The Early Christians in Rome

by H. D. M. Spence-Jones

It has been shown that this was by no means the case, and that the Christians were harassed more or less all through this period of supposed quiet.

And after, through the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, the rapidly growing Christian community was perpetually persecuted by an unfriendly and suspicious government, often at the instigation of a jealous and hostile populace. Again and again these attacks, probably at first mostly local and partial, flamed out into a general and bitter persecution.

In the days of Antoninus Pius the harrying of Christians even grew more and more general and cruel, and when Marcus Antoninus became Emperor, the sufferings of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth became decidedly more acute and pronounced, and a terrible period of persecution set in and became the lot of the Christian subjects of Rome.

We have awful examples of this bitter “Antonine” persecution in the sad records, undoubtedly genuine, of the martyrs of Vienne and Lyons, of the Scillitan martyrs in North Africa, of the heroic Mauritanian victims, in the striking and pathetic acts of Perpetua and her companions.[114]

Again it has been not unfrequently urged, and very largely believed, that the Christian traditions exaggerated the number of martyrs who suffered during the long though occasionally interrupted periods of persecution. As regards this early period, the first two centuries, the age we are now especially dwelling on, this supposition, very generally more or less accepted, is absolutely baseless. Indeed, the exact contrary is the case.

So far from exaggerating the numbers of confessors of “the Name,” or painting in too vivid colours the story of their martyrdom, the earlier Christian writers dwell very little either on the number of the confessors or on their sufferings. It does not appear that any mention of martyrs or confessors of the second century appears in the oldest extant Church calendars; no allusion in these lists is recorded of martyrs until after the middle of the third century. Only in the case of some celebrated martyrs and confessors is an exception made. As a rule, save in very special cases, no anniversary of second-century martyrs appears to have been kept. It is only from the general tone of the earliest Christian writings[115] that we gather that the community was exposed to an ever-present danger, and that the shadow of persecution was ever brooding over the heads of the followers of “the Name.”

By far the most definite account of the great numbers of Christians, the way in which they were looked upon by the imperial government, and the severe measures taken against them, are to be found in the notices of great pagan historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius, and more accurately and precisely in the Letter of Pliny to Trajan and in the Emperor’s reply, on which we have already dwelt with some detail.

On the important and interesting question respecting the “number” of martyrs generally, one very weighty piece of evidence has been curiously neglected and ignored.

This evidence comes from the Catacombs, which have been in later years the subject of so much careful and painstaking research, a research that is still proceeding. In these investigations perhaps nothing has assisted the great scholars who have devoted themselves to the work, so much as the so-called “Itineraries” or “Pilgrim Guides” to this great network of subterranean cemeteries beneath the suburbs of Rome. In the fifth, sixth, and two following centuries we know that vast numbers of Pilgrims, not only from Italy but from distant countries, visited Rome, especially with the view of reverently visiting and praying at the shrines of the brave confessors of the Faith who suffered in the days of persecution, from the time of Nero to the accession of Constantine the Great to power.

To assist these pilgrim crowds, a certain number of “Itineraries” were composed. Some few of them have come down to us; these curious and interesting Pilgrim “Hand-Books” have been usually unearthed (in comparatively speaking modern times) in certain of the greater monastic libraries.[116]