Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Number of quotes: 19
Book ID: 210 Page: 3
Section: 3B
…we are at a loss to discover what new offence the Christians had committed, what new provocation could exasperate the mild indifference of antiquity, and what new motives could urge the Roman princes, who beheld without concern a thousand forms of religion subsisting in peace under their gentle sway, to inflict a severe punishment on any part of their subjects who had chosen for themselves a singular but an inoffensive mode of faith and worship.. . . .
About fourscore years after the death of Christ, his innocent disciples were punished with death by the sentence of a proconsul of the most amiable and philosophic character, and according to the laws of an emperor distinguished by the wisdom and justice of his general administration.
Quote ID: 5186
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 210 Page: 7
Section: 2D3B,4B
Since the Jews, who rejected with abhorrence the deities adored by their sovereign and by their fellow-subjects, enjoyed, however, the free exercise of their unsocial religion, there must have existed some other cause which exposed the disciples of Christ to those severities from which the posterity of Abraham was exempt. The difference between them is simple and obvious, but, according to the sentiments of antiquity, it was of the highest importance. The Jews were a nation, the Christians were a sect: and if it was natural for every community to respect the sacred institutions of their neighbours, it was incumbent on them to preserve in those of their ancestors.. . . .
The laws of Moses might be for the most part frivolous or absurd; yet, since they had been received during many ages by a large society, his followers were justified by the example of mankind, and it was universally acknowledged that they had a right to practise what it would have been criminal in them to neglect. But this principle, which protected the Jewish synagogue, afforded not any favour or security to the primitive church. By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. 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.
Quote ID: 5187
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 210 Page: 11/12
Section: 2A5
The precautions with which the disciples of Christ performed the offices of religion were at first dictated by fear and necessity; but they were continued from choice. By imitating the awful secrecy which reigned in the Eleusinian mysteries, the Christians had flattered themselves that they should render their sacred institutions more respectable in the eyes of the Pagan world.{1} But the event, as it often happens to the operations of subtile policy, deceived their wishes and their expectations. It was concluded that they only concealed what they would have blushed to disclose.
Quote ID: 5189
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 210 Page: 18
Section: 1B,2E3
…Rome, the common asylum which receives and protects whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious.
Quote ID: 5190
Time Periods: 147
Book ID: 210 Page: 26/27
Section: 3B
Pliny had never assisted at any judicial proceedings against the Christians, with whose name alone he seems to be acquainted; and he was totally uninformed with regard to the nature of their guilt, the method of their conviction, and the degree of their punishment.
Quote ID: 5191
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 210 Page: 27
Section: 3B
The life of Pliny had been employed in the acquisition of learning, and in the business of the world. Since the age of nineteen he had pleaded with distinction in the tribunals of Rome,{1} filled a place in the senate, had been invested with the honours of the consulship, and had formed very numerous connections with every order of men, both in Italy and in the provinces. From his ignorance therefore we may derive some useful information. We may assure ourselves that when he accepted the government of Bithynia there were no general laws or decrees of the senate in force against the Christians; that neither Trajan nor any of his virtuous predecessors, whose edicts were received into the civil and criminal jurisprudence, had publicly declared their intentions concerning the new sect; and that, whatever proceedings had been carried on against the Christians, there were none of sufficient weight and authority to establish a precedent for the conduct of a Roman magistrate.
Quote ID: 5192
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 210 Page: 39/40
Section: 2E1,4B
It was in the choice of Cyprian either to die a martyr or to live an apostate, but on that choice depended the alternative of honour or infamy.. . . .
The assurance of a lasting reputation upon earth, a motive so congenial to the vanity of human nature, often served to animate the courage of the martyrs. The honours which Rome or Athens bestowed on those citizens who had fallen in the cause of their country were cold and unmeaning demonstrations of respect, when compared with the ardent gratitude and devotion which the primitive church expressed towards the victorious champions of the faith. The annual commemoration of their virtues and sufferings was observed as a sacred ceremony, and at length terminated in religious worship.
Quote ID: 5193
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 210 Page: 48
Section: 2E3,3B
But the laws which Severus had enacted soon expired with the authority of that emperor; and the Christians, after this accidental tempest, enjoyed a calm of thirty-eight years.{2} Till this period, they had usually held their assemblies in private houses and sequestered places. They were now permitted to erect and consecrate convenient edifices for the purpose of religious worship;{3} to purchase lands, even at Rome itself, for the use of the community; and to conduct the elections of their ecclesiastical ministers in so public, but at the same time in so exemplary a manner, as to deserve the respectful attention of the Gentiles.{4}
Quote ID: 5194
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 210 Page: 49
Section: 3A4,3B
The sentiments of Mamaea were adopted by her son Alexander, and the philosophic devotion of that emperor was marked by a singular but injudicious regard for the Christian religion. In his domestic chapel he placed the statues of Abraham, of Orpheus, of Apollonius, and of Christ, as an honour justly due to those respectable sages who had instructed mankind in the various modes of addressing their homage to the supreme and universal Deity.{2} A purer faith, as well as worship, was openly professed and practised among his household. Bishops, perhaps for the first time, were seen at court; ….
