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Trajan and his Successors establish a Legal Inquisition against the Christians, Trials Begin, There Follows Inconsiderable Numbers of Martyrs
II. About ten years afterwards, under the reign of Trajan,
the younger Pliny was intrusted by his friend and master with the
government of Bithynia and Pontus. He soon found himself at a
loss to determine by what rule of justice or of law he should
direct his conduct in the execution of an office the most
repugnant to his humanity. Pliny had never assisted at any
judicial proceedings against the Christians, with whose lame
alone he seems to be acquainted; and he was totally uninformed
with regard to the nature of their guilt, the method of their
conviction, and the degree of their punishment. In this
perplexity he had recourse to his usual expedient, of submitting
to the wisdom of Trajan an impartial, and, in some respects, a
favorable account of the new superstition, requesting the
emperor, that he would condescend to resolve his doubts, and to
instruct his ignorance. 57 The life of Pliny had been employed
in the acquisition of learning, and in the business of the world.
Since the age of nineteen he had pleaded with distinction in the
tribunals of Rome, 58 filled a place in the senate, had been
invested with the honors of the consulship, and had formed very
numerous connections with every order of men, both in Italy and
in the provinces. From his ignorance therefore we may derive
some useful information. We may assure ourselves, that when he
accepted the government of Bithynia, there were no general laws
or decrees of the senate in force against the Christians; that
neither Trajan nor any of his virtuous predecessors, whose edicts
were received into the civil and criminal jurisprudence, had
publicly declared their intentions concerning the new sect; and
that whatever proceedings had been carried on against the
Christians, there were none of sufficient weight and authority to
establish a precedent for the conduct of a Roman magistrate.
Footnote 57: Plin. Epistol. x. 97. The learned Mosheim
expresses himself (p. 147, 232) with the highest approbation of
Pliny's moderate and candid temper. Notwithstanding Dr. Lardner's
suspicions (see Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. ii. p. 46,)
I am unable to discover any bigotry in his language or
proceedings.
Note: Yet the humane Pliny put two female attendants,
probably deaconesses to the torture, in order to ascertain the
real nature of these suspicious meetings: necessarium credidi, ex
duabus ancillis, quae ministrae dicebantor quid asset veri et per
tormenta quaerere. - M.
Footnote 58: Plin. Epist. v. 8. He pleaded his first cause A.
D. 81; the year after the famous eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, in
which his uncle lost his life.
The answer of Trajan, to which the Christians of the
succeeding age have frequently appealed, discovers as much regard
for justice and humanity as could be reconciled with his mistaken
notions of religious policy. 59 Instead of displaying the
implacable zeal of an inquisitor, anxious to discover the most
minute particles of heresy, and exulting in the number of his
victims, the emperor expresses much more solicitude to protect
the security of the innocent, than to prevent the escape of the
guilty. He acknowledged the difficulty of fixing any general
plan; but he lays down two salutary rules, which often afforded
relief and support to the distressed Christians. Though he
directs the magistrates to punish such persons as are legally
convicted, he prohibits them, with a very humane inconsistency,
from making any inquiries concerning the supposed criminals. Nor
was the magistrate allowed to proceed on every kind of
information. Anonymous charges the emperor rejects, as too
repugnant to the equity of his government; and he strictly
requires, for the conviction of those to whom the guilt of
Christianity is imputed, the positive evidence of a fair and open
accuser. It is likewise probable, that the persons who assumed
so invidiuous an office, were obliged to declare the grounds of
their suspicions, to specify (both in respect to time and place)
the secret assemblies, which their Christian adversary had
frequented, and to disclose a great number of circumstances,
which were concealed with the most vigilant jealousy from the eye
of the profane. If they succeeded in their prosecution, they
were exposed to the resentment of a considerable and active
party, to the censure of the more liberal portion of mankind, and
to the ignominy which, in every age and country, has attended the
character of an informer. If, on the contrary, they failed in
their proofs, they incurred the severe and perhaps capital
penalty, which, according to a law published by the emperor
Hadrian, was inflicted on those who falsely attributed to their
fellow-citizens the crime of Christianity. The violence of
personal or superstitious animosity might sometimes prevail over
the most natural apprehensions of disgrace and danger but it
cannot surely be imagined, that accusations of so unpromising an
appearance were either lightly or frequently undertaken by the
Pagan subjects of the Roman empire. 60 *
Footnote 59: Plin. Epist. x. 98. Tertullian (Apolog. c. 5)
considers this rescript as a relaxation of the ancient penal
laws, "quas Trajanus exparte frustratus est: " and yet
Tertullian, in another part of his Apology, exposes the
inconsistency of prohibiting inquiries, and enjoining
punishments.
