LAST DAYS OF PERSECUTION
In a previous chapter we gave a brief account of the terrible sufferings
inflicted upon the Church during the persecution which followed the
edicts of Diocletian. They continued for many years almost without
interruption, but with varying intensity. When, for example, Diocletian
celebrated his Vicennalia a general amnesty was proclaimed which must
have opened the prison doors to many thousands of Christians. Eusebius
expressly states that the amnesty was for “all who were in prison the
world over,” and there is no hint that liberty was made conditional upon
apostasy. None the less, it is certain that a great number of Christians
were still kept in the cells—on the pretext that they were specially
obnoxious to the civil power—by governors of strong anti-Christian bias.
The sword of persecution was speedily resumed and wielded as vigorously
as before down to the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian.
Then came another lull. With Constantius as the senior Augustus the
persecution came to an end in the West, and even in the East there was
an interval of peace. For Maximin, who was soon to develop into the most
ferocious of all the persecutors,—so St. Jerome speaks of him in
comparison with Decius and Diocletian,—gave a brief respite to the
Christians in his provinces of Egypt, Cilicia, Palestine, and Syria.
“When I first visited the East,” Maximin wrote,[67] some years later,
in referring to his accession, “I found that a great number of persons
who might have been useful to the State had been exiled to various
places by the judges. I ordered each one of these judges no longer to
press hardly upon the provincials, but rather to exhort them by kindly
words to return to the worship of the gods. While my orders were
obeyed by the magistrates, no one in the countries of the East was
exiled or ill-treated, but the provincials, won over by kindness,
returned to the worship of the gods.”
-----
Footnote 67:
Eusebius, _Hist. Eccles._, ix., 9.
-----
Direct contradiction is given to this boast as to the number of
Christian apostates by the fact that, within a twelvemonth, the new
Cæsar grew tired of seeking to kill Christianity by kindness and revoked
his recent rescript of leniency. Maximin developed into a furious bigot.
He fell wholly under the influence of the more fanatical priests and
became increasingly devoted to magic, divination, and the black arts.
Lactantius declares that not a joint appeared at his table which had not
been taken from some victim sacrificed by a priest at an altar and
drenched with the wine of libation. Edict followed edict in rapid
succession, until, in the middle of 306, what Eusebius describes as “a
second declaration of war” was issued, which ordered every magistrate to
compel all who lived within his jurisdiction to sacrifice to the gods on
pain of being burnt alive. House to house visitations were set on foot
that no creature might escape, and the common informer was encouraged by
large rewards to be active in his detestable occupation. It would seem
indeed as if the Christians in the provinces of Maximin suffered far
more severely than any of their brethren. The most frightful bodily
mutilations were practised. Batches of Christians were sentenced to work
in the porphyry mines of Egypt or the copper mines of Phænos in
Palestine, after being hamstrung and having their right eyes burnt out
with hot irons. The evidence of Lactantius, who says that the confessors
had their eyes dug out, their hands and feet amputated, and their
nostrils and ears cut off, is corroborated by Eusebius and the authors
of the _Passions_.
Palestine seems to have had two peculiarly brutal governors, Urbanus and
Firmilianus. The latter in a single day presided at the execution of
twelve Christians, pilgrims from Egypt on their way to succour the
unfortunate convicts in the copper mines of Palestine, whose deplorable
condition had awakened the active sympathy of the Christian East. These
bands of pilgrims had to pass through Cæsarea, where the officers of
Firmilianus were on the watch for them, and as soon as they confessed
that they were Christians they were haled before the tribunal, where
their doom was certain. A distinguishing feature of the persecution in
the provinces of Maximin was the frequency of outrages upon Christian
women and the fortitude with which many of the victims committed suicide
rather than suffer pollution. The story of St. Pelagia of Antioch is
typical. Maximin sent some soldiers to conduct her to his palace. They
found her alone in her house and announced their errand. With perfect
composure this girl of fifteen asked permission to retire in order to
change her dress, and then, mounting to the roof, threw herself down
into the street below. Eusebius, himself an eye-witness of this
persecution, gives many a vivid story of the fury of Maximin and his
officials, and of the cold-blooded calculation with which he sought to
draw new victims into the net of the law. In 308 he issued an edict
ordering every city and village thoroughly to repair any temple which,
for whatever reason, had been allowed to fall into ruins. He increased
tenfold the number of priesthoods, and insisted upon daily sacrifices.
