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[Please see Appendix VI for details on the persecution under Nero and subsequent backbround for this lecture/essay.]
The persecution launched by Nero against the Christians at Rome seems to have died with him, for there are no certain evidences of its continuation during the brief civil war or under the early Flavians. Relations between the Non-Christian Jews and the Christian Jews grew more strident following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The authoritative Jewish Council reassembled in the imperial territory in south Syria after the war, reportedly passed resolutions and sent letters to all the Jewish Synagogues across the world denouncing and disassociating from the Christian Jews. But the numbers of converts to Christianity from among the Jews continued to count up to higher and higher numbers. By the middle of Domitian's reign, say in 90 AD, the majority of the Christian population in the Empire was preponderantly Jewish with perhaps somewhere between 25% and 45% of the total number of Christians being non-Jewish. Most of these Christian Jews were to be found in the Hellenistic urban centers around the Mediterranean, particularly throughout Syria, as well as in Egypt and Cyrenaica, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy.
Emperor Domitian initiated some new policies very soon after taking office in AD 81. As a result of a devastating fire in AD 80 the temples and other governmental structures on the Capitol had been destroyed. Domitian launched a rebuilding program immediately. Indications are that Domitian increasingly relied on revenues from a tax Vespasian and Titus had established earlier subsequent to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. His policies effected Jews across the Roman world and hence there was an impact on Christianity.
This tax on heads of Jewish households replaced the old one-half-shekel Temple Tax. The Jews now paid this new imperial tax, known as the capitularia Judaica or Jewish head tax. If we are to understand the justification for such a tax we must remember that the Jews, aside from the almost invisible group of non-Jewish converts to Christianity, are the only monotheists in a polytheistic world. In a polytheistic society everybody has the basic religious freedom to worship the gods of their traditional preference in peace. In Roman imperial society it was understood that in addition to one's personal religious expressions a loyal and subservient subject should on occasion, as dictated by circumstance, worship the gods of Rome. Since the Jews ethnically and culturally had a long history of refraining from such religious expressions involving gods other than their own, the tax was a reasonable substitute. Jewish obedience in paying the tax was an expression of loyalty and subservience to Rome but that was not all it did. It gave the Jews a unique kind of religious freedom that the polytheists did not enjoy, that is, freedom from any obligation to recognize and worship Rome's gods. Besides, many Jews recognized that they needed a way to affirm their loyalty to Rome; for, they were embarrassed by the rebellion of their fellow Jews in Judea. In all likelihood the Jewish tax helped Rome pay off the debt caused by the Jewish War.
The head tax obviously pertained to the heads of Jewish families who did have one identifying characteristic that set them apart from non-Jewish families--the Jewish males were circumcised. Hence the capitularia Judaica came to be a tax on circumcision. Jews who abandoned the practice of their religion as well as those who converted to Christianity could not avoid liability to the head tax for the scars of circumcision were permanent.
For various reasons the Jewish population that had apparently participated in the new tax more or less grudgingly but dutifully during the 70s began to loose their motivation in the 80s. It was perhaps partly due to the survival of smoldering zealot sentiment among some of the non-believing Jews and the parallel nativistic reaction among some Jewish believers. The Christian Jews were also tempted by gentile Church members who paid no such tax simply because as gentiles their males weren't circumcised. In the last analysis some Jews may have felt that paying off the war debt was somehow less objectionable than refurbishing burnt-out pagan temples at Rome.
When Domitian's extensive spending began to embarrass his treasury he began monitoring the revenues of the capitularia Judaica and discovered that there must be numerous Jews who weren't paying their tax. Consequently, he gave instruction to his tax collectors to exploit all avenues to produce more revenue with the Jewish head tax. Since it was a revenue issue Domitian instructed his tax officials to apply the tax to as many people as possible. Suetonius says they not only sought out those who were trying to keep their Jewishness a secret to avoid the tax but those who lived like Jews but did not profess Judaism (Domitian, 12).
Identifying the individuals liable for the Jewish tax turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. Jews not paying the head tax might succeed in hiding their identity from their neighbors even though they refrained from recognizing or worshipping other gods, particularly if they were not openly observing the Sabbath or making a public show of keeping other aspects of the Jewish law. There was, after all, no set time or place where the general population had to worship the Roman gods.
