The Roman Persecutions of Christians

Roman religion was less about private belief than about public practice. Cities and the state offered sacrifices to keep the pax deorum, the peace between gods and humans, and from the time of Augustus honours to the emperor became part of civic loyalty. Romans tolerated many foreign cults, and Jews, whose ancestral religion was respected for its antiquity, were usually excused from sacrifice. Christians, however, were a new movement that drew members from many peoples and refused all sacrifice to the gods.

To many Romans this looked like atheism and disloyalty. Rumours spread that Christians practised secret crimes at their meetings, and when floods, plagues or invasions came, some blamed them for angering the gods. The first known persecution came in 64 CE. After a great fire destroyed much of Rome, the historian Tacitus reports, Nero shifted suspicion onto the Christians and had many of them executed in cruel public spectacles. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died in Rome under Nero, though the details are not recorded by contemporary sources.

For the next two centuries there was no general law against Christians. Around 112 CE Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, wrote to Emperor Trajan asking how to handle Christians brought before him. Trajan replied that they should not be hunted down or accused anonymously, but if properly charged and they refused to sacrifice, they should be punished. Pliny’s letter is revealing: he admits he found no crime among the Christians beyond what he called a stubborn superstition, yet he executed those who would not recant. This pattern of local, reactive trials explains most martyrdoms of the second century, including those of Bishop Polycarp at Smyrna, of the Christians of Lyon in 177, and of the young mother Perpetua and the slave Felicity at Carthage in 203.

The situation changed in the third century, a time of military crisis and plague. In 250 Emperor Decius ordered all inhabitants of the empire to sacrifice to the gods and obtain a certificate proving they had done so. The edict may not have been aimed at Christians alone, but it forced them to choose. Some died, among them Bishop Fabian of Rome; many sacrificed or bought false certificates. Valerian went further in 257–258, targeting clergy, banning meetings and confiscating property. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was beheaded in 258. In 260 Valerian’s son Gallienus restored church property, and a long period of peace followed.

The last and most severe campaign, the Great Persecution, began under Diocletian in 303. A series of edicts ordered churches destroyed and scriptures surrendered, then clergy arrested, and finally required everyone to sacrifice. Enforcement varied greatly. In the West it was brief and mild in the lands of Constantius, father of Constantine. In the East, under Galerius and later Maximinus Daia, it lasted until 311–313. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, an eyewitness, recorded the martyrs of Palestine by name.

The persecution failed. In 311 Galerius, gravely ill, issued an edict granting Christians the right to exist and asking them to pray for the state. After defeating his rival Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in 312, Constantine, who attributed his victory to the Christian God, joined his colleague Licinius in 313 in the agreement known as the Edict of Milan, granting freedom of worship and restoring confiscated property.

No Roman census of martyrs exists, and ancient numbers are rare. Christian writers of later centuries, and medieval collections of saints’ lives, multiplied martyrs and filled gaps with legend; some later traditions spoke of thousands killed in single events. Historians treat many of these accounts as pious literature rather than records.

Modern estimates are far lower. Edward Gibbon in the eighteenth century suggested fewer than two thousand deaths in the Great Persecution. The historian W. H. C. Frend later proposed a figure in the region of three thousand. Most scholars place the total for all three centuries in the low thousands, in a population of Christians that may have numbered several million by 300. These deaths were nonetheless real, and many more suffered imprisonment, forced labour in the mines, torture and loss of property.

In recent decades some scholars, notably Candida Moss, have argued that early Christians built a powerful story of continuous persecution out of what were actually limited and sporadic events. Others respond that even rare persecutions created lasting fear. Nearly all agree that the experience of martyrdom, real and remembered, shaped Christian identity profoundly.

The sources themselves explain why certainty is impossible. Pagan writers mention Christians only occasionally, and Roman court records have not survived. The best evidence comes from a handful of early martyr accounts, such as the letter of the churches of Lyon and Vienne preserved by Eusebius, and from Eusebius’s own eyewitness record of the persecution in Palestine, which names fewer than a hundred victims there over eight years. Historians generalise from such fragments with caution, which is why responsible estimates are given as ranges rather than precise totals.

Christians honoured their martyrs from the beginning, gathering at their tombs on the anniversary of their deaths, which they called the martyrs’ birthdays into heaven. After 313 churches rose over these graves, among them the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Rome, and martyrs’ relics spread across the Christian world. Accounts of their trials, such as the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, partly based on Perpetua’s own prison diary, became some of the most widely read Christian texts.

The persecution also left divisions. Those who had lapsed sought readmission, and quarrels over their treatment produced lasting schisms, such as the Donatist movement in North Africa. Within a century of the Edict of Milan, Christianity became the favoured religion of the empire, and traditional cults were themselves restricted under emperors such as Theodosius I. Historians often note this reversal, in which a persecuted minority came to hold power.

Today the martyrs of the Roman era are venerated in Catholic, Orthodox and other churches. Historians aim to honour their courage while separating the documented record from the legends that later grew around it.