The magistrates were again strictly enjoined to compel men, women,
children, and slaves alike to offer sacrifice and partake of the
sacrificial food. All goods exposed for sale in the public markets were
to be sprinkled with lustral water, and even at the entrance to the
public baths, officials were to be placed to see that no one passed
through the doors without throwing a few grains of incense on the altar.
Maximin, in short, was a religious bigot, who combined with a zealous
observance of pagan ritual a consuming hatred of Christianity.
There are not many records of what was taking place in the provinces of
Galerius, while Maximin was thus terrorising Syria and Egypt. But the
Emperor had begun to see that the persecution, upon which he had entered
with such zest some years before, was bound to end in failure. The
terrible malady which attacked him in 310 would tend to confirm his
forebodings. Like Antiochus Epiphanius, Herod the Great, and Herod
Agrippa, Galerius became, before death released him from his agony, a
putrescent and loathsome spectacle. His physicians could do nothing for
him. Imploring deputations were sent to beg the aid of Apollo and
Æsculapius. Apollo prescribed a remedy, but the application only left
the patient worse, and Lactantius quotes with powerful effect the lines
from Virgil which describe Laocoon in the toils of the serpents, raising
horror-stricken cries to Heaven, like some wounded bull as it flies
bellowing from the altar. Was it when broken by a year’s constant
anguish that Galerius exclaimed that he would restore the temple of God
and make amends for his sin? Was he, as Lactantius says, “compelled to
confess GOD”? Whether that be so or not, here is the remarkable edict
which the shattered Emperor found strength to dictate. It deserves to be
given in full:
“Among the measures which we have constantly taken for the well-being
and advantage of the State, we had wished to regulate everything
according to the ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans, and
especially to provide that the Christians, who had abandoned the
religion of their ancestors, should return to a better frame of mind.
“For, from whatever reason, these Christians were the victims of such
wilfulness and folly that they not only refused to follow the ancient
customs, which very likely their own forefathers had instituted, but
they made laws for themselves according to their fancy and caprice,
and gathered together all kinds of people in different places.
“Eventually, when our commands had been published that they should
conform to long established custom, many submitted from fear, and many
more under the compulsion of punishment.
“But since the majority have obstinately held out and we see that they
neither give the gods their worship and due, nor yet adore the God of
the Christians, we have taken into consideration our unexampled
clemency and followed the dictation of the invariable mercifulness,
which we shew to all men.
“We have, therefore, thought it best to extend even to these people
our fullest indulgence and to give[68] them leave once more to be
Christians, and rebuild their meeting places, provided that they do
nothing contrary to discipline.
“In another letter we shall make clear to the magistrates the course
which they should pursue.
“In return for our indulgence the Christians will, in duty bound, pray
to their God for our safety, for their own, and for that of the State,
that so the State may everywhere be safe and prosperous, and that they
themselves may dwell in security in their homes.”
This extraordinary edict was issued at Nicomedia on the last day of
April, 311. It is as abject a confession of failure as could be expected
from an Emperor. Galerius admits that the majority of Christians have
stubbornly held to their faith in spite of bitter persecution, and now,
as they are determined to sin against the light and follow their own
caprice, more in sorrow than in anger, he will recognise their status as
Christians and give them the right of assembly, provided they do not
offend against public discipline. But the special interest of this edict
lies in the Emperor’s request that the Christians will pray for him, in
the despairing hope that Christ may succeed, where Apollo has failed, in
finding a remedy for his grievous case. Galerius was ready to clutch at
any passing straw.
-----
Footnote 68:
_Ut denuo sint Christiani et conventicula componant, ita ut ne quid
contra disciplinam agant._
-----
The edict bore the names of Galerius, of Constantine, and of Licinius.
