THE CATASTROPHE OF THE FALL of Rome, with all that its fall signified to the fifth century, came very near to accomplishment in the third. There was a long period when it seemed as though nothing could save the Empire. Her prestige sank to the vanishing point. Her armies had forgotten what it was to win a victory over a foreign enemy. Her Emperors were worthless and incapable. On every side the frontiers were being pierced and the barriers were giving way.
The Franks swept over Gaul and laid it waste. They penetrated into Spain; besieged Toledo; and, seizing the galleys which they found in the Spanish ports, boldly crossed into Mauretanian Africa. Other confederations of free barbarians from southern Germany had burst through the wall of Hadrian which protected the Tithe Lands, and had followed the ancient route of invasion over the Alps. Pannonia had been ravaged by the Sarmatae and the Quadi. In successive invasions the Goths had overrun Dacia; had poured round the Black Sea or crossed it on shipboard; had sacked Trebizond and Chalcedon, and, after traversing Bithynia, had reached the coast at Ephesus. Others had advanced into Greece and Macedonia and challenged the Roman navies for the possession of Crete.
Not only was Armenia lost, but the Parthians had passed the Euphrates, vanquished and taken prisoner the Emperor Valerian, and surprised the city of Antioch while the inhabitants were idly gathered in the theatre. Valerian, chained and robed in purple, was kept alive to act as Sapor’s footstool; when he died his skin was tanned and stuffed with straw and set to grace a Parthian temple. Egypt was in the hands of a rebel who had cut off the grain supply. And as if such misfortunes were not enough, there was a succession of terrifying and destructive earthquakes, which wrought their worst havoc in Asia, though they were felt in Rome and Egypt. These too were followed by a pestilence which raged for fifteen years and, according to Eutropius, claimed, when at its height, as many as five thousand victims in a single day.
It looked, indeed, as though the Roman Empire were past praying for and its destruction certain. The armies were in widespread revolt. Rebel usurpers succeeded one another so fast that the period came to be known as that of the Thirty Tyrants, many of whom were elected, worshipped, and murdered by their soldiers within the space of a few weeks or months. “You little know, my friends”, said Saturninus, one of the more candid of these phantom monarchs, when his troops a few years later insisted that he should pit himself against Aurelian, “you little know what a poor thing it is to be an Emperor. Swords hang over our necks; on every side is the menace of spear and dart. We go in fear of our guards, in terror of our household troops. We cannot eat what we like, fight when we would, or take up arms for our pleasure. Moreover, whatever an Emperor’s age, it is never what it should be. Is he a grey beard? Then he is past his prime. Is he young? He has the mad recklessness of youth. You insist on making me Emperor; you are dragging me to inevitable death. But I have at least this consolation in dying, that I shall not be able to die alone”. In that celebrated speech, vibrating with bitter irony, we have the middle of the third century in epitome.
But then the usual miracle of good fortune intervened to save Rome from herself. The Empire fell into the strong hands of Claudius, who in two years smote the Goths by land and sea, and of Aurelian, who recovered Britain and Gaul, restored the northern frontiers, and threw to the ground the kingdom over which Zenobia ruled from Palmyra. The Empire was thus restored once more by the genius of two Pannonian peasants, who had found in the army a career open to talent. The murder of Aurelian, in 275, was followed by an interregnum of seven months, during which the army seemed to repent of having slain its general and paid to the Senate a deference which effectually turned the head—never strong—of that assembly. Vopiscus quotes a letter written by one senator to another at this period, begging him to return to Rome and tear himself away from the amusements of Baiae and Puteoli. “The Senate”, he says, “has returned to its ancient status. It is we who make Emperors; it is our order which has the distribution of offices. Come back to the city and the Senate House. Rome is flourishing; the whole State is flourishing. We give Emperors; we make Princes; and we who have begun to create, can also restrain”. The pleasant delusion was soon dispelled. The legions speedily reassumed the role of king-makers. Tacitus, the senatorial nominee, ruled only for a year, and another series of soldier Emperors succeeded. Probus, in six years of incessant fighting, repeated the triumphs of Aurelian, and carried his successful arms east, west, and north. Carus, despite his sixty years, crossed the Tigris and made good—at any rate in part—his threat to render Persia as naked of trees as his own bald head was bare of hairs. But Carus’s reign was brief, and at his death the Empire was divided between his two sons, Carinus and Numerian. The former was a voluptuary; the latter, a youth of retiring and scholarly disposition, quite unfitted for a soldier’s life, was soon slain by his Praetorian prefect, Arrius Aper. But the choice of the army fell upon Diocletian, and he, after stabbing to the heart the man who had cleared his way to the throne, gathered up into his strong hands the reins of power in the autumn of 284. He met in battle the army of Carinus at Margus, in Moesia, during the spring of 285. Carinus was slain by his officers and Diocletian reigned alone.
