very heart of Italy, and pitching his camp at Interamna, now Terni, sent his friend Licinius and another on a peaceful ambassage to his son-in-law. The hostage was still alive, and it was necessary to proceed with modera­tion, lest he should be killed. Licinius held out hope on behalf of the Augustus, that if Maxentius would but ask as a favour that which he possessed as a fact, it might be granted: but the only answer to this gracious proposal which the envoys carried back, was the intelligence that the unfortunate Severus had been compelled to quit life quietly by opening the arteries of his throat. And at that instant Galerius found himself powerless to avenge his death. For some reason or another he found that his troops were on the point of deserting him. The fate of his drinking-mate and fellow-Emperor seemed likely to become his own. He found no means to check their mutinous spirit, but to lead them at once from the seductive neighbourhood of his young rival, and to give them licence to harry and ravage the whole length of the Flaminian Road as they retreated.

Maximian had not been present at the time when Gale­rius made his invasion, and was probably not cognisant of Severus’ happy despatch. In the end of the year 306, he had hastened into Gaul in hope of inducing Constantine to league himself with the Italian empire against the East. It was a bold stroke; for though Constantine had come to the throne against the will of Galerius, yet he was now one of the legitimate tetrarchy, and to seek to detach him from his fidelity to the court of Sirmium meant nothing less than to contemplate the destruction of the new regime. And the stroke was, for the time, successful. The Roman usurpation was so strong, that Constantine did not disdain to accept from Maximian the Augustusship which Severus had left vacant, and a bride; and following the example of his father, he divorced the humble wife who had borne him the begin­ning of his strength—the hapless boy whom he murdered later in life—and with great state married Fausta, half-sister to his father’s wife, whom Maximian and Constantius alike had long intended him to marry. But at this point he paused. He did not mean to become a mere feudary to Herculius: and though Herculius besought him to fall on the retreating legions of Galerius, Constantine felt that it was not his game to annihilate so fine a countercheck to Maxentius.

In all probability about April or May, 307, Herculius returned to Rome. But he soon found that his daydream of once more holding the West in fee was not coming true. His son was not his subject: and not only so, but he found that their plans of government were entirely opposed, and that a concord such as had existed in old days between Emperors and their Heirs-Apparent was not to be ex­pected. Herculius had ruled despotically from Milan: it had been part of the Jovian system to degrade and enfeeble Rome, to take away her military importance, to ignore her Senate. Maxentius was a Roman, whether in heart, or by policy, it matters not. From first to last, his was a Roman, and a popular, rule. He had received his own authority as much from the choice of the plebs, as from that of the guards. When he invited his father’s countenance and coadjutorship, he persuaded (if we may trust a silly orator) the Senate to take the matter up. Once more upon the reverse of his coins reappears the old she-wolf, with Romulus and Remus at her dugs, to typify that the Eternal City was still the mother and protectress of kings. His little son bore the name of the first king and founder of the town. And one step he took, in accordance with the character of his government, which is of extreme importance to the Church historian, and to which repeated reference has been made already. He wished to be popular:—a sure way to be popular was to reverse all that Herculius had done in the days of his first empire :—there was nothing which had more signalised Herculius than his cruel zeal for the Christian persecution. “ Maxentius,” says the Greek historian, “ began his reign by feigning our Christian faith to curry favour with the people of Rome, and in that region, assuming a form of godliness, gave orders to his subjects to drop at once the persecution against the Christians.” Constantius had had no power to stop the persecution, but now it was definitely, entirely, authoritatively stopped. The Pope who, according to a late tradition, had been set the task of grooming Maximian’s horse, now sent Deacons to the Prefect of the City, with warrants from Maxentius and his Prefect of the Praetorium, to reoccupy the property which had been taken from us in the time of the persecution. It was not likely then that Maximian and Maxentius could pull harmoniously under the same yoke. The chasm between the two widened daily. At last the final rupture came. Herculius summoned to a conference the soldiery who had deserted Severus for him, and invited also the attendance of the Roman populace. He was announced as intending to state his ideas on the great burning question of the government. Suddenly, at a climax in his oration, he turned with stretched hands to his son and colleague, who was beside him on the platform, denouncing him as the author of all the calamities under which the empire groaned; and becoming more hot as he went on, he grasped the purple robe and tore it from Maxentius’ shoulders. Vain and mistaken old man, he believed himself still to be the idol of the troops, and hoped that his deed would be hailed with acclamations. But Maxentius knew better. Shaking himself from his father, he leapt boldly out from the high platform and fell among the soldiers, who caught their popular young prince with enthusiasm. Amid the angry clamour of the multitudes, Maximian was justled out of Rome, and might well thank heaven that he was allowed to reach uninjured the French court and his new son-in-law.

And Diocletian during all this turbulent period was gaining new health in a quiet country life, and trying to shut his ears to the din of his fabric breaking up. Yet even in his retreat, he was not suffered to forget the cardinal error of his life,—that 23rd of February, when, sick and nervous, he had bowed to Galerius’ will, and consented to a course of action which he knew to be unjust. The persecution haunted him. There has been preserved a naive and most interesting narrative of one occasion,—possibly one of many,—when he was compelled, in his private life, to take part unwillingly in administering the bloody statute of Herculius. The facts recorded belong to the year 306. It would hardly be possible to set in a more amiable light the eager interest of that master mind about matters of art, the frank kindliness of his intercourse with his simple workmen, which makes the reader think how tender must have been his relations with his martyred chamberlains,— his outburst of disgust with the “philosophers” who forced him to notice that his favourite craftsmen were guilty of Christianity. Diocletian is every inch himself.

“ It was when Diocletian the Augustus came to Pannonia, to be present at the opening of divers quarries in the hills. And it was so, when he gathered together all the stone­masons, that he found among them men filled with great skill in their art, Claude, Castory, Symphorian, and Nicostratus, marvellous men in the stonecutter’s art. These men were Christians in secret, and kept God’s commandments, and whatsoever piece of work they did in their carving, they carved in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it fell out on a day, that Diocletian the Augustus ordered the artificers to take all their tools and carve out of Thasos stone an image of the Sun with his four-horse chariot—chariot and horses and all out of this same stone. So at that time, all the artificers thinking the thing over with the philosophers, began to design the fashion of the piece, and after they had hewn a great block out of the Thasos quarry, the piece of carving suited not according to the order of Diocletian the Augustus. And there was emulation many days among the artificers and philosophers. Now on a certain day all the artificers came together, in number six hundred and twenty two, with five philosophers to try the lie of the stone, and they began to look for the veins pf the stone. And there was wonderful emulation among the artificers and philosophers. At that time Symphorian, trusting in the faith which he held, said to his fellow-workmen, ‘I beseech you, brethren all, trust me, and I will find out the lie of this stone, with the men of my gang, Claude, Simplice, Nicostratus, and Castory.’ And finding a vein of marble, he began to carve the piece in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the carving had good success according to the order of the Augustus. The carving that was made was of an image of the Sun, twenty-five foot long. And this was declared to Diocletian the Augustus, and he rejoiced. And the same hour he gave command to build in that part of Pannonia a temple in a place which is called Ad Montem Pinguem, and there he erected and placed the statue, and gilded it, and began to make merry at that place with sacrifices and ointments and perfumes, and gave great gifts to the artificers. At that time Dio­cletian the Augustus rejoiced in their handicraft, and being seized with exceeding great love of it, ordered that the columns or the chapiters of columns should be cut by the artificers from the Porphyry quarry. And he called to him Claude, Symphorian, Nicostratus and Castory, and Simplice, whom lifting with gladness from the ground he said to them : ‘I wish to have the columns or chapiters of columns cut from the Porphyry hill by no workmanship less skilled than yours.’

“And they, having heard it, departed straightway from the Emperor with a multitude of artificers and with the philosophers. And coming to the Porphyry hill, at a place which is called Locus Igneus, they began to hew a stone of forty foot long. Now Claude used to do everything, at which he worked, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and his handicraft succeeded: but whatsoever Simplice, who was a Gentile, did, was not convenient.

But on a day said Nicostratus to Simplice, ‘Brother, how is it that thy chisel breaks?’

And Simplice said to him, ‘I pray thee, temper the chisel for me that it break not ?

Claude said to him, ‘Give me every tool of thy craft.’ And when he had given him all his iron instruments of carving, Claude said, ‘In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, be this iron strong and sound to work withal.’

From that hour Simplice began to work all his squaring work with his own chisel well and rightly, even as Symphorian did. Then Simplice with wonderful desire and zeal began to enquire of Symphorian what was the manner of the tempering, that his tools and chisels never brake, whereas before it was not so. Symphorian said to him with Claude, ‘Dost thou, brother, marvel then at the tempering of the chisels? The God who is Creator and Lord of all hath strengthened his own handi­work.’

Simplice answered, saying to Symphorian, ‘Yea, hath not the god Jove himself made all things?’

Claude answering said to him, 'Brother, do penance, for thou hast blasphemed, not wotting what thou sayest. The God whom we confess, He created all things, and Jesus Christ His Son our Lord, and the Holy Ghost. For the god whom thou speakest of, wherefore seest thou not that he is carved forth of our own hands? Knowest thou not that the very Sun whom we made by our art of carving is himself nothing?’

That very day, while they were debating among themselves, lo on a sudden Diocletian the Augustus ordered that they should cause to be hollowed for him out of the Porphyry quarry, conches adorned with figures. Then Symphorian, Claude, Castory, Nicostratus, began in the Lord’s Name to hollow the conches and basins with figures and stoups, with great subtilty of workmanship. But whatsoever tool Simplice took in his hand to work withal, anon it brake. Then said he to Symphorian: ‘I adjure thee by the Sungod, tell me who’s the God that created all things, in whose Name ye do your work so well.’

Claude answering said to Simplice : ‘Art thou pleased with that which we do in the sight of thine eyes?’

Simplice answered and said: ‘I see your works; but I know not the lore which ye teach secretly day by day. Now declare to me, I entreat you, this lore of your God, that I may enjoy full friendship with you.’

Claude said to him: ‘And is thy friendship unfeigned?’

Simplice said: ‘Unfeigned indeed: for yourselves also know, lo these fifteen years how I have worked with you.’

Symphoriam said to him: ‘If thou canst believe, we will tell thee, and thou wilt both soon gain skill, and also have eternal life.’

Simplice said : ‘I have earnestly longed to know about your God, and I beseech you.’

Claude said to him: ‘Behold, this is what we tell thee, that thou must believe faithfully our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and receive Baptism, and all things shall be supplied unto thee.’

Simplice said: ‘Well then, delay not, that I may be at one with you, in work and in religion.’

And they began to seek about for a Priest, and they found a Bishop bound in custody, Cyril by name, brought from Antioch, kept in chains for the Name of Christ, who had been now tormented with many stripes for three whole years. To whom coming by night, Symphorian, Claude, Nicostratus, and Castory, together with Simplice, they found him fast bound in irons with many other confessors, and entering in unto the blessed Cyril, they threw themselves at his feet, and besought him to baptize Simplice. And when the blessed Bishop Cyril heard it, he was filled with great joy and said to Simplice : ‘Son, see that thou believe with all thy heart, and all things shall be given unto thee.’

And Claude, Symphorian, Nicostratus, and Castory, answering told him the thing which had come to pass concerning the tools. And then the blessed Bishop Cyril giving thanks to Almighty God said to Simplice: ‘ Son, thou hast seen a deed of power at thy work: only believe faithfully,’ Simplice answered with tears and said: ‘And how would ye have me show my belief?’

The blessed Bishop Cyril said: ‘That thou shouldest believe on Jesus Christ our Lord, the Son of God, the Creator of all, and that thou shouldest renounce all images made with hand.’

Simplice said: 'I believe in truth that Jesus Christ is Very God.’ And when he had made him, according to Church custom, a catechumen, he baptized him there in the prison, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and sent them away.”

The five good masons, now in full communion with each other, went back to their work, and again used the blessed Sign at every moment, but so openly now that the 'philosopher,’ or gaffer, under whom they worked, observed the gesture, and accused them of practising magic,—an art then in high and rising repute. Claude denied the charge, and in the altercation which ensued, it came out that the men were Christians; and several of the artificers who had listened to the dispute were disposed to throw in their lot with a religion whose effects were so visible. The piece of work was finished, and brought before Diocletian, who sent them a bountiful reward, and delivered a large order for more sculptures, with the express command that the five were to superintend the business. The philosophers were very jealous and indignant, but could not countermand Diocletian’s own orders: so Claude and his company set the gangs to work, and began themselves to work among them. But when the philosophers objected to their having any share in this attempt, after being already enriched, they departed, and undertook a carving of their own, and within a third of the time taken by the rest, produced a very fine column. On hearing of their success, the Augustus expressed himself overjoyed with the men’s cleverness, and ordered the five to be presented to him in person. “To whom he said with joy: ‘By the power of heaven, I will make proud men of you with riches and presents, only go on carving figures out of this Porphyry hill.’ And he bade them make Victories and Cupids, and conches again, and above all an Asclepius.

