Draft Version
 

Christians and the Roman State

193-324

In this section I provide a quick summary--with minimal analysis--of the known clashes between Roman authorities and the Christian communities in the first half of the third century.
 

'Persecution' of Christians by Roman officials had been in the course of the second century sporadic and unsystematic, and basically local in range, and is best seen in the context of the occasional harassment of many another exotic group equally regarded as deviant (astrologers, soothsayers, magicians and the like). However, Christians had been considered troublesome enough to have been brought to the attention, from time to time, not just of Roman provincial governors or of the Roman urban prefect but on rare occasions of Roman emperors themselves (Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius), so much so that early in the third century Ulpian was able to draw up a register of imperial rescripts (i.e. imperial responses to referrals by provincial governors, possibly responses to complaints or queries by provincial councils etc.) demonstrating the punishments that by then were deemed appropriate for Christian adherents:[1] there was by that date an adequate accumulation of case-histories with imperial authority. But the intermittent and regional nature of the outbreaks needs to be emphasized: Christians were ipso facto potentially on the wrong side of the law but it required local circumstances to realize that potentiality, especially through popular agitation (whether out of religious fervour, or of superstitious fear occasioned by earthquake, drought, flood, plague or famine) or, occasionally, through Christian enthusiastic provocation. In either case it was pressure from below, rather than imperial initiative, that gave rise to troubles, breaching the generally prevailing, but nevertheless fragile, limits of Roman tolerance: the official attitude was passive until activated to confront particular cases and this activation normally was confined to the local and provincial level. There is a strong tendency in later sources to universalize these local outbreaks as the heroisation of the past age of martyrdom gained pace in the post-Constantinian era but there are no solid grounds for concluding that the same pattern did not apply for the first half of the third century as it had throughout the second century.
 

And throughout this first half of the third century we have to appreciate that this intermittent trouble is brought to our attention by casual evidence: our sources being so fitful, we have to allow that we have but a sample of what Christians may well have experienced elsewhere (thanks to Eusebius, a fundamental source, our view is notoriously biassed towards Eastern evidence). And we have to allow that, additionally, victims belonging to other Christian sects may well have been crowded out of that imperfect record: with martyrdom valued as the supreme sign of the elect, memory of these sectaries was promptly erased in what emerged as the orthodox tradition, in the rush to lay claim to the spiritual high ground of martyrdom. It was of course solemnly and consistently argued by the orthodox that there can be no true martyrdom outside the church. Thus under the Antonines Montanists and Marcionites and other non-orthodox groups could lay claim to 'innumerable martyrs' (ap. Euseb. H.E. 5.16.20f) but typically our knowledge of individuals comes basically in efforts to discredit their spiritual credentials eg. ap. Euseb. H.E. 5.18.5ff (Montanists), Tert. Adv. Prax. 1.4. (Praxeas). A century later, in the martyrdom of Pionios (250) we casually--but significantly--encounter (without elaboration) a Marcionite martyr (c.21.5f) and a Montanist confessor (c.11.2)--such sectaries, generally suppressed, have to be added mentally to our register of Christian victims[2]. In all this the frequent occurrence of confessors (that is, released Christians) as opposed to perfected martyrs is noteworthy: in the case of provincial governors, wielding as they did the ius gladii, their discretionary powers (the arbitrium iudicantis) could be crucial. A period of imprisonment after an initial hearing (with pressure to recant) appears to have been standard, to be followed, in a significant number of cases, by eventual release as hopelessly recalcitrant--or as renegade (Tert ad Scap. 4 provides, among many other instances, some pertinent illustrations). Arrest as a Christian did not inevitably lead to a martyr's death: adventitious circumstances such as the hostility of a crowd or the strength of the religious sentiments of a governor could be determinant.
 

Under Septimius Severus the spotlight for us falls on Egypt and Africa, but that focus may well be due to the vagaries of our surviving documentation (Eusebius H.E. 6.1-5, Tertullian's writings especially de Corona Militis, Scorpiace and ad Scap., and the Passio of Perpetua and Felicity).[3] Eusebius H.E. 6.1 (in typical fashion) asserts that 'when Severus was stirring up persecution against the churches, in every place splendid martyrdoms of the athletes of piety were accomplished and this was especially frequent at Alexandria', and he goes on to illustrate--without further reference to the emperor or to other places--the cases of ten specific (Alexandrian) individuals whilst declaring 'countless numbers' donned the crowns of martyrdom (H.E. 6.2.3). There is no good reason to doubt the reality of the particular cases that Eusebius cites, only the generalisation that he draws from them and the imperial source he attributes to them. The named victims are Plutarch (brother of Heraclas, later to be bishop of Alexandria), Serenus, Heraclides, Hero, a second Serenus, Herais ("of the women'). Potamiaena (these seven are all identified by Eusebius as being converts and disciples of Origen's, several being catechumens or only recently baptized, H.E. 6.3.2, 3.13, 4.1ff), Marcella (the mother of Potamiaena) and the soldier Basilides (also a catechumen?, H.E. 6.5.6). These all appear to suffer under the Egyptian prefect Ti. Claudius Subatianus Aquila (H.E. 6.3.3, 5.2--attested in office from at least 206 until 211). The tenth named victim is Leonides, Origen's father: his death, and the subsequent confiscation of his property (H.E. 6.2.13), is dated by Eusebius unequivocally to the tenth year of Severus (H.E. 6.2.2) under the prefecture of Quintus Maecius Laetus (attested for at least 200 to 203). Despite the impression of Eusebius, his case might well be an incident quite separate from that of the other victims: at least a furthur prefecture of Egypt, that of Claudius Julianus, intervened (204-205/6).[4] There does seem to be a popular element in the attack on the catechetical school and its members--Origen barely escaped stoning from the heathen mob, he needed to be defended in his own home by soldiers and was forced to flee from house to house for safety from the unbelievers (or so Eusebius defensively declares, H.E. 6.2.4ff). But this is no mob pogrom: some of the victims are beheaded.
 

At about the same time (traditionally remembered as March 7) when the procurator Hilarianus was acting proconsul in Africa Proconsularis (?203, but 202 or 204 are also possible) a group of five youthful catechumens along with their teacher was condemned to death fighting the beasts in the amphitheatre of Carthage (though the location is not actually attested in the Passion), at games celebrating the birthday of Geta, the emperor's younger brother. They were two slaves, Revocatus and Felicity, Saturninus and Secundulus (who actually died in prison before the ordeal, c. 14) along with the twenty-two year old Perpetua highlighted in our account as being 'of good family, well-educated and a married Roman matron' ('honeste nata, liberaliter instituta, matronaliter nupta' c. 2.1). Their teacher, Saturus, not arrested with his catechumens, voluntarily surrendered himself subsequently (c. 4.5). The dream account of Saturus, adds four named others, seen to be already in the garden of Paradise, 'Jucundus, Saturninus, and Artaxius, who were burnt alive in this same persecution, together with Quintus who had actually died as a martyr in prison' (c. 11.9) whilst they also recognized in Paradise 'many of their brethren, including martyrs' (c. 13.8).[5] The extraordinary document of their trial preserves the record written by Perpetua herself of her imprisonment including four of her dreams (cc. 3-10) along with Saturus' account of his vision (cc. 11-13). By these accounts we gain a remarkable insight into the contemporary mentality of such martyrs, their sense of privileged spiritual access (a prophetic dream, on request, to determine whether they would indeed suffer--or be reprieved, c. 4), their sense of spiritual powers (Perpetua's deceased brother Dinocrates released from his sufferings, cc. 7-8), their sense of spiritual superiority (they act as mediators of the contention between their bishop Optatus and the presbyter Aspasius c. 13), their sense of immediate election to Paradise (cc. 10ff.). Apart from graphically perceiving the stark realities of their periods of imprisonment (awaiting formal trial before the acting proconsul and then, after condemnation, awaiting the games) we also perceive in Perpetua's case familial tensions ('I grieved for my father's sake because he alone of all my kindred [genus] would not be rejoicing at my suffering' c. 5.6) with a brother also a catechumen (her younger brother having died, it seems, unbaptised cc. 7f.) and presumably mother and (absent) husband already Christian. Other-worldly aspirations are highlighted by her preparedness to abandon her infant son at the breast (as well as by Felicity's abandonment of her new-born child). The crowd (populus) is variously shown to be sympathetic and hostile (eg. cc. 17, 18.9, 20.2, 21.7). The grounds for condemnation are importantly (and unequivocally) reported by Perpetua: 'The procurator Hilarianus ... said: "Have pity on your father's white hairs, have pity on your infant son. Perform sacrifice (fac sacrum) for the well-being of the emperors. And I replied: I will not. Hilarianus said: Are you a Christian? And I replied: I am a Christian. ... Then Hilarianus pronounced sentence on us all and condemned us to the beasts"' (c. 6.3ff.). The sequence of official thinking is clear: so long as Perpetua was prepared to conform to accepted public Roman ritual ceremonies, she could go free (whatever the beliefs--and indeed practices--she might privately continue to maintain). The exclusivity of Christian worship was the sticking-point. That avenue refused, condemnation followed precisely on the grounds of her persistent Christian adherence. (Had she refused to sacrifice, for example, and then it emerged that she was Jewish, condemnation would not have followed).
 

Many have attempted to link these (on the face of it, quite unrelated) incidents in Egypt and Africa with a compressed and confused passage in H.A. Septimius Severus 16.8f. which has Septimius, with Caracalla, journeying from Syria through Palestine on their way to Alexandria (that is, in 199 A.D.) and 'on their way he established many privileges (iura) for the Palestinians. He forbade under severe penalty that people should become Jews (Judaeos fieri). He also decreed the same concerning Christians (idem etiam de Christianis sanxit).' However, if such a linkage is made, there are clear chronological difficulties; the purported imperial embargo does not find any resonance elsewhere in our sources--indeed Tertullian ad Scap. 4 [212 A.D.] can wax eulogistic on Septimius' favourable personal relations with Christians;[6] and not all of the known victims fall into the envisaged category (of converts--? and their teachers) eg. Leonides. The Historia Augusta passage is best regarded as spurious, an invention reflecting the author's late fourth-century preoccupations and prejudices, and the temptation to link these incidents should accordingly be resisted.[7] They can be considered as typical of the perils that could potentially befall anywhere openly enthusiastic converts and staunch Christian adherents alike. Such a charged atmosphere in which Christians found themselves living was guaranteed to generate eager talk of the coming of Antichrist and perfervid millenarian expectations (so at this season Eusebius H.E. 6.7 [the writer Judas], Hippol. in Dan. 4.18 [Syria], 4.19 [Pontus], Tert. adv. Marc. 3.24 [Palestine]).
 

However, de Corona (a Montanist work, dated to the time of a military donative by joint Severan emperors, c. 1.1, i.e. datable to before late 211[8]) has a (? Carthaginian) soldier brought to trial (reus ad praefectos c.1.2) and imprisoned, there awaiting the largesse of martyrdom (donativum Christi in carcere expectat c. 1.3) but by his ostentatious refusal to wear the ceremonial laurel crown drawing the complaint of pusillanimous Christians for 'jeopardizing for them a peace so long and so good' (tam bonam et longam pacem periclitari sibi c.1.5). We must suppose that there have not been too many incidents like that of Perpetua, Felicity, and companions in the interim, since c. 203, known to Tertullian and his audience.
 

Under early Caracalla it was to be no different. Tertullian bears incidental testimony to lethal danger in Numidia and Mauretania ('nam et nunc a praeside Legionis, et a praeside Mauretaniae vexatur hoc nomen, sed gladio tenus', ad Scap. 4.8), as well continuing stress in Africa Proconsularis itself (ad Scap., passim): one martyr is named, Mavilus of Hadrumetum, condemned to the beasts, ad Scap. 3.5 (there are textual uncertainties). We also encounter some later surviving confessors, implying that their stand for their faith had occurred under the earlier Severans. For example, bishop Alexander was in prison as a confessor in Cappadocia at the time of the appointment of Asclepiades as bishop of Antioch (Euseb. H.E. 6.11.5), in the first year of Caracalla, 211/12 (according to Eusebius' Chronicle): he was, however, soon to the released and translated from his see in Cappadocia to the bishopric in Jerusalem (H.E. 6.8.7). Asclepiades, in turn, had been a confessor by the time of his appointment to Antioch, H.E. 6.11.4--his confession (and release) presumably had taken place during the principate of Septimius; and Asclepiades' predecessor in the cathedra of Antioch, Serapion, had had occasion to write to one Domnus who had 'fallen away from the faith of Christ at the time of the persecution' H.E. 6.12.1, that is, again under Septimius, Serapion's bishopric extending from 191 to 210 according to Eusebius' Chronicle. We ought to deduce further trouble for Christians apart from Africa and Egypt, in Cappadocia and Syria. Likewise again for Africa: Cyprian (Ep. 39.3.1) in early 251 incidentally mentions the illustrious martyred forebears of the young (Decian) confessor Celerinus--his grandmother Celerina and his two uncles (paternal and maternal), Laurentinus and Egnatius, both soldiers. We must presume their deaths (in Carthage?--their anniversaries were annually commemorated there) occurred in the reasonably distant past--Cyprian in the de Lapsis (251) can blame the pax longa for its lulling effects in stultifying the faith of those who had recently lapsed (de Laps. 9)--but they will still have had to fall within the last generation or two. We have to suppose such scattered incidents were endemic, liable to occur anywhere at any time: however diminished these incidents may have become in frequency, there still remained a background of insecurity and some peril in which Christians had to live out their lives.

