Notwithstanding these prohibitions declared by the Roman laws, God inspired many of the emperors with indulgence towards the Christians. Even Diocletian, whom the ignorant consider as a persecutor—Diocletian, the first year of whose reign is still regarded as constituting the commencement of the era of martyrdom, was, for more than eighteen years, the declared protector of Christianity, and many Christians held offices of high consequence about his person. He even married a Christian; and, in Nicomedia, the place of his residence, he permitted a splendid church to be erected opposite his palace.
The Cæsar Galerius having unfortunately taken up a prejudice against the Christians, of whom he thought he had reason to complain, influenced Diocletian to destroy the cathedral of Nicomedia. One of the Christians, with more zeal than prudence, tore the edict of the emperor to pieces; and hence arose that famous persecution, in the course of which more than two hundred persons were executed in the Roman Empire, without reckoning those whom the rage of the common people, always fanatical and always cruel, destroyed without even the form of law.
So great has been the number of actual martyrs that we should be careful how we shake the truth of the history of those genuine confessors of our holy religion by a dangerous mixture of fables and of false martyrs.
The Benedictine Prior (Dom) Ruinart, for example, a man otherwise as well informed as he was respectable and devout, should have selected his genuine records, his "actes sinceres," with more discretion. It is not sufficient that a manuscript, whether taken from the abbey of St. Benoit on the Loire, or from a convent of Celestines at Paris, corresponds with a manuscript of the Feuillans, to show that the record is authentic; the record should possess a suitable antiquity; should have been evidently written by contemporaries; and, moreover, should bear all the characters of truth.
He might have dispensed with relating the adventure of young Romanus, which occurred in 303. This young Romanus had obtained the pardon of Diocletian, at Antioch. However, Ruinart states that the judge Asclepiades condemned him to be burnt. The Jews who were present at the spectacle, derided the young saint and reproached the Christians, that their God, who had delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of the furnace, left them to be burned; that immediately, although the weather had been as calm as possible, a tremendous storm arose and extinguished the flames; that the judge then ordered young Romanus's tongue to be cut out; that the principal surgeon of the emperor, being present, eagerly acted the part of executioner, and cut off the tongue at the root; that instantly the young man, who, before had an impediment in his speech, spoke with perfect freedom; that the emperor was astonished that any one could speak so well without a tongue; and that the surgeon, to repeat the experiment, directly cut out the tongue of some bystander, who died on the spot.
Eusebius, from whom the Benedictine Ruinart drew his narrative, should have so far respected the real miracles performed in the Old and New Testament—which no one can ever doubt—as not to have associated with them relations so suspicious, and so calculated to give offence to weak minds. This last persecution did not extend through the empire. There was at that time some Christianity in England, which soon eclipsed, to reappear afterwards under the Saxon kings. The southern districts of Gaul and Spain abounded with Christians. The Cæsar Constantius Chlorus afforded them great protection in all his provinces. He had a concubine who was a Christian, and who was the mother of Constantine, known under the name of St. Helena; for no marriage was ever proved to have taken place between them; he even divorced her in the year 292, when he married the daughter of Maximilian Hercules; but she had preserved great ascendency over his mind, and had inspired him with a great attachment to our holy religion.
Of the Establishment of the Church Under Constantine.
Thus did divine Providence prepare the triumph of its church by ways apparently conformable to human causes and events. Constantius Chlorus died in 306, at York, in England, at a time when the children he had by the daughter of a Cæsar were of tender age, and incapable of making pretensions to the empire. Constantine boldly got himself elected at York, by five or six thousand soldiers, the greater part of whom were French and English. There was no probability that this election, effected without the consent of Rome, of the senate and the armies, could stand; but God gave him the victory over Maxentius, who had been elected at Rome, and delivered him at last from all his colleagues. It is not to be dissembled that he at first rendered himself unworthy of the favors of heaven, by murdering all his relations, and at length even his own wife and son.
We may be permitted to doubt what Zosimus relates on this subject. He states that Constantine, under the tortures of remorse from the perpetration of so many crimes, inquired of the pontiffs of the empire, whether it were possible for him to obtain any expiation, and that they informed him that they knew of none. It is perfectly true that none was found for Nero, and that he did not venture to assist at the sacred mysteries in Greece. However, the Taurobolia were still observed, and it is difficult to believe that an emperor, supremely powerful, could not obtain a priest who would willingly indulge him in expiatory sacrifices. Perhaps, indeed, it is less easy to believe that Constantine, occupied as he was with war, politic enterprises, and ambition, and surrounded by flatterers, had time for remorse at all. Zosimus adds that an Egyptian priest, who had access to his gate, promised him the expiation of all his crimes in the Christian religion. It has been suspected that this priest was Ozius, bishop of Cordova.
However this might be, God reserved Constantine for the purpose of enlightening his mind, and to make him the protector of the Church. This prince built the city of Constantinople, which became the centre of the empire and of the Christian religion. The Church then assumed a form of splendor. And we may hope that, being purified by his baptism, and penitent at his death, he may have found mercy, although he died an Arian. It would be not a little severe, were all the partisans of both the bishops of the name of Eusebius to incur damnation.