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

and the apostles,

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 and to the spirit of true martyrdom, which consists in the union of sincere

humility and power, and possesses divine strength in the very consciousness of human weakness.

And accordingly intelligent church teachers censured this stormy, morbid zeal. The church of

Smyrna speaks thus: "We do not commend those who expose themselves; for the gospel teaches

not so." Clement of Alexandria says: "The Lord himself has commanded us to flee to another city

when we are persecuted; not as if the persecution were an evil; not as if we feared death; but that

we may not lead or help any to evil doing." In Tertullian’s view martyrdom perfects itself in divine

patience; and with Cyprian it is a gift of divine grace, which one cannot hastily grasp, but must

patiently wait for.

But after all due allowance for such adulteration and degeneracy, the martyrdom of the first

three centuries still remains one of the grandest phenomena of history, and an evidence of the

indestructible divine nature of Christianity.

No other religion could have stood for so long a period the combined opposition of Jewish

bigotry, Greek philosophy, and Roman policy and power; no other could have triumphed at last

over so many foes by purely moral and spiritual force, without calling any carnal weapons to its

aid. This comprehensive and long-continued martyrdom is the peculiar crown and glory of the early

church; it pervaded its entire literature and gave it a predominantly apologetic character; it entered

deeply into its organization and discipline and the development of Christian doctrine; it affected

the public worship and private devotions; it produced a legendary poetry; but it gave rise also,

innocently, to a great deal of superstition, and undue exaltation of human merit; and it lies at the

foundation of the Catholic worship of saints and relics.

Sceptical writers have endeavored to diminish its moral effect by pointing to the fiendish

and hellish scenes of the papal crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, the Parisian massacre

of the Huguenots, the Spanish Inquisition, and other persecutions of more recent date. Dodwell

expressed the opinion, which has been recently confirmed by the high authority of the learned and

impartial Niebuhr, that the Diocletian persecution was a mere shadow as compared with the

persecution of the Protestants in the Netherlands by the Duke of Alva in the service of Spanish

bigotry and despotism. Gibbon goes even further, and boldly asserts that "the number of Protestants

who were executed by the Spaniards in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of

the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries and of the Roman empire." The victims of the

Spanish Inquisition also are said to outnumber those of the Roman emperors.

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Admitting these sad facts, they do not justify any sceptical conclusion. For Christianity is

no more responsible for the crimes and cruelties perpetrated in its name by unworthy professors

and under the sanction of an unholy alliance of politics and religion, than the Bible for all the

nonsense men have put into it, or God for the abuse daily and hourly practised with his best gifts.

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Comp. Matt. 10:23; 24:15-20; Phil. 1:20-25; 2 Tim. 4:6-8.

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The number of Dutch martyrs under the Duke of Alva amounted, according to Grotius, to over 100,000; according to P.

Sarpi, the R. Cath. historian, to 50,000. Motley, in his History of the Rim of the Dutch Republic, vol. II. 504, says of the terrible

reign of Alva: "The barbarities committed amid the sack and ruin of those blazing and starving cities are almost beyond belief;

unborn infants were torn from the living bodies of their mothers; women and children were violated by the thousands; and whole

populations burned and hacked to pieces by soldiers in every mode which cruelty, in its wanton ingenuity, could devise." Buckle

and Friedländer (III. 586) assert that during the eighteen years of office of Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition punished,

according to the lowest estimate, 105,000 persons, among whom 8,800 were burnt. In Andalusia 2000 Jews were executed, and

17,000 punished in a single year.

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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But the number of martyrs must be judged by the total number of Christians who were a minority

of the population. The want of particular statements by contemporary writers leaves it impossible

to ascertain, even approximately, the number of martyrs. Dodwell and Gibbon have certainly

underrated it, as far as Eusebius, the popular tradition since Constantine, and the legendary poesy

of the middle age, have erred the other way. This is the result of recent discovery and investigation,

and fully admitted by such writers as Renan. Origen, it is true, wrote in the middle of the third

century, that the number of Christian martyrs was small and easy to be counted; God not permitting

that all this class of men should be exterminated.

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5 But this language must be understood as referring

chiefly to the reigns of Caracalla, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus and Philippus Arabs, who did

not persecute the Christians. Soon afterwards the fearful persecution of Decius broke out, in which

Origen himself was thrown into prison and cruelly treated. Concerning the preceding ages, his

statement must be qualified by the equally valid testimonies of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria

(Origen’s teacher), and the still older Irenaeus, who says expressly, that the church, for her love to

God, "sends in all places and at all times a multitude of martyrs to the Father."

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 Even the heathen

Tacitus speaks of an "immense multitude" (ingens multitudo) of Christians, who were murdered

in the city of Rome alone during the Neronian persecution in 64. To this must be added the silent,

yet most eloquent testimony of the Roman catacombs, which, according to the calculation of Marchi

and Northcote, extended over nine hundred English miles, and are said to contain nearly seven

millions of graves, a large proportion of these including the relics of martyrs, as the innumerable

inscriptions and instruments of death testify. The sufferings, moreover, of the church during this

period are of course not to be measured merely by the number of actual executions, but by the far

more numerous insults, slanders, vexatious, and tortures, which the cruelty of heartless heathens

and barbarians could devise, or any sort of instrument could inflict on the human body, and which

were in a thousand cases worse than death.

Finally, while the Christian religion has at all times suffered more or less persecution, bloody

or unbloody, from the ungodly world, and always had its witnesses ready for any sacrifice; yet at

no period since the first three centuries was the whole church denied the right of a peaceful legal

existence, and the profession of Christianity itself universally declared and punished as a political

crime. Before Constantine the Christians were a helpless and proscribed minority in an essentially

heathen world, and under a heathen government. Then they died not simply for particular doctrines,

but for the facts of Christianity. Then it was a conflict, not for a denomination or sect, but for

Christianity itself. The importance of ancient martyrdom does not rest so much on the number of

victims and the cruelty of their sufferings as on the great antithesis and the ultimate result in saving

the Christian religion for all time to come. Hence the first three centuries are the classical period

of heathen persecution and of Christian martyrdom. The martyrs and confessors of the ante-Nicene

age suffered for the common cause of all Christian denominations and sects, and hence are justly

held in reverence and gratitude by all.

Notes.

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Ὀλίγοι κατὰ καιροὺς καὶ σφόδρα εὐαρίθμητοι τεθνήκασι.. Adv. Cels. III. 8 The older testimony of Melito of Sardis, in the

well-known fragment from his Apology, preserved by Eusebius IV. 26, refers merely to the small number of imperial persecutors

before Marcus Aurelius.

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Adv. Haer. IV. c. 33, § 9: Ecclesia omni in loco ob eam, quam habet erga Deum dilectionem, multitudinem martyrum in

omni tempore praemittit ad Patrem.

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Philip Schaff

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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