CHAPTER XIX

THE GREAT PERSECUTION

I.

THE ATTITUDE OF PHILOSOPHERS TO CHRISTIANITY

 

THE histories of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea from the standpoint of a spectator of a later day may be regarded as man’s preparation of the oikoumene for the rule of Rome. The struggles of rival empires issue in the dominance of the only Empire which has ever held in sole supremacy all the shores of the inland sea. And the culture of this bilingual Mediterranean world is itself highly complex, and in that complexity is mirrored the fact that it is the legatee who has entered into possession of the goods of many predecessors. But before this culture of the Empire of Rome, the deposit of the pagan past, could become the culture of the Empire whose heart was Constantinople it needed yet a further contribution—the legacy of the Jew, the blood-bought treasure of the Christian. That final fusion of the elements which were to constitute the Byzantine inheritance came not through the tranquil process of a peaceful evolution: historically it was effected through the violent reaction of a pagan counter­reformation which failed and through the will of a Roman emperor who had put the God of the Christians to the test and had proved in his own experience that victory lay not with Juppiter Optimus Maximus but with the God whom through the centuries his worshippers had acknowledged as the Lord who was strong and mighty in battle—the Lord of Hosts.

We stand at one of the turning points in the history of Europe —at the moment when the old world of paganism is in travail, when against its will it gives birth to the Christian Empire. The pagan world might refuse to acknowledge its offspring: the child might disclaim the links which bound it to a pagan past; but at length the pagan came to realize that his gods could be abandoned, that his literature, his philosophy and his art could outlive the deities with which they had been so intimately associated. This pagan culture, it was found, possessed a vitality which the Immortals could not command, and on his side the Christian could not forgo the inheritance of a world in which he had formerly felt himself an alien, as but a sojourner in another’s city: the vessel of polytheism which had contained the treasure of the past could be broken and the treasure could still be preserved, the spoil of the Egyptians could become the pride of the despised Galilaeans. Thus in the fourth century of our era was brought about the final fusion which was to determine the faith and the achievement of the men of the later Empire. With the history of that momentous fusion this volume is not concerned: we have but to sketch the course of the crisis which made that fusion possible.

Roman State, Hellenistic culture, the Christian Church— these are the three forces in the crisis: how did they stand towards each other at the close of the third century? A brief retrospect can hardly be avoided. In the first century the new faith which had been born amongst the mongrel population of Galilee of the Gentiles, whose founder had been crucified as a common criminal, could hardly arouse the serious interest of the Roman world: it was but one more poisonous superstition from the East, the fruitful mother of queer and revolting cults. Scorn—or perhaps a scornful pity—for such delusion was all that could be expected. But in the second century some notice had perforce to be taken of the sect: a governor such as Pliny might be constrained to acknowledge that the superstition appeared morally guiltless; only the perverse obstinacy of the Christians offended the Roman’s sense for discipline. The first writer seriously to attack the new faith was, so far as we know, Fronto, the tutor of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius; his work is lost, yet it probably furnished to Minucius much material for his statement of the pagans’ case. But the world of culture still remained unconcerned, and when about 180 Celsus published his True Discourse against the Christians it may well have passed unnoticed: pagan writers do not mention the treatise, and it was only seventy years later that the attention of Origen was called to the work; it is from his elaborate reply that the greater part of Celsus’ attack can be recovered. But the remarkable fact is that in its conception the True Discourse was something more than a criticism: in developing his argument Celsus may be led into sarcasm, ridicule and bitterness, but originally he had, it would seem, intended the True Discourse as an appeal for Christian co­operation: if men withdrew themselves from the service of the State, they were endangering the defence of the world of civilized life threatened by the chaos of encircling barbarism. The work ends with an invitation to share in the task of empire. The Platonist does not as yet demand the ruthless suppression of Christianity: his message is rather that of Macedonia to the early missionaries of the faith: ‘Come over and help us.’

And in the opening years of the third century, when the school of Neoplatonism was being formed in Alexandria, it was a convert from Christianity, Ammonius Saccas, who was the leader of the movement, while Origen was the equal of his pagan contem­poraries, and pagan and Christian could meet in a common search for truth.

That moment passed and it has been with plausibility suggested that the hostility of Neoplatonism to Christianity begins with Plotinus: it is true that in the Enneads there is no direct attack upon Christianity, but the arguments marshalled by Plotinus against the gnostics might prove of equal service against the Christians. There were profound differences between the two faiths; in the thought of Plotinus, man needed no divine redeemer to secure his salvation, man’s soul could by its own unaided powers regain its first dignity; the thought of Plotinus is indeed entirely pagan. Of this his affirmation of the eternity and incorruptibility of the world is sufficient proof, excluding as it did the Christian dogma of creation as well as Christian eschatology. The Cross remained for the Greek foolishness and the resurrection of the human body an absurdity. Neoplatonism and Christianity, it has been said, were rivals destined to fight each other. Under Gallienus persecution might be stayed: it was an unintelligent method of attack, but the intellectual battle must proceed. The forces of Hellenism must present a united front to a foe who was more dangerous than Epicurean or Sceptic precisely because Platonist and Christian held so much ground in common. When Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, resumes the work of Celsus, he writes no longer an appeal for co-operation, but an uncompromising attack upon the Christian Church and upon its sacred books: he gave to that attack the title ‘Against the Christians.’ Porphyry, scholar and critic, trained at Athens in the school of Longinus, thus provided the arsenal from which all the later critics of Christianity drew their weapons. His hostility to the revolutionary sectaries who had deserted the traditions of their fathers continued to be the attitude of the Neoplatonist defenders of Hellenism.

But in the culture of the pagan world the Christians of the third century also claimed to share. Christian missionaries had naturally striven from the first to present their appeal to the Gentile world through the medium of conceptions with which it was already familiar. The Jewish Messiah thus became the Logos of the Supreme God. It was sought to reinforce the Christian message by showing that it was in conformity with Greek thought: the earliest extant apology addressed to the world of pagan culture called in evidence the words of ‘certain of your own poets.’ In the second century the Greek apologists present Christianity in so philosophic a form that at times it is no easy matter to recognize that they are seeking to recommend the same gospel as that proclaimed in the books of the New Testament. There can have been few missionaries who rejected all Greek thought with the thoroughness of Tatian, who rejoiced in being a ‘barbarian.’ Yet it may be doubted whether these earlier defenders of the faith had many readers; it was in Alexandria through such teachers as Clement and Origen that pagan thought was adopted not merely as a missionary expedient, but was woven into the texture of Christian theology. The De principiis of Origen is a landmark, and from the influence of Origen, whether by attraction or repulsion, no later Christian writer could escape.