“And they made the conches, Victories and Cupids; but the image of Asclepius they made not. So after certain days they brought their works, adorned in divers ways with figures. Diocletian was pleased as before with the skill of their carving, and the Emperor said to Claude, Symphorian, Nicostratus, Castory and Simplice: ‘ It makes me happy to see how zealously you work, but why have you not shown your love of me by carving the Asclepius, the god of all health? Go on quietly, and pay your attention to making this statue, and then make some lions spouting water, and eagles and stags and representations of different kinds of creatures.’ And they did all, in their own fashion —except, of course, the statue of Asclepius. So after four months the philosophers made their report to the Augustus Diocletian, that he might see the works of the artificers, and he bade them all be brought and exhibited in a field. And when they were all brought, there was no Asclepius presented according to the order of the Emperor Diocletian. And when the Emperor with exceeding eagerness asked for that, the philosophers reported saying: ‘Most gracious Caesar and Ever-Augustus, who lovest all men and art the friend of peace, be it known to thy clemency that these whom thou lovest are Christians, and whatever has been commanded them, they do it in the Name of Christ.’

Diocletian the Augustus said to them: ‘If all that they do in their Christ’s Name is notoriously magnificent, I see no harm in it, but on the contrary great credit.’

The philosophers answered saying: ‘ Thou knowest not, Most Gracious, that they in their horrible guilt, do not obey thy grace’s order: they have refused to let the magnificence of their art be employed on the erection of the god Asclepius’ image, or to exhibit a statue of him.’

Diocletian the Augustus said: ‘Let those men be brought to me.’ And when Claude, Symphorian, Nicostratus, Castory and Simplice, had been called, the Emperor said to them: ‘You know that our clemency has loved you with kindness and favour, and I have cherished you with a close affection. Why did you not obey our commands to carve the god Asclepius from the Porphyry quarry?’

Claude answered and said:  ‘O gracious Ever-Augustus, we have always obeyed thy grace and served thy nobleness; but an idol of a poor sorry human being we will never make: because it is

so written, They that make them are like unto them, and so are all they that put their trust in them.’ Then the philosophers burst forth against them, saying to the Emperor: ‘Most gracious Emperor and Ever-Augustus, thou seest their treason, how loftily they speak to thy grace.’

Diocletian the Augustus said to them: ‘I cannot have my skilful artificers reviled, but encouraged.’

To whom the philosophers answered: ‘Then let them do the bidding of thy grace, or we will find men who will do according to the will of your clemency.’

Diocletian the Augustus said : ‘And are there men to be found who are more learned than these for skill in this art?’

The philosophers said: ‘We will procure men who have the support of religion.’

Diocletian the Augustus said : ‘If you find men who will make the god Asclepius out of this Porphyry quarry, then these men shall suffer a penalty for sacrilege, and the others shall be great in the sight of our clemency’.”

The statue was put in other hands, and finished, and presented, but when Diocletian came to inspect it, the work was so inferior that “he wondered, and said: ‘Is this the handiwork of the same men who pleased us so much by their cleverness in sculpture?’

The philosophers said: ‘Most sacred Emperor and Ever-Augustus, let your clemency take note that those whom your serenity calls most skilled in stone­cutting, that is, Claude, Symphorian, Nicostratus, Castory and Simplice, are sacrilegious Christians, and that through their magical incantations all mankind is being humbled under them.’

Diocletian the Augustus said : ‘If they will not obey lawful commands, and the words of your report are true, let them bear the penalty of sacrilege.’ And he ordered a certain tribune named Lampadius to give them a fair and favourable hearing, saying: ‘Try them by a fair examination, and let any one who bears false witness against them be visited with the penalty that would fall on the accused.’

At that time Lampadius the tribune ordered a judgment-seat to be got ready there, before the temple of the Sun, and all the artificers to be called together, and Symphorian, Claude, Nicostratus, Castory and Simplice, and the philosophers; to whom Lampadius the tribune said publicly: ‘Our lords the most gracious Emperors have given this order, that we should find the truth between the philosophers and masters Claude, Symphorian, Castory, Nicostratus and Simplice, and make it plain whether the accusation between the parties was a true one.’ All the masons cried out for envy, being urged on by the philosophers, saying: ‘By the health of the most gracious Caesar, away with the sacrilegious men! away with the sorcerers!’

“But Lampadius the tribune, seeing that the artificers only cried out for jealousy, said: ‘The case is not finished yet: how can I give sentence ?’

The philosophers said: ‘If they are not sorcerers, let them adore the Caesars god’

And straightway Lampadius the tribune ordered Symphorian, Claude, Castory, Nicostratus and Simplice, saying: ‘Adore the Sungod so that you may destroy the philosophers’ line of argument.’

Who answering said: ‘We never will adore the work of our own hands, but we adore the God of heaven and earth, who is Potentate and Emperor for ever and eternal God, even the Lord Jesus Christ.’

The philosophers said: ‘There! you know the truth: report this to our lord Caesar.’

Then Lampadius the tribune ordered them to be thrust into the public prison. And after nine days, having obtained a quiet moment, he reported the matter to Diocletian the Augustus. That same day the philosophers also accused them, persistently saying in jealousy to the Prince: ‘If these shall escape, the worship of the gods will die out.’ Then Diocletian the Augustus said: ‘By the great Sungod, if they will not in the end sacrifice to the Sungod according to antient custom, nor listen to our advice, I will consume them with divers exquisite punishments.’ Soon Lampadius the tribune ordered them to be brought to trial another day, at the same place, before the temple of the Sun. Lampadius the tribune said: ‘Bring in both parties, the philosophers and the masons.’ When they were brought in, Lampadius the tribune said: ‘Let their accusers come and say what blame they have to find with them.’ And when the philosophers came in, one of them, Chrysolite the philosopher, said to the tribune: ‘Why do you seek to find out further, what your intelligence has already learned?’ Lampadius the tribune said to Claude, Nicostratus, Symphorian, Castory and Simplice: ‘Are you aware what the most gracious princes have ordered?’ These five said : 'We know not.’ To whom he said again: ‘That you must sacrifice to the great Sungod and pay honour to the antient divinities.’ Claude answered: ‘We give honour to Almighty God and to our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, in whose Name we have always hoped, and believe that out of darkness we have come into the light.’ Lampadius the tribune said: ‘And what light is so clear as the great Sungod’s?’ Claude answered, saying: ‘Christ who was born by the Holy Ghost of Mary the Virgin, who lighteneth every man coming into this world, who is the true light, where there is no darkness at all.’ Lampadius the tribune said to them: ‘I beg you, and I warn you, do not waste all this love and all this favour of our lord the prince, Diocletian Ever-Augustus. You yourselves know too well for me to tell you, that our most gracious prince is so kind to all men that he honours them all with as much affection as brothers or sons, but especially the worshippers of the gods.’ Symphorian together with his comrades said : ‘The most gracious prince ought to have so much care for men as to see that they do not offend the God of heaven, who is the Creator of all things. For we arc careful that we perish not in the world to come, where the fire is not quenched.’ Then Lampadius the tri­bune, considering the command of Diocletian, again re­ported the matter to Diocletian. Then Diocletian the Augustus, considering their skill, instructed Lampadius the tribune, saying : ‘ Henceforth if they will not consent and sacrifice to the great Sungod, whip them with scorpions; but if they consent, bring them to the presence of our clemency.’

“Now after five days Lampadius sat again in the same place before the temple of the Sun, and ordered them to be brought in by voice of herald, and showed them instru­ments of fear and all kinds of tortures. And when they were come in, he thus approached them, saying: ‘Hearken to me, and escape the tortures, and be ye dear friends of the noble princes, and sacrifice to the great Sungod. For I may no longer speak to you with sweet words.’ Claude answered in one breath with his fellows, saying with great boldness: ‘We are not afraid of your terrors, neither are we broken by your blandishments, but we fear rather the torments eternal. For let Diocletian thy Emperor know this, that we are true Christians, and never depart from the worship of our true God.’ Then Lampadius the tribune was wroth, and commanded them to be stripped then and there, and punished with scorpions, while a herald’s voice cried : ‘Despise not the bidding of the princes.’ But in that same hour Lampadius was seized with a devil, and plucking himself in pieces died sitting on the judgment-seat. His wife and family hearing this ran to the philosophers with great crying, so that the news came to Diocletian. Now when Diocletian the Emperor heard it, he was wroth exceedingly, and, full of great fury, said : ‘Let leaden Coffins be made, and let them be shut up inside alive, and thrown into the river.’ Then a certain advocate Nicetius”, who was assessor to Lampadius, did what Diocletian had bidden: and he made leaden coffins, and shut them all up inside alive, and ordered them to be thrown into the river. But the holy Bishop Cyril, hearing this while he was in prison, afflicted himself and passed to the Lord. And the holy martyrs suffered for the Lord’s Name on the sixth day before the Ides of November.”

In such artistic employments as these Diocletian was passing his time, and in employments homelier still, as we shall see. Perhaps he had with him the library, which had been a matter of interest to him even in the days when Bishop Theonas wrote concerning him”. And he was certainly enjoying still the consolations of a friendship which he had formed in early days with the family of Flavius Vopiscus. But affairs of state were again to be obtruded on him. By the end of the year 307, matters had arrived at such a pitch of confusion, that the men who were responsible for the public disorders had recourse to the old wise man whose advice they had spurned but three or four years back.

Galerius, who was at Carnuntum on the Danube frontier, sent an urgent message requesting the presence of his father-in-law. He wanted to be told what action to take with regard to the usurpation in Italy. Severus had now been dead at least ten months, and yet neither Maximin nor Constantine had been preferred legitimately to the place he had evacuated. The question was, whether it would be most prudent to yield to necessity, as Diocletian himself had done while Carausius lived, and to admit Maxentius, in spite of past faults, into the imperial circle, or to try whether a third attack on his position would fare better than the two first. Uninvited, as it appears, and unexpected, old Maximian broke in upon their deliberation, fresh from his successful intrigue with Constantine, whom he had induced to join a league for quelling his now-hated son. How the different members of that august conclave conducted their arguments, we do not know: we are not even informed directly that there was the least disagreement be­tween the views of the trio : for there were no reporters present. But thus much is certain, that all difficulty would have been at an end if Maxentius had been recognised; and that on some occasion Diocletian expressed himself so decidedly in favour of the claims of the Roman pretender, that neither Constantine nor the new Emperor Licinius ever forgave him for it: and no occasion seems so likely to have elicited this avowal of Diocletian’s adhesion to his first design as the Council of Carnuntum. Next we may observe that the one practical outcome of the congress was an act entirely subversive of Diocletian’s system of succession: in the presence of Diodes as well as of Herculius, Galerius made his old comrade Licinius Emperor of the West, in the full­blown honours of an Augustus, without the germinal probation of the Caesarship. It is inconceivable that the man should have given his tame assent to a measure so revolutionary, so foolish, so retrograde. The immediate effect of the measure was easy to prophesy. To content the actual Caesars, the name of their dignity was cheaply altered, and instead of being Caesars any more, they were styled the Sons of the Augusti. But it was not less galling to be the 'Son’ of Licinius, than to be his lieutenant: and missives soon came—early in 308—from Maximin, to say that, at some great review of the oriental troops, he had been hailed as an Augustus. So soon does a diplomatic tampering with the succession lead to forcible usurpation. Galerius could not gainsay the claim any longer, and admitted both Daza and Constantine to the highest rank of all’. And Diocletian must have foreseen all this from the beginning. He found that his advice had been asked, only to be rejected contumeliously. He had been invited to Carnuntum, only to see his fine scheme for the world’s government definitely set aside, never to be revived again.

But though neither of the Maximians had enough veneration for their benefactor’s wisdom to submit their own good pleasure to its dictates, they were keenly aware that in the eyes of their subjects their respective policies would look vastly better, if they could but cajole Diocletian into a seeming support. Maximian was conscious that his re-ascension of the throne was a great crime. It taxed the wit of the shrewd rhetorician who pronounced the marriage oration of Constantine and Fausta, to find reasons why he should be Emperor again, while Diodes remained a private gentleman. He wished to cover the enormity of his transgression by making Diodes a participator in it. We are not told what were the pleas he urged,—whether it was now against Constantine or Galerius, against Maxentius or Maximin, that the perfidious old plotter intreated him to combine,—but at any rate he had the vulgar impu­dence to tempt his friend once more with those sweets of empire which his friend had once and for ever unregretfully forsworn. And Galerius too, whether in concert with Maximian or apart, was himself anxious now—so the younger Victor records—to implicate the retired Augustus once more. Doubtless he wished men to think (as most men have thought) that the new Emperor who had been raised in Diocletian’s presence had been raised by Diocletian’s suffrage. Galerius wished Diocletian to be again an Augustus; but this time an under-Augustus, a moral prop to his own throne. But Diocletian, who had been willing in 305 to work a little longer for the world, while there was still some reasonable hope of bringing order back, and had then been rudely rebuffed by Galerius, would not now return to a task at which younger men recoiled in dismay,—and that, simply to colour with his name the acts of a despot Whose conduct he abhorred. The honour which these maladroit courtiers would have flattered him into accepting was as distasteful to him, as though they had offered him the plague. No words of Diocletian’s are so widely known as those in which he declined the' humiliation. “I should like you,” he said, "to see the kitchen garden where I work at Salona : you would, I am sure, acknowledge that your proposals contain no charm”

Yet in spite of Diocletian's peremptory and sarcastic refusal to play the- part of second Emperor to his son-in-law, he was, by an audacious fiction, made to reign. Galerius, or Maximin, or both, did not scruple to take his name in vain, and claim his sanction for important laws of which he probably never heard, or (if ever) heard of with disapproval. Witness the well-known edict against ‘Malignants and Manichaeans,’ in the consideration of which we come back to the religious affairs of the Roman empire. Without any qualms of misgiving we may date the edict from Alexandria, March 31st, 308, instead of referring it as previous authors have been Content to do, to the year 290.

