Why Did Rome Persecute Christians? From Nero to Diocletian

Every Orthodox church is full of martyrs. Their icons line the walls, their names fill the calendar, and since the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) a bishop who consecrates a church "without holy relics" of the martyrs is to be deposed.¹ Most of the early martyrs died at the hands of the Roman state, which for two and a half centuries treated being a Christian as something that could be punished by death.

Why? Rome was not usually a religious persecutor. It tolerated, and often adopted, the gods of the peoples it conquered, and it made room for the Jews. Christians were not rebels, and their own apologists insisted they prayed for the emperor. Yet a governor could ask a person "Are you a Christian?" and execute him for the answer. This article follows the evidence from Nero to Diocletian, says what can and cannot be known about the numbers, and takes seriously the modern scholars who think the traditional story has been exaggerated.

In brief

Roman persecution of Christians came in two phases. From Nero in 64 until 249 it was local and sporadic: a mob, a hostile governor or an informer could bring Christians to trial, and the emperor Trajan ruled about 112 that they should not be hunted out but must be punished if accused and unrepentant. From 250 the emperors themselves acted. Decius ordered everyone in the empire to sacrifice to the gods, Valerian targeted clergy and Christian aristocrats in 257 and 258, and the Great Persecution under Diocletian and his colleagues ran from 303 until Galerius's edict of toleration in 311 (and longer in the East). The underlying reason was religious: Romans believed the empire's safety depended on honouring the gods, and Christians refused to sacrifice. How many died cannot be counted. Ancient Christian writers admit the martyrs of the early period were relatively few; the Great Persecution killed many more in some provinces than in others. Historians such as Candida Moss and Brent Shaw have argued that the story was magnified later, and parts of their case deserve a hearing, but the core of the record is secure.

Thesis: Rome persecuted Christians because their refusal to worship the gods looked like a threat to the peace between heaven and the empire, and the evidence, read honestly, shows persecution that was intermittent and uneven but real, and at times severe.

Why Rome cared: the gods and the empire

Roman religion was public. Sacrifices, festivals and prayers for the emperor kept what Romans called the peace of the gods, and disaster was a sign that the gods were offended. Tertullian, writing at Carthage around the end of the second century, describes the result with bitter wit: "If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, Away with the Christians to the lion!"²

He also names the legal heart of the matter. "You do not worship the gods, you say; and you do not offer sacrifices for the emperors." That, he says, "is the chief ground of charge against us."³ The Christians refused because they worshipped the one true God and knew the gods of Rome to be no gods: "we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one" (1 Corinthians 8:4, NKJV). To Romans, people who refused all the gods were "atheists." When the Christians of Smyrna were being hunted, the crowd cried out "Away with the Atheists; let Polycarp be sought out," and when the aged bishop stood in the stadium the proconsul urged him to "Swear by the fortune of Cæsar" and to say, "Away with the Atheists."⁴ Rumours made things worse. Christians met before dawn, called each other brother and sister and ate the body and blood of their Lord; Tertullian reports the charge that they killed and ate a child and then committed incest.⁵

None of this made Christianity a single named crime in a written statute for most of this period. As the historian James Rives puts it, before 250 "persecutions of Christians had always been local affairs determined by local conditions."⁶

Nero and the fire of Rome (64)

The first recorded persecution followed the great fire of Rome in July 64. The historian Tacitus, writing his Annals decades later, says that rumour blamed Nero, so "to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace." He names "Christus," executed "during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus." An "immense multitude" was convicted, "not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind." Some were dressed in animal skins and torn by dogs; others were crucified or "burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination."⁷ Even Tacitus, who despised Christians, says the cruelty roused pity.

Suetonius, a contemporary of Tacitus, lists among Nero's measures that "He likewise inflicted punishments on the Christians, a sort of people who held a new and impious superstition," but he does not connect this to the fire.⁸ A Christian witness from Rome itself, the letter known as 1 Clement, recalls that Peter and Paul died through "envy," and that "a great multitude of the elect" suffered "many indignities and tortures," including women made to play the parts of "the Danaids and Dircæ" in brutal spectacles.⁹ Our article on Paul's final years discusses his death under Nero.