However, from our perception of things that pattern of peril does indeed appear to be visibly changing. There is much less evidence of outbreaks of popular hostility against Christians in the thirty-five years or so before 250: was this as Christianity became a more familiar part of the kaleidescopic religious landscape and being less secretive therefore became less feared? And in parallel many fewer Christians are known to be arraigned for trial. But appearances can be deceptive and our perception distorted by the tyranny of our sources: we have, for example, scant western evidence between Tertullian and Cyprian and where we do have it (eg. via the papal Calendars) much is unreliable.[9] The earliest and the most reliable (the Liberian) does record baldly the deportation of the Pope, Pontian and the presbyter Hippolytus (one supposes the Hippolytus) to the unhealthy island of Sardinia in 235 (and the resignation of the former from his office in late September on that island).[10] We simply do not know what circumstances may have occasioned this action. But here, once again, the testimony of Eusebius has been invoked (though he was himself apparently unaware of these particular events). For H.E. 6.28 reads:
 

When Alexander the Emperor of the Romans had brought his principate to an end after thirteen years, he was succeeded by Maximin Caesar. He, through ill-will towards the house of Alexander, since it consisted for the most part of believers, raised a persecution, ordering the leaders of the Church alone to be put to death, as being responsible for the teaching of the Gospel. Then also Origen composed his work On Martyrdom, dedicating the treatise to Ambrose and Protoctetus, a presbyter of the community at Caesarea; for in the persecution no ordinary distress had befallen them both, in which distress it is recorded that these men were distinguished for the confession they made during the period, not more than three years, that the reign of Maximin lasted. Origen has noted this particular time for the persecution, in the twenty-second of his Expositions of the Gospel according to John, and in various letters. (trans. J.E.L. Oulton)
 

Regrettably we do not have Eusebius' collection of Origen's letters (H.E. 6.36.3) nor the twenty-second Exposition on the Gospel of John (from which Eusebius deduced the dates of the trouble) but we can verify that in the Exhortation to Martyrdom Origen does address Ambrose (deacon and Origen's patron) and the otherwise unattested priest Protoctetus urging them to face with steadfast courage threatening troubles, but in the most general of hortatory terms. There are in fact no deaths (Ambrose surviving to be the dedicatee of the Contra Celsum composed a dozen years later, c.248). The rest seem to be deductions and generalisations of Eusebius' own (imperial motivation,[11] universal attack on Church leaders specifically, as being responsible for preaching the gospel) based presumably on his own more recent experiences. Ironically, where we do have some collateral evidence it serves only to undermine further Eusebius' generalisation.
 

For Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, writes to Cyprian in the autumn of 256 (Cyp. Ep. 75.10.1f):
 

10.1 I should like now to recount to you an incident, relevant to this present matter, which happened in our area. About twenty-two years ago, in the period after the Emperor Severus Alexander, a great number of trials and tribulations befell in these parts both the whole community generally and the Christians in particular. There occurred a long succession of earthquakes, as a result of which many buildings throughout Cappadocia and Pontus collapsed, and even towns were swallowed up by crevasses opening out in the ground, sinking into the abyss. In consequence, there arose against us a violent persecution for the Name; it broke out suddenly after there had been a lengthy period of peace, and its effect was all the more devastating in throwing our people into disarray because trouble of this kind was so unexpected and novel to them. Serenianus was governor of our province at the time, a bitter and relentless persecutor.
 

10.2 The faithful, finding themselves in the midst of this upheaval, took to flight in all directions in fear of persecution; they abandoned their home territories and moved to other parts of the country (they were free so to move, in that this persecution was local and did not extend to the whole world). Suddenly, a certain woman started up in our midst: she presented herself as a prophetess, being in a state of ecstasy and acting as if she were filled with the Holy Spirit. But she was so deeply under the sway and control of the principal demons that she managed to disturb and deceive the brethren for a long time by performing astonishing and preternatural feats, and she even promised that she would cause the earth to quake: not that her devil had such power that he was able to cause an earthquake or disturb the elements by his own efforts, but that, as an evil spirit, possessing the gift of foreknowledge and therefore perceiving that there was to be an earthquake, he sometimes pretended that he was going to do that which he saw was going to happen.[12]
 

Firmilian is insistent that the persecution of 235 which he is describing was local to Cappadocia and Pontus (unlike the recent one under Decius) and he is clear about its origins (not the emperor but the reaction of the pagan population--including the governor Licinnius Serenianus, PIR²L245--to a series of local earthquakes)[13] and about its victims (Christian congregations, not exclusively church leaders). The general air of superstitious hysteria engendered by the natural disasters is significant--as equally is the long period free from persecution that the region had enjoyed (to our knowledge, extending since the governorship of Claudius Lucius Herminianus and the confession of bishop Alexander). So far as we know this may well have been typical of the histories of the church communities in many regions of the empire.
 

All told, it is prudent to deduce scattered troubles in Palestine, Cappadocia and Rome at this period of 235-238 (and quite probably elsewhere) but no universal proscription of church leaders as Eusebius posits.[14] And we remain ignorant of any further troubles until over a decade later. Indeed Origen writing towards the end of the 240's confirms the general impression of the peace of this period for Christians (Contra Celsum 3.15):
 

That not even the fear of outsiders maintains our unity is clear from the fact that by the will of God this has ceased for a long time now. It is, however, probable that the freedom of believers from anxiety for their lives will come to an end when again those who attack Christianity in every possible way regard the multitude of believers as responsible for the rebellion which is so strong at this moment,[15] thinking that it is because they are not being persecuted by the governors as they used to be. (trans. H. Chadwick)
 

Likewise, writing with hindsight after the devastation of the persecution of Decius, Dionysius of Alexandria can also refer to the preceding principate of Philip as having been 'more kindly' (eumenestera) towards Christians (ap. Euseb. H.E. 6.41.9). Overall the record of persecution, as it survives for us, would indicate an increasing acceptance of the Christian presence in the empire as the first half of the third century progressed and a corresponding easing in the physical molestation of the Christian communities.[16] But the chance survival of part of a letter of Dionysius of Alexandria (addressed to Fabius of Antioch c.251/2), preserved by Eusebius H.E. 6.41, acts as some brake in forming too confident, and too sanguine, a picture. Without it we would not know of marauding mobs of chanting native Egyptian fanatics (that is, in the view of the sophisticated Christian Hellene, Dionysius), rampaging through the streets and alleys of Alexandria, looting the houses of Christians, forced to flee, and lynching four victims (Metras and Quinta, stoned to death; Apollonia burnt; Serapion hurled to his death from an upper story). This fierce and unruly pogrom (it is no official persecution) lasted, we are told, a long time (epi polu: ap. H.E. 6.41.8), starting a full year before the actual arrival of Decius' orders (that is, in late 248/early 249). It is salutary to be reminded that we know of this popular agitation only because Dionysius wishes to emphasize the spiritual standing of his Alexandrian church--before, eventually, lecturing the patriarch of Antioch on the need to forgive sins of apostasy, as the Alexandrian church is doing (ap. H.E. 6.42.5ff, 6.44.1ff). It is too easy to conclude (as many have) that by mid-century Christians have virtually ceased to be targets of popular outcry. The momentous events of the coming year are to witness repeat scenes in Rome, Alexandria, Carthage, Smyrna (and no doubt elsewhere).
 
 

1. Summary
 

I first provide a very summary account of the course of the persecution, followed by some detailed sections justifying the construction of that summary. Sources are abundant, comprising principally the correspondence of Cyprian (especially Epp. 5-41) and his treatise de Lapsis, the letters of Dionysius of Alexandria (largely preserved as extracts in Euseb. H.E. 6 and 7), the Acta of Pionios and the forty-five extant Decian libelli from Egypt.
 

By autumn 249 the emperor Decius was secured in power after his usurpation. It cannot have been very long afterwards that orders went out from Rome to all the provincial governors of the Empire that there was to be a universal sacrifice to the gods of empire--possibly to be proclaimed on January 3, 250 at the public civic ceremony of the vota solemnia, the annually celebrated sacrifices for the emperor's personal welfare (though attractive, this is an entirely speculative setting). At any rate victims are attested before the month of January 250 was over.[17] On the face of it, this was a decidedly old-fashioned gesture--on the model of a supplicatio when in the distant past the people of Rome were bidden in times of public distress to come forward as a body to throng all the temples and shrines of the tutelary deities of the state--but the scale of the operation was entirely unprecedented: a religious rally by the inhabitants of the entire empire to win the favour of the gods who protected that empire--and in support of the new dynasty under whose sacred auspices the destiny of the empire now lay. This was to be the dynasty inaugurating Rome's second millenium (the millenial games and pageants having been celebrated with much pomp and fanfare the previous year, 248). So far as our evidence goes the gods to be so honoured were left unspecified, allowing for variants in local civic divinities--whether it be, say, the Nemeseion in Smyrna, the Serapaeum in Alexandria or the Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva in the more Romanized civitates or indeed some more personal cult (Pionios' dialogue with the proconsul of Asia who vainly urges the Christian to offer sacrifice to whatsoever deity he cares to have in mind--to the air, if he likes--is a revealing vignette of this persecution, Acta Pionii 19f.). But a publicly accepted gesture of religious obeisance had to be done by pouring libation and tasting sacrificial offerings.[18] The emperor-cult was not directly involved, only insofar as it could (as in the past) be used as a means of testing Christian obstinacy--or proving apostasy.[19] Honour to the gods was the object, not necessarily entailing abjuration of private or local beliefs or cult practices (which were of course legion throughout the length and breath of the empire, Christianity included). About Decius' edict there is, however, a foretaste of that autocracy which marks fourth-century government: directives are being issued from above affecting the lives of the entire empire as the central authorities attempt to grapple with the problems of commanding and controlling an unwieldy and extremely diverse empire. There is here a presage of those centralist pressures for conformity and homogeneity. Christians, certainly, would have seen it as a dramatic, indeed drastic, departure from their own experience of the more laissez-faire attitude towards their religion that had characterized the previous years, the preceding regimes now appearing benign by contrast.[20] For there has been a significant shift: it is now the religious sentiment of the imperial court--rather than that of the local populace--that is to determine the well-being or otherwise of Christians. It is a watershed moment. And the sources are repetitious in declaring the suddenness and unexpectedness of the outbreak of persecution for Christians.
 

But it is clear that an attack on Christianity as such was not the object of the legislation. However, bishops by this date could be figures of prominence, especially in the major metropolitan cities, known to command sizeable congregations. They are promptly put under pressure to lead their followers to the pagan altars.[21] Christians, therefore, quickly become victims by their refusal to comply (Jews appear to have been exempted, as by now traditional in Roman religious matters).[22] And the sequel shows as the year 250 progressed that in most cases various pressures to conform were imposed (tortures, confiscations, exile, periods of imprisonment with varying degrees of deprivation) rather than the (relatively rare) imposition of the death penalty. Here, as before, the (variable) mood of the local populace (which it was the course of prudence to assuage), or the patience (or piety) of the governor, could be determining factors. Though incontestably a period of intense anxiety and extreme apprehension for most confessing Christians, the persecution of Decius--the first of the 'General Persecutions'--was in fact less lurid than many modern accounts (and later Acta) might lead us to believe.
 

One of the remarkable features of the orders is certification--the issuing of certificates (libelli), signed by official witnesses, bearing testimony to the recipients' having complied with the orders, and no doubt protecting them from further harassment (not unlike the issuing of taxation receipts). Copies of forty-five such certificates have been recovered from Egypt.[23] There are no good grounds for believing that only Christian suspects were required to produce such documents. The bureaucratic implications must have been immense and, in many less urbanized or bureaucratized districts, well-nigh insurmountable. We are forced to conclude that Decius' intentions were far from idle: the depth of traditional piety involved ought not to be underestimated. To issue those certificates and to supervise the sacrificial actions panels of local commissioners were established, varying in composition from place to place.[24] A fixed date dies ... praestitutus, Cyp. de Lapsis 3) was also set locally by which time the local inhabitants were to have presented themselves; thereafter the commissioners would have had to deal with late-comers, defectors or defaulters drawn to their attention. The recalcitrant were left to languish in prison, their cases referred to a higher magistrate awaiting trial. All indications are that after a lapse of twelve months from the date set for the sacrificial rites, the various commissions were dissolved, Christians still imprisoned were released, and exiles were recalled: refugees begin to return and those who have lain concealed in hiding feel free to emerge. By March 251 bishops are planning publicly to hold post-persecution Council meetings. By that date it was clear all danger had passed. And this was well in advance of Decius' death in June , 251.
 