Footnote 60: Eusebius (Hist. Ecclesiast. l. iv. c. 9) has
preserved the edict of Hadrian. He has likewise (c. 13) given us
one still more favorable, under the name of Antoninus; the
authenticity of which is not so universally allowed. The second
Apology of Justin contains some curious particulars relative to
the accusations of Christians.
The expedient which was employed to elude the prudence of
the laws, affords a sufficient proof how effectually they
disappointed the mischievous designs of private malice or
superstitious zeal. In a large and tumultuous assembly, the
restraints of fear and shame, so forcible on the minds of
individuals, are deprived of the greatest part of their
influence. The pious Christian, as he was desirous to obtain, or
to escape, the glory of martyrdom, expected, either with
impatience or with terror, the stated returns of the public games
and festivals. On those occasions the inhabitants of the great
cities of the empire were collected in the circus or the theatre,
where every circumstance of the place, as well as of the
ceremony, contributed to kindle their devotion, and to extinguish
their humanity. Whilst the numerous spectators, crowned with
garlands, perfumed with incense, purified with the blood of
victims, and surrounded with the altars and statues of their
tutelar deities, resigned themselves to the enjoyment of
pleasures, which they considered as an essential part of their
religious worship, they recollected, that the Christians alone
abhorred the gods of mankind, and by their absence and melancholy
on these solemn festivals, seemed to insult or to lament the
public felicity. If the empire had been afflicted by any recent
calamity, by a plague, a famine, or an unsuccessful war; if the
Tyber had, or if the Nile had not, risen beyond its banks; if the
earth had shaken, or if the temperate order of the seasons had
been interrupted, the superstitious Pagans were convinced that
the crimes and the impiety of the Christians, who were spared by
the excessive lenity of the government, had at length provoked
the divine justice. It was not among a licentious and
exasperated populace, that the forms of legal proceedings could
be observed; it was not in an amphitheatre, stained with the
blood of wild beasts and gladiators, that the voice of compassion
could be heard. The impatient clamors of the multitude denounced
the Christians as the enemies of gods and men, doomed them to the
severest tortures, and venturing to accuse by name some of the
most distinguished of the new sectaries, required with
irresistible vehemence that they should be instantly apprehended
and cast to the lions. 61 The provincial governors and
magistrates who presided in the public spectacles were usually
inclined to gratify the inclinations, and to appease the rage, of
the people, by the sacrifice of a few obnoxious victims. But the
wisdom of the emperors protected the church from the danger of
these tumultuous clamors and irregular accusations, which they
justly censured as repugnant both to the firmness and to the
equity of their administration. The edicts of Hadrian and of
Antoninus Pius expressly declared, that the voice of the
multitude should never be admitted as legal evidence to convict
or to punish those unfortunate persons who had embraced the
enthusiasm of the Christians. 62
Footnote 61: See Tertullian, (Apolog. c. 40.) The acts of the
martyrdom of Polycarp exhibit a lively picture of these tumults,
which were usually fomented by the malice of the Jews.
Footnote 62: These regulations are inserted in the above
mentioned document of Hadrian and Pius. See the apology of
Melito, (apud Euseb. l iv 26)
III. Punishment was not the inevitable consequence of
conviction, and the Christians, whose guilt was the most clearly
proved by the testimony of witnesses, or even by their voluntary
confession, still retained in their own power the alternative of
life or death. It was not so much the past offence, as the
actual resistance, which excited the indignation of the
magistrate. He was persuaded that he offered them an easy
pardon, since, if they consented to cast a few grains of incense
upon the altar, they were dismissed from the tribunal in safety
and with applause. It was esteemed the duty of a humane judge to
endeavor to reclaim, rather than to punish, those deluded
enthusiasts. Varying his tone according to the age, the sex, or
the situation of the prisoners, he frequently condescended to set
before their eyes every circumstance which could render life more
pleasing, or death more terrible; and to solicit, nay, to
entreat, them, that they would show some compassion to
themselves, to their families, and to their friends. 63 If
threats and persuasions proved ineffectual, he had often recourse
to violence; the scourge and the rack were called in to supply
the deficiency of argument, and every art of cruelty was employed
to subdue such inflexible, and, as it appeared to the Pagans,
such criminal, obstinacy. The ancient apologists of Christianity
have censured, with equal truth and severity, the irregular
conduct of their persecutors who, contrary to every principle of
judicial proceeding, admitted the use of torture, in order to
obtain, not a confession, but a denial, of the crime which was
the object of their inquiry. 64 The monks of succeeding ages,
who, in their peaceful solitudes, entertained themselves with
diversifying the deaths and sufferings of the primitive martyrs,
have frequently invented torments of a much more refined and
ingenious nature. In particular, it has pleased them to suppose,
that the zeal of the Roman magistrates, disdaining every
consideration of moral virtue or public decency, endeavored to
seduce those whom they were unable to vanquish, and that by their
orders the most brutal violence was offered to those whom they
found it impossible to seduce. It is related, that females, who
were prepared to despise death, were sometimes condemned to a
more severe trial, ! and called upon to determine whether they
set a higher value on their religion or on their chastity. The
youths to whose licentious embraces they were abandoned, received
a solemn exhortation from the judge, to exert their most
strenuous efforts to maintain the honor of Venus against the
impious virgin who refused to burn incense on her altars. Their
violence, however, was commonly disappointed, and the seasonable
interposition of some miraculous power preserved the chaste
spouses of Christ from the dishonor even of an involuntary
defeat. We should not indeed neglect to remark, that the more
ancient as well as authentic memorials of the church are seldom
polluted with these extravagant and indecent fictions. 65
Footnote 63: See the rescript of Trajan, and the conduct of
Pliny. The most authentic acts of the martyrs abound in these
exhortations.
