III Silence Respecting Persecution
It has been asked, How comes it that for much of the first and second centuries there is a remarkable silence respecting these persecutions which we are persuaded harassed the Christian congregations in the provinces as in the great metropolis? The answer here is not difficult to find.
The pagan writers of these centuries held the Christian sect in deep contempt;12 they would never think the punishments dealt out to a number of law-breakers and wild fanatics worthy of chronicling; the mere loss of life in that age, so accustomed to wholesale destruction of human beings, would not strike them as a notable incident in any year.
While as regards Christian records, the practice of celebrating the anniversary days of even famous martyrs and confessors only began in Rome far on in the third century.
But, as we shall see, although we possess no Christian records definitely telling us of any special persecution between the times of Nero and the later years of Domitian, the pages of the undoubtedly genuine Christian writings of very early date, from which we shall presently quote, were unmistakably all written under the shadow of a restless relentless hostility on the part of the Roman government towards the Christian sect. The followers of Jesus we see ever lived under the shadow of persecution.
Never safe for a single day was the life of one who believed in the Name; his life and the life of his dear ones were never for an instant secure: he and his family were at the mercy of every enemy, open and secret. Confiscation, degradation from rank and position, banishment, imprisonment, torture, death, were ever threatening him. A hard, stern combat, indeed, was the daily life of every Christian disciple. Many came out as victors from the terrible trial; this we learn from such writings as the Shepherd of Hermas, but some, alas! we learn from that same vivid and truthful picture of Hermas, flinched and played the traitor when the hour of decision between Christ and the pagan gods struck, as it often, very often, did in the so-called quiet days of the Flavian Emperors.
But it is only from the general character and spirit of the early Christian writers that we gather this; it is only from the allusions scattered up and down these striking and pathetic pages, which after all had other and nobler work before them than to record the many sufferings and martyrdoms of the brethren, that we learn what was the character of the hard life the followers of Jesus had to lead. So far from exaggerating, these writers give a very imperfect account of the sufferings of that period.
But in spite of this dark shadow of danger under which the Christian always lived, a cloud which for two hundred and fifty years never really lifted; in spite of popular dislike and of public condemnation,—the numbers of the persecuted sect multiplied with startling rapidity in all lands, among all the various peoples massed together under the rule of the Empire, and called by the name of Romans. Their great number attracted the attention of pagan writers such as Tacitus, writing of the martyrdoms of A.D. 64; of Pliny, speaking of what he witnessed in A.D. 112; of Christian writers like Tertullian, giving a picture of the sect at the end of the second century.
In the middle years of this second century, only a little more than a hundred years after the Resurrection morning, when the Antonines were reigning, we know that there were large congregations in Spain and Gaul, in Germany, in North Africa, in Egypt and in Syria, besides the great and powerful Church in Rome.
All that we learn of the busy, earnest, strenuous life of these early Christian communities, of their noble charities, of their active propaganda, of their grave and successful contentions with the heretical teachers who successively arose in their midst, makes it hard to believe that they were ever living, as it were, under the very shadow of persecution which might burst upon them at any moment; and yet well-nigh all the writings of these early days are coloured with these anticipations of torture, confiscation, imprisonment and death,—a death of pain and agony. The Apocalypse refers to these things again and again—Clement of Rome in his grave and measured Epistle—Hermas and Ignatius, Justin and Tertullian, and somewhat later Cyprian writing in the middle of the third century—allude to these things as part of the everyday Christian life. They give us, it is true, few details, little history of the events which were constantly happening; but as we read, we feel that the thought of martyrdom was constantly present with them.
Now what was the attraction to this Christianity, the profession of which was so fraught with danger—so surrounded with deadly peril?
“Le candidat au Christianisme, était, par le fait même, candidat au Martyre,” graphically writes the brilliant and careful French scholar Duchesne. The Christian verily exposed himself and his dear ones to measureless penalties. Now what had he to gain by such a dangerous adventure?
It is true that martyrdom itself possessed a special attraction for some. The famous chapters of Ignatius’ Letter to the Roman Church, written circa A.D. 109–10, very vividly picture this strange charm. The constancy of the confessor, the calm serenity with which he endured tortures, the smiling confidence with which he welcomed a death often of pain and suffering—his eyes fixed upon something invisible to mortal eyes which he saw immediately before him,—all this was new in the world of Rome; it was at once striking and admirable. Such a sight, and it was a frequent one, was indeed inspiring—“Why should not I,” thought many a believer in Jesus, “share in this glorious future? Why should not I form one of this noble band of elect and blessed souls?”