“ The Emperors Maximianus, Diocletianus, and Maximinus, most noble Augusti, to Julianus, Proconsul of Africa. Times of perfect repose sometimes encourage men to transgress against the common condition of human nature, and move them to introduce certain most vain and disgraceful kinds of superstitious doctrine, in order to display their power of dragging about multitudes of disciples at the beck of their own deluded fancy, O well-beloved Julian. But the immortal gods have deigned by their providence so to order and arrange the things which are good and true, that, by the research and treatment of many good and notable men, and great men of science, they should be proved and established indefeasibly : which dogmas ought neither to be assailed nor resisted, nor should an antient ‘ religion ’ be found fault with by a new. For it is a most serious offence, to recast what antiquity has once for all established and defined, and which still has and holds its own position and current influence. Wherefore we have an extreme zeal to chastise the perverse obstinacy of such worthless persons:—those, to wit, who set up their paltry new-fangle and unheard-of sects against the antient ‘ religions,’ so as to cut off (for the gratification of their perverse wills) what has been bestowed upon us aforetime from heaven. As for the Manichaeans, touching whom your prudence has reported to our serenity, we have heard that they have come into this realm but very recently, like some strange unexpected portents, from a starting-place and origin in the race of our enemies the Persians ; and that they here commit many crimes; that they disquiet peaceful populations, and also bring much mischief into the cities: and it is to be feared lest (as is usual) in time to come they should attempt, by the execrable customs and hideous laws of the Persians, to infect (as it were) with their malignant poisons men of a more innocent nature, the modest and tranquil nation of Rome, and the whole circle of our empire. And forasmuch as all these things, which your prudence declares in your report on their religion, are shown by you to be subtly invented and planned modes of doing most palpable harm, therefore we appoint for them pains and penalties such as are due and condign: viz., we command (1) that movers and ringleaders, together with their abominable writings, be subjected to the severer penalty of being consumed with flames of fire ; (2) we enjoin that partisans of theirs who carry their contention to that extreme, suffer capital punishment, and we sanction the seizure of their goods for our imperial treasury; (3) if, however, any who have actually held office, or are of any rank and are distinguished persons, have apostatised to this unheard-of and degraded and in every way infamous sect, or to the doctrine of the Persians, you shall cause their patrimonies to be added to our treasury, and themselves to be committed to the Phaenian or Proconnesian quarries. To the end, therefore, that this bad wickedness may be radically cut off from this most blessed age of ours, your devotion will make haste to obey our tranquillity’s commands and statutes with all promptitude. Given at Alexandria, the day before the kalends of April ”

The principles which dictated this longwinded rescript, would certainly lead to a similar treatment of the Church, Christianity was not indeed a ‘new religion,’ in the sense in which Manichaeanism was. It had received formal sanctions. Men had forgotten the old slanders against it. Narseus and Sapor had not been its nursing fathers, Its arithmetical size made a strong practical difference between itself and the little sect of Manes. Yet it showed no signs of the age, or rather the decrepitude, which was so visible pn the front of paganism. It was quick with that tiresome youthfulness which would not let men be; it was not conservative for conservation’s sake; it did ‘find fault with the antient religions ’ and with the foul sin which had shot up under them, like toadstools under the gloomy darkness of the forest. The true Catholic, with all his reverence for authority, does not know the doctrine that dogma may ‘neither be assailed’ by frank investigation, nor its stealthy encroachments ‘ resisted,’ or that ‘ recasting of antient institutions and definitions is a crime.’ All that he claims is thoroughness and honesty. If then the principles expressed in this rescript were logically developed, Christianity, as well as the Persian doctrine, would come beneath the ban. And, as a matter of fact, the mind which expressed itself thus against Manes, was doubtless the same which in 303 expressed itself against Christ. But we have yet to learn that that mind was the mind of Diocletian.

It has been shown conclusively in the third chapter of this work that the persecution of the Christians originated entirely with Galerius and his friends. And Galerius and his friends must answer for this Manichaean edict also. A mere glance at the title of it is enough to prove it. About a third of the laws in the Code of Gregory are laws of Diocletian and Maximian Herculius. Law after law begins with the words, Impp. Diocletianus et Maximianus AA. The order in which the names appear never varies; for Diocletian was the senior. Suddenly we find one rescript in which the name of Maximian stands first. It is useless to try, with Baronius, the effect of changing Maximianus into Marcus; for the Emperor Diocletian’s real name was Gaius. And then, following the name of Diocletian, stands the name of Maximin. As Maximin only became a Caesar to fill the gap made by Diocletian’s abdication, it becomes clear that the date of this edict is subsequent to 305, when Diocletian retired. The Maximian, therefore, is without doubt the junior of that name, Galerius. But further:—Maximin was not a mere Caesar when this edict was issued, for not only do the Caesars’ names never appear in the titles of laws of the period, but the letter A in this case stands three times over,—showing that Diocletian’s system had already broken down and that there were three Augusti (at least) in the world. This was not the case till the year 308. But how comes Diocletian, now a private man, to be named at all in the superscription ? The most natural answer is that which has been given above. Galerius, unable to stem the tide alone, had implored the aid of Diocletian. Though Diocletian had positively refused the penitent supplication, Galerius pretended that his suit was granted, and that Diocletian was reinstalled as a coadjutor Augustus. He made believe that the thunderbolt which fell on the Manichaeans was winged by the same Jovian hand which he had constrained to bruise the Church. Yet who knows whether Galerius was not clear after all ? The letter is dated from Alexandria, the most important city in Maximin Daza’s realm. Maximin Daza, the Platonists’ friend, was no stickler for truth in the concrete. Perhaps the man who forged the Acts of Pilate, may have forged the names of Diocletian and of Galerius too.

But the religious energy of the Eastern Emperors was not expended in 308 upon the Manichaeans alone. They had not done with us. We had tasted plentifully of their harshness, but we had still to taste the yet more cruel draught of their tender mercies. The number of martyrs had swollen into so long a list that even Maximin became alarmed. It was impossible for the work to go on steadily at such a pace as it had done in 306 and 307. So the ensuing year was ushered in with what is popularly thought a relaxation. From the words of Eusebius we are to believe that it was the imperial will—even if unexpressed in an imperial decree—that capital punishments should become rarer. Maximian, in all probability, concurred with Maximin. But the order to try any other measures rather than behead, was the signal for atrocities to begin that were worthy of Zelbeks and Bashi-bazouks,—atrocities that might even have woke the incredulity of a British Government. Hardly near Sophia or Philippoli could one see a more dreadful sight than Eusebius saw at Caesarea. Ninety-seven unfortunate Christians, men, women, and even young children, arrived one day in that city, to be distributed by the governor Firmilian among the mines in his province. The reason of their coming was, that in the vast mines of Thebais, from which they came, there was not sufficient ‘accommodation’ for the Christian prisoners. Whether Firmilian feared lest they should be as cramped at Phaeno, and wished to thin their numbers before they went, is uncertain : but when the poor wretches started again there was not one who had a right eye, nor even a right eyelid to conceal the ghastly orifice;—and each one had had the left foot disabled by searing the ancle-sinews with red-hot iron. And about the same time came into use an ingenious, though not so tragic, kind of dissuasive from Christianity. This Evidence of Paganism (if the phrase may stand) was named in the hang­man’s slang the Siphon. The reason why it is mentioned here is not a love of horrors, but a desire to mention with honour a confessor—thank God she did not prove a martyr—of Alexandria, upon whom it was tried ;—a confessor who deserves the deepest gratitude of all Biblical students, and of Englishmen in particular. The trial which she endured consisted in being stripped to the skin, then smeared with honey, and thus left for a day or so tied up in the glaring street for the benefit of the flies and wasps. The lady’s name was Thecla; and, at the time when she underwent this maddening test, probably in the year 308, she had but half accomplished her grand task of copying out the magnificent Greek Bible, which Cyril Lucar gave to King Charles the Martyr, which lies now in the British Museum, under the name of the Codex Alexandrians.

It is perhaps worth while to hazard a conjecture whether this so-called relaxation was not possibly—like the title of the Manichaean Edict—a result of the Congress of Carnuntum. There is not the slightest evidence for the conjecture, except that the relaxation followed so soon upon the meeting of Galerius with Diocletian. Galerius was really alive to the fact that the empire was in a critical condition, or he would not have sought the meeting at all: and if is hardly likely that the meeting would pass off without the great Christian question being mooted. At any rate, precisely the form which this concession to the Church assumed, was a kind of return to Diocletian’s first idea of persecution,—that no lives were to be destroyed. Did Diocletian urge this return? Did he allow his name to stand with Galerius’ and Maximin’s in the superscription of the letters which bespoke it? Did this suggest the thought of adding it also in the ungentle edict against the ‘Malignants and Manichaeans’? Of course to assert this would be ridiculous, but to deny it entirely would be rash.

Matters, however, did not come back to the state in which they were in 303. Diocletian’s First Edict had not been backed by a general command to sacrifice ; it only punished men with losses of rank and liberty, more or less heavy, whenever Christianity happened to be proved upon them. Now, though they were not to be killed, they were to be sought out with diligence still, and (by way of variety) mutilated instead. Not that martyrdoms during this lull were unknown. Eusebius saw one poor Nun burnt, whose crime was that, seeing a fellow Nun first ordered to the brothel and then scraped to death upon the hobby, she cried out from among the crowd, “And how long do you mean to torture my sister so savagely?” One Paul, at the same place and time, was beheaded; who, being obliged by the executioner with a few moments for prayer, prayed first for the peace of the Church, then for the conversion of the Jews, then (it is a curious point) for the Samaritans; and then for the Gentiles, the judge, the Emperors, and the hang­man. But these were exceptions. The relief, on the whole, was undeniable. “ The conflagration,” says Eusebius, “ sub­sided, as though it were quenched with their streams of sacred blood.” His friends and he began to draw their breath. It appears as if mercy had advanced so far, that the poor maimed creatures in the Thebais were positively allowed to scramble forth into such liberty as was still possible for them.

But hardly had the Christians begun to congratulate each other, when the storm burst on them afresh. A new edict appeared, more stringent than ever. Fragments, or fragmentary descriptions, of it appear in several of the extant Acts of Martyrs. In the Passion of Saint Theodorus of Amasea we learn, what we should otherwise have only guessed, that Maximin did not issue the edict alone, but joined, or was joined by, Galerius. However the uncle and nephew may have disagreed on other points, they were quite at one in hating Christians. “ How it came about, or what stirred him,” writes the Bishop of Caesarea, “ I know not, but he to whom Providence had given the power to persecute, burst aflame once more. Letters against us from Maximin sped again simultaneously, in all directions, into every province. The presidents, and not only they but the Prefect of the Praetorium also, in edicts and rescripts and public proclamations, egged on the mayors in all the cities together with the captains of garrisons and the town-clerks, to bring to a final issue the imperial edict, which commanded, (1) to re-erect with all diligence the idols which had fallen, (2) to make all males, universally, with their wives and household servants, and even their children in arms, sacrifice and pour drink-offering, and to take special pains to make them actually and un- mistakeably taste the accursed sacrifices, and (3) to pollute well all the articles for sale in the market with libations from the sacrifices, and to station sentries at the doors of the public baths in order to pollute with the abominable sacri­fices all who went to wash in them.”

It would be inaccurate to say that this Fifth Edict (if so we may call it) was worse than any of the foregoing. But there is in it a thin bitterness, a venomous spitefulness, which may be noticed as characteristic of all the latef part of the persecution. This spitefulness is due to two main facts. The first was, that Paganism was becoming con­scious of defeat; the Church had not yielded a single point. The second fact was, that the Church had no longer to deal with the sensible statesmanlike hostility of Diocletian,—‘not even with the bluff bloodiness of Maximian. Galerius himself was How, except in name, no longer persecutor-in-chief. He was content to follow the lead of a man who was in all ways even worse than himself. Galerius was indeed an Evil Beast; his nephew was more like the Crooked Serpent. The artful, sour spirit of Maximin employed itself to invent — not large measures of solid policy against his feared and hated foes, but petty tricks to annoy and sting them. Like those who make vinegar out of generous wine, he associated with the new school of Alexandrian philosophers, and used their wit and knowledge for his vile purposes of religious hectoring. From this time forth we shall find the persecution taking more and more a colour derived from books and bigotry, rather than from statecraft and knowledge of the world. An odium theologicum begins to dictate the edicts ; and any one who carefully compares the periods, will find that almost every feature in the behaviour of Julian the Apostate towards his former co-religionists is imitated and developed from what was done in the days of Maximin Daza and his philosophical adviser Theotecnus.