Maxentius, who at this time ruled Italy, was not recognised by Galerius,
so the absence of his name causes no surprise. Maximin’s name is also
absent, but we find one of his præfects, Sabinus, addressing shortly
afterwards a circular letter to all the Governors of Cilicia, Syria, and
Egypt, in which the signal was given to stop the persecution. Like
Galerius, Maximin declared that the sole object of the Emperors had been
to lead all men back to a pious and regular life, and to restore to the
gods those who had embraced alien rites contrary to the spirit of the
institutions of Rome. Then the letter continued:
“But since the mad obstinacy of certain people has reached such a
pitch that they are not to be shaken in their resolution either by the
justice of the imperial command or by the fear of imminent punishment,
and since, actuated by these motives, a very large number have brought
themselves into positions of extreme peril, it has pleased their
Majesties in their great pity and compassion to send this letter to
your Excellency.
“Their instructions are that if any Christian has been apprehended,
while observing the religion of his sect, you are to deliver him from
all molestation and annoyance and not to inflict any penalty upon him,
for a very long experience has convinced the Emperors that there is no
method of turning these people from their madness.
“Your Excellency will therefore write to the magistrates, to the
commander of the forces, and to the town provosts, in each city, that
they may know for the future that they are not to interfere with the
Christians any more.”
In other words, the prisons were to be emptied and the mad sectaries to
be let alone. The bigot was obliged to bow, however reluctantly, to the
wishes and commands of the senior Augustus, even though Galerius was a
broken and dying man.
Nevertheless, within six months we find Maximin devising new schemes for
troubling the Christians. Eusebius tells us with what joy the edict of
toleration had been welcomed, with what triumph the Christians had
quitted their prisons, and with what enthusiastic exultation the bands
of Christian confessors, returning from the mines to their own towns and
villages, were received by the Christian communities in the places
through which they passed. Those whose testimony to their faith had not
been so sure and clear, those who had bowed the knee to Baal under the
shadow of torture and death, humbly approached their stouter-hearted
brethren and implored their intercession. The Church rose from the
persecution proudly and confidently, and with incredible speed renewed
its suspended services and repaired its broken organisation. Maximin
issued an order forbidding Christians to assemble after dark in their
cemeteries, as they had been in the habit of doing, in order to
celebrate the victory of their martyrs over death. Such assemblies, the
Emperor said, were subversive of morality: they were to be allowed no
more. This must have warned the Christians how little reliance was to be
placed in the promises of Maximin, and shortly afterwards they had
another warning. Maximin made a tour through his provinces and in
several cities received petitions in which he was urged to give an order
for the absolute expulsion of all Christians. No doubt it was known that
such a request would be well pleasing to Maximin, but at the same time
it undoubtedly points to the existence of a strong anti-Christian
feeling. At Antioch, which was under the governorship of Theotecnus, the
petitioners, according to Eusebius, said that the expulsion of the
Christians would be the greatest boon the Emperor could confer upon
them, but the full text of one of these petitions has been found among
the ruins of a small Lycian township of the name of Aricanda. It runs as
follows:
“To the Saviours of the entire human race, to the august Cæsars,
Galerius Valerius Maximinus, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, Valerius
Licinianus Licinius, this petition is addressed by the people of the
Lycians and the Pamphylians.
“Inasmuch as the gods, your congeners, O divine Emperor, have always
crowned with their manifest favours those who have their religion at
heart and offer prayers to them for the perpetual safety of our
invincible masters, we have thought it well to approach your immortal
Majesty and to ask that the Christians, who for years have been
impious and do not cease to be so, may be finally suppressed and
transgress no longer, by their wicked and innovating cult, the respect
that is owing to the gods.
“This result would be attained if their impious rites were forbidden
and suppressed by your divine and eternal decree, and if they were
compelled to practise the cult of the gods, your congeners, and pray
to them on behalf of your eternal and incorruptible Majesty. This
would clearly be to the advantage and profit of all your subjects.”
Eusebius records two replies of the Emperor to petitions of this
character. One is contained in a letter to his præfect, Sabinus, and
relates to Nicomedia. The other is a document copied by Eusebius from a
bronze tablet set up on a column in Tyre. Maximin expatiates at great
length on the debt, which men owe to the gods, and especially to
Jupiter, the presiding deity of Tyre, for the ordered succession of the
seasons, and for keeping within their appointed bounds the overwhelming
forces of Nature. If there have been calamities and cataclysms, to what
else, he asks, can they be attributed than to the “vain and pestilential
errors of the villainous Christians?” Those who have apostatised and
have been delivered from their blindness are like people who have
escaped from a furious storm or have been cured of some deadly malady.