Even so, there were instances where one's cover could be blown. For example unless an individual was willing to publicly worship the gods of Rome he could have no recourse to the provincial governor's law courts. A Roman official expected those who came into his court either as petitioner, plaintiff or accused to worship the gods of Rome then and there. Only a tax paying Jew had the license to abstain in such a circumstance.
Suppose a Jew who had not paid the tax found himself in court. He must confess his Judaism and pay the tax so he can legally refrain from worshipping the Roman gods. Otherwise he must swallow his heritage and worship the Roman gods when in a Roman court. Even if he did sacrifice, Suetonius remembered seeing court officials strip an old man in open court to see if he was circumcised (Domitian, 12). It was obvious that the whole purpose was to increase the revenue, not to encourage piety.
If the individual who declined to worship the gods of Rome in court was not a Jew, then his refusal would likely be treated as a criminal offense of sacriligium or impeitas, sacrilege or impiety, against the gods. If the individual were also a Roman citizen he would be charged in addition with atheotes, atheism.
The God-fearers, that is gentiles who were moving toward becoming proselytes, converts to Judaism, offered one fuzzy gray area for the commissioners. At what point do the gentile God-fearers become liable to the tax? They were associating with the Jews and worshipping with the Jews and observing many aspects of the Jewish culture.
And there was yet another fuzzy gray area. Those Gentile Christians who were associated with ethnic Jews in their local Christian congregations, keeping the Saturday Sabbath, studying the Jewish Bible, and worshiping the Jewish God were also a challenge to the Commissioners.
Gentile Christians were at first rounded up because they behaved like Jews--just as did the gentile God-fearers. Our evidence does not let us fully examine how the many local commissions actually resolved these dilemmas. We know that the Jewish ethnic leadership from South Syria traveled to Rome to intercede on behalf of the God-fearers and proselytes. And we know that more and more the Gentile Christians began to distance and disassociate themselves from their fellow Christians who were ethnically Jews. We also know that some Gentile Church members simply disassociated themselves from Christianity and reverted to polytheism.
For a more detailed discussion of affairs under Domitian check the appropriate section of Appendix VI. To follow the account of the Jewish Christians in this essay go down in this lecture to Increasing Jewish Persecution.
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The Roman Empire reached its maximum size territorially for a brief time early in the second century during the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117). His successors continued to maintain an aggressive posture along the frontiers, but beginning in the 140's the hostile attacks from beyond the imperial boundaries increased in frequency and intensity. The increasing need for the defense of the imperial frontiers in the face of the growing threat is illustrated by the fact that Emperor Marcus Aurelius was killed in battle on the Danube River frontier (near Vienna) in AD 180.
The Empire in the second century was much more uniformly organized than it had been in the previous century, from the central administration to the local communities. The direct powers of the Emperor were greatly enlarged at the expense of the hodgepodge of older political institutions, agencies and policies that had characterized the empire in the early first century. By AD 200 the Emperor had a very powerful and well-organized administrative bureaucracy centered at Rome with an effective outreach to the extremities of the Roman domain. Imperial administrators supervised all levels of government. A huge civil service corps that literally blanketed the empire aided imperial administration. The civil service personnel were recruited from all over the Empire from among the Roman citizens.
The proportion of citizens to non-citizens rose steadily so that by the end of the second century at least 80 percent of the residents of the imperial territory were citizens by birth. The local "grassroots" political unit found almost everywhere in the imperial territory by AD 200 was the region called the "city" (civitas). Cities ranged in character from those rural districts whose urban population was actually very small up to those huge urban settlements like Alexandria. Early in the second century Emperor Trajan had standardized the organization of city government. Tax collection was thereafter administered at the city level. The local wealthy class of the city annually picked an individual from among themselves who was responsible to pay the city's tax whether or not he was able to collect from the lower class residents. The increasing burden of taxation impoverished whenever it did not bankrupt one family after another in this well-to-do class in the cities, especially during the last sixty years of the second century.
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The policies set in place by Domitian were just the beginning of Jewish troubles. Over the next 40 years the Roman Jewish policy continued to be very heavy-handed. The head tax was continued and there are some indications that it was perhaps increased. This pressure provoked several outbursts of Jewish violence. Nerva had eliminated the charge of atheism, but otherwise the capitularia Judaica was still being enforced everywhere.