During the second half of the third century, while the Christian Church was consolidating its position after persecution and increasing its membership, pagan cults, it would seem, were suffering severely from the economic crisis: ephemeral emperors had neither time nor money for the endowment of religion, and the liberality of private citizens was paralysed. The evidence of inscriptions tells the same story both in the Eastern and Western provinces of the Empire. This decline of paganism was the Church’s opportunity: doctors, lawyers, rhetoricians—the representatives of the culture of the day—were joining the Christian community. Many were, however, still repelled by the prejudice of the educated against the vulgar simplicity of the style of the Christian scriptures: in a world where literary form and verbal elaboration were so highly valued the Christians were regarded as ‘barbarians,’ ‘ignorant folk’, completely lacking in the charms and graces of civilized life. It is for pagans such as these that Lactantius wrote his apologetic works. That which constitutes the permanent importance of the writings of Lactantius is that here one versed in the style and thought of Cicero makes his appeal to men of culture, and selects for his defence of Christianity the discussion of those problems with which his pagan contemporaries were wrestling. In the De Opificio Dei it is the problem of divine providence, maintained against Epicurean denials, which is illustrated in minutest—and sometimes humorous—detail by a consideration of man’s body as the handiwork of God. In the De Ira Dei it is the impassibility of God—divine justice demands that He should be angry against the sinner: righteous anger is but an activity of divine providence.

It is this principle which inspires Lactantius’ interpretation of history in the De mortibus persecutorum. Jurists had written Introductions (Institutiones) to the study of law, and now the time was ripe for an Introduction to Christianity in which the errors of paganism should be exposed and the true foundations of Christian worship and Christian ethics set forth. During the great persecution Lactantius produced his Divine Institutes. The early apologists had made use of the evidence of the Hebrew prophets: they were older than the oldest Greek scriptures, and by the fulfilment of their prophecies their authority even for pagans should be established. But Lactantius is writing for men of culture who recognized no such authority in the books of the Hebrew prophets, and thus his appeal is primarily to the works of pagan authors or to works such as the Sibylline oracles which he failed to recognize as coming from the hands of Jews or Christians. A man trained in a rhetorical school is addressing those of his own world. Modern critics of his work have complained that it  lacks originality, that his attacks upon the gods of paganism are composed of traditional material which could have had but little relevance for those schooled in the philosophic thought of the third century. It may be doubted whether such criticism is justified. We have perhaps laid too much stress upon the significance of the ‘solar monotheism’ of Aurelian: it is not easy to say how far the exclusiveness of that cult survived its founder’s death. Philosophy does not proclaim a sole god: Plotinus is no monotheist. The faith of philosophy is a divine monarchy, and the Summus Deus rules over lesser deities each with his own sphere of function. There was still reason to state the case for monotheism.

But that is not all: in face of the decline in the public cult of the gods, Porphyry sought in his later years to arouse the cultured pagan world from its religious lethargy by propounding startling questions which formed a challenge to its traditions (in his letter to Anebo). His De abstinentia went further: here the ascetic and religious enthusiast undermined the whole basis of the public worship of the gods: in his last work, his ‘letter’ to his wife Marcella, there are echoes of those Christian scriptures which he had closely studied. But paganism refused to accept so dangerous an ally from whose works Christians could draw such effective material for their criticism of the older faith. Before the peril of the Christian challenge this was no time to palter with a modernism which made the largest concessions to the foe: the one thing needed was a fundamentalism which admitted of no doubts, which re-affirmed the whole portentous inheritance—gods and statues, bloody sacrifices and libations, magic and theurgy. Iamblichus represents the spirit of one who writes after a pagan Church has issued its encyclical Pascendi. There were, it would seem, even those who thought that the Senate should perform the function of a pagan Holy Office and establish an Index of forbidden books. On this list should be placed such works as Cicero’s De natura deorum and De divinatione—books ‘quibus Christiana religio comprobetur et vetustatis opprimatur auctoritas.’ It was to no solar monotheism that Diocletian professed allegiance: it was to many gods and to many local cults that he made his dedications. The pagan revival of Diocletian is essentially polytheistic. Lactantius knew what he was doing when he levelled his sarcasms against the gods and especially against Juppiter and Hercules— the patrons of the reigning Jovian and Herculian dynasties.

The Divine Institutes have often been compared with earlier Christian apologies: it might be more fruitful to read the work of Lactantius alongside that of Porphyry’s closing years, for Porphyry is not an original thinker, he does not stand solitary like Plotinus; despite the tide of obscurantism which at this time overwhelmed pagan thought there must have been not a few religious pagans with the scruples, the doubts and the aspirations of a Porphyry to whom Lactantius could address his apologia. Against the externalism of a religion of cultus and bodily acts Lactantius can assert that it matters not how man worships: the fundamental question is always what man worships. Over against vetustatis auctoritas Lactantius sets his majestic appeal to human reason and the progress which can be made through man’s intelligence and its criticism of tradition. By their return to the past—in the interest of the faith—the pagans have only rendered a reasoned defence of that faith more difficult. Lactantius complains that the supporters of polytheism flee from argument, since they have no confidence in their own case. Lactantius will meet violence with the argument of Christian certainty.

As Lactantius had studied Cicero, so Methodius had become familiar with Plato, while Africa produced in Arnobius another apologist from the schools of rhetoric. The Adversus Nationes, like the Divine Institutes, was written during the persecution, but between the work of Arnobius and that of Lactantius there is a vast difference. Indeed the fascination of the Christian literature produced before the Council of Nicaea lies largely in the fact that tradition and dogma did not confine men so closely as they did in later centuries.

To Lactantius the divine Providence is the centre of his faith: Arnobius denies that Providence. For Lactantius the wrath of God is a part of His justice; for Arnobius to attribute anger to God is blasphemy. Lactantius had devoted an entire monograph to the praise of man’s body as the handiwork of God; to Arnobius man appears so miserable and abject that it would be an insult to Highest God to regard Him as the creator of this bag of ordure and of urine: some lesser power must have fashioned man’s body. To Lactantius as to Origen the problem of evil can only be faced if we believe in the freedom of man’s will: Eusebius redeems the weariness of the Contra Hieroclem by an impassioned assertion of man’s freedom from inexorable fate: to Arnobius the soul of man has been so contaminated by evil influences in its descent to earth that it possesses no freedom and thus before the coming of Christ it could commit no sin. Christ offered to the soul which in itself is not immortal the hope of immortality: the rejection of Christ’s offer by the human soul brings sin to birth. Whence this poor thing, the human soul, came we cannot know and it is idle to enquire; what we can know is that its neutral character with its bare potentiality of survival can be gloriously changed by Christ into the fullness of a life which shall have no end. At the heart of Christianity there is a profound pessimism—‘without me ye can do nothing’—but never has that pessimism received more ruthless expression than in the Adversus Nationes. ‘If I had not come, they would not have had sin’: no one has taken this text to heart as did Arnobius.

The devout worshipper of pagan images and pagan relics has appropriated the salvation brought by Christ from the Supreme God ( adeo principe): he has received the gift of immortality unknown before. This it seems was for Arnobius the decisive fact. His Saviour Christ Jesus had abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. It is a strange Christianity which the African rhetorician expounds, but the triumph of a release from a great fear inspires the whole of his bitter attack upon the gods. Hierocles in an apology for paganism had sung the praises of the Summus Deus: we are the true worshippers of the Summus Deus, retorts Arnobius, ‘magistro Christo.’

