Pliny's Letter to Trajan on Christians (c. AD 112) Explained

Pliny’s letter to Trajan on the Christians is a short exchange of correspondence from about AD 112 between Pliny the Younger, Roman governor of Bithynia and Pontus in northern Anatolia, and the emperor Trajan. Pliny asked how to deal with people accused of being Christians; Trajan replied with guidelines that shaped Roman practice for over a century. Together the two letters are among the earliest and most valuable outside sources on early Christianity.

Background

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, known as Pliny the Younger, was a senator, lawyer and letter-writer from Comum (Como) in northern Italy, and the nephew of the naturalist Pliny the Elder. Around AD 110 Trajan sent him as a special governor to Bithynia and Pontus, a province troubled by mismanaged city finances and local disputes. Pliny was an experienced administrator: he had held senior treasury posts and served as suffect consul in AD 100, when he delivered a speech of thanks to Trajan later published as the Panegyricus. Book 10 of Pliny’s letters preserves his official correspondence with the emperor, together with Trajan’s replies.

Christians had already suffered at Rome under Nero after the Great Fire of AD 64, but there was no general law against them. Governors handled cases as they arose, using their broad power to punish disorder.

What Pliny wrote (Letter 10.96)

Pliny opened by admitting that he had never taken part in trials of Christians and did not know what was usually punished or how far to investigate. He asked whether age mattered, whether repentance earned pardon, and whether the name itself was a crime or only the offences associated with it.

He then described his procedure. Accused people were asked three times whether they were Christians, under threat of punishment. Those who persisted were executed, because Pliny believed their stubbornness deserved punishment in any case; Roman citizens were sent to Rome for trial. When an anonymous pamphlet listing many names appeared, he tested suspects by having them invoke the gods, offer incense and wine before the emperor’s statue and curse Christ, acts he had heard real Christians would not perform.

Former Christians told him that their practice had been to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing a hymn to Christ “as to a god”. They bound themselves by oath not to commit theft, robbery or adultery, not to break their word and not to deny a deposit. Later they met again to share ordinary, harmless food, but had stopped after Pliny’s edict banning private associations. To check this, he had two slave women, called ministrae (often translated as deaconesses), questioned under torture. He found nothing but what he called a depraved and excessive superstition.

Pliny added that the movement had spread through cities, villages and countryside, involving people of every age, rank and sex. He claimed that after his measures, deserted temples were filling again and the sale of sacrificial meat was recovering.

Trajan’s reply (Letter 10.97)

Trajan approved Pliny’s conduct but said that no general rule with a fixed form could be laid down. Christians were not to be sought out. If they were accused and proved guilty, they were to be punished, but anyone who denied being a Christian and showed it by worshipping the Roman gods was to be pardoned, whatever his past.

Anonymous accusations were to be ignored entirely. Trajan called them a very bad precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of the age.

Significance and interpretation

The exchange shows Roman officials treating Christianity as a suspect cult rather than a recognised crime, and punishing defiance of a magistrate as much as belief. About 85 years later the Christian writer Tertullian mocked the logic of the rescript: if Christians were guilty, why not search for them, and if innocent, why punish them?

For historians of Christianity, Letter 96 is precious evidence of early worship: dawn meetings, hymns to Christ, a moral oath, a communal meal and female ministers. It is also evidence of the spread of Christianity in Asia Minor within a century of the crucifixion of Jesus. Most scholars accept both letters as genuine.

Trajan’s policy remained the legal basis for dealing with Christians until the emperor Decius demanded universal sacrifice in AD 250, leading to the Decian persecution.

Timeline

• AD 64: Nero blames Christians in Rome for the Great Fire.
• AD 98: Trajan becomes emperor.
• c. AD 110: Pliny arrives as governor of Bithynia and Pontus.
• c. AD 112: Pliny writes Letter 10.96; Trajan replies in Letter 10.97.
• c. AD 113: Pliny’s correspondence ends, probably because he died in office.
• c. AD 197: Tertullian criticises Trajan’s ruling in his Apology.

Why it matters

In two short letters, a governor and an emperor set out how Rome would treat Christians for the next century and a half, and left one of the earliest outside descriptions of how Christians worshipped.