The state of things which immediately preceded this grand attack of the empire on the Church is thus described by Cyprian in the interval which followed the persecution of Decius and preceded that of Gallus; and the words of one who not only taught but died for his teaching carry with them no common force. “As long repose had corrupted the discipline which had [pg 359] come down to us from God, the divine judgment awakened our faith from a declining, and if I may so speak an almost slumbering state; and whereas we deserved yet more for our sins, the most merciful Lord has so moderated all, that what has passed has seemed rather a trial of what we were than an actual infliction. Everyone was applying himself to the increase of wealth, and forgetting both what was the conduct of believers under the Apostles, and what ought to be their conduct in every age, they with insatiable eagerness for gain devoted themselves to the multiplying of possessions. The priests were wanting in religious devotedness; the ministers in entireness of faith; there was no mercy in works, no discipline in manners. Men wore their beards disfigured, and women stained their complexion with a dye. The eyes were changed from what God made them, and a lying colour was passed upon the hair. The hearts of the simple were misled by treacherous artifices, and brethren became entangled in seductive snares; ties of marriage were formed with unbelievers; members of Christ abandoned to the heathen. Not only rash swearing was heard, but even false; persons in high place were swollen with contemptuousness; poisoned reproaches fell from their mouths; and men were sundered by unabating quarrels. Numerous bishops, who ought to be an encouragement and example to others, despising their sacred calling, engaged themselves [pg 360] in secular vocations, relinquished their chair, deserted their people, strayed among foreign provinces, hunted the markets for mercantile profits, tried to amass large sums of money, while they had brethren starving within the Church, took possession of estates by fraudulent proceedings, and multiplied their gains by accumulated usuries.”[304]
Such was the end of the long peace which succeeded the persecution of Septimius Severus, and yet it was followed at once by that ten years' conflict which if stained with apostasies at first, soon became rife in martyrdoms. And as the former relaxation seems to prove that the third century among Christians was no ideal time in which moral corruptions and abuses did not largely exist, so the improvement which trial and suffering at once produced, calling forth some of the greatest triumphs which the Faith has ever known, seems to indicate that the divine power of the Church lies not in forming a community free from imperfections, or even secured from scandals, but in building up a portion of her children to sanctity. At all times the wheat and the chaff lie together on her threshing-floor, and the flail of suffering winnows them. But those who seek for a time when all professing believers were saints, will find it neither when the Apostles taught nor afterwards.
The Emperor Valerian, after being during four [pg 361] years more kindly disposed to Christians than any preceding emperor, and after filling his palace with them, was instigated by an Egyptian magician into becoming a most bitter persecutor.[305] This was ended in less than three years through his capture by the Persian monarch, when his son Gallienus restored the sacred places to the Christians, and ordered the bishops not to be disturbed.[306] The empire during the following eight years seemed through the supineness of Gallienus to be on the point of dissolution; it is the time when nineteen commanders in various provinces assume the purple, and successively perish. At last Gallienus is put out of the way by a council of officers, and the empire is restored by Claudius and by Aurelian. The latter, after being for some years fair to Christians, ends by persecuting them. But he too is speedily removed by death. It is remarkable that all these persecutions, by Maximin, by Decius, by Gallus, by Valerian, and by Aurelian, are of short duration: none of them continue more than three years. After Aurelian's death in 275 a whole generation ensues in which Christians by the ordinary operation of the empire's laws, according to which their religion was illicit, were liable to suffer much in individual cases. Thus it is in a time not reckoned persecuting, shortly after Maximianus had been made his colleague in the empire by Diocletian, that [pg 362] one of the most merciless acts of tyrannical cruelty took place, which gave an occasion for several thousand men at once to offer up their lives. Unresisting victims, yet brave soldiers with arms in their hands, they endured two decimations, and when remonstrance had proved in vain, piled their arms, and let themselves be massacred to the last man rather than violate their conscience. The place where they suffered took the name of their heroic captain, Maurice; the churches of that Alpine valley to this day bear witness by his figure over their altars to that most illustrious act of Christian sacrifice: and beside the place of their repose rises still a monastery which for thirteen hundred and fifty years has guarded the sepulture of a legion of martyrs, and is become one of the most ancient Christian houses of prayer.