At a time when Pamphilus with his band of loyal disciples was labouring in selfless devotion to maintain the tradition of scholarship inherited from Origen, when pagan rhetoricians were deserting the schools to devote themselves to the service of the Church, the culture of the old world was finding a home amongst ‘the barbarians’: pagan and Christian shared a common appreciation of the legacy of the past: they were divided only by religion or by a philosophy which was itself essentially religious.

II.

 STATE AND CHURCH

What of the Roman State? Repression of a faith may clearly be either political or religious in its purpose: it may seek to avert a social peril or crush a belief which may endanger the safety of man’s soul. The ancient world, it has been said, knew of religious cults, and of myths and legends, it had no dogmas which were necessary for man’s salvation. Thus it could easily adopt the principle ‘cuius regio eius religio.’ Rome did not seek to suppress local cults, she rather endeavoured to affiliate them to her own national traditions. The idea of an exclusive individual faith which was not the traditional faith of a nation was foreign to Roman thought: it was natural to interpret such a faith as merely a veil for a deep-rooted hostility to State and Society. These sectaries were bent on turning the inhabited world upside down: here was a revolutionary transvaluation of all traditional values. To the modern student of the history of the Roman Empire it is the curious timidity of the Caesars which seems so remarkable—the queer anxiety lest in any way the hard-won peace and security of the Mediterranean world should be threatened: the establishment of the Pax Romana had been bought at so high a price that even a municipal fire-brigade in an Asian city was too perilous an asso­ciation to receive imperial sanction. And in Christianity the Caesars were faced by no municipal association, but by a far-flung secret brotherhood. These ‘Bolsheviks’ must be suppressed. The Roman persecutions of the Christians, as has been pointed out, have been judged by their effects and treated as the prototype of religious intolerance. With regard to its motives the procedure of the Roman State can be censured only as an excess of political intolerance; in its results it constituted an undeniable violation of the Christian’s liberty of conscience.

The persecutions of the Christians have been considered elsewhere in this volume in their effects upon the life of the Church; in this place a brief retrospect is necessary in which that repression may be viewed from the standpoint of the Roman State. What was at first the precise legal basis for the persecution it is perhaps impossible for us to determine: was it founded upon successive decisions of Roman magistrates acting under their wide discretionary powers (coercitio), such decisions gradually hardening into a binding presumption of law?—or was there, as the present writer thinks probable, a direct imperial pronouncement proscribing the sect? In any event, by the time of Trajan it had become established that the persistent avowal of Christianity carried as its consequence the penalty of death. From that position, in the view of the present writer, the Roman State never receded until 311—until that year the Christian Church was never granted express recognition as a lawful corporation. Yet experience proved that Christians might be regarded as a peculiar brand of malefactors; against them the Roman magistrate was not under the obligation of proceeding on his own initiative. That initiative must be taken by the informer, and recantation of his faith secured for the Christian immunity from punishment. In fact the Roman State no longer believed that Christians constituted a danger to society, though repression of the sectaries might at times provide a useful outlet for popular discontent. Toleration in our modern world, it has been maintained, is the result of social development, it rests solely on the basis of empiricism; practically we are tolerant because no harm comes of our being so. ‘Toleration is one of the most valuable empirical maxims of modern politics’. When England in the early years of the nineteenth century discovered that Unitarians were not in any way dangerous to the peace and welfare of the kingdom but were ‘very decent, well-behaved and well-to-do people’ the penalties imposed by 9 Wil­liam III, c. 35 were repealed for their benefit so far as concerned persons denying the doctrine of the Trinity. Similarly Rome discovered that the early Christians were no menace to the State, but with traditional Roman conservatism the Empire did not pass any relieving act. Parliament admitted that it had been in error; the Caesars made no such direct admission.

Thus it was that even as late as the first half of the third century, when some disaster or natural catastrophe such as an earthquake suggested that the gods were angered with men, the populace might demand a persecution of the Christians in order to placate the wrath of an outraged Heaven, and then it is the attitude of the provincial governor which determines the severity of the repression : it is to the provincial governors that Tertullian addresses his apologia.

During the early decades of the third century national Roman feeling had been weakened; the Severi had favoured the provinces at the expense of Rome. When Caracalla had extended Roman citizenship to the provincial population, the Empire became a Cosmopolis, and universalism could afford to be tolerant towards a faith which had from the first claimed the whole inhabited world for its Lord. Under a Syrian dynasty Origen could be summoned to the imperial court. It might have seemed that the reconciliation between the Roman State and the Christian Church would be realized through a peaceful evolution and mutual understanding. But the crisis of the third century brought other men and other ways of thought to the fore. In the rude soldiery of the Danube lands the Empire found its defenders, and on their side the Danubian soldiers adopted with the enthusiastic conviction of the newly converted the belief in the imperial traditions of Rome and its pagan past. It is this new romanism of the Danube lands which revives the hostility of the Roman State towards those who had abandoned the worship of the Roman gods. The millenary celebration of the founding of Rome had recalled the pagan traditions forcibly to men’s minds: Roman greatness had ever been dependent on the favour of the divine powers—on the maintenance of the Pax Beoruw. now that the Empire was threatened with unexampled perils, how could success be more surely guaranteed than by a massive demonstration of an Empire’s loyalty? It may be suggested that some such thought led the Pannonian Emperor Decius to issue his command that the entire population of the Roman world should by the act of sacrifice attest its devotion to the gods. The situation is changed: persecution becomes once more the policy of the Roman State, though that policy is now no longer sustained by any widespread hatred and animosity against the Christians. The initiative in repression has passed from the people to the central government.

But even so it is not easy to say whether the order of Decius constituted in its motive a religious persecution of the Christians. Decius, for the welfare of a Roman world threatened with disaster, has resort to a religious act in which every inhabitant of that world should do uniform homage to the gods of Rome: is not this Act of Uniformity at least primarily a political measure? It would seem that Decius did not demand from the Christian any abjuration of his own faith—only that he should join in a ‘supplicatio’ such as Rome had traditionally employed in times of national crisis. It is by studying the persecution of another religious minority that we may best understand this measure of Decius. The hardships suffered by the Catholics in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth— are these to be regarded as a religious persecution? ‘Burleigh was aiming at political power, and, for this, unity between Church and State was necessary.’ Elizabeth writes ‘The Queen would not have any of their consciences unnecessarily sifted to know what affection they had to the old religion,’ and if she has lately done so in the case of a few prisoners ‘the cause thereof hath grown merely of themselves in that they have first manifestly broken the laws established for religion, in not coming at all to the church.’ The first clause repels the accusation of oppressing people for their faith which is just what the second clause admits. Elizabeth’s subjects are free to believe what they will, if in the interests of the State they join in the common worship.