We can guess that Decius would have been surprised by his posthumous reputation in the Christian tradition--for Lactantius he is an execrabile animal (de mort. persec. 4); matters of state more pressing that the fate of a relatively few Christian recusants had claimed his attention. And as for his religious programme generally, he may even have regarded it as not unsuccessful. After all, so many pagans as well as lapsing Christians throughout the empire had done honour to the empire's gods (though it is difficult to penetrate a theology which might regard gods as honoured by a false declaration of continuous piety, as lapsing Christians would have had to profess).
 

2. The Orders
 

Who were enjoined to perform the sacrificial rites--all citizens or all inhabitants (servile population included) of the empire? The wording in several passages of Cyprian certainly leaves the impression that all inhabitants, regardless of sex, age and citizen-status, were probably involved. Ep. 15.4 reveals that entire households, having lapsed, were seeking readmittance to communion 'up to twenty and thirty and more at a time who claim to be the relations, in-laws, freedmen and domestics of the person holding a certificate of forgiveness' (issued by one of the martyrs). Liberti et domestici could well encompass the servile classes. A similar inference could be drawn from Ep. 55.13.2: the case of a Christian who sacrificed in person as proxy 'for his entire family, thereby protecting his wife, his children and his entire household [domum totam]'.[25] Even babies were not exempted (de Laps. 9, 25). [26] This is a religious rally on the grandest of scales, and we have recorded by way of corroboration evidence of the subsequent persecution for Spain, Gaul, Italy, Sicily, Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Pontus and Asia.
 

The Egyptian libelli so far published were issued between mid-June and mid-July, 250: that is a good six months since the promulgation of the edict, at least in some other parts of the empire. Do libelli, therefore, belong to a second and more intensive stage in Decius' persecution when such certificates were required? Possibly so. But the evidence for Rome indicates that certification was required there by at least March: Numeria, in bribing her way out of actually sacrificing before Easter (April 7, 250), had thereby committed a sin entailing her exclusion from communion (Cyp. Ep. 21.2.1, 3.2). She must have acquired an incriminating certificate (compare the description in Cyp. Ep. 55.14.1f), an action regarded by many (at least in the West) as tantamount to apostasy. Similarly by May 250 Cyprian can mention grades of apostasy (i.e. libellatici vs. sacrificati) in Ep. 15.3.1 (glossed in Ep. 20.2.2 as 'those who had stained their hands and lips with sacrilegious contagion or had none the less contaminated their conscience with impious certificates'). This he mentions casually, not as a recent new wave of perils for Christians: there is already by May 250 a significant and importunate group of purchasers of libelli in Carthage. Certification was part of the routine of this persecution in his experience.
 

It is possible, given the locality of the known Egyptian libelli (Theadelphia, Alexandru Nesus, Philadelphia, Oxyrhynchus, Arsinoe, Narmouthis, Thosbis), that it took some time for Decius' orders to penetrate into these areas up country and for a local date then to be set for their implementation (there are parallel delays in the promulgation of Diocletian's first edict against Christians--February 23, 303 in Nicomedia, June 5, 303 at a town near Carthage). If this is so, there is one corollary: Christians up in this locality could well have had advance warning of the coming trial from their brethren down on the coast and have had every opportunity to make themselves scarce. This reduces considerably the likelihood of finding any apostate Christians among the finds of the Egyptian libelli.
 

3. Implementation of the orders
 

Our sources allow us to glimpse scenes of the commissions at work. We see the appointed magistrates flocked by crowds anxious to prove (correctly or not) their religious loyalties (de Laps. 8,25); at times among the crowds Christians of prominent station are pushed forward, urged on by pagan inciters to demonstrate their compliance (Dionysius ap. Euseb. H.E. 6.41.11). Smoking altars are set up around the Forum to help cope with the numbers, but characteristically, in the larger and romanised town centres, long lines of slowly moving processions wind their way up to the altars set before the Capitoline temple (Cyp. Ep. 8.2.3, Ep. 21.3.2). When the pilgrim reaches an altar, he (or she) places on it a portion of ritual meat in offering, pours there a little wine in libation, and tastes a morsel of the sacrificial meats provided. (We hear of some apostates so eager to establish their pagan loyalties that they brought their own hostia and victima with them [de Laps. 8]). Our pilgrim now presents a libellus (possibly in duplicate)[27] to the commission; it is often, for the illiterate--or the speaker of a native language only--prepared by a local notary. It is read out (publice legitur, Cyp. Ep. 30.3.1), the petitioner acknowledges it as his or her own (Cyp. Ep. 30.31, Ep. 55.14.1), and one or more of the commissioners then duly sign it as witnesses in the appropriate place on the document.
 

Our sources also allow us to see clandestine evasions of the orders. For what very many Christians did was not to perform the actual pagan rites enjoined upon them but to bribe the official or officials concerned, and purchase their libellus. They could thereby secure immunity from the edict's penalties, and, they thought, retain their Christian faith unimpaired (see Cyp. Ep. 55.14). Writing a good generation or so earlier, Tertullian testifies that bribing one's way out of the clutches of a persecutor was common practice for a Christian, and one which, with his rigorous temperament, he personally disapproved of (De fuga 5.3, 12-14). Clearly others did not.
 

In the minds of the libellatici, or purchasers of libelli, in the persecution of Decius, there was simply not much difference between passing money over to a praeses or to an intending delator, and thus securing freedom from threatened molestation (as Tertullian testifies Christians had done in the past), and passing over money, either in person or through a deputy (Cyp. Ep. 30.3.1, Ep. 55.14.1 for deputies), to a local official thus securing a libellus and thereby freedom from molestation from Decius' edict. But to the legally-minded ecclesiastical authorities, at least in the West, what was purchased was significant (for the East our sources are comparatively meagre).[28] For a Christian it was tantamount to a formal declaration of apostasy, and by acknowledging a libellus as his own a Christian was, technically, guilty of denying his faith. He joined the ranks of the lapsi, the fallen (so, firmly, de Laps. 27f).
 

What many other Christians did, in order to escape detection by authorities, or delation before a commission, was to take to flight. Bishops fled from distant provinces to be lost in the crowds of Rome (Cyp. Ep. 30.8.1); and we hear, for example, of 65 refugees from Carthage who were cared for by the two sisters of Celerinus in Rome (Cyp. Ep. 21.4.1). In turn, Christian refugees fled to the crowds of Carthage also; they required special funds for their needs (Cyp. Ep. 7.2 [peregrini]), and they might find shelter in Christian homes, as displaced fugitives and exiles (extorres et profugi), in large numbers (Cyp. Ep. 55.13.2). Gregory Thaumaturgus took to the safety of the Pontic hills (relying on Gregory Nyssa, PG 46.945), and likewise many Egyptians fled to 'the Arabian mountain' for refuge, and subsequent perils (Dionysius ap. Euseb. H.E. 6.42.2ff.).
 

When the persecution died down Cyprian could muster for his African Council, held in the first half of 251, a 'copious number of bishops' and these bishops were 'whole in soul and body' (Ep. 55.6.1). The charity of hospitable fellow-Christians had ensured that even the main figures in the Church, the bishops, had managed to escape in safety and without spiritual compromise. There is little evidence to suggest that any systematic search was made for them. The authorities appear to have relied on delation as the main weapon for subsequent detection; and if inhabitants were poor, insignificant, and unobtrusive, they were most unlikely to be the victims of delation. And very many Christians were poor and insignificant, and they escaped. They were the stantes, the steadfast; they are the silent, and characteristic, heroes of the persecution of Decius.[29]
 

4. The Victims
 

When a recusant was detected by or reported to a commission, when a well-known Christian was arrested by searching soldiers or was hounded by his neighbours to sacrifice and publicly refused, when an enthusiastic Christian defiantly flaunted his refusal to comply, or when a person who had initially sacrificed subsequently presented himself voluntarily in order to repudiate his earlier actions, then the task of the local officials was clear. After verifying the facts, and possibly putting some pressure on the recalcitrant to relent (cf. Acta Pionii 15ff.), they referred the case to the local governor, to be dealt with as he came on the rounds of his assize conventus. For however tempted they might be in such a case to act ultra vires, the matter was strictly beyond the legal competence of such minor magistrates; the penalties liable (not laid down perhaps with specificity) could be capital. After his initial ordeal, and confession, the Christian could face a period in prison, awaiting trial, followed by appearance before the governor's tribunal and eventual sentence. At the trial the judge might exercise his rightful discretion and dismiss the case,[30] or the accused might be sentenced to some form of exile (along with confiscation of his property). However, as apostates (to honour the gods) were wanted rather than martyrs, torture and further periods in prison under conditions of varying stringency might be imposed. Under such circumstances obstinacy might be repaid in the end by death in prison, or, in relatively rare cases, by a death sentence, or by eventual dismissal as a hopeless case.
 

Eastern Provinces
 

It is difficult to assess how far we may with any assurance extrapolate from our surviving evidence to undocumented areas. Nevertheless, patterns are discernible even in such erratic evidence as we do have.
 

Concerning the area about which he might best be informed, and about events that occurred only about a decade perhaps before his own birth, Eusebius can report that the bishops of Antioch in Syria (Babylas) and of Jerusalem in Palestine (the aged Alexander) both died in prison as unrepentant confessors (Euseb. H.E. 6.39.2ff.). Origen (domiciled in Palestinian Caesarea) survived his long months of imprisonment; despite the dungeons, tortures, chains and rack, which Eusebius found described in detail in numerous letters of Origen's, he nevertheless outlived the emperor Decius. We are left to wonder whether there can have been in this general area any other resistance heroes the memory of whom had faded so quickly, within half a century, in the local church tradition. The absence of the death penalty is noteworthy.[31]
 

Further northwards in Smyrna (province of Asia), we encounter the arrest on February 23, 250, of a group of Christians discovered praying together in a house, namely the presbyter Pionios, together with another presbyter (Limnos) and three of the laity (Sabina, Asclepiades, and Macedonia); [32] we observe their refusal to sacrifice after appearing before the commission in the city's forum, and their incarceration. In the face of provocation and pressures from officials, soldiers and populace of Smyrna alike, they adamantly await the arrival of the proconsul. Trial and tortures end with Pionios' condemnation to death (by fire) on March 12, 250, along with a Marcionite Christian. We are not told of the fate of his other companions, nor of the three others they discover already in prison. Here the local citizenry voice the threat of death--or females to the brothels--at the outset; there prevails an atmosphere charged with religious hostility (though some of the agoraioi are made out to be solicitously sympathetic, Acta Pionii 5.2ff.).In such a setting the proconsul judges in the end that little quarter should be given, nor was it expected.
 

Up in the more northerly district of Pontus the stress in the vague and fulsomely rhetorical narrative of Gregory of Nyssa (in his life of Gregory Thaumaturgus) is on the search for Christian fugitives, arrests, imprisonments and tortures (PG 46.944ff.). One martyr's name only is given, Troadius (a young man of prominent station), and he was seen in a miraculous vision dying 'after many tortures' (PG 46.949); this does not sound like execution but death as a result of tortures applied to induce apostasy.
 

The remaining Eastern evidence comes from Egypt and derives from a first-hand account--excerpts from three letters by Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria at the time, as preserved by Eusebius (H.E. 6.40.1ff., 7.11.20ff.). In a few brief pages we meet (for Alexandria), five 'volunteer martyrs' (Ammon, Zeus, Ptolemy, Ingenuus--all soldiers--and Theophilus), five Christians sentenced to death by fire (Macar, Hero, Ater, Isidore and Nemesion), four by quicklime (Julian, Cronion, Epimachus and Alexander), four by beheading or the sword (Besas, Ammonarion, Mercuria, Dionysia)--altogether eighteen named Alexandrian victims, a nineteenth (woman) being left unnamed, H.E. 6.41.18, plus the instance of a hired steward (Ischyrion) beaten to death by his outraged employer, a government official (outside Alexandria).[33] Throughout, statements and illustrations abound of desperate fugitives and refugees, prisoners heroically enduring tortures, and the angry mob violently harassing notorious Christians (the wealthy and the prominent). What has to be recalled here is the religious atmosphere that has been prevailing in Alexandria. That smouldering mood of bigotry and virulent hostility revealed in the savage pogroms of the previous year was resuscitated by the advent of Decius' edict and appears to be reflected in the apparently high number of Alexandrian victims condemned to death for their religious intransigence. How far this mood prevailed in Egypt generally outside the city of Alexandria we do not know, but we do have Dionysius' general word for it that 'very many others throughout the cities and villages were torn to pieces by the heathen' (ap. Euseb H.E. 6.42.1). The forty-five libelli surviving from the rubbish dumps of the towns and villages of upper Egypt begin to acquire a moving, and human, context.
 

