EARLY PERSECUTIONS OF THE CHRISTIANS.
In one of his bold Apologies[9] the great African writer Tertullian said to the rulers of the Roman Empire that “it was one and the same thing for the truth [of Christianity] to be announced to the world, and for the world to hate and persecute it.” This persecution of the church began on the very spot that was her birth-place; for soon after the ascension of our Lord the wicked Jews tried by every means to crush her. “From the days of the apostles,” wrote Tertullian in the IIId century, “the synagogue has been a source of persecutions.” At first the church was attacked by words only; but these were soon replaced by weapons, when Stephen was stoned, the apostles were thrown into prison and scourged, and all the East had risen in commotion against the Christians. The Gentiles soon followed the example of the Jews, and those persecutions which bore an official character throughout the Roman Empire, and lasted for three centuries, are commonly called the Ten General Persecutions. Besides these, there were partial persecutions at all times in some part or other of the empire. Nero, whose name is synonymous with cruelty, was the first emperor to begin a general persecution of the Christians; and Tertullian made a strong point in his favor when he cried out to the people (Apol. v.), saying, “That our troubles began at such a source, we glory; for whoever has studied his nature knows well that nothing but what is good and great was ever condemned by Nero.” This persecution began in the year 64, and lasted four years. Its pretext was the burning of Rome, the work of the emperor himself, who ambitiously desired, when he would have rebuilt the city and made it still more grand, to call it by his own name; but the plan not succeeding, he tried to avert the odium of the deed from his own person, and accused the Christians. Their extermination was decreed. The pagan historian Tacitus has mentioned, in his Annals (xv. 44), some of the principal torments inflicted on the Christians. He says that they were covered with the skins of wild beasts and torn to pieces by savage hounds, were crucified, were burned alive, and that some, being coated with resinous substances, were put up in the imperial garden at night to serve as human torches. The Roman Martyrology makes a special commemoration, on the 24th of June, of these martyrs for having all been disciples of the apostles and the firstlings of the Christian flock which the church in Rome presented to the Lord. In this persecution S. Peter was crucified with his head downwards; S. Paul was beheaded; and among the other more illustrious victims we find S. Mark the Evangelist, S. Thecla, the first martyr of her sex, SS. Gervase and Protase at Milan, S. Vitalis at Ravenna, and S. Polycetus at Saragossa in Spain. The number of the slain, and the hitherto unheard-of cruelties practised upon them, moved to pity many of the heathen, and the sight of so much fortitude for a principle of religion was the means, through divine grace, of many conversions. After this, as after every succeeding persecution, the great truth spoken by Tertullian was exemplified: that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christians.
By a law of the empire, which was not revoked until nearly three hundred years afterwards, under Constantine, the profession of the Christian religion was made a capital offence. This law, it is true, was not enforced at all times, especially under benign or indifferent rulers; but it hung continually suspended over the heads of the Christians like a sword of Damocles.
The second persecution was that of Domitian, from 94 to 96. Tertullian calls him “a portion of Nero by his cruelty.” At first he only imposed heavy fines upon the wealthy Christians; but, thirsting for blood, he soon published more cruel edicts against them. Among his noblest victims were his cousin-german, Flavius Clemens, a man of consular dignity; John the Evangelist, who was thrown into a caldron of boiling oil (from which, however, he miraculously escaped unhurt); Andrew the Apostle, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Onesimus, S. Paul’s convert. Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, has recorded a very interesting fact about the children of Jude, surnamed Thaddeus in the Gospel, telling us that, having confessed the faith under this reign, they were always honored in the church of Jerusalem, not alone as martyrs, but as relatives of Jesus Christ according to the flesh.
The third persecution was Trajan’s, from 97 to 116. In answer to a letter from his friend Pliny the Younger, who had command in Asia Minor, the emperor ordered that the Christians were not to be sought out, but that, if accused, and they remained obstinate in their faith, they were to be put to death. Under an appearance of mercy a large field was opened for the cruelty and exactions of Roman officials, which they were not slow to work. A single circumstance attests the severity of the persecution. This was that the Tiberian governor of Palestine wrote to the emperor complaining of the odious duty imposed upon him, since the Christians were forthcoming in greater numbers than he could, without tiring, have executed. The persecution was particularly severe in the East. Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem, Ignatius of Antioch, and the virgin Domitilla, who was related to three emperors, are among the more illustrious martyrs of the period.