To have any meat thrust into the mouth against the will, to know that in any way the goods bought in the market have been previously mishandled, to be sprinkled with any liquid without leave given, is sufficient to arouse indignation, sometimes even to provoke an active revenge. A mere heedlessness about small conscientious scruples was enough to engender the Indian Mutiny. But when these liberties are taken in the name of religion, taken with the avowed design of degrading a man (if possible) in the eyes of the Deity he worships, it naturally makes the blood in the man’s veins run scaldingly. In the face of edicts such as these we cannot wonder that the Christians learned to detest Maximin with a fiercer detestation than even the Antichrists before him,—that St Gregory should speak of the names of Diocletian, Galerius, and Maximin, as forming a progress and a climax in cruel wickedness. Nor is it strange that even pagans, who stood by and saw their fellow-men’s freedom thus ungenerously stolen from them, should have condemned the edict which ordered it, in terms of unbounded reprobation. They themselves did not care to have so much of their religion: the government was going too far. When the fair young Febronia of Nisibis was being tortured for refusing to obey the imperial orders, the heathen mob turned away from the hateful scene, shouting for damnation on the Emperor and his gods.

It was indeed a reign of terror which now began, and which did not cease until the end of the year 310. Moments there were of comparative quiet; it could not but be so; for even the flaming sun has spots which cool it, and the very trough of the waves is a shelter from the raving wind. Late in 309, the confessors in the copper-mines of the Holy Land had the rash security even to erect rooms in which to meet for worship. But there was perhaps as much of defiance in the act as trust in the favour of the tribune. At any rate the reprieve was not authorised, as in the spring of 308. There was no favour from the Emperor. Directly the fact was made known to him, an imperial rescript ordered the companies of captives to be broken up,—some to Cyprus, and some to Lebanon. Two Coptic Pontiffs who were among them, with two other distinguished disciples, were burned alive to terrify the rest. To give a minute description of this period would be impossible. Those who wish to form some picture of it, must read the concluding chapters of Eusebius’ pamphlet on the Martyrs. I cannot fill these pages with descriptions of the mad enthusiasm which made Priests of Christ rush with shrieks upon the proconsuls as they sacrificed, to scare them from their error;—how blessed Virgins, adorned with the fillet of their profession, were whipped, more than half-naked, up and down the streets of the metropolis;—how (for the first time in this persecution) the corpses of the martyrs were no longer disposed of in any way, neither burnt nor thrown into the sea, but guarded night and day, till birds and dogs had strewn even the interior of the town with the sickening relics ;—how (though Eusebius himself declares that ambitious men took occasion by the demoralized state of the fraternity to set up schisms and to usurp sees) Asclepius the arch-heretic, and Peter Absalom the orthodox boy-anchoret, burned together brother­like;—how excited visionaries, when asked their names, refused even to say Apollodorus or Serapion, lest they should seem to acknowledge these dumb devils for deities ; and, when asked of their cities, would answer, “Jerusalem (a name geographically extinct), the great City of all the Faithful towards the Rising Sun,” filling the judge with fears of some vast conspiracy;—how gangs of believers began to march up and down the empire, from Egypt to Cilicia, visiting the colonies of confessors, and occasionally falling into the hands of the Government and becoming food for the lions;—how, unrebuked by the higher powers, the local authorities transgressed their jurisdictions in the good cause of repression, and assumed against Christians powers of life and death which they might not have used against any other men. It is not the intention, either, of the present volume, to celebrate the high names which won distinction in these days of blood. Martyrdoms have only been recorded which exemplify principles, or vividly present an aspect of the time : and though far the greater number of those who are set down as ‘Martyrs under Diocletian,’ won their crowns during these few years which I have been last reviewing, those who would know about them must seek elsewhere. I have said nothing of the way in which the persecution drew St Anthony into the town, and drove St Hilarion into the wilderness. It is for want of room, and not of reverence, that I leave Peter of Alexandria, and Methodius of Tyre, and Silvanus of Gaza, Cosmas and Damian and Euphemia and Julitta, and even the great Pamphilus himself, as unmentioned' as I have left Vincent and Sebastian and Pancras, Agnes and Afra.

But I cannot resist the desire to insert one more trial, because it has so peculiar a flavour of its own,—the trial and condemnation of a learned and philosophical Bishop, from a fragment of whose works we have quoted a striking line or two at the end of the fifth chapter. The Acts of St Phileas of Thmuis exhibit emphatically (what none of our other specimens shew) two well-bred literary gentlemen as prisoner and judge, and recognising each other for gentlemen. Culcian, the friend of Maximin, had something of the same kind of Scriptural knowledge as Hierocles had: and he would not use tortures to persuade the Pontiff who was his fellow­scholar, his brother-Platonist.

“Phileas being placed in the dock, Culcian the president said to him, ‘Can you bring yourself now to a sober mind?’

Phileas answered, ‘I am at all times sober-minded: my habits are sober.’

Culc. Sacrifice to the gods.

Phil. I do not sacrifice.

Cute. Why so ?

Phil. Because the sacred and divine Scriptures say : He that offers to any gods but to God alone shall be rooted out.

Culc. Offer a victim then to God alone.

Phil. No : God does not want such sacrifices. The divine Scriptures say: Why do ye bring Me the multitude of your sacrifices? I am full of holocausts of rams and the fat of lambs, and I will not have the blood of goats ; offer Me no fine flour.

But one of the advocates said, ‘Does fine flour form any part of your case, may I ask? or are you pleading for your life?’

Culcian the president said, ‘With what sacrifices then is your God pleased?’

Phileas answered, ‘With a clean heart, and an unsophisticate intellect, and the sacrifice of truthful speech God is pleased.’

Culc. Offer now.

Phil. I do not offer: I never was taught it.

Culc. Did not Paul offer victims?

Phil. God forbid.

Culc. Did not Moses offer?

Phil. To the Jews and them only command had been given, to sacrifice to God alone, in Jerusalem: and the Jews now do wrong in celebrating their sacred rites in other places.

Culc. A truce to these idle words. Pray sacrifice even now.

Phil. I will not defile my soul.

Culc. Do you mean that we are risking our souls ?

Phil. Both soul and body.

Culc. This body?

Phil. This body.

Culc. Will this flesh rise again?

Phil. Yes.—

Culcian said again to him, 'Paul denied Christ, did he not?’

Phil. God forbid.

Culc. I have sworn the oath; now do you swear too.

Phil. We are bidden not to swear. The sacred Scripture says, Let your yea be yea and your nay nay.

Culc. I am sure that Paul was a persecutor.

Phil. No: God forbid.

Culc. Paul was no scholar. Was he not a Syrian, and disputed in Syriac?

Phil. No; he was a Hebrew, and disputed in Greek; and he had the sublimest philosophy that ever man had.

Culc. Oh, perhaps you will aver that he excelled even Plato.

Phil. He was wiser than not Plato only but all the philosophers put together. He made even wise men converts, and if you like I will tell you some of his discourses.

Culc. Come, sacrifice.

Phil. By no means.

Culc. Have you any conscience?

Phil. Yes.

Culc. Why then are you so careless and unconscientious towards your children and wife?

Phil. Because God’s claims upon the conscience are supreme. The sacred and divine Scripture says, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God who made thee.

Culc. What God’s that?

Phileas spread out his hands toward heaven: ‘God who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is: the Creator and Maker of all things visible and invisible; God the inexpressible, who alone is and abideth for ever and ever. Amen.’

“But the advocates, at many points when Phileas was addressing the president, prevented him, saying, 'Why do you withstand the president?’

Phileas replied, ‘I do nothing but answer the questions he asks me.’

Culc. You must be tired of speaking: come and sacrifice.

Phil. No, I cannot. My soul is what I care for. Christians are not the only people who care for their souls. You remember the example of Socrates, how, when he was led to death, though his wife and children stood by, he would not turn back, but took the deadly decoction quite readily.

Culc. Was Christ a god?

Phil. Yes.

Culc. What makes you think he was a god?

Phil. He made the blind to see, the deaf to hear; He cleansed the lepers, raised the dead, restored speech to the dumb, and healed many sicknesses. A woman with an issue of blood but touched the fringe of His garment, and was made whole. When He was dead, He rose again ; and many other signs and wonders He did.

Culc. And God was crucified!

Phil. He was crucified for our salvation. But He knew quite well that He was to be crucified, and to suffer shame; and He gave Himself to endure all for us. And these things had been foretold about Him in the Holy Scriptures, which the Jews think they hold, but they hold them not. Any one who pleases may come and see whether these things are not so.

Culc. You recollect that I have paid you a compliment. I might have used you roughly in your own city, but I wished to pay you a compliment, and forbore.

Phil. I am deeply indebted to you, but I beg you to complete the favour.

Culc. What is your wish ?

Phil. Use all the violence at your command. Do what you have been ordered to do.

Culc. Do you want to die when there is absolutely no cause for it ?

Phil. There is a cause; God and truth demand it.

Culc. Was Paul a god ?

Phil. No.

Culc. What was he then ?

Phil. A man like us ; only the Divine Spirit was in him, and by the Spirit he did mighty works and signs and wonders.

Culc. I make a present of you to your brother.

Phil. Nay, complete the favour I asked; use all your violence, and do as as you have been bidden.

Culc. If I knew you were in want, and that that had driven you out of your mind, I should not spare you thus; but you have plenty of wealth ; you are rich enough to support nearly the whole province, not yourself only; so I spare you, and want to persuade you to sacrifice.

Phil. I cannot sacrifice: I say it in self-defence.

The advocates said to the president, ‘He has already sacrificed, in the house of correction.’

Phil. I did not sacrifice : that is certain.

Culc. Your poor wife is making for you.

Phil. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all our spirits, whom I serve in bonds. He who has called me into the heritage of His glory, is able also to call her.

The advocates said to the president, ‘Phileas asks for a remand.’

Culcian said to Phileas, ‘I grant you the remand, that you may consider with yourself.’

Phil. I have considered many a time, and have elected to suffer for Christ.

The advocates and the clerk, together with the mayor and with all his relations, embraced his feet, beseeching him to have regard for his wife and to think of providing for his children. He, as if it were a wave beating on an immovable rock, rejected their prattling words, and in his heart aimed heavenwards, and kept God before his eyes, and said that he ought to hold the Martyrs and Apostles for his parents and his kin       

“The judge ordered him to be slain with the sword. And when they had gone out of court, and were on the way to the usual place of execution, the brother of Phileas, who was one of the advocates, cried out saying, ‘Phileas asks to have his sentence revoked.’ Culcian calling him back said, ‘Why have you appealed?’ Phileas answered, ‘I did not appeal; God forbid. Do not pay heed to this most unhappy person. Nay, I acknowledge my extreme obligation to the Emperors and to my lord president, for letting me be made a joint heir with Jesus Christ.’ After this Phileas went forth.”

In a fine paragraph of one of his printed discourses, Professor Mozley has spoken of the surpassing interest with which men regard action performed just before death. “All that a man does,” he says, “upon this extreme boundary of vision appeals to us; what he said, or did, how he looked, his expressions and signs upon the verge of that moment awaken our curiosity; it seems as if he were in another world, when he was so near one. So in war,’’ he continues, “there is just that conflux of splendid action upon the very edge of life, which rouses curiosity and emotion; the figures move upon the extreme line of a shifting horizon, in another instant they are below it; yet the flame of energy mounts the highest upon the moment of the eclipse. There is a miraculous outbreak of power and will, which gathers all into a point; then all is over, and the man is gone.” And this is what has made the records of martyrdom so fascinating, so stimulative. The book has still to be written, which shall set before ordinary English folks those genuine Acts of the Catholic Martyrs which are their most inspiring and most imperishable reliques: and until the memories and sayings of those who have died in battle for our faith a're more known and cared for in our Churches,—until our enthusiasm has been more kindled than at present by witnessing the marvellous vitality which the threat of death evoked from them,— the Church is guilty of not directing to noble purposes that craving for romantic sensation which the Creator has seen fit to make so strong within us.

But the time is now come to turn again from these scenes of persecution. The end is coming into sight. Eight years had passed away since the morning on which St George tore down the First Edict at Nicomedia, when another edict of a very different tenour was posted in the same place. What those eight years had been to the Church, no human language—as the two historians who lived through them well protest—is at all adequate to express. During that period the sufferings of Christendom had not (of course) been kept up to the average of their keenest moments of anguish : this would have been impossible : but the intervals between the sharpest bursts had been filled with that dreary aching insecurity which is worse to bear than the energy of pain. If anything could ever possibly prevail against the Church, the Church would not have survived the first decade of the fourth century; and the inscription forged at Clunia would have been her epitaph, if ever she could have needed one. In that time, the total forces of the known world, gathered in the one person of ‘the Prince of this World’—that Roman Emperorship which was almost a synonym for Satan—had spent themselves upon her. True, the popular voice had not been against her: but the people was as nothing: the army, which was everything, and the executive, the whole over­powering machinery of Government, had been brought to bear upon her with dogged pertinacity. The moment had been chosen, when the imperial power (by Diocletian’s statecraft) was the most secure and the best concentrated. Nor was it only that the force used to batter the Church was the most massive ever collected in human history. That force was directed with more scientific sagacity than was ever used, before or since, for a kindred purpose. It was a small matter that the subtle dialectic wits of the whole Alexandrian school were engaged in refining short and easy methods for dealing with the Christians, and that, while our progenitors were being persecuted in the law courts, they were being written against in the phrontisteria. The great point was that the whole vast sum, of main force, of political mechanism, and of learned argument and skill, was originally directed and set to its work by one of the five or six greatest men who have breathed the earth’s atmosphere, by the very Solomon of Rome, Diocletian himself. And yet the effect of it all upon the Corporation in which God has embodied universal truth, can only be compared to what is seen by the visitor to some great iron works, when a mass of metal weighing many tons is dropped a score of feet upon a coil of steel spring, which the beholder expects to see ground into sparks; and the spring tosses it back into the air, and dandles it lightly, and suffers it gradually to subside. The Church, without dreaming of an armed resistance (for the winning of our souls is promised only to our patience), had completely conquered; and the very document which the Emperors headed with the pompous list of their military successes and with the arrogant title of Invicti, is nothing in the world, from beginning to end, but an abject, grudging, cynical confession that they had tried to cope with the Church and had been beaten.