Western Provinces
 

Although our evidence from Spain and Gaul implies that the edict of Decius was enforced there (Cyp. Epp. 67, 68), we do not chance to have in our meagre records certain knowledge of Decian martyrs from these localities. The same is true for Sicily (Cyp. Ep. 30.6.2), whereas an odd note seems to preserve the names of two Decian victims in Campania (Capua)--Augustine and Felicity.[34]
 

In Rome, however, pope Fabian certainly died a martyr's death, in late January of 250 A.D. But no detailed account survives of his gloriosus exitus (Cyp. Ep. 9.1.1); it may have been due to torture, or simply the sudden shock of the adversities of Roman prison life. Thereafter, though imprisonment, privations, and tortures were undoubtedly the lot of a number of Christians arrested in Rome, we have to wait very many months before there is any word of Christian deaths. There are indeed none by the time Cyprian wrote Letter 28 (? August/September 250), but some had occurred by Letter 37 (§3; winter of 250/251). The Roman presbyter Moyses died subsequently to that letter, after a confinement lasting some eleven months (Liber Pontif. ed. Duchesne 21); many of his companions lived on to enjoy release from their prison only a short while later (see Cyp. Ep. 49, Ep. 54.2.2). Here, in what was unquestionably the largest Christian community in the West, defiant Christians are not automatically punished with death. The pattern matches much of our other evidence. Christians were not being extirpated, only being induced, by variable means and at variable levels of intensity, to conform, and even then some of those apprehended were simply dismissed in despair.
 

The rich details provided by the pages of Cyprian present much the same picture for Africa: flight, trials, exiles, confiscations, imprisonments, tortures--and a mob lynching (Ep. 40.1.1)--are all there to be sure, with all their attendant fears and horrors, but deaths are relatively few and none is certainly by way of legal condemnation. The best commentary is to read Letter 22 which supplies all of the named victims (17 all told)[35] apart from the pair Castus and Aemilius who died undergoing tortures and very probably at this period (de Lapsis 13). But it remains a humbling reminder of our ignorance, and of the haphazard nature of our testimony, that had Cyprian not had occasion to include a copy of Letter 22 with his correspondence, we would have been left largely unaware in any detailed and personalized way of the harsh realities of the sufferings being endured in Carthage.
 

Overall, to judge from the list of the victims we know, certainly by no means all Christians 'died in prisons dark, by dungeon, fire and sword.' Far from it. But the memory of the nightmare, if not of the details, of this persecution lived vividly on, and understandably so.
 

And everywhere the churches were left in the aftermath with the devastation of the fallen within their ranks. For Cyprian 'the wild tempest had overwhelmed not only the majority of our laity' but 'it had included in its destructive wake even a portion of the clergy' (Ep. 14.1.1). In Smyrna not only had the bishop apostatized (Acta Pionii 15.2) along with 'many of the Christian brethren' (Acta Pionii 12.2) but Pionios was urged 'to obey and offer sacrifice like everyone else' (Acta Pionii 4.1) and the Proconsul could declare that 'many others have offered sacrifice and are now alive' (Acta Pionii 20.3). Alexandria in turn saw many defections especially among the more socially eminent including those in official employ (ap. Euseb. H.E. 6.41.11). May we take Smyrna and Alexandria as typical of the cities in at least the eastern Empire? Even whole communities had been led by their bishops into apostasy (Cyp. Ep. 55.11.1f, [Trofimus, in Italy], Cyp Ep. 59.10.3 [ Repostus, in Africa Proconsularis]) and apostate bishops subsequently fought for reinstatement (Cyp. Epp. 65, 67) or joined schismatic groups (Cyp. Ep. 59.10.2). Decius' religious rally had left behind a long-lasting legacy of disorder and disarray within the Christian ranks, with dissensions over the proper conditions for readmitting the fallen bitterly dividing the churches everywhere, and with bishops challenged for spiritual leadership by surviving (and, by definition, inspirited) confessors.
 

Dionysius writing from Alexandria in the early 260s addressed a festal (presumably Easter) letter to Hermammon and the brethren in Egypt: this was penned during 'the peace of Gallienus' (ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.22.12) and expanded on the congenial (but rhetorically unexceptional) theme that emperors enjoy peace, health and prosperity (as, currently, does Gallienus) whilst they engage the favours and prayers of Christians but that they are beset with wars, plagues and disasters when they persecute them (ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.1, 7.10.22ff., 7.22.12ff.). This reading of the imperial history of the past decade was illustrated not only from the recent histories of Decius, Valerian and the Macriani, but also from the reign of Gallus, Decius' immediate successor (mid-251 to mid-253). Consistent with this perspective Gallus is blessed--tendentiously--with an initial period 'when his reign was progressing happily and affairs were going according to his wishes' but subsequently he was unwise enough to 'drive away the holy men who were mediating before God for his peace and well-being. Consequently when he banished these men away, he also banished away their supplications on his behalf' (ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.1).
 

After carefully clearing Egyptian Christians of any taint of complicity in the (now defeated) cause of the Macriani, Dionysius concluded his whole argument resoundingly: 'And I am moved to make a further review of the length of days in the imperial reigns. For what I observe is that it has taken only a brief time for those who were utterly ungodly, though once such renowned names, to become nameless, whereas he [= Gallienus], being more pious and god-loving, has already left behind the seven year mark and is now actually completing his ninth year, during which let us now celebrate the feast. ...' (ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.23.4).
 

Unfortunately Dionysius leaves entirely vague the identity of the holy men and what precisely Gallus did to them when he is said to have 'hounded them out' and 'banished' them [elasen, edioxen]. Whilst such vagueness is not untypical of the panegyric mode in which his festal letters are couched, were they fellow Egyptian heroes we could reasonably expect some named identities. However, we can supply two candidates--from overseas (Rome).
 

Cornelius the bishop of Rome was exiled to Centumcellae (Cyprian does not know of his confession until late Spring, 253) and there he died whilst apparently still in office, at least before June 25, 253 (the commencement date of his successor's pontificate).[36] That successor, Lucius, was also promptly relegated, immediately upon his election to office, sharing his relegation with companions (Cyp. Ep. 61.1.1). Cyprian can write not too long afterwards congratulating them on their release (Ep. 61). Their recall may possibly lie behind Valerian's (much exaggerated) reputation for initially regarding Christians with favour (as witnessed by Dionysius of Alexandria in the same--tendentious--festal letter to Hermammon, ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.10.3).[37] We are without information as to the circumstances which gave rise to these relegations, but the periods of exile of these 'holy men' would indeed have coincided with the collapse and downfall of Gallus' principate sufficient to lend credence to Dionysius' loaded version of history.
 

Elsewhere, in a letter written in the summer of the previous year, 252, Cyprian addresses Cornelius (at that time still in Rome) whose church can be regarded at the time as greatly flourishing, i.e. not threatened with difficulties (florentissimo illic clero tecum praesidenti, Ep. 59.19). And yet Cyprian has this to say of himself: 'In recent days, also, just as I am writing this letter to you, there has been once again popular outcry in the circus for me to be thrown to the lion: this has been occasioned by the sacrifices which the people have been ordered by a public edict to celebrate' (ob sacrificia quae edicto proposito celebrare populus iubebatur) (Ep. 59.6.1). Obviously Cornelius (the addressee) and the Roman church are not included in the troubles: this is a local outburst, the edict presumably proclaimed by the local proconsul. (One can imagine orders for a public expiation against the plague, at a ceremony in the circus from which the notable figure of the leader of the Christians--popularly blamed for the visitation of the plague through their failure to worship 'Roman gods', eg. ad Demet. 2,5--was enragingly absent).
 

The following year (253) we do hear in Carthage of anxious premonitions of a threatened persecution, manifested by frequent ominous signs and minatory visions (Cyp. Epp. 57, 58) but so far as we know these apprehensions were never actualised: Epp. 57, 58 are datable to May, 253 at the onset of another summer bringing with it the threat of further deaths in Carthage by the devastating plague (see the contemporary descriptions in de Mort. 14, Pontius Vit. Cyp. 9)--and the prospect of similar terrifying scenes in the circus of Carthage.
 

We know of no troubles elsewhere. There was no 'persecution of Gallus', no continuation of Decius' edict, merely the continuation of intermittent local troubles and isolated incidents to which especially prominent church leaders were constantly liable under the stress of local circumstances--and at a particular season of social and political instability and insecurity. Following on their unnerving experiences under Decius it was, however, for many Christians a time of heightened apprehensions.[38]
 

So far as we are able to judge, Valerian and Gallienus started off their principate with the same general attitude of laissez-faire towards Christians (as likely as not it was no delicately modulated policy, simply that other and more pressing matters of state commanded their attention).[39] That did not mean, however, that Christians were assured of going unmolested. They were still individually liable to hostile attack. For example, a papyrus of February 28, 256 (Oxy. Pap. 3035) reveals orders to arrest from the Egyptian village of Mermertha one 'Petosorapis, son of Horus, Christian': that could mean that the man's Christianity provided the grounds for his arrest.[40] But in all events, in the course of the following year, 257, as the regime now approached the completion of its first quinquennium, that laissez-faire imperial attitude modified. The date is summer of that year; the orders conveyed to the proconsul in Africa by imperial litterae were implemented on August 30 in Carthage (Act. procons. Cyp. 1.1). While we are in ignorance of the precise and immediate circumstances which may have triggered off the dispatch of these litterae,[41] we do chance to have two precious documents which convey at a more general level the official reasoning that lay behind them.(1) Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, in the course of defending his actions under persecution against defamation from a brother bishop named Germanus, his occasion to quote the ipsissima verba from the official court records of his trial before Aemilianus (at the time vice-prefect of Egypt)[42] in Alexandria. Dionysius was accompanied by a fellow-presbyter (Maximus), three deacons (Faustus, Eusebius, Chaeremon), and 'one of the brethren who were in Alexandria at the time from Rome' (=? Marcellus). (There seems to have occurred already a court appearance followed by an adjournment while Dionysius and his clerical companions were left time to think things over).
 

But listen to the actual words which were spoken by both of us just as they are recorded in the official proceedings.
 

'Dionysius, Faustus, Maximus, Marcellus and Chaeremon having been brought in, Aemilianus, the vice-prefect, said: And I also talked with you off the record, discussing the clemency which our emperors have displayed towards you: they have in effect granted you the power to save yourselves, if only you are willing to adopt that which is according to nature, worshipping gods that preserve their empire and abandoning those that are contrary to nature.
 

'What, then, is your response to this? I do not imagine that you are going to show yourselves ungrateful for their clemency, seeing that what they are urging you to do is to adopt the better course.
 

'To this Dionysius replied: It is not true that all men worship all gods but every group worships certain gods in whom they believe. So in our case there is the one god, the creator of the universe, the one who in fact entrusted the empire into the hands of the most pious Augusti, Valerian and Gallienus. This is the god whom we both venerate and worship and to whom we offer prayers without ceasing for their empire, petitioning that it may continue unshaken.
 

'Aemilianus, the vice-prefect, said to them: Well, then, who is stopping you from worshipping him as well, if indeed he is a god, along with the gods that are according to nature? You were ordered to worship gods--gods that everyone knows.
 

'Dionysius answered: We do not worship any other.
 

'Aemilianus, the vice-prefect, said to them: I perceive that you are being at once ungrateful and unappreciative of the generosity of our august emperors. You shall, therefore, no longer stay in this city: instead, you will be despatched to the regions of Libya, at a place call Cephro. This is the place I have selected, in conformity, with the command of our august emperors.
 

'And on no account will it be lawful for either you or anyone else to hold assemblies or to enter the "cemeteries", as they are termed. But should anyone be shown not to have been at this place I have ordered or is detected at any meeting, he is going to bring himself into jeopardy. Rest assured: this will be stringently enforced.
 

'Be off, therefore, to the place to which you have been ordered.' (ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.11.6ff.).
 

The official concerns, we can observe, are for worship to be given to known gods (not 'unnatural' ones) who preserve the empire and for public conformity to be displayed as part of the process of winning that preservation of the state (the 'unnatural' religious assemblies of Christians are, as a corollary, to be forbidden). Dionysius' attempt to sidestep the imperial demands is telling: Christians already pray for the continued security of the empire without ceasing, and to the one God that matters. Maintaining pax with the divine was understood by both sides to be the underlying objective. And both sides appear to agree in closely interpreting the course of contemporary history theologically.
 