It cannot be doubted that in the last twenty-five years of the third century the number of Christians was being largely increased, and moreover they were daily gaining the higher ranks of society. Diocletian had reigned for eighteen years, and seemed effectually to have stopped that incessant succession of soldiers gaining the throne by assassination and yielding it in turn to their assassins, which for fifty years threatened to destroy the state. At such a moment it was that Diocletian, belying all the past conduct of his life, let loose against the Christian Church the last, the fiercest, and the longest of the heathen persecutions.
It was in truth scarcely less than the rending in pieces the whole social framework when a proclamation of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, in the year 303, declared that the Christian Faith should cease to exist. How entirely that faith had now penetrated all ranks was shown in Diocletian's own household, wherein his most trusted[307] chamberlains, beloved as his children, were cruelly tortured because they refused to worship the heathen gods, while his wife Prisca and his daughter Valeria purchased immunity for the present by compliance. We have the emperor described by an eye-witness of those times as himself sitting in judgment,[308] and putting men to the torture of fire. The same power was delegated to the governors throughout the provinces. “It was,” says Eusebius, “the nineteenth year of Diocletian's reign, in the month of March, when the festival of the Lord's Passion was drawing near, that imperial edicts were everywhere published, ordering the churches to be levelled, the scriptures to be burnt, those of rank to be deprived of it, the common people, if they remained faithful, to be reduced to slavery. This was the first edict against us; another soon came enjoining that all [pg 364] those who ruled the churches should first be imprisoned, and then by every means compelled to sacrifice.”[309] Lactantius adds that every action at law was to proceed against Christians, while they should not be allowed to claim the law for any wrong inflicted, or spoliation suffered, or dishonour done to their wives.[310] Many in consequence of these edicts suffered willingly terrible torments: many others at first gave way. What these torments were Eusebius describes: some were beaten; some torn with hooks.[311] “It is impossible to say how many and how great martyrs of Christ might be seen in every city and country.” A man of the highest rank in Nicomedia from an impulse of zeal when the edict first appeared tore it down: he was seized, and not merely tortured but slowly roasted alive,[312] which he bore with unflinching patience, preserving joyousness and tranquillity to his last breath. The emperors polluted the provinces subject to them, by the slaughter of men and women who worshipped God, as if it had been in a civil war, with the exception of Constantius,[313] who ruled the Gauls and Britain, and preserved his soul pure from this stain. But it was so much worse than a war in which the conquered have [pg 365] only to suffer servitude or at most death, whereas in this case what was committed against those who refused to do wrong passes all description. They used against them every imaginable torture, and thought it little to slay those whom they hated, unless by cruelty having first exposed their bodies to mockery. If they could persuade, by terror, any to violate the faith to which they were bound, and to agree to the fatal sacrifice, these they praised and with their honours destroyed, but on the others they exhausted the whole ingenuity of their butchery, calling them desperate as disregarding their own body.[314] For two years the whole Roman world ruled by Diocletian, Maximian, and Galerius was exposed to this misery: when on the retirement of Diocletian and Maximian in 305 Galerius became the chief emperor, the persecution continued in all its intensity, save in the territory subject to Constantius. “It is impossible to describe the individual scenes which took place throughout the world. The several governors having received their commission carried it out according to their own ferocity. Some through excess of fear did more than their orders; some were inspired by personal enmity; some by natural cruelty; some sought to advance themselves; some were precipitate in the work of destruction, as one in Phrygia,”[315] where, says Eusebius, [pg 366] the soldiers surrounded a Christian town and burnt it with all its inhabitants, “men, women, and children calling upon the name of Christ, the God of all.”[316] “And in devising various kinds of tortures they aim at gaining a victory. They are well aware that it is a struggle between champions. I myself saw in Bithynia a governor beside himself in joy, as if he had subdued some barbarous nation, because one who for two years had with great virtue resisted was seen to fail. They inflict therefore exquisite pains, only avoiding to put the tortured to death, as if it were only death that made them blessed, and not likewise those torments which in proportion to their severity produce a greater glory by the virtue which they exhibit.”[317]