Then again another attraction to Christianity was ever present in the close union which existed among the members of the community.
In this great Brotherhood, without any attempt to level down the wealthier Christians, without any movement towards establishing a general community of goods, the warmest feelings of friendship and love were cultivated between all classes and degrees. The Christian teachers pointed out with great force that in the eyes of the divine Master no difference existed between the slave and the free-born, between the patrician and the little trader; with Him there was perfect equality. Sex and age, rank and fortune, poverty and riches, country and race, with Him were of no account. All men and women who struggled after the life He loved, were His dear servants. The result of all this was shown in the generous and self-denying love of the wealthier members of the flock towards their poor and needy brothers and sisters.
This is conspicuously shown in the wonderful story of the vast cemeteries of the suburbs of Rome, where at a very early date the rich afforded the hospitality of the tomb to their poor friends.
Most of the so-called “catacombs” began in the gardens of the rich and noble, where the little family God’s acre was speedily opened to the proletariat and the slave, who after death were tenderly and lovingly cared for, and laid to sleep with all reverence alongside the members of the patrician house to whom the cemetery belonged, and which in numberless instances was enlarged to receive these poor and humble guests.
But, after all, great and different though these various attractive influences were,—and which no doubt in countless cases brought unnumbered men and women of all ranks and orders into the ranks of Christianity,—there was something more which united all these various nationalities, these different grades, with an indissoluble bond of union; something more which enabled them to live on year after year in the shadow of persecution—in daily danger of losing all that men most prize and hold dear; something more which gave them that serene courage at the last, which inspired the great army of bravely patient martyrs to witness a good confession for the Name’s sake. It was that burning, that living faith in the great sacrifice of their loving Master—the faith which in the end vanquished even pagan Rome—the faith which comes from no books or arguments, no preaching and no persuasion—from no learning however profound and sacred—from no human arsenal, however furnished with truth and righteousness.
It was that strong and deathless faith which is the gift of God alone, and which in a double portion was the gift of the Holy Ghost to the sorely tried Church in the heroic age of Christianity.
After the death of Nero, during the very brief reigns of Galba Otho and Vitellius, probably the persecution of Christians, owing to the disturbed state of Rome and the Empire, languished. When, however, the Flavian House in the person of Vespasian was firmly placed in power, the policy of the government of Nero, which held that the Christians were a sect the tendency of whose beliefs and practice was hostile to the very foundations and established principles of the Roman government, was strictly adhered to, and possibly even developed.
The followers of the sect were deemed outlaws, and the name of a Christian was treated as a crime.
There is a famous passage in Sulpicius Severus (fourth century) which most modern scholars consider to have been an extract from a lost book of Tacitus. It is an account of a Council of War held after the storming of Jerusalem, A.D. 70. In this Council, Titus the son and heir of Vespasian—the hero of the great campaign which closed with the fall of Jerusalem—is reported to have expressed the opinion that the Temple ought to be destroyed in order that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians might be more completely rooted up; for these religions, though opposed to each other, had yet the same origin. The Christians had sprung from the Jews, and when the root was torn up the stem issuing from the root would easily be destroyed. There is no doubt but that this report of Titus’ speech at the Council of War is an historical document of the utmost importance. It tells us exactly what was the feeling of the imperial Flavian House towards the Christians—they represented an evil which it was well to extirpate.