(2) The court records (dated August 30, 257) are also preserved for Cyprian's appearance before the proconsul in Carthage.[43]
 

The proconsul Paternus said to Cyprian the bishop: 'The most revered emperors Valerian and Gallienus have honoured me with a letter in which they command that those who do not practise Roman religion must observe Roman rites. Accordingly I have made inquiries in your connection. What is your answer to me?'
 

Cyprian the bishop said: 'I am a Christian and a bishop. I know no other gods beside the one, true God who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them. This is the God we Christians serve, to this God we pray day and night for you and for all mankind, and for the well-being of the emperors themselves.'
 

The proconsul Paternus said: 'And so you persist in this way of thinking?'
 

Cyprian the bishop answered: 'A good way of thinking which brings knowledge of God cannot be changed.'
 

The proconsul Paternus said: 'Will you be able, then, to go into exile to the city of Curubis, in accordance with the orders of Valerian and Gallienus?'

Cyprian the bishop said: 'I go.'
 

The proconsul Paternus said: 'They have honoured me by writing not only about bishops but also about presbyters. I want you to tell me, therefore, who are the presbyters dwelling in this city?'
 

Cyprian the bishop answered: 'By excellent and beneficial legislation you have outlawed informers. Hence I am unable to reveal or denounce them; but they are to be found in their own cities. Our rules forbid anyone to surrender himself voluntarily and you strongly disapprove of this as well; they may not, therefore, surrender themselves but they will be discovered if you search for them.'
 

The proconsul Paternus said: 'I shall certainly make a search for them today from this community.'
 

Cyprian the bishop said; 'If you make inquiries they will be discovered.'
 

The proconsul Paternus said: 'I shall discover them.' And he added: 'They also command that no meetings are to be held in any place nor shall they enter the cemeteries. If, therefore, anyone does not observe this salutary command, he will suffer capital punishment' (Act procons. Cyp. 1).
 

We are able to discern the same stress on public conformity in acceptable ritual action (Romanas caeremonias recognoscere),[44] and Cyprian's defensive insistence that Christians pray without ceasing for the well-being of the emperors' persons (pro incolumitate imperatorum ipsorum) indicates what he, too, perceived to be the imperial motivation behind that stress on ritual conformity. Higher clerical orders only--involved in performing the 'unnatural' Christian caeremoniae--are concerned, viz. bishops, presbyters (deacons, as well--Dionysius' companions included three deacons), and Christians' ritual assemblies themselves and their sacred grounds are proscribed. There is a growing sense that the Christian caeremoniae, far from being mere harmless aberrations, are positively offensive to the 'natural' gods.

We do not chance to have a great deal of evidence for the actual implementation of these orders, save for Africa Proconsularis (the case of Cyprian), Egypt (the case of Dionysius and his five companions), and Numidia (the two exiled bishops Agapius and Secundinus in Act Marian. et Jacob. 3). Much will have depended on the initiative and zeal of the individual governor, the eminence of local clerics (too much in the public eye to allow them to be overlooked), and, of course, popular hostility against Christians in a particular area which could lead to the reporting of Christian lawbreaking or of the whereabouts of Christian clergy. Governors, however indifferently they felt towards religious matters or however anxious they were to avoid needless trouble, could not let themselves be seen too blatantly to disregard entirely the emperors' wishes: they had careers to foster. At least in one sector of Numidia the grinding hardships and ordeals that were to confront Christian clergy and laity alike were painfully real. Cyprian Epp. 76-79 (written whilst Cyprian was still in exile at Curubis) reveal not just exile but condemnation in metallum of bishops (9 are named) along with (unnamed) presbyters and deacons--together with laity (including women and children, Ep. 76.6.2). Deaths have occurred (Ep. 76.1.2). So far as we know this first stage of the Valerianic persecution singled out higher clergy only: lower clergy and laity would become involved only if they infringed (under threat of capital penalty) the regulations regarding assemblies and cemeteries--which we must presume these Numidian Christians, laity and clergy alike, have done.[45] We are simply left to extrapolate from these samples for other regions of the empire.

The version we have of Gallienus' later rescript of toleration certainly implies that Christian places of worship (topoi) might be subject to sequestration (and Christian cemetery grounds might be seized, as we gather from the further imperial response which Eusebius paraphrases in H.E. 7.13 ad fin). The litterae of 257 did not merely convey a clear licence from the emperors, if a governor chanced to be so inclined, to outlaw Christian officials and corporate Christian worship: more positive action was being demanded.
 

But the last decade had given Christians practice in the skills required for evading detection, and the elaborate international network of the brotherhood (witness Cyp. Ep. 80) further assisted underground survival. Even those actually apprehended for exemplary treatment and exiled continued their proselytizing activities (so Dionysius declares at Cephro, ap. Euseb H.E. 7.11.12f.); they even participated in the (forbidden) assemblies (so Dionysius--defensively--claims at Colluthion, ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.11.17); they were flocked with Christian visitors, laden with their gifts (as Cyprian enjoyed at Curubis, Pont. Vit. Cyp. 12, cf. Dionysius both at Cephro ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.11.12 and at Colluthion ap. Euseb. H.E. 7.11.17); they might continue lavishly to minister to the Christian poor (see Pont., Vit. Cyp. 13) or send sustaining support to fellow confessors (Cyp. Epp. 76-79).
 

The Roman Senate appears to have written to Valerian in the east requesting official guidance for dealing with such public defiance of the imperial wishes (as far as we know, the clergy of Rome had all so far managed to survive unharmed). We learn from Cyp. Ep. 80 of the contents of the imperial reply:
 

1.1 ... But you should now be informed that the men whom I had expressly sent over to Rome are back; they were to find out the truth and report to us the terms of the rescript concerning us, for there have been rife a wide variety of unconfirmed rumours.
 

1.2 The truth of the matter stands as follows.

Valerian has sent a rescript to the Senate, directing that bishops, presbyters, and deacons are to be put to death at once but that senators, high-ranking officials, and Roman knights are to lose their status as well as forfeit their property, and that if, after being so dispossessed, they should persist in remaining Christians, they are then to suffer capital punishment as well. Furthermore, that matrons are to be dispossessed of their property and despatched into exile and that any members of Caesar's household who had either confessed earlier or should have done so now, are to have their possessions confiscated and are to be sent in chains, assigned to the imperial estates.
 

1.3 Moreover, the emperor Valerian has added to his address a copy of the letter which he has written to the governors of the provinces concerning us. We are daily awaiting the arrival of this letter ...
 

1.4 You should be further informed that Sixtus was put to death in the Cemetery on August 6, and, along with him, four deacons. Indeed, the prefects in Rome are daily pressing on with this persecution: those who are brought before them are being condemned, with their estates forfeited to the imperial treasury.
 

The fact that the Senate--it would appear--had written to the emperor requesting guidance in dealing with prominently recalcitrant Christians (whether notables of the Church or of society and of Caesar's own household) suggests there were conscientious enemies of Christianity to be found within the conservative upper social circles of Rome: Valerian himself need have been no different. (Porphyry Vit. Plot. 16 echoes the resentment felt at the spread of Christianity, and other outlandish sects, in contemporary Rome at the expense of the 'old philosophy.') And we need to remember that the Christian intelligence network would have known of the Senate's referral months before the imperial response came back from the east--hence long weeks of apprehensive waiting by Christian communities (Cyp. Ep. 80.1.1). The virulence of the mood of hostility is reflected in orders which entailed the recall and retrial of clergy already sentenced under the first stage (thus the African bishops Agapius and Secundinus brought back from exile to their execution, Act Marian. et Jacob. 2.5ff., as likewise Cyprian himself),[46] or harsher treatment for already confessed (and presumably sentenced) Caesariani. But the most devastating illustration of the violent change in temper comes with the stark news of the execution on the spot of Pope Sixtus and four of his deacons at the cemetery of Callistus in Rome (û1.4). This heralds the bloodiest persecution known before the days of Diocletian.
 

An ingredient in Valerian's decision may have been reaction to the affront cast upon the imperial dignity and Roman law by open Christian recalcitrance. But an administrator, however hotly outraged, however hastily he may have been obliged to act while in the midst of military campaigning, would still have realized the grave consequences of these orders to be distributed throughout the empire. This was persecution, because it was thought it mattered that Christian religious leaders should be extirpated and that Christians in positions of prominence should not be allowed to be seen publicly to repudiate "Roman ceremonies" with impunity. The proconsul in Africa, putting into effect the new ordinances on September 14, 258 in Carthage, provides our most immediate gloss; he could well echo some of the phrases in the preamble of the imperial rescript itself.
 

Galerius Maximus conferred with his judicial council and then with great difficulty declared: 'You have long lived with sacrilegious views and you have gathered to yourself many vicious men in a conspiracy. You have set yourself up as an enemy to the Roman gods and to their sacred rites. And the pious and most revered emperors Valerian and Gallienus, Augusti, and Valerian, the most noble Caesar, have been unable to bring you back to the observance of their own sacred rituals.
 

'Therefore, having been apprehended as the instigator and ringleader in atrocious crime, you are yourself going to be made an example to those whom you have gathered together through your criminal actions. The authority of the law shall be ratified by means of your blood.'
 

He then read out the verdict from a tablet: 'It is the sentence that Thascius Cyprianus be executed by the sword.'
 

Cyprian the bishop said: 'Thanks be to God.'

For the Roman governing circles, at least, it still remained incomprehensible that Roman citizens should fail so signally in their civic duties of honouring their Roman gods and acknowledging their sacred rites ('civic duties'--rather than 'civil rights'--was certainly their inherited mode of thinking). The comportment of Cyprian, himself of the local curial aristocracy but now a Christian bishop, highlights this clash of perceived duties--and ideological stances. Cyprian had spent a whole year in anxious expectation of this moment before the proconsul's tribunal. His inspired words, uttered a year before as confessor, had been promptly transcribed, treasured, and given wide circulation and lavish laudation (witness Ep. 77.2, written from mines in Numidia; and cf. Pont. Vit. Cyp. 11). A vision of his as confessor had been relayed in detail and interpreted as prophetic of this very day (so Pont., Vit,. Cyp. 12f). In recent weeks he had spent long days with his assembled clergy meditating with them on this very moment of his agon (Ep. 80.1.1), and then, in confident expectation of the end, he had rallied the brethren with a series of rousing exhortations (Pont. Vit. Cyp. 14 ad fin.). He had also contrived, by eluding the proconsul's agents, that he should be seen to go forward to take his seat as assessor on the celestial tribunal (as he would have to put it) in the midst of his own Carthaginian Church (Ep. 81.1f.): for the Church was in the bishop (Ep. 66.8.3) and the witnessing people would thus become partners in the graces, and the gloria, of their own inspirited bishop.
 

The entire Carthaginian congregation (universus populus fratrum), so prepared and exhorted, thronged to witness the noble spectacle; they all kept vigil outside his quarters throughout the night, then accompanied him to the place of execution. There Cyprian enacted an exemplum of conscious dignity, a Christian nobile letum, at last putting into deed the words he had so often preached. The brethren spread out cloths and handkerchiefs to catch the drops of his precious blood; the cultus of saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr, had begun.
 

So Cyprian suffered and his body was laid out nearby to satisfy the curiosity of the pagans. But at nightfall his body was moved from there and, accompanied by tapers and torches, it was conducted with prayers in great triumph to the burial ground of Macrobius Candidianus the procurator, which lies on the Mappalian Way near the fishponds. And there it was buried (Act. procons. Cyp. 5.6).
 

Within twelve months fellow martyrs could be numbered throughout the empire securely attested all the way from the west (Bishop Fructuosus and his two deacons Augurius and Eulogius, beheaded in Tarraco, Spain [January 21, 259]--the location being supplied by Prudentius, Peristephanon 6), through the central Mediterranean (eventually, in Rome, all told, the bishop, one of his presbyters, all of his seven deacons, a sub-deacon, a reader and a doorkeeper [47] as far as the east (Priscus, Malcus, Alexander and a Marcionite woman fed to the beasts in Palestine, Euseb. H.E. 7.12). But it is the south, in the African provinces, which is especially rich in testimony. Thus the Passion of Montanus and Lucius records (for Africa Proconsularis) the deaths in prison of two recently baptized Christians (Primolus and Donatianus, c.2); a presbyter, Victor, c. 7.2; Quartillosa, her husband and her son, c.8; bishop Successus, Paulus and their companions, c. 21.8; as well as Lucius, Montanus, Flavianus, Julianus and Victoricus (presumably all clerics), c. 2. And in Numidia in the Passion of Marian and James we encounter many in prison (in Cirta) to be sent on eventually for trial (and death) before the governor at Lambaesis: altogether there are the bishops Agapius and Secundinus, c. 3; James a deacon, Marian a lector along with others of the clergy, c. 10, 11.3; lay martyrs, cc. 5.10, 9,10, including Aemilianus an equestrian, c. 8 (a unique attestation for one of the specific lay categories of victim) and Tertulla and Antonia, c. 11. The terms of Valerian's rescript of 258 had given rise to a deeply divisive and bloody conflict throughout the Empire.
 