There was one of the foremost authors of the persecution who was unable to set his hand to the recantation. Maximian the elder was no more. In his latter days he had forfeited utterly the loyal character he once bore; and his desultory planless intrigues had brought—though not so soon as might have been expected—his grey hairs to the grave. The chapters in which Lactantius paints the last scenes of his life, stand unrivalled even in their author’s works, for graphic effect and grim saturnine humour. From the Council of Carnuntum Maximian had returned again to Gaul. There he had already made one attempt, during Constantine’s absence in Germany, to resume the purple which, in all probability at Carnuntum, he had been compelled a second time to doff : but the attempt was but a fiasco: Constantine had returned in haste, and driven Maximian into Marseilles, and while the old man stood on the town wall showering down curses on his son-in-law, the townspeople had opened the gates behind him, and surrendered him to justice. That time, however, he had found but mercy. Constantine made them unfrock him, and gave him a lecture and his life. But in 310 Maximian was guilty of a more criminal design. Calling his daughter, he endeavoured to cajole her into a plot against her husband’s life. It was agreed that Fausta should not kill the Emperor with her own hands, but ensure to Maxi­mian a facile access to the apartment, where he was to conduct the affair himself. When all was arranged, the Empress, a better wife than daughter, laid the plans before the intended victim. On the night agreed, the sentries were few and far between; but Maximian, to make all safe, accosted them, showed who he was, said that he had seen an evil dream which he must tell the Emperor instantly. He entered the bedchamber, dagger in hand, plunged the weapon to his satisfaction into the breast of an unlucky eunuch who had been doomed to occupy his master’s couch, and as he was leaving the room in exultation, fell into the hands of Constantine and his armed guards. There was no possibility of defence, and the utmost that could be indulged to the old man who for twenty years had had but one superior in the world, was the liberty to adjust for himself the noose in which he was to hang.

And Galerius himself barely lived to see his recantation published. In the year of Maximian’s death, 310, he had begun to fall under a secret'disease, engendered, or at the least fostered, by his unstinted pampering of his appetite. That obscene cancer, in process of time, developed into the malady which either the severity of Almighty God, or else the sensitiveness of men, has (as it were) kept for great persecutors. Like Antiochus Epiphanes, like Herod in the Acts of the Apostles, like Alva’s master and Mary’s husband, the corruption of the  grave, and the vermin which feed upon corruption, claimed impatiently the colossal and bloated form of Galerius, before the spirit had left it. The agonies of this living death found voice in one of the most bizarre state-documents that was ever penned. In it a few days before he expired he restored Christianity to its privileges: but the restoration is couched in language treacherous, contradictory, and sour with the most virulent hatred. Galerius is full of remorse, and full of terror. He believed in our God, in the same way as the Christians believed in his. His tortures seem to him to be the vengeance of the Christ whose disciples he had wronged; but he lays the blame upon the Christians, because they had forsaken Christ. The dying Emperor shows no penitence, makes no confession, except of his impotence. He wishes to dupe and outwit the angry Christ, by pretending to be not a persecutor but a Reformer. With a curse, he dashes his edict of toleration in the Church’s face, and hopes superstitiously that it will win him an indemnity. This extraor­dinary manifesto is best described in the terse epigram of the noble French Catholic historian. “Singulier document,” cries M. de Broglie, “moitié insolent, moitié suppliant, qui commence par insulter les chrétiens et finit par leur demander de prier leur maitre pour lui.”

After rehearsing in full all the titles of Galerius, of Constantine, and of Licinius, and attributing to them some score of conquests apiece, the proclamation begins: “Amongst the other schemes which we are for ever framing for the use and profit of the state, we for our part had sometime been minded to reform all things after the antient laws and public discipline of the Romans, and to take order that the Christians also, who had left the persuasion of their own fathers, should return to a good disposition: forasmuch as, by logic of a peculiar kind, so great wilfulness had entered into the said Christians, and such folly had possessed them, that they would not follow those very instructions of the ancients which had peradventure been first established by the said persons’ own forefathers, but according to their own private judgment, each man after his own caprice, and on no other principle, they made their laws for themselves, and these they observed, and congregated in separate places dissenting as­semblies. In brief therefore, when a decree of ours had been set forth to that effect, that they should betake themselves again to the institutions of the ancients, many persons were put under jeopardy, many also utterly crushed down: and when the majority of them persevered in their resolution, and we saw that the said persons neither displayed to the gods the worship and reverence that was due, nor paid heed to the God of the Christians, we, in consideration of our most humane clemency, and having regard to the invariable use by which we are wont to accord mercy to all mankind alike, have thought best in this case also to extend our most prompt indulgence ; that Christianity may once more be practised, and that they may build their conventicles, on condition that they do nothing to break the discipline. And we are about to signify to the judges in another despatch, what rule that is that they are to observe. Wherefore, over against this our indulgence, it will be their duties to pray to their God for our good health, and the health of the state, and of themselves, that on all sides the state may be found in good condition, and that they may be able to live without anxieties in their own homes.”

It is vain to hope that any light will fall from this strange proclamation, back upon the cause of the persecution. It is Galerius who speaks, not Diocletian: and though Diocletian would never have persecuted but for Galerius’ passionate insistance, yet he ordered the persecution (during its first year) to his own taste, and with his own ends in view. Nor indeed is the Galerius who speaks here, the same Galerius who stormed up and down the council-room at Nicomedia in 303. That Galerius was, by eight tempestuous years, a younger man; he had never felt by experience, never realized by a knowledge of history, how arduous a task he was undertaking; he was full of enthusiastic confidence in the religion which gave so generous a licence to his passions. Now he lay dis­appointed, utterly defeated, half living man and half worm-eaten corpse, and as horribly convinced as either of his Christian biographers that he was writhing under the scourge of Christ. Yet nothing is further from his thoughts than to make a clean breast of it or acknowledge his change of views.

If indeed the statements contained in the edict are true, and Galerius is really taking the Church into his confidence before he asks her prayers, we certainly have some remarkable facts before us. The Emperor, when he lit the first fires, was but setting to action the Church’s own song of Ecce quam bonum. He saw with grief our unhappy divisions and their danger. It has been the special work of the genius of Rome in all ages to insist upon a hard material unity; and this was, in earlier days, the chief ground on which the empire attacked the Church. It regarded Christianity as the embodiment of sectarian spirit. Celsus’ definition of the essence of Christianity was, factiousness pure and simple. But now, if Galerius does not lie, the old quarrel with Christianity as such was forgiven or forgotten. Not a word was said against the Church’s peremp­tory absolutism, her incompatibility with heathendom, her refusal to set other state gods on any footing of equality with her Spouse. The Church indeed was still as exclusive as ever: but, if the Emperor is to be believed, the persecution was not intended to bring her to terms with paganism,—for her legal position, as one of the institutions of the ancients, is apparently acknowledged,—but to reduce the schismatics into unity with her. Galerius was not offended because Catholic Popes and Patriarchs ruled over multitudinous hosts who would willingly kick or bespit or burn the objects of his own ardent devotion; but because some self-willed fanatics rejected the established form of Christianity, refused allegiance to Anthimus and Melchiades and other princes of the Corpus Christianorum, and had built themselves dissenting chapels. The much-misinterpreted sovereign, for eight years past, had had nothing in view but the triumph of the true Church, and regarded his successive edicts, which had led to such unfortunate results, as so many Acts of Uniformity!

But the lie is barely masked. If Galerius lamented that all Christians alike had fallen from the purity of the original faith, why did he persecute professed reformers like the Novatianists and Marcionites? Why did he not summon a Council’ of the Divines whom he supposed to be most nearly orthodox, and make himself the first Emperor to impose a symbol? If, on the other hand, unity was all he wanted, why did he not follow Aurelian’s example, declare himself for the main body of believers, for the Pope and the Italian Bishops, and lay severe penalties on Dissent? Unfortunately we find no trace of men being asked on trial, whether they were primitive Christians, or members of some Protestant sect. It was of course Catholic blood chiefly that was being shed on every side like water. But in truth, the unhappy persecutor himself in these same few lines points out his transparent deception. He acknowledges that all Christianity alike had been proscribed, by granting permission for men to profess that religion once again,—ut denuo sint Christiani.

It may perhaps be thought, that when Galerius says he meant the Christians to return to the instituta veterum, he simply meant, to paganism. That that was, in reality, his sole purpose, there cannot, of course, be any doubt. But it seems most probable, notwithstanding, that in this edict he intends the phrase to signify—at any rate to the Christians— the primitive forms of their own religion. He tells them that they were extremely pigheaded, and got themselves into all manner of trouble, because, in spite of the persecution, they would do neither of two things:—they would neither be good heathens, nor good Christians. If only they would have wor­shipped the God of the Christians, he implies that he would have been content. He does not observe that he has again half contradicted himself, by saying above that one reason why he attacked them was the tenacity with which they observed the laws that they had laid down for themselves.

But there is also another slight indication that Galerius meant to include apostolic practice in the phrase. It is on the whole more likely that he would use his “peradventure” of the chance that the modern sectaries were descended from antient Catholic founders, than of the chance that the pagan institutions were due to the fathers of men now Christians. Again it must be repeated that there is nothing strange in Galerius speaking of Christian antiquity with respect,— respect, that is, for its antiquity, not for its Christianity.

It is, however, my belief that the dying Emperor is intentionally loose and vague. He used words which might, chamaeleon-like, look differently to different readers. The pagans might think that he was taunting all Christians, with having left their ancestral persuasion of polytheism. The dissenters might feel themselves bitterly rebuked for turning against the old faith for which their fathers bled, and clinging with such bigoted tenacity to their perverse and man-made regulations. And the Church, the pillar and ground of the truth, would feel more keenly still the smart of this buffet in the face, this insult added to eight years’ injury, when she read that she had left the orthodox faith and the primitive discipline, that she paid no heed to the God of the Christians, that she (who had not a law of any kind that was not Divine) acted on no other principle than human whim, that she had—not forced the Emperors by her fortitude to surrender at discretion, but—had obtained from them a contemptuous forgiveness because she was really too obstinate to be coaxed and too stupid to be frightened.

But the God of the Christians was not duped. “Le Dieu inconnu auquel il s’était enfin recommandé ne répondait pas a son insolente et tardive invocation’.” He had been willing to allow His people to be eaten up like sheep; but yet He was determined to avenge them. “According to the Divine judgment,” writes Eusebius, “need was that these things should happen; but nevertheless, Woe, saith the Scripture, to him by whom the offence cometh.” Galerius died, and was buried. His mausoleum was shown in the Dacian province which had given him birth. No provision for a successor was made. The tetrarchy was at an end. He had left his wife and children in the hands—hands but too credulously trusted—of his friend Licinius.

Licinius, then, (or Licinian, as it seems more correct to call him since his elevation) apparently assisted at the persecutor’s death ; and in all likelihood his advice had been taken before Galerius set pen to paper. Licinius had no policy but that of his benefactor, and would not demur to being one of the signataries. He had probably persecuted, when persecution was the order of the day: he was as ready to tolerate, or even to patronize, when the word was given for toleration. He had no religious feeling one way or the other. He cordially detested the pragmatical canting professors and scribblers who had got the agitation up: he said they were a common nuisance, plaguy fellows who were poisoning the country, and lost no opportunity of converting his forcible feeling against them into suitable action. When Galerius was dead, he adhered steadfastly to the lines laid down in the edict: it was useful as a mark of his antagonism to Daza, whom perhaps he hated all the more because of his bookish propensities. It was not till many years after, when Daza had been a long while in the grave, and the rival and bugbear was Constantine, that Licinius identified himself with the conservative reaction, and discouraged, nay persecuted, the religion of progress.

Constantine’s name is added in the edict. He had probably not been consulted. He would certainly not have approved the wording of the paper: but he had already taken the same measure in the far West five years ago, and was not likely to object to seeing his name head a proclamation, the effect of which (in spite of ungracious language) would be to make him popular in those Eastern provinces, which his ambition already coveted.