To them life offers once more its bounteous blessings. Then the Emperor
continues:
“But if they still persist in their detestable errors, they shall be
banished, in accordance with your petition, far from your city and
your territory, that so this city of Tyre, completely purified, as you
most properly desire it to be, may yield itself wholly to the worship
of the gods.
“But that you may know how agreeable your petition has been to us, and
how, even without petition on your part, we are disposed to heap
favours upon you, we grant you in advance any favour you shall ask,
however great, in reward for your piety.
“Ask, therefore, and receive, and do so without hesitation. The
benefit which shall accrue to your city will be a perpetual witness of
your devotion to the gods.”
Evidently the Christians had not yet come to the end of their troubles.
Those who read this circular letter, for it seems to have been sent
round from city to city, must have expected the persecution to break out
anew at any moment. We do not know to what extent the edict was
observed. If it had been generally acted upon, we should certainly have
heard more of it, inasmuch as it must have entailed a widespread exodus
from the provinces of Maximin. But of this there is no evidence. We
imagine rather that this circular was merely a preliminary sharpening of
the sword in order to keep the Christians in a due state of
apprehension.
Maximin, however, continued his anti-Christian propaganda with unabated
zeal, and with greater cunning and better devised system than before.
His court at Antioch was the gathering place of all the priests,
magicians, and thaumaturgists of the East, who found in him a generous
patron. We hear of a new deity being invented by Theotecnus, or rather
of an old deity being invested with new attributes. Zeus Philios, or
Jupiter the Friendly was the name of this god, to whom a splendid statue
was erected in Antioch, and to whose shrine a new priesthood, with new
rites, was solemnly dedicated. The god was provided with an attendant
oracle to speak in his name; what more natural than that the first
response should order the banishment of all Christians from the city?
Very noteworthy, too, was the re-appearance of a vigorous anti-Christian
literature. Maximin set on his pamphleteers to write libellous parodies
of the Christian doctrines and encouraged the more serious
controversialists on the pagan side to attack the Christian religion
wherever it was most vulnerable. The most famous of these productions
was one which bore the name of _The Acts of Pilate_ and purported to be
a relation by Pilate himself of the life and conduct of Christ. It was
really an old pamphlet rewritten and brought up to date, full, as
Eusebius says, of all conceivable blasphemy against Christ and reducing
Him to the level of a common malefactor. Maximin welcomed it with
delight. He had thousands of copies written and distributed; extracts
were cut on brass and stone and posted up in conspicuous places; the
work was appointed to be read frequently in public, and—what shews most
of all the fury and cunning of Maximin—it was appointed to be used as a
text-book in schools throughout Asia and Egypt. There was no more subtle
method of training bigots and poisoning the minds of the younger
generation amongst Christianity. Some of the Emperor’s devices, however,
were much more crude. For example, the military commandant of Damascus
arrested half a dozen notorious women of the town and threatened them
with torture if they did not confess that they were Christians, and that
they had been present at ceremonies of the grossest impurity in the
Christian assemblies. Maximin ordered the precious confession thus
extorted to be set up in a prominent place in every township.
But the Emperor was not merely a furious bigot. There is evidence that
he fully recognised the wonderful strength of the Christian
ecclesiastical organisation and contrasted it with the essential
weakness of the pagan system. In this he anticipated the Emperor Julian.
Paganism was anything but a church. Its framework was loose and
disconnected. There were various colleges of priests, some of which were
powerful and had branches throughout the Empire, but there was little
connection between them save that of a common ritual. There was also
little doctrine save in the special mysteries, where membership was
preceded by formal initiation. Maximin sought to institute a pagan
clergy based upon the Christian model, with a definite hierarchy from
the highest to the lowest. There were already chief priests of the
various provinces, who had borne for long the titles of Asiarch,
Pontarch, Galatarch, and Ciliciarch in their respective provinces.