But he soon found that he needed a colleague to halve with him the dangers and the responsibilities of empire. He, therefore, raised his lieutenant, Maximian, to the purple, with the title of Cesar, and a twelvemonth later gave him the full name and honours of Augustus. There were thus two armies, two sets of court officials, and two palaces, but the edicts ran in the joint name of both Augusti. Then, when still further division seemed advisable, the principle of imperial partnership was extended, and it was decided that each Augustus should have a Cesar attached to him. Galerius was promoted to be the Cesar of Diocletian; Constantius to be the Caesar of Maximian. Each married the daughter of his patron, and looked forward to becoming Augustus as soon as his superior should die. The plan was by no means perfect, but there was much to be said in its favor. An Emperor like Diocletian, the nominee of the eastern army alone and the son of a Dalmatian slave, had few, if any, claims upon the natural loyalty of his subjects. Himself a successful adventurer, he knew that other adventurers would rise to challenge his position, if they could find an army to back them. By entrusting Maximian with the sovereignty of the West, he forestalled Maximian’s almost certain rivalry, and the four great frontiers each required the presence of a powerful army and an able commander-in-chief. By having three colleagues, each of whom might hope in time to become the senior Augustus, Diocletian secured himself, so far as security was possible, against military rebellion.
Unquestionably, too, this decentralization tended towards general efficiency. It was more than one man’s task, whatever his capacity, to hold together the Empire as Diocletian found it. Gaul was ablaze from end to end with a peasants’ war. Carausius ruled for eight years in Britain, which he temporarily detached from the Empire, and, secure in his naval strength, forced Diocletian and Maximian, much to their disgust, to recognize him as a brother Augustus. This archpirate, as they called him, was crushed at last, but whenever Constantius crossed into Britain it was necessary for Maximian to move up to the vacant frontier of the Rhine and mount guard in his place. We hear, too, of Maximian fighting the Moors in Mauretania. War was thus incessant in the West. In the East, Diocletian recovered Armenia for Roman influence in 287 by placing his nominee, Tiridates, on the throne. This was done without a breach with Parthia, but in 296 Tiridates was expelled and war ensued. Diocletian summoned Galerius from the Danube and entrusted him with the command. But Galerius committed the same blunder which Crassus had made three centuries and a half before. He led his troops into the wastes of the Mesopotamian desert and suffered the inevitable disaster. When he returned with the survivors of his army to Antioch, Diocletian, it is said, rode forth to meet him; received him with cold displeasure; and, instead of taking him up into his chariot, compelled him to march alongside on foot, in spite of his purple robe. However, in the following year, 297, Galerius faced the Parthian with a new army, took the longer but less hazardous route through Armenia, and utterly overwhelmed the enemy in a night attack. The victory was so complete that Narses sued for peace, paying for the boon no less a price than the whole of Mesopotamia and five provinces in the valley of the Tigris, and renouncing all claim to the sovereignty of Armenia.
This was the greatest victory which Rome had won in the East since the campaigns of Trajan and Vespasian. It was followed by fifty years of profound peace; and the ancient feud between Rome and Parthia was not renewed until the closing days of the reign of Constantine. Lactantius, of whose credibility as a historian we shall speak later on, sneers at the victory of Galerius, which he says was “easily won” over an enemy encumbered by baggage, and he represents him as being so elated with his success that when Diocletian addressed him in a letter of congratulation by the name of Cesar, he exclaimed, with glowing eyes and a voice of thunder, “How long shall I be merely Caesar?”. But there is no word of corroboration from any other source. On the contrary, we can see that Diocletian, whose forte was diplomacy rather than generalship, was on the best of terms with his son-in-law, Galerius, who regarded him not with contempt, but with the most profound respect. Diocletian and Galerius, for their lifetime at any rate, had settled the Eastern question on a footing entirely satisfactory and honorable to Rome. A long line of fortresses was established on the new frontier, within which there was perfect security for trade and commerce, and the result was a rapid recovery from the havoc caused by the Gothic and Parthian irruptions.
Though Diocletian had divided the supreme power, he was still the moving and controlling spirit, by whose nod all things were governed. He had chosen for his own special domain Asia, Syria, and Egypt, fixing his capital at Nicomedia, which he had filled with stately palaces, temples, and public buildings, for he indulged the dream of making his city the rival of Rome. Galerius ruled the Danubian provinces with Greece and Illyricum from his capital at Sirmium. Maximian, the Augustus of the West, ruled over Italy, Africa, and Spain from Milan; Constantius watched over Gaul and Britain, with headquarters at Treves and at York. But everywhere the writ of Diocletian ran. He took the majestic name of Jovius, while Maximian styled himself Herculius; and it stands as a marvellous tribute to his commanding influence that we hear of no friction between the four masters of the world.