Trajan boldly invaded Parthian territory with the intent of annexing the entire Tigris-Euphrates region down to the Persian Gulf. A very large population of Jews lived scattered in that area. Once they realized that they were going to be subject to Rome and the capitularia Judaica, they reacted very strongly. In order to divert Trajan's attention from the Parthian region, the Jews in the Parthian region stirred up the Jews in Cyprus and Cyrenaica and other areas in the eastern Mediterranean to make common cause with them. Their goal was overthrowing Trajan's conquest of Parthia and liberating the Roman Jews from the hated head tax. The Parthian territory was soon lost and Trajan had suffered what proved to be fatal battle wounds. Nevertheless before he died he launched reprisals against the prosperous Jewish populations of Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Alexandria, and elsewhere.
Trajan had visited many of the provinces. When he passed through Bithynia-Pontus on one of his early trips to the East, he had noted that the population seemed not to give due response to his presence. They seemed too busy and distracted. Perhaps Trajan perceived that the provincial government had failed to maintain a proper degree of respect for Roman authority. Trajan commissioned a new governor for Bithynia-Pontus, Pliny, with strict instructions to completely renovate the provincial government and the province in order to get the people's undivided attention. Pliny was a very highly literate, highly educated Roman who wrote Latin far more eloquently than most. This accounts for the fact that the letters, dispatches, charters, and other documents that he wrote in the exercise of his duties as Governor were published as models of the best Latin and for the most part have survived.
Included in his correspondence with Trajan is a letter detailing Pliny's dealings with a group of Christians in 112 AD. This encounter had taken place because Pliny ordered all organizations of any type whatsoever within the Province, to be indefinitely suspended, forbidding any meetings or assembly of members to take place. When a group of Christians refused to obey his orders, they were no doubt arrested by Roman citizens or non-citizens resident in the Province and brought to Pliny's court and charged. Their disobedience was already a serious mark against them so they were given harsh treatment. When they defied his direct order to worship the Roman gods, he repeated his order to be sure they understood, then those who defied his order were executed. Some who were Roman citizens he sent to the Emperor's court in Rome. Curious, Pliny now interrogated some of the women deacons under torture to learn what nefarious plot they were trying to cover up. He expressed honest surprise that he found no evidence of criminal activity.
Then an accuser produced a list of names. Still curious Pliny sent his court officers (there was no police force as today) to round up the people on the list and bring them in. He presented them with the same command to worship the Roman gods and some of them promptly complied explaining that they had once been part of the Christian group but had disassociated themselves approximately 20 years before in the days of Domitian. Others on the list refused to worship the Roman gods so he ordered them executed.
In his letter to Trajan Pliny admits that he has had no previous encounters with Christians. He explains how he has handled it and asks the Princeps for further instructions. Trajan's very brief rescript, official reply, written in very common, colloquial Latin made some interesting points. In the first place Trajan points out that there is no general law with regard to Christians. Nevertheless, when Christians are accused in suspicious circumstances and confess that they are Christians they should always be punished, but only after they have refused an opportunity to recant and worship "our Gods". Moreover, Christians are not to be sought out and neither should anonymous accusations, such as a list of names, be acted upon. --the point being that people are not to be put in jeopardy unless their accusers are present in the court to identify them and validate the accusation.
Other evidence comes to us from South Syria where about 107 the Roman governor tortured and executed Simon son of Cleopas, the very influential leader among the Christians of Judea, a relative and successor to James, the Lord's brother. Simon was arrested and accused before the Governor by a member of a rival Christian group. The same Roman governor reprimanded and dismissed another Judean who was likewise accused before him as a Christian. What this shows is the wide discretion the Roman judge had in handling those accused and confessed of being Christians.
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Emperor Hadrian ruled from 117 to 138. He started his reign shedding the blood of those groups of rebellious Jews stirred by Trajan's attempt to annex the East. None of the very considerable Jewish population of Cyprus was allowed to remain on the island. The Jewish communities in Alexandria and Cyrenaica were decimated in bloody purges. Ironically, Hadrian also ended his career by crushing yet another rebellion in Judea seeking to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. This rebellion was in response to Hadrian's announced plan to build a city in honor of Jupiter on the site of Jerusalem and erect a pagan shrine on the ruins of the Jewish Temple. When all was said and done no Jew could remain in the province formerly called Judea. The ancient name "Palestine" was revived and applied to the province. A new Roman colonial city named "Aelia Capitolina" was built on the ruins of Jerusalem and a shrine to Jupiter Capitolinus was built on the Temple site. No Jew, Christian or non-Christian, was permitted even to visit in Aelia, but a Gentile Christian congregation is soon reported there.