In 2015 the historian Brent Shaw argued that the evidence in Tacitus was too weak to show a state persecution of Christians in 64, and in 2018 he restated that a persecution linked to the fire "seems improbable." Christopher Jones replied in 2017 that Tacitus's account is generally credible, and Shaw, answering him, accepted some of Jones's criticisms while keeping his main claim.¹⁰ The debate is real. Even so, 1 Clement independently remembers a large group of Roman martyrs in the apostles' generation, and Suetonius independently records punishments under Nero. {{strong: Christians were executed in Rome under Nero, though the link to the fire of 64 is debated.}}

Trajan's rule: "Do not go out of your way to look for them"

The clearest window into second-century practice is a pair of letters. Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia-Pontus in northern Asia Minor between about 111 and 113, wrote to the emperor Trajan for advice.¹¹ He had never attended trials of Christians and did not know whether "the very profession of Christianity, unattended with any criminal act," was punishable. His method was simple. He asked suspects three times whether they were Christians; those who persisted he executed, "for I was persuaded, whatever the nature of their opinions might be, a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved correction." Those who denied it proved it by offering wine and incense to the emperor's statue and cursing Christ, "whereas there is no forcing, it is said, those who are really Christians into any of these compliances."¹²

Pliny also reports what former Christians told him about their worship: they met "on a stated day before it was light," "addressed a form of prayer to Christ, as to a divinity," bound themselves "never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery," and later ate "a harmless meal."¹³ Trajan's reply set the pattern for a century and a half: "Do not go out of your way to look for them. If indeed they should be brought before you, and the crime is proved, they must be punished," but anyone who denies it and proves it "by invoking our gods" should be pardoned. Anonymous accusations "ought not to be received."¹⁴ Tertullian later mocked the logic: "It forbids them to be sought after as innocent, and it commands them to be punished as guilty."¹⁵

Martyrs of the second century

Under this rule Christians died when someone accused them. Polycarp of Smyrna, burned in the second century, answered the proconsul's demand to curse Christ: "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?" The same account warns against seeking martyrdom. A Christian named Quintus who had pushed himself and others forward lost his nerve and sacrificed, "Wherefore, brethren, we do not commend those who give themselves up."¹⁶ (See our infographic on Polycarp.)

At Rome, the philosopher Justin and his companions were tried before the prefect Rusticus, who sentenced "those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to yield to the command of the emperor" to be scourged and beheaded.¹⁷ Our article on Justin Martyr tells his story. At Carthage early in the third century the young mother Perpetua was told by the procurator Hilarianus at her hearing to "offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperors," and answered, "I am a Christian." She was condemned to the beasts, and her prison diary links the coming games with the birthday of Geta Caesar. Her own prison diary is preserved in the account of her death.¹⁸ In every case the demand is the same, and so is the refusal.

Tertullian drew the lesson that became famous: "The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed."¹⁹

Decius and the certificates of sacrifice (250)

Everything changed when the emperor Decius, shortly after taking power in 249, ordered the inhabitants of the empire to sacrifice to the gods. Rives notes that it is widely recognised as "a turning point in the history of Christian persecution."²⁰ Local commissions watched people sacrifice and issued signed certificates, called libelli. Dozens survive from Egypt. One, rediscovered in 2014 at Luther College in Iowa, reads in W. Graham Claytor's translation: "Always sacrificing to the gods, now too, in your presence, in accordance with the orders, I sacrificed and poured the libations and tasted the offerings, and I ask that you sign below."²¹

The papyri changed how historians read this episode. Claytor notes that a certificate issued to a priestess of the crocodile god Petesouchos showed that the order applied to everyone, not only to suspected Christians, and he argues that Decius's purpose was to restore the empire's relationship with the gods rather than to target the Church. {{debated: Whether Decius intended his decree as an attack on Christians is debated; its effect on them was severe.}} For Christians the result was the same. They had to sacrifice or face prison, torture and death.

