Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Number of quotes: 68
Book ID: 316 Page: 1/2
Section: 3B,3C2
In the summer of 177 there took place at Lyons one of the most terrible dramas in the history of the early Church. The story of the persecution is preserved in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book v, Chs. 1 – 3, from an account sent to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia by an anonymous survivor of the Gallic community.{1} For simplicity, sincerity and for the sheer horror of the events it describes it is unmatched in the annals of Christian antiquity.. . . .
Yet, however one looks at the evidence, there is no doubt that the Gallic Churches were in a rudimentary stage of development. In particular, and there seems to be no point in denying this,{11} Greek influences still predominated. Not only was the letter sent to the Churches in Asia Minor written in Greek, but any statements spoken in Latin were specially noted.{12}
Quote ID: 7648
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 316 Page: 3
Section: 3B
Pothinus, the aged bishop is likely to have been himself an immigrant,{14} his senior presbyter and famous successor, Irenaeus had been brought up in Smyrna.{15} Attalus, described as a ‘pillar of the Church’ at Vienne was a Roman citizen from Pergamum.{16} Alexander, another prominent Christian at Lyons was a physician who had emigrated from Phrygia.{17}. . . .
The spiritual home of the two Churches was Asia Minor, for it was to the Churches of the provinces of Asia and Phrygia more than a thousand miles away that they addressed themselves in their hour of need. Here were ‘the brethren who had the same faith and hope of redemption’.{18} Their links with these provinces must have been strong indeed.
PJ: Irenaues connection with Phrygia made him defend them?
Quote ID: 7649
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 316 Page: 6
Section: 3B
Then there began a general search for Christians which included a number from Vienne.{46} How this happened is not at all certain, as Vienne was outside the legatus’ jurisdiction. On the other hand, at Lyons the legatus had jurisdiction over every criminal found in his province regardless of origin. The only obvious explanation is that Sanctus and his companions from Vienne were visiting Lyons at the time.{47} Day by day, new victims, the most zealous members of the two Churches, were arrested.{48} From this, it seems that Trajan’s directive to Pliny in 112, that Christians should not be sought out, was no longer being observed fully everywhere.{49}
Quote ID: 7650
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 7
Section: 4B,3B
Pagan slaves belonging to the prisoners were arrested and tortured in order to secure admissions from them that their masters had also indulged in incest and cannibalism – Thyestian feasts and Oedipean intercourse.{53} With a certain amount of prompting from the soldiers some made the desired statements.
Quote ID: 7651
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 7
Section: 3B
Some of the martyrs refused, however, to give as much as their names to their torturers. Of Sanctus it was said ‘that he did not even tell his own name, or the race, or the city whence he was, but to all questions answered in Latin, “I am a Christian”. This he said for name and city and race and for everything else, and the heathen heard no other sound from him’.{57} To such exasperating behaviour the authorities could do little but apply repeated tortures.
Quote ID: 7653
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 8
Section: 3B
Sanctus and Maturus perished. Blandina, terribly tortured though she was, nevertheless survived, the animals refusing to touch her.{61}
Quote ID: 7654
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 316 Page: 8
Section: 3B
It was in this period of respite probably that the echoes of Montanism reached the prisoners from Phrygia: and Irenaeus, who somehow had escaped arrest, was charged with conveying their views to Bishop Eleutherus at Rome.{64}In due course, Marcus Aurelius’ answer arrived. In essentials it represented a continuation of the policy of Trajan sixty years earlier.{65} Those who persisted in confessing to Christianity were to be executed. The Roman citizens among them were to be beheaded, the remainder delivered to the beasts. Those who recanted were to be freed.{66}
Quote ID: 7655
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 316 Page: 9
Section: 2E1
The intense fury of the people and their fear that somehow or other the Christians might triumph over their gods, stands out on every page of the confessor’s story. Not even the death of the Christians was sufficient. At all costs their claim to immortality must be shown to be vain. This is clearly expressed in a statement put into the mouth of pagans to justify the treatment of the bodies of the victims, ‘As they said, “that they might not even have any hope of resurrection”,’ through their religion. {75}
Quote ID: 3177
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 316 Page: 10
Section: 3B
