History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

During this long season of peace the church rose rapidly in numbers and outward prosperity.

Large and even splendid houses of worship were erected in the chief cities, and provided with

collections of sacred books and vessels of gold and silver for the administration of the sacraments.

But in the same proportion discipline relaxed, quarrels, intrigues, and factions increased, and

worldliness poured in like a flood.

Hence a new trial was a necessary and wholesome process of purification.

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§ 24. The Diocletian Persecution, a.d. 303–311.

I. Sources.

Eusebius: H. E. Lib. VIII. – X; De Martyr. Palaest. (ed. Cureton, Lond, 1861); Vita Const. (ed.

Heinichen, Lips. 1870).

Lactantius: De Mortibus Persec. c. 7 sqq. Of uncertain authorship.

Basilius M.: Oratio in Gordium mart.; Oratio in Barlaham mart.

II. Works.

Baronius: Annal. ad ann. 302–305.

Gibbon: Chrs. XIII., XIV. and XVI.

Jak. Burckhardt: 

Die Zeit Constantins des Gr.

 Basel, 1853, p. 325.

Th. Keim: 

Der Uebertritt Constantins des Gr. zum Christenthum.

 Zürich 1852. The same: 

Die römischen Toleranzedicte für

das Christenthum

 (311–313), in the "Tüb. Theol. Jahrb." 1852. (His. 

Rom und das Christenthum

 only comes

down to a.d. 192.)

Alb. Vogel: 

Der Kaiser Diocletian.

 Gotha 1857.

Bernhardt: 

Diokletian in s. Verhältnisse zu den Christen.

 Bonn, 1862.

Hunziker: 

Regierung und Christenverfolgung des Kaisers Diocletianus und seiner Nachfolger.

 Leipz. 1868.

Theod. Preuss: 

Kaiser Diocletian und seine Zeit.

 Leipz. 1869.

A. J. Mason: The Persecution of Diocletian. Cambridge, 1876. Pages 370. (Comp. a review by Ad.

Harnack in the "Theol. Literaturzeitung" for 1877. No. 7. f. 169.)

Theod. Zahn: 

Constantin der Grosse und die Kirche.

 Hannover, 1876.

Brieger.: 

Constantin der Gr. als Religionspolitiker.

 Gotha, 1880. Comp. the Lit. on Constantine, in vol. III., 10,

11.

The forty years’ repose was followed by, the last and most violent persecution, a struggle for

life and death.

"The accession of the Emperor Diocletian is the era from which the Coptic Churches of

Egypt and Abyssinia still date, under the name of the ’Era of Martyrs.’ All former persecutions of

the faith were forgotten in the horror with which men looked back upon the last and greatest: the

tenth wave (as men delighted to count it) of that great storm obliterated all the traces that had been

left by others. The fiendish cruelty of Nero, the jealous fears of Domitian, the unimpassioned dislike

of Marcus, the sweeping purpose of Decius, the clever devices of Valerian, fell into obscurity when

compared with the concentrated terrors of that final grapple, which resulted in the destruction of

the old Roman Empire and the establishment of the Cross as the symbol of the world’s hope."

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Eusebius, H. E. VIII. 1.

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So Arthur James Mason begins his book on thePersecution of Diocletian.

44

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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Diocletian (284–305) was one of the most judicious and able emperors who, in a trying

period, preserved the sinking state from dissolution. He was the son of a slave or of obscure

parentage, and worked himself up to supreme power. He converted the Roman republican empire

into an Oriental despotism, and prepared the way for Constantine and Constantinople. He associated

with himself three subordinate co-regents, Maximian (who committed suicide, 310), Galerius (d.

311), and Constantius Chlorus (d. 306, the father of Constantine the Great), and divided with them

the government of the immense empire; thereby quadrupling the personality of the sovereign, and

imparting vigor to provincial administration, but also sowing the seed of discord and civil war

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5.

Gibbon calls him a second Augustus, the founder of a new empire, rather than the restorer of the

old. He also compares him to Charles V., whom he somewhat resembled in his talents, temporary

success and ultimate failure, and voluntary retirement from the cares of government.

In the first twenty years of his reign Diocletian respected the toleration edict of Gallienus.

His own wife Prisca his daughter Valeria, and most of his eunuchs and court officers, besides many

of the most prominent public functionaries, were Christians, or at least favorable to the Christian

religion. He himself was a superstitious heathen and an oriental despot. Like Aurelian and Domitian

before him, he claimed divine honors, as the vicar of Jupiter Capitolinus. He was called, as the

Lord and Master of the world, Sacratissimus Dominus Noster; he guarded his Sacred Majesty with

many circles of soldiers and eunuchs, and allowed no one to approach him except on bended knees,

and with the forehead touching the ground, while he was seated on the throne in rich vestments

from the far East. "Ostentation," says Gibbon, "was the first principle of the new system instituted

by Diocletian." As a practical statesman, he must have seen that his work of the political restoration

and consolidation of the empire would lack a firm and permanent basis without the restoration of

the old religion of the state. Although he long postponed the religious question, he had to meet it

at last. It could not be expected, in the nature of the case, that paganism should surrender to its

dangerous rival without a last desperate effort to save itself.

But the chief instigator of the renewal of hostility, according to the account of Lactantius,

was Diocletian’s co-regent and son-in-law, Galerius, a cruel and fanatical heathen.

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6 He prevailed

at last on Diocletian in his old age to authorize the persecution which gave to his glorious reign a

disgraceful end.

In 303 Diocletian issued in rapid succession three edicts, each more severe than its

predecessor. Maximian issued the fourth, the worst of all, April 30, 304. Christian churches were

to be destroyed; all copies of the Bible were to be burned; all Christians were to be deprived of

public office and civil rights; and at last all, without exception, were to sacrifice to the gods upon

pain of death. Pretext for this severity was afforded by the occurrence of fire twice in the palace of

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Maximian (surnamed Herculius) ruled in Italy and Africa, Galerius (Armentarius) on the banks of the Danube, and afterwards

in the East, Constantius (Chlorus) in Gaul, Spain, and Britain; while Diocletian reserved to himself Asia, Egypt, and Thrace,

and resided in Nicomedia. Galerius married a daughter of Diocletian (the unfortunate Valeria), Constantius a (nominal) daughter

of Maximian (Theodora), after repudiating their former wives. Constantine, the son of the divorced Helena, married Fausta, the

daughter of Maximian as his second wife (father and son being married to two sisters). He was raised to the dignity of Caesar,

July 25, 306. See Gibbon, chs. XIII and XIV.

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Lactantius (De Morte. Persec. c. 9), calls him "a wild beast, " in whom dwelt "a native barbarity and a savageness foreign

to Roman blood." He died at last of a terrible disease, of which Lacantius gives a minute account (ch. 33).

45

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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