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Diocletian and the Great Persecution
The Great Persecution of Christians by Diocletian and his pagan successors; its causes, effectiveness and aftermath
The Roman Empire was in trouble. The death of Alexander Severus in AD235 had thrown the empire into a fifty-year period of almost total anarchy. The state had been restored by the campaigns of Aurelian and Probus but it was a precarious arrangement. The instability looked set to continue on the blood-soaked accession of Diocletian in AD284. Who could expect anything different from the son of a Illyrian scribe[1], who was linked to the deaths of two emperors[2] and may even have killed his rival for the purple, the praetorian prefect, Aper, with his own hands in full view of the congregated army?[3] Yet it would be Diocletian who would reform, restructure and evolve the Roman Empire and reign for over twenty years, longer than any other since Antoninus Pius over one hundred and fifty years before.
Despite these incredible achievements, a certain section of the source material remembers Diocletian as “the inventor of wicked deeds and the contriver of evils, who destroyed everything.”[4] This opinion comes from the Christian author, Lactantius, and is coloured by the persecution of Christianity that began during Diocletian’s reign. Lactantius and other Roman Christians “tended to portray the ‘Great’ persecution of Diocletian as a bloodbath”[5] and the Liber Pontificalis claims that 17,000 Christians were martyred throughout the empire in less than a month[6]. These numbers are hardly credible, however, in the final years of his reign there were several edicts issued by Diocletian aimed specifically at Christians. The ‘Great’ persecution did take place, if not to the levels of severity claimed by many prejudice sources. So why after nineteen years did Diocletian decide to attack the now established religion of Christianity and how effective, if at all, was he? Was he solely responsible or did his pagan colleagues of the Tetrarchy take advantage of a weakened or angered Diocletian to satisfy their own anti-Christian sentiments? Before we look at the development of Christianity and the ‘Great’ persecution, we must identify the new government that was put in effect by Diocletian. He had surprised everyone by, after having gained undisputed leadership of the Roman Empire in AD285 when he defeated Carinus on the Margus River[7], bestowing the title of Caesar and later Augustus[8] with control over the western provinces on his general, Maximian[9]. Together the two emperors battled against the numerous foreign problems, defeating Sarmatians, Persians, Alemanni and the Bagaudae[10]. Despite the major problem of the usurpation of Carausius in Britain, who had proved difficult to dislodge, by AD290 Diocletian’s experiment had proved highly effective and instead of Maximian succeeding him on his death, Diocletian wanted to maintain the joint emperorship. He did this by having Maximian and himself each appoint a Caesar, who would succeed when the Augusti died. The arrangement was sealed when, on 1st March AD293, Maximian adopted his praetorian commander, Julius Constantius, as his son and Caesar while Diocletian conferred the corresponding position on one of his generals, Galerius Maximianus. Collectively, as shown by the porphyry statue of the tetrarchs[11], the Augusti and their Caesars were able to divide up the empire and face the threats individually or in groups[12]. By the year AD300 the major military crisis was over and the Tetrarchy had re-established the Rhine, Danube and Mesopotamian frontiers. The remainder of Diocletian’s reign involved internal and domestic affairs. The extent of Diocletian’s reforms is not the subject of this essay but some of them must be mentioned. Probably the most important amendment was the introduction of the two-tier system with regard to provinces, which were grouped into twelve large dioceses to be governed by a vicar, who had no military responsibility. The army had a different command structure and was distributed in a different way to the dioceses, making successful rebellion or insurrection nigh on impossible. Diocletian won more praise for his impartial lawgiving and protecting of the taxpayer from those who would exploit them and the entire tax system was overhauled with higher quality coins being issued to halt inflation. When this did not work he introduced an edict on maximum prices hoping to settle the monetary crisis, but due to the size and population of the empire it proved to be virtually unenforceable. Another area that Diocletian brought reform was the religious policy of the empire. Throughout the third century, successive emperors had promoted the worship of Sol Invictus as a unifying theme. Diocletian, however, being particularly pious, favoured the traditional gods of Jove and Hercules. He used imperial propaganda to liken his and his colleague Maximian’s roles to that of their heavenly counterparts, with Diocletian as Jove, the parental and senior figure, and Maximian as Hercules acting as his earthly agent ridding the world of evils[13]. The joint emperors were proclaimed the sons of their particular deity and with this divine parentage they hoped to inspire respect and to distance themselves from