Note: Pliny's test was the worship of the gods, offerings to
the statue of the emperor, and blaspheming Christ - praeterea
maledicerent Christo. - M.
Footnote 64: In particular, see Tertullian, (Apolog. c. 2, 3,)
and Lactantius, (Institut. Divin. v. 9.) Their reasonings are
almost the same; but we may discover, that one of these
apologists had been a lawyer, and the other a rhetorician.
Footnote !: The more ancient as well as authentic memorials of
the church, relate many examples of the fact, (of these severe
trials,) which there is nothing to contradict. Tertullian, among
others, says, Nam proxime ad lenonem damnando Christianam, potius
quam ad leonem, confessi estis labem pudicitiae apud nos
atrociorem omni poena et omni morte reputari, Apol. cap. ult.
Eusebius likewise says, "Other virgins, dragged to brothels, have
lost their life rather than defile their virtue." Euseb. Hist.
Ecc. viii. 14. - G.
The miraculous interpositions were the offspring of the
coarse imaginations of the monks. - M.
Footnote 65: See two instances of this kind of torture in the
Acta Sincere Martyrum, published by Ruinart, p. 160, 399.
Jerome, in his Legend of Paul the Hermit, tells a strange story
of a young man, who was chained naked on a bed of flowers, and
assaulted by a beautiful and wanton courtesan. He quelled the
rising temptation by biting off his tongue.
The total disregard of truth and probability in the
representation of these primitive martyrdoms was occasioned by a
very natural mistake. The ecclesiastical writers of the fourth
or fifth centuries ascribed to the magistrates of Rome the same
degree of implacable and unrelenting zeal which filled their own
breasts against the heretics or the idolaters of their own times.
It is not improbable that some of those persons who were raised
to the dignities of the empire, might have imbibed the prejudices
of the populace, and that the cruel disposition of others might
occasionally be stimulated by motives of avarice or of personal
resentment. 66 But it is certain, and we may appeal to the
grateful confessions of the first Christians, that the greatest
part of those magistrates who exercised in the provinces the
authority of the emperor, or of the senate, and to whose hands
alone the jurisdiction of life and death was intrusted, behaved
like men of polished manners and liberal education, who respected
the rules of justice, and who were conversant with the precepts
of philosophy. They frequently declined the odious task of
persecution, dismissed the charge with contempt, or suggested to
the accused Christian some legal evasion, by which he might elude
the severity of the laws. 67 Whenever they were invested with a
discretionary power, 68 they used it much less for the
oppression, than for the relief and benefit of the afflicted
church. They were far from condemning all the Christians who
were accused before their tribunal, and very far from punishing
with death all those who were convicted of an obstinate adherence
to the new superstition. Contenting themselves, for the most
part, with the milder chastisements of imprisonment, exile, or
slavery in the mines, 69 they left the unhappy victims of their
justice some reason to hope, that a prosperous event, the
accession, the marriage, or the triumph of an emperor, might
speedily restore them, by a general pardon, to their former
state. The martyrs, devoted to immediate execution by the Roman
magistrates, appear to have been selected from the most opposite
extremes. They were either bishops and presbyters, the persons
the most distinguished among the Christians by their rank and
influence, and whose example might strike terror into the whole
sect; 70 or else they were the meanest and most abject among
them, particularly those of the servile condition, whose lives
were esteemed of little value, and whose sufferings were viewed
by the ancients with too careless an indifference. 71 The
learned Origen, who, from his experience as well as reading, was
intimately acquainted with the history of the Christians,
declares, in the most express terms, that the number of martyrs
was very inconsiderable. 72 His authority would alone be
sufficient to annihilate that formidable army of martyrs, whose
relics, drawn for the most part from the catacombs of Rome, have
replenished so many churches, 73 and whose marvellous
achievements have been the subject of so many volumes of Holy
Romance. 74 But the general assertion of Origen may be explained
and confirmed by the particular testimony of his friend
Dionysius, who, in the immense city of Alexandria, and under the
rigorous persecution of Decius, reckons only ten men and seven
women who suffered for the profession of the Christian name. 75
Footnote 66: The conversion of his wife provoked Claudius
Herminianus, governor of Cappadocia, to treat the Christians with
uncommon severity. Tertullian ad Scapulam, c. 3.
