Great Persecution (303-311): Diocletian Against the Christians

The Great Persecution, also called the Diocletianic Persecution, was the last and most severe attempt by the Roman state to suppress Christianity. It began in February AD 303 under the emperor Diocletian and his colleagues of the Tetrarchy, and lasted until 311 in most of the empire and until 313 in parts of the East. Thousands of Christians were imprisoned, tortured or executed, but the Church survived, and within a decade Christianity had won toleration and imperial favour.

Background: the Church and the Roman state

Christians had faced local hostility since the first century and empire-wide persecutions under Decius in 250 and Valerian in 257–260. The Decian persecution had demanded that every inhabitant sacrifice to the gods. After Valerian’s capture by the Persians in 260, his son Gallienus ended the persecution, and the Church enjoyed some forty years of peace.

In those decades Christianity grew rapidly, especially in the cities of the eastern provinces. Churches were built openly, including one in sight of the imperial palace at Nicomedia. Christians served in the army, the civil service and even the imperial household. Some estimates suggest that around 10 per cent of the empire’s population may have been Christian by 300, though any figure is a guess.

Diocletian’s Tetrarchy presented itself as the restorer of Roman order under the protection of the traditional gods, especially Jupiter and Hercules. Religious unity was part of this programme. In 302 Diocletian also issued an edict against the Manichaeans, followers of a new religion from Persia.

Causes

The Christian writer Lactantius, who taught rhetoric at Nicomedia and witnessed the events, is the main source. He describes a sacrifice in about 299 at which the diviners failed to read the omens and blamed Christians present for making the sign of the cross. Diocletian then ordered soldiers and palace staff to sacrifice or leave their posts.

According to Lactantius, Galerius, the eastern Caesar, pressed Diocletian through the winter of 302–303 to go further. Diocletian consulted advisers and the oracle of Apollo at Didyma, whose reply was taken as hostile to the Christians. Modern historians generally accept that Galerius was a driving force, while noting that Lactantius wrote to show the persecutors in the worst light.

The four edicts

The persecution was carried out through a series of decrees.

• First edict (24 February 303): Issued the day after soldiers destroyed the church at Nicomedia on 23 February, the Roman festival of the Terminalia. It ordered churches to be demolished, scriptures and liturgical books surrendered and burned, and Christian meetings banned. Christians of high status lost their privileges and could be tortured, and Christian imperial freedmen were returned to slavery.
• Second edict (summer 303): After two fires in the palace at Nicomedia and unrest in Syria and Armenia, all clergy, bishops, priests and deacons, were to be arrested. The prisons filled so quickly that ordinary criminals had to be released.
• Third edict (late 303): For Diocletian’s twentieth anniversary in November 303, imprisoned clergy were to be freed if they sacrificed; many were forced to do so.
• Fourth edict (early 304): Every inhabitant of the empire was ordered to offer sacrifice to the gods, on pain of death or forced labour.

Enforcement across the empire

Enforcement depended heavily on the ruler of each region and on individual governors. In the West, Maximian applied the edicts in Italy, Spain and North Africa. In Gaul and Britain, Constantius I, father of Constantine, reportedly did little more than destroy some church buildings.

The East suffered most. After Diocletian and Maximian abdicated in 305, Galerius and his nephew Maximinus Daia continued the persecution in the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Eusebius of Caesarea, who later became the first great historian of the Church, recorded the trials and deaths of dozens of named martyrs in Palestine. Punishments included beheading, burning, exposure to beasts, and sentences to the mines after blinding one eye and laming one leg.

In Rome, Maxentius, who seized power in 306, stopped the persecution in Italy and Africa and later returned confiscated church property.

The end of the persecution

By 311 Galerius was dying of a painful illness. On 30 April 311 an edict in his name, and those of his colleagues, was published at Nicomedia. It admitted that the effort to make Christians return to the old religion had failed and allowed them to exist again and to hold their meetings, provided they did nothing against public order, and asked them to pray for the emperors. Galerius died a few days later.

Maximinus Daia soon renewed pressure in his territories, encouraging cities to petition against the Christians. His defeat by Licinius near Adrianople on 30 April 313 ended the persecution for good. In June 313 Licinius published at Nicomedia the policy he had agreed with Constantine, known as the Edict of Milan, which granted full freedom of worship and the return of property.

Consequences

The persecution left deep divisions. Christians who had handed over scriptures to the authorities were called traditores, “those who handed over”. In North Africa a dispute over whether bishops who had cooperated could still ordain clergy led to the Donatist schism, which divided the African Church for more than a century. In Egypt the Melitian schism arose from similar quarrels over how to treat those who had lapsed.

The martyrs became central to Christian memory. Their tombs became places of pilgrimage, and many later legends of saints were set in this persecution. The writings of Lactantius and Eusebius shaped how later generations understood the age, presenting the persecutors’ deaths as divine judgement.

Myths and facts

Myth: the persecution killed huge numbers of Christians. Medieval traditions spoke of vast numbers of victims. Modern estimates, based on the surviving evidence, usually suggest about 3,000 to 3,500 executions, although many more suffered imprisonment, torture or forced labour.

Myth: Diocletian was hostile to Christians throughout his reign. For his first eighteen years in power he left the Church alone, and Christians held posts close to him. Lactantius reports that his own wife Prisca and daughter Valeria were made to sacrifice in 303, which suggests they had been sympathetic to Christianity. The persecution came late in his reign and was probably as much a matter of state policy as personal conviction.

Myth: all famous martyrs died in this persecution. Saints such as Sebastian, Agnes and George were placed in Diocletian’s reign by later tradition, but their stories cannot be verified. Better documented cases include Felix of Thibiuca in Africa (303), Pamphilus of Caesarea (309) and Peter of Alexandria (311).

Timeline

• c. 299: Christians are purged from the army and palace after failed omens.
• 303, 23 February: The church at Nicomedia is destroyed.
• 303, 24 February: The first edict is posted.
• 303, summer: The second edict orders the arrest of clergy.
• 303, November: An amnesty releases clergy who sacrifice.
• 304: The fourth edict demands universal sacrifice.
• 305, 1 May: Diocletian and Maximian abdicate; persecution continues in the East.
• 311, 30 April: Galerius’s edict of toleration is published at Nicomedia.
• 313, 30 April: Maximinus Daia is defeated by Licinius.
• 313, 13 June: Licinius publishes the toleration agreed at Milan.

Why it matters

The Great Persecution was the Roman state’s last attempt to restore religious unity by force. Its failure showed that Christianity was too large and too well organised to be destroyed. Within a generation the empire had moved from persecuting the Church to supporting it, one of the most important turning points in European history.