ordinary mortals. It would the tetrarchs attention to the question of religion and “the linking of the fortunes of the tetrarchic system so publicly to the most venerable gods of the pantheon”[14] that would have dire consequences for Christians. By the turn of the fourth century, Christians within the Roman Empire had had to suffer persecution from different groups and individuals. First the Jews had condemned them as blasphemers and forced them out of Judaea in a form of Christian diaspora. In Rome, they had been accused of starting the Great Fire of Rome by the emperor Nero, who had many convicted not just for arson but for a “hatred of the human race”[15], not only using them as scapegoats but also as human torches for his nocturnal games. After two centuries of relative tolerance[16] when Christians, in the words of the emperor Trajan, “were not to be sought out”[17], the first ‘real’ persecution appeared under Decius[18] (AD249-51). This was followed up by the twin edicts of Valerian aimed specifically at Christians and the church hierarchy in an attempt to eradicate Christianity from the upper echelons of Roman society. However, despite this opposition, the Christian Church had continued to grow so much so that Christians were now a significant minority group within the Roman Empire and many of their number occupied high places in the army and the imperial administration. Several major Christian areas had already emerged around the Bishop at Rome, in Egypt centred on Alexandria and especially in Africa. Most of the emperors since Trajan, Decius and Valerian being the major exceptions, had followed a theory of religious toleration throughout the empire and for the first nineteen years of his reign Diocletian had done the same, but in AD303 three conspicuously anti-Christian edicts were issued beginning the ‘Great’ persecution. Why had Diocletian suddenly changed his policy on religious tolerance? It is possible that a planned persecution was not so sudden as in around AD298, Diocletian had issued an order requiring all soldiers and imperial administrators to sacrifice to the gods and those who refused (i.e. Christians) were forced to quit the service. However, this may just have been an answer to the rumours of disloyalty in the army following Galerius’s disastrous defeat by the Persians near Carrhae in AD296 and by removing Christians, the army could be united under the banner of Jove and his earthly representatives. Another possible motive for the purging of many Christians from public and military office and the persecution itself that may have arisen from the renewed Persian threat was the emergence of Manichaeism. Founded by a Syriac-speaking Babylonian, Mani (216-76), and based on Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Gnostic Christianity[19], the Manichees had caused problems for the Persian King before being sent into Roman territory[20]. These dualists may have helped elevate the unrest in Egypt[21] following Galerius’s defeat by Narses into rebellions by Lucius Domitianus and then Aurelius Achilleus, forcing Diocletian to reduce several cities and undertake a huge siege of Alexandria in AD298. This may have affected views towards Christians due to the knowledge of the Manichaen links to Gnosticism or because Romans[22], through ignorance, had thought a group of ‘Christians’ were the problem and therefore had to be legislated against, however, the evidence for this is sketchy and Christians openly disliked Manichees as much as, if not more than, pagan sacrifice. The timing of Diocletian’s change of heart towards the Christians could be paralleled with the elevation of Galerius to serve as Diocletian’s Caesar in the East. Many Christian writers, like Lactantius above, were eager to attack Galerius as an enemy of the faith and the hatred of certain individuals close to the emperor for Christianity cannot be discounted as influencing the instituting of the ‘Great’ persecution. Indeed, Galerius and the violently anti-Christian, Neoplatonist, governor of Bithynia, Hierocles are thought to have spent the entire winter of AD302-3 arguing for a persecution of Christians, and that only after some hesitation did Diocletian agree. However, the occasion chosen for the issuing of the first edict against Christians does not make it seem like Diocletian was reluctant. The day was 24th February, which was the Roman festival of Terminalia celebrating the end of the winter, an “ opportune moment for starting the attempt to terminate the Christian Church”[23]. Also the day before the first edict the most prominent Christian Church in Nicomedia situated near the imperial palace was destroyed “by an official party led by the praetorian prefect”[24]. Another raison d'être for Diocletian to attack Christians was his own personal piety. As we have already seen, the linking of himself and his fellow tetrarchs with the traditional Roman gods made the atypical, monotheistic beliefs of Jews and Christians far more apparent. However, while Jews had enjoyed religious tolerance for over three centuries since the dictatorship of Julius Caesar due to the ancient roots of their faith, Christianity was still a relatively new religion and their growth in numbers could be linked to the growing troubles faced by the empire over the last century. So with