Not dissimilar may have been the motive of the Emperor Decius: by these assurances of devotion the gods of Rome should be contented and render to the Romans the reward of their loyalty. The sudden command to sacrifice falling upon the Church after a long period of security caused wholesale apostasy, but for our present purpose it is more interesting to note that the Emperor’s conviction could hardly have been generally held by those who were charged with the enforcement of the imperial order, otherwise it would not have been possible for Christians without compliance with that order to obtain so easily as they did the official certificate of sacrifice performed; further, as soon as the Emperor’s attention was diverted to military operations, the proceedings against the Christians were suspended. The persecution begun in the winter of 249 was already at an end, at least in Carthage and in Rome, by the Easter of 251, although Decius did not meet his death until the following summer.

The outworn calumnies against the Christians were discredited: pagans as well as their fellow-believers had been tended by the Christians during the great plague which devastated the empire in the middle years of the third century. Folk had come to know this peculiar people and pagans shared with Christians in the common life of the Roman cities. This change in popular sentiment is of the first significance for the understanding of the last great persecution. Outside of Egypt there were, it would seem, but few cities in the Roman East which emulated Gaza in its popular enthusiasm for the older faith; in the Western provinces Maxentius, though himself a convinced worshipper of the gods, will find it prudent to adopt an attitude of tolerance.

The attempt of Valerian to break up the corporate life of the Church by striking at the bishops and the clergy and by forbidding all assemblies of Christians is interesting, since it would appear to have served as the model for those who instigated the last great persecution. Valerian’s captivity in Persia, in the view of Dionysius of Alexandria, was the vengeance of the God of the Christians taken upon the oppressor of His people. Decius dead on the northern frontier, Valerian in the hands of the enemy, not a few pagans may have asked themselves: did such a result justify the effort to restore the Pax Deorum? It is certain that Gallienus handed back to Christian bishops the property which his father had confiscated, that the persecution was stayed, and that henceforth the Church was left in peace. The initiative of the Roman State had borne no fruit which could encourage an emperor to renew the challenge.

Between the Roman State and the Christian Church there had stood no greater obstacle to reconciliation than the worship of the emperor. The pagan could not understand the Christian objection to this tribute of respect to the ruler of the Roman world—the Christian refusal puzzled and irritated many a well-meaning Roman governor: it seemed to him, as to Marcus Aurelius, a perverse obstinacy. But what if the godhead of the emperor were after all a mistake?—what if the emperor were not God, but only God’s vicegerent on earth? It was to this conviction, it would appear to the present writer, that Aurelian came: it was this view of his office that Diocletian held—he was not Juppiter, but Jovius, Juppiter’s representative, his colleague was not Hercules, but Herculius. If this be true, the way to an understanding between pagan ruler and Christian subject was open, for even the proskynesis—the prostration before the emperor—which had now become obligatory in court ceremonial—was not the worship of a god, but merely the outward symbol of homage to a human master. The cult of the emperors plays a very subordinate part in the last great persecution.

After the death of Valerian the Roman State had shown itself ready to trust the Christian and to welcome him to its service, and the individual Christian, whatever might be the official view of the Church, was clearly prepared to respond to these advances. The appeal with which Celsus had ended his True Discourse seemed in a fair way to be answered. It is no easy task to form any picture of the life of the ordinary Christian in the third cen­tury: how far did the views held by the leaders of Christian thought find expression in the contacts of believers with the pagan world about them? At this time when Christian exegetes could maintain that it wanted yet another two hundred years before the beginning of the ‘last things,’ the immediate expectation of the parousia, the second coming of Christ, had passed: what was the Christian’s attitude to the Roman State, how far could he participate in its administration? Early canons had condemned military service. Origen is an intransigent pacifist; in the Contra Celsum, he had solemnly stated that Christians would not fight for the emperor even when called upon for service; the Christian’s prayers are his militia. Similarly in the West the condemnation of the military profession is proclaimed with violent rhetoric by the rigorist Tertullian, and again at the beginning of the fourth century by another African, Lactantius. Yet it is certain that such prohibitions can have had but little effect upon the general Christian practice. There were Christian soldiers in the Roman army under Marcus Aurelius; in the persecution of Decius a small detachment of soldiers guarding a Christian prisoner declared itself to share the faith of the accused. During the crisis of the third-century invasions the authorities doubtless asked no questions; they may have even been prepared discreetly to refuse to notice that at the military sacrifices the Christian protected himself from the demons by making the sign of the cross, just as the worshipper of Mithras was excused, it would seem, from wearing the festival crown, since his god was his crown. There must have been many Christians both in the civil and military service of the Empire when Diocletian came to the throne. And in the life of the municipalities Christians no longer sought to live apart from their pagan neighbours: they held office as municipal senators; apparently, to judge from the canons of the Council of Elvira, they were elected even to municipal priesthoods. Save in exceptional cases, as in the Tembris valley in Anatolia the Christian did not desire to endanger his fellow­believers by any aggressive profession of his nonconformity: ‘probably the same policy which placed on the gravestone an appeal to “the god,” leaving the reader to understand in his own sense a term common to both Christians and Pagans, modified in similar slight ways many of the other forms of social and municipal life.’ Alongside of the growth of asceticism and of a morality of ever-increasing strictness, there was admitted in practice amongst Christians a second ethic of the life in the world. It might well have seemed that in the sphere of a common service of the State conciliation was slowly winning the day.

Indeed it is interesting to observe that at the very time when Christians were beginning freely to enter the service of the Empire, pagan philosophers were losing interest in political life. Plotinus sought to withdraw his friends from public office: ‘a senator, Rogatianus, advanced to such detachment from political ambitions that he gave up all his property, dismissed all his slaves, renounced every dignity and on the point of taking up his praetorship, the lictors already at the door, refused to come out or to have anything to do with the office.’ Celsus was profoundly concerned for the defence of the Empire, but there is no trace of such anxiety in the works of Porphyry.

And, further, there remained the fact that throughout all the persecutions no Christian had raised the standard of revolt. From the time of the earliest apologists Christians had indeed constantly affirmed their loyalty to the emperor, for his power, however much he might abuse it, was God-given, and thus prayers for the emperor had always formed a part of a Christian’s worship. Here surely was a foundation upon which wise states­manship might build. To some far-seeing Christians such as Melito there had already come the vision that Church and Empire were in the Providence of God ordained not to enmity, but to co-operation: Augustus and Christ were both the bringers of peace to a distracted world: in God’s good time the alliance thus foreshadowed would be accomplished fact. There were many followers of Christ who were prepared to give their loyalty to a State which, while sustaining order and justice, would not demand of them apostasy from their faith. Lactantius is not" only a Christian, he is a Roman who shrinks with terror from the thought that one day according to the scriptures of his religion the Empire of Rome would pass, as had already passed the empires of Babylon and of Alexander.

 

III.

