CHAPTER VIII
LAST DAYS OF PERSECUTION

In a previous chapter we gave a brief account of the terrible sufferings inflicted upon the Church during the persecution which followed the edicts of Diocletian. They continued for many years almost without interruption, but with varying intensity. When, for example, Diocletian celebrated his Vicennalia a general amnesty was proclaimed which must have opened the prison doors to many thousands of Christians. Eusebius expressly states that the amnesty was for “all who were in prison the world over,” and there is no hint that liberty was made conditional upon apostasy. None the less, it is certain that a great number of Christians were still kept in the cells—on the pretext that they were specially obnoxious to the civil power—by governors of strong anti-Christian bias. The sword of persecution was speedily resumed and wielded as vigorously as before down to the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian.

Then came another lull. With Constantius as the senior Augustus the persecution came to an end in the West, and even in the East there was an interval of peace. For Maximin, who was soon to develop into the most ferocious of all the persecutors,—so St. Jerome speaks of him in comparison with Decius and Diocletian,—gave a brief respite to the Christians in his provinces of Egypt, Cilicia, Palestine, and Syria.

“When I first visited the East,” Maximin wrote,[[67]] some years later, in referring to his accession, “I found that a great number of persons who might have been useful to the State had been exiled to various places by the judges. I ordered each one of these judges no longer to press hardly upon the provincials, but rather to exhort them by kindly words to return to the worship of the gods. While my orders were obeyed by the magistrates, no one in the countries of the East was exiled or ill-treated, but the provincials, won over by kindness, returned to the worship of the gods.”

Direct contradiction is given to this boast as to the number of Christian apostates by the fact that, within a twelvemonth, the new Cæsar grew tired of seeking to kill Christianity by kindness and revoked his recent rescript of leniency. Maximin developed into a furious bigot. He fell wholly under the influence of the more fanatical priests and became increasingly devoted to magic, divination, and the black arts. Lactantius declares that not a joint appeared at his table which had not been taken from some victim sacrificed by a priest at an altar and drenched with the wine of libation. Edict followed edict in rapid succession, until, in the middle of 306, what Eusebius describes as “a second declaration of war” was issued, which ordered every magistrate to compel all who lived within his jurisdiction to sacrifice to the gods on pain of being burnt alive. House to house visitations were set on foot that no creature might escape, and the common informer was encouraged by large rewards to be active in his detestable occupation. It would seem indeed as if the Christians in the provinces of Maximin suffered far more severely than any of their brethren. The most frightful bodily mutilations were practised. Batches of Christians were sentenced to work in the porphyry mines of Egypt or the copper mines of Phænos in Palestine, after being hamstrung and having their right eyes burnt out with hot irons. The evidence of Lactantius, who says that the confessors had their eyes dug out, their hands and feet amputated, and their nostrils and ears cut off, is corroborated by Eusebius and the authors of the Passions.

Palestine seems to have had two peculiarly brutal governors, Urbanus and Firmilianus. The latter in a single day presided at the execution of twelve Christians, pilgrims from Egypt on their way to succour the unfortunate convicts in the copper mines of Palestine, whose deplorable condition had awakened the active sympathy of the Christian East. These bands of pilgrims had to pass through Cæsarea, where the officers of Firmilianus were on the watch for them, and as soon as they confessed that they were Christians they were haled before the tribunal, where their doom was certain. A distinguishing feature of the persecution in the provinces of Maximin was the frequency of outrages upon Christian women and the fortitude with which many of the victims committed suicide rather than suffer pollution. The story of St. Pelagia of Antioch is typical. Maximin sent some soldiers to conduct her to his palace. They found her alone in her house and announced their errand. With perfect composure this girl of fifteen asked permission to retire in order to change her dress, and then, mounting to the roof, threw herself down into the street below. Eusebius, himself an eye-witness of this persecution, gives many a vivid story of the fury of Maximin and his officials, and of the cold-blooded calculation with which he sought to draw new victims into the net of the law. In 308 he issued an edict ordering every city and village thoroughly to repair any temple which, for whatever reason, had been allowed to fall into ruins. He increased tenfold the number of priesthoods, and insisted upon daily sacrifices. The magistrates were again strictly enjoined to compel men, women, children, and slaves alike to offer sacrifice and partake of the sacrificial food. All goods exposed for sale in the public markets were to be sprinkled with lustral water, and even at the entrance to the public baths, officials were to be placed to see that no one passed through the doors without throwing a few grains of incense on the altar. Maximin, in short, was a religious bigot, who combined with a zealous observance of pagan ritual a consuming hatred of Christianity.

There are not many records of what was taking place in the provinces of Galerius, while Maximin was thus terrorising Syria and Egypt. But the Emperor had begun to see that the persecution, upon which he had entered with such zest some years before, was bound to end in failure. The terrible malady which attacked him in 310 would tend to confirm his forebodings. Like Antiochus Epiphanius, Herod the Great, and Herod Agrippa, Galerius became, before death released him from his agony, a putrescent and loathsome spectacle. His physicians could do nothing for him. Imploring deputations were sent to beg the aid of Apollo and Æsculapius. Apollo prescribed a remedy, but the application only left the patient worse, and Lactantius quotes with powerful effect the lines from Virgil which describe Laocoon in the toils of the serpents, raising horror-stricken cries to Heaven, like some wounded bull as it flies bellowing from the altar. Was it when broken by a year’s constant anguish that Galerius exclaimed that he would restore the temple of God and make amends for his sin? Was he, as Lactantius says, “compelled to confess GOD”? Whether that be so or not, here is the remarkable edict which the shattered Emperor found strength to dictate. It deserves to be given in full:

“Among the measures which we have constantly taken for the well-being and advantage of the State, we had wished to regulate everything according to the ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans, and especially to provide that the Christians, who had abandoned the religion of their ancestors, should return to a better frame of mind.

“For, from whatever reason, these Christians were the victims of such wilfulness and folly that they not only refused to follow the ancient customs, which very likely their own forefathers had instituted, but they made laws for themselves according to their fancy and caprice, and gathered together all kinds of people in different places.