Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire began with the stoning of the deacon Stephen and continued intermittently over a period of about three centuries until the 313 Edict of Milan issued by Roman Emperors Constantine I and Licinius, when Christianity was legalized. Christians were persecuted by local authorities on a sporadic and ad-hoc basis, often more according to the whims of the local community than to the opinion of imperial authority. This persecution heavily influenced the development of Christianity, shaping the selection of the Canonical gospels, Christian theology and the structure of the Church. Among other things, persecution sparked the cult of the saints, facilitated the rapid growth and spread of Christianity prompted defenses and explanations of Christianity, and raised fundamental questions about the nature of the Christian Church. Although Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in 380, persecution of Christians did not come to a complete halt; instead, it switched to those deemed to be heretics by the state. Again more material was lost or destroyed particularly in regard to Jewish Christianity.[1] Legal basis for persecution Due to the informal and personality-driven nature of the Roman justice system, nothing other than a prosecutor, a charge of Christianity, and a governor willing to punish on that charge[2] was required to bring a legal case against a Christian. Roman law was largely concerned with property rights, leaving many gaps in criminal and public law. While the well-regulated quaestio system was in place to fill such gaps, it was limited to Rome itself. Thus the process cognitio extra ordinem (special investigation) filled the legal void left by both code and court. All provincial governors had the right to run trials in this way as part of their imperium in the province.[3] In cognitio extra ordinem, an accuser called a delator brought before the governor an individual to be charged with a certain offense—in this case, that of being a Christian. This delator was prepared to act as the prosecutor for the trial, and could be rewarded with some of the accuseds property if he made an adequate case or charged with calumnia (malicious prosecution) if his case was insufficient. If the governor agreed to hear the case—and he was free not to—he oversaw the trial from start to finish: he heard the arguments, decided on the verdict, and passed the sentence.[4] Christians sometimes offered themselves up for punishment, and the hearings of such voluntary martyrs were conducted in the same way. More often than not, the outcome of the case was wholly subject to the governors personal opinion. While some tried to rely on precedent or imperial opinion where they could, as evidenced by Pliny the Youngers letter to Trajan concerning the Christians,[5] such guidance was often unavailable.[6] In many cases months and weeks travel away from Rome, these governors had to make decisions about running their provinces according to their own instincts and knowledge. Even if these governors had easy access to the city, they would not have found much official legal guidance on the matter of the Christians. Before the persecution under Decius beginning in 250, there was no empire-wide edict against the Christians, and the only solid precedent was that set by Trajan in his reply to Pliny: the name of Christian alone was sufficient grounds for punishment and Christians were not to be sought out by the government. There is speculation that Christians were also condemned for contumacia—disobedience toward the magistrate, akin to the modern contempt of court—but the evidence on this matter is mixed.[7] Melito of Sardis later asserted that Antoninus Pius ordered that Christians were not to be executed without proper trial.[8] Given the lack of guidance and distance of imperial supervision, the outcomes of the trials of Christians varied widely. Many followed Plinys formula: they asked if the accused individuals were Christians, gave those who answered in the affirmative a chance to recant, and offered those who denied or recanted a chance to prove their sincerity by making a sacrifice to the Roman gods and swearing by the emperors genius. Those who persisted were executed. Some stern individuals, like the governor P. Aelius Hilarianus who famously sent the Christian Roman citizen Vibia Perpetua to the beasts at Carthage[9] and the unnamed governor who oversaw the persecution of Christians at Lyons and Vienne in 177, were more harsh than circumstances and precedent would have dictated. According to the Christian apologist Tertullian, some governors in Africa helped accused Christians secure acquittals or refused to bring them to trial.[10] The Acts of the Apostles provide evidence that some Roman governors were even intrigued by the teachings of Christianity and found the proponents of this new religion guilty of no crime (Luke 22:24-26). Overall, Roman governors were more interested in making apostates than martyrs: one proconsul of Asia, Arrius Antoninus, when confronted with a group of voluntary martyrs during one of his assize tours, sent a few to be executed and snapped at the rest, If you want to die, you wretches, you can use ropes or precipices.[11] During the Great Persecution which lasted from 303 to 312/313, governors were given direct edicts from the emperor. Christian churches and texts were to be destroyed, meeting for Christian worship was forbidden, and those Christians who refused to recant lost their legal rights. Later, it was ordered that Christian clergy be arrested and that all inhabitants of the empire sacrifice to the gods. Still, no specific punishment was prescribed by these edicts and governors retained the leeway afforded to them by distance.[12] Lactantius reported that some governors claimed to have shed no Christian blood,[13] and there is evidence that others turned a blind eye to evasions of the edict or only enforced it when absolutely necessary. When an edict ordering clemency to jailed Christians was issued, governors eagerly cleared their overcrowded jails. It is difficult to state each Roman officials reasons for persecuting Christians in his jurisdiction. However, a knowledge of a Roman elites duties in government point to interests he might have had in cooperating with popular agitation for the persecution of Christians. When a governor was sent to a province, he was charged with the task of keeping it pacata atque quieta—settled and orderly.