Speratus, and twelve others, were likewise beheaded; as was Andocles in France. Asclepiades, bishop of Antioch, suffered many tortures, but his life was spared.
Cecilia, a young lady of good family in Rome, was married to a gentleman named Valerian. She converted her husband and brother, who were beheaded; and the maximus, or officer, who led them to execution, becoming their convert, suffered the same fate. The lady was placed naked in a scalding bath, and having continued there a considerable time, her head was struck off with a sword, A. D. 222.
Calistus, bishop of Rome, was martyred, A. D. 224; but the manner of his death is not recorded; and Urban, bishop of Rome, met the same fate A. D. 232.
The Sixth Persecution, under Maximinus, A. D. 235.
A. D. 235, was in the time of Maximinus. In Cappadocia, the president, Seremianus, did all he could to exterminate the christians from that province.
The principal persons who perished under this reign were Pontianus, bishop of Rome; Anteros, a Grecian, his successor, who gave offence to the government, by collecting the acts of the martyrs, Pammachius and Quiritus, Roman senators, with all their families, and many other christians; Simplicius, senator; Calepodius, a christian minister, thrown into the Tyber; Martina, a noble and beautiful virgin; and Hippolitus, a christian prelate, tied to a wild horse, and dragged till he expired.
During this persecution, raised by Maximinus, numberless christians were slain without trial, and buried indiscriminately in heaps, sometimes fifty or sixty being cast into a pit together, without the least decency.
The tyrant Maximinus dying, A. D. 238, was succeeded by Gordian, during whose reign, and that of his successor Philip, the church was free from persecution for the space of more than ten years; but A. D. 249, a violent persecution broke out in Alexandria, at the instigation of a pagan priest, without the knowledge of the emperor.
The Seventh Persecution, under Decius A. D. 249.
This was occasioned partly by the hatred he bore to his predecessor Philip, who was deemed a christian, and partly to his jealousy concerning the amazing increase of christianity; for the heathen temples began to be forsaken, and the christian churches thronged.