DIOCLETIAN’S POLICY

 

This is the background against which Diocletian undertakes his task of re-organization and reform: his effort is to unite all the forces of the Empire and to harness them to the work of imperial restoration. Why should he exclude those who are prepared to lend their aid? He seizes the opportunity: it should be made easy for Christians to play their part. Those who were willing to hold office were freed from the obligation of pagan sacrifice. For himself the Emperor chose the worship of Juppiter: he would re­affirm as the delegate of Jove the religious past of Rome: his colleague in the West should under the protection of Hercules labour, as had his divine patron, for mankind: ‘c’etait le reveil, dans le monde romain, de ce double culte de Jupiter maitre du Capitole et d’Hercule heros du Palatin qui, depuis l’origine, avait fait l’orgueil et la saintete de la Ville Eternelle’ The gods of paganism had not been, as was the Semitic Jehovah, jealous deities; there was room in the working-out of his task for the collaboration of the worshippers of the Christian God. Statesmanship could hardly come to any other conclusion.

Some modern scholars have argued that the new reign began with a persecution of the Christians: have we such evidence as would constrain us to adopt this view? To the present writer this appears to be a point of crucial import for the understanding of Diocletian’s religious policy. Two considerations have to be borne in mind: the contemporary historians Lactantius and Eusebius have no knowledge of such persecution; Maximian, who was appointed by Diocletian to rule the Western provinces of the Empire, always followed faithfully the lead of the senior Augustus; he cannot be thought to have originated a course of action to which Diocletian was opposed. Nor is it likely, as some late accounts of Christian martyrdoms would imply, that Diocletian himself visited Rome shortly after his victory on the Margus and there began an attack upon the Christians at the beginning of his reign; for such a visit we have no independent evidence save a statement in Zonaras, and it would appear otherwise improbable. The martyrdom of the Quattuor Coronati has been placed at this time in Rome, but the Roman Passio deserves no credence; S. Genesius, the converted actor, whose martyrdom appears to be dated early in Diocletian’s reign, is probably not a historical character: the S. Genesius whose cult was later celebrated in Rome may well have been S. Genesius of Arles, and the story of S. Genesius the actor is, it has been plausibly suggested, an adaptation of an Eastern legend. The Acta of S. Sebastian cannot be used as a historical source. The presumption would thus appear to be unfavourable to the view that the new order was inaugurated by religious oppression. For a persecution conducted by Maximian in Gaul no reliance can be placed upon the stories of the exploits of the ubiquitous Rictiovarus; he has all the appearance of being the creation of a hagiographer’s imagination; it is possible that S. Maurice may have suffered martyrdom for some breach of military discipline, but until we can determine upon what sources the fifth-century account of the sufferings of the Christians in the Theban Legion is based, the historical student cannot use that document. So far as the present writer can judge, there is no adequate ground for the supposition that at this time either Diocletian or Maximian broke the religious truce which had been preserved since the accession of Gallienus.

We have seen that there were rigorists in the Church who denied to the Christian the right to serve in the army, but that this was not the general view. In individual cases, it is true, the old prejudice against the army was still alive. The father of the young recruit Maximilian was a Christian veteran; he presented his son for enrolment, but the son’s conscience forbade him to serve. For this breach of military discipline Maximilian was put to death, but here there is no question of pagan religious observance: Maximilian was not called upon to sacrifice to the gods. Similarly at a feast given on the Emperor’s birthday Marcellus, a centurion, stripped off his military belt, and declared that his loyalty to Christ did not allow him to serve another master. This is not persecution by the Roman State; it is the tradition of Tertullian’s rigorism which thus suddenly awakened the scruples of a Christian soldier.

The whole re-organization of the Empire was carried through, the new Caesars were appointed, and still no religious difficulty arose. And then, according to Lactantius, ‘some time’ before the general persecution, at a public sacrifice offered for the purpose of learning the will of Heaven by inspection of the livers of the sacrificial animals, the Christians in the presence both of Diocletian and Galerius crossed themselves to ward off evil from the demons. The augurs failed to find the customary marks on the livers and repeated the sacrifice without result until the chief augur Tagis pronounced that no answer had been obtained because of the presence at the rite of profane persons. Diocletian was furious and ordered that all in the palace should sacrifice and on refusal be beaten: letters were sent to the military commanders that the soldiers should sacrifice or be dismissed the service. It has sometimes been doubted whether so slight an incident could have had so far-reaching an effect. But it must be remembered that Christians and pagans alike believed in magic: it was one thing to tolerate Christians, another to allow them to disturb a solemn pagan rite. Dionysius under Valerian had written of the Christians that ‘indeed they are and were capable by their presence and through being seen merely by their breath or word to scatter the designs of the baneful demons’ and in the Divine Institutes (not merely in the De mortibus persecutorum) Lactantius states that if a by­stander makes the sign of the cross on the forehead, the pagan priest can obtain no answer from the gods. This has, he continues, often been the principal reason why bad emperors have persecuted the Christians. When account is taken of the beliefs of the time, we have every reason to trust Lactantius. But the trouble passed, and Diocletian took no further measures.

Galerius, it will have been noticed, had been present at this public sacrifice, and, according to Eusebius, it was Galerius who began the persecution: he forced the Christian officers in his army either to sacrifice or to leave the service. This purification of the army was carried through by a strato-pedarches—a master of the soldiery—acting, we must presume, under the orders of the Caesar. One or two Christians suffered the death penalty, but in what circumstances Eusebius does not tell us. If, as seems natural, the stratopedarches of the Church History is to be identified with the magister militiae of Eusebius’ Chronicon, these measures were taken between the years 298 and 301. It may be suggested that Galerius was acting under the order of Diocletian reported by Lactantius. It is to be noted that in 298 Galerius had won his brilliant success over Persia and this must have greatly strengthened his position. He hoped, Eusebius says, thus to pave the way for a general policy of re­pression.

In the winter of 302-3 Diocletian and his Caesar were both in Nicomedia, and here, according to Lactantius, Galerius pressed upon his Augustus the necessity for a rigorous persecution of the Christians; Diocletian continued to resist. Galerius was supported by a circle of Neoplatonist philosophers, among them Hierocles who was at this time consular governor of Bithynia. Diocletian at length agreed to refer the question to the oracle of the Milesian Apollo, who answered ‘ut divinae religionis inimicus.’ This must be the same consultation of the oracle as that of which Constantine speaks when the god replied that the just upon the earth hindered him from declaring the truth and that this was the cause of false oracles issuing from the tripods. To the insistence of his friends, the Caesar and the god, Diocletian yielded, but only on condition that blood should not be shed. In the opinion of the present writer—an opinion which would certainly not meet with general assent— both Eusebius and Lactantius consistently regarded Galerius as the author of the persecution, and in that view he would concur.

IV.

