The Diocletianic or Great Persecution was the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.Gaddis, 29. In 303, the emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding Christians' legal rights and demanding that they comply with traditional religious practices. Later edicts targeted the clergy and demanded universal sacrifice, ordering all inhabitants to sacrifice to the Roman gods (Jews were exempt). The persecution varied in intensity across the empire—weakest in Gaul and Britain, where only the first edict was applied, and strongest in the Eastern provinces. Persecutory laws were nullified by different emperors (Galerius with the Edict of Serdica in 311) at different times. Traditionally, the reign of Constantine the Great (306–337 AD) and Licinius' Edict of Milan in 313 have marked the end of the persecution.
Christians had been subject to intermittent local discrimination in the empire. Roman Emperors before Diocletian were reluctant to legislate against Christianity. In the 250s, under the reigns of Decius and Valerian, Roman subjects including Christians were compelled to sacrifice to Roman gods or face imprisonment and execution, but there is no evidence that these edicts were specifically intended to attack Christianity. After Gallienus's accession in 260, these laws went into abeyance. Diocletian's assumption of power in 284 did not mark an immediate reversal of imperial inattention to Christianity, but it did herald a gradual shift in official attitudes toward religious minorities. In the first fifteen years of his rule, Diocletian purged the army of Christians, condemned Manicheans to death, and surrounded himself with public opponents of Christianity. Diocletian's preference for activist government, combined with his self-image as a restorer of past Roman glory, foreboded the most pervasive persecution in Roman history. In the winter of 302, Galerius urged Diocletian to begin a general persecution of the Christians. Diocletian was wary and asked the oracle at Didyma for guidance. The oracle's reply was read as an endorsement of Galerius's position, and a general persecution was called on 23 February 303.
Persecutory policies varied in intensity across the empire. Whereas Galerius and Diocletian were avid persecutors, Constantius was unenthusiastic. Later persecutory edicts, including the calls for universal sacrifice, were not applied in his domain. His son, Constantine, on taking the imperial office in 306, restored Christians to full legal equality and returned property that had been confiscated during the persecution. In Italy in 306, the usurper Maxentius ousted Maximian's successor Severus, promising full religious toleration. Galerius ended the persecution in the East in 311, but it was resumed in Egypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor by his successor, Maximinus. Constantine and Licinius, Severus's successor, signed the Edict of Milan in 313, which offered a more comprehensive acceptance of Christianity than Galerius's edict had provided. Licinius ousted Maximinus in 313, bringing an end to persecution in the East.
The persecution failed to check the rise of the Church. By 324, Constantine was sole ruler of the empire, and Christianity had become his favored religion. Although the persecution resulted in death, torture, imprisonment, or dislocation for many Christians, most of the empire's Christians avoided punishment. The persecution did, however, cause many churches to split between those who had complied with imperial authority (the traditores), and those who had remained "pure". Certain schisms, like those of the Donatists in North Africa and the Melitians in Egypt, persisted long after the persecutions. The Donatists would not be reconciled to the Church until after 411.
Some historians posit that in the centuries that followed the persecutory era, Christians created a "cult of the martyrs" and exaggerated the barbarity of the persecutions. Other historians using texts and archeological evidence from the period assert that this position is in error. Christian accounts were criticized during the Enlightenment and afterwards, most notably by Edward Gibbon. That can be attributed to the political anticlerical and secular tenor of that period. Modern historians, such as G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, have attempted to determine whether Christian sources exaggerated the scope of the Diocletianic persecution, but disagreements continue.
Background Prior persecutions
From its first appearance to its legalization under Constantine, Christianity was an illegal religion in the eyes of the Roman state.Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 503. For the first two centuries of its existence, Christianity and its practitioners were unpopular with the people at large.Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 511; de Ste-Croix, "Persecuted?", 15–16. Christians were always suspect, members of a "secret society" who communicated with a private codeDodds, 111. and shied away from the public sphere.MacMullen, 35. It was popular hostility and the anger of the crowd that drove the earliest persecutions, not official action. Around 112, Pliny, the governor of Bithynia–Pontus, was sent long lists of denunciations of Christians by anonymous citizens, which Emperor Trajan advised him to ignore.Dodds, 110. In Lyon in 177, it was only the intervention of civil authorities that stopped a pagan mob from dragging Christians from their houses and beating them to death.