Many gave way. St Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, wrote with grief that some "ran to the market-place of their own accord," so eager that magistrates put them off until the next day. Others bought certificates without sacrificing, and Cyprian told them they too had "defiled their conscience with certificates."²² The question of how to receive these "lapsed" back into communion divided the Church for years and produced the Novatian schism; our article on Cyprian of Carthage tells that story. The Church's eventual answer, penance and restoration rather than permanent exclusion, is part of the Orthodox inheritance of mercy.

Valerian (257 to 258)

A few years later Valerian struck at the Church's leaders and wealthy members. Cyprian reports the emperor's rescript to the Senate: "bishops and presbyters and deacons should immediately be punished," senators and knights should lose rank and property and then their heads if they persisted, matrons should be exiled, and Christians in the imperial household should be sent in chains to Caesar's estates. He adds that Bishop Xistus (Sixtus II) of Rome had been martyred "in the cemetery" in August 258.²³ Cyprian himself was beheaded near Carthage on 14 September of that year after refusing to sacrifice.²⁴ When Valerian was captured by the Persians, his son Gallienus issued a rescript allowing bishops to recover their places of worship, and a peace followed that lasted until 303.²⁵

The Great Persecution (303 to 311 and beyond)

The last and worst persecution began under Diocletian. Lactantius, a Christian teacher of rhetoric who had been summoned to Nicomedia under Diocletian, says the date was chosen deliberately: the festival of the god Terminus, 23 February 303, "to terminate, as it were, the Christian religion." At dawn officials broke into the church at Nicomedia and burned the Scriptures, and the next day an edict stripped Christians of legal rights and rank.²⁶ Eusebius of Caesarea, who lived through it, summarises the first edict as "commanding that the churches be leveled to the ground and the Scriptures be destroyed by fire," followed by orders to imprison the clergy and then compel them "by every artifice" to sacrifice.²⁷

The persecution was uneven. Gibbon, following the ancient sources, notes that in Italy, Africa and perhaps Spain the penal laws were relaxed after two or three years, while in the East they ran on under Galerius and Maximin Daia.²⁸ Eusebius describes the Thebaid in Egypt, where on some days "not less than thirty, then about sixty, and yet again a hundred men with young children and women, were slain," and a small town in Phrygia, all Christian, burned with its people inside.²⁹ In April 311, as he was dying, Galerius issued an edict admitting failure: many had submitted, but "great numbers still persist in their opinions," so he decided "to permit them again to be Christians, and to establish the places of their religious assemblies," asking them to pray for the emperors.³⁰ In 313 Constantine and Licinius, meeting at Milan, granted freedom of worship, and Licinius published the order at Nicomedia.³¹ Our article on whether Christianity disappeared after the apostles shows what kind of Church emerged from those years.

How many died?

No one can give a reliable total. Ancient Christians did not claim vast numbers for the early period. Origen, who wrote his reply to Celsus in his sixties, in the years of peace just before Decius, says that only "some, on special occasions, and these individuals who can be easily numbered, have endured death for the sake of Christianity."³²

The eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon, no friend of the Church, tried to estimate the Great Persecution. Eusebius names ninety-two martyrs in Palestine; treating Palestine as a sixteenth of the East, Gibbon reached a figure of "somewhat less than two thousand persons" executed across the empire.³³ His method is crude. It assumes Palestine was typical, when Eusebius describes far heavier killing in Egypt, and it counts only formal executions, not those who died in prison, in the mines or in mob violence. The surviving evidence points to thousands of deaths, not hundreds of thousands, with the burden falling very unevenly by time and place. {{moderate: The total number of Christians executed by Rome was probably in the thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands, though no reliable count exists.}}

Objections and replies

"The age of martyrs is a myth."

Candida Moss, a New Testament scholar, argued in The Myth of Persecution (2013) that "the sustained period of persecution never happened in the ways that we usually think," that many martyr stories were embellished or invented in later centuries, and that the language of persecution today makes dialogue harder.³⁴ Parts of this are right, and Orthodox Christians should admit it. Many later passions of martyrs are legendary, the early persecutions were intermittent, and Trajan's rule meant that most Christians in most years were left alone. But Moss's critics, such as Collin Garbarino in Themelios, reply that she attacks a "straw man," since anyone familiar with Christian history knows the Church did not suffer continuous persecution.³⁵ The documentary core (Tacitus, Pliny and Trajan, the libelli, Cyprian's letters, Galerius's own edict) comes from Roman officials and eyewitnesses, not from later legend.

