In 284 AD, Caesarea Palestine was a predominantly pagan city of 100,000 with a large Jewish population rivaled by an almost equally large Samaritan community. But a smaller Christian community was growing fast. The Gospel of Jesus Christ was rapidly spreading through Caesarea largely due to a thriving Christian academy begun by the great theologian Origen some fifty years earlier. Origen journeyed to Caesarea from Alexandria in Egypt where he was a student of the great catechetical school of Alexandria and was instructed by respectable Christian philosopher, Clement of Alexandria. Origen would remain in Caesarea for the next twenty years during which time he built his academy and library attracting pupils from all over the east. Origen died a martyr in 254.
Sometime after Origen’s death, Pamphilus, a presbyter and scholar of Caesarea and great admirer of Origen, carried on Origen’s legacy and preserved much of his works. Pamphilus went on to become the mentor of Eusebius who in turn has preserved a great deal of Christian history that would have been lost if not for his dedicated effort to compile it. It is from this Eusebius that we learn the triumphs and tragedies of the Christian church during his own time – a time when peace and prosperity created the perfect recipe for disaster.
In 285 Diocletian, just one year into his reign as Roman Emperor, established the diarchy system of government. Diocletian appointed Maximian as his Augustus and co-emperor in the west while he ruled in the east. Under the emperors Christians held important offices in government including governing Roman providences. As a result of the esteem they received, the church experienced rapid growth. Christians, who once gathered in houses to worship, were now purchasing land and building churches to accommodate their growing numbers. Even Diocletian’s wife Prisca and his daughter Valeria had purportedly become Christians. However, rapid growth and prosperity in the hands of fallible man spelled trouble for the Christian faith. Organization and maintaining orthodoxy became extremely difficult as tranquility turned to chaos and compassion to greed. The malignant disease grew like a cancer from within as Eusebius recounts:
“No envy hindered the progress of these affairs which advanced gradually, and grew and increased day by day. Nor could any evil demon slander them or hinder them through human counsels, so long as the divine and heavenly hand watched over and guarded his own people as worthy. But when on account of the abundant freedom, we fell into laxity and sloth, and envied and reviled each other, and were almost, as it were, taking up arms against one another, rulers assailing rulers with words like spears, and people forming parties against people, and monstrous hypocrisy and dissimulation rising to the greatest height of wickedness, the divine judgment with forbearance, as is its pleasure, while the multitudes yet continued to assemble, gently and moderately harassed the episcopacy.”1
In 293 Diocletian expanded power in the empire to include two lesser rulers called Caesars. The senior rulers Diocletian and Maximinus considered themselves brothers and each adopted a Caesar to assist in ruling their immense territories. Maximinus adopted Constantius, the father of Constantine the Great, to help rule in the west, while Diocletian adopted the iniquitous antichristian Galerius in the east.
In 299, in the city of Antioch, Diocletian’s primary residence at the time, he and Galerius took part in a Roman ritual where haruspices2 predicted the future. Haruspices were a type of fortuneteller that ascertained whether the gods approved of some suggested coarse of action by reading the entrails of an animal that had been sacrificed. The ritual took place in Diocletian’s palace where some of his household servants were Christians. On this occasion the haruspices claimed not to be able to read the entrails and blamed the Christians in the imperial household saying, “There are profane persons here, who obstruct the rites.“3 It was later suspected by the Christians that Galerius, who desired to see the Christian faith meet its end, was behind the accusation.
In fear that his servants had angered the gods, Diocletian ordered all who resided in the palace to sacrifice in order to appease the gods or else face punishment by scourging. Once the emperor was convinced the palace was cleansed, he extended his order to the military, thereby threatening to discharge any who refused to comply. This action was clearly designed to target Christians for whom Diocletian believed angered the Roman gods for he knew the Christians would not offer sacrifice. Having purged the Christians from his military, Diocletian was satisfied, but Galerius, who harbored deep bitterness towards the faith, felt that the penalty failed to even scratch the surface. Thus, he focused all his efforts on attempting to convince Diocletian that he aught to continue his campaign.
Galerius’ odious attitude towards Christians was perhaps, as Lactantius suggests, the result of his upbringing. His mother was devoted to the Roman gods and highly superstitious. She offered sacrifice daily and fed her family and servants the sacrificial meat. But the Christians in her family refused to eat meat sacrificed to idols, as doing so, they would have surly exclaimed, would make them partakers of the devil’s table. This greatly angered Galerius’ mother to the point that she developed an absolute distain towards the faith and instituted the same malevolence in her son.4 But as much as Galerius from the depths of his ingrained hatred tried to convince Diocletian to raise a persecution against the Christians, Diocletian refused fearing that it would not be prudent to shed so much blood. But he did agree, however, to remove Christians from the court and thoroughly purge his army of any who was found to practice the faith. It is for this reason that Eusebius explains, “This persecution began with the brethren in the army.“5 Thus began the great persecution of the Christians.
Galerius relentlessly continued to ware down Diocletian with eventual success. In time Diocletian resolved to confer with some of his magistrates and military commanders on the matter of persecuting the Christians. His character was such that he would seek the advise of others whenever he believed that taking certain action might bring about ill results. This allowed him to impute the blame to someone else if for any reason the outcome reflected poorly on him. All his advisors, whether sincere or acting out of fear, consented to a campaign of persecution against the Christians. In spite of Galerius’ demands to immediately launch the persecution, Diocletian withheld his command until conferring with a soothsayer to inquire the advise of the Roman god Apollo. The soothsayer confirmed the expected answer and Diocletian was at last convinced to accept Galerius’ petition, but commanded that it be done without bloodshed.
- Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Book 8 Chapter, 1
- haruspices: A soothsayer specially trained to read the entails of sacrificial animals
- Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 10
- Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 11
- Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Book 8 Chapter, 1
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