The Great Persecution of Christians Begins

 

Bronze coin of Diocletion

 

 

The years leading up to the pontificate of Eusebius were troubled ones, both for the Church and for the Roman Empire. A long war with the Persian Empire in the east had bled the Roman state of both money and trained military manpower. As a result there had been a series of rebellions in Egypt, Britain and North Africa which had been put down only with difficulty. Even worse the barbarians of central Europe were raiding over the Danube in numbers, causing damage which not only brought vast human misery but further weakened the finances of the Empire.

The general decline was brought to an end by the energetic ruler Diocletian, who took power in 285 as a result of a military coup. For the next ten years Diocletion fought a series of military campaigns to secure the borders and overawe potential rebels. The then turned to reforming the internal administration of the Empire. Provincial boundaries were redrawn, powers shifted from senators elected for life to officials appointed to short term positions by the Emperor. Taxes were changed to reflect ability to pay and corruption rooted out wholesale.

Diocletian then turned to religion. He believed that it had been the abandonment of the traditional Roman gods - under whose watch the Empire had grown - that had led to the downturn in imperial fortunes. He frowned upon the worship of gods from Persia, discouraged rituals associated with gods from outside the empire and had a particular distaste for the worship of the Sun. Then in February 303 two things happened that were to have a terrible effect on the Christian Church and pave the way for the pontificate of Eusebius.

The first event came when Diocletian and his favoured successor Galerius went to consult the oracle of Apollo at Didyma, in what is now Turkey. Instead of answering the questions as would have been normal, the oracle replied that "The activies of the impious on Earth hinder the ability of Apollo to give advice." Such a thing had never happened before. Diocletian and Galerius stared at each other in confusion.

The second event took place at the main imperial palace at Nicomedia soon after Diocletian and Galerius returned there after their abortive visit to Didyma. A fire broke out and destroyed much of the palace, including Diocletian's favourite rooms.

Looking round for someone to blame, and who Apollo might have meant by "the impious", Galerius noticed that the Christians of Nicomedia had just finished building a lavish new church. Galerius concluded that the Christians had been to blame, not only for the fire and for angering Apollo, but also for the general decline in Imperial fortunes over the previous 50 years. By worshipping a non-Roman deity, the Christians had been to blame for angering the old pagan gods, who had then turned their faces away from Rome with catastrophic results. It is thought that at this date around 10% of the Empire's population was Christian.

A contemporary head of Diocletian, the Roman Emperor who launched a savage persecution of Christians the aftermath of which dominated the pontificate of Eusebius.

 

Diocletian was quickly convinced by Galerius and so launched his great persecution of the Christians. First to suffer were the Christians of Nicomedia. The new church was pulled down and stripped of its valuables. All Bibles and other scriptural books that could be found were burned and several clergy executed. As the persecution rippled out through the Empire the violence against Christians increased dramatically. Priests, bishops and other leaders were executed - the famous St George among them - while hefty fines were imposed on anyone who would not sacrifice to Apollo or Jupiter. Christians employed by the state in the army or as officials were forced to sacrifice, or lost their jobs.

The severity of the persecution varied considerably. In Britain the tough new regulations were hardly enforced and only four people appear to have been executed, including St Alban who had a town named after him. In Asia Minor, however, mobs of pagans were encouraged to attack Christians, loot and destroy their homes and churchs and murder at will. Across the Empire thousands suffered beatings and financial loss, hundreds were thrown into prison and large numbers executed - some by being thrown to the lions in what pagan Romans believed to be a particularly degrading death - though at least it was fairly quick compared to some other forms of execution used by the inventive Romans.