Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire facts for kids
Christians were persecuted throughout the Roman Empire, beginning in the 1st century AD and ending in the 4th century. Originally a polytheistic empire in the traditions of Roman paganism and the Hellenistic religion, as Christianity spread through the empire, it came into ideological conflict with the imperial cult of ancient Rome. Pagan practices such as making sacrifices to the deified emperors or other gods were abhorrent to Christians as their beliefs prohibited idolatry. The state and other members of civic society punished Christians for treason, various rumored crimes, illegal assembly, and for introducing an alien cult that led to Roman apostasy. The first, localized Neronian persecution occurred under Emperor Nero (r. 54 – 68) in Rome. A more general persecution occurred during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161 – 180). After a lull, persecution resumed under Emperors Decius (r. 249 – 251) and Trebonianus Gallus (r. 251 – 253). The Decian persecution was particularly extensive. The persecution of Emperor Valerian (r. 253 – 260) ceased with his notable capture by the Sasanian Empire's Shapur I (r. 240 – 270) at the Battle of Edessa during the Roman–Persian Wars. His successor, Gallienus (r. 253 – 268), halted the persecutions.
The Augustus Diocletian (r. 283 – 305) began the Diocletianic persecution, the final general persecution of Christians, which continued to be enforced in parts of the empire until the Augustus Galerius (r. 310 – 313) issued the Edict of Serdica and the Augustus Maximinus Daza (r. 310 – 313) died. After Constantine the Great (r. 306 – 337) defeated his rival Maxentius (r. 306 – 312) at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in October 312, he and his co-emperor, Licinius, issued the Edict of Milan (313), which permitted all religions, including Christianity, to be tolerated.
Contents
Religion in Roman society
Roman religion at the beginning of the Roman Empire (27 BC - 476) was polytheistic and local. Each city worshipped its own set of gods and goddesses that had originally been derived from ancient Greece and become Romanized. This polis-religion was embedded in, and inseparable from, "the general structures of the ancient city; there was no religious identity separate from political or civic identity, and the essence of religion lay in ritual rather than belief". Private religion and its public practices were under the control of public officials, primarily, the Senate. Religion was central to being Roman, its practices widespread, and intertwined with politics.
Support for this form of traditional Roman polytheism had begun to decline by the first century BC when it was seen, according to various writers and historians of the time, as having become empty and ineffectual. A combination of external factors such as war and invasions, and internal factors such as the formal nature and political manipulation of traditional religion, is said to have created the slow decline of polytheism. This left a vacuum in the personal lives of people that they filled with other forms of worship: such as the imperial cult, various mystery cults, imported eastern religions, and Christianity.
The Roman approach to empire building included a cultural permeability that allowed foreigners to become a part of it, but the Roman religious practice of adopting foreign gods and practices into its pantheon did not apply equally to all gods: "Many divinities were brought to Rome and installed as part of the Roman state religion, but a great many more were not". This characteristic openness has led many, such as Ramsay MacMullen to say that in its process of expansion, the Roman Empire was "completely tolerant, in heaven as on earth", but to also go on and immediately add: "That [tolerance] was only half the story".
MacMullen says the most significant factor in determining whether one received 'tolerance' or 'intolerance' from Roman religion was if that religion honored one's god "according to ancestral custom". Christians were thought of badly for abandoning their ancestral roots in Judaism. However, how religion was practiced was also a factor. Roman officials had become suspicious of the worshippers of Dionysus and their practice of Bacchanalia as far back as 186 BC because it "took place at night". Private divination, astrology, and 'Chaldean practices' were magics associated with night worship, and as such, had carried the threat of banishment and execution since the early imperial period. Archaeologist Luke Lavan explains that is because night worship was private and secret and associated with treason and secret plots against the emperor. Bacchic associations were dissolved, leaders were arrested and executed, women were forbidden to hold important positions in the cult, no Roman citizen could be a priest, and strict control of the cult was thereafter established.
This became the pattern for the Roman state's response to whatever was seen as a religious threat. In the first century of the common era, there were "periodic expulsions of astrologers, philosophers and even teachers of rhetoric... as well as Jews and...the cult of Isis". Druids also received the same treatment, as did Christians.
Reasons, causes, and contributing factors
Reasons
A. N. Sherwin-White records that serious discussion of the reasons for Roman persecution of Christians began in 1890 when it produced "20 years of controversy" and three main opinions: first, there was the theory held by most French and Belgian scholars that "there was a general enactment, precisely formulated and valid for the whole empire, which forbade the practice of the Christian religion. The origin of this is most commonly attributed to Nero, but sometimes to Domitian". This has evolved into a 'common law' theory which gives great weight to Tertullian's description of prosecution resulting from the 'accusation of the Name', as being Nero's plan. Nero had an older resolution forbidding the introduction of new religions, but the application to Christians is seen as coming from the much older Republican principle that it was a capital offense to introduce a new superstition without the authorization of the Roman state. Sherwin-White adds that this theory might explain persecution in Rome, but it fails to explain it in the provinces. For that, a second theory is needed.