Eusebius declares that such cruelties were perpetrated not for a short time, but during several years; that ten, twenty, thirty, sixty, and as many as a hundred men, women, and children would be slain in a day by various tortures. “When I was in Egypt myself I saw a crowd in one day, some beheaded, some burnt; with my own eyes I beheld the marvellous ardour, the truly divine virtue and alacrity of those who believed in Christ. Scarcely was sentence passed against the first, when a fresh number hastened before the tribunal, professing themselves Christians: with joy, gaiety, and smiles they received the award of death, singing [pg 367] hymns, and returning thanks to their last breath.”[318]
Among those distinguished for their learning in all Grecian studies, and for the universal honour in which they had been held, Eusebius mentions especially a bishop of Thmuis named Phileas. While he lay in prison under sentence of death, which was afterwards executed by beheading, he wrote a letter to his people, detailing the scenes in which he bore a part. This letter the historian has happily preserved for us. “Inasmuch,” he says, “as the holy scriptures presented us with so many fair ensamples and lessons, the blessed martyrs who are with me felt no hesitation. They fixed their mind's eye steadily upon the God of all, formed the conception of death suffered for piety's sake, and clung firmly to that to which they were called. For they knew that our Lord Jesus Christ had become man for our sakes in order to cut up all sin by the root, and to supply us with food on that journey by which we enter into eternal life. For He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a slave, and being found in fashion as a man humbled Himself to death, and that death the cross. Hence it was that the martyrs, bearing Christ within them, in their zeal for the greater gifts endured every suffering and all the various inventions of torture not once, but [pg 368] some of them a second time, and all the threats of their guards, which did not stop with words in their zeal to overcome them, without their resolution being broken, because perfect charity casts out fear. What words can I find to enumerate their virtue and their endurance in each particular trial? Since they were left exposed to anyone's outrage, some being struck with clubs, others with rods, others with scourges, some with lashes, some with ropes. The sight of the tortures presented every variety, but great suffering throughout. These with hands bound behind them were distended on the wood, and had every limb stretched by machinery; and thus their tormentors by command attacked the whole body, tearing them not on the sides alone as murderers are treated, but on the stomach, the knees, and the cheeks. Others were hung by one hand from the portico, and this tension of the sinews and limbs caused a more terrible pain than any. Others were bound to pillars face to face, the feet not reaching the ground, but the weight of the body tightening the bonds, and this they suffered not during the time of examination only, or while the governor was engaged with them, but almost the whole day. For when he went to others, he left his officers watching over these, to see if the extremity of torture should cause any to give way: and he charged them to be bound without mercy, but when at their last gasp to be let down and dragged [pg 369] along the ground. For he said that no account at all was to be taken of us, but we were to be both reputed and treated as non-existent. This last was a second torture which they superadded to their blows. There were those also who after their tortures were put in the stocks with their feet distended to the fourth hole, where they must needs lie down, not being able to hold themselves up through their wounds gaping over the whole body. Others flung on the pavement lay there through the repeated violence of their racking, the many signs of suffering over their body presenting a more fearful spectacle to those who looked on than the racking itself. Thus treated, some died under the torture, putting their adversary to shame by their endurance; some shut up in prison half-dead, after a few days expired through the extremity of their pains; the rest having treatment applied became still more resolute through the time spent in prison. And so when the choice was presented to them either to touch the abominable sacrifice, and depart unmolested, gaining by this course an execrable deliverance, or, not sacrificing, to receive sentence of death, without any doubt they joyfully went to death. For they knew what the sacred writings enjoin: ‘he that sacrifices to other gods shall be rooted out,’ and ‘thou shalt have no other gods but me.’ ”[319]