[14] His primary interest would be to keep the populace happy; thus when unrest against the Christians arose in his jurisdiction, he would be inclined to placate it with appeasement lest the populace vent itself in riots and lynching.[15] Political leaders in the Roman Empire were also public cult leaders. Roman religion revolved around public ceremonies and sacrifices; personal belief was not as central an element as it is in many modern faiths. Thus while the private beliefs of Christians may have been largely immaterial to many Roman elites, this public religious practice was in their estimation critical to the social and political well-being of both the local community and the empire as a whole. Honoring tradition in the right way -- pietas—was key to stability and success.[16] Hence the Romans protected the integrity of cults practiced by communities under their rule, seeing it as inherently correct to honor ones ancestral traditions; for this reason the Romans for a long time tolerated the highly exclusive Jewish sect, even though some Romans despised it.[17] Historian H. H. Ben-Sasson has proposed that the Crisis under Caligula (37-41) was the first open break between Rome and the Jews.[18] After the First Jewish–Roman Wars (66-73), Jews were officially allowed to practice their religion as long as they paid the Jewish tax. There is debate among historians over whether the Roman government simply saw Christians as a sect of Judaism prior to Nervas modification of the tax in 96. From then on, practicing Jews paid the tax while Christians did not, providing hard evidence of an official distinction.[19] Part of the Roman disdain for Christianity, then, arose in large part from the sense that it was bad for society. In the 3rd century, the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry wrote: How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? ... What else are they than fighters against God?[20] Once distinguished from Judaism, Christianity was no longer seen as simply a bizarre sect of an old and venerable religion; it was a superstitio (a superstition).[21] Superstition had for the Romans a much more powerful and dangerous connotation than it does for much of the Western world today: to them, this term meant a set of religious practices that were not only different, but corrosive to society, disturbing a mans mind in such a way that he is really going insans and causing him to lose humanitas (humanity).[22] The persecution of superstitious sects was hardly unheard-of in Roman history: an unnamed foreign cult was persecuted during a drought in 428 BCE, some initiates of the Bacchic cult were executed when deemed out-of-hand in 186 BCE, and measures were taken against the Druids during the early Principate.[23] Even so, the level of persecution experienced by any given community of Christians still depended upon how threatening the local official deemed this new superstitio to be. Christians beliefs would not have endeared them to many government officials: they worshipped a convicted criminal, refused to swear by the emperors genius, harshly criticized Rome in their holy books, and suspiciously conducted their rites in private. In the early third century one magistrate told Christians I cannot bring myself so much as to listen to people who speak ill of the Roman way of religion.[24] Public interest in persecution Without agitation from the public, the Roman government would have had little motivation to persecute local Christians. According to many Christian sources, early hostility against Christians largely came from the Jewish community, which branded them heretics; most of the opposition Paul encountered along his travels in the Acts of the Apostles came from the local synagogue of a city, not the pagan population (Luke 23:13-25; Acts 7:54-60; 9:23-25; 14:1-7; 18:12-17; 24:27). Given Jesus contemptuous treatment of temple authorities in the gospels, it is hardly surprising that Jewish religious leaders opposed his followers: But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees! For you love to have the seat of honor in the synagogues and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces. Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk all over them without realizing it. (Luke 11:42-44) (see also: Pharisees) Christians also aroused suspicion among the pagan population. Accustomed to public displays of religion, pagans found the private practices of Christians highly suspect; it was often believed that they committed flagitia, sclera, and maleficia[25]—outrageous crimes, wickedness, and evil deeds. Specifically, Christians were most frequently accused of cannibalism and incest -- Thyestian banquets and Oedipodean intercourse[26]—due to their practices of eating the blood and body of Christ and referring to each other as brothers and sisters. Christians refusal to participate in communal religion was as problematic to the populace as it was to the elites, and contributed to the general hostility toward Christians. Much of the pagan populace maintained a sense that bad things will happen if the gods are not respected and worshiped properly. Many pagans held that the neglect of the old gods who had made Rome strong was responsible for the disasters which were overtaking the Mediterranean world.[27][28] Edward Gibbon wrote: They [Christians] 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.[29] Gibbon argued that the tendency of Christian converts to renounce their family, the common business and pleasures of life, and their inclination to prophesy calamities and disasters instilled a feeling of apprehension in their pagan neighbours.[30] As Christianity became more widespread and better-understood, however, these suspicions faded away.[13]
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 23:46:47 +0000