The second theory, which originated with German scholars, and is the best-known theory to English readers, is that of coercion (curtailment). It holds that Christians were punished by Roman governors through the ordinary use of their power to keep order because Christians had introduced "an alien cult which induced 'national apostasy', [and] the abandonment of the traditional Roman religion. Others substituted for this a general aversion to the established order and disobedience to constituted authority. All of [this] school seem to envisage the procedure as a direct police action, or inquisition against notable malefactors, arrest, and punishment, without the ordinary forms of trial".
A third school asserted that Christians were prosecuted for specific criminal offenses such as magic, illegal assembly, and treason – a charge based on their refusal to worship the divinity of the Roman emperor. Sherwin-White says "this third opinion has usually been combined with the coercion theory, but some scholars have attributed all Christian persecution to a single criminal charge, notably treason, or illegal assembly, or the introduction of an alien cult". In spite of the fact that malicious rumors did exist, this theory has been the least verified of the three by later scholarship.
Social and religious causes
.jpg)
Ideological conflict
Joseph Plescia says persecution was caused by an ideological conflict. Caesar was seen as divine. Christians could accept only one divinity, and it wasn't Caesar. Cairns describes the ideological conflict as: "The exclusive sovereignty of Christ clashed with Caesar's claims to his own exclusive sovereignty."
In this clash of ideologies, "the ordinary Christian lived under a constant threat of denunciation and the possibility of arraignment on capital charges". Joseph Bryant asserts it was not easy for Christians to hide their religion and pretend to Romanness either, since renunciation of the world was an aspect of their faith that demanded "numerous departures from conventional norms and pursuits". The Christian had exacting moral standards that included avoiding contact with those that still lay in bondage to 'the Evil One (2 Corinthians 6:1-18; 1 John 2: 15-18; Revelation 18: 4; II Clement 6; Epistle of Barnabas, 1920). Life as a Christian required daily courage, "with the radical choice of Christ or the world being forced upon the believer in countless ways".
"Christian attendance at civic festivals, athletic games, and theatrical performances were fraught with danger, since in addition to the 'sinful frenzy' and 'debauchery' aroused, each was held in honor of pagan deities. Various occupations and careers were regarded as inconsistent with Christian principles, most notably military service and public office, the manufacturing of idols, and of course all pursuits which affirmed polytheistic culture, such as music, acting, and school-teaching (cf. Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 16). Even the wearing of jewelry and fine apparel was judged harshly by Christian moralists and ecclesiastical officials, as was the use of cosmetics and perfumes".
In Rome, citizens were expected to demonstrate their loyalty to Rome by participating in the rites of the state religion which had numerous feast days, processions and offerings throughout the year. Christians simply could not, and so they were seen as belonging to an illicit religion that was anti-social and subversive.
Privatizing
McDonald explains that the privatizing of religion was another factor in persecution as "Christians moved their activities from the streets to the more secluded domains of houses, shops and women's apartments, severing the normal ties between religion, tradition and public institutions like cities and nations".
McDonald adds that Christians sometimes "met at night, in secret, and this also aroused suspicion among the pagan population accustomed to religion as a public event; rumours abounded that Christians committed flagitia, scelera, and maleficia— "outrageous crimes", "wickedness", and "evil deeds" — due to their rumoured practices of eating the "blood and body" of Christ.
Inclusivity
Early Christian communities were highly inclusive in terms of social stratification and other social categories, much more so than were the Roman voluntary associations. Heterogeneity characterized the groups formed by Paul the Apostle, and the role of women was much greater than in either of the forms of Judaism or paganism in existence at the time. Early Christians were told to love others, even enemies, and Christians of all classes and sorts called each other "brother" and "sister". This inclusivity of various social classes and backgrounds stems from early Christian beliefs in the importance of performing missionary work among Jews and gentiles in hopes of converting to a new way of life in accordance of gospel standards (Mark 16:15-16, Galatians 5:16-26). This was perceived by the opponents of Christianity as a "disruptive and, most significantly, a competitive menace to the traditional class/gender-based order of Roman society".
Exclusivity
Edward Gibbon argued that the tendency of Christian converts to renounce their family and country, (and their frequent predictions of impending disasters), instilled a feeling of apprehension in their pagan neighbors. He wrote:
By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offense. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred.