At this period Romano-Gallic paganism was still intellectually and materially in the ascendant. It was the outward symbol of the deep imprint of classical culture in the Celtic lands. The Roman pantheon found itself grafted easily on to the Celtic religion. After its final outbreak in the year of the Four Emperors (68-69) Druidic nationalism had suffered eclipse.{82} The Druids became socially respectable and were no longer a menace to Rome.{83}
Quote ID: 3178
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 316 Page: 15
Section: 3B,4B
There is no evidence that the Christians regarded their quarrel specifically with the authorities, let alone with the Roman Empire. Their witness was against the ‘world’ (which, of course, was represented for the time being by the pagan Roman Empire), but they saw their acts in eschatological and not political terms. The Devil was their enemy; {122} the Paraclete was their Advocate
Quote ID: 3179
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 16/17
Section: 2D3A,2D3B,3B
The question has often been debated as to the extent of Montanist influence among the Lyons Christians at this time.{131} The problem would, however, appear to be more one of parallel religious developments rather than allegiances.As we have seen, there were many links between the Churches in Gaul and those of Asia Minor in those years. Movements among the one might be expected to find an echo in the other. If the letter had been written from Asia Minor at this time, the emphatic references to prophecy as among the Apostolic charismata,{132} and the description of Vettius Epagathus, ‘the Paraclete of the Christians’, ‘boiling over with the Spirit’, and ‘having the Spirit in fuller measure than Zacharias’, would certainly suggest Montanist influence.{133} So too would the claim made on behalf of the confessors to be able to forgive sins,{134} and to ‘bind and loose’,{135} as these were claims explicitly made by the Montanist prophets.{136}
Quote ID: 7656
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 18
Section: 2D3B,3B,4B
This is revealed in a curious incident. Time and again the Christians under torture have denied the charges of cannibalism and incest made against them. They claimed indignantly that their religion did not involve these or any other evil actions. The authorities tortured a slave girl named Biblis who had previously shown a willingness to recant. In a sudden burst of strength she cried out, ‘How could such men eat children, when they are not allowed to consume the blood even of irrational animals (Greek Word)?’{147} The statement sounds as though it had been made under the stress of the moment, and is interesting. It suggests that the Christians at Lyons were still observing the strict Apostolic rules concerning food (Acts 15:20 and 29), and as is well known, these were derived from orthodox Jewish practice.{148}Pastor John notes: Footnote on page 28
Quote ID: 3180
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 316 Page: 22
Section: 3A1
The problem which the Christians posed to the Empire was fundamentally the same as that posed by Judaism, namely the reconciliation of the claims of a theocracy with those of a world empire.{193}
Quote ID: 7657
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 316 Page: 104
Section: 1B,4B
Developments leading up to the establishment of the Imperial cult may be briefly told. The Roman Republic was famed for ‘religio’. Both foreign observers and citizens testify to the pride felt by the Roman governing classes for their devotion towards their ancestral religion. To Polybius, writing in Rome in circa 150 B.C., religious devotion was the one outstanding mark of superiority which Rome possessed over the Greeks of his day.
Quote ID: 3181
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 105
Section: 4B
Polybius was echoed a century later in a statement which Cicero put into the mouth of the Stoic, Balbus. ‘Moreover, if we care to compare our national characteristics with those of foreign peoples, we shall find that, while in all other respects we are only the equal or inferiors of others, yet in the sense of religion, that is, reverence for the gods we are far superior’ (De Natura Deorum, ii.3.8). Sallust (Jugurtha, I4.I9) and later, Horace (Odes iii.6.5) were to repeat the same sentiments. To Vergil (Aeneid vi.791-807), Augustus ruled because he honoured the gods.. . . .
The gods in their totality were the guardians of Rome. Failure to give them their proper due, embodied in rites handed down from time immemorial, could bring disaster to Rome and her achievement.
Quote ID: 3182
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 105
Section: 3B
Thus Livy records how in 397 B.C., during the war against Veii, the Delphic oracle informed the embassy from Rome that a condition of success was the restoration of traditional cults in the old style.{5} During the same war, Livy put into the mouth of Camillus the warning to the Roman people ‘that all went well so long as we obeyed the gods, and ill when we spurned them’.{6} When disaster did befall, as in the time of the great pestilence of 463 B.C., the remedy was a general sacrifice to the Roman gods by the whole people.{7} There were long-standing precedents for the action of the Emperor Decius in 250.
