Yet between around a.d. 200 and 350 Christianity was transformed. First, Christians were taken seriously as a group. Then, in the mid-third century they were persecuted en masse. The really programmatic pursuit of Christians began under emperor Decius (r. a.d. 249–51), who took umbrage at general Christian refusal to take part in a series of pagan sacrifices that he had ordered for the good of the empire during the Crisis of the Third Century. Under Decius—and later, under Valerian (r. a.d. 253–60) and Diocletian (r. a.d. 284–305)—Christians were flogged, flayed, thrown to wild beasts, and
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