Maximin developed their powers on the model of those of the Christian
bishops, giving them authority over subordinates and entrusting them
with the duty of seeing that the sacrifices were duly and regularly
offered. He tried to raise the standard of the priesthood by choosing
its members from the best families, by insisting on the priests wearing
white flowing robes, by giving them a guard of soldiers and full powers
of search and arrest.
Evidently, Maximin was something more than the lustful, bloodthirsty
tyrant who appears in the pages of Lactantius and the ecclesiastical
historians. He dealt the Church much shrewder—though not less
ineffectual—blows than his colleagues in persecution. With such an
Emperor another appeal to the faggot and the sword was inevitable, and
the death of Galerius was the signal for a renewal of the persecution.
This time Maximin struck directly at the most conspicuous figures in the
Christian Church and counted among his victims Peter, the Patriarch of
Alexandria, and three other Egyptian bishops—Methodus, Bishop of Tyre,
Basiliscus, Bishop of Comana in Bithynia, and Silvanus, Bishop of Emesa
in Phœnicia. In Egypt the persecution was so sharp that it drew Saint
Antony from his hermit’s cell in the desert to succour the unfortunate
in Alexandria. He escaped with his life, probably because he was
overlooked or disdained, or because the mighty influence which he was to
exercise upon the Church had not yet declared itself. This persecution
was followed by a terrible drought, famine, and pestilence.
Eusebius,[69] in a vigorous chapter, describes how parents were driven
by hunger to sell not only their lands but also their children, how
whole families were wiped out, how the pestilence seemed to mark down
the rich for its special vengeance, and how in certain townships the
inhabitants were driven to kill all the dogs within their walls that
they might not feed on the bodies of the unburied dead. Amid these
horrors the Christians alone remained calm. They alone displayed the
supreme virtue of charity in tending the suffering and ministering to
the dying. From the pagans themselves, says Eusebius, was wrung the
unwilling admission that none but the Christians, in the sharp test of
adversity, shewed real piety and genuine worship of God.[70]
-----
Footnote 69:
_Hist. Eccles._, ix., 8.
Footnote 70:
Εὐσεβεῖς τε καὶ μόνους θεοσεβεῖς τούτους ἀληθῶς, πρὸς αυτῶν
ἐλεγχθέντας τῶν πραγμάτων, ὁμολογεῖν.
-----
Maximin’s reign, however, was fast drawing to a close. After becoming
involved in a war with Tiridates of Armenia, from which he emerged with
little credit to himself, he entered into an alliance with Maxentius,
the ruler of Italy, against Constantine and Licinius, but did not invade
the territory of the latter until Maxentius had already been overthrown.
As we have seen, Maximin was utterly routed and, after a hurried flight
to beyond the Taurus, he there, according to Eusebius,[71] gathered
together his erstwhile trusted priests, thaumaturgists, and soothsayers,
and slew them for the proved falsehood of their prophecy. More
significant still, when he found that his doom was certain, he issued a
last religious edict in the vain hope of appeasing the resentment of the
Christians and their God. The document is worth giving in full:
“The Emperor Cæsar Caius Valerius Maximinus, Germanicus, Sarmaticus,
pious, happy, invincible, august.
“We have always endeavoured by all means in our power to secure the
advantage of those who dwell in our provinces, and to contribute by
our benefits at once to the prosperity of the State and to the
well-being of every citizen. Nobody can be ignorant of this, and we
are confident that each one who puts his memory to the test, is
persuaded of its truth.
“We found, however, some time ago that, in virtue of the edict
published by our divine parents, Diocletian and Maximian, ordering the
destruction of the places where the Christians were in the habit of
assembling, many excesses and acts of violence had been committed by
our public servants and that the evil was being increasingly felt by
our subjects every day, inasmuch as their goods were, under this
pretext, unwarrantably seized.
“Consequently, we declared last year by letters addressed to the
Governors of the Provinces that if any one wished to attach himself to
this sect and practise this religion, he should be allowed to please
himself without interference and no one should say him nay, and the
Christians should enjoy complete liberty and be sheltered from all
fear and all suspicion.
“However, we have not been able entirely to shut our eyes to the fact
that certain of the magistrates misunderstood our instructions, with
the result that our subjects distrusted our words and were nervous
about resuming the religion of their choice. That is why, in order to
do away with all disquietude and equivocation for the future, we have
resolved to publish this edict, by which all are to understand that
those who wish to follow this sect have full liberty to do so, and
that, by the indulgence of our Majesty, each man may practise the
religion he prefers or that to which he is accustomed.
“It is also permitted to them to rebuild the houses of the LORD.
Moreover, so that there may be no mistake about the scope of our
indulgence, we have been pleased to order that all houses and places,
formerly belonging to the Christians, which have either been
confiscated by the order of our divine parents, or occupied by any
municipality, or sold or given away, shall return to their original
ownership, so that all men may recognise our piety and our
solicitude.”
-----
Footnote 71:
_Hist. Eccles._, ix., 10.
-----
The bigot must have been brought very low and reduced to the last depths
of despair before he set his seal to such a document as this. One can
see that it was drawn up by Maximin with a copy of the Edict of Milan
before him, and that he hoped, by this tardy and clumsy recognition of
the principle of absolute liberty of conscience for all men, to make the
Christians forget his brutalities. Doubtless, the Christians of Cilicia
and Syria looked to Constantine in far off Gaul as a model prince and
emperor, and heard with joy of the steady advance of Constantine’s ally,
Licinius. The latter would come in their eyes in the guise of a
liberator, and prayers for his success would be offered up in every
Christian church of the persecuted East. Maximin sought to repurchase
their loyalty: it was too late. His absurd pretext that his orders had
been misunderstood by his provincial governors would deceive no one. He
had been the shrewdest enemy with whom the Church had had to cope; his
edict of recantation was read with chilly suspicion or cold contempt,
which was changed into hymns of rejoicing when the Christians heard that
the tyrant had poisoned himself and died in agony, while his conqueror,
Licinius, had drowned the fallen Empress in the Orontes and put to death
her children, a boy of eight and a girl of seven. Those who had suffered
persecution for ten years may be pardoned their exultation that there
was no one left alive to perpetuate the names of their persecutors.[72]
-----
Footnote 72:
_Hoc modo deus universos persecutores nominis sui debellavit, ut eorum
nec stirps nec radix ulla remaneret._—_De Mort. Persec._, c. 49.
-----
Throughout this time the West had escaped very lightly. Even Maxentius
had begun his reign by seeking to secure the good-will of the
Christians. Eusebius, indeed, makes the incredible statement[73] that in
order to please and flatter the Roman people he pretended to embrace the
Christian faith and “assumed the mask of piety.” Probably all he did was
to leave the Christians of Rome in peace. The chair of St. Peter had
remained empty for four years after the death of Bishop Marcellinus. In
308 Marcellus was elected to fill it and the Church was organised
afresh. But it was rent with internal dissensions. There was a large
section which insisted that the brethren who had been found weak during
the recent persecution should be received back into the fold without
penance and reproach. Marcellus stood out for discipline; the quarrel
became so exacerbated that Maxentius exiled the Bishop, who shortly
afterwards died. A priest named Eusebius was then chosen Pontiff, but
the schismatics elected a Pontiff of their own, Heraclius by name, and
the rival partisans quarrelled and fought in the streets. Maxentius,
with strict impartiality, exiled both. The record of this schism is
preserved in the curious epitaph composed by Pope Damasus for the tomb
of Eusebius:
“Heraclius forbade the lapsed to bewail their sins; Eusebius taught
them to repent and weep for their wrong-doing. The people were divided
into factions, raging and furious: then came sedition, bloodshed, war,
discord, strife.[74] Forthwith both were driven away by the cruelty of
the tyrant. While the Bishop preserved intact the bonds of peace, he
endured his exile gladly on the Trinacrian shores, knowing that God
was his judge, and so passed from this world and from life.”
-----
Footnote 73:
_Hist. Eccles._, viii., 14.
Footnote 74:
_Scinditur in partes populus gliscente furore; Seditio, cædes, bellum,
discordia, lites._
-----
On the confession of Damasus himself, the state of the Roman Church
warranted the interference of Maxentius if it resulted in “sedition,
bloodshed, war, discord, and strife,” and the “cruelty of the tyrant” in
this particular case is not proven. Eusebius died in Sicily in 310; in
the following year Miltiades was elected Bishop, and Maxentius restored
to the Roman Christians their churches and cemeteries, which for eight
years had been in the hands of the civil authorities.
The overthrow of Maxentius by Constantine, the destruction of Maximin by
Licinius, the publication of the Edict of Milan, and the apparent
sincerity of the two Emperors in their anxiety to restore peace and
security, were naturally hailed by the Christians throughout the Empire
with the liveliest joy. On every side stately churches began to rise
from the ground, and as the triumph of Christianity over its enemies was
incontestable, converts came flocking in by the thousand to receive what
Eusebius calls “the mysterious signs of the Saviour’s Passion.” The only
troublers of the Church were members of the Church herself, like the
extravagant Donatists in Africa. The canons of the Council of Ancyra,
which was held soon after the death of Maximin, shew how the
ecclesiastical authorities imposed varying penances upon those who had
shrunk from their duty as soldiers of Christ in the recent persecution,
varying, that is to say, according to the extent of their shortcomings.
Some had apostatised and themselves turned persecutors; some had
sacrificed at the first command; some had endured prison, but had shrunk
from torture; some had suffered torture, but quailed before the stake;
some had bribed the executioners only to make a show of torturing them;
some had attended the sacrificial feasts, but had substituted other
meats. The punishments range from ten years of probation and every
degree of penance, down to a few months’ deprivation of the comforts and
communions of the Church.
New dangers, however, speedily threatened. Constantine and Licinius
quarrelled between themselves and, after two stubborn battles, agreed
upon a fresh division of the world. For eight years, from 315 to 323,
this partition lasted, but, as the Emperors again drifted apart,
Licinius became more and more anti-Christian. His rivalry with
Constantine accounts for the change. Licinius suspected Constantine of
intriguing with his Christian subjects just as Constantine regarded the
pagan element in his own provinces as the natural focus of disaffection
against his rule. Licinius had no definite Christian beliefs; he had
been the friend and nominee of Galerius; and, like Galerius, he never
got rid of the suspicion that the Christian assemblies were a danger to
the public security. The Christians had aided him against Maximin: he
thought they would do the same for Constantine against himself.
Eusebius[75] likens him to a twisted snake, wriggling along and
concealing its poisoned fangs, not daring to attack the Church openly
for fear of Constantine, but dealing it constant and insidious blows.
-----
Footnote 75:
_De Vita Constant._, ii., 1.
-----
The simile was well chosen. Licinius seems to have opened his campaign
against the Christians by forbidding the bishops in his provinces to
leave their dioceses and take part in their usual synods and councils.
They were to remain at home, he said, and mind their own business and
not plot treason against their Emperor under the pretext of perfecting
the discipline of the Church. Another edict, which came with poor grace
from a man whose own excesses were notorious, forbade Christian men and
women to meet for common worship in their churches: they were to worship
apart, so that their morals might not be exposed to danger. On the same
pretext, bishops and priests were only allowed to give teaching and
consolation to their own sex; Christian women must find women teachers
and advisers. Eusebius tells us[76] that these edicts excited universal
ridicule. It was too late to revive the old stories of gross immorality
taking place at the communion services, and there was fresh cause for
mocking laughter when Licinius forbade the Christians to assemble in
their churches within the towns and ordered them to go outside the gates
and meet, if they must meet, in the open air. This was necessary, he
said, on the grounds of public health; the atmosphere beyond the gates
was purer. Licinius’s theory of hygiene was perfectly sound; its
application was ludicrous.
-----
Footnote 76:
_De Vita Constant._, i., 53.