THE PERSECUTION

 

We cannot recover the text of the fatal first edict which inaugurated the persecution—it is a curious fact that the text of no imperial edict has been cited in the historical Acta of the martyrs— but the principal provisions can be stated with some certainty: the Christian churches were to be destroyed, as well as, it would appear, such private houses as were regularly used for Christian services; all assemblages of Christians for worship were forbidden. The scriptures and liturgical books were to be surrendered and publicly burnt. Christians belonging to the higher classes were deprived of their privileges, e.g. immunity from torture in judicial process, and all Christians were placed outside the law, being forbidden to defend their rights in the courts. Lactantius closes his account of the edict with the words ‘ libertatem denique ac vocem non haberent.’ Eusebius in the same position writes ‘Those who were in “oiketiai” if they persisted in their profession of Christianity, were to be deprived of their freedom.’ The words have been much discussed, and their meaning is uncertain. But the measures taken against the Christians by Valerian may have served as a precedent on this occasion: in the former perse­cution Christians serving in the imperial bureaux, the Caesariani, were, if they persisted in their faith, reduced to slavery and it may be suggested that this is the meaning of the phrase used by Eusebius.

It was decided that on the festival of the Terminalia (Feb. 23, 303) a term should be set to the Christian heresy: the imperial agents entered the cathedral at Nicomedia, and the work of destruction began. The following day the edict was placarded in the streets of the city: a Christian straightway tore it down with the taunt ‘More victories over Goths and Sarmatians.’ He was arrested and burnt to death—‘legitime coctus’ as Lactantius writes.

There was to be no bloodshed Diocletian had determined, but that decision was abandoned when twice in succession fire broke out in the imperial palace. On the second occasion Galerius ostentatiously left the city—he was not going to be burnt alive by Christian incendiaries. A plot of Galerius against the Chris­tians—so Lactantius: arson by the Christians—so Galerius: the palace struck by lightning according to the account of Constantine as quoted in the Qratio ad Sanctos—the cause of the fire must remain for us, as it was for contemporaries, a mystery. But a charge of arson, then as in later times, may have served political ends. Diocletian was furious, and, in the enquiry which followed, many of the imperial servants met their deaths: for a short time there seems to have been something like a reign of terror in Nicomedia. Then news came of revolts in Melitene and in Syria instigated, it was said, by the Christians. The Church must be deprived of its leaders. The clergy by a second edict were condemned to imprisonment: ‘an unnumbered host was shut up in every place and on every hand prisons built long ago for murderers and violators of tombs were now filled with bishops and elders and deacons, with readers and exorcists, so that no longer was any space left in them for condemned criminals.’ In the days of Elizabeth the Catholics similarly filled the prisons of England. ‘The prisons are so full of Catholics that there is no room for thieves.’ Just as the government of Elizabeth was troubled by the problem of the cost of maintaining so many prisoners, so must have been the Roman State. In the summer of a.d. 303 Diocletian left for the West to celebrate his Vicennalia in Rome. On this festival the customary amnesty was granted to criminals: these were released, but the administration was still faced with the question of the incarcerated Christian clergy. By a third edict it was ordered that they were to be constrained to sacrifice and might then be set at liberty. Every effort was made to enforce the order: ‘For in one case a man’s hands would be held and he would be dragged to the altar; the foul and unholy sacrifice would be thrust into his right hand and then he would be released as though he had sacrificed. Another might never even have touched the sacrifice, but when others declared that he had sacrificed, he would go away in silence. Yet another was lifted up half dead and was thrown down as though he were already a corpse; they freed him from his fetters and counted him amongst those who had sacrificed. While another was shouting and protesting that he would not yield, he was struck on the mouth and silenced by a number of atten­dants appointed for the purpose; finally he was violently thrust out of the prison, even though he had not sacrificed. So anxious were they by any and every means to seem to have gained their end.’ Thus at length the prisons were emptied. At Caesarea three members of the lower ranks of the clergy suffered death for lese majeste, and on the same charge one at Antioch was martyred while Galerius was present in the city.

During his visit to the West Diocletian fell dangerously ill, and on his return to Nicomedia it appears that for a time he was a mental wreck: it was reported that he was dead. On his recovery he was so altered that men did not recognize him. During the incapacity of the Augustus, Galerius seized his opportunity: he issued the bloody fourth edict commanding all—men, women and children—to sacrifice and make libation on penalty of death. The dies traditions—the delivery of the sacred books—gave place to the dies thurificationis—the day of the offering of incense. The present writer has suggested that Galerius enforced the acceptance of this policy upon Maximian, the Western Augustus, by the threat of leading against him the troops which had recently defeated Persia. Galerius would present his Augustus with a fait accompli. And the answer of Diocletian to that challenge was the abdication both of himself and of his Western colleague.

This view is, it should be clearly understood, a hypothetical reconstruction of the course of events, and it is not the interpretation adopted by most of those who in recent years have studied the period. For them, persecution of the Christians is the necessary and logical completion of Diocletian’s reform: the ruler, they urge, who had placed himself under the protection of the Father of gods and men, the essentially Roman deity Juppiter Optimus Maximus, who stood for the old Roman faith to which the folk of his Balkan homeland had become enthusiastic converts—he must, if he were consistent, ruthlessly suppress the one serious rival creed which throughout the empire was daily gaining ground. They can point to his support of traditional views on the sanctity of marriage, and above all to the language of his violent edict against the Manichaeans. Diocletian as the last of the Romans was fated to be the instigator of the most formidable of the Roman assaults upon the upstart faith. It is a strong case.

And yet to the present writer it would appear that against the weight of contemporary evidence it cannot be sustained: we have no adequate reason to believe that the reign began with persecution; rather, after his accession, Diocletian opened the way for Christians to enter the service of the State; once, as we have seen, in his presence at a solemn public ceremony the Christians by the magic of the sign of the cross defeated his desire to learn the will of his own gods. For the moment he was indignant—we may perhaps say, not without reason, but the momentary anger passed: for twenty years under an unquestioned absolutism a policy of toleration was maintained, and in his capital, Nicomedia, the Christian cathedral faced the imperial palace. At a time when the most formidable foe of the Empire was Persia, Diocletian attacked the Persian faith of the Manichaeans: those at least who have lived through the Great War should recognise war-time propaganda when they meet with it in an earlier period. And contemporaries tell us that to the last Diocletian strenuously resisted the introduction of a policy of repression, and yielded only on condition that there should be no bloodshed. Surely the facts, so far as they can be established, point irresistibly to the conclusion that with Diocletian statesmanship had overruled religious fanaticism: he would facilitate that process by which the sojourner in an alien city should come to keep house together with the pagan and through this ‘synoikism’ acknowledge his imperial citizenship and shoulder the common burden of the defence of the Roman world before the instant menace of barbarism. Constantine had been Diocletian’s companion at the Eastern court: Constantine as a Christian completes the work of his pagan instructor, that work which the bloody decade of persecution had interrupted. Diocletian had marked out the way of reconciliation between the faiths: but Galerius did not share the outlook of his Augustus, and at last, supported by Neoplatonist philosophers and by the oracle of Apollo, Galerius carried the day.