Quote ID: 7659
Time Periods: 03
Book ID: 316 Page: 106
Section: 2C,4B
It is interesting that Cicero’s Balbus, despite his Stoicism, applauds the views of Cotta, a religious sceptic who was none the less Pontifex Maximus, in rejecting the arguments of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers for the existence of gods, as being subject to logical suspicion and therefore unacceptable as a basis of religious conduct. {8} Instead, the only basis Cotta can accept was that of tradition, the mos maiorum and that was to be accepted without question.{9}. . . .
‘If we reject devotion towards the gods, good faith and all associations of human life and the best of virtues, justice, may also disappear.’{11}
. . . .
Roman religion was therefore less a matter of personal devotion than of national cult.{13}
. . . .
A religio was licita for a particular group on the basis of tribe or nationality and traditional practices, coupled with the proviso that its rites were not offensive to the Roman people or their gods.
Quote ID: 3183
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 316 Page: 106
Section: 2C
…the views of Cotta, a religious sceptic who was none the less Pontifex Maximus, in rejecting the arguments of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers for the existence of gods, as being subject to logical suspicion and therefore unacceptable as a basis of religious conduct.{8} Instead, the only basis Cotta can accept was that of tradition, the mos maiorum--and that was to be accepted without question.{9}
Quote ID: 7660
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 316 Page: 107
Section: 2B2
Thus, in the Celtic provinces it was quite possible to find Roman equivalents even for Teutates and Tanaris, while the Druids and their rites were extirpated. {19} In Africa we find that Baal-Hammon was acceptable under the name of Saturn and housed in classical-looking temples, while the human sacrifice connected with his worship in Punic sanctuaries was suppressed. Harmonization, however, was generally taken a long way. In Rome itself many of the Greek deities had been assimilated, probably as part of the Etruscan legacy during the fifth century B.C., and so too had some of the gods and goddesses of the Italic tribes, including Mars and Diana. By about 300 B.C. Aesculapius had been introduced from Epidaurus and his cult of healing ensconced on an island in the Tiber.
Quote ID: 3184
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 114
Section: 3B
The events following his murder showed how threadbare the Republican tradition had become. The dead Caesar was accorded the title of Divus, the month of July was dedicated to him, and the Senate voted his Consecratio. His worship was associated with that of Dea Roma, and his genius was admitted to the Pantheon. It is difficult not to see in these measures a decisive break with the past,…
Quote ID: 7662
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 115
Section: 3B,4B
The myth of Actium, as Syme has shown,{72} was religious as well as national. On the one side stood Rome and all the protecting gods of Italy, on the other, the bestial divinities of the Nile. If the Roman people were to be strong and confident in their future, honour must be done to the gods of Rome. Their dignified and reverent worship was the moral buttress of Rome’s continuing power. The qualities of virtus and pietas could not be dissociated. Thus there begins a period of self-assertiveness in Roman paganism, patriotic as well as religious. It was not that there was active proselytization on behalf of the Roman gods, but these became the symbols of Empire, of the culture and language of Rome.
Quote ID: 7663
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 116
Section: 3B
What of the role of Augustus himself?{81} One looks for the clue in the profoundly conservative character of the man and in the fact that the principate was not intended as a complete break from what had gone before. Thus, to quote his own opinion of his office, ‘I refused to accept the award of any form of office which was not in accordance with the institutions of our ancestors’.{82}
Quote ID: 7664
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 316 Page: 127
Section: 4B
In the last century of the Republic the Greek cities had caused Rome considerable trouble. The legacy of the asylum given by the Seleucids to Hannibal was a long one, breeding prejudice and suspicion on both sides.. . . .
In return, Greeks in Asia kept up a subtle barrage of polemic against a power whose strength they feared but whose culture they despised.
Quote ID: 3186
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 128/129
Section: 4B
The great ‘atheists’ of the Hellenistic world were thinkers who would hardly have dreamt of robbing temples, yet unlike Socrates they were not heroes even among intellectuals. Diagoras of Melos, Protagoras of Abdera and Theodorus of Cyrene went down to history as men who ‘cut at the root of all the fear and reverence by which mankind is governed’. {10}. . . .
It was a matter for rejoicing that atheists were expelled from their cities and their works burnt in the marketplaces.
