32. There is also another and a greater necessity for our offering prayer in behalf of the Emperors, nay, for the complete stability of the Empire, and for Roman interests in general. For we know that a mighty shock is impending over the whole earth-in fact, the very end of all things threatening dreadful woes is only retarded by the continued existence of the Roman Empire. We have no desire, then, to be overtaken by these dire events; and in praying that their coming may be delayed, we are lending our aid to Rome's duration. . . . 33. But why dwell longer on the reverence and sacred respect of Christians to the Emperor, whom we cannot but look up to as called by our Lord in his office? so that on valid grounds I might say Cæsar is more ours than yours, for our God has appointed him. Therefore, as having this property in him, I do more than you for his welfare, not merely because I ask it of Him who can give it, nor because I ask it as one who deserves to get it, but also because, in keeping the majesty of Cæsar within due limits, and putting it under the Most High, and making it less than divine, I commend him the more to the favor of the Deity, to whom alone I make him inferior. But I place him in subjection to one I regard as more glorious than himself. Never will I call the Emperor God. . . . 35. This is the reason, then, why Christians are counted public enemies: that they pay no vain, nor false, nor foolish honors to the Emperor; that, as men believing in the true religion, they prefer to celebrate their festal days with a good conscience, instead of with common wantonness. ... 31. The Persecution of the Christians as Disloyal Citizens of the Roman Empire (Pliny, Letters, book x, letters 96 and 97) Pliny the Younger (62–113 A.D.), a distinguished Roman Senator and man of letters, was appointed governor of Bithynia, a province lying along the central southern coast of the Black Sea, in Asia Minor, by the Emperor Trajan, about 112 A.D. The following letter from Pliny to the Emperor asking for instructions as to how to deal with the disloyal Christians, and Trajan's reply, are of special value as displaying both the tolerant attitude of the Roman government toward their religion as such, and the peculiar difficulties met in dealing with them. It is my custom, my which I am in doubt. enlighten my ignorance? (a) Pliny to Trajan Lord, to refer to you all things concerning I have never taken part in the trials of Christians: hence I do not know for what crime nor to what extent it is customary to punish or investigate. I have been in no little doubt as to whether any discrimination is made for age, or whether the treatment of the weakest does not differ from that of the stronger; whether pardon is granted in case of repentance, or whether he who has ever been a Christian gains nothing by having ceased to be one; whether the name itself without the proof of crimes, or the crimes, inseparably connected with the name, are punished. Meanwhile, I have followed this procedure in the case of those who have been brought before me as Christians. I asked them whether they were Christians a second and a third time and with threats of punishment; I questioned those who confessed; I ordered those who were obstinate to be executed. For I did not doubt that, whatever it was that they confessed, their stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy ought certainly to be punished. There were others of similar madness, whom, because they were Roman citizens, I have noted for sending to the City. Soon, the crime spreading, as is usual when attention is called to it, more cases arose. An anonymous accusation containing many names was presented. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, ought, I thought, to be dismissed, since they repeated after me a prayer to the gods and made supplication with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for the purpose together with the statues of the gods, and since besides they cursed Christ, not one of which things, they say, those who are really Christians can be compelled to do. Others, accused by the informer, said that they were Christians and afterwards denied it; in fact they had been but had ceased to be, some many years ago, some even twenty years before. All both worshipped your image, and cursed Christ. They continued to maintain that this was the amount of their fault or error, that on a fixed day they were accustomed to come together before daylight and to sing by turns a hymn to Christ as a god, and that they bound themselves by oath, not for some crime, but that they would not commit robbery, theft, or adultery, that they would not betray a trust nor deny a deposit when called upon. After this it was their custom to disperse and to come together again to partake of food, of an ordinary and harmless kind, however; even this they had ceased to do after the publication of my edict in which according to your command I had forbidden associations. Hence I believed it the more necessary to examine two female slaves, who were called deaconesses, in order to find out what was true, and to do it by torture. I found nothing but a vicious, extravagant suspicion. Consequently I have postponed the examination and make haste to consult you. For it seemed to me that the subject would justify consultation, especially on account of the number of those in peril. For many of all ages, of every rank, and even of both sexes are and will be called into danger. The infection of this superstition has not only spread to the cities, but even to the villages and country districts. It seems possible to stay it and bring about a reform. It is plain enough that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented again, that the sacred rights, which had been neglected for a long time, have begun to be restored, and that fodder for victims, for which till now there was scarcely a purchaser, is sold. From which one may readily judge what a number of men can be reclaimed if repentance is permitted. (b) Trajan's Reply You have followed the correct procedure, my Secundus, in conducting the cases of those who were accused before you as Christians, for no general rule can be laid down as a set form. They ought not to be sought out; if they are brought before you and convicted, they ought to be punished, provided that he who denies that he is a Christian, and proves this by making supplication to our gods, however much he may have been under suspicion in the past, shall secure pardon on repentance. In the case of no crime should attention be paid to anonymous charges, for they afford a bad precedent and are not worthy of our age. 32. Effect of the Persecutions (Tertullian, Apology, chap. 50) The early Christian spirit is shown in the following extract from Tertullian (c. 150-230 A.D.), one of the Fathers of the Western Church. His Apology is an important work on the relations of the Christians and the imperial government. Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed. Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death, as Cicero in Tusculans, as Seneca in his Chances, as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus; and yet their words do not find as many disciples as Christians do, teachers not by words, but by their deeds. That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress. For who that contemplates it, is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it? who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines? and when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fulness of God's grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness, by giving in exchange his blood? For that secures the remission of all offences. 33. Edicts of Diocletian against the Christians (Eusebius, P., Church History, book VIII, chaps. 2, 6) The following descriptions of the edicts of Diocletian, 303 A.D., are from the early Church historian, Eusebius Pamphili, who was Bishop of Cæsarea from 314 to his death, about 340 A.D. 2. This was the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian, in Dystrus (which the Romans call March), when the feast of the Saviour's passion was near at hand, and royal edicts were published everywhere, commanding that the churches should be razed to the ground, the Scriptures destroyed by fire, those who held positions of honor degraded, and the household servants, if they persisted in the Christian profession, be deprived of their liberty. And such was the first decree against us. But issuing other decrees not long after, the Emperor commanded that all the rulers of the churches in every place should be first put in prison and afterwards compelled by every device to offer sacrifice. 6. Then as the first decrees were followed by others commanding that those in prison should be set free, if they would offer sacrifice, but that those who refused should be tormented with countless tortures; who could again at that time count the multitude of martyrs throughout each province, and especially throughout Africa and among the race of the Moors, in Thebais and throughout Egypt, from which having already gone into other cities and provinces, they became illustrious in their martyrdoms! 34. Certificate of having sacrificed to the Pagan Gods The following certificate, issued in Egypt during the persecutions of Decius, in 250 A.D., comes from an old papyrus, found in 1893. It was issued in a small village in Egypt, and shows how suspected Christians were forced to clear themselves of suspicion by sacrificing publicly to the old gods. To the Commissioners of Sacrifice in the Village of Alexander's Island: from Aurelius Diogenes, the son of Satabus, of the Village of Alexander's Island, aged 72 years: scar on his right eyebrow. I have always sacrificed regularly to the gods, and now, in your presence, in accordance with the edict, I have done sacrifice, and poured the drink offering, and tasted of the sacrifices, and I request you to certify the same. Farewell. Handed in by me, Aurelius Diogenes. I certify that I saw him sacrificing . . . [Signature obliterated,] Magistrate. Done in the first year of the Emperor, Cæsar Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius, Pius, Felix, Augustus: the second of the month Epith. (June 26, 250 A.D.) 35. The Empire and Christianity in Conflict (Kingsley, Chas., Introduction to Hypatia; selected) The Reverend Charles Kingsley (1819-75), an English writer, in the Introduction to his historical novel Hypatia, gives a good picture of the conflict between the Empire and the Christian Church, and the final victory of the latter, from which the following selection has been taken. For somewhat more than four hundred years the Roman Empire and the Christian Church, born into the world almost at the same moment, had been developing themselves side by side as two great rival powers, in deadly struggle for the possession of the human race. The weapons of the Empire had been not merely an overwhelming physical force, and a ruthless lust of aggressive conquest: but, even more powerful still, an unequalled genius for organization, and an uniform system of external law and order. This was generally a real boon to conquered nations, because it substituted a fixed and regular spoliation for the fortuitous and arbitrary miseries of savage warfare: but it arrayed, meanwhile, on the side of the Empire the wealthier citizens of every province, by allowing them their share in the plunder of the laboring classes beneath them. These, in the country districts, were utterly enslaved; while in the cities, nominal freedom was of little use to masses kept from starvation by the alms of the government, and drugged into brutish good-humor by a vast system of public spectacles, in which the realms of nature and of art were ransacked to glut the wonder, lust, and ferocity of a degraded population. Against this vast organization the Church had been fighting for now four hundred years, armed only with its own mighty and all-embracing message, and with the manifestation of a spirit of purity and virtue, of love and self-sacrifice, which had proved itself mightier to melt and weld together the hearts of men than all the force and terror, all the mechanical organization, all the sensual baits with which the Empire had been contending against that Gospel in which it had recognized instinctively, and at first sight, its internecine foe. And now the Church had conquered. The weak things of this world had confounded the strong. In spite of the devilish cruelties of persecutors; in spite of the contaminating atmosphere of sin which surrounded her; in spite of having to form herself, not out of a race of |