Diocletian’s abdication is the sequel to the victory of Galerius. It was generally thought, we are told, that Constantine had been selected by Diocletian for promotion to the rank of Caesar; but the new policy demanded new men, and the choice was doubtless left to Galerius who now became Augustus in the Eastern provinces. Severus was appointed Caesar under Constantius (now senior Augustus) and Maximin Daia, the nephew of Galerius, became the latter’s subordinate in the East. It yet remained to be seen whether Constantius would insist on his right to determine the religious policy which his colleagues should pursue: Galerius and his Caesar for a time were content to wait: thus for a whole year there was not a single martyrdom in Palestine. When Constantius had recalled Constantine to the West and made no move to control the action of the Eastern Augustus, the policy of persecution was resumed. Maximin’s new edict (early in 306), as we learn from Eusebius, called upon the provincial governors everywhere to enforce upon all—men, women and children—the obligation to sacrifice to the gods. The brutal repression of the Christians was continued with redoubled energy, and by his presence both in Antioch and in Palestine Maximin stimulated the administration to greater excesses of cruelty.

No general history of the persecution can be written, for, so far as we know, the example of Eusebius in giving a detailed chronological account of the sufferings of the martyrs and confessors of Palestine of which he had been an eyewitness was not followed in any other province of the empire. Crowds of renegades pressed to the pagan altars, and for a time it may well have appeared to Maximin that a policy of frightfulness would be crowned with success. But throughout the early history of the Church Christian leaders had never forgotten that their message was not addressed to men of intellect alone: pistis, the faith of the simple believer, and gnosis, the higher knowledge of the initiate, had each their place and justification in the Church. Through the writings alike of apologists and theologians the width and range of the gospel proclamation were maintained, and in the hour of crisis that loyalty of the Church to its catholic mission was splendidly rewarded. When bishops failed, women and girls, young men and uncultured folk endured the extremest torture which malignity could devise. ‘For this is the love of God, that we keep his com­mandments .... For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.’ Against that faith the will of an emperor was powerless.

It would appear that after July 308 the persecution in Palestine was stayed for more than a year. Unfortunately the Syriac translation of the longer version of the Martyrs of Palestine seems at this point to have an omission in the text. We read that a heavy blow was sent down from God upon the tyrant Maximin, but what this was is not explained; there is no parallel phrase in the Greek of the shorter version, but here Eusebius states that he who had received authority to persecute, as a result of some excite­ment, was again inflamed against the Christians with renewed passion. But the meaning of the respite is apparent. In the autumn of 308 took place the meeting of Diocletian, Maximian and Galerius at Carnuntum; Maximin hoped as the result of that conference to receive recognition as Augustus from his colleagues. That hope was disappointed: at Carnuntum his claim to the title was ignored, and when he later sought to extort it from Galerius, his demand was refused. This must surely be the ‘heavy blow’ to which Eusebius refers. During the latter part of the year 308 Maximin’s attention was diverted from the persecution of the Christians, and it seems that there was so little enthusiasm in Palestine for a policy of repression that forthwith the persecuted ceased to be molested. Maximin’s anger and humiliation were reflected by the issue in 309 of a new edict. The pagan temples were to be rebuilt and every one—even babes at the breast—were to be present at the public sacrifices and were to taste of the flesh of the victims: every article exposed for sale in the market was to be defiled by libations and sprinkling of the sacrificial blood. Even to the pagans this edict appeared burdensome and excessive: it was they felt, ‘out of place’: they had had more than enough of such oppressive measures. Maximin perhaps felt that he was no longer supported by public opinion: mutilation of resolute Christians and relegation to work in the mines now generally take the place of the death penalty. In Palestine the first martyrdom under the new edict is dated to November 309, but already in March 310 the revival of persecution has spent itself and when in 311 the superintendent of the copper mines desired to take action against the confessors there, it is felt to be necessary to apply directly to Maximin for fresh authority before making any move. Of these facts surely only one interpretation is possible: the Roman East was sick of blood­shed.

It was in this year (311) that the unexpected happened: Galerius, the author of the persecution, suffering from a horrible illness, issued an edict which was published in Nicomedia on 30 April. By that edict the persecution was stayed and the Christians were accorded legal recognition. Now for the first time that principle is explicitly revoked. The Latin text of the edict is preserved for us by Lactantius, while Eusebius ‘as best he could’ translated it into Greek. The modern student has good cause to sympathize with Eusebius in the perplexities of his task, for the edict presents many difficulties to an interpreter. Those difficulties cannot be discussed in this place, but of this ‘palinode’ of Galerius a translation must be attempted :

‘Among other steps which we are always taking for the profit and advantage of the State we had formerly sought to set all things right according to the ancient laws and public order (disciplinam) of the Romans and further to provide that the Christians too who had abandoned the way of life (sectam) of their own fathers should return to sound reason (ad bonas mentes). For the said Christians had somehow become possessed by such obstinacy (read (mala) voluntas) and folly that, instead of following those institutions of the ancients which perchance their own ancestors had first established, they were at their own will and pleasure making laws for themselves and acting upon them and were assembling in different places people of different nationalities. After we had decreed that they should return to the institutions of the ancients, many were subjected to danger, many too were completely overthrown; and when very many (or ‘most’—plurimi) persisted in their determination and we saw that they neither gave worship and due reverence to the gods nor practised the worship (observare) of the god of the Christians, considering our most gentle clemency and our immemorial custom by which we are wont to grant indulgence to all men, we have thought it right in their case too to extend the speediest indulgence to the effect that they may once more be free to live (sint) as Christians and may reform their churches (conventicula componant) always provided that they do nothing contrary to (public) order (disciplinam). Further by another letter we shall inform provincial governors (iudicibus) what conditions the Christians must observe. Wherefore in accordance with this our indulgence they will be bound to entreat their god for our well-being and for that of the State and for their own so that on every side the State may be preserved unharmed and that they themselves may live in their homes in security.’

This is an edict of toleration: that word ‘presupposes the existence of a religious State, that is to say, of a State which believes it necessary for itself to make as a collective person profession of a certain religion just as if, like its individual members, it had a soul to be saved.’ And the State compelled by necessity to admit other religions within its territory cannot but disapprove of them even when tolerating them: ‘Toleration presumes an authority which has been and which again may become coercive: an authority which for subjective reasons is not brought to bear on the dissenting group. It implies. . .voluntary inaction on the part of the dominant group’, that group having waived in favour of a minority prerogatives which it regards as inalienable and absolute.

Thus at the opening of the edict the language of earlier constitutions is recalled: the anoia (= mala voluntas), the stultitia of the Christians, the danger of their cosmopolitanism in breaking through the wall of partition which separated one national religion from another, while the grant itself is conditioned by an elastic proviso that nothing must be done ‘contra disciplinam.’ It has been doubted whether the recognition granted to Christians would carry with it the further right to make new converts from the pagan world: did the words ‘conventicula componant’ authorize the rebuilding of churches destroyed in the persecution? —what were the instructions contained in the letters sent to provincial governors—instructions which later seemed to Constantine and Licinius ‘mischievous and alien from our clemency’. It must further not be forgotten that there is no word in the edict of restitution of property of the Church which had been confiscated by the State or which had passed into private hands. The significance of the palinode must not be overrated; but at the same time it must be recognized as a momentous triumph for the Christian Church. Not only had individual freedom of conscience been won for the Christians, but also that further step on the ladder of religious liberty, the right of assembling themselves together for common worship which Vinet once defined as the liberty of conscience of associations. The supreme effort of the pagan State had failed: Eusebius realized that it was a historic moment: with the text of the palinode issued by the author of the persecution he closed the first edition of his history.