Quote ID: 3187
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 129/130
Section: 4B
Finally, wherever they settled, the Greeks tended to regard themselves as urban outposts against the barbarian world. {13} They did not generally assimilate the surrounding native populations to their culture. Town versus countryside is a recurring theme in the social history of the Ancient World, and not without cause. In Asia Minor, the Phrygians, Lycaonians and even the immigrant Celtic Galatians maintained for centuries their gods, traditions and languages, and resisted Hellenization. {14}. . . .
The Greek cities of Asia with their fine walls, public buildings, temples and agora stood as isolated in the barbarian countryside on which they depended for their food, as the cities of the early Industrial Revolution stood in the European landscape.
. . . .
Not, however, content with the status of privileged foreigners, the Jews claimed the same rights as the Greek citizens, while insisting on religious privileges which robbed citizenship of its meaning. ‘Why’, asked the outraged Apion at the end of the first century A.D. ‘do the Jews claims to be citizens of Alexandria when they will not worship the same gods as we?’ {24}
Quote ID: 3188
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 316 Page: 131/132
Section: 4B
As against this, the Jews alone of the ancients possessed a religion, ethic and theory of history which could be found in a single book, the LXX, accessible to all. {31} They had a world view of events, based on the continual handing on of a tradition which extended back to the creation of the world. Anyone could see that the Hebrew prophets were real people who lived in remote but nevertheless historical times. {32} And, in an age when the claim of antiquity to be the equivalent of truth was strong, {33} the Jews could present to the world a monotheism and high religious ethic and history which their chronicles proved were far older than Homer (Contra Apionem, ii.I6)
Quote ID: 3189
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 132
Section: 4B
By the middle of the first century B.C. Judaism seems to have established a sort of religious and ethical superiority. Instead of succumbing to Christianity, Hellenism might have succumbed to this had it not been for the stumbling-block of the Law.. . . .
For the Jews were ubiquitous.
Quote ID: 3190
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 135/136
Section: 4B
An apostate Jew, named Antiochus, accused his fellow countrymen, including his own father who was Ethnarch, before the city authorities of conspiring to set Antioch on fire. In one night the whole town was to be consumed, and Antiochus produced some ‘conspirators’ in the persons of foreign Jews who happened to be in the city at the time. There was apparently just enough evidence to lend colour to his story. The mob immediately demanded that the prisoners should be burnt alive, and the authorities complied. The unhappy Jews, presumably innocent of the charge, were burnt in the amphitheatre. Then the mob set on other Jews, and Antiochus, after doing sacrifice himself, persuaded the city authorities to order a sacrifice test ‘because they would by that means discover who they were that plotted against them, since they would not do so; .... . . .
As if this was not enough, when there was a real fire in the agora shortly afterwards, people were only too ready to believe more of Antiochus’ accusations against the Jews.
….
Significant, however, is the differing attitude of the Greek and Roman authorities respectively. The Greeks seized on the incident to do what their fellows had tried to do in city after city in Asia Minor, namely to curtail the special privileges enjoyed by the Jews. Now super-loyalists themselves, they asserted that the Jews by their rebellion had forfeited their special status and therefore must sacrifice just as the Greeks were bound to do (Greek Words). ‘Sacrifice or die.’ The choice was soon to have a familiar ring in these same cities.
The Romans, despite the fact that they were engaged in a tremendous struggle with the Jews in Palestine, intervened not only to restore order, but to see that a modicum of justice was granted to the Jewish community.
Quote ID: 3192
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 316 Page: 137
Section: 3B,4B
Nearly fifty years later, Pliny’s advisers in Bithynia urged the same course and for the same reasons, against the Christians. Supplication with incense to the Emperor’s statue and the recitation of prayer to the gods were ‘things (which so it was said) those who are really Christians cannot be made to do’.
Quote ID: 3193
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 139
Section: 4B
the Jews were described as ‘friend and allies’ (Greek Words), they were allowed to live according to their customs
Quote ID: 3196
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 316 Page: 139
Section: 4B
Dolabella, the proconsul of Asia, resulted in an unequivocal statement of the privileges of the Jews which were regarded as traditional. {74} ‘I do therefore grant them’, the decree runs, ‘freedom from going into the army, as the former prefects have done, and permit them to use the customs of their forefathers, in assembling together for sacred and religious purposes, as their law requires and for collecting oblations necessary for sacrifices.