We are entirely dependent on Eusebius for our knowledge how that division and conflict was resolved.
 

But not long afterwards Valerian underwent slavery at the hands of the barbarians, and his son, succeeding to the sole power, conducted the government with greater prudence, and immediate by means of edicts [programmata] put an end to the persecution against us. He granted free power to those who presided over the word to perform their accustomed duties, by a rescript [antigraphe] which runs as follows: 'The Emperor Caesar Publius Licinius Gallienus Pius Felix Augustus to Dionysius and Pinnas and Demetrius and the other bishops. I have ordered that the benefits of my bounty should be spread throughout all the world, namely that they should depart from the places of worship. Therefore you too are entitled to make use of the provisions contained in my rescript, so that none may molest you. And this thing which it is within your power to accomplish has long since been granted by me. Therefore Aurelius Quirinius, the procurator summae rei (?), will observe the provisions granted by me.
 

Let this, which for the sake of greater clearness was translated from the Latin, be inserted. And there is also another ordinance of the same emperor, which was issued to other bishops, giving permission to recover the sites of the cemeteries, as they are called. (H.E. 7.13).
 

Valerian's ignominious capture is best dated to early summer 260.[48] Eusebius certainly places the revoking, by imperial edicts (programmata), of the previous orders against Christians as an immediate (autika) reaction to the disaster. We know no more than that--and this may be Eusebius' own interpretation, a theological reading of the dire event by the imperial authorities. That is a fair surmise, but there were no doubt proffered also prudential counsels to avoid at all costs exacerbating internal strife and divisions (as Valerian's second rescript had manifestly been doing) in an empire that must have seemed at the time perilously fragmenting--and perhaps to disassociate the now sole emperor from policies identified with his father Valerian.
 

Dionysius and his fellow bishops have petitioned the emperor and the imperial response which they receive[49] allowing freedom of worship asserts that the ordinance has been operative 'long since' (ede pro pollou): given the successive revolts and civil war in which Egypt has been embroiled (Macrianus and Quietus, Aemilianus [260-261]) the ordinance has not yet been effective there. The Egyptian bishops now have a document guaranteeing their (delayed) rights--and Eusebius has a copy of a further imperial response, assisting bishops in the recovery of their (confiscated) burial grounds.
 

It is possible to make too much of Gallienus' ordinance: in strict legality Christians are now only back to where they were before Valerian's orders were issued--that is, they are still potentially liable, qua Christians, to fall foul of the law. But in revoking those earlier orders, by the very act of having positively to permit unmolested Christian worship, Gallienus was in effect also conceding a major degree of official toleration: some forty years of relative peace follow from this significant move. To those minds inclined to read the events of 257-260 theologically the Christians' god may now have appeared to be a god of vengeful power--to be treated with due caution.
 

For the full decade that effective toleration appears basically to have held, so far as our knowledge goes--apart from the case of the soldier Marinus of Caesarea (Pal.)[50]--until under Aurelian (270-275) there was a strong and persistent rumour (Eusebius and Lactantius are both reporting within their youthful personal experience) that the emperor was intending to initiate a persecution, an intention thwarted at the very last moment by the emperor's death (275). (Lactantius de mort. pers. 6.2 dramatically has the letters to governors issued but not yet reaching the more distant provinces, Eusebius H.E. 7.30.21 has the hand of the Divine Justice staying the emperor's arm as he is about to pen his signature to the decrees!). Unfulfilled rumours are by nature unverifiable and all we can say is that it would not have been out of character for Aurelian to have thought, and planned, like a Valerian before him--or, eventually, a Diocletian and a Galerius after him. (Constantine, Oratio 25, can later rank Aurelian with Decius and Valerian as persecutors who deservedly met with miserable deaths).
 

In the (earlier) dispute over the church house at Antioch--did it belong to the (new deposed) Paul of Samosata or to the (newly installed) Domnus?--no doubt the petition to Aurelian by the party of Domnus appealed to the ordinance of Gallienus, an imperial predecessor, allowing bishops unmolested access to their places of worship (Euseb. H.E. 7.30.19 cf. H.E. 7.13). Aurelian assigned the building 'to those with whomsoever the bishops of the doctrine [tou dogmatos] in Italy and Rome were in communication'.[51] From our perception it marks a significant moment: the realities of the civil place of the Christian churches within the social organisation of the empire are being officially recognized--and a presage set for Constantine forty years later in his dealings with the Donatists. But for contemporaries, with a growing church now a familiar, if still minor, presence in most communities (especially urban), the significance may not have been visible: the civil place of the churches had simply long been a social reality.
 

Mani (b. 216) and his disciple missionaries, the narrow band of high-achieving 'Elect' and their devoted faithful, the 'Hearers', had in the course of the third century made remarkable proselytizing progress both inside and outside the permeable boundaries of the Roman world, especially in the Eastern Empire. Violently outspoken opposition had come both from the Christian orthodox (as well as from pagan philosophers) from within the Empire[52] as also from inside the Persian Empire, from zealous Zoroastrian clergy, led by the Magian official Kartir, with not only Mani himself (d. 276) and his followers but orthodox Christians as well persecuted.[53] In (very probably) late March 302 Diocletian replied from Alexandria to an anxious inquiry and report (sollertia tua serenitati nostrae retulit) forwarded by the proconsul of Africa concerning these upstart Manichees. Not only the ferociousness of the measures to extirpate the infectious poison but the grandiloquent preamble on the religious, moral and political grounds (typically, not disaggregated) for leaving traditional religion peacefully undisturbed are highly revealing of the temper and the thinking current in the imperial court.
 

We have heard that the Manichaeans, concerning whom your Conscientiousness [sollertia tua] has reported to our Serenity [serenitas nostra], have set up new and hitherto unheard of sects in opposition to the older creeds so that they might cast out the doctrines vouchsafed to us in the past by divine favour, for the benefit of their own depraved doctrine. They have sprung forth very recently like novel and unexpected monstrosities from the race of the Persians--a nation hostile to us--and have made their way into our empire, where they are committing many outrages, disturbing the tranquillity of the people and even inflicting grave harm on the civic communities [civitates]: our fear is that with the passage of time, they will endeavour, as usually happens, to infect the modest and tranquil Roman race, people of an innocent nature, and our whole empire with the damnable customs [consuetudines] and the perverse laws [leges] of the Persians as with the poison of a malignant serpent.

(Mos. et Rom. Legum Collatio XV. III 3f.)
 

Whilst the Persian connexion is clearly a major determining factor in Diocletian's reaction, the preceding paragraphs make plain that his fundamental objection is to the sacrilegious disturbance of what has been established since antiquity (quae semel ab antiquis statuta et definita), laid down by the immortal gods for the benefit of mankind: "ancient religion ought not to be criticized by a new-fangled one" (neque reprehendi a nova vetus religio deberet). The vulnerability of Christianity to this enunciated line of thinking is obvious, and the savage measures enjoined should have given Christians pause, however hateful to them may have been the 'heresy' now under attack:
 

We order the authors and leaders of the sect [=the Elect], to be subjected to a very severe penalty, namely, to be incinerated in fiery flames, along with their abominable scriptures: but their followers [=the Hearers], who are persistently obstinate we order to be punished with death, and we ordain that their property be confiscated to our treasury. If any persons of the official classes, or of any rank, no matter what, or of superior status (si qui sane etiam honorati aut cuiuslibet dignitatis ve1 maiores personae), have betaken themselves to this unheard of, base, and utterly infamous sect, to this doctrine of the Persians, you will see that their property is attached to our treasury and that they are themselves committed to the mines of Phaeno or Proconnesus. In order that this abomination of wickedness be rooted out completely from our most blessed age, your Devotion will not delay to obey with all haste the orders and regulations of our Tranquillity.[54]

Mos. et Rom Legum Collatio XV. III. 6-8.
 

Christian apprehensions at this harsh treatment of what would have been seen by many as simply yet another variant of a Christians sect were no doubt exacerbated by the fact that it was only a year or two before (in all likelihood)[55] that the Emperors Diocletian and Galerius had become infuriated at repeated failures during the taking of the sacred auspices: this was put down to the malign effect of Christians present, making the sign of the cross on their foreheads. In enraged reaction, not only those attending the rites but all serving in the palace were required to sacrifice (on pain of flogging) and letters were then despatched to the army commanders requiring their soldiers to sacrifice (on pain of dismissal). The eastern imperial courts and the soldiers who served under their auspices were being purged of the offending Christians.[56] Forty years of relative peace since the toleration of Gallienus were coming to an end.[57] But this imperial mood of moral and religious outrage, combined with a passion for disciplined conformity, was no sudden novelty. A few years previously, for example, in 295, an edict was issued from Damascus[58] on the moral offence of incestuous marriages within degrees of kindred long forbidden by ancient Roman law, marriages roundly declared to be a sacrilegious abomination and a barbarian savagery by which men 'plunged into illicit unions with promiscuous lust no better than cattle and wild beasts without a thought for morality and piety'. The preamble didactically insists that it is the strict duty of the pious and religious emperors to venerate and preserve the chaste and sacred precepts of Roman law: 'For there can be no doubt that the immortal gods themselves will favour and be at peace with the Roman name, as they have always been in the past, if we have seen to it that all subject to our rule entirely lead a pious, religious, peaceable and chaste life in every respect'. And the edict concludes, declaring 'Our laws protect only what is holy and venerable, and accordingly the Roman majesty has attained to so great a plenitude by the favour of all the divine powers, for it has wisely entwined about all its laws with the bonds of piety and the observance of morality'.[59] The logic of this thinking, with its appeal to antiquity and religious uniformity--and prosperity, could be ominously turned against adherents of any deviant 'barbarian superstition'. But whereas it had been feasible for Roman authorities any time over the preceding forty years to draw the logical conclusions from these premises, it requires an explanation why it was eventually now, on February 23, 303 that the Empire was plunged, by stages-- but by no means uniformly nor continuously--into a bloody decade of turmoil involving horrifying human pain and suffering as the 'Great Persecution' against the Christians got under way. After all, the senior Augustus, Diocletian, had been in power now some eighteen years.
 

Both Lactantius and Eusebius (even more unequivocally) make Galerius, the Caesar in the east, the originator and author of the deviation in policy. Eusebius' version is without nuance (eg. H.E. 8.8.4, 16.2; 8 App. 1, 2), whereas Lactantius has a (maliciously slanted but basically credible) account of lengthy secret debates between Diocletian and Galerius (by nature, beyond documentation) during the winter months of 302/3, along with systematic consultation of court amici and advisers, civil and military,--as well as pagan intellectuals hostile to Christianity (eg. the anonymous philosopher of D.I. 5.2.3ff., Sossianus Hierocles, de mort. pers. 16.4, D.I. 5.2.12ff., 3.22), with a reluctant Diocletian ultimately overpersuaded by an oracular response from Apollo of Didyma (de mort. pers. 11.3ff., cf. 31.1). All we are able to say is that Lactantius, as eye-witness in Nicomedia, reflects informed rumour current at the time: it is about as close as we can hope to get. And it is the virtue of his version that the final decision is still made to lie with Diocletian, pressured though he may well have been by the ferocious Galerius.[60] A power struggle between a tiring Diocletian and his more junior colleague, the Caesar Galerius, centred on a policy issue in which Diocletian was inextricably entangled by the logic of his own premises makes realistic sense.[61] The inherent weakness of Roman polytheism--pluralistic, fluid, assimilative, permeable--to maintain a consistent long-term policy was once more revealed.
 