Next came the persecution of Hadrian, lasting from 118 to about 129. We have the authority of S. Jerome for saying that it was very violent. This emperor was a coward and, perhaps as a consequence, intensely superstitious. One of his particular grievances against the Christians was that they professed a religion in which he had no share. Under him perished, with countless others, Pope Alexander I. and his priests, Eventius and Theodulus; Eustace, a celebrated general, with his wife and little children; Symphorosa and her seven sons; Zoe, with her husband and two children.
The fifth was the persecution of Marcus Aurelius. Although he was by nature well inclined, he was certainly the author of much innocent bloodshed, which may be in part ascribed to the powerful influence of the so-called philosophers whose company and tone he affected. The persecution raged most severely among the Gauls; and elsewhere we find the illustrious names of Justin the great Apologist, Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and Felicitas and her seven children.
Followed the persecution of Septimius Severus, which lasted from 200 to 211, and was so extremely violent that many Christians believed Antichrist had come. It reaped from the church such distinguished persons as Pope Victor at Rome; Leonidas, father of the great Origen, at Alexandria; Irenæus and companions at Lyons; Perpetua and Felicitas in Mauritania. Egypt was particularly rich in holy martyrs.
After this one came the persecution of Maximinus, from 235 to 237. It was in the beginning more especially directed against the sacred ministers of the church. Several popes were put to death; and among the inferior clergy we find the deacon Ambrose, who was the bosom friend of Origen and one of his principal assistants in his work on the Holy Scriptures.
The persecution of Decius lasted from 249 to 251. The Christians, in spite of all repressive measures, had steadily increased in numbers; but this emperor thought to do what his predecessors had failed in, and was hardly seated on the throne before he published most cruel edicts against them. Among the more celebrated names of this persecution are those of Popes Fabian and Cornelius; Saturninus, first bishop of Toulouse; Babylas, bishop of Antioch; the famous Christopher in Lycia, about whom there is a beautiful legend; and the noble virgin Agatha in Sicily. The great scholar Origen was put to the torture during this persecution, but escaped death. Like Maximinus, this emperor singled out the heads of the various local churches, the most active and learned ministers, the highest of both sexes in the social scale, aiming less at the death than the apostasy of Christians, hoping in this way to destroy the faith; whence S. Cyprian laments in one of his epistles that the Christians suffer atrocious torments without the final consolation of martyrdom. One effect of this persecution was of immense benefit to the church in the East; for S. Paul, surnamed First Hermit, took refuge from the storm in Upper Egypt, where he peopled by his example the region around Thebes with those holy anchorites since called the Fathers of the Desert.
The ninth persecution was that of Valerian, who, although at first favorable to the Christians, became one of their greatest opposers at the instigation of their sworn enemy, Marcian. At this date we find upon the list of martyrs the eminent names of Popes Stephen and Sixtus II., Lawrence the Roman deacon, and Cyprian, the great convert and bishop of Carthage.
The persecution of Diocletian was the last and the bloodiest of all. It raged from 303 to 310. Maximian, the emperor’s colleague, had already put to death many Christians, and among others, on the 22d of September, 286, Maurice and his Theban legion, before the persecution became general throughout the Roman Empire. It began in this form at Nicomedia on occasion of a fire that consumed a part of the imperial palace, and which was maliciously ascribed to the Christians; and it is remarkable that the two extreme persecutions of the early church should both have begun with a false charge of incendiarism. Diocletian used to sit upon his throne at Nicomedia, watching the death-pangs of his Christian subjects who were being burned, not singly, but in great crowds. Many officers and servants of his household perished, and, to distinguish them from the rest, they were dropped into the sea with large stones fastened about their necks. A special object of the persecutors was to destroy the churches and tombs of earlier martyrs, to seize the vessels used in the Holy Sacrifice, and to burn the liturgical books and the Holy Scriptures. The Roman Martyrology makes a particular mention on the 2d of January of those who suffered death rather than deliver up these books to the tyrant. Although innumerable copies of the Scriptures perished, not a few were saved, and new copies multiplied either by favor of the less stringent executors of the law, or because the privilege was bought by the faithful at a great price. Some years ago the German Biblical critic Tischendorf discovered on Mount Sinai a Greek codex of extraordinary antiquity and only two removes from an original of Origen. It is connected with one of the celebrated martyrs of this persecution, and bears upon what we have just said of the Sacred Scriptures. In this codex, at the end of the Book of Esther, there is a note attesting that the copy was collated with a very ancient manuscript that had itself been corrected by the hand of the blessed martyr Pamphilus, priest of Cæsarea in Palestine, while in prison, assisted by Antoninus, his fellow-prisoner, who read for him from a copy of the Hexapla of Origen, which had been revised by that author himself. The touching spectacle of these two men, both of whom gave their blood for the faith, occupied, in the midst of the inconveniences, pain, and weariness of captivity, in transcribing good copies of the Bible, is one of the many instances, discovered in every age, showing the care that the church has had to multiply and guard from error the holy written Word of God.