Rejection of paganism
Many pagans believed that bad things would happen if the established pagan gods were not properly propitiated and reverenced. Bart Ehrman says that: "By the end of the second century, the Christian apologist Tertullian complained about the widespread perception that Christians were the source of all disasters brought against the human race by the gods.
They think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, 'Away with the Christians to the lions!"
Roman identity
Roman religion was largely what determined Romanness. The Christian refusal to sacrifice to the Roman gods was seen as an act of defiance against this cultural and political character and the very nature of Rome itself. MacMullen quotes Eusebius as having written that the pagans "have thoroughly persuaded themselves that they act rightly and that we are guilty of the greatest impiety". According to Wilken, "The polytheistic worldview of the Romans did not incline them to understand a refusal to worship, even symbolically, the state gods.". MacMullen explains this meant Christians were "constantly on the defensive", and although they responded with appeals to philosophy and reason and anything they thought might weigh against ta patria (the ancestral customs), they could not practice Roman religion and continue fealty to their own religion. Abel Bibliowicz says that, amongst the Romans, "The prejudice became so instinctive that eventually, mere confession of the name 'Christian' could be sufficient grounds for execution".
Contributing factors
Roman legal system
Historian Joyce E. Salisbury points out that "The random nature of the persecutions between 64 and 203 has led to much discussion about what constituted the legal basis for the persecutions, and the answer has remained somewhat elusive ..." Candida Moss says there is "scant" evidence of martyrdom when using Roman Law as the measure. Historian Joseph Plescia asserts that the first evidence of Roman law concerning Christians is that of Trajan. T. D. Barnes and Ste. Croix both argue there was no Roman law concerning the Christians before Decius and the third century; Barnes agrees that the central fact of the juridical basis of the persecutions is Trajan's rescript to Pliny; after Trajan's rescript, (if not before), Christianity became a crime in a special category.
Other scholars trace the precedent for killing Christians to Nero. Barnes explains that, though there was no Roman law, there was "ample precedent for suppressing foreign superstitions" prior to Nero. Precedent was based on the strong feeling that only the ancestral Gods ought to be worshipped. Such feeling could "acquire the force of law", since the ancestral customs – the Mos maiorum – were the most important source of Roman law. In Joseph Bryant's view, "Nero's mass executions ... set [such] a precedent, and thereafter the mere fact of 'being a Christian' was sufficient for state officials to impose capital punishment".
Barnes says "Keresztes, goes so far as to claim that 'there is today an almost general agreement that the Christians, under normal circumstances, were not tried on the basis of either the ius coercitionis [(the governor's 'power of arrest')], or the general criminal law, but on the basis of a special law introduced during Nero's rule, proscribing Christians as such". This theory gives great weight to Tertullian, and Nero's older resolution forbidding the introduction of new religions, and the even older Republican principle that it was a capital offense to introduce a new superstition without the authorization of the Roman state.
Bryant agrees, adding, "This situation is strikingly illustrated in the famous correspondence between Emperor Trajan (98-117) and Pliny the Younger". Trajan's correspondence with Pliny does indeed show that Christians were being executed for being Christian before AD 110, yet Pliny's letters also show there was no empire–wide Roman law, making Christianity a crime, that was generally known at that time. Herbert Musurillo, translator and scholar of The Acts of the Christian martyr's Introduction says Ste. Croix asserted the governor's special powers were all that was needed.
Due to the informal and personality-driven nature of the Roman legal system, nothing "other than a prosecutor" (an accuser, including a member of the public, not only a holder of an official position), "a charge of Christianity, and a governor willing to punish on that charge" was required to bring a legal case against a Christian. Roman law was largely concerned with property rights, leaving many gaps in criminal and public law. Thus the process cognition extra ordinem ("special investigation") filled the legal void left by both code and court. All provincial governors had the right to run trials in this way as part of their imperium in the province.
In cognitio extra ordinem, an accuser called a delator brought before the governor an individual to be charged with a certain offense—in this case, that of being a Christian. This delator was prepared to act as the prosecutor for the trial, and could be rewarded with some of the accused's property if he made an adequate case or charged with calumnia (malicious prosecution) if his case was insufficient. If the governor agreed to hear the case—and he was free not to—he oversaw the trial from start to finish: he heard the arguments, decided on the verdict, and passed the sentence. Christians sometimes offered themselves up for punishment, and the hearings of such voluntary martyrs were conducted in the same way.
More often than not, the outcome of the case was wholly subject to the governor's personal opinion. While some tried to rely on precedent or imperial opinion where they could, as evidenced by Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan concerning the Christians, such guidance was often unavailable. In many cases months' and weeks' travel away from Rome, these governors had to make decisions about running their provinces according to their own instincts and knowledge.