the new prominence of Roman ideology under the Tetrarchy, with the “heavy emphasis on moral and religious sanctions”[25], Christianity could be interpreted as subversive and extremely dangerous to the future security of the empire. Some pagan priests may have latched onto Diocletian’s want for religious backing for the Tetrarchy and used the ‘threat’ of Christians as an excuse for the failure to find good omens at an imperial sacrifice. At a solemn sacrifice attended by Diocletian and Galerius, the priests could not read the signs on the sacrificial victims’ livers. Someone blamed the Christians who were present for making the sign of the cross. This complaint reached the ears of Diocletian, who then consulted the oracle of Apollo at Miletus[26]; the god replied that the Christians were causing false oracles. This religious warning may have pushed the pious Diocletian towards drastic action against the Christians, who were not favoured by the gods, and shortly after his first edict was issued. As I have intimated above, the Diocletianic persecution came in the form of anti-Christian edicts. The first, issued on 24th February AD303, ordered that all churches were to be dismantled, all Bibles, liturgical books and Scriptures surrendered, sacred vessels confiscated, all meetings of worship forbidden[27], all Christians in imperial service forced to quit, privileges of honestiores rank lost, all Christian liberti re-enslaved and no Christian could act as a delator in cases of personal injury, adultery or theft[28]. With such a meticulous and scrupulous piece of legislation, combined with being launched with a sense of occasion, any suggestion of Diocletian’s indifference and hesitation towards the persecution is very difficult to uphold even if we do accept that Galerius was behind the bulk of the anti-Christian activity. This was followed up by a second edict during the summer AD303, which ordered the arrest of all Christian clergy. This caused a logistical problem because due to the number of ‘confessors’ the prisons were unable to accommodate them all[29]. Perhaps with this in mind and again a strong sense of occasion, a third edict was issued on the first day of Diocletian’s twentieth year as emperor, reiterating what the second said with the amendment that all those imprisoned who sacrificed to the gods would be allowed to go free. The fourth anti-Christian edict was issued in April AD304 and seems to have been exclusively the work of Galerius who had taken control of the east from the dying Diocletian. This edict marks the ‘Great’ persecution’s ‘Final Solution’ as regards the Christians for all citizens were required to give public sacrifice to the gods on the pain of death. Eusebius tells of how the next ten years of the persecution were untenable[30] as everyone, pagan, Jew or Christian was under suspicion. The persecution was brought to end by an unexpected source near a decade later. The interceding eight years had not been kind to Galerius, who was by AD311 the senior Augustus in the Tetrarchy, but was in the grip of the frightful cancer that would soon claim his life. He had become convinced that his past behaviour had come back to haunt him and in April AD311 he rescinded his anti-Christian edict. In the words of Eusebius, “he pulled himself together, made open confession to God and lost no time in stopping the persecution of Christians”[31], declaring religious tolerance throughout the empire[32]. However, Galerius’s Caesar, Maximin Daia, revived the persecution less than six months later. To Christians, Daia was “anathema”[33], a persecutor every bit as bad as Galerius, a textbook tyrant unbridled in his lusts[34] and the forger of the anti-Christian Acts of Pilate[35]. The petitions by some pagan communities in the East for him to suppress disloyal Christians may also have egged on Daia[36] to reinstate the persecution, which was not finally ended until the defeat and death of Daia at Taurus in AD313. So after ten years of almost constant persecution, how effective had the ‘Great’ persecution been? The most obvious place to start is to look at the fact that less than ten years after the end of the persecution, a Christian emperor sat on the throne of the Caesars and Christianity was now the official religion of the Roman Empire. This would point to the absolute failure of the persecution and despite the exaggeration of the Liber Pontificalis of those martyred, the numbers of Christians dead appears to be relatively little and confined to the more important and prominent members of the community, such as Marcellinus[37], Bishop of Rome and Eusebius’s[38] mentor Pamphilius. The organisation of the ‘Great’ persecution has been heavily criticised for while the anti-Christian edicts issued by Diocletian and Galerius were meant to be empire wide, the persecution in the west seems to have been confined to some churches being pulled down by Constantius[39] in Gaul, Britain and Spain and no one was executed. Even the obvious Christians in Rome were not arrested in the early years of the persecution suggesting that even the Augustus, Maximian did not enforce the edict, although he may later have used it as an excuse to confiscate land for himself. Despite not being able to prevent the rise of Christianity, the ‘Great’ persecution did have a