These were three martyrs of Thuburbo. Two of them, Maxima and Donatilla, had been denounced to the judge by another woman. Secunda, a child of twelve, saw her friends from a window in her father’s house, as they were being dragged off to prison. “Do not abandon me, my sisters,” she cried. They tried to wave her back. She insisted. They warned her of the cruel fate which was certain to await her; Secunda declared her confidence in Him who comforts and consoles the little ones. In the end they let her accompany them. All three were sentenced to be torn by the wild beasts of the amphitheatre, but when they stood up to face that cruel death, a wild bear came and lay at their feet. The judge, Anulinus, then ordered them to be decapitated. Such is the story that lies behind those simple and touching words, “Secunda, Bona Puella.”
Nor were young men backward in their zeal for the martyr’s crown. Eusebius tells us of a band of eight Christian youths at Cæsarea, who confronted the Governor, Urbanus, in a body shouting, “We are Christians,” and of another youth named Aphianus, who, while reading the Scriptures, heard the voice of the heralds summoning the people to sacrifice. He at once made his way to the Governor’s house, and, just as Urbanus was in the act of offering libation, Aphianus caught his arm and upbraided him for his idolatry. He simply flung his life away.
In this connection may be mentioned the five martyred statuary workers belonging to a Pannonian marble quarry. They had been converted by the exhortations of Bishop Cyril, of Antioch, who had been condemned to labour in their quarry, and, once having become Christians, their calling gave them great searching of heart. Did not the Scriptures forbid them to make idols or graven images of false gods? When, therefore, they refused to undertake a statue of Æsculapius, they were challenged as Christians, and sentenced to death. Yet they had not thought it wrong to carve figures of Victory and Cupid, and they seem to have executed without scruple a marble group showing the sun in a chariot, doubtless satisfying themselves that these were merely decorative pieces, which did not necessarily involve the idea of worship. But they preferred to die rather than make a god for a temple, even though that god were the gentle Æsculapius, the Healer.
We might dwell at much greater length upon this absorbing subject of the persecution of Diocletian, and draw upon the Passions of the Saints for further examples of the marvellous fortitude with which so many of the Christians endured the most fiendish tortures for the sake of their faith. “I only ask one favour,” said the intrepid Asterius: “it is that you will not leave unlacerated a single part of my body.” In the presence of such splendid fidelity and such unswerving faith, which made even the weakest strong and able to endure, one sees why the eventual triumph of the Church was certain and assured. One can also understand why the memory and the relics of the martyrs were preserved with such passionate devotion; why their graves were considered holy and credited with powers of healing; and why, too, the names of their persecutors were remembered with such furious hatred. It may be too much to expect the early chroniclers of the Church to be fair to those who framed and those who put into execution the edicts of persecution, but we, at least, after so many centuries, and after so many persecutions framed and directed by the Churches themselves, must try to look at the question from both sides and take note of the absolute refusal of the Christian Church to consent to the slightest compromise in its attitude of hostility to the religious system which it had already dangerously undermined.
It is not easy from a study of the Passions of the Saints to draw any sweeping generalisations as to what the public at large thought of the torture and execution of Christians. We get a glimpse, indeed, of the ferocity of the populace at Rome when Maximian went thither to celebrate the Ludi Cereales in 304. The “Passion of St. Savinus” shews an excited crowd gathered in the Circus Maximus, roaring for blood and repeating twelve times over the savage cry, “Away with the Christians and our happiness is complete. By the head of Augustus let not a Christian survive.”[[15]] Then, when they caught sight of Hermogenianus, the city præfect, they called ten times over to the Emperor, “May you conquer, Augustus! Ask the præfect what it is we are shouting.” Such a scene was natural enough in the Circus of Rome; was it typical of the Empire? Doubtless in all the great cities, such as Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Carthage, the “baser sort” would be quite ready to shout, “Away with the Christians.” But it is to be remembered that we find no trace anywhere in this persecution of a massacre on the scale of that of St. Bartholomew or the Sicilian Vespers. On the contrary, we see that though the prisons were full, the relations of the Christians were usually allowed to visit them, take them food, and listen to their exhortations. Pamphilus of Cæsarea, who was in jail for two years, not only received his friends during that period, but was able to go on making copies of the Scriptures!
We rarely hear of the courts being packed with anti-Christian crowds, or of the judges being incited by popular clamour to pass the death sentence. The reports of the trials shew us silent, orderly courts, with the judges anxious not so much to condemn to death as to make a convert. If Diocletian had wanted blood he could have had it in rivers, not in streams. But he did not. He wished to eradicate what he believed to be an impious, mischievous, and, from the point of view of the State’s security, a dangerous superstition. There was no talk of persecuting for the sake of saving the souls of heretics; that lamentable theory was reserved for a later day. Diocletian persecuted for what he considered to be the good of the State. He lived to witness the full extent of his failure, and to realise the appalling crime which he had committed against humanity, amid the general overthrow of the political system which he had so laboriously set up.