Quote ID: 3197
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 139/140
Section: 4B
In Augustus’ reign, a further crop of rescripts are recorded, protecting the Jews from various injustices and abuse to which their Greek neighbours in the cities of Asia and Cyrenaica were subjecting them. Robbery of Jewish sacred books and money was made punishable as sacrilege. {76}. . . .
In 4 B.C., it is recorded that no less than 8000 Jewish residents in Rome greeted the deputation of fifty Jews from Palestine who were coming to the capital with a petition demanding the deposition of Archelaus. {79}
. . . .
They were regarded as a separate nation with their own laws and cult, and so long as they did not violate the jurisdiction of the city’s gods there was no reason for the authorities to interfere. In return, the attitude of the Roman Jews was loyal, and a group who dedicated a synagogue in Augustus’ reign evidently felt no scruples about calling themselves ‘Augustesi’. {81} The Emperor in his turn demonstrated good-will towards the Jews by sending gifts to the Jerusalem Temple, and commanding that a burnt offering be made there daily for ever at his expense, in token of his respect to the supreme God of the Jews. {82} Little wonder that the deaths of both Julius Caesar and himself were bitterly lamented by the Roman Jews.
Quote ID: 3198
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 316 Page: 139
Section: 4B
At about the same time, an embassy from Hyrcanus to Dolabella, the proconsul of Asia, resulted in an unequivocal statement of the privileges of the Jews which were regarded a traditional.{74} ‘I do therefore grant them’, the decree runs, ‘freedom from going into the army, as the former prefects have done, and permit them to use the customs of their forefathers, in assembling together for sacred and religious purposes, as their law requires and for collecting oblations necessary for sacrifices, and my will is that you write this to the several cities under your jurisdiction’. These rescripts provided a firm foundation for their privileged status in the Empire.
Quote ID: 9894
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 141
Section: 2B2
Throughout the Republican period and in the first decades of the Empire clashes between the Roman authorities and the Jews seem to have been very few, and were due to specific offences. Thus, in I39 B.C., we hear of the praetor peregrinus Cn. Cornelius Scipio Hispanus, {83} expelling Jews on the ground that ‘they were tainting Roman manners with the worship of Jupiter Sabazios’. The men concerned may have been members of the embassy of Simon Maccabaeus who had come to Rome that year, but are more likely to have been residents. The identification of Jahwe with the Anatolian Sabazios is interesting, for Rome was not the only place where the two deities were identified. {84} Secondly, this is the first indication that Jewish proselytism would not be accepted and that those who indulged might be punished. But this seems to have been an isolated incident in a century and a half of normal relations. {85}. . . .
Quote ID: 3199
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 316 Page: 143/144
Section: 4B
By 33 the fear of a national Jewish uprising under a king of the Jews had become a reality. This deep-seated anxiety was echoed by Philo in 39/40, when he pointed to the vast numbers and extent of the Jewish nation and put into the mouths of Petronius’ Council the impossibility of the military situation ‘if these vast hordes’ should rise against Rome. {97} The shift of Roman interest and sentiment away from the Jews was already taking place in the reign of Tiberius.. . . .
Caligula’s exaggeration of the Imperial cult in his own favour, and his hostility to the Jews for not respecting it, entailed a major shift in Roman policy in the Mediterranean, for these resembled the acts of a Seleucid king more than Roman tradition.
Quote ID: 3201
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 316 Page: 179
Section: 2C
From the scattered evidence of the Rabbinic sources, we can trace how, in the thirty or forty years after the fall of Jerusalem, the Christians in Palestine faded into a despised and dwindling heretical sect of Nazoreans.3
Quote ID: 7665
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 316 Page: 179
Section: 2C
The Jewish canon of Scripture was drawn up so as to exclude the Gospels and about the same time the sentence was added by Rabbi Samuel the Lesser to the traditional malediction of separatists, ‘Let the Christian (notzrim) and the heretics (minim) perish as in a moment. Let them be wiped out of the book of life and with the righteous let them not be written’.{6 This petition was not intended as empty words. Gamaliel ordered the Benedictions to be recited three times a day.{7} It effectively excluded Christians from synagogue worship. From the Jewish point of view the separation was now complete.{8}
Quote ID: 7666
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 316 Page: 179
Section: 4A
Thus, Casey has wisely commented in his study of early Gnosticism, ‘However much philosophy may have softened the blow, conversion to Christianity involved submission to the Jewish way of conceiving the origin of the universe and much of the history of mankind’.{12}
Quote ID: 7667
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 180
Section: 2A5
The outward forms of Christian organization and, it would seem, many features of the Christian liturgy, were recognizably those of the Hellenistic synagogue.{19} Jews and Christians might mutually insult each other as ‘hypocrites’,{20} ‘heretics’,{21} and ‘atheists’,{22} but the vital issue at stake was still which synagogue{23} represented Israel.{24}
Quote ID: 7668
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 197
Section: 2A3
Against this background of exaltation, hostility to pagan society and hope of speedy deliverance, the phenomenon of Ignatius of Antioch can best be studied. In the seven genuine letters{178} written to the Churches in Asia Minor through which he passed on his way to Rome, circa 107-108,{179} and to the Roman community itself, he exhibits the theology of martyrdom of the primitive Church at its most intense.