lasting effect on Christians. Almost immediately there was an argument about allowing those who had deviated from their faith and taken some part in a sacrifice to re-enter the church. The ‘confessors’, who had stayed strong in the face of persecution, did not want the Christian faith to be diluted by those whose professed Christianity was only skin deep. This split between the libellatici[40] and the ‘confessors’ would erupt even further when it emerged that some western clerics, such as Mensurius[41], Bishop of Carthage, his archdeacon, Caecilian and even the Bishop of Rome, Marcellinus before his martyrdom, had cooperated with the persecutors. The situation in Africa would later plunge Africa into the fanatical Donatist schism[42] that would rage for a century and still be around at the time of the Arab conquest of Africa in the AD640’s. Africa was not the only province to suffer schism after the ‘Great’ persecution. In Egypt, the danger to the leading clerics had forced Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, to flee. The remaining clergy ordained one Arius, who became extremely popular before his Christian orthodoxy was called into question. Arius preached that because Jesus had faced temptation, suffered pain and had died, he was not the equal of God and therefore inferior. Even after the famous Council of Nicaea in AD325, which promoted the idea of the homoousios[43] of the Son and the Father, the Arian debate continued throughout the fourth century and would later be superseded[44] by the Nestorian schism in first half of the fifth century. These future problems for Christianity suggest that the “worst legacy of the persecution” was the basis for schism and an early indicator of a possible divide between eastern and western Christendom. However, in the short term, the ‘Great’ persecution had been an almost total failure. The numbers of Christian martyrs appears to have been small, despite the reports of the Liber Pontificalis, and the enforcing of the persecution was “geographically patchy”[45]. Of course, numerous eastern Christians had died as a result and Eusebius’s account of the persecution in his native Palestine leaves little doubt as to the shock felt by many Eastern Christians. However, due to the nature of Christianity, the persecution is more likely to have strengthened the resolve of those who survived rather than break it. Christians believed that their victory was inevitable and, like Lactantius, could point to the fates of all those who opposed them. The first persecutors, the Jews, were without their spiritual home of the Temple of Jerusalem, destroyed in AD70; Nero had committed suicide as an enemy of the state; Decius had become the first Roman emperor to fall in battle against a foreign enemy[46] and Valerian was the only emperor to be captured and die in captivity. These examples coupled with the horrific death of Galerius, graphically detailed by Eusebius[47], the botched suicide of Maximin Daia[48] and the supposed painful death of Diocletian[49] were, to leading Christian writers, clear evidence of the wrath of God. Also monotheism was not a new innovation in the empire. Along with the Jewish population there had been the failed attempt of Elagabalus to supersede the Roman Pantheon and during the third century crisis the more successful emperors, such as Aurelian, had promoted a kind of monotheism with the endorsement of Sol Invictus, which was already extremely popular with the army. Constantius had been an enthusiastic follower of the ‘Unconquered Sun’ and had passed it on to his son, Constantine. From this religious belief, it would not be difficult to make the final jump to Christian monotheism for Constantine and his army, which they did in AD312 before the battle of the Milvian Bridge. Ultimately, by singling out Christianity, the persecutors helped seal their own fate because sooner or later, in the face of such maltreatment, Christians would find an earthly champion to unite themselves behind, although no one would have predicted that that champion would be an emperor of Rome. [1] His fathers’ identity is not known for certain and instead of a scribe he may have been a former slave (freedman) of a wealthy senator – Scarre, 1995, Chronicle of the Roman Emperors, p.197 [2] It is possible, despite the lack of evidence, that Diocletian was the ‘bolt of lightning’ that killed Carus on the Tigris in AD283 and that he was involved in the murder of Numerian in the same year [3] Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Vita Cari.13 – Diocletian supposedly quoted Virgil while stabbing Aper in front of the assembled army [4] Lactantius, de mortibus persecutorum. VII [5] Curran, 2000, Pagan City and Christian Capital, p. 50 [6] Liber Pontificalis, I.162 [7] Now called the Morava, near modern day Belgrade [8] 1st April AD286 [9] Maximian was another Illyrian army officer of humble origin, being born the son of shopkeepers near Sirmium and rising through the ranks to serve on the Mesopotamian campaigns of AD283-4 [10] A Gallic group of displaced peasants acting like bandits and whose leader, Amandus, had proclaimed himself emperor before his defeat by Maximian in AD286 [11] It was looted from Constantinople by the Venetians after the Fourth Crusade and is now built into a corner St. Mark’s Basilica