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The surviving Jews retreated from South Syria to the off-the-beaten-path villages in Galilee, and Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, 138-161, seems to have treated them with respect and may have in some way reduced the persecution. In any case the intense persecution of the Jews seems to have passed and the Jews began once again to thrive. The ruins of several very prosperous synagogues survive from the latter half of the 2nd century. This period of intense Jewish persecution between 90 and 138 seems to have reduced the number of Jewish Christians significantly while the numbers of Gentile Christians had increased steadily. Follow the account of Jewish Christianity in the first two sections of Lecture/Essay Six.
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Emperor Marcus Aurelius 161-180 is reported to have issued some new decrees in 176 that allowed an increase in the persecution specifically in the Province of Asia. One reason was that the Christians were implicated in supporting the bid of a failed political usurper. The Roman government had no official policy to harass Christians during the second century. When one group of Christians at Lyons in Gaul rioted, the local Roman government reacted quickly and about 45 Christians were martyred at Lyons and nearby Vienne between 176 and 180. And popular anti-Christian uprisings did occur in several regions following earthquakes or floods that the pagans interpreted as the acts of the gods disgruntled about the Christian refusal to worship them. Often the local Roman governors were forced by intense popular pressure to take action against some Christian leader like Polycarp, the 70-year-old bishop of Smyrna.
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Commodus, the natural son of Marcus Aurelius ruled from 180 until his assassination in 192. While the persecution of Christians in the earlier period was not being launched and coordinated as a policy by the imperial government there is evidence in the last decades of the second century that the legal charge of treason was being popularly directed against Christians for the first time. Yet the ambiguity of the situation is illustrated by the fact that Commodus is the first Emperor on record to have pardoned Christians.
The civil war that followed the death of Commodus was essentially a struggle between several parts of the Roman military in support of the bids of their respective commanders for the imperial office. Out of the war Septimius Severus rose to the victor's position and established his Severii dynasty beginning in 193. Septimius, a career military officer, was born in North Africa while his wife was the daughter of the high priest of the Sun-god worship in Syria. Their child, Caracalla killed his brother and reigned from 211-217. After a short interlude when a usurper took control, two relatives of Septimius' Syrian wife ruled. One is better known by his Syrian name, Elagabalus, 218-222, and the other, Severus Alexander, 222-235.
The Severii dynasty had prohibited the growth of existing Jewish and Christian communities by forbidding any evangelism or proselytism, and it became customary for charges against Christians to be treated as charges of treason. Nevertheless the historian Sulpicious Severus (Chron. II, 32) reports that the Church enjoyed relative peace from the reign of Caracalla (211-217). In order to unify the Empire Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all groups of inhabitants who had not otherwise already received citizenship. There is a tradition that Elagabalus proposed including a shrine to Christ in a new temple to be dedicated to the solar deity. A similar tradition has it that Emperor Alexander Severus (222-235), included statues of Christ and Abraham together with other pagan religious heroes such as Apollonius of Tyanna and Alexander the Great in his private chapel. It was said that he was with some difficulty disuaded from a plan to make Christ one of the official gods of the state. There is some corroborating evidence that Severus Alexander probably did tolerate Christians in the service of his government; for, his successor, Maximinus Thrax (235-238), purged the imperial court of Christians and exiled the local church's leaders when he came to the throne.
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The Severii dynasty contributed much to the elevation of the economic and social status of the armed forces as a step toward the various regional armies taking the initiative to fight with other regional armies to put their own favorite general in the Imperial office in the period after 235. The barbarians from beyond the Danube River and behind the Rhine River were able to wander into the imperial territory almost without hindrance because the Roman armies assigned to guard the frontiers were preoccupied elsewhere fighting against other Roman troops. These Emperors in the middle of the century, the last years of the Principate, are called Barracks Emperors. This is a label for the procession of 26 soldier emperors that paraded at double time through the imperial office like it was a revolving door between 235 and 285. Many lasted only a few months and most died violent deaths as their successors were elevated by some other part of the army.
