The Early Christians in Rome

by H. D. M. Spence-Jones

In the first part of Diocletian’s reign, A.D. 284–96, the court of Nicomedia was in great measure composed of Christians; the wife and daughter of the Emperor were believers.

From this chain of references to the presence of Christians in the imperial court from the days of S. Paul to the latter years of the third century, we are compelled to conclude that large allowances on the part of the Emperor were not unfrequently made to the sect, and even that not a few concessions outwardly to take part in the ceremonies of official paganism must have been allowed to the Christian courtier all through the period when Christianity was an unlawful and forbidden religion.

In the army a similar spirit of mutual allowance and concession must have been often shown. It is clear that from the very first there were not a few Christian soldiers in the Legions. There must have been many cases in which the superior officers connived at the scruples of Christian soldiers; while, on the other hand, the Christian Legionary must have consented generally to share in the more public and official ceremonies in which the old worship of the gods was inextricably mixed up. Nowhere were the difficulties, however, for believers more acute than in the army, and the slightest ill-will or pagan bigotry on the part of the superior officer made the position of a Christian soldier absolutely untenable even when the soldier belonged to what we have termed the gentler and more accommodating school of Christian teaching. Martyrs in the army, it has been noticed, were relatively more numerous than in the civil callings.[81]

The civil service contained undoubtedly many Christians in the early centuries of the era; see Aristides (Apol. xv.), who, writing of Christians, says: “Where they are judges they judge righteously.” Tertullian refers to the presence of Christians in all ranks, and states how “they could be found in the palace, in the Senate, and in the Forum” (Ad. Nat. i. 1 and Apol. i.). Cyprian, Ep. lxxx. 1, and other early authorities could be quoted here. Eus. H. E. viii. 1, specially mentions how provinces were occasionally ruled by Christian governors, and calls attention to a Phrygian city whose whole population including officials were Christians. He was writing of the last years of the third century. Such Christian officials must have had great allowances made to them, and they must have often availed themselves of the licence permitted to believers on the occasion of purely State ceremonials, which were literally permeated with references to the old State religion.

Instances and examples from the Old Testament books were adduced by the teachers of the gentler school of Christian life in support of the allowances made to believers to retain their court appointments and civil service offices, and to carry on their professions in spite of the idolatrous associations connected with these offices and callings.

Great saints such as Daniel—revered patriarchs such as Joseph—had been ministers of mighty idol-worshipping sovereigns, and must have been present at and given a certain countenance to official pagan ceremonies. Naaman, the eminent servant of the King of Syria, after he had accepted the worship of the God of Israel, even asked the great prophet Elisha permission to accompany his royal master into the temple of the god Rimmon, and to pay obeisance to the Syrian idol on State occasions; and asked that he might be forgiven for this apparent act of idolatry. In reply, Elisha simply bade him “go in peace” (2 Kings v. 18–19).

But in spite of these kindly allowances, these gentler rules and directions, the condition of Christians, even for those, and they certainly were in the majority, who followed the teaching of the more kindly and lenient school, was very hard and difficult. In the family life—in public life, the searchings of heart of a true believer must have been often very acute and distressing, and their position most precarious; and in those times when a wave of pagan fanaticism swept over the imperial court, the province, or the city, no maxims of earthly prudence and caution, however carefully followed out, would have been able to save them from prosecution; and prosecution was invariably followed by the breaking up of their homes, by rigorous imprisonment, confiscation of their property, loss of rank and position, too often by torture and death.

To turn once more to the sterner and smaller school of “Rigourists,” for these, after all, were “les âmes d’élite” of the Christians in the first three centuries; in later times such men and women possibly were termed fanatics, they have been often branded as wild and unpractical persons; but it was to these heroic souls after all that in great measure Christianity owed its final victory.

The wonderful and rapid spread of Christianity noticeable after the Milan toleration Edict of Constantine, A.D. 313, has often been commented upon with surprise. From being a persecuted and despised cult, Christianity became, long before the fourth century had run its course, the religion of the Empire; it had previously gained evidently the hearts of the people in well-nigh all the provinces of the mighty Empire.

Now no imperial edicts—no mere favour and patronage of the Emperor and his court, could ever have won for Christianity that widespread and general acceptance among the people so noticeable within fifty years of the Milan proclamation of Constantine.[82] Something more was needed. For a little over two hundred years the Christians had been sowing the seeds of a new and nobler view of life—“it had gradually taught the supreme sanctity of love—it had presented an ideal destined for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest as well as all that was noblest on earth; and one great cause of its success was that it produced more heroic actions and formed more upright men than any other creed.... Noble lives crowned by heroic deaths were the best arguments of the infant Church.”[83]