Late in 302 the emperors visited the shrine of Apollo at Didyma and the oracle complained of the baneful influence of the Christians (“the just on earth”) in its pronouncements. The die was now cast. On February 23, 303, the Feast of Terminalia, repression would start. Churches were destroyed, Christian services banned, and the Scriptures seized and burned. Christians in high places lost civil rights, and “those in households” (perhaps meaning, “private citizens”) were deprived of their liberty. One concession Diocletian secured: no bloodshed.

Early Christians expected suffering. Christ had died on the cross, so there was no higher honor than to imitate that death through accepting martyrdom (witness by one’s blood). The Jewish legacy portrayed, in writings such as the Fourth Book of the Maccabees, the glorious nature of death rather than renunciation of Israel; even without this, Christianity would inevitably have held the martyr’s death in high esteem. As the writer of 1 Peter expressed it, “If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.” (4:16).

Why Were Christians Persecuted?

How was it that the church underwent such sacrifices? The Roman religion was not intolerant; Rome had accepted into its pantheon deities from the Italian tribes and from Asia Minor. In the provinces, the great territorial gods—such as Saturn in North Africa and Jehovah among the Jews—were accepted as “legal religion” on the grounds that their rites, even if barbarous, were sanctified by ancient tradition. Countless local gods and goddesses, worshiped by the ordinary inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world, were often provided with a classical equivalent name and worshiped as “Roman” deities.

Despite this toleration, by the early second century the Roman governor of Bithynia (on the Black Sea) had no hesitation in sending to immediate execution those who had been denounced as being Christians. The name alone was a sufficient death warrant.

Reasons for the persecution emerge from the record of Christianity’s first three centuries.

Fratricidal Strife

Persecution did not begin with the Roman authorities. The New Testament writings tell of fratricidal strife between Jews and Christians, the latter challenging the Jews by claiming to be “the New Israel.” In the early chapters of Acts, Stephen (7:57) and James, the brother of John the disciple (12:2), became victims of the Jerusalem mob and of King Herod Agrippa, respectively. Indeed, the writer of Luke-Acts appears to go out of his way to reassure the Roman authorizes of the loyalty and general value of the Christians and the hostility of the Jews toward them.

The persecutors and their motives changed in A.D. 64. On July 19 that year a great fire engulfed much of Rome; only four of the fourteen quarters of the city escaped damage. Suspicion immediately fell on Emperor Nero: was this a madcap way of clearing part of the city to make room for new, magnificent streets and buildings in his honor? Nero, however, managed to deflect blame first, apparently, on the Jews, who had a reputation for large-scale arson but also had friends at court; and then onto the Christians. Many Christians (perhaps including Peter) were seized, tortured, and done to death in the arena.

Tacitus, writing in c. 115, included an account of the incident in his Annales(XV, 44). Except for the manner of the Christians’ deaths, which he thought excessively cruel, he showed no sympathy for the Christians. Recording that “Christus, from whom the name [Christians] had its origin” was executed by “one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate,” Tacitus described the Christians as a “class hated for their abominations” and guilty of “hatred of the human race,” an accusation he also made against the Jews. Theirs was not a “religion” but a “deadly superstition,” and hence worthy of repression. Though there was no immediate sequel to Nero’s persecution, the fire forfeited any chance Christians might have had of being recognized as “legal religion” (religio licita) separate from Judaism.

Imperial Policies

Another 30 years pass before we hear of further action against the Christians, and then the evidence is not watertight.

Emperors were extremely suspicious of anything that seemed like “superstition” (for example, carrying a memento given by a Druid priest cost one Roman officer his life!). In 95–96, the emperor Domitian acted drastically against some members of the Roman nobility accused of “atheism” and “lapsing into Jewish customs.” It is not sure that Christianity was meant. However, Domitlla, the emperor’s kinswoman (neptis) who was exiled to the island of Pantelleria [near Sicily], was believed to have been a Christian. The accusation of “atheism”—denial of the existence and power of the gods—might point in that direction.

The veil is lifted, however, about 15 years later. In c. 112, Pliny was sent by the emperor Trajan (98–117) to Bithynia to restore the province from ravages caused by maladministration and corruption. He toured the province and when he reached the far east end, near Amastris, he encountered Christians. Pliny, though a lawyer by profession, had never been at a trial of Christians. The procedure he used was the same as for the vast majority of criminal cases in the province: cognitio extra ordinem, an arbitrary system of trial before a magistrate for offenses that fell outside the range of “statutory crimes” such as treason, forgery, or adultery.

As already mentioned, Pliny condemned to immediate execution those who confessed to being Christians, “for I held no question that whatever it was that they admitted, in any case obstinacy and unbending perversity deserve to be punished.” Christianity itself was punishable, but the defiant, martyr-attitude of the accused left Pliny in no doubt that his action was right.

Pliny’s difficulties arose when individuals agreed that they had been Christians once but were so no longer, and his letter to the emperor indicated his preference for lenience toward them. Trajan responded in an ambiguous but fair-minded way. Christians were “not to be sought out” (i.e., treated like common criminals). If they recanted and “worshiped our gods,” they were to be freed, but those who persisted must be punished. Anonymous denunciations, however, were to be rejected as being “a bad example and unworthy of our times.”

Twelve years later (in 124–125), Christian gained a further concession. Anti-Christian riots had broken out in the province of Asia (western Asia Minor) in 122–123, and the governor had written to Emperor Hadrian for advice. In response, Hadrian’s rescript (imperial order) allowed cases against Christians to be brought to trial, but ordered that the Christians had to be proven guilty of illegal acts before they could be condemned. Once again, “slanderous attacks” against Christians were forbidden. The rescript helped protect Christians, for now the emphasis was less on their name than on specific misdeeds. Christians might be unpopular, and their cult technically illegal, but it would take a bold man to file an accusation that, if in any way flawed, could rebound with serious consequences. An accuser also had to await the arrival of the one senior of ficial (the proconsul) able to try a capital case in the large province of Asia. No wonder Justin Martyr attached the text of Hadrian’s rescript to the end of his First Apology, written c. 155.

Precarious Toleration

Between 125 and 160, Christians enjoyed a precarious toleration. Few martyrdoms are recorded in this era of prosperity that marked the climax of the Greco-Roman achievement.

With the accession of Marcus Aurelius as emperor in 161, however, the situation changed. First, the Christians were becoming exceedingly unpopular; they were blamed for causing natural disasters by refusing to worship the deities that protected communities. Christians were also accused of immorality, unnatural vice, and black magic, all calculated to bring the rest of the population into peril.

An urban mob demanded the arrest of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, during what the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius of Caesarea termed “great persecutions that disturbed the province of Asia” (perhaps in February 156, but more likely 166–69). Other Christians had been seized, tried, and executed before Polycarp was arrested. One, a Phrygian, had rushed toward martyrdom—only to recant at the sight of the beasts in the amphitheater.

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