Quote ID: 7669
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 224
Section: 3C2
If Eusebius’ account in the Ecclesiastical History is correct,…
Quote ID: 7670
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 237
Section: 4B
Events prove that this was the case. The outward marks of the fury of the Jewish war were removed as soon as possible. Circumcision was once more permitted to Jews, but if performed on non-Jews was regarded as castration and punishable by the same penalties. {8} Thus the situation pre-I30 was restored. Judaism was once more religio licita, but restricted to the narrowest national limits.
Quote ID: 3202
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 247
Section: 4A
Less immediately destructive to the martyr-idea, but ultimately guiding the Church into ways of thought which would render it superfluous except in rare crises was the teaching of the Greek Apologist. Their appearance, at the same time as the Gnostic leaders, from the end of the reign of Hadrian onwards was a further sign of the change which was taking place in Christian thought.
Quote ID: 7671
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 248/249/250
Section: 4A
Of the first of the Apologist, Quadratus, writing in Asia in the reign of Hadrian,{73} we may record simply that he was the first who attempted to argue with the heathen instead of mentally abandoning them to the flames or worse. The Apology of Aristides, written perhaps circa 145, marks a transition.{75} Its approach to the heathen is eirenic in form though not in content, but it is still entirely in the tradition of Jewish apologetic.. . . .
Justin, however, writing his two Apologies, circa 150 and 155 respectively,{87} carries this argument a stage further.{88} His was an outlook not moulded in the first place by Judaism, but by a long study of the current philosophies, and especially Platonism, before he adopted Christianity. It is not surprising that he claimed that Christians were following the lead of Plato, the greatest of the Greek philosophers.
Quote ID: 7672
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 316 Page: 251
Section: 2C,4A
His claim that some of the philosophers were ‘Christians before Christ’, prepared the way for the more generous assertion of Clement that ‘philosophy was the schoolmaster to bring the Greek mind to Christ, as the Law brought the Hebrews’,{97}…
Quote ID: 7673
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 257
Section: 2A3,2E4,3C
Even at this stage Churches had their roll of honour of martyrs whose ‘birthdays’ (natalicia) were celebrated each year.{132} The niche in the Red Wall under St. Peter’s with its fragmentary Greek word ... may be the earliest material evidence for the cult. In addition, they inherited from Judaism a sense of social obligation which even if it was confined mainly to benefiting their own members, impressed outsiders with their cohesion and inner strength.
Quote ID: 7674
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 316 Page: 259
Section: 2C,4B
As the decade 150-160 wore on, Christians gradually concentrated on themselves the hatred of the Greek-speaking world previously reserved for the Jews.. . . .
The key to the deepening wave of hatred was the accusation of ‘atheism’,{154} – the old battle cry of Greek provincial against the Jew, and now turned against the Christians.
Quote ID: 7675
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 316 Page: 440
Section: 3B
Chapter Fourteen The Triumph of Christianity, 260-303
Quote ID: 7676
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 316 Page: 477
Section: 3B
Exactly why, on 23 February 303, Diocletian signed an edict aimed at outlawing the Christian Church may perhaps never be known.
