The Empire and the Great Persecution Part 4 of 11

The New Tetrarch and the Rise of Constantine

The tetrarch now consisted of Galerius and Maximinus in the east and Constantius and Severus in the west. Galerius had cleverly and forcefully tipped the scales in his ambitious plan to be the sovereign ruler of the Empire. The only thing standing in his way was the compassionate, and aging, Constantius. By virtue of his rank, Constantius was elevated from Caesar to Augustus when Maximinus was forced to abdicate, but declining health made ridding him of his title an all too alluring scheme for Galerius to resist.

A long-time friend of Galerius named Licinius, was also part of Galerius’ grand scheme. Galerius had forced his hand in making Severus and Maximinus Caesars, but Licinius he purposed to make a brother emperor in the place of Constantius. If the plan were to be fulfilled, Galerius would certainly possess the level of supreme authority he desired. But the hand of God, as the Christians under his relentless persecutions would attest, would deliver Galerius a blow that would end his devilish ambitions, but not before Galerius’ fury grew stronger. Lactantius provides a horrifying example of Galerius’ indiscriminate evil tortures, particularly towards Christians.

“Men of private station were condemned to be burnt alive; and he began this mode of execution by edicts against the Christians, commanding that, after torture and condemnation, they should be burnt at a slow fire. They were fixed to a stake, and first a moderate flame was applied to the soles of their feet, until the muscles, contracted by burning, were torn from the bones; then torches, lighted and put out again, were directed to all the members of their bodies, so that no part had any exemption. Meanwhile cold water was continually poured on their faces, and their mouths moistened, lest, by reason of their jaws being parched, they should expire. At length they did expire, when, after many hours, the violent heat had consumed their skin and penetrated into their intestines. The dead carcasses were laid on a funeral pile, and wholly burnt; their bones were gathered, ground to powder, and thrown into the river, or into the sea.”¹

The only ally with any influence the Christian’s had was helplessly clinging to life by a thread. When Galerius learned that Constantius’ health was worse than he realized, he decided to bide his time and wait for the inevitable, rather than force Constantius to abdicate. While upon his deathbed, as his final breath crept closer, Constantius wrote to Galerius requesting that his son Constantine be sent to him. With awareness of the request spreading, Galerius could not refuse Constantine without risking an uprising, so he granted the petition.

Galerius found himself in a precarious situation, though he must have known Constantius would grant his son the honor of emperor, especially since he had previously requested it from Galerius. If Galerius could not find a way to secretly keep Constantine from power, his plans would be severally hindered or perhaps all together destroyed.

As Constantine set out on his journey, Galerius laid snares in his path, but Constantine, being made aware of his plans, escaped the traps and returned to his father. When he arrived, he found his father at the brink of death. Constantius recommended his son to his army who happily proclaimed him emperor. Upon their acceptance, Constantius delivered his authority to Constantine and shortly after expired.

True to his character, Constantine made his first official proclamation as emperor a comforting declaration to the Christians, promising to reinstate the legality of the religion. With the strength of his father’s army now his own, Constantine sent news of his acquired status to Galerius by having his portrait delivered to him. Galerius, beside himself with rage, desired to burn the portrait and Constantine along with it. But his advisors warned him that if Constantine came with his army he may draw solders upset by Galerius’ instatement of Maximinus and Severus to him. So Galerius withheld his hand, but requested that Severus, by virtue of his age, by made Augustus in the second position, reducing Constantine to Caesar in the fourth position. All came to agreement with the request satisfying Galerius for the time being.

1 Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 21

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The Empire and the Great Persecution: Part 2 of 11

Persecution Ensues

At daybreak on February 23, 303, Diocletian’s army busted in the doors of a large newly constructed church in Nicomedia in Asia Minor, and confiscated the sacred writings. Once found, the Scriptures were consumed by fire and the church was pillaged. The church was located on a hill and in full view from one of Diocletian’s palaces where he and Galerius stood watching the assault. Galerius insisted that the church be burned to the ground, but Diocletian argued that doing so might cause a greater fire consuming part of the city and possibly his palace. Diocletian won out and the church was destroyed without fire. The next day Diocletian published an edict which he had posted throughout the city for public viewing, denying Christians of their rights and subjecting them to various tortures. One Christian man, when he saw the edict, tore it into pieces¹ and was subsequently tortured and eventually burned alive.