It is possible that in a mutilated passage of Suetonius a reference occurs to Vespasian’s actions at this period (in the year following A.D. 70) in respect to the Christians. The passage runs as follows: “Never in the death of any one did Vespasian (take pleasure, and in the case of) merited punishments he even wept and groaned.” This is clearly a reference to some class of individuals whose punishment Vespasian felt bound to accept, while he regretted it. “It is inconceivable that Vespasian, a Roman soldier of long experience in the bloody wars of Britain and Judæa, wept and groaned at every merited execution.... We think of the punishments which by the principle of Nero attached to the Christians... the principle in question continued permanently, and Suetonius alluded to it on account of the detail, interesting to a biographer, that Vespasian wept while he confirmed its operation.”13
But a yet more precise statement, that persecution was actively continued under Vespasian, is to be found in the Latin Father, Hilary of Poitiers, who ranks Vespasian between Nero and Decius as a persecutor of the Faith.14 Some critics have supposed this notice an error. Lightfoot, however, thinks it more probable that it was based upon some facts of history known to Hilary, but since blotted out by time from the records of history.15
Towards the end of Domitian’s reign, circa A.D. 95, the persecution became more bitter. Indeed, so severely were the Christians hunted out and prosecuted that the period had become memorable in history. Domitian is constantly mentioned as the second great persecutor, Nero being the first. The reason doubtless for this general tradition is that in A.D. 95, persons of the highest rank, some even belonging to the imperial family, were among the condemned; notably Flavius Clemens the Consul, and the two princesses bearing the name of Domitilla—all these being very near relatives of the Emperor.
The violent outbreak of persecution, fierce and terrible as it seems to have been in the last year and a half of Domitian’s reign, does not appear to have been owing to any special movement among the Christian subjects of the Empire which aroused attention and suggested distrust, but was solely owing to the Emperor’s private policy and personal feelings. There is nothing to show that any edict against the sect was promulgated in this reign. Since the time of Nero the persecution of Christians was a standing matter, as was that of persons who were habitual law-breakers, robbers, and such-like. Probably under the princes of the Flavian dynasty, as we have said, this policy of the government was somewhat developed throughout the Empire, and now and again, owing to local circumstances and the disposition of the chief magistrate, was more or less severe. It is said that some governors boasted that they had brought back from their province their lictors’ axes unstained with blood; but others were actuated with very different feelings.
In the case of the so-called Domitian persecution, the ill-will of the autocratic Emperor naturally intensified it. Various motives seem to have influenced the sovereign Lord of the Empire here.
Domitian was a sombre and suspicious tyrant, and no doubt his cruel action in the case of his relatives, the consul Flavius and the princesses of his House, was prompted by jealousy of those who stood nearest his throne, and the fact that they were found to belong to the proscribed sect gave him a pretext of which he was glad to avail himself. But his bloody vengeance was by no means only wreaked upon his own relatives. We learn from the pagan writer Dion Cassius (in the epitome of his work by the monk Xiphilin) and also from Suetonius, that he put to death various persons of high position, notably Acilius Glabrio who had been consul in A.D. 91. This Acilius Glabrio was also a Christian. The researches and discoveries of De Rossi and Marruchi in the older portion of the vast Catacomb of S. Priscilla have conclusively proved this.
There was another reason, however, for Domitian’s special hatred of the Christian sect. The Emperor was a vigilant censor, and an austere guardian of the ancient Roman traditions. In this respect he has with some justice been cited as pursuing the same policy as did his great predecessor Augustus, and, like him, he looked on the imperial cultus16 as part of the State religion. Domitian felt that these ancient traditions which formed a part of Roman life were compromised by the teaching and practices of the Christian sect. No doubt this was one of the principal reasons which influenced him in his active persecution of the followers of Jesus.
But although he struck at some of the noblest and most highly placed in the Empire, especially, as it seems, those suspected of being members of the hated sect, he appears to have vented his fury also upon many who belonged to the lower classes of the citizens. Juvenal in a striking passage evidently alludes to his pursuit of these comparatively unknown and obscure ones, and traces the unpopularity which eventually led to his assassination to this persecution of the poor nameless citizen.17
Domitian was assassinated A.D. 96, and was succeeded by the good and gentle Emperor Nerva. The active and bitter persecution which Domitian carried on in the latter years of his reign, as far as we know, ceased, and once more the Christian sect was left in comparative quiet, that is to say, they were still in the position of outlaws, the sword of persecution ever hanging over their heads. The law which forbade their very existence was there, if any one was disposed to call it into action. The passion of the populace, the bigotry of a magistrate, or the malice of some responsible personage, might at any moment awake the slumbering law into activity. These various malicious influences, ever ready, were constantly setting the law in motion. This we certainly gather from Pliny’s reference to the “Cognitiones” or inquiries into accusations set on foot against Christians in his famous letter to the Emperor Trajan.