Another characteristic of this third century period was the declining economic situation. Coinage became progressively more worthless until it reached the point where the government would not allow the money in circulation to be used to pay taxes. Instead the government agencies confiscated goods and commandeered services from helpless Roman citizens.
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During the last centuries of the Republic and throughout the period of the Early Empire the uncivilized peoples of central Europe have been gradually climbing the ladder of culture advancement. It was the Greeks who had first labeled these peoples "Barbarians" evidently likening their speech to the barking of dogs. Enormous numbers of these Europeans had been Romanized successfully by Roman conquest of the regions in which they lived or by being absorbed individually across the frontiers into the Roman Empire either as freemen or by way of the imperial slave markets. Indeed the Roman frontier provinces along the Rhine and the Danube and along other frontiers served as the processing centers for people being absorbed from the Barbarian population. The uncivilized Barbarians were almost always individually capable of adapting quickly to the more civilized life of the Empire.
By the first century AD Rome had acquired a healthy respect for these central European peoples, even though their culture was only marginally agricultural, and their highly fragmented tribal society was still volatile and nomadic. The barbarian population pressure began to concentrate along the Rhine and Danube in the second century because the barbarians there were adopting more advanced agriculture and were also trading ideas and trinkets with enterprising Roman traders. Politically the barbarians began to consolidate in what were called tribal confederations, the forerunners of true statehood. Because of this concentration of authority and numbers, a confederation could organize and launch very impressive military/pillaging salvos into Imperial territory by the middle of the second century AD.
As the Barbarians continued to grow stronger, they were able during the third century to get past the Empire's frontier defensive capabilities with ease. Several small hordes of barbarians wandered in pillaging raids across Gaul, the Balkans and what today is Turkey.
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[This link takes you to a more detailed discussion of this subject in Appendix Seven.]
Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 6.34-41) provides a very curious mixture of reports. On the one hand you have the Emperor Philip the Arab (244-249) whose attitude toward Christianity is reportedly positive, followed by Decius Trajan (From c. September-October, 249 to c. June, 251) who because of his alleged hatred of Philip determined to persecute the Christians. Very little evidence of any kind in non-Christian sources survives from these two reigns. No unbiased evidence of any positive contribution to the cause of Christianity by Philip the Arab has otherwise come to light. No unbiased evidence of Decius' deliberate persecution of Christianity remains. The evidence from Decius' reign that does survive seems to demand a more balanced explanation, as noted in the next section.
What Eusebius' quoted source (Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria) tells us is that the popular persecution against the Christians had been going on "for a whole year" (Ecclesiastical History 6.41) in Alexandria before Decius' edict was issued. The actual text of Decius' edict does not survive, but scholars understand that it must have been issued early in Decius' short reign.
The eastern cities such as Antioch in Syria, and Alexandria in Egypt, certainly contained the largest concentrations of Christians by the middle of the third century because they were the largest eastern cities. The increasingly visible masses of Christians in the cities surely was the catalyst that sparked an occasional polytheistic reaction. The kind of mass hysteria in Alexandria described by Dionysius was attributed to an unidentified "prophet and worker of mischief" who "was the first to stir up and incite the heathen masses against us, fanning the flames of their local superstition and working them up, till they seized on every available authority for their unholy deeds and convinced themselves that the only true religion was this demon-worship--thirst for our blood." (This translation from Eusebius, The History of the Church by G.A. Williamson © 1965, Penguin Books, p. 275)
It is important to note the localized ideology behind this persecution so that we do not read this as a universal occurrence. The details of the persecution are convincingly dramatic including the lull in persecution produced by a factious division among the persecutors just before Decius' accession was announced. When Decius' edict finally arrived the authorities in Alexandria seem to have employed it to legitimize and amplify the persecution. Dionysius names several martyrdoms occurring before the edict and several more afterwards.
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[This link takes you to a more detailed discussion of this subject in Appendix Seven.]