To the followers of the traditional cults, Christians were odd creatures: not quite Roman but not quite barbarian either.Schott, Making of Religion, 2, citing Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 1.2.1. Their practices were deeply threatening to traditional mores. Christians rejected public festivals, refused to take part in the imperial cult, avoided public office, and publicly criticized ancient traditions.Schott, Making of Religion, 1. Conversions tore families apart: Justin Martyr tells of a pagan husband who denounced his Christian wife, and Tertullian tells of children disinherited for becoming Christians.Dodds, 115–16, citing Justin, Apologia 2.2; Tertullian, Apologia 3. Traditional Roman religion was inextricably interwoven into the fabric of Roman society and state, but Christians refused to observe its practices.Castelli, 38; Gaddis, 30–31. In the words of Tacitus, Christians showed "hatred of the human race" (odium generis humani).Tacitus, Annales 15.44.6, cited in Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 504; Dodds, 110. Among the more credulous, Christians were thought to use black magic in pursuit of revolutionary aimsFrend, "Genesis and Legacy", 504, citing Suetonius, Nero 16.2. and to practise incest and cannibalism.Dodds, 111–12, 112 n.1; de Ste-Croix, "Persecuted?", 20.
Nonetheless, for the first two centuries of the Christian era, no emperor issued general laws against the faith or its Church. The persecutions were carried out under the authority of local government officials.Clarke, 616; Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 510. See also: Barnes, "Legislation"; de Sainte-Croix, "Persecuted?"; Musurillo, lviii–lxii; and Sherwin-White, "Early Persecutions." At Bithynia–Pontus in 111, it was Pliny;Drake, Bishops, 87–93; Edwards, 579; Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 506–8, citing Pliny, Epistaules 10.96. at Smyrna in 156 and Scilli near Carthage in 180, it was the proconsul;Martyrium Polycarpi (= Musurillo, 2–21) and Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 4.15; Frend, 509 (Smyrna); Martyrium Scillitanarum acta (= Musurillo, 86–89), cited in Frend, 510 (Scilli). at Lyon in 177, it was the provincial governor.Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.1 (= Musurillo, 62–85); Edwards, 587; Frend, 508. When Emperor Nero executed Christians for their alleged involvement in the fire of 64, it was a purely local affair and did not spread beyond the city limits of Rome.G. W. Clarke, "The origins and spread of Christianity," in Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 10, The Augustan Empire, ed. Alan K. Bowman, Edward Champlin, and Andrew Linott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 869–70. The early persecutions were certainly violent but they were sporadic, brief, and limited in extent.Clarke, 616; Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 510; de Ste-Croix, "Persecuted?", 7. They were of limited threat to Christianity as a whole.Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome (Toronto: Penguin, 2006), 576. The very capriciousness of official action, however, made the threat of state coercion loom large in the Christian imagination.Castelli, 38.
In the 3rd century, the pattern changed. Emperors became more active, and government officials began to actively pursue Christians rather than merely to respond to the will of the crowd.Drake, Bishops, 113–14; Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 511. Christianity also changed. No longer were its practitioners merely "the lower orders fomenting discontent"; some Christians were now rich or from the upper classes. Origen, writing at about 248, tells of "the multitude of people coming in to the faith, even rich men and persons in positions of honour and ladies of high refinement and birth."Origen, Contra Celsum 3.9, qtd. and tr. in Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 512. Official reaction grew firmer. In 202, according to the Historia Augusta, a 4th-century history of dubious reliability, Septimius Severus (r. 193–211) issued a general rescript forbidding conversion to either Judaism or Christianity.Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Septimius Severus, 17.1; Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 511. Timothy Barnes, at Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 151, calls this supposed rescript an "invention" of the author, reflecting his own religious prejudices instead of imperial policy under the Severans. Maximin (r. 235–238) targeted Christian leaders.Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 6.28, cited in Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 513. Decius (r. 249–251), demanding a show of support for the old pagan Roman religion, proclaimed that all inhabitants of the empire must sacrifice to the gods, eat sacrificial meat, and testify to these acts.Clarke, 625–27; Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 513; Rives, 135. Christians were obstinate in their non-compliance. Church leaders, like Fabian, bishop of Rome, and Babylas, bishop of Antioch, were arrested, tried and executed,Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 6.39.4; Clarke, 632, 634; Frend, "Genesis and Legacy", 514. as were certain members of the Christian laity, like Pionius of Smyrna.E. Leigh Gibson, "Jewish Antagonism or Christian Polemic: The Case of the Martyrdom of Pionius," Journal of Early Christian Studies 9:3 (2001): 339–58. Origen was tortured during the persecution and died about a year after from the resulting injuries.Joseph Wilson Trigg, Origen (New York: Routledge, 1998), 61.