at Venice [12] Constantius defeated Carausius at Boulogne and then his successor Allectus in Britain; Maximian defeated a band of Frankish pirates in Spain, then crossing to Africa and defeating the Berber confederation of the Quinquegentiani before rejoining Constantius on the Rhine and together they defeated the Alemanni; Galerius and Diocletian campaigned against the Carpi and Bastarnae shoring up the frontier; Galerius then travelled east to deal with the rejuvenated Persian threat of Narses and after an initial defeat near Carrhae in AD296, Galerius annihilated Narses in Armenia in AD297 [13] Diocletian adopted the name of Jovius into his imperial title and Maximian did likewise with Herculius [14] Curran, 2000, p. 47 [15] Tacitus, Annales XV.44 [16] Convicted Christians were still to be executed for dabbling in superstitio and neglecting the traditional Roman gods, however, under Trajan and his second century successors there were to be no witch hunts [17] Pliny the Younger, Letters X.97 [18] Decius’s edict obliged all Roman citizens to sacrifice to the gods on the pain of torture and execution (the Bishop of Rome, Fabian, perished as a result), however, the edict was not aimed specifically at Christians and may have been an attempted oath of allegiance to the emperor and state and by not following it Christians would have been seen as traitors. According to Eusebius, the Decian persecution had been a reaction to the previous regime as it was rumoured that Philip the Arab had been a Christian [19] Chadwick, 1993, The Early Church, p. 169 [20] The King of Kings may have hoped for the Manichees to destabilise the region he had his eye on [21] Manichaeism was known to the Romans as Diocletian is known to have issued a violent edict against them as early as AD297 – Chadwick, 1993, p. 169 [22] Romans had a history of grouping similar religions together and Christianity was originally thought to have been a Jewish sect [23] Curran, 2000, p. 48 [24] Cameron, 1993, The Later Roman Empire, p. 43 [25] Cameron, 1993, p. 45 [26] Chadwick, 1993, p. 121 [27] Chadwick, 1993, p. 121 [28] Curran, 2000, p. 48 [29] Chadwick. 2000, p. 121 [30] Eusebius, Church History, VIII.15 [31] Eusebius, VIII. 20 [32] It was too late to save Galerius, who died a few days later [33] Scarre, 1995, p. 207 [34] Lactantius, XIX. 37-9 [35] A work that slandered the character of Jesus of Nazareth [36] This pagan dislike is shown on the Lycian inscription from Arycanda – Stevenson, 1987, A New Eusebius, p. 297 [37] Marcellinus has been accused of cooperating with the persecutors and may have handed over some of the sacred books – Chadwick, 1993, p. 123; Curran, 2000, p. 49 [38] Eusebius was, however, able to visit ‘confessors’ without apparently attracting the attention of the persecutors, despite being an enthusiastic Christian [39] Constantius may have been influenced by some Christian sympathies in his own family as his half-sister was called Anastasia, meaning ‘resurrection’ – Chadwick, 1993, p. 122 [40] Those who retracted their Christian faith and offered sacrifice to the gods were given a libellus (a sort of certificate) as evidence of their actions (of course these libelli were available to buy from corrupt officials, meaning that some libellatici had never faltered in their Christian beliefs) [41] Mensurius and Caecilian are thought to have prevented food getting to those ‘confessors’ who had been imprisoned claiming that their actions were only provoking sterner measures – Chadwick, 1993, p. 123 [42] A record of the enforcing of the first edict in Cirta is preserved by the writings of the fifth century African Catholic Bishop of Milevis, Optatus – Optatus, Appendix I; Jones, 1970, History of Rome Through the Fifth Century, no. 174 [43] Chadwick, 1993, p.130 – ‘of one substance’ or ‘identical in essence’ [44] Arianism did continue to exist in the form of the Gothic tribes who had been converted by Arian missionaries, helped in no small part by Ulfila, who translated the Bible into Gothic [45] Cameron, 1993, p. 44 [46] Decius died fighting Goths at Abrittus in AD251 [47] Eusebius, VIII. 16 [48] Daia is reported to have taken poison, which proved to be very slow acting and in the four days it took to kill him, he was driven mad with pain – Scarre, 1995, p. 212 [49] Lactantius (DMP, 42) suggests that after seeing his prestige evaporate and his achievements called into question, Diocletian starved himself to death in AD311 Bibliography Primary Aurelius Victor, Book of the Caesars Eusebius, Church History Eutropius, Breviarium Ab Urbe Condita Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum Optatus, History of the Donatist Schism Pliny the Younger, Letters Tacitus, Annales Liber Pontificalis Scriptores Historiae Augustae Secondary Cameron, A. (1993), The Later Roman Empire Chadwick, H. (1993), The Early Church, revised edn. Curran, J. (2000), Pagan City and Christian Capital; Rome in the Fourth Century Jones, A.H.M. (1948), Constantine and the Conversion of Europe Jones, A.H.M. (1970), History of Rome in the Fifth Century Lane Fox, R. (1986), Pagans and Christians Norwich, J.J. (1997), A Short History of Byzantium Scarre, C. (1995), Chronicle of the Roman Emperors Stevenson, J. (1987), A New Eusebius, revised edn. |
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