"Christians were punished for crimes, not faith."

Pliny's letter answers this. He found no crime beyond "an absurd and extravagant superstition," yet executed those who would not deny Christ, and released those who sacrificed. Trajan confirms that denying and sacrificing brought pardon. The offence was the name and the refusal.

"Many Christians sought death."

Some did, and the Church disapproved. The account of Polycarp's death explicitly does not "commend those who give themselves up," because "the Gospel does not teach so to do."

"Persecution proves that Christianity is true."

Not by itself, since people die for many beliefs. But the martyrs were not dying for opinions of their own making. The Greek word martys means "witness," and they bore witness to Christ, crucified and risen, whom the apostles had seen alive and proclaimed at the cost of their own lives (see How Did the Apostles Die?). The truth of their confession rests on the Resurrection; the martyrs show that those who received it held it worth more than life, and that the Church grew under the sword rather than by state favour.

What we can say confidently

• Romans persecuted Christians mainly because they refused to sacrifice to the gods and for the emperor, which seemed to endanger the peace between the gods and the empire.
• Before 250 persecution was local and sporadic; Trajan ruled that Christians should not be hunted out but punished if accused and unrepentant.
• Decius's decree of 249 to 250 required universal sacrifice, documented by surviving certificates; Valerian targeted clergy in 257 to 258.
• The Great Persecution began in February 303 and ended in stages, with Galerius's edict of 311 and the settlement of 313.
• Many Christians lapsed under pressure, and the Church chose to restore them through penance.

What remains disputed

• Whether Nero's punishment of Christians was connected to the fire of 64.
• Whether Decius aimed his decree at Christians or simply at universal piety.
• How many Christians died in total, and in each persecution.
• How much of the later martyr literature preserves real history.

Conclusion

The Roman persecutions were not a three-century massacre. They were something harder to dismiss: the steady possibility that any Christian, if accused, would be asked to burn a pinch of incense and would have to choose. Some chose to deny Christ, and the Church, after much argument, received them back with tears. Others, from slaves to bishops, chose death, and the Church has kept their names ever since. The Orthodox Church honours them not as heroes who saved themselves but as witnesses whose victory was Christ's own. Honesty about the numbers takes nothing from them. Their witness never depended on being many, only on being faithful.