Among the petty sources of annoyance during this persecution, was the difficulty of procuring food, drink, or raiment that had not been offered to idols; for the pagan priests had set up statues of their divinities in all the market-places, hostelries, and shops, and at the private and public fountains. They used also to go around city and country sprinkling with superstitious lustral water the gardens, vineyards, orchards, and fields, so as to put the Christians to the greatest straits to obtain anything that had not been polluted in this manner. We learn from the Acts of S. Theodotus, a Christian tradesman of Ancyra, the obstacles he had to surmount at this time to procure pure bread and wine to be used by the priests in the Mass. We can appreciate the intense severity of this persecution in many ways; but one of the most singular proofs of it is that pagans in Spain inscribed upon a marble monument, erected in Diocletian’s honor, that he had abolished the very name of Christian. This emperor had also the rare but unenviable privilege of giving his name to a new chronological period, called by the pagans, in compliment to his bloody zeal for their rites, the Era of Diocletian; but the Christians called it the Era of the Martyrs. It began on the 29th of August, 284, and was long in use in Egypt and Abyssinia. Some of the more renowned victims of this persecution are Sebastian, an imperial officer; Agnes, a Roman virgin; Lucy, a virgin of Syracuse, and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.
It may be interesting to note briefly the chief causes of so much cruel bloodshed, even under princes of undoubted moderation in the general government of affairs, as were Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus the Pious, and a few others.
The most continual, if not the deepest, source of persecution were the passions of the populace. Calumny of the subtlest and most popular kind, and pressed at all times with patient effort, had so inflamed the minds of the brutal lower classes that only a word or a sign was required to set them upon the Christians. These were called disloyal to the empire, unfriendly to the princes, of a foreign religion, people who refused to fall into the ways of the majority, and enemies of the human race. From the remains of ancient histories, from the Acts of martyrs, from pagan inscriptions, and from other sources, more than fifty-seven different opprobrious qualifications, applied to the Christians as a body, have been counted up. But when particular calumnies became any way stale, the Christians could always be accused as the cause of every calamity that befell the state; so that, in the words of Tertullian (Apol. xl.), “If the Tiber exceeded its limits, if the Nile did not rise to irrigate the fields, if the rain failed to fall, if the earth quaked, if famine or pestilence scourged the land, at once the cry was raised, Christians to the lions!”
The next most constant source of trouble was the pernicious influence of the Philosophers—a set of men who pretended to be seekers after wisdom, and distinguished themselves from the vulgar by a certain style of dress. Puffed up as they were with their own knowledge, nothing irritated their pride so much as that men of the despised Christian class should presume to dispute their doctrines and teach that profane philosophy was naught, since man could not be made perfect by human wisdom, but only by the testimony of Christ who was crucified. Among the Christians, too, a special order of men whom we call Apologists, and among whom we count Justin, Tertullian, Tatian, Arnobius, Minutius Felix, Origen, Aristides, Quadratus, Athenagoras, and Miltiades the chief, exposed in their eloquent writings the vanity, contradictions, and vices of their opponents, succeeding sometimes in silencing false accusations, and even in arresting the course of persecution. Their apologies and memorials form one of the most instructive branches of early Christian literature, and are a considerable compensation for the loss of so many Acts of martyrs and other venerable documents destroyed by the pagans or which have otherwise perished.