Origen had said that a Christian’s prayers were his service to the State—his ‘militia’: it was for the prayers of the Christians alike for Emperor and Empire that Galerius asked. But the prayers availed him nothing: a few days after the issue of the edict he was dead.

Lactantius and Eusebius agree that it was the fatal illness of Galerius—an illness which reminded Christian apologists of the sufferings of another persecutor, Herod of Judaea—which led to the issue of the edict. Modern students have not been content with that explanation. To one it has seemed that it must have been inspired by Licinius, another has maintained that Galerius yielded to the insistence of Constantine. It might not be easy to find any evidence in our authorities for either of these views. Is it not somewhat strange that both Lactantius and Eusebius should have missed so magnificent an opportunity and have failed to claim credit for the issue of the edict on behalf of the two emperors who were later to grant to the Roman world a yet wider liberty? If Galerius in his mortal sickness sought anyone’s advice it might perhaps be suggested with greater plausibility that it was his wife Valeria, who was known to be in close sympathy with the Christians, who counselled him to placate the God of the persecuted.

With the palinode of Galerius a chapter closes. No history of the great persecution, it must be repeated, can be written; it is idle to attempt to estimate the number of those who gave their lives for the faith. On one day in Egypt one hundred Christians were martyred: in Palestine during all the years of the persecution not one hundred were put to death. Of the extent of the repression in Asia Minor where Christianity was strongest we can form no impression. In Phrygia we are told a whole town was Christian: in the persecution it was surrounded by soldiers who under orders from the governor burned to death the entire population since none would deny their faith. It has been suggested that this town may have been Eumeneia, for inscriptions found there cease c. a.d. 300: ‘the contrast between the rich intellectual and political life of the Christians in the third century and the inarticulate monotony of the many centuries that succeeded is painful; one recognizes... the signs of a great misfortune... the destruction of a vigorous and varied life.’ Thus, it has been contended, the persecution by exterminating the most progressive party in the Eastern cities destroyed the last chance that the Empire had of regaining vitality and health. ‘Massacre then, as always, was proved to be not merely a crime and a stupendous folly, but also a terrible blow to the world, to civilization, and to humanity.’

But the student can hardly avoid the question whether both Eusebius and Lactantius did not mention the disaster suffered by this Phrygian town precisely because it was an exceptional atrocity. We have not, so far as the present writer knows, any descriptions from other provinces of such wholesale martyrdoms as in Egypt, and here conditions were peculiar, and attention has not always been paid to the evidence of Eusebius, who knew Egypt and had been in that country during the persecution. Here, he expressly states, Christians formed the majority of the population. Christ went down into Egypt because idolatry took its rise there, and the Egyptians were formerly the most superstitious of peoples; because of Christ’s visit the word of the gospel teaching flourished amongst the Egyptians more than anywhere else. The spirit of idolatry which in Egypt is still active keeps the Egyptians in a ferment plotting against the Christians in order to extinguish Christianity and blot it out. Countless times have they enquired of their gods against us in oracles and prophecies and of the demons that lurk in the statues and of the ‘engastrimuthoi' who were once so powerful amongst them, and yet have no profit from them. Believing in these demons and being set in action by them, they raise persecution against the church of God. In ‘every place and town and countryside’ a Christian altar is to be found: nay more, every town and every house is divided by a civil war waged between Christians and idolaters. These statements are made in proof of the fulfilment of a prophecy of Isaiah, but they are too definite not to be based upon facts which were known to Eusebius, and they serve to explain the ferocity of the persecution in Egypt.

Elsewhere the reluctance of governors to impose the death penalty is often striking. There is an instructive chapter in the Divine Institutes: governors would boast that they had not put to death any Christians; they would resort to any torture in order to break down the resistance of the Christian. ‘I saw in Bithynia,’ writes Lactantius, ‘the governor wonderfully elated as though he had subdued some barbarian tribe, because one who had resisted for two years with great spirit appeared at the last to yield.’ It was the cruel persecutor who was most merciful because the end came swiftly. Governors would try to make it easy for the accused. A Christian when called upon to sacrifice to the gods replied ‘There is but one God only, the Creator.’ Flavian, the ruthless governor of Palestine, is prepared to assent: he changes the order ‘Then sacrifice to the emperors.’ Another governor was ready to accept a sacrifice offered ‘to the only God.’ If we may regard the Passio of Philip bishop of Heraclea as historical, it would appear that the governor, whose wife was a Christian, had taken no steps to execute the early edicts: he acts only after the issue of the fourth edict and enforces both the first and fourth edicts at one and the same time. It is interesting to observe a business-like and conscientious Roman official at his work in Africa making an inventory of confiscated property. There is no violence, simply the scrupulous performance of a tiresome duty.

And it must never be forgotten that Christians were at times provocative. When Hierocles in Egypt had condemned a Christian virgin to confinement in a brothel, Aedesius knocked him down and continued beating him as he lay on the ground. A careful study of The Martyrs of Palestine reveals a surprising number of cases where Christians compelled the governor to take notice of them, while their refusal to answer the formal questions concerning their place of origin must often have been exasperating. On one occasion several of the accused replied that their home city lay in the East: it belonged to the Christians alone, and was called Jerusalem. The governor became alarmed and thought that the sectaries were creating for themselves a centre hostile to Rome where the disaffected could assemble and live as Christians, much as Plotinus almost persuaded Gallienus to allow him to found a state where men should dwell under Plato’s laws. Platonopolis would have been situated in Campania: the Jerusalem of the Christians, however, was in Heaven. During the persecution governors were guilty of hideous brutalities, but it must be remembered that many of them must have found the task which the government imposed on them a sorry duty. And some of the simple stories of Christian confession under extreme torture are still to the modern reader things of wonder and of beauty: to extract a sentence or two is useless: those confessions must be read in their setting. Paul’s prayer before his execution—for Christians and Jews, for Samaritans and the pagan world, for the judge who had condemned him and for the executioner—reduced the multitude of spectators to tears: when the martyred bodies of Christians were left for beasts to devour and none might bury them, the sympathies of the pagans of Caesarea were with the persecuted: in Alexandria pagans sheltered the Christians in their own homes. When Hierocles and another pagan apologist published attacks upon the Christians during the persecution, even pagan opinion disapproved. The government had outrun pagan animosity: it was no wonder that Lactantius thought that God had permitted the persecution in order to bring the pagans within the community of the Christian Church.