This may suffice as a specimen of what was [pg 370] done during a course of years throughout the dominion of Galerius, Maximin, and Maxentius. It is in this persecution especially that the virgin martyrs suffered the extremity of the heathen malignity in the threatened loss of that purity which they valued more than life. And here a fellow-Christian at Alexandria disguising himself as a soldier was to S. Theodora the guardian which her angel himself became to S. Agnes at Rome. In this persecution also S. Vincent repeats in Spain the trial and the triumph of S. Laurence at Rome. The authentic account of his martyrdom shows the utmost point to which the most ingenious and the most ferocious cruelty could reach on the one side, and the most enduring patience on the other. But the numberless details concerning the sufferings of this time preserved to us show that it was indeed a conflict prolonged during eight years, in which the Roman state put forth the utmost strength which unlimited power guided by unhesitating cruelty could exert to destroy the Christian Church and name.
At the end of this time the conflict was terminated by the Emperor Galerius, the chief mover of the whole persecution, being struck by a mortal disease, in which reduced to impotence by his sufferings he withdrew his edicts against the Christian Faith. One after another the persecuting emperors are taken away by death. Constantine inheriting his father's justice towards Christians, and [pg 371] preserving them in his own territory from these outrages, gradually appears as their champion. It is when advancing to Rome against Maxentius that he sees in the Cross the token of victory over all enemies: enrolling it on his banner he rules with Licinius the Roman world, and by a decree issued at Milan in 313 assures to all Christians the free exercise of their religion.
In the year 64 Nero had declared by initiating a persecution against Christians that their religion was illicit, and fell under the ban of the old Roman laws which forbade the exercise of any worship not approved by the senate. From that time down to the edict of Constantine no Christian could stand before a Roman tribunal plainly avowing his faith in one God and one Christ without incurring the liability of capital punishment. In this period of two hundred and forty-eight years it is true that there were intervals of comparative peace when the emperors did not themselves call into action the laws against Christians. During the whole second century there would seem to be no emperor who set himself to destroy the Christian name and people as a whole. In the time of Commodus it was even forbidden to accuse a Christian of his religion; yet even then, if the accusation was made and proved, it was a capital offence, followed, and that too in the case of a senator after defence before the senate, by the infliction of the penalty. Alexander Severus is the first of whom [pg 372] it is said that “he suffered the Christians to be;” Philip also favoured them; so again Valerian at first; Gallienus gave back their churches; Diocletian trusted them and filled his palace with them: but no one of these emperors ventured to declare the Christian religion to be according to the laws of Rome a “licit” religion, and no one therefore enabled Christians to avow it without danger of suffering. The most favourable suspended the action of the laws either by positive edict, or by letting it be understood that they did not wish Christians to be disturbed. A change either of the ruler, or of the ruler's inclination, as was seen in the cases of Valerian, Aurelian, and Diocletian, induced at once that full state of penality under which Christianity was as much forbidden as homicide or treason, and in virtue of which Roman magistrates could as little refuse to judge the crime of being a Christian as those other crimes. Thus it is that we find martyrdoms assigned to times at which there is not known to have been any general persecution: and in unnumbered cases Christians won their crown through private enmity or local tumults, when any one of the thousand motives which awaken ill-will was sufficient to cause an appeal to that great and unchanged enemy, the Law of Rome, which proscribed them. To Constantine belongs the glory of having removed this enemy. He made the profession of Christianity no longer a crime. He accomplished [pg 373] that which Justin and Tertullian and every Christian apologist had asked for in vain, that every Christian in the Roman empire might profess and practise the Christian Faith without suffering punishment for it.