There was one speaking omission in the preamble. It has often been discussed, why the name of Galerius’ nephew is not added to the other three. It cannot be, as Tillemont thinks, a simple omission of Eusebius’ copyists: the paragraph containing his titles would have been too long to slip out, and besides, Eusebius himself has something to say  about the omission. Neither is it, as Keim suggests, because Galerius and Maximin were at feud. Galerius (however grudgingly) had recognised him as an Augustus : and in this very year the two were consuls together. Dean Milman’s theory is visibly absurd, that “the Caesar of the East,” as he is pleased to call him, found with surprise that his name had been insultingly omitted, and in revenge determined to go on with the persecution. There is more in Canon Robertson’s opinion, who believes that Galerius did not venture to mention him, knowing Maximin’s unquenchable animus against us. The fact seems to be, that Maximin (as Eusebius says plainly) refused to sanction the proclamation as it stood, and was determined to garble it, and to water down some of its expressions, before his Orientals saw it. In other quarters of the globe it may be that the readers of the proclamation saw the names of four Augusti stand harmoniously side by side: but what few copies got abroad in the East bore no mark of Daza’s concurrence.

Maximin refused to set his seal to Galerius’ edict. He found it the easier to refuse, because his uncle’s immediate death released him from the fear of having to give account of his independence. Hating the Church as he did, he would not pledge himself by formal enactment to allow her freedom and justice. Verbal instruction compromised him less for the future; and yet his was not the last case in which verbal reforms in the Church’s favour have sufficed to flatter and .cheat the Christian Powers.

He allowed his Grand Vizier, Sabinus, the Prefect of the East, to indite an encyclical to all his subordinates which was in appearance but a paraphrase of Galerius’ own proclamation. This encyclical, which Eusebius has preserved, was not for the public eye: it corresponded to the letter of instruction to the judges which accompanied the edict of the three Em­perors. 0n this account we are not surprised at the omission of a few passages, which the Christians had been intended to ponder, but which might be thought unedifying to the magistracy. But when these few omissions are studied, it will readily be perceived how well it suited Maximin’s insidious designs to select that mode of giving general assent to the edict, which would make the omissions less conspicuous. In the first place, Maximin, not yet beneath Christ’s lash, begs for no Christian intercessions. He scorns all but his own idolatrous sacrifices. The second alteration requires to be examined more closely, before its significance appears. At the first blush it might seem a courtesy to the Church to expunge from this encyclical the taunt of corruption and declension from the Catholic religion, and of negligence towards the Lord God. Upon this charge Sabinus and his master are silent. Christianity is dismissed with the description, “those who seem to follow an usage alien to Romans.” But the reason for this excision lies in Maximin’s more theological hatred of the faith. He would not use phrases which seemed to indicate that primitive Christianity was perhaps a sufferable religion, to abandon which was a fall, or that Christians would have seemed any nobler in his eyes for regular attend­ance at the Christian Sacrifice and maintaining orthodoxly the Divinity of Christ. To call modern Christianity un­Christian, sounded bitterer, but meant less mischief, than to call it un-Roman. And there is a third variation in Maxi­min’s circular not less expressive. Nothing could have been plainer than the phrase in which Galerius reestablished Christianity as a legitimate persuasion: he had used the regular formula, ut sint Ckristiani. Maximin says nothing of the kind. “Their sacred Majesties,” writes the prefect, “ determining that it was not their purpose for such a cause to bring the men into so great danger, have ordered their devoted servant to signify to your wisdom, that if any of the Chris­tians be found going after the worship of his own people, you shall exempt him from the molestation to which he is subject, and from personal danger. You will write to your subalterns and let them know that after the date of this letter they need not exert themselves further in the cause.” In other words, Christianity strictly is still illicit, though in particular cases not to be punished as severely as heretofore; and the Emperor, though forced for the present not to require you to persecute, will expect you not to relax your exertions more than can be helped.

It is almost a wonder that the judges interpreted Maximin’s document in a sense so favourable to the brotherhood as they really did. Though no effectual security was given against the recurrence of the late atrocities, the Persecution of Diocletian was virtually at an end, even in the East. The subordinate officers issued and posted local mandates, which conceded more than they were bidden to concede. In some cases their humanity showed itself so impatiently that, before they could have the notices published, they had set the prisoners free. Perhaps never in the world’s history were the privileges of Christian public worship so enthusiastically accepted. From jails and mines, from ‘hills and holes where they hid themselves before,’ the people streamed. Such congregations never had been seen. Churches began to rise. The confessors preached publicly the faith which their sufferings had endeared to them. The weak-hearted prostrated themselves before them, imploring their more than sacerdotal absolu­tion. Christianity took the cities by storm. As the bands of exiles passed through on their homeward journey, the native Churches met them at the gates, and led them in bold procession, with psalms and hymns, right through the main streets and market squares, and set them on their way. Their demonstrations of sympathetic and unaffected joy, and the marks which the sufferers bore about in their bodies, appealed so powerfully for compassion, that even those who were not yet Christians joined in the festivities, as though the cause of rejoicing were their own.

But this joy, in the provinces of Maximin—and these (after a dangerous disputation with Licinius) now included all from Cyrene round to the Bosphorus—was not to be long unchequered. That prince had seen with a scowling eye the Churches exultation, and the popularity that she had won. It was time that he and his theosophists should apprise the ignorant folk that Christianity existed on the barest sufferance, and that she was not in favour at court. Hardly six months had elapsed since the death of Galerius, when the first warning came to the Church, not to presume. There was in every town one spot, to which, as soon as ever Christians might declare themselves without fear, every Churchman and Churchwoman was sure to run. It was the ground where slept the sainted dead. Masses said, sermons preached, prayers offered, vows made, over the martyrs’ bones, had an efficacy double of any others. But the Government took this pious reverence for an insult to itself. Every adoration offered at a martyr’s grave was an open, seditious condemnation of the Emperor’s persecuting policy. From first to last Christianity was a homage to the enemies of Caesar. Maximin’s toleration of the faith did not include the toleration of such sinister gatherings. On some pretext—perhaps of the immoral tendency of torchlight or moonlight meetings out of doors—the Emperor gave strict orders that there should thenceforth be no services of any kind within the cemetery gates.

Towards the fall of this year, Maximin made (it seems) a kind of progress through his loyal provinces. Most of the chief towns of the East, such as Tyre, Antioch, and Nicomedia, received the honour of a visit. Humble addresses were presented to him everywhere; for probably the unhappy provincials hoped that obsequiousness might secure them and their wives from his overlordly claims on purse and person. In one point these addresses resembled one another closely. Maximin was known to have one taste, as well developed as even his taste for strong drinks and for female society, namely the taste for Christian persecution. Theotecnus at Antioch, where he was now supreme, set the example of calling the imperial attention to the religious question. Other towns—for in every one there was a sufficient clique of zealous pagans to recommend the policy to the rest—took the happy hint. Until the Emperor came, the two parties had been the best of friends, but they found his presence act like a revelation. They told the Emperor that the neighbourhood of the Christians was intolerable. They deeply regretted Maximin’s concession to them in the beginning of the year. They did not dare to ask him to revoke his decision formally. They only asked leave for so much local self-government as to enable them to expatriate their Christian fellow-citizens.

These petitions proved a prodigious success. They touched the Platonic sovereign to the heart. They were so perfect a satisfaction to him, as to make it the current belief of the Church, that Maximin had himself sent the deputations to himself. No doubt in every town he came to, he dwelt with such pious fervour upon the memorials presented to him elsewhere, as to make like action a necessity. He could even afford to hesitate, to argue, almost to refuse. At his own Bithynian capital—we have his own word for the statement, not contradicted by that of the Christian professor of rhetoric at the place—when the memorialists came to him, with a magnificent display of the images of the gods, asking leave to banish the atheists, Daza answered, that he knew the Christian population there to be very large; that he thanked them cordially for the request, but observed that the petition was not quite unanimously signed; that the Christians (if there were any who were determined to stick to their superstition) were as free to abide Christians as those who abode worshippers of the gods; but nevertheless he deemed himself compelled to defer to the judgment of such a deputation, a deputation which felt so strongly in the matter, both because all imperial precedent was in favour of granting such petitions, and because the gods might takfe it amiss if the claims of expediency were preferred to those of religion.

Thus compelled by the people, whose most humble minister he was, the despot made no secret of the delight he felt at the turn public opinion was taking. At Tyre, the decree of the municipal authorities, forbidding Christianity within the town, was engraved on a brazen tablet and affixed to a column: and appended to it, was engraved a jubilant sermon from the pen of the sovereign, congratulating the city on its act. “At last,” begins the happy preacher, “ weakness has become strong and bold. The night of error is scattering. The mist is breaking up. You would not believe me,” he continues a little lower down, “if I were to say what transport of joy, what delicious pleasure, what solid satisfaction this has been to me. You have given me the greatest proof of your religious temper.” Tyre, he says, had left off thinking of her material interests, had forgotten all selfish demands of older days, as soon as ever she perceived that ‘the votaries of that damned folly were beginning to creep forward again,’ like a fire which was supposed extinct. He saw the good hand of Jove in the fact that the Tyrians had fled immediately for healing to his own breast,—the home, the metropolis, of all piety. He contrasts the present prosperity of the East with those earlier days of plague and pestilence, war and famine, storms and earthquake, which had visited the empty folly of those trespassers against all laws divine and human, who had swamped the earth with their shame. He enthusiastically gives the Tyrians leave to do what they desired. “ If they still cling to their damnable folly, let them, as you demand, be sorted out, and chased over the hills and far away from your city and its district. Follow out your laudable zeal. Free yourselves from all pollution and profanation. Then your city will be able duly to serve the rites of the immortal gods, according to its own innate inclination.” And then follows what the Tyrians had really wanted. “And that you may know, how extremely agreeable to us your petition has been, we permit you, our dutiful subjects, to demand of us, in requital of this your godly resolution, any great privilege that you shall choose. And indeed you must be sure so to do, and to receive what you demand ; for you shall assuredly obtain it : and it will remain for ever to testify to your descendants of your devotion to the gods and of our substantial mode of rewarding it.”

Theotecnus had meanwhile been making vigorous efforts to popularize idolatry in that city which gave birth to the Christian name. There was a good deal of what is commonly called Jesuitry in the religious revival of the new Platonics: and this character was in no one more pronounced than in the Curator of Antioch. Eusebius sums up this aspect of the man and of the movement, when he calls Theotecnus a formidably cjever, unscrupulous sorcerer, to whom no greater misnomer could have been applied than the name he bore, of ‘ Child of God.’ This gentleman supposed it not inconsistent with the advance of truth, to establish, for the behoof of the ignorant, upon whom philosophic argument would have been wasted, a wonderful image of the reconciled tutelary of the town, Zeus Philius, the god of goodwill. The pomp of the Christian reconsecrations was quite eclipsed by the imposing rites at the dedication of the image. Theotecnus devised novel mysteries in its honour in which men were put through a profane and mumming parody of the holy Sacrament of the Laver. There were further initiations, to match the successive steps of Christian initiation, so grotesquely wicked that Eusebius dares not mention them. The highest stage of mystic knowledge to which a man could attain (and the Emperor Maximin appears to have been among the first who attained it), was the discovery, made only when Gnosis was advanced enough to despise the shock, of the springs and traps by which the image worked. These weird secrets were irregularly divulged, two years later, under the spell of torture, to the inquisitors of Licinius. But the natives were enthralled with wonder at the show. The god was liberal of miracles. Oracles of grave importance were uttered: and, above all, Jupiter backed the petition of the townsmen, and bad his minister declare that no Christians must be allowed to enter the district of Antioch. The new deity was so paying an invention, that Maximin rewarded his hierophant with promotion to the proconsulate.

And now, throughout all the East, while the towns were raising local persecutions against the faith, Maximin and his advisers were taking a most wise step for the reformation of paganism. No former persecutor had ever seen the need of supplying anything in the place of that which he destroyed. It was a measure more worthy of a politician and a philosopher, than the old trickeries of an idol temple. We have already drawn attention to the fact that paganism was destitute of every element of cohesion. It had never had to grapple, till now, with any foe ; for it had never challenged scepticism by committing itself to a creed, nor had it even consciously pro­posed to itself the reduction of immorality. It had never, therefore, trimmed itself into a wieldy form. An ardent devotee here and there might perhaps make it his business to encourage others to the worship of the gods, or to blame them for their slackness: but, as a matter of constitution, paganism (besides having no historical unity with the past, no life) had no pastorate, no cure of souls, no sacramenta, no Bible, no doctrine of unity, no preaching of law or teaching of dogma, no yearning for fellowship. The mind is positively amazed when first it recognises the full difference between that poor chaos which the heathen religions were, and the Hebrew ideal of a Church, a peculiar people, which was to widen and widen till humanity should be reunited in the Perfect Man. Maximin, at the teaching of Theotecnus, conceived the stupendous thought of creating a Heathen Catholic Church.