Diocletian profoundly modified the character of the Roman Principate. He orientalised it, adopting frankly and openly the symbols and paraphernalia of royalty which had been so repugnant to the Roman temper. Hitherto the Roman Emperors had been, first and foremost, Imperators, heads of the army, soldiers in the purple. Diocletian became a King, clad in sumptuous robes, stiff with embroidery and jewels. Instead of approaching with the old military salute, those who came into his presence bent the knee and prostrated themselves in adoration. The monarch surrounded himself, not with military prefects, but with chamberlains and court officials, the hierarchy of the palace, not of the camp. We cannot wholly impute this change to vanity or to that littleness of mind which is pleased with pomp and elaborate ceremonial. Diocletian was too great a man to be swayed by paltry motives. It was rather that his subjects had abdicated their old claim to be called a free and sovereign people, and were ready to be slaves. The whole senatorial order had been debarred by Gallienus from entering the army, and had acquiesced without apparent protest in an edict which closed to its members the profession of arms. Diocletian thought that his throne would be safer by removing it from the ken of the outside world, by screening it from vulgar approach, by deepening the mystery and impressiveness attaching to palaces, by elaborating the court ceremonial, and exalting even the simplest of domestic services into the dignity of a liturgy. It may be that these changes intensified the servility of the subject, and sapped still further the manhood and self-respect of the race. Let it not be forgotten, however, that the ceremonial of the modern courts of Europe may be traced directly back to the changes introduced by Diocletian, and also that the ceremonial, which the older school of Romans would have thought degrading and effeminate, was, perhaps, calculated to impress by its stateliness, beauty, and dignity the barbarous nations which were supplying the Roman armies with troops.
We will reserve to a later chapter some account of the remodeled administration, which Constantine for the most part accepted without demur. Here we may briefly mention the decentralization which Diocletian carried out in the provinces. Lactantius says that “he carved the provinces up into little fragments that he might fill the earth with terror,” and suggests that be multiplied officials in order to wring more money out of his subjects. That is an enemy’s perversion of a wise statesman’s plan for securing efficiency by lessening the administrative areas, and bringing them within working limits. Diocletian split up the Empire into twelve great dioceses. Each diocese again was subdivided into provinces. There were fifty-seven of these when he came to the throne; when he quitted it there were ninety-six. The system had grave faults, for the principles on which the finances of the Empire rested were thoroughly mischievous and unsound. But the reign of Diocletian was one of rapid recuperation and great prosperity, such as the Roman world had not enjoyed since the days of the Antonines.
UNFORTUNATELY FOR THE FAME OF Diocletian there is one indelible blot upon the record of his reign. He attached his name to the edicts whereby was let loose upon the Christian Church the last and—in certain provinces—the fiercest of the persecutions. Inasmuch as the affairs of the Christian Church will demand so large a share of our attention in dealing with the religious policy of Constantine, it will be well here to describe, as briefly as possible, its condition in the reign of Diocletian.
It has been computed that towards the end of the third century the population of the Roman Empire numbered about a hundred millions. What proportion were Christians? No one can say with certainty, but they were far more numerous in the East than in the West, among the Greek-speaking peoples of Asia than among the Latin-speaking peoples of Europe. Perhaps if we reckon them at a twelfth of the whole we shall rather underestimate than overestimate their number, while in certain portions of Asia and Syria they were probably at least one in five. Christianity had spread with amazing rapidity since the days of Domitian. There had been spasmodic outbreaks of fierce persecution under Decius,—“that execrable beast”, as Lactantius calls him,—under Valerian, and under Aurelian. But Aurelian’s reign was short and he had been too busy fighting to spare much time for religious persecution. The tempest quickly blew over. For fully half a century, with brief interludes of terror, the Church had been gathering strength and boldness.
The policy of the State towards it was one of indifference. Gallienus, indeed, the worthless son of Valerian, had issued edicts of toleration, which might be considered cancelled by the later edicts of Aurelian or might not. If the State wished to be savage, it could invoke the one set; if to be mild, it could invoke the other. There was, therefore, no absolute security for the Church, but the general feeling was one of confidence. The army contained a large number of Christians, of all ranks and conditions, officers, centurions, and private soldiers. Many of the officials of the civil service were Christians. The court and the palace were full of them. Diocletian’s wife, Prisca, was a Christian; so was Valeria, his daughter. So, too, were many of his chamberlains, secretaries, and eunuchs. If Christianity had been a proscribed religion, if the Christians had anticipated another storm, is it conceivable that they would have dared to erect at Nicomedia, within full view of the palace windows, a large church situated upon an eminence in the centre of the city, and evidently one of its most conspicuous structures? No, Christianity in the East felt tolerably safe and was advancing from strength to strength, conscious of its increasing powers and of the benevolent neutrality of Diocletian. Christians who took office were relieved from the necessity of offering incense or presiding at the games. The State looked the other way; the Church was inclined to let them off with the infliction of some nominal penance. Nor was there much difficulty about service in the army. Probably few enlisted in the legions after they had become Christians; against this the Church set her face. But she permitted the converted soldier to remain true to his military oath, for she did not wish to become embroiled with the State. In a word, there was deep religious peace, at any rate in Diocletian’s special sphere of influence, Asia, Egypt, and Syria.