Quote ID: 7677
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 316 Page: 485/486
Section: 3A4,3B
When it came, however, the persecution was more the outcome of the needs of military discipline than the result of intellectual conflict. Despite the adoratio, Diocletian’s court at Nicomedia was no centre for anti-Christian agitation. The Emperor’s wife and daughter and his personal attendants seem to have been pro-Christian.{75} There were plenty of Christian civil servants both at court and in the provinces, and plenty of Christians serving in the armies.{76}
Quote ID: 7678
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 316 Page: 487/488
Section: 3B
Manichaeism had been spreading across the Persian frontier into Arabia and Egypt, and by 296/297 had found support in Carthage. The edict which Diocletian sent from Alexandria to Julianus, proconsul of Africa, at the height of the Persian war{85} on 31 March 297, demonstrated the religious beliefs by which the Tetrarchy was guided, and the Emperor’s determination to crush a proselytizing creed which he regarded as enemy propaganda hostile to the interests of the State.. . . .
The Manichaeans were therefore to be punished as innovators and indeed as enemy agents working for Persia. Their leaders and their books were to be seized and burnt;{86} other adherents of the sect to be put to death by more normal means.
Quote ID: 7679
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 316 Page: 491
Section: 3B
To the very end, however, Diocletian with his concern for public order and the welfare of the Empire as a whole, insisted that there must be no bloodshed. The object was to recall Christians to their duty of honoring the gods. The edict was prepared according to his wishes. At first light on 23 February, soldiers and Guardians of the Peace (irenarchs) accompanied by the pretorian prefect and other high officers went to the church at Nicomedia, situated in full view of the Imperial palace, and demolished it. The sacred books were burnt, and anything else found in the church given over to the mob.{101} The next day, the edict was published. It commanded that throughout the whole Empire churches were to be destroyed, and sacred books handed over to be burnt. Christians in the public service were to be removed from their offices: in civil life the honestiores were to lose their important privileges of birth and status, and no Christian might act as accuser in cases of personal injury, adultery and theft. Christian slaves might no longer be freed.
Quote ID: 7680
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 316 Page: 507
Section: 3B
…throughout the period 306-311 Christians never knew when their turn might come. Even so, the spirit of the pagans was flagging. Persecution was no longer a popular policy and, as Athanasius was to say, many pagans now sympathized with the Christians.{210}After nearly a year of suspense and confusion,{211} Maximian issued an edict around Easter 306{212} calling on everyone regardless of age and sex to sacrifice at the temples under the supervision of the magistrates.{213}
Quote ID: 7681
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 508
Section: 3B
Next year, 307, Maximin changed his tactics. For the death penalty he substituted savage mutilation and consignment to hard labour in the mines and quarries.{216}
Quote ID: 7682
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 509
Section: 3B
In the first months of 310 persecution continued, but after February, which witnessed the execution of Pamphilus and his pupils, it tended to become more desultory. Eusebius records Eubulus, as the last of the Palestinian martyrdoms, 7 March 310.{229}
Quote ID: 7683
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 514
Section: 3B
Then, perhaps in the early autumn 311, pagan public opinion in Asia, Syria and Palestine was galvanized into action for the last time. There was to be a ‘plebiscite’ against the Christians.
Quote ID: 7684
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 515
Section: 3B
Without promulgating a formal edict, executions of prominent Christians began again. Silvanus of Emesa was thrown to the beasts in the late autumn, Peter of Alexandria executed on 25 November 311 and ‘many other Egyptian bishops with him’, also the bishop and author Methodius of Olympus in Lycia,{262} and the theologian, Lucian, presbyter of Antioch at Nicomedia on 7 January 312.{263} The final savage outburst lasting from November 311 to January 312{264} deprived the Christians of some of their ablest leaders who had hitherto escaped molestation.
Quote ID: 7685
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 518
Section: 3B,3C
What Maximian was performing for the benefits of the adherents of the gods, Constantine now did for those of the Christian God. The Senate had rapidly declared him senior Augustus. In the winter of 312, he used his legislative authority to dismantle the remains of the persecution.{281}
Quote ID: 7686
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 520/521
Section: 3C,4B
Persecution had failed as a policy. When one looks for the immediate causes of the Christian triumph one need only consult Lactantius. The pagan world had had enough, enough of bloodshed, enough of the butchers’ shop in service to the gods, enough of the deaths of men known (like Pamphilus) to be upright, learned and brave.{290} As the killing went on, so more turned to Christ. Persecution even quickened the pace of conversions.{291}
Quote ID: 7687
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 521
Section: 2B2,3C
It was no longer a ‘strange, new religion’. In the Vatican cemetery, a mosaic dated to this period shows Christ resplendent with halo, whose rays of light form a cross, driving a little chariot of the sun.{293} So it was in this Christian’s mind. Sol Invictus and Christus Victor could be assimilated, but the victor was Christ and it was thus that Constantine was interpreting the vision of the Milvian Bridge.