On February 24, 303 the first edict against the Christians was posted up in Nicomedia, the current imperial residence in the East. The previous day the edict had been issued and, symbolically, the church building in Nicomedia, on high ground in view of the imperial palace, was searched for its scriptures (which were burned), plundered of its valuables and then razed to the ground. The terms of the edict now posted enjoined, inter alia, that church buildings everywhere were to be destroyed, that the scriptures and liturgical books should be burned and church plate and other valuables confiscated, that Christians who enjoyed social status or juridical privileges should be reduced to the status of humiliores (and be liable to torture), that litigants (including Christians) be required to offer sacrifice before any legal action was heard, and that Christian (? imperial) freedmen, if recalcitrant, should be re-enslaved.[62]
 

By spring 303 the edict was posted in Palestine, by early June it was already in operation in Africa.[63] The penalties for infringement were probably not specified: there were adequate precedents for governors to choose from for defiance of imperial orders and whilst Lactantius can report that Diocletian prevailed in 'ordering that the business be carried out without bloodshed' (de mort. pers. 11.8), this clearly would not prevent the exercise of the death penalty, at their discretion, when judges came to deal with any recusant. Not only were the Caesars to be seen putting their own households in order:[64] corporate church organization was under attack and, typically, the public presence of the church was to be erased whether in physical terms or in terms of the socially prominent. Whilst creating a tense atmosphere of peril and undoubted anxiety this edict still left the church rank and file, being humiliores, not directly threatened unless involved in litigation, and even then various forms of evasion, ranging from the use of proxies to bribery, were time-honoured recources available.[65]
 

This first edict was put into operation in both halves of the Empire, although in Constantius' sphere (Britain, the Gauls) Lactantius insists that at most church buildings were destroyed and even this is explicitly denied by Eusebius.[66] Apologetic bias aside, Constantius could well have had little sympathy for the operation, an initiative of his eastern colleagues, Lact. de mort. pers. 15.6 (likewise, there were governors later who could boast not having shed any Christian blood, Lact. D.I. 5.11.13). But there is no doubt about the effects in the territory of Constantius' western senior colleague, Maximian: in Rome (Pope Marcellinus was a traditor, or even worse),[67] in Sicily (Acta Eupli, at Catania on August 12, 304),[68] in Spain (reflected in Counc. Elvira can. 1-4) and above all, in Africa. As the handing over of the sacred scriptures for destruction (traditio) was regarded in the West as a most heinous sin, the post-persecution witch-hunts, especially prompted by the rigorist Donatists in Africa, have provided us with invaluable vignettes of the implementation of this edict. Thus the Gesta apud Zenophilum reveal the search made in Cirta on May 19, 303, not only of the church house (and an inventory made of its plate and numerous chattels) but also of the houses of the seven readers, confiscating all scriptures there found or surrendered (C.S.E.L. 26.186ff.). The Acta Purgationis Felicis clear Felix of Aptungi of charges of surrendering or burning the scriptures (C.S.E.L. 26.203f.), the Acts of the Council of Cirta, March 4, 305 (Aug. Contra Cresc. iii. 27.30) disclose varieties of evasion (Donatus of Calama surrendering medical codices, Victor of Rustica four illegible gospels, Marinus of Aquae Tibilitanae some papers (cartulas) but not the scriptural codices) whereas Mensurinus could claim surrendering to the flames only heretical works (quaecumque reproba scripta haereticorum: Aug. Brev. Coll. iii. 13.25). The Acta Felicis show what might ensue when the bishop (in this case, of Tibiuca) refused to surrender: Felix was beheaded on July 15, 303 in Carthage: similarly Secundus bishop of Numidian Tigisis can mention the many martyrs who ' have been crowned because they did not surrender' (Aug. Contra Cresc. iii 27.30, cf. Brev. Coll. iii 13.25, 15.27). This was certainly no idle affair.
 

Nevertheless it has to be emphasized that when Constantius succeeded Maximian as Augustus in 305, all active persecution ceased in the West. The persecution had lasted 'less than two years'[69] and deaths securely known (as opposed to later legend) are not many.[70] The following year (306) saw the actual recovery of church property and full freedom for Christians under Constantine in Britain, the Gauls and Spain (so Lact. de mort. pers. 24.9 asserts); whereas in the territory under Maxentius' control (Italy, Africa) Christians, though tolerated (Euseb. H.E. 8.14.1, Optatus 1.18), had to wait a further five years until their properties were restored (311: Aug. Brev. Coll. iii. 18.34) in a last-minute bid by Maxentius to woo Christian support.[71] It is clear that, even so, this restoration had not been fully enforced by the time of the victory of the Milvian Bridge (Oct. 28, 312)--as the letter of Constantine to Anullinus, proconsul of Africa, dated to the early months of 313 reveals (Euseb. H.E. 10.5. 15ff). For all these years Christians would have had to pass by their places of assembly seeing them in ruins and live with an uncertain future (spine-chilling accounts reaching them of events in the east which could equally well befall them also). The persecution had bequeathed, meantime, a rich legacy of disarray and disaccord, especially in Rome and North Africa, over disputed penitential régimes, elections and consecrations. But the 'Great Persecution' proved in the end to be no long-lasting bloody affair for the western empire.
 

Not so in the east. The violent reaction to the treasonable tearing down by a Christian protestor (Euethius) of the edict posted in Nicomedia on February 24, 303 (Lact. de mort. pers. 13.2f., Euseb. H.E. 8.5) and the savage reprisals that followed the two outbreaks of fire in the imperial palace in Nicomedia shortly afterwards, with a violent purge of Christian civil servants, eunuchs and slaves in the imperial service, set the contrasting tone, especially in the immediate environment of the emperors (Diocletian being active in conducting trials personally, Lact. de mort. pers. 14.3f., 15.1f., Euseb. H.E. 8.6--Dorotheus, Gorgonius and Peter being named: cf. Oratio ad sanctos 25). But it is well to remember that whilst deaths with appalling suffering and tortures are a horrifying aspect of our received accounts of these persecutions, especially in the east, such savage legal treatment was not exclusive to Christian prisoners: it is simply one undeniable and brutal fact of the late Roman régime of law.
 

'Soon afterwards' was issued a follow-up edict (? i.e. spring, 303), an imperial order (prostagma basilikon) to arrest and imprison church leaders everywhere (Euseb. H.E. 8.6.8f., M.P. 1 praef.; cf Lact. de mort. pers. 15.2). The sequel indicates that this could include anyone of clerical rank: this was a logical extension of the aim to attack corporate church organization and to erase the public presence of the church--as Valerian earlier had aimed to do. No evidence compels us to believe that this order was distributed to the western empire: it applied to the eastern only.
 

A further imperial letter (grammata) followed, as prisons became overcrowded, requiring Christians so arrested to sacrifice (and secure release) with tortures applied to those who resisted (Euseb. H.E. 8.6.10, cf. 8.2.5., M.P. praef.). Every form of physical coercion was used to create recusants, at least in form, and thus to clear the gaols--as well as honour the gods (Euseb. H.E. 8.3, M.P.(S) 1. 3-5).[72] Deaths were accordingly rare (cf M.P. 1.4f.: in Palestine the deacon Zacchaeus and the reader and exorcist Alphaeus). Was this intended to be by way of a celebratory amnesty in anticipation of Diocletian's vicennalia (in late 303)? Despite Euseb. H.E. 8.6.10 ('how could one here number the multitude of the martyrs in each province and especially those in Africa and Mauretania...') this order, like its immediate predecessor, appears to have been applied in the east only.
 

In the second year of the persecution (304/5) and very probably in the early months of 304,[73] Eusebius reports that an imperial letter reached Palestine, a universal order (katholikon prostagma) requiring entire civic communities as a body to sacrifice (Euseb. M.P. 3.1: reflected in Lact. de mort. pers. 15.4). No doubt, as was the experience with similar orders earlier under Decius, enforcement was haphazard, particularly given the lack of adequate civic registers, and many would have simply made themselves scarce, escaping detection especially into more rural areas or being hidden by pagan friends.[74] There was presumably, as was the case in the parallel orders of Decius, a time-limit set for its enforcement. The fourteen canons of Peter of Alexandria, a circular issued to Egyptian bishops for Easter 306, appear to have been composed in the aftermath of this new onslaught (and shortly before Maximinus repeated the exercise, more efficiently, in his own diocese). This episcopal circular was written in an endeavour to provide regulations over varieties of lapse, compromise and evasion. Certificates could be issued, but not generally (as appears to have been the case in Decius' orders), only as a means of protection for their possessors against further molestation from enforcing officials (see Peter of Alexandria, can. 5 PG 18. 473ff.). Nevertheless this constituted outright repression of the Christian cult: defaulting Christians (now lay as well as clerical) could find themselves liable to capital penalties for failure to comply. The evidence is not compelling that this edict, certainly issued throughout the east, was ever promulgated in the west: if it was, it cannot have been enforced systematically.[75] There, the Acta of Crispina (Theveste, Dec. 304) provide suspiciously isolated testimony for such a major upheaval (the proconsul is made to claim, c.1.7: omnis Africa sacrificia fecit nec tibi dubium est).
 

We can only speculate how Diocletian and Maximian may have regarded their onslaught on Christianity at the time of their joint abdication on 1 May, 305: higher matters of state, other than religious, will certainly have preoccupied their attention. But from their perception they would have seen the churches wiped from the landscape, the Christian leadership and organization broken, their revered texts destroyed, their followers cleared from the army and the imperial service, and many satisfying defections from all Christian ranks to the 'Roman gods' (Euseb. H.E. 8.3.1 reckoning defections as 'countless' [myrioi])--leaving still no doubt some unimportant but inevitable fanatical Christian diehards. That may have been the view from the eminence of the imperial courts: it need not have been sympathetically shared either by all of the governing classes or urban elites let alone the general population (popular hostility being noticeably infrequent, with Gaza providing a rarely attested exception in Euseb. M.P. 3.1 (L) [304]).
 

Whilst the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian (1 May, 305) set in train events in the west that led ultimately to the triumphant liberation of Christians, leaving them free to court imperial patronage--and to foment quarrels, it was otherwise in the east. The newly appointed Caesar of the diocese of Oriens, Maximinus, promptly revealed his personal hostility towards Christianity by launching in 306 a vigorous onslaught, in a positive drive to reach down to the level of the general population and exploiting systematically freshly completed and detailed census rolls.[76] His orders (by grammata) required city magistrates to compel the whole population (men, women and children) together to make sacrifice and pour libation.[77] No doubt, as before, many Christians managed to evade the demands, especially in districts outside the major civitates; and it is a reasonable assumption that this (far more efficient) variation of the Fourth Edict was also issued in the territory of Galerius (the Danubian provinces and Greece, the diocese of Asiana and Pontica): it does, however, go unmentioned by Lactantius. At all events, the previously issued edicts against the Christians were still to be in force there for a further five years, and Eusebius accuses Galerius of relentlessly pressing on with the persecution of Christians (H.E. 8.14.9ff.).
 

Certainly in Maximinus' own territory the pressure for religious conformity continued: the narrative of Eusebius over the years 306-308 can record for Palestine gruesome martyrdoms for every years under the governorships of Urbanus and then of Firmilianus (M.P. 4-8). Eusebius then records 'a short relief and calm' from persecution--including release of confessors condemned to working in the mines of the Thebaid M.P. 9.1(S) (lasting, it would appear, from summer 308 until autumn 309--whilst Maximinus was embroiled in imperial politics),[78] only to be broken without warning by further orders sent down by Maximinus through praetorian prefect and provincial governors to the city magistrates both to repair pagan temples and to enforce mass sacrifice (once again) by the entire population: additionally, items for sale at the markets were to be sprinkled with the blood and libations from sacrifices and those entering the baths were similarly to be ritually sprinkled (M.P. 9.2). In a valuable aside Eusebius remarks that even the heathens regarded these latter, provocative, measures as 'harsh and unnecessary' (M.P. 9.3). Reluctant city officials, away from the immediate environment of the Caesar, could go far in thwarting even the imperial will. Nevertheless Eusebius can go on to record (M.P. 9.4-13.10) a whole series of martyrdoms culminating in the horrific scene of May 4, 311 when Silvanus bishop of Gaza, along with thirty-nine other confessors (deemed too old or infirm to continue working usefully in the copper mines of Phaeno) were executed by decapitation on a single day.
 

Persecution then ceased, for a few days earlier (posted at Nicomedia on 30 April, 311) the dying emperor Galerius in the name of all his imperial colleagues (including Maximinus)[79] had issued a proclamation, couched in the form of a letter, ending persecution, allowing Christians a legal existence and the right of assembly, at the same time encouraging all men to worship the gods in the interests of the state. With this, prisons were opened, those condemned to the mines were released and confessors freed (Euseb. H.E. 9.1.7ff., Lact. de mort. pers. 35.2). Persecution appeared everywhere now to be, joyously, at an end.
 

'Among all the other arrangements which we are always making for the advantage and benefit of the state, we had earlier sought to set everything right in accordance with the ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans and to ensure that the Christians too, who had abandoned the way of life of their ancestors, should return to a sound frame of mind; for in some way such self-will had come upon these same Christians, such folly had taken hold of them, that they no longer followed those usages of the ancients which their own ancestors perhaps had first instituted, but, simply following their own judgement and pleasure, they were making up for themselves the laws which they were to observe and were gathering various groups of people together in different places. When finally our order was published that they should betake themselves to the practices of the ancients, many were subjected to danger, many too were struck down. Very many, however, persisted in their determination and we saw that these same people were neither offering worship and due religious observance to the gods nor practising the worship of the god of the Christians. Bearing in mind therefore our own most gentle clemency and our perpetual habit of showing indulgent pardon to all men, we have taken the view that in the case of these people too we should extend our speediest indulgence, so that once more they may be Christians and put together their meeting-places [conventicula sua componant], provided they do nothing to disturb good order. We are moreover about to indicate in another letter to governors what conditions they ought to observe. Consequently, in accordance with this indulgence of ours, it will be their duty to pray to their god for our safety and for that of the state and themselves, so that from every side the state may be kept unharmed and they may be able to live free of care in their own homes.'