Emperor Decius Trajan who ruled 249-251 enacted a new experiment in imperial religious policy. Decius decreed that every Roman citizen must worship the Roman gods (including the deified Emperors) in one of two specific ways during the month of the Emperor's birthday. Local officers (probably local priests) were authorized to issue libelli, affidavits of compliance, to those who obeyed the Emperor's order. These affidavits, some of which have survived, were sometimes personal testimonies written out by the literate worshippers and signed by the officiating officer. Those for the illiterate were evidently prepared by local scribes and were very generic. Notice that this policy was a first step in limiting the religious freedom of the polytheists. This whole operation was rather clumsy but it did have the potential of being a loyalty test; for, if you were discovered with no signed affidavit in your possession you would be imprisoned on suspicion of treason or dragged into court and ordered to sacrifice.
Although Decius' edict seems not to have targeted Christians by design, it did apply to Christian citizens as well as to all the polytheists. Refusing to worship when commanded to do so was the test first applied by Pliny in the days of Decius' second century namesake, Emperor Trajan. The edict ordering all citizens to worship the gods of Rome first brought Christians into jeopardy in Rome early in 250. Bishop Fabian and probably others were executed before the end of January. Although no surviving affidavit mentions Christianity by name when Christian citizens refused to comply with the mandated religious exercises they became liable for punishment if detected. These policies reached wide implementation by the end of Decius' reign, probably in June of 251. A number Christians across the Empire were put in prison (e.g. Origen) only to be released when Decius was killed in battle against the barbarians. Other Christians forged affidavits or purchased them from enterprising officials, but a number of Christians, both clergy and laity, under the intense pressure went through the motions of sacrificing as commanded. Some, including the bishop of Smyrna, became practicing pagans, but many of these "lapsed" Christians repented and came back to their churches asking forgiveness. The Churches were now seriously divided about whether to allow those who in weakness had obeyed the Emperor's order, and those who had lied about it, back in the Churches ever again. (See the controversies around the doctrine of penance in Lecture/Essay Eleven.)
The successor to Decius Trajan, Emperor Trebonius Gallus (251-253), was too busy with the collapsing Empire to be very aggressive in the enforcement of Decius' ideological programs. The Church at Rome had re-established its bishopric with Dionysius a few months before Decius' death. Even though divided over the lapsed members, Bishop Dionysius reported an elaborate clerical organization of some 108 deacons and lesser clergy.
Valerian, who ruled from 254-259 experimented with another measure intended to guarantee the loyalty of the rank and file citizens. He ordered the executive officers of all organizations to represent the membership of their organizations in the worship of the Roman gods as an expression of loyalty. Subsequently, in 257, bishops and other non-compliant executives were exiled, and any assembly of the organization's membership was prohibited (no worship, no funerals, etc.). This was another attempt to mandate religious behavior without regard for Rome's longstanding policy of religious freedom. Several Christian bishops were arrested on suspicion of treason because they would not worship the Roman gods as commanded, and other congregations who met illegally also got arrested. While Bishop Xystus (Sixtus) II and all the deacons of the Roman Church were executed in August 258 we never find out what Valerian's original intentions were in dealing with the majority of these people he had in detention, because the invasion of the Persians distracted him. Moreover, he found his treasury empty in the face of the desperate need to mount a defense against the Persians.
Confiscation was the standard policy, but whose wealth to confiscate--Valerian decided to confiscate the wealth and properties of the churches and of the wealthy Christian families to fund his military enterprise. The property confiscation was facilitated by condemning the individuals and banishing them to the mines as state slaves. All imperial employees who were "Christians" had their possessions confiscated and, together with their families, were sold into slavery. Numerous wealthy Christian individuals were also arrested and their property likewise dedicated to the war. These and the several bishops in prison were given one last chance to obediently worship Jupiter on pain of execution. Some did sacrifice and were released. It is estimated that at least 1000 well known Christians including the bishops of Rome and Carthage were executed. We have no way of estimating how many lackluster Christians may have been in jeopardy. Nevertheless, Christians remained remarkably positive in their support of the Empire.
Valerian marched to the Persian front and was promptly captured as a prisoner of war. His colleague and successor, Emperor Gallienus, rescinded Valerian's legislation restoring traditional religious freedom. He restored most church property and further ruled that Churches were legitimate property holding corporations. Ruined families were apparently not always reimbursed for their loses but at least they were no longer enslaved in the mines. The hard-hit Roman congregation did not re-establish its bishopric until 260.