The first great measure was the creation of Pagan Bishops with territorial authority. Such a thing had been unheard of before, and we can hardly tell whether the pagan ministers in the smaller towns were pleased or not at being put under superior jurisdiction. The number of local ministers was at the same time increased, not a single image being left without its separate chaplain; whereas before, many of the temples had been served, as occasion required, by any casual person who knew how to do the sacrificial act. And in imitation of the Christian daily Sacrifice, the pagan Prelate of each chief city, with the help of his subordinates, was to see that in each single temple of the town, perhaps of the country too, sacred rites should be offered day by day, with all the regularity of a Liturgy. Within Maximin’s own palace there was an unintermitted daily service. But even thus the hierarchy was not complete enough to match our Church. Maximin added the provincial to the diocesan organization, reserving for the crown the right to appoint all superior officers. And these Archbishops and Bishops were armed with most formidable powers over the laity. Through the organised espionage of their parochial clergy, they were enabled to make a perfect monopoly of religion. They stopped the building of Christian churches, which had been permitted by name in the edict of Galerius. They detected the smallest gatherings of the Christians, even in private houses. If it were observed that any man was inconstant at the worship of the gods, whether he called him­self Christian or heathen, the new pontiffs had authority to summon him before their own consistories, or to deliver him to the secular arm, according as they saw fit. The ecclesiastical courts were unable to inflict the penalty of death, but were allowed to mulct malcontents of noses, eyes, and ears.

To the terrors of the law were added the seductions of aestheticism and outward grandeur. The men selected for the antichristian bishoprics, were men who had adorned the highest civic magistracies: for rank was supposed to confer lustre on the Church, not the Church to ennoble rank. As it was the fashion for devout Christians to seek a sacerdotal blessing on their meals, so Maximin paid honour to his hierarchy, by refusing to eat flesh not slaughtered at an altar: and all his food and drink had been sanctified by the rites of libation. Guards of honour were told off to escort the dignitaries. The two upper orders, the metropolitan and suffragan prelates (for in Maximin's establishment the former were not simply primi inter pares), were ordered to display their august and mystic dignity by wearing, as their ordinary dress, albs of snowy purity .

We do not know whether any formal efforts were made to preach the Neoplatonic creed, or whether the people were left to learn, what was embodied in the new ecclesiasticism, to chance, and to gratuitous teaching such as Maximin gave in his brazen rescripts. But it is unhappily certain that in the opposite direction, in the polemic against Christianity, they adopted means as discreditable to them, as the pagan hierarchy was creditable. Obsolete and ridiculous slanders were gravely revived. One of these unhandsome tricks is traced to the commandant of the Roman garrison at Damascus. That gallant officer, one night, sent out into the market-place, and fetched off the pavement three or four notorious strumpets, and requested them, unless they loved torture, to dictate officially a fantastic story, of how they had once been Christian women and had learned their execrable trade in the celebration of the Mass. Christian worship was then as well known as it is now; yet when the Emperor received the acts from the commandant, he gave instant orders that copies of the document should be circulated and published openly in every city in his empire.

But to Theotecnus must be paid the crowning, damning honour of the masterstroke of this part of the persecution. For a long time past the Christians themselves had not remained content with those scanty records of the Life and Death of their Master which Divine inspiration had reckoned sufficient. As far back as the times of Tertullian, and even of St Justin, apologists had challenged their enemies to inspect works which passed under the name of Pilate. But Theotecnus had turned the tables on them. During the days which he had passed in the Curatorship of Ancyra, he had amused his leisure time with the composition of a rival forgery. It was not the most careful or critical of forgeries indeed; for even Eusebius, of whose uncritical character so much is said, was able to show that Theotecnus had dated our Saviour’s Passion five years before Pilate ever came into the province. But the piece suited its purpose well enough.

It was perhaps not intended at first for any serious use, but rather as a mocking burlesque. What these Acts contained, we happily do not know; in all likelihood (for anything can be proved in a forgery) they proved our Lord guilty of moral as well as of political crimes.

The ingenious author appears to have given publicity to his work pretty early in the persecution; for it will be re­membered that the explosive judge who sentenced St Andronicus argued against him out of them,—unless it were from others like them. Theotecnus himself (whether he had then set his thoughts on paper or not) argued in the same way against St Theodotus in 304. Now, however, Theotecnus was a greater and more influential man; and he determined to make a wider and an authoritative use of his composition. He showed them to his delighted master. Maximin at once ordered copies to be sent to every place, great or small, town or country, in the whole East. A full edict was sent along with them, which ordered that the Acts of Jesus and Pilate should be posted up in conspicuous places where every one might read them. It was nothing to the Emperor and his minister that they were conscious of the fraud. They had but One object—to damage Christianity. But the worst is yet to be told. With a most diabolical fertility of resource, the imperial edict enjoined, that all schoolmasters, from the Dardanelles to the Nile, should be supplied with copies, that allscholars should be made to understand that these Acts were the genuine account: nay the edict condescended to minuter and meaner details still. The Acts were made a government text-book. Lest from any of those pure boys’ minds the filthy lies should pass without tainting, it was expressly ordered that every boy should have the Acts dinned into his ears until he knew them by heart; that every boy should be examined in them and exercised in repeating them; and that every boy should have to compose out of his own reflexion frequent declamations upon them. The Christians could not pass down the street without hearing the Name at which they bow, coming from those young lips in scurrilous banter, or in the lofty moral scorn of rhetorical practice. Thus at the very age when the heart is tenderest, when the pathos of the Cross and the Crown of Thorns tells most upon the life, all reverence and pity for Jesus Christ were to be purposely, laboriously, as a piece of school discipline, turned into contempt and ridicule and hatred. Any one who knows how profane and blasphemous imaginations are apt to be shot into the mind, untimely and unwelcome, when once they have been suggested, will see how purely Satanic the device of Maximin was.

The state of affairs which was now reached, in 311 and 312, was as follows. Christianity had never yet received, in the East, the formal removal of its disabilities which Galerius had intended. Though Maximin still affected to give complete religious liberty to his empire at large, he had encouraged the several towns to proscribe Christianity. The ecclesiastical courts of the novel hierarchy possessed powers of enforcing conformity upon the individual. And as we have already hinted, in those places which had declared themselves pagan, it was gradually discovered that the civil power might go further lengths even than such spiritual censures as torture and mutilation. So it came to pass that some of the very purest martyrdoms occurred after the great edict of toleration. At Emesa, an aged Bishop and two others were actually tossed to the beasts on their confession of the Christian name. But this final effort of persecution was chiefly directed against the best theologians of the Church. It was designed to shut formidable mouths. One of the greatest Prelates of the time, St Peter of Alexandria, who had been released from his long confessoriate in 311, and had drawn up canons for the readmission of the lapsed as though the persecution were over, with an innocent surprise found himself a martyr after all. And these things were not kept privy from the Emperor. He had taken up his abode at Nicomedia. That town became the headquarters of persecution. At any rate since the death of Pamphilus, the most famous Biblical scholar of the East was Lucian, a Priest of Antioch. Maximin sent for the man to Nicomedia. He was invited to make a defence of his religion, part of which Ruffinus has recorded for us, and very noble it is: and when he had finished the peroration, he was beheaded. A few days before he died, in his farewell epistle to his own Church, he wrote an interesting sentence. “A perfect choir of martyrs,” he says, “ salute you all at once. And I tell you the glad-tidings, that Anthimus the Pope”—the great Archbishop of Nicomedia, whom even Galerius had spared—“has just received his final consecration by the course of martyrdom.”

But the fanaticism of Maximin was bringing him into trouble on two sides. He had created an ‘Eastern Question.’ It happened that part of his dominion was bounded by the not insignificant kingdom of Armenia, which had hitherto done the Roman good service in his struggle with the power of Persia. Now, as we have mentioned before, Armenia,—King, Queen, people and all—had become Christian. The first state that had learned to appreciate the blessed influence of Christianity upon government, might well feel wroth at the treatment of the brotherhood across the border. But St Gregory’s converts had a fleshly as well as a spiritual kinship with some of the oppressed. Lesser Armenia, separated from them by. a mere geographical line, and entirely peopled by men of their own clan, was a Christian province, but subject to the powers at Nicomedia. Maximin’s ministers—perhaps his ecclesiastics—made the unhappy attempt to enforce among the hills of Koordistan the same discipline which was in vogue under the Bithynian Olympus. But the attempt to make these Armenians sacrifice to the demons of Neoplatonism, called forth an ungovernable sympathy from their independent cousins. Eusebius does not make it clear which party was the first formally to declare war. War however broke forth : and Maximin, hampered at home by pestilence and famine (which he boasted had been banished for good by his pagan zeal), suffered a disastrous defeat. The first war fought under the banner of the Cross against oppression, ended in the suc­cess of righteousness.

And Maximin found himself embroiled with a far more potent adversary on the other side. Even in 311, Constantine had written to him, advising him not to behave with so little regard for the edict of toleration. And now, late in 312, Constantine’s reasons for being displeased with the senior Emperor were better than ever. Upon his triumphant entry into Rome after Maxentius’ death at Pons Milvius, he discovered that that prince and Maximin had come to a stealthy agreement. A correspondence betwixt the two was found; and the statues of Daza and Maxentius were observed standing on the same pedestal. This, apart from the religious question, was enough. But at that moment, if at any in the life of Constantine the Great, the religious question was uppermost. Upon the nature of Constantine’s famous Vision, I do not enter, nor upon the nature of his conversion to the faith. Suffice it here to say that at Pons Milvius Constantine had made a sharp, if superstitious, experiment upon the efficacy of the saving Sign, and was beyond measure impressed by his success. He had long been biassed for Christianity by his sagacious perception that it was the power of the future : but his was a mind incapable of atheism, and he was now deeply convinced that Christianity was—I will not say, a true system, but—a worship of a substantial Deity. He went down to meet Licinius at Milan (Licinius was there to marry his colleague’s young sister) in all the fervour of a neophyte. The one grand event of the meeting of the Emperors was the great effectual close of the ten years’ strife,—the Edict of Milan.

The famous Edict of Milan has a claim to be remembered far above that of ending the Persecution of Diocletian. In that respect, indeed, it is of less real importance than Galerius’ legacy of peace. This edict is more an era in the religious history of the world. It is the very first announcement of that doctrine which is now regarded as the mark and the principle of civilization, the foundation of solid liberty, the characteristic of modern politics. In vigorous and trenchant sentences it sets forth perfect freedom of conscience, the unfettered choice of religion. Alexander, Gallienus, Galerius, had broadened the aegis of Rome so as to protect one more creed. Christianity had passed from the number (it might be infinite) of religiones illicitae into the number of religiones licitae: but that was all. By the Edict of Milan, all religions of all sorts, sizes, and origins, effected at a bound the same exodus. Galerius, snarling and growling,—the very figure that the Dreamer saw “ biting his nails because he could not come at them,”—had been compelled conditionally to arm with legal authority a certain faith. Constantine the Great said boldly, “Henceforth the State rejects the function of prescribing in matters of faith: religion is inalienably a ques­tion for the individual.”

“We have long seen,” says the edict, “that we have no business to refuse freedom of religion; and that to the judgment and desire of each individual man must be left the power of seeing to matters of belief, according to the man’s own free will.” There is no ambiguity here. “In this view, we had given orders, which were destined for the Christians too, that every man should loyally observe his own persuasion and his own cult.” The Toleration Act of 313 that is to say, was intended to give as full a liberty to a Christian as to a heathen. The State would not dictate to what religion a man should belong, but exhorted him to cleave steadfastly to whichever fate and his forefathers’ choice had assigned him. “But there were sundry and diverse conditions attached in detail in that Rescript in which the said power was conceded to the aforesaid Christians.” There are indeed no conditions detailed in the Edict which has been preserved, and of which we have given a translation: but that Edict sets forth the general condition of ‘ doing nothing contrary to discipline,’ and mentions immediately the lost Rescript of instruction to the judges touching the nature of that discipline. Constantine the more naturally alludes in this place to the accompanying Rescript, and not to the public Edict, inasmuch as the document we are now considering (though commonly called the Edict of Milan) was really itself a Rescript, or farther paper of instructions upon the mode of administering the Edict of 311. “So because of these conditions, some of them (it may be) after a short while,”—not at first, because the conditions were not proclaimed in the Edict, so that they only came to know them by breaking them—“withdrew from the loyal observance of Christianity.” Galerius then had imposed harsh conditions, but had not let the unhappy Christians know what his conditions were. The harshness and reticence combined make it still plainer that Galerius had only meant to conciliate the Christians for the nonce, in hopes to cheat Christ into removing His heavy hand.