The third great cause of persecution was found (to use a comparatively modern word) in the Erastianism of the Roman Empire. The emperor was, by right of the purple, high-pontiff, and no religion was recognized that did not profess its existence and authority dependent upon the state. Naturally, a religion whose followers would reply to every iniquitous command, “We ought to obey God rather than men,” could expect no mercy, but only continual war.
Sometimes the Christians were put to death in the same manner as the common malefactors, such as by decapitation, crucifixion, or scourging; sometimes in the manner reserved for particular classes of criminals, as being hurled down a precipice, drowned, devoured by wild beasts, left to starve. But sometimes, also, the exquisite cruelty of the persecutors delighted to feed upon the sufferings of its victims, and make dying as long and painful as possible. Thus, there are innumerable examples of Christians being flayed alive, the skin being neatly cut off in long strips, and pepper or vinegar rubbed into the raw flesh; or slowly crushed between two large stones; or having molten lead poured down the throat. Some Christians were tied to stakes in the ground and gored to death by wild bulls, or thinly smeared with honey and exposed under a broiling sun to the insects which would be attracted; some were tied to the tails of vicious horses and dragged to pieces some were sewed up in sacks with vipers, scorpions, or other venomous things, and thrown into the water; some had their members violently torn from the trunk of the body; some were tortured by fire in ways almost unknown to the most savage Indians of America; some were slowly scourged to death with whips made of several bronze chainlets, at the extremity of each of which was a jagged bullet; while jerking out of the teeth in slow succession; cutting off the nose, ears, lips, and breasts; tearing of the flesh with hot pincers; sticking sharp sticks up under the finger-nails; being held suspended, head downward, over a smoking fire; stretching upon a rack, and breaking upon the wheel, were some only of the commonest tortures that preceded the final death-stroke by sword or lance. Many instruments used in tormenting the martyrs have been found at different times, and are now carefully preserved in collections of Christian antiquities; and from these, from early-written descriptions, and from the rude representations on the tombs of martyrs in the Catacombs, it is known positively that over one hundred different modes of torture were used upon the Christians.
From the earliest period particular pains were taken by the pastors of the church to have the remains of the martyrs collected and some account of their sufferings consigned to letters; and Pope S. Clement, a disciple of the Apostle Peter, instituted a college of notaries, one for each of the seven ecclesiastical districts into which he had divided Rome, with the special charge of collecting with diligence all the information possible about the martyrs. They were not to pass over even the minutest circumstances of their confession of faith and death. This attendance on the last moments of the martyrs was often accompanied by great personal risk, or at least a heavy expense in the way of buying the good-will of venal officers; but it was a thing of the utmost importance, in view of the church’s doctrine concerning the veneration and invocation of saints, that nothing should be left undone which prudence would suggest to leave it beyond a doubt that the martyrs had confessed the true faith, and had suffered death for the faith. The pagans soon discovered the value that was set upon such documents, and very many of them were seized and destroyed. The fact that the Act of the martyrs were objects of careful search is so well attested—as is also the other fact, that an immense number perished—that it is a wonder and a grace of divine Providence how any, however few comparatively, have come down to us. It has been calculated that at least five million Christians—men, women, and children—were put to death for the faith during the first three centuries of the church.
The French historian Ampère has very justly remarked that amidst the moral decay of the Roman Empire, when all else was lust and despotism, the Christians alone saved the dignity of human nature; and the Spaniard Balmes, when treating of the progress of individuality under the influence of Catholicity (European Civilization, ch. xxiii.), remarks that it was the martyrs who first gave the great example of proclaiming that “the individual should cease to acknowledge power when power exacts from him what he believes to be contrary to his conscience.” The patience of the martyrs rebuked the sensualism of the pagans; and their fearless assertions that matters of conscience are beyond the jurisdiction of any civil ruler proved them to be the best friends of human liberty; while their constancy and number during three hundred years of persecution, that only ceased with their triumph, is one of the solid arguments to prove that the Catholic Church has a divine origin, and a sustaining divinity within her.
“A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchang’d,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang’d;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She fear’d no danger, for she knew no sin:
Yet had she oft been chas’d with horns and hounds,
And Scythian shafts, and many wingèd wounds
Aim’d at her heart; was often forc’d to fly,
And doom’d to death, tho’ fated not to die.”
—Dryden.