Quote ID: 5195
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 210 Page: 55
Section: 3B
But the leisure of the two empresses, of his wife Prisca, and of Valeria his daughter, permitted them to listen with more attention and respect to the truths of Christianity, which in every age has acknowledged its important obligations to female devotion.{1} The principal eunuchs, Lucian{2} and Dorotheus, Gorgonius and Andrew, who attended the person, possessed the favour, and governed the household of Diocletian, protected by their powerful influence the faith which they had embraced.
Quote ID: 5196
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 210 Page: 55/56
Section: 3A4,3B
Diocletian and his colleagues frequently conferred the most important offices on those persons who avowed their abhorrence for the worship of the gods, but who had displayed abilities proper for the service of the state. The bishops held an honourable rank in their respective provinces, and were treated with distinction and respect, not only by the people, but by the magistrates themselves. Almost in every city the ancient churches were found insufficient to contain the increasing multitude of proselytes; and in their place more stately and capacious edifices were erected for the public worship of the faithful. The corruption of manners and principles, so forcibly lamented by Eusebius,{4} may be considered, not only as a consequence, but as a proof, of the liberty which the Christians enjoyed and abused under the reign of Diocletian. Prosperity had relaxed the nerves of discipline. Fraud, envy, and malice prevailed in every congregation. The presbyters aspired to the Episcopal office, which every day became an object more worthy of their ambition. The bishops, who contended with each other for ecclesiastical pre-eminence, appeared by their conduct to claim a secular and tyrannical power in the church; and the lively faith which still distinguished the Christians from the Gentiles was shown much less in their lives than in their controversial writings.
Quote ID: 5197
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 210 Page: 58/59
Section: 3A4C
It could scarcely be expected that any government should suffer the action of Marcellus the centurion [PJ: c.mid-3rd century – 298] to pass with impunity. On the day of a public festival, that officer threw away his belt, his arms, and the ensigns of his office, and exclaimed with a loud voice that he would obey none but Jesus Christ the eternal King, and that he renounced for ever the use of carnal weapons, and the service of an idolatrous master. The soldiers, as soon as they recovered from their astonishment, secured the person of Marcellus. He was examined in the city of Tingi by the president of that part of Mauritania; and as he was convicted by his own confession, he was condemned and beheaded for the crime of desertion.{1}
Quote ID: 5198
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 210 Page: 76
Section: 3C2
....the character of Eusebius, which was less tinctured with credulity, and more practised in the arts of courts, than that of almost any of his contemporaries.
Quote ID: 5200
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 210 Page: 79
Section: 3A1,3C
The church of Rome defended by violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud; a system of peace and benevolence was soon disgraced by the proscriptions, wars, massacres, and the institution of the holy office.
Quote ID: 5201
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 210 Page: 79
Section: 3A2A
…it must still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflected far greater severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels.
Quote ID: 8170
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 210 Page: 94
Section: 2B2,3C
On the summit of the pillar, above one hundred and twenty feet from the ground, stood the colossal statue of Apollo. It was of bronze, had been transported either from Athens or from a town of Phrygia, and was supposed to be the work of Phidias. The artist had represented the god of day, or, as it was afterwards interpreted, the emperor Constantine himself, with a scepter in his right hand, the globe of the world in his left, and a crown of rays glittering on his head.{3}
Quote ID: 8555
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 210 Page: 323/324
Section: 3C2
The character of Eusebius has always been a problem; but those who have read the second critical epistle of Le Clerc (Ars Critica, tom. iii. P. 30-69) must entertain a very unfavourable opinion of the orthodoxy and sincerity of the bishop of Caesarea.
Quote ID: 8557
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 210 Page: 324
Section: 3C1
On the same day which had been fixed for the triumph of Arius, he expired; and the strange and horrid circumstances of his death might excite a suspicion that the orthodox saints had contributed more efficaciously than by their prayers to deliver the church from the most formidable of her enemies.{3}
Quote ID: 8558
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 210 Page: 421
Section: 3A2,3C
He extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration; and the only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow-subjects….
Quote ID: 8559
Time Periods: 4
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