Quote ID: 7688
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 316 Page: 543
Section: 3C
At the same time he demanded that the Christian ministers should be united among themselves.
Quote ID: 7689
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 547
Section: 2E2
He himself believed that the ‘prophetic’ or ‘philosophic’ life, meaning that of the ascetic, was the ‘true citizenship of heaven according to the Gospel’.{62}John’s note: Paul didn’t think so.
. . . .
He had the wit to understand that the ascetic ideal was not one to be confined to the rich and cultivated. The monks of his day he praised as ‘the first order of those pre-eminent in Christ’, but he adds perhaps with reference to Palestine alone, ‘they were few’.{65}
Quote ID: 7691
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 554
Section: 3A2A
Constans was stigmatized as a ‘tyrant’{101} (like the Donatist view of Maxentius{102}) and a ‘forerunner of Antichrist’, as Decius had been a century previously.{103} The authorities were ‘maddened butchers’,{104} the Catholics the treacherous wolves belonging to the anti-Church of the traditores, the Donatists ‘soldiers of Christ’ and ‘glorious martyrs’. The struggle was between ‘a soldier of Christ’ and ‘the soldiers of the Devil’. It was the spirit of Tertullian and of the Great Persecution over again.{105}
Quote ID: 7692
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 316 Page: 555/556
Section: 2D3B,3A2A
The opening words of the Donatist memorandum presented at the Council Carthage in 411 read, ‘Januarius and the other bishops of the catholic truth that suffers persecution but does not persecute’.{108} In the absence of physical persecution the guidance of the Spirit directed the believers towards a life of penance and attuning the will towards God, not, however, by leaving the world, but by guiding and reforming it. The Donatist was no monk.In this theology, the Holy Spirit and Biblical inspiration remained all-important. On conversion, the Donatist Christian put away both his secular career and his secular books. He had the Bible on his lips and martyrdom in his soul.{109}
. . . .
He (Petilian) links righteous suffering with poverty. ‘So too’, he tells the Catholics, ‘you do not cease to murder us who are just and poor’{112}…
Quote ID: 7693
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 316 Page: 557
Section: 2D3B
The Luciferian begins, like his Donatist contemporary, with the assertion that ‘the entire universe belongs to the devil’, and that ‘the Church has become a brothel’,{123} Heretics (in this case, the Catholics) were the equivalent of pagans, their meeting-places were ‘camps of the devil’{124} and in consequence, their clergy could not be accepted without being reduced to penitent lay status and their laymen would be re-baptized.{125}John’s note: Lucifer of Cagliari was passionately anti Arius.
Quote ID: 7694
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 316 Page: 560
Section: 2D3B,4B
Not only does Hilary abuse his sovereign as ‘Antichrist’, but denounces his rule as a direct continuation of the age of persecution. Constantius was the heir of Nero, Decius and Maximian,{141} and if that was not sufficient echo of current Donatist writing, there follows the claim that the Devil having failed to destroy Christians by force was turning to treachery instead.
Quote ID: 7695
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 316 Page: 561
Section: 2D3B,4B
In the better defined situation of southern Gaul during the barbarian settlement, circa 439, Salvian’s denunciation of the Roman world was also based on the visible evidence of growing corruption and oppression.{150} He was aware how serfdom had developed under the pressure of crushing taxation and of patronage and he paints a grim picture of the extortions practised by the curiales and officials against the provincial population. ‘Yet what else is the life of all business men but fraud and perjury of the curials but injustice, of the petty officials but slander, of all soldiers but rapine?’{151} In such circumstances, the rule of the barbarian invaders was to be preferred to that of Rome.
Quote ID: 7696
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 316 Page: 571
Section: 3A3B,4B
Victory came eventually from a combination of circumstances. The catastrophic events of the 250s and 260s seem to have shaken the faith of many in the saving power of the ‘immortal gods’. The city aristocracies, the traditional enemies of the Christians and indeed of all revolutionary sects, declined in wealth and power.. . . .
Their tradition of charitable works and brotherly self-help may have been decisive…
. . . .
The Church had become a great popular movement.
. . . .
The conversion of Constantine raised as many problems as it solved.
Quote ID: 7697
Time Periods: 34
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