It is to be remembered, however, that there were four rulers, men of very different characters and each, therefore, certain to regard Christianity from a different standpoint. Thus there might be religious peace in Asia and persecution in the West, as, indeed, there was—partial and spasmodic, but still persecution. Maximian was cruel and ambitious, an able soldier of the hard Roman type, no respecter of persons, and careless of human life. Very few modern historians have accepted the story of the massacre of the Theban Legion at Agauna, near Lake Leman, for refusal to offer sacrifice and take the oath to the Emperor. According to the legend, the legion was twice decimated and then cut to pieces. But it is impossible to believe that there could have been a legion or even a company of troops from Thebes in Egypt, wholly composed of Christians, and, even supposing the facts to have been as stated, their refusal to march in obedience to the Emperor’s orders and rejoin the main army at a moment when an active campaign was in progress, simply invited the stroke of doom. Maximian was not the man to tolerate mutiny in the face of the enemy.
But still there were many Christian victims of Maximian wherever he took up his quarters—at Rome, Aquileia, Marseilles—mostly soldiers whose refusal to sacrifice brought down upon them the arm of the law. Maximian is described in the “Passion of St. Victor” as “a great dragon”, but the story, even as told by the hagiologist, scarcely justifies the epithet. Just as the military prefects, before whom Victor was first taken, begged him to reconsider his position, so Maximian, after ordering a priest to bring an altar of Jupiter, turned to Victor and said “Just offer a few grains of incense; placate Jupiter and be our friend”. Victor’s answer was to dash the altar to the ground from the hands of the priest and place his foot triumphantly upon it. We may admire the fortitude of the martyr, but the martyrdom was self-inflicted, and the anger of the Emperor not wholly unwarranted. “Be our friend”, he had said, and his overtures were spurned with contempt.
We may suspect, indeed, that this partial persecution was due rather to the insistence of the martyrs themselves than to deliberate policy on the part of Maximian. When enthusiastic Christians thrust their Christianity upon the official notice of the authorities, insulted the Emperor or the gods, and refused to take the oath or sacrifice on ceremonial occasions, then martyrdom was the result, and little notice was taken, for life was cheap. Diocletian, as we have seen, rather patronized than persecuted Christianity. Maximian’s inclinations towards cruelty were kept in check by the known wishes of his senior colleague. Constantius, the Caesar of Gaul, was one of those refined characters, tolerant and sympathetic by nature, to whom the idea of persecution for the sake of religion was intensely repugnant; and Galerius, the Caesar of Pannonia, the most fanatical pagan of the group, was not likely, at any rate during the first few years after his elevation, to run counter to the wishes of his patron.
What was it, then, that wrought the fatal change in the mind of Diocletian and turned him from benevolent neutrality to fierce antagonism? Lactantius attributes it solely to the baleful influence of Galerius, whom he paints in the very blackest colours. “He was a wild beast, a savage barbarian of alien blood, tall in stature, a mountain of flesh, abnormally bloated, terrifying to look at, and with a voice that made men shiver”. Behind this monster stood his mother, a barbarian woman from beyond the Danube, priestess of some wild deity of the mountains, imbued with a fanatical hatred of the Christians, which she was forever instilling into her son. When we have stripped away the obvious exaggeration of this onslaught we may still accept the main statement and admit that Galerius was the most active and unsparing enemy of the Christians in the Imperial circle. This rough soldier, trained in the school of two such martinets as Aurelian and Probus, who enforced military discipline by the most pitiless methods, would not stay to reason with a soldier’s religious prejudices. Unhesitating obedience or death—that was the only choice he gave to those who served under him, and when, after his great victory over the Parthians, his position and prestige in the East were beyond challenge, we find Christian martyrdoms in the track of his armies, in the Anti-Taurus, in Coele-Syria, in Samosata.
Galerius began to purge his army of Christians. Unless they would sacrifice, officers were to lose their rank and private soldiers to be dismissed ignominiously without the privileges of long service. Several were put to death in Moesia, where a certain Maximus was Governor. Among them was a veteran named Julius, who had served in the legion for twenty-six years, and fought in seven campaigns, without a single black mark having been entered against his name for any military offence. Maximus did his best to get him off.
“Julius”, he said, “I see that you are a man of sense and wisdom. Suffer yourself to be persuaded and sacrifice to the gods”.
“I will not”, was the reply, “do what you ask. I will not incur by an act of sin eternal punishment”.
“But”, said the Governor, “I take the sin upon myself. I will use compulsion so that you may not seem to act voluntarily. Then you will be able to return in peace to your house. You will receive the bounty of ten denarii and no one will molest you”.
Evidently, Maximus was heartily sorry that such a fine old soldier should take up a position which seemed to him so grotesquely indefensible. But what was Julius’s reply?
“Neither this Devil’s money nor your specious words shall cause me to lose eternal God. I cannot deny Him. Condemn me as a Christian”.