These dying words of Galerius underline clearly the theological thinking on which the persecution has been based and the civic duties inextricably associated in this thinking with traditional religion--along with a somewhat reluctant acknowledgement of the existence of the Christians' god and of the failure of the programme of persecution of that god's followers. The grudging tone is clear--nothing is said about the restoration of confiscated church properties.[81] But the unequivocal legitimization of the practice of Christianity by the senior Augustus is a landmark. Henceforth from the Balkans and the Danubian provinces westwards the Roman Empire was released from persecution of Christians.
 

Here it would be well to pause and consider some of the implications of Eusebius' invaluable Martyrs of Palestine, his account of the Christian heroes of just one province up to this date of 311. The bald statistics first. There are cited ninety-one victims in Palestine itself over the years 303-311, thirteen of whom were condemned in 303-5 before the abdication of Diocletian,[82] and forty-four altogether in the last year (310/311) of the persecution under the military dux at the Phaeno mines. That leaves thirty-four deaths recorded over the years 306-310 (including the year's respite 308/9).[83] If one subtracts from the total of ninety-one the forty-four victims from the mines in 310-311, the remainder is four-seven and of these Eusebius' narrative reveals that some thirty-one either provocatively drew attention to themselves or volunteered themselves outright to the authorities. The authorities cannot be said to have been over-officious in seeking out the remaining sixteen. Even so Palestinian Christians may have been unlucky in their governors: Urbanus and then (even worse) Firmilianus are luridly depicted as virulent in their eager pursuit and punishment of Christians and it must be significant that Eusebius can report (after the last martyrdom at Caesarea on 7 March, 310) that 'affairs had taken a quieter and more peaceful turn' in the province until the edict of toleration of Galerius became known (M.P. 13.1(S)): that would have coincided with the departure of Firmilianus and the regime of a replacement governor (Valentinianus, PLRE 1.932). In addition Palestine was the recipient of many confessors from Egypt, sent to labour in the mines and quarries of Palestine:[84] these certainly helped to swell unusually the numbers of the victims put to death in Palestine, especially in the massacre of the confessors in the Phaeno mines (some two-thirds of the thirty-nine unnamed victims are more likely than not actually to have been Egyptian). That consideration would reduce the total of strictly Palestinian numbers by some twenty-six to (approximately) sixty-five over a total of some eight years, an average of eight martyrs per year. (Even so this latter computation still includes ten Egyptians martyred in earlier years in Palestine).

That constitutes our best statistical guide to actual deaths in one province as some sort of model for elsewhere in the east. But other governors may have been even more vigorous in their pursuit of Christians[85]--and the presence of the imperial court, whenever it progressed, undoubtedly stimulated action in its immediate environment. And there is one important caveat to make on Eusebius' own figures. He is not necessarily giving the full tally but recording for posterity those with whom he was personally conversant:[86]
 

It is meet, then, that the conflicts which were illustrious in various districts should be committed to writing by those who dwelt with the combatants in their districts. But for me, I pray that I may be able to speak of those with whom I was personally conversant, and that they may associate me with them--those in whom the whole people of Palestine glories, because even in the midst of our land, the Saviour of all men arose like a thirst-quenching spring. The contests, then, of those illustrious champions I shall relate for the general instruction and profit.

Indeed, the narrative at various points casually discloses unnamed (and unnumbered) companions of confessors and martyrs (presumably not personally known to Eusebius), for example, M.P.(L) 1.1 (companions of Procopius, sent from Scythopolis to Caesarea), 3.3(L) ('Agapius and his companions'), 7.1(L) (unnamed confessors on trial, approached by Theodosia of Tyre), 8.4(L) (unnamed Christians from Gaza and their companions, mutilated) etc. We cannot, therefore, be in any way certain that even for Palestine we have fully reliable statistics as some yardstick. Yet even these brute statistics go nowhere in reflecting the human suffering of confessors, enduring long years detained in the vile conditions of Roman prisons, the irregular bouts of gruesome tortures, young girls sent to brothels, the systematic maiming of batches of men, women, and children condemned to the notorious drudgery and danger of Roman mines, some young men castrated, most others with one leg hamstrung and one eye gouged out and cauterized with branding irons--not to mention the mental anguish both of those who had succumbed to apostasy as well as of those who contrived to continue to escape detection. The 'Great Persecution' amounts to more than the simple tally of the martyred dead.[87]
 

Eusebius reports that peace for Christians in the territory of Maximinus (now significantly enhanced to include the diocese of Asiana and Pontica) held for less than six full months (H.E. 9.2.1). In his later apologia (December 312), Maximinus claims that he 'gave orders to each of the judges that none of them in future was to deal harshly with the provincials' (ap. Euseb. H.E. 9.9a.2) but the orders that he did issue via his practorian prefect Sabinus (ap. Euseb. H.E. 9.1.3ff.) failed, crucially, to allow Christians specifically rights of assembly (and of rebuilding churches) and customary ritual action (as the palinode of Galerius had importantly legitimated). The first breakdown of formal peace came with orders forbidding Christians to assemble in their cemeteries (Euseb. H.E. 9.2.1: autumn 311) and was soon followed by a concerted attack on prominent church figures (eg. Peter of Alexandria, beheaded Nov. 26, 311 and 'many others of the Egyptian bishops', Euseb. H.E. 9.6.2, cf. 7.32.31, 8.13.7; Lucian of Antioch, executed in Nicomedia Jan. 7, 312, Euseb. H.E. 9.6.3, cf. 8.13.2), whilst Lactantius claims that Maximinus rather ordered confessors to have 'their eyes gouged out, their hands cut off, their feet amputated, their noses or ears severed' (de mort. pers. 36.7).
 

Meantime cities throughout the east were encouraged (so our sources declare, Lact. de mort. pers. 36.3, Euseb. H.E. 9.2.1, 9.4.1f.) to petition the Emperor for special permission (and rewards) for expelling Christians from their territory, a process Maximinus defends in his apologia (ap. Euseb. H.E. 9.9a.6). Before long, bronze tablets recording these petitions along with the imperial reply were being loyally set up on display throughout the eastern cities--revealing the strength of polytheistic piety (and/or political opportunism) among the urban elites (Euseb. H.E. 9.7.1): Antioch (Euseb. H.E. 9.2.1); Nicomedia (ap. Euseb. 9.9a.6: initially declined on the grounds of the number of Christians dwelling there, ap. Euseb. 9.9a.4); Arycanda in Lycia (a result of the petition of the province of Lycia and Pamphylia), TAM 2.3.785; Colbasa in Pisidia (April 6, 312);[88] Eusebius quotes the text for the city of Tyre (clearly a standardised one), H.E. 9.7.3ff. This threat of permanent exclusion of Christians from their home cities (where they would be well known) had the potential to affect more deeply Christians' lives than many of the previous measures (which their survival clearly shows could be successfully negotiated one way or another), cf. Euseb. H.E. 9.7.15. This process was accompanied by a positive encouragement of polytheistic cults and priesthoods (Lact. de mort. pers. 36.4f., Euseb. H.E. 9.4.2) along with a sustained propaganda warfare against Christianity (imperial distribution of copies of the scandalous Acts of Pilate and of the (false) accounts by prostitutes of Damascus of Christian orgies, Euseb. H.E. 9.5.1f.).
 

Some of the words of Maximinus' response to these petitions are worth quoting as a remarkable theological statement of pagan piety:
 

For all these evils [= war, plague, tempest, earthquake], and evils even more terrible, have happened many a time before this, as everyone knows. And all these things happened at once because of the baneful error and vain folly of those unhallowed men [= Christians] when that error took possession of their souls, and, one might almost say, oppressed the whole world everywhere with its deeds of shame.... Let them behold in the broad plains the crops already ripe with waving ears of corn, the meadows, thanks to opportune rains, brilliant with plants and flowers, and the weather that has been granted us temperate and very mild; further, let all rejoice since through our piety, through the sacrifices and veneration we have rendered, the most powerful and intractable air has been propitiated, and let them take pleasure in that they therefore enjoy the most serene peace securely and in quiet. And let as many as have been wholly rescued from that blind folly and error and returned to a right and goodly frame of mind rejoice indeed the more, as if they were delivered from an unexpected hurricane or severe illness and were reaping life's sweet enjoyment for the future. But if they persist in their accursed folly, let them be separated and driven far away from your city and neighbourhood, even as you requested; that so, in accordance with your praiseworthy zeal in this respect, your city may be separated from all pollution and impiety, and, following its natural desire, may respond with due reverence to the worship of the immortal gods.

Ironically, this response, delivered to Tyre in (?) summer 312, was accompanied by a year marked by drought, famine, plague and then war (in Armenia, where there were many Christians), Euseb. H.E. 9.8.1ff. And by autumn of that year, after Constantine's defeat of Maxentius (October 28), Maximinus was informed of 'a most perfect law in the fullest terms on behalf of the Christians' drawn up by Constantine and Licinius (so Euseb. H.E. 9.9.12, cf. 9.9a.12 ['edicts and laws'], Lact. de mort. pers. 37.1, 44.11f.). Maximinus, in false compliance, issued via his practorian prefect to his governors in late 312 an apologetic account of his previous treatment of Christians, reiterating his (claimed) toleration of Christians ('if some desire to follow their own worship, you should leave it in their own power'), ap. Euseb. H.E. 9.9a.1ff. But, again, he crucially failed to specify for Christians rights of assembly and practice of customary rituals and permission to erect church-buildings (cf. Euseb. H.E. 9.9a.11). But the end was near, and in the spring campaign the following year (313) between Licinius and Maximinus, defeat shook Maximinus' faith in his pagan gods. 'Less than a whole year after the ordinances against the Christians' were set up on the bronze tablets in the eastern cities (Euseb. H.E. 9.10.12), Maximinus felt constrained at last to issue a law unequivocally restoring full freedom to Christians, along with restoration of property:[89]
 

That, therefore, for the future all suspicion or doubt arising from fear may be removed, we have decreed that this ordinance (diatagma) be published, so that it may be plain to all that those who desire to follow this sect and religious observance [i.e. Christianity] are permitted, in accordance with this our bounty, as each one wishes or finds it pleasing, to join in that religious observance which from choice he was wont to practise. And permission has also been granted them to build the Lord's houses. Nevertheless, that our bounty may be even greater, we have decided to decree this also: that if any houses or lands, which used formerly to belong by right to the Christians, have by the injunction of our parents passed into the right of the public treasury or have been seized by any city--whether a sale of these has taken place, or they have been handed over to anyone as a gift--we have given orders that all these be restored to the Christians as their original right, so that in this also all may perceive our piety and solicitude.

But it was, in a sense, too late. When the victorious Licinius entered Nicomedia in June 313 he brought with him letters for the governors of the eastern provinces, the terms of which had been drawn up in the meeting held at Milan between Constantine and Licinius the preceding winter (February, 313), Lact. de mort. pers. 45.1, 48.2; these terms will reflect the ordinances already applying in the west (including state compensation for any who may suffer by the restoration of church properties, previously confiscated). As this constitutes a major statement of the Constantinian (and Licinian?) view (at the time) of the place of Christianity within the Empire, it deserves to be quoted in full.[90]
 

'When I, Constantine Augustus, and I, Licinius Augustus, happily met at Milan and had under consideration all matters which concerned the public advantage and safety, we thought that, among all the other things that we saw would benefit the majority of men, the arrangements which above all needed to be made were those which ensured reverence for the Divinity, so that we might grant both to Christians and to all men freedom to follow whatever religion each one wished, in order that whatever divinity there is in the seat of heaven may be appeased and made propitious towards us and towards all who have been set under our power. We thought therefore that in accordance with salutary and most correct reasoning we ought to follow the policy of regarding this opportunity as one not to be denied to anyone at all, whether he wished to give his mind to the observances of the Christians or to that religion which he felt was most fitting to himself, so that the supreme Divinity, whose religion we obey with free minds, may be able to show in all matters His accustomed favour and benevolence towards us. For this reason we wish your Devotedness to know that we have resolved that, all the conditions which were contained in letters previously sent to your office about the Christian name being completely set aside, those measures should be repealed which seemed utterly inauspicious and foreign to our clemency, and that each individual one of those who share this same wish to observe the religion of the Christians should freely and straightforwardly hasten to do so without any anxiety or interference. We thought that this should be very fully communicated to your Solicitude, so that you should know that we have given a free and absolute permission to these same Christians to practise their religion. And when yo