Today in History: Diocletian Persecutes the Christians
On this day (February 23) in 303, Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered the destruction of a Christian Church in Nicomedia beginning an eight-year persecution of Christians. Under the first edict, Christian property was confiscated and their scriptures burned. Christians were also excluded from the political process. They lost their ranks in the army and government and lost the right to petition the court or to respond to lawsuits. They were made vulnerable to judicial torture. In theory, this was supposed to be a bloodless persecution, but many local governors executed Christians who would not make sacrifice to Roman gods.
A second edict (Summer 303) targeted Christian deacons, lectors, priests, bishops and exorcists. The Roman prisons were so overwhelmed with Christian captives that common criminals had to be released. A third edict (November 303) offered amnesty to imprisoned priests who would sacrifice to Roman gods. When not enough priests agreed, many were tortured to force them to sacrifice and others were publicly announced to have sacrificed even though they claimed they had not. Scholars think that Diocletian was attempting to split the Christian community with these actions, but evidently he was not pleased with the result for in 304 he offered a final edict which ordered all people in the empire to gather in public places and offer sacrifice to the gods. Those who refused were executed often in terrible ways such as public rending by wild animals.
Diocletian saw his actions as a part of his systemic reform of the Roman Empire as he attempted to reverse a century of decline and restore Rome’s greatness. In today’s terminology this was a national security issue. To keep the gods on his side, he had to keep them happy, and allowing a people who denied the gods to flourish in his empire risked the gods turning on Rome. Yet, Christians in general were not unpopular. Concentrated mostly in the cities, they engaged in a lot of charitable works directed toward their poor and appear to have been pretty good neighbors. There were also other monotheists like worshippers of Sol Invictus who must have wondered if their turn would come.
In the long run, Diocletian’s effort to stomp out Christianity failed. The persecutions were never aggressively enforced in the west and in 313 Emperor Constantine, whose mother was a Christian, formally ended the persecutions.