After the interrogation had gone on for some time, Maximus said: “I pity you, and I beg you to sacrifice, so that you may live with us.”
“To live with you would be death for me”, rejoined Julius, “but if I die, I shall live”.
“Listen to me and sacrifice; if not, I shall have to keep my word and order you to death”.
“I have often prayed that I might merit such an end”.
“Then you have chosen to die?”
“I have chosen a temporary death, but an eternal life”.
Maximus then passed sentence, and the law took its course.
On another occasion the Governor said to two Christians, named Nicander and Marcian, who had proved themselves equally resolute: “It is not I whom you resist; it is not I who persecute you. My hands are unstained by your blood. If you know that you will fare well on your journey, I congratulate you. Let your desire be accomplished”.
“Peace be with you, merciful judge”, cried both the martyrs as the sentence was pronounced.
The movement seems gradually to have spread from the provinces of Galerius to those of Maximian. At Tangiers, Marcellus, a centurion of the Legion of Trajan, threw down his centurion’s staff and belt and refused to serve any longer. He did so in the face of the whole army assembled to sacrifice in honor of Maximian’s birthday. A similar scene took place in Spain at Calahorra, near Tarraco, where two soldiers cast off their arms exclaiming: “We are called to serve in the shining company of angels. There Christ commands His cohorts, clothed in white, and from his lofty throne condemns your infamous gods, and you, who are the creatures of these gods, or, we should say, these ridiculous monsters”. Death followed as a matter of course. Looking at the evidence with absolute impartiality, one begins to suspect that the process of clearing the Christians out of the army was due quite as much to the fanaticism of certain Christian soldiers eager for martyrdom, as to any lust for blood on the part even of Galerius and Maximian.
But what we have to account for is the rise of a fierce anti-Christian spirit which induced Diocletian — for even Lactantius admits that he was not easily persuaded—to take active measures against the Christians. It is certainly noteworthy that about this time the only school of philosophy which was alive, active, and at all original, was definitely anti-Christian. We refer, of course, to the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria. Their principal exponent was the philosopher Porphyry, who carried on a violent anti-Christian propaganda, though he seems to have borrowed from Christianity, and more especially from the rigorously ascetic form which Christianity had assumed in Egypt, many of his leading tenets.
The morality which Porphyry inculcated was elevated and pure; his religion was mystical to such a degree that none but an expert philosopher could follow him into the refinements of his abstractions; but he had for the Christian Church a “theological hatred” of extraordinary bitterness. The treatise—in fifteen books— in which he assailed the Divinity of Christ apparently set a fashion in anti-Christian literature. We hear, for example, of another unnamed philosopher who “vomited three books against the Christian religion”, and the violence with which Lactantius denounces him as “an accomplished hypocrite” makes one suspect that his work had a considerable success. Still better known was Hierocles, Governor at one time of Palmyra, and then transferred to the royal province of Bithynia, who wrote a book to which he ave the name of The Friend of Truth, and addressed it, “To the Christians”. Its interest lies chiefly in the fact that its author compares with the miracles wrought by Christ those attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, and denies divinity to both. Lactantius tells us that this Hierocles was “author and counsellor of the persecution”, and we may judge, therefore, that there existed among the pagans a powerful party bitterly opposed to Christianity, carrying on a vigorous campaign against it, and urging upon the Emperors the advisability of a sharp repressive policy.
They would have no difficulty in making out a case against the Christians which on the face of it seemed plausible and overwhelming. They would point to the fanatical spirit manifested, as we have seen, by a large number of Christian soldiers in the army, which led them to throw down their arms, blaspheme the gods, and deny the Emperors. They would point to the anti-social movement, which was especially marked in Egypt, where the example of St. Antony was drawing crowds of men and women away into the desert to live out their lives, either in solitary cells as hermits, or as members of religious communities equally ascetic, and almost equally solitary. They would point to the aloofness even of the ordinary Christian in city or in town from its common life, and to his avoidance of office and public duties. They would point to the extraordinary closeness of the ties which bound Christians together, to their elaborate organization, to the implicit and ready obedience they paid to their bishops, and would ask whether so powerful a secret society, with ramifications everywhere throughout the Empire, was not inevitably a menace to the established authorities, The Christians were peaceable enough. To accuse them of plotting rebellion was hardly possible, though the most outrageous calumnies against them and their rites were sedulously fostered in order to inflame the minds of the rabble, just as they were against the Jews in the Middle Ages, and are, even at the present day, in certain parts of the Continent of Europe. But, at bottom, the real strength of the case against the Christians lay in the fact that the more enlightened pagans saw that Christianity was the solvent which was bound to loosen all that held pagan society together. They instinctively felt what was coming, and were sensible of approaching doom. Christianity was the enemy, the proclaimed enemy, of their religion, of their point of view of this life as well as of the next, of their customs, of their pleasures, of their arts. Paganism was fighting for existence. What wonder that it snatched at any weapon wherewith to strike?
The personal attitude of Diocletian towards religion in general is best seen in the edict which he issued against the Manicheans. The date is somewhat uncertain, but it undoubtedly preceded the anti-Christian edicts. Manichaeism took its rise in Persia, its principal characteristic being the practice of thaumaturgy, and it spread fast throughout the East. Diocletian ordered the chiefs of the sect to be burned to death; their followers were to have their goods confiscated and to suffer capital punishment unless they recanted; while persons of rank who had disgraced themselves by joining such a shameful and infamous set of men were to lose their patrimony and be sent to the mines. These were savage enactments, and it is important to see how the Emperor justified them. Fortunately his language is most explicit. “The gods”, he says, “have determined what is just and true; the wisest of mankind, by counsel and by deed, have proved and firmly established their principles. It is not, therefore, lawful to oppose their divine and human wisdom, or to pretend that a new religion can correct the old one. To wish to change the institutions of our ancestors is the greatest of crimes”. Nothing could be clearer. It is the old official defence of the State religion, that men are not wiser than their fathers, and that innovation in worship is likely to bring down the wrath of the gods. Moreover, as the edict points out, this Manichaeism came from Persia, the traditional enemy of Rome, and threatened to corrupt the “modest and tranquil Roman people” with the detestable manners and infamous laws of the Orient. “Modest and tranquil” are not the epithets which posterity has chosen to apply to the Roman people of the Empire, but Diocletian’s point is obvious. Manichaeism was a device of the enemy; it must be poison, therefore, to the good Roman. Such an argument was born of prejudice rather than of reason; we shall see it applied yet again to the Christians, and applied even by the Christian Church to its own schismatic’s and heretics.
It was during the winter of 302 that the question was carefully debated by Diocletian and Galerius, the latter was staying with the senior Augustus at Nicomedia—whether it was advisable to take repressive measures against the Christians. According to Lactantius, Galerius clamored for blood, while Diocletian represented how mischievous it would be to throw the whole world into a ferment, and how the Christians were wont to welcome martyrdom. He argued, therefore, that it would be quite enough if they purged the court and the army. Then, as neither would give way, a Council was called, which sided with Galerius rather than with Diocletian, and it was decided to consult the oracle of Apollo at Miletus. Apollo returned the strange answer that there were just men on the earth who prevented him from speaking the truth, and gave that as the reason why the oracles which proceeded from his tripods were false. The “just men” were, of course, the Christians. Diocletian yielded, only stipulating that there should be no bloodshed, while Galerius was for burning all Christians alive. Such is Lactantius’s story, and it does credit to Diocletian, inasmuch as it shows his profound reluctance to disturb the internal peace which his own wise policy had established. As a propitious day, the Festival of the Terminalia, February 23, 303, was chosen for the inauguration of the anti-Christian campaign. The church at Nicomedia was leveled to the ground by the Imperial troops and, on the following day, an edict was issued depriving Christians of their privileges as full Roman citizens. They were to be deprived of all their honours and distinctions, whatever their rank; they were to be liable to torture; they were to be penalized in the courts by not being allowed to prosecute for assault, adultery, and theft. Lactantius well says a that they were to lose their liberty and their right of speech. The penalties extended even to slaves. If a Christian slave refused to renounce his religion he was never to receive his freedom. The churches, moreover, were to be destroyed and Christians were forbidden to meet together. No bloodshed was threatened, as Diocletian had stipulated, but the Christian was reduced to the condition of a pariah. The edict was no sooner posted up than, with a bitter jibe at the Emperors, some bold, indignant Christian tore it down. He was immediately arrested, tortured, racked, and burnt at the stake. Diocletian had been right. The Christians made willing martyrs.
Soon afterwards there was an outbreak of fire at the palace. Lactantius accuses Galerius of having contrived it himself so that he might throw the odium upon the Christians, and he adds that Galerius so worked upon the fears of Diocletian that he gave leave to every official in the palace to use the rack in the hope of getting at the truth. Nothing was discovered, but fifteen days later there was another mysterious outbreak. Galerius, protesting that he would stay no longer to be burnt alive, quitted the palace at once, though it was bad weather for travelling. Then, says Lactantius, Diocletian allowed his blind terrors to get the better of him, and the persecution began in earnest. He forced his wife and daughter to recant; he purged the palace, and put to death some of his most powerful eunuchs, while the Bishop of Nicomedia was beheaded, and crowds of less distinguished victims were thrown into prison. Whether there was incendiarism or not, no one can say. Eusebius, indeed, tells us that Constantine, who was living in the palace at the time, declared years afterwards to the bishops at the Council of Nicaea that he hail seen with his own eyes the lightning descend and set fire to the abode of the godless Emperor. But neither Constantine nor Eusebius was to be believed implicitly when it was a question of some supernatural occurrence between earth and heaven. The double conflagration is certainly suspicious, but tyrants do not, as a rule, set fire to their own palaces when they themselves are in residence, however strong may be their animus against some obnoxious party in the State.
A few months passed and Diocletian published a second edict ordering the arrest of all bishops and clergy who refused to surrender their “holy books” to the civil officers. Then, in the following year, came a third, offering freedom to all in prison if they consented to sacrifice, and instructing magistrates to use every possible means to compel the obstinate to abandon their faith. These edicts provoked a frenzy of persecution, and Gaul and Britain alone enjoyed comparative immunity. Constantius could not, indeed, entirely disregard an order which bore the joint names of the two Augusti, but he took care that there was no over-zealousness, and, according to a well-known passage of Lactantius, he allowed the meeting-places of the Christians, the buildings of wood and stone which could easily be restored, to be torn down, but preserved in safety the true temple of God, viz., the bodies of His worshippers. Elsewhere the persecution may be traced from province to province and from city to city in the mournful and poignant documents known as the Passions of the Martyrs. Naturally it varied in intensity according to local conditions and according to the personal predilections of the magistrates.
Where the populace was fiercely anti-Christian or where the pagan priests were zealous, there the Christians suffered severely. Their churches would be razed to the ground and the prisons would be full. Some of the weaker brethren would recant; others would hide themselves or quit the district; others again would suffer martyrdom. In more fortunate districts, where public opinion was with the Christians, the churches might not be destroyed, though they stood empty and silent.
The fiercest persecution seems to have taken place in Asia Minor. There had been a partial revolt of the troops at Antioch, easily suppressed by the Antiochenes themselves, but Diocletian apparently connected it in some way with the Christians and let his hand fall heavily upon them. Just at this time, moreover, in the neighbouring kingdom of Armenia, Saint Gregory the Illuminator was preaching the gospel with marvelous success, and the Christians of Cappadocia, just over the border, paid the penalty for the uneasiness which this ferment caused to their rulers. We hear, for example, in Phrygia of a whole Christian community being extirpated. Magistrates, senators, and people—Christians all—had taken refuge in their principal church, to which the troops set fire. Eusebius, in his History of the Church, paints a lamentable picture of the persecution which he himself witnessed in Palestine and Syria, and, in his Life of Constantine, he says a that even the barbarians across the frontier were so touched by the sufferings of the Christian fugitives that they gave them shelter. Athanasius, too, declares that he often heard survivors of the persecution say that many pagans risked the loss of their goods and the chance of imprisonment in order to hide Christians from the officers of the law. There is no question of exaggeration. The most horrible tortures were invented; the most barbarous and degrading punishments were devised. The victim who was simply ordered to be decapitated or drowned was highly favored. In a very large number of cases death was delayed as long as possible. The sufferer, after being tortured on the rack, or having eyes or tongue torn out, or foot or hand struck off, was taken back to prison to recover for a second examination.
Even when the victim was dead the law frequently pursued the corpse with its futile vengeance. It was no uncommon thing for a body to be thrown to the dogs, or to be chopped into fragments and cast into the sea, or to be burnt and the ashes flung upon running water. He was counted a merciful judge who allowed the friends of the martyr to bear away the body to decent burial and lay it in the grave. At Augsburg, when the magistrate heard that the mother and three servants of a converted courtesan, named Afra, had placed her body in a tomb, he ordered all four to be enclosed in one grave with the corpse and burnt alive.
It is, of course, quite impossible to compute the number of the victims, but it was unquestionably very large. We do not, perhaps, hear of as many bishops and priests being put to death as might have been expected, but if the extreme rigor of the law had been enforced the Empire would have been turned into a shambles. The fact is, as we have said, that very much depended upon the personal character of the Governors and the local magistrates. In some places altars were put up in the law courts and no one was allowed either to bring or defend a suit without offering sacrifice. In other towns they were erected in the market squares and by the side of the public fountains, so that one could neither buy nor sell, nor even draw water, without being challenged to do homage to the gods. Some Governors, such as Datianus in Spain, Theotecnus in Galatia, Urbanus of Palestine, and Hierocles of Bithynia and Egypt, were noted for the ferocity with which they carried out the edicts; others— and, when the evidence is carefully examined, the humane judges seem to have formed the majority—presided with reluctance at these lamentable trials. Many exhausted every means in their power to convert the prisoners back to the old religion, partly from motives of humanity, and partly, no doubt, because their success in this respect gained them the notice and favor of their superiors.
We hear of magistrates who ordered the attendants of the court to place by force a few grains of incense in the hands of the prisoner and make him sprinkle it upon the altar, or to thrust into his mouth a portion of the sacrificial meat. The victim would protest against his involuntary defilement, but the magistrate would declare that the offering had been made. Often, the judge sought to bribe the accused into apostasy. “If you obey the Governor”, St. Victor of Galatia was told, “you shall have the title of Friend of Caesar and a post in the palace”. Theotecnus promised Theodotus of Ancyra “the favor of the Emperors, the highest municipal dignities, and the priesthood of Apollo”. The bribe was great, but it was withstood. The steadfast confessor gloried in replying to every fresh taunt, entreaty, or bribe, “I am a Christian.” It was to him the only, as well as the highest argument.
Sometimes the kindest-hearted judges were driven to exasperation by their total inability to make the slightest impression upon the Christians.
“Do abandon your foolish boasting”, said Maximus, the Governor of Cilicia, to Andronicus, “and listen to me as you would listen to your father. Those who have played the madman before you have gained nothing by it. Pay honor to our Princes and our fathers and submit yourself to the gods”.
“You do well”, came the reply, “to call them your fathers, for you are the sons of Satan, the sons of the Devil, whose works you perform”.
A few more remarks passed between judge and prisoner and then Maximus lost his temper.
“I will make you die by inches”, he exclaimed.
“I despise”, retorted Andronicus, “your threats and your menaces”.
While an old man of sixty-five was being led to the torture, a friendly centurion said to him: “Have pity on yourself and sacrifice”.
“Get thee from me, minister of Satan”, was the reply. The main feeling uppermost in the mind of the confessor was one of exultation that he had been found worthy to suffer. Such a spirit could neither be bent nor broken.
Of active disloyalty to the Emperor there is absolutely no trace. Many Christian soldiers boasted of their long and honorable service in the army; civilians were willing to pay unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s. But Christ was their King. “There is but one God”, cried Alpheus and Zaccheus at Caesarea, “and only one King and Lord, who is Jesus Christ”. To the pagan judge this was not merely blasphemy against the gods, but treason against the Emperor. Sometimes, but not often, the martyr’s feelings got the better of him and he cursed the Emperor. “May you be punished”, cried the dauntless Andronicus to Maximus, when the officers of the court had thrust between his lips the bread and meat of sacrifice, “may you be punished, bloody tyrant, you and they who have given you the power to defile me with your impious sacrifices. One day you will know what you have done to the servants of God”.
“Accursed scoundrel”, said the judge, “dare you curse the Emperors who have given the world such long and profound peace?”
“I have cursed them and I will curse them”, replied Andronicus, “these public scourges, these drinkers of blood, who have turned the world upside down. May the immortal hand of God tolerate them no longer and punish their cruel amusements, that they may learn and know the evil they have done to God’s servants”.
No doubt, most Christians agreed with the sentiments expressed by Andronicus, but they rarely gave expression to them.
“I have obeyed the Emperors all the years of my life”, said Bishop Philippus of Heraclea, “and, when their commands are just, I hasten to obey. For the Holy Scripture has ordered me to render to God what is due to God and to Caesar what is due to Caesar. I have kept this commandment without flaw down to the present time, and it only remains for me to give preference to the things of heaven over the attractions of this world. Remember what I have already said several times, that I am a Christian and that I refuse to sacrifice to your gods”.
Nothing could be more dignified or explicit. It is the Emperor-God and his fellow deities of Olympus, not the Emperor, to whom the Christian refuses homage. During a trial at Catania in Sicily the judge, Calvisianus, said to a Christian: “Unhappy man, adore the gods, render homage to Mars, Apollo, and Esculapius”.
The answer came without a second’s hesitation: “I adore the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the Holy Trinity—beyond whom there is no God. Perish the gods who have not made heaven and earth and all that they contain. I am a Christian”.
From first to last, in Spain as in Africa, in Italy as in Sicily, this is the alpha and the omega of the Christian position: “Christianus sum”.
To what extent was the martyrdom self-inflicted? How far did the Christians pile with their own hands the faggots round the stakes to which they were tied? It is significant that some churches found it necessary to condemn the extraordinary exaltation of spirit which drove men and women to force themselves upon the notice of the authorities and led them to regard flight from danger as culpable weakness. They not only did not encourage but strictly forbade the overthrowing of pagan statues or altars by zealous Christians anxious to testify to their faith. They did not wish, that is to say, to provoke certain reprisals. Yet, in spite of all their efforts, martyrdom was constantly courted by rash and excitable natures in the frenzy of religious fanaticism, like that which impelled Theodorus of Amasia in Pontus to set fire to a temple of Cybele in the middle of the city and then boast openly of the deed. Often, however, such martyrs were mere children. Such was Eulalia of Merida, a girl of twelve, whose parents, suspecting her intention, had taken her into the country to be out of harm’s way. She escaped their vigilance, returned to the city, and, standing before the tribunal of the judge, proclaimed herself a Christian. The judge, instead of bidding the officials remove the child, began to argue with her, and the argument ended in Eulalia spitting in his face and overturning the statue which had been brought for her to worship. Then came torture and the stake, a martyred saint, and in later centuries a stately church, flower festivals, and a charming poem from the Christian poet, Prudentius. But even his graceful verses do not reconcile us to the pitiful futility of such child-martyrdom as that of Eulalia of Merida or Agnes of Rome.
Or take, again, the pathetic inscription found at Testur, in Northern Africa;
“Sande Tres ; Maxima,
Donatilla Et Secunda,
Bona Peella”.