Even if these governors had easy access to the city, they would not have found much official legal guidance on the matter of the Christians. Before the anti-Christian policies under Decius beginning in 250, there was no empire-wide edict against the Christians, and the only solid precedent was that set by Trajan in his reply to Pliny: the name of "Christian" alone was sufficient grounds for punishment and Christians were not to be sought out by the government. There is speculation that Christians were also condemned for contumacia—disobedience toward the magistrate, akin to the modern "contempt of court"—but the evidence on this matter is mixed. Melito of Sardis later asserted that Antoninus Pius ordered that Christians were not to be executed without proper trial.
Given the lack of guidance and distance of imperial supervision, the outcomes of the trials of Christians varied widely. Many followed Pliny's formula: they asked if the accused individuals were Christians, gave those who answered in the affirmative a chance to recant, and offered those who denied or recanted a chance to prove their sincerity by making a sacrifice to the Roman gods and swearing by the emperor's genius. Those who persisted were executed.
According to the Christian apologist Tertullian, some governors in Africa helped accused Christians secure acquittals or refused to bring them to trial. Overall, Roman governors were more interested in making apostates than martyrs: one proconsul of Asia, Arrius Antoninus, when confronted with a group of voluntary martyrs during one of his assize tours, sent a few to be executed and snapped at the rest, "If you want to die, you wretches, you can use ropes or precipices."
During the Great Persecution which lasted from 303 to 312/313, governors were given direct edicts from the emperor. Christian churches and texts were to be destroyed, meeting for Christian worship was forbidden, and those Christians who refused to recant lost their legal rights. Later, it was ordered that Christian clergy be arrested and that all inhabitants of the empire sacrifice to the gods. Still, no specific punishment was prescribed by these edicts and governors retained the leeway afforded to them by distance. Lactantius reported that some governors claimed to have shed no Christian blood, and there is evidence that others turned a blind eye to evasions of the edict or only enforced it when absolutely necessary.
Government motivation
When a governor was sent to a province, he was charged with the task of keeping it pacata atque quieta—settled and orderly. His primary interest would be to keep the populace happy; thus when unrest against the Christians arose in his jurisdiction, he would be inclined to placate it with appeasement.
Political leaders in the Roman Empire were also public cult leaders. Roman religion revolved around public ceremonies and sacrifices; personal belief was not as central an element as it is in many modern faiths. Thus while the private beliefs of Christians may have been largely immaterial to many Roman elites, this public religious practice was in their estimation critical to the social and political well-being of both the local community and the empire as a whole. Honoring tradition in the right way – pietas – was key to stability and success. Hence the Romans protected the integrity of cults practiced by communities under their rule, seeing it as inherently correct to honor one's ancestral traditions; for this reason the Romans for a long time tolerated the highly exclusive Jewish sect, even though some Romans despised it.
Historian H. H. Ben-Sasson has proposed that the "Crisis under Caligula" (37–41) was the "first open break" between Rome and the Jews. After the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73), Jews were officially allowed to practice their religion as long as they paid the Jewish tax. There is debate among historians over whether the Roman government simply saw Christians as a sect of Judaism prior to Nerva's modification of the tax in 96. From then on, practicing Jews paid the tax while Christians did not, providing hard evidence of an official distinction. Part of the Roman disdain for Christianity, then, arose in large part from the sense that it was bad for society. In the 3rd century, the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry wrote:
How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? ... What else are they than fighters against God?
Once distinguished from Judaism, Christianity was no longer seen as simply a bizarre sect of an old and venerable religion; it was a superstitio. Superstition had for the Romans a much more powerful and dangerous connotation than it does for much of the Western world today: to them, this term meant a set of religious practices that were not only different, but corrosive to society, "disturbing a man's mind in such a way that he is really going insane" and causing him to lose humanitas (humanity). The persecution of "superstitious" sects was hardly unheard-of in Roman history: an unnamed foreign cult was persecuted during a drought in 428 BC, some initiates of the Bacchic cult were executed when deemed out-of-hand in 186 BC, and measures were taken against the Celtic Druids during the early Principate.
Even so, the level of persecution experienced by any given community of Christians still depended upon how threatening the local official deemed this new superstitio to be. Christians' beliefs would not have endeared them to many government officials: they worshipped a convicted criminal, refused to swear by the emperor's genius, harshly criticized Rome in their holy books, and suspiciously conducted their rites in private. In the early third century one magistrate told Christians "I cannot bring myself so much as to listen to people who speak ill of the Roman way of religion."
See also
- Acts of the Martyrs
- Christian martyrs
- Damnatio ad bestias
- Hellenistic religion
- Interpretatio graeca
- Hindu terrorism
- Martyrdom of Polycarp
- New-martyr
- Scillitan Martyrs
- Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire
