The Great Persecution

The Great Persecution

It was the worst persecution to date.

WHEN DIOCLETIAN became emperor of the Roman Empire in 284, Christians were encouraged because of rumors that his wife, Prisca, and daughter Valeria were believers. And, in fact, during the first nineteen years of his reign, Christians lived in relative peace and prosperity, some even holding high positions in the emperor’s court.

In civil affairs Diocletian had great organizational skills. To facilitate the rule of the Roman Empire, he established his tetrarchy with two senior emperors called augusti (himself and Maximian) and two junior emperors called caesares (Galerius, his son-in-law, and Constantius, the father of Constantine).

Gradually, life became more difficult for Christians. Deciding that religious unity would strengthen the empire, Diocletian published three edicts in an attempt to guarantee the supremacy of the Roman state religion.

On February 23, 303, the day of the Roman feast Terminalia, an edict was posted that ordered all copies of Scripture to be burned, all churches destroyed, their property confiscated, and Christian worship forbidden. Additional measures were decreed the next day: Christians who resisted no longer had legal recourse. Christians were deprived of any honors and public office, and Christians in the royal household would be enslaved if they did not recant. Thus the Great Persecution began, although it was not uniformly enforced by the four emperors. Many Christians first learned of the edicts as they watched their churches go up in smoke.

A third edict, ordering Christian clergy arrested, resulted in a state crisis when the prisons filled, crowding out real criminals. To deal with this problem, the next edict stated that Christian prisoners would be released if they sacrificed to Roman gods. The prison guards could compel them by any means possible to make these sacrifices. But the proclamations did not stop there. In early 304 another edict insisted that everyone in the Roman Empire—clergy and laity alike—sacrifice to the Roman gods. Every Christian was now in jeopardy.

In 305 Diocletian and Maximian abdicated in favor of Constantius and Galerius, effectively ending the persecution in the West since Constantius was not interested in enforcing the edict. The persecution continued in the East until 311, when shortly before his death Galerius relented and issued an edict of limited toleration, granting freedom of worship if Christians did not disturb the peace.

The years of the Great Persecution officially ended with a second edict of toleration, this time by Constantine in 313. The Edict of Milan was a great historical event, for it granted religious liberty to Christians and pagans alike. Eusebius, the first church historian and a contemporary of these events, recorded the words of Constantine’s edict:

Perceiving long ago that religious liberty ought not to be denied, but that it ought to be granted to the judgment and desire of each individual to perform his religious duties according to his own choice, we had given orders that every man, Christians as well as others, should preserve the faith of his own sect and religion. . . . We resolved . . . to grant both to the Christians and to all men freedom to follow the religion which they choose, . . . And we decree still further in regard to the Christians, that their places, in which they were formerly accustomed to assemble . . . shall be restored to the said Christians, without demanding money or any other equivalent, with no delay or hesitation. . . . For by this means . . . the divine favor toward us which we have already experienced in many matters will continue sure through all time.

Reflection

What would you have done if you had been living in 304 and the Roman emperor decreed that everyone must sacrifice to the Roman gods? This issue may be more relevant than you think if you are alive when the Antichrist appears. He will demand to be worshiped and require the death penalty for those who refuse.

Another beast . . . ordered the people of the world to make a great statue of the first beast, who was fatally wounded and then came back to life. He was permitted to give life to this statue so that it could speak. Then the statue commanded that anyone refusing to worship it must die.

Revelation 13:11, 14-15