“It was in the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian, in the month Dystrus, called March by the Romans, when the feast of the Savior’s passion was near at hand, that royal edicts were published everywhere, commanding that the churches be leveled to the ground and the Scriptures be destroyed by fire, and ordering that those who held places of honor be degraded, and that the household servants, if they persisted in the profession of Christianity, be deprived of freedom. Such was the first edict gainst us. But not long after, other decrees were issued, commanding that all the rulers of the churches in every place be first thrown into prison, and afterwards by every artifice be compelled to sacrifices.”
²

Soon after the edict was published a fire broke out in Diocletian’s palace. Eusebius states that he does not know how it happened, but Lactantius claims that Galerius, in an effort to urge Diocletian to enact crueler persecutions on the Christians, employed private emissaries to set the palace on fire and placed blame on the Christians. Two dignitaries were among the victims claimed by the fire. This infuriated Diocletian who upon hearing about it commanded that all his domestics be tortured to force a confession of the plot, but none was forthcoming. Word of the incident and the blame accompanying it spread far and wide, inciting more widespread hatred of Christians in the east.

Fear spread through the Christian communities enticing some to attempt a usurpation of the government in Syria and Melitina. In response, an imperial edict was issued commanding that all the heads of the Christian churches everywhere be bound and imprisoned. Once carried out, the prisons were bursting with bishops, presbyters and deacons, such that there was no room for real criminals. Soon after, a second edict was issued permitting the prisoners to gain back their liberty by sacrificing to the Roman gods. But if they refused to sacrifice they would be subject to unspeakable tortures. The decision facing these Christian leaders was a true test of their faith. If they were to choose to save their lives by sacrificing, they knew they were choosing eternal damnation. For in their minds, prepared to pierce their conscience, resides the words of Christ who said, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.“

Countless martyrs were thus created by torturous means. Christian leaders along with their families were burned alive. Others were committed to death by wild beasts in the arena as entertainment for the masses. Other martyrs throughout the Roman Empire met with death in various other ways such as scourging, drowning, torn apart on racks, starvation, and crucifixion.

1. Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Book 8 Chapter, 5;
2. Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 13
3. Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Book 8 Chapter, 2
4. Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 14
5. Holy Bible (KJV) Mathew 16:25

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The Empire and The Great Persecution (Part 1 of 11)

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.

1. Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Book 8 Chapter, 1


2. haruspices: A soothsayer specially trained to read the entails of sacrificial animals


3. Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 10


4. Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum 11


5. Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Book 8 Chapter, 1

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The Trinity

Difficulty in understanding the Trinity was, and is today, commonplace, but its orthodoxy is unquestionably sound. It was an earlier theologian named Tertullian, who, at the turn of the third century, first coined the term Trinity. His description of the Godhead, tres Personae, una Substantia (three Persons, one Substance) is summarized in his work, Adversus Pracian (Against Praxeas). Tertullian did not invent the doctrine of the trinity, but rather had opportunity to present an explicit explanation in answering to Praxeas who believed that the Father and Son were one in the same person. Tertullian used the Scriptures to explain the Trinity and insisted that one portion of Scripture should not be interpreted contrary to another portion.

“But Scripture is not in such danger that you need to come to its help with your reasoning, lest it should seem inconsistent with itself. It is quite right both when it lays down that there is one God and when it shows that there are two, Father and Son, and it is self-sufficient”

Tertullian did not appear to make any grand theological oration, just simple logical explanations from Scripture. His predecessors presented the Trinity in terms that were mater-of-fact, indicating that Christians in the earliest years of church existence understood the concept. In simply stating what Christians believe, the second century apologist and bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus, plainly declared the Trinity in his works against heresy.

“The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: She believes in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God.”

And earlier at the turn of the second century Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, clearly established in his salutations to the Ephesians that the will of the Father and the will of the Son were one in the same yet distinct persons. “…Elected through the true passion by the will of God the Father, and of our Lord Jesus Christ our Savior”

The Trinity concept survived to the time of Tertullian untainted. During Tertullian’s time, a Christian philosopher and theologian at the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, also lectured quite clearly concerning the Trinity in his Exhortation to the Heathens:

“We the rational creatures of the Word of God, on whose account we date from the beginning; for “in the beginning was the Word.” Well, inasmuch as the Word was from the first, He was and is the divine source of all things; but inasmuch as He has now assumed the name Christ, consecrated of old, and worthy of power, he has been called by me the New Song. This Word, then, the Christ, the cause of both our being at first (for He was in God) and of our well-being, this very Word has now appeared as man, He alone being both, both God and man-the Author of all blessings to us; by whom we, being taught to live well, are sent on our way to life eternal.”

So even though the term “Trinity” originated with Tertullian, the concept of one God in three persons was evident from the earliest writings of the church fathers.