Notes

1. Second Council of Nicaea (787), canon 7, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm.
2. Tertullian, Apology 40, trans. S. Thelwall, ANF vol. 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm.
3. Tertullian, Apology 10.
4. Martyrdom of Polycarp 3 and 9, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0102.htm.
5. Tertullian, Apology 7.
6. J. B. Rives, "The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire," Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999): 135-154, opening extract, https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0075435800060068/type/journal_article.
7. Tacitus, Annals 15.44, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_15.
8. Suetonius, Nero 16, trans. Alexander Thomson, rev. T. Forester, Project Gutenberg ebook 6400, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6400.
9. 1 Clement 5-6, trans. John Keith, ANF vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm.
10. Brent D. Shaw, "The Myth of the Neronian Persecution," Journal of Roman Studies 105 (2015): 73-100; C. P. Jones, "The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution: A Response to Brent Shaw," New Testament Studies 63 (2017): 146-152; Brent D. Shaw, "Response to Christopher Jones," New Testament Studies 64 (2018): 231-242, abstract at https://cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/response-to-christopher-jones-the-historicity-of-the-neronian-persecution/38FE019260A6F71EFD86ABD8E9B19D63. Shaw's 2015 article and Jones's reply were not opened; their positions are taken from Shaw's 2018 abstract.
11. Paul Halsall, Internet Ancient History Sourcebook, "Pliny the Younger and Trajan on the Christians," https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/pliny1.asp.
12. Pliny, Letters 10.96, trans. William Melmoth, rev. F. C. T. Bosanquet, Project Gutenberg ebook 2811, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2811 (numbered XCVII in that edition).
13. Pliny, Letters 10.96.
14. Trajan to Pliny, Letters 10.97 (XCVIII in the Gutenberg edition).
15. Tertullian, Apology 2.
16. Martyrdom of Polycarp 4 and 9.
17. The Martyrdom of the Holy Martyrs Justin, Chariton, Charites, Pæon, and Liberianus 5, trans. Marcus Dods, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0133.htm.
18. The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas chapters 1-2, trans. R. E. Wallis, ANF vol. 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0324.htm.
19. Tertullian, Apology 50.
20. Rives, "The Decree of Decius," opening extract.
21. W. Graham Claytor, "A Decian Libellus at Luther College (Iowa)," Tyche 30 (2015), https://tyche.univie.ac.at/index.php/tyche/article/view/4992.
22. Cyprian, On the Lapsed 8 and 27, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, ANF vol. 5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050703.htm.
23. Cyprian, Epistle 81 (ANF numbering; 80 in other editions), To Successus, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050681.htm.
24. John Chapman, "St. Cyprian of Carthage," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04583b.htm.
25. Eusebius, Church History 7.13, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250107.htm.
26. Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors 12-13, trans. William Fletcher, ANF vol. 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0705.htm.
27. Eusebius, Church History 8.2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250108.htm.
28. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 16, Project Gutenberg ebook 732 (volume 2), https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/732.
29. Eusebius, Church History 8.9 and 8.11.
30. Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors 34-35.
31. Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors 48.
32. Origen, Against Celsus 3.8, trans. Frederick Crombie, ANF vol. 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04163.htm.
33. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chapter 16.
34. Henry L. Carrigan Jr., "Were Early Christians Really Persecuted? PW Talks with Candida Moss," Publishers Weekly, 23 April 2013, https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/56939-were-early-christians-really-persecuted-pw-talks-with-candida-moss.html.
35. Collin Garbarino, review of Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution, Themelios, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/review/the-myth-of-persecution-how-early-christians-invented-a-story-of-martyrdom/.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Tacitus. The Annals. Trans. A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb. London: Macmillan, 1876. Online at Wikisource.
• Suetonius. The Lives of the Twelve Caesars. Trans. Alexander Thomson, rev. T. Forester. Project Gutenberg.
• Pliny the Younger. Letters. Trans. William Melmoth, rev. F. C. T. Bosanquet. Project Gutenberg.
• Lactantius. On the Deaths of the Persecutors. Trans. William Fletcher. ANF vol. 7. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1886.
• Claytor, W. Graham. "A Decian Libellus at Luther College (Iowa)." Tyche 30 (2015) (edition of a certificate of sacrifice).
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• 1 Clement; Martyrdom of Polycarp; Martyrdom of Justin and Companions. ANF vols. 1 and 9.
• The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas. ANF vol. 3.
• Tertullian. Apology. Trans. S. Thelwall. ANF vol. 3.
• Origen. Against Celsus. Trans. Frederick Crombie. ANF vol. 4.
• Cyprian of Carthage. On the Lapsed; Epistles. Trans. R. E. Wallis. ANF vol. 5.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History. Trans. A. C. McGiffert. NPNF2 vol. 1.
• Second Council of Nicaea (787). Canons. Trans. Henry Percival. NPNF2 vol. 14.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Rives, J. B. "The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire." Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999): 135-154.
• Shaw, Brent D. "The Myth of the Neronian Persecution." Journal of Roman Studies 105 (2015): 73-100; with C. P. Jones, "The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution: A Response to Brent Shaw," New Testament Studies 63 (2017): 146-152; and Shaw, "Response to Christopher Jones," New Testament Studies 64 (2018): 231-242.
• Moss, Candida. The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. New York: HarperOne, 2013 (interview in Publishers Weekly, 2013).
• Garbarino, Collin. Review of Moss, The Myth of Persecution. Themelios.
• Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 16.
• Chapman, John. "St. Cyprian of Carthage." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4, 1908.