Traditions support the report that the Churches were now legitimate corporations. Emperor Aurelian (270-275) ruled in a dispute between the heretical former bishop of Syrian Antioch, Paul of Samosata, and the current bishop of Antioch over the control of a piece of church-owned property. The Emperor ruled that the contending party who was recognized by the Bishop of Rome should have the property. This reveals that prominent Christian officials could appeal court cases all the way to the Emperor. More about Aurelian below.
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In another lecture we will trace the many changes in religious attitude and practice during the third century. Suffice it to say here that popular attention turned from the state religions the old local and regional cults in the direction of a more universal god whose symbol was the Sun. Solar worship was sponsored by Emperors Claudius II (268-270) and Aurelian (270-275).
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In 284 an emperor of considerable foresight and tenacity came to power. He succeeded in second guessing all his opponents and making three of them his colleagues in the Imperial office with the result that he lived so long that he was the only Roman emperor in all Roman history to retire from office in 305. This was Diocletian, architect of the new more centralized imperial Government called the Dominate and consequently the harbinger of the Late Roman Empire. He re-established the frontier provinces with a much larger military concentration than before the crisis, effectively closing the frontier more securely than ever before. In the interior he reduced the size, and increased the number of the provinces. He also took positive but ineffectual steps trying to halt the economic decline. The money in circulation was so worthless it had to be handled in bags in order to make purchases. He rebuilt the imperial military from scratch and he sought to revive the old Roman polytheism. When his efforts to revive the traditional Imperial Jupiter cult met with surprisingly little enthusiasm he and his colleagues perceived that the rigorous monotheism of Christianity was widespread enough in many communities to render traditional, freely exercised polytheism fatally flawed.
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For polytheism to continue as it had been the great majority of individuals in every community had to at least respect, if not worship, everybody else's gods. The Christians neither respected not worshipped any god but their own. If polytheism was to survive, this Christian intolerance of other gods had to be broken. Beginning in about 301 Diocletian and Galerius, his senior colleague, issued a series of edicts directed at the Christians we call Manichaeans. Realizing success at this first step they were encouraged to take on the whole "Christian" movement. This included not only the group we identify as Orthodox, but also other separate groups that also called themselves Christians. In 303 and following they issued more edicts depriving Christians of citizenship rights, confiscating Church properties and ordering the surrender and destruction of all Christian books. This was the "great persecution" and it was a deliberate government policy intending to convert the Christians from rigorous, exclusivistic monotheism to at least a tolerant henotheism if not total polytheism. It proved to be, however, too little and too late.
After Diocletian retired in 305 his former colleagues soon fell to fighting among themselves. Nevertheless the persecution continued in most parts of the Empire until 311 when Galerius rescinded the decrees. His edict admits the failure of the coercive policy and admits the necessity of religious freedom for all including the Christians.
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At first Emperors Constantine and Licinius in 313 attempted in their joint Edict from Milan to reestablish the traditional Roman religious freedom for all religions including Christianity. Licinius and Constantine had both been raised as practicing pagans and had been involved in the court of Diocletian where the historic Roman cult of Jupiter was given first rank importance. Constantine, however, when push came to shove, found himself uncertain. Under the influence of the new religious attitudes he found himself convinced that if he was to be successful in his bid for imperial power he would need the support of the highest and most powerful god there was. Surely no emperor would aspire to less. For the previous 50 years or more many aspiring henotheists had come to the conclusion that the Sun was the symbol of the ubiquitous but nameless "supreme god". So as a practicing pagan Constantine came first to identify the Christian God as the Solar deity and then to the realization he would need to honor the newly identified "supreme deity" in accordance with His designated cult under the direction of His cultic priests. Although he adopted the Christianized solar deity as his patron god by 312, he was not baptized until a few days before his death in 337.
Constantine became the sole ruler after 324, but he promptly divided the Empire into three sections destined to be ruled by his thee sons. Like their father they identified themselves with Christianity. One of them survived the deaths of his brothers and consolidated the Empire under his rule until he died in 361. The cousin who succeeded to the throne, the last of the Constantinian dynasty, was also the last Roman Emperor to openly practice polytheism even though he had been raised as a Christian. He is known to the Christians as Julian the "Apostate", 361-363.
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Return to the Lecture/Essay Table of Contens for Part I
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