-----
These were the first steps leading, as his subjects must have known only
too well, straight to persecution. After a time Licinius threw over
bodily the Edict of Milan. He purged his court and his army in the old
way. The choice was sacrifice or dismissal, and some pretext was usually
made to tack on to official dismissal a confiscation of goods. Licinius,
says Eusebius, thirsted for gold like a very Tantalus. Aurelius Victor
says[77] he had all the mean, sordid avarice of a peasant. And the
Christians, of course, were fair game. He pillaged their churches,
robbed them of their goods, sentenced them to exile and to the mines, or
ruined them just as effectually by insisting on their becoming
magistrates. Bloodshed followed, and Licinius aimed his severest blows
at the bishops. He accused them of omitting his name in their prayers
for the welfare of the Emperor and the State, though they carefully
remembered that of Constantine; and, if none were actually put to death,
many suffered imprisonment, torture, and mutilation. The story of the
martyrs and confessors in the Licinian persecution is very like that of
those who suffered under Diocletian and Maximin. But the fate of the
forty soldier martyrs of the Twelfth Legion (_Fulminata_) deserves
special mention. They had refused to sacrifice, and, by order of their
general, were stripped naked and ordered to remain throughout a winter’s
night upon a frozen pond, exposed to the elements. At the side of the
pond was a building, where the water for the town baths was heated.
Apparently no guard was kept. The martyrs were free to make their way to
the warmth and shelter if they wished it, but only at the price of
apostasy. One of them, after enduring bravely for many hours, crawled
towards the warmth, but died of exhaustion as soon as he had crossed the
threshold. The sight so affected the pagan attendant of the bath that he
flung off his clothes in uncontrollable emotion, and with the shout, “I
too am a Christian,” took the place of the weak brother who had just
lost the martyr’s crown. In the morning the forty were found dead and
their bodies were burnt at the stake. It was said that one of them was
found to be still breathing, and the executioners put him apart from the
rest. His mother, afraid lest he should miss entering heaven by the side
of his brave companions in glory, herself placed him in the cart to be
borne to the stake.
-----
Footnote 77:
_Huic parcimonia et ea quidem agrestis._
-----
Another moving story of the Licinian persecution is that of Gordius of
Cæsarea, in Cappadocia. He had fled from his home to live the life of a
hermit among the mountains, when suddenly an impulse came upon him to
return and testify to the truth. The people were all assembled in the
Circus, intent upon some public spectacle, when an uncouth figure was
seen to move slowly down the marble steps and then pass out into the
centre of the arena. A hush fell upon the multitude, as the hermit was
recognised and dragged before the tribunal of the Governor. “I have
come,” he said, “to shew how little I think of your edicts and to
confess my faith in Jesus Christ, and I have chosen this moment, O
Governor, because I know your cruelty, which surpasses that of all other
men.” They put him to the torture: he delighted in his pain. “The more
you torture me,” he said, “the greater will be my reward. There is a
bargain between God and us. Each pang and torment that we suffer here
will be rewarded there by increased glory and happiness.”
Licinius had thus, like Maximin, made himself the champion of the old
religion and the religious reactionaries. When in 323 war again broke
out between himself and Constantine, it was as the professed enemy of
Christianity and its God that he took the field. The war was a war of
ambition on both sides, but it was also a war between the two religions.
We have mentioned elsewhere the oath which Licinius took before the
battle, when he vowed that if the gods gave him the victory he would
extirpate root and branch the Christian religion. Fate gave him no
opportunity to fulfil his promise. Defeated at Adrianople and at
Chrysopolis, and then exiled to Thessalonica, Licinius had not many
months to live. Before he died he saw his pagan councillors pay for
their folly with their lives and heard the rejoicings of the Christians
of the East at the fall of the last of their pagan persecutors. The
Church at last had won her freedom and was to suffer at the hands of the
State no more. Eusebius has fortunately preserved for us the text of the
edict addressed by Constantine after his victory to the inhabitants of
Palestine, recalling from exile, from the mines, and from servitude the
Christian victims of the recent persecution, restoring their property to
those who had suffered confiscation, offering to soldiers who had been
expelled in disgrace from the army either a return to their old rank or
the certificate of honourable discharge, and giving back to the churches
without diminution the corporate possessions of which they had been
robbed. Constantine not merely passed the sponge over the administrative
acts of Licinius: he granted large subsidies to the bishops who had
suffered at the hands of “the dragon,” and himself wrote to “his dearest
beloved brother,” Eusebius of Cæsarea, urging him to see that the
bishops, elders, and deacons in his neighbourhood were “active and
enthusiastic in the work of the Church.”[78]
-----
Footnote 78:
σπουδάζειν περὶ τὰ ἔργα τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν.—_De Vita Const._, ii., 46.
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