Footnote 67: Tertullian, in his epistle to the governor of
Africa, mentions several remarkable instances of lenity and
forbearance, which had happened within his knowledge.
Footnote 68: Neque enim in universum aliquid quod quasi certam
formam habeat, constitui potest; an expression of Trajan, which
gave a very great latitude to the governors of provinces.
Note: Gibbon altogether forgets that Trajan fully approved
of the course pursued by Pliny the Elder. That course was, to order all
who persevered in their faith to be led to execution:
perseverantes duci jussi. - M.
Footnote 69: In Metalla damnamur, in insulas relegamur.
Tertullian, Apolog. c. 12. The mines of Numidia contained nine
bishops, with a proportionable number of their clergy and people,
to whom Cyprian addressed a pious epistle of praise and comfort.
See Cyprian. Epistol. 76, 77.
Footnote 70: Though we cannot receive with entire confidence
either the epistles, or the acts, of Ignatius, (they may be found
in the 2d volume of the Apostolic Fathers,) yet we may quote that
bishop of Antioch as one of these exemplary martyrs. He was sent
in chains to Rome as a public spectacle, and when he arrived at
Troas, he received the pleasing intelligence, that the
persecution of Antioch was already at an end.
Note: The acts of Ignatius are generally received as
authentic, as are seven of his letters. Eusebius and St. Jerome
mention them: there are two editions; in one, the letters are
longer, and many passages appear to have been interpolated; the
other edition is that which contains the real letters of St.
Ignatius; such at least is the opinion of the wisest and most
enlightened critics. (See Lardner. Cred. of gospel Hist.) Less,
uber dis Religion, v. i. p. 529. Usser. Diss. de Ign. Epist.
Pearson, Vindic, Ignatianae. It should be remarked, that it was
under the reign of Trajan that the bishop Ignatius was carried
from Antioch to Rome, to be exposed to the lions in the
amphitheatre, the year of J. C. 107, according to some; of 116,
according to others. - G.
Footnote 71: Among the martyrs of Lyons, (Euseb. l. v. c. 1,)
the slave Blandina was distinguished by more exquisite tortures.
Of the five martyrs so much celebrated in the acts of Felicitas
and Perpetua, two were of a servile, and two others of a very
mean, condition.
Footnote 72: Origen. advers. Celsum, l. iii. p. 116. His words
deserve to be transcribed.
Note: The words that follow should be quoted. "God not
permitting that all his class of men should be exterminated: "
which appears to indicate that Origen thought the number put to
death inconsiderable only when compared to the numbers who had
survived. Besides this, he is speaking of the state of the
religion under Caracalla, Elagabalus, Alexander Severus, and
Philip, who had not persecuted the Christians. It was during the
reign of the latter that Origen wrote his books against Celsus. -
G.
Footnote 73: If we recollect that all the Plebeians of Rome were
not Christians, and that all the Christians were not saints and
martyrs, we may judge with how much safety religious honors can
be ascribed to bones or urns, indiscriminately taken from the
public burial-place. After ten centuries of a very free and open
trade, some suspicions have arisen among the more learned
Catholics. They now require as a proof of sanctity and
martyrdom, the letters B.M., a vial full of red liquor supposed
to be blood, or the figure of a palm-tree. But the two former
signs are of little weight, and with regard to the last, it is
observed by the critics, 1. That the figure, as it is called, of
a palm, is perhaps a cypress, and perhaps only a stop, the
flourish of a comma used in the monumental inscriptions. 2. That
the palm was the symbol of victory among the Pagans. 3. That
among the Christians it served as the emblem, not only of
martyrdom, but in general of a joyful resurrection. See the
epistle of P. Mabillon, on the worship of unknown saints, and
Muratori sopra le Antichita Italiane, Dissertat. lviii.
Footnote 74: As a specimen of these legends, we may be satisfied
with 10,000 Christian soldiers crucified in one day, either by
Trajan or Hadrian on Mount Ararat. See Baronius ad Martyrologium
Romanum; Tille mont, Mem. Ecclesiast. tom. ii. part ii. p. 438;
and Geddes's Miscellanies, vol. ii. p. 203. The abbreviation of
Mil., which may signify either soldiers or thousands, is said to
have occasioned some extraordinary mistakes.
Footnote 75: Dionysius ap. Euseb l. vi. c. 41 One of the
seventeen was likewise accused of robbery.
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To cite original text:
Gibbon, Edward, 1737-1794. The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. (NY : Knopf, 1993), v. 2, pp. 26 - 34 .