Constantine, in the Edict of Milan, does not say in so many words that the conditions themselves were hard—that they would strike a mere reader as hard—but acknowledges freely that there were hardships accompanying them. It is not easy to conjecture, at least with any confidence, what Galerius had bidden his magistrates exact as the price of licensing Christianity. The only clue, and that not a sure one, is to be found in what seem to be fresh concessions in the Edict of Milan. In the first place, Constantine expresses the wish not to appear to damage either any form of worship, or any rank of life. We conclude that in 311, Christianity was forbidden to all but certain classes,—that if a man chose to declare himself a Christian he would incur no danger, but might no longer take his seat as a Decurion in his native town, or the like. Again, it is now ordered that the Christians are to receive back their Churches and sites and demesnes, simply for the asking; the Emperor’s own noble liberality indemnifying those who had bought or received such property. As the former order of proceedings is described as definite and very different, it seems clear that Galerius had endeavoured to turn some money on the transaction. Again, men are now encouraged freely to choose their own religion, and this provision is rightly supposed to point at a former veto upon proselytism: it has been thought that possibly a certain number of years of Church membership previous to the persecution were considered a necessary qualification, before any one, under the first statute of tolerance, might revert. Other writers have remarked that Constantine gives perfect liberty not only to practise, but also in practising any given religion,— facilitate, in colendo, not only colendi. Had Galerius granted leave to worship Christ, but subject to some horrid pagan supervision? insisted upon all the sects being taken, unwel­come and unwilling, into Catholic communion? framed some Public Worship Regulation Act, that forbad services and uses which the Christian conscience felt it needed? This is an extremely probable guess. But to the best of my belief, among the provisos of the former rescript must have been conspicuous one which, while speciously allowing perhaps an unmaimed Christianity where Christianity was allowed at all, removed the question entirely from the judgment and conscience of the individual soul. I cannot help thinking that one of those things which Constantine describes as “sinister, and not german to our gracious benevolence,’' must have been a stipulation which made room for Maximin’s permissive prohibitory laws,—a stipulation that if the Church was anywhere obnoxious to the majority, she was to be tabooed,—a stipulation (that is) that religion should still be, what it had always been till then, a matter of public external order, not of private spiritual conviction. This supposition alone explains the startling distinctness,—as clear as a clap of thunder,—with which Constantine preaches, in the light of his new Christianity, absolute freedom of faith, as an indefeasible right, for Pagan or Manichee, for Catholic or schismatic. Every condition of toleration is clean cancelled: no circumstances are henceforth imaginable which would justify religious despotism. We have no more a charter for a Church or a sect, but a charter for each unit of humanity. “No man whatsoever ought to be refused any facility for giving up his whole soul either to the observation of Christianity or to any religion which he, personally, feels to be best adapted to his needs''!’ It is for heralding this vast revolution in the bases of religion, if for anything,—not merely for his patronage of ourselves,— that Constantine the Great deserved his most majestic title of Peer of the Apostles.

And what special facts, at that particular moment, evoked this mighty utterance ? Not the fall of Maxentius. The Christians in the new-won Italy needed no liberation, more than their heathen fellows. Maxentius’ tyranny had pressed impartially upon all. Conceivably his new secret alliance piay have involved something which looked ominously for the Church; but it was not for the West that the Western Emperors’ decree was issued. It was undoubtedly Maximin’s conduct, Maximin’s false and treacherous construction of the Articles of 311, at which Constantine was aiming. This is revealed by the extraordinary speed with which Constantine and Licinius despatched their orders to the prince whom the Senate had just made their junior. The battle of Pons Milvius had only been fought in the very end of October, and Constantine had subsequently passed some time in Rome; and yet before the year 312 had quite run out, Maximin had not only received the haughty mandate from Milan, but had put forth his own semi-submissive rejoinder.

Maximin, in spite of his secret treaty with the Roman usurper, had pretended to be on good terms with the other Emperors. But now his treachery was discovered, and the two Emperors were forming a perilously close alliance at Milan, probably against him. He resolved in fear to take the initiative. It was not for dread of Constantine’s vengeance that he sent out his new mandate to Sabinus: for he was bent on war in any case. But he felt that at this crisis it would be better to reconcile the great party of his own subjects whom he had disobliged. He must take the complaints for the moment out of the Christians’ mouths : it would be easy enough to deal sternly with them again when the crisis was past. His new missive went to work most strangely. He told Sabinus he firmly trusted that the wisdom of ‘our lords, our fathers, Diocletian and Maximian,’ in ordering the Christians to be reduced by sharp chastisements, was obvious to everybody. On coming into the East, however, he had found that in some places an actual majority of the most useful citizens had been banished for their religion. He had at once ordered the judges not to torture or browbeat them any more, but to wheedle and conjure them over to orthodox heathendom. No Turk ever lied more shamelessly; but let that pass. This leniency, according to the lordly liar, was converting Christians in shoals, when the antichristian deputations began to come : and then, what could he do but answer them genteelly? Maximin does not acknowledge that his civil answers to the towns had made any change in the position of the Christians, but continues with the very tone of an injured man. Although he had already given injunctions quite full enough, and there was no need to say a syllable more, yet he thought he might as well write word, that neither beneficiarii (a kind of Redifs), nor any one else, was to have leave and privilege—a horrible disclosure of what had hitherto been thought fair—to afflict the Christians with the process known by the cant term of “concussion.” The judges (dreadful threat!) were to return to their wheedling and their conjuring. If any one, under their charming caresses, left the Church and worshipped the gods, so much the better for him; but if he refused, Maximin, like those who suggest pumps and horseponds deprecatingly, repeated that he could not think of allowing “concussions.”

In this curious letter Maximin contradicts himself often enough to make his Christian subjects dizzy. First he justifies bloody persecution, then plumes himself upon having stopped it, next apologises for having set it again on foot, then denies that it was going on, and lastly orders it to cease. We cannot wonder at what Eusebius relates, that the people whose wrongs the letter applauded and forbad, neither built Church nor held meeting in public on the strength of it; they did not know where to have it.

Relying on the bruised reed of this charter (which did but perpetuate the miserable status quo) Maximin went northward and westward, to occupy the provinces of Licinius before that old prince’s wedding-feast was over. When he reached Bithynia, his army was so shattered with the winter’s march, that he was obliged to wait for some time to recruit. As soon as it was prudent, he crossed the Bosphorus. Byzantium, not then the city of the great monarch whose eye first saw its surpassing value, took him but eleven days to reduce. He marched on to Heraclea, where he was detained a considerable time. When he reached Adrianople, he found Licinius there in person. Licinius was not desirous of giving battle: his forces were far too inferior: but he hoped to check Daza’s onward march. Somethinghowever, led to an engagement. It was fought on the 30th of April. Whether or not the tale be true, that the whole army of Licinius fell on their knees, and prayed the Most High God to befriend the right, it is certain that He did befriend it. The battlefield was as little the scene for a Maximin, as the Platonist’s lecture-room for a Licinius. “The incredible speed which Maximin exerted in his flight, is much more celebrated than his prowess in the battle. Twenty-four hours afterwards he was seen pale, trembling, and without his imperial ornaments, at Nicomedia, one hundred and sixty miles from the place of his defeat.” But Maximin did not stay in the Asiatic capital; for Licinius was following him up. Taking his wife and children, he made' haste to escape into Cappadocia, leaving Diocletian’s palace for his vanquisher. Licinius was not slow to enter on the possession: and on the 13th of June, 313, Lactantius and the remnant of the Church of Nicomedia read the manifesto of Milan.

Asia was now in the hands of Licinius, and Maximin was in the worst straits. His vast army was either cut to pieces, or incorporated in the legions of the victor. In self­defence he endeavoured to get together another, powerful enough to thwart the ambitious progress of Licinius. But he was now in the thick of the Christians, The Christians had heard that his rival was promising, and securing too, in every province where he came, a perfect liberty of conscience. It was nothing but his religious policy which was making Licinius such a favourite. Maximin had at any rate a few qualities which would make him a more popular ruler than his foe; for while Licinius was the most illiberal extortioner alive, Maximin had never oppressed with taxations on the Galerian scale, and at the same time was open-handed. There was only one thing to be done: but it was the most distasteful sacrifice that Maximin ever made. While he secured himself at Tarsus (to which he had retreated, to keep the keys of Syria), by blockhouses in the passes of the Taurus, he endeavoured to secure himself from his own subjects’ wrath by at last giving in his adhesion to the religious policy of the West.

Maximin made the concession with so much dignity and grace, that it is impossible to help wishing that his language were truer. His single-eyed desire to benefit all his subjects, he says, and his plan of conceding to the wishes of the majority, had been perspicuous. This could be proved by a mere cursory glance at the history of the last few years. He takes no blame to himself for the sufferings of the Christians. He had set his face against persecution from the first. Unjust judges had made religion a pretext for seizing property, but not with his connivance. Only the year before, he had written to the magistrates, ordering perfect liberty to be allowed in matters of religion. The judges had misread his instructions, and had caused Maximin’s people to doubt the meaning of his ordinances; the Christians had felt shy (this was a fact) of performing the observances which they preferred. Maximin was determined that this wrong state of things should continue no longer. This time, he had resolved not to send Rescripts which the magistrates could keep dark, but to proclaim his intentions in a public Edict, so that any man with eyes might see that he was allowed to become a Christian if he chose, and to practise Christianity as he chose: there was to be no suspicion of a double entendre. If they wanted to build Lord’s Houses—Maximin went so far as to call them by this name—they had free leave to do so. And as a further sign of the imperial benevolence, any houses or sites that had legally, under Diocletian’s statute, fallen to the fiscus, were to return at once to the Catholic Church.

There is no saying how profoundly history might have been altered, had Maximin lived to enjoy the fruits of his honourable action. But when he wrote this edict, his hours were already numbered. Round the Deaths of the Persecu­tors dreadful tales have clustered: and it is probable that Maximin died of nothing worse than a natural death. But the death which was natural to him, was the most dreadful perhaps that men can die. Maximin was known as a habitual drunkard; and in his dying delirium he is said to have cried out, that he saw God, with assessors all in white robes, judging him. He perished protesting to his Judge, even as he had protested in his last edict, that it was not he, but his officers, that had done it.

He was the last of the persecutors to die. That venerable man who had refounded the fortunes of the empire, who had been the maker of so many princes, and survived so many reigns, had gone to his rest in sorrow near the beginning of the year. Besides such pleasures as he could extract from his garden and his books, his servants, masons, and few private friends, he had felt but little joy since his retirement. He had been forced to order to a frightful death the servants whom he admired and loved with almost a childlike simplicity, because they professed a religion in which he saw no harm. He had been once summoned from his repose, and consulted on the best means of escaping from a difficulty, which, if his advice had been followed, would never have occurred : and when he had given his still wise counsel, not only was it ostentatiously rejected, but the shameless persons whom he had raised to distinction affronted him with the offer of a crown. And as his hairs grew greyer, and his years entitled him to still deeper veneration, his sorrows had increased, and the insults he was compelled to brook were multiplied.

He had but one child, the Empress Valeria, a lady of a sweet and chastened nature, whom he had married to Galerius. The generous, meek, affectionate character of Valeria is revealed by one remarkable act of hers. Being herself debarred by nature from bearing children, and hated in consequence by her rude husband, she had not thought it beneath her to adopt and cherish as her own, Candidian, the son of one of Galerius’ paramours. Scarcely had Valeria been left a widow, when she came (with Prisca her mother) to the court of her husband’s nephew, who was himself married, and who had stood to her in the estimation of a son. But Maximin, perhaps full of the oriental notions of sovereign succession, instead of offering her a splendid asylum, had offered her an alliance at once adulterous and incestuous. Upon the receipt of her majestic and Christian reply, Maximin’s cruel anger burst forth. He seized her goods. He took away her ladies of honour. He tortured and killed her chamberlains. He forced them to accuse her friends falsely of the most nefarious crimes, and punished with severe penalties the deeds never done. Lastly, he drove the two Empresses themselves into destitute exile, refused to assign them even a Seriphos or Pandataria where they might be in peace, and whensoever he heard where they had settled, sent messengers to oust them offensively from their place. From some spot in the wilds of Syria, Diocletian’s daughter found means to send to her father the story of her unutterable woe. Diocletian, in astonishment and anger, sent an ambassage to Maximin to demand that Valeria should be instantly conveyed to Spalatro.

He received no answer. He sent several times, for the matter was one in which a father’s heart and an Emperor’s honour could not be contented with delay. But no Valeria came. At length he commissioned a prince of his own blood, a soldier of the highest rank and great influence, to approach Maximin, and to condescend to beseech him, by the memory of Diocletian’s favours, to have mercy upon the father and the daughter. The envoy returned with the intelligence that Maximin had flatly refused ’.

It might have been thought that Maximin’s hostility in itself would have been enough to secure the friendship of Licinius, even if recollections of boyish love could not touch the heart of Constantine. But it was not so. One of the conquering Emperor’s first acts on entering Rome and Italy, was to destroy the images of his father-in-law and would-be assassin. Side by side with the images of Maximian stood the images of Diocletian : they formed but a Janus, two men in one. But reverence for Jovius proved no safeguard for the memorials of Herculius. Diocletian was told by some officious news-carrier that all his effigies together with his colleague’s had been dragged by the hangman’s hook and broken.

From this unduteous work at Rome, Constantine went down to Milan to consign Constantia to her aged and unattractive lover. Though conscious of what he had been doing, he was not abashed to send, in conjunction with Licinius, an invitation to the hermit of Spalatro to attend the festive ceremony. The old man of seventy-eight returned a dignified and valid excuse : he was too old and too infirm to bear the fatigues of the journey, or to take part in the joys of the marriage. But Licinius and his brother-in-law pretended to see in the excuse a mere pretext for political disapproval. With infamous bad taste, they sent back to Diocletian an angry and threatening letter, in which they told him that they knew he had always been a partisan of Maxentius, and was still a partisan of his daughter’s persecutor, Daza.

Broken with sorrow and shame, insult, sickness and old age—and (as some say) seized once more with that mental malady which cares had before brought upon him,—Diocletian gave up even the desire for life itself. It did not require much violence to drive the spirit from the worn body. Diocletian refused to touch the food which was served to him, and died. But before he died, the great step had been taken which was the fulfilment of his own interrupted policy of reform. It may have been a slight comfort even to his miserable end, that he had seen the Edict of Milan.

 

Finis.