Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire
were heavily persecuted throughout the Roman Empire until the 3rd century. Although Christianity initially emerged as a small Jewish movement in 1st-century Judaea, it quickly branched off as a separate religion and began spreading across the various Roman territories at a pace that put it at odds with the well-established Roman imperial cult, to which it stood in opposition; Christians were vocal in their expressions of abhorrence towards the beliefs and practices of Roman paganism, such as deifying and making ritual sacrifices to the Roman emperor or partaking in other methods of idolatry. Consequently, the Roman state and other members of civic society routinely punished Christians for treason, various rumoured crimes, illegal assembly, and for introducing an alien cult that drove many Roman people to apostasy in favour of Jesus Christ. According to Tacitus, the first wave of organized persecution occurred under Nero, who blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in 64. A number of mostly localized persecutions occurred during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. After a lull, persecution resumed under Decius and Trebonianus Gallus. The Decian persecution was particularly extensive, as Decius strived to restore the Roman golden age in part by forcing pagan practices upon the Christian community. Another wave of persecution began under Valerian, but ceased abruptly after he was captured and taken prisoner by the Sasanian Empire during the Battle of Edessa of the Roman–Persian Wars. Under his successor Gallienus, whose reign was marred by rapidly escalating military conflicts of the Crisis of the Third Century, the first ever decree of tolerance was issued for Christian practices and places of worship, although it stopped short of recognizing Christianity as a religion with legal status.
Emperor Diocletian began the Diocletianic persecution, which was the final and the most severe wave of persecution of Christians by the Roman state. It was enforced until the accession of Galerius, who issued the Edict of Serdica, and the death of Maximinus Daza. After Constantine the Great defeated his rival Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in October 312, he and his co-emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, which decriminalized Christianity and suppressed pagan populations throughout the Roman Empire. In 380, Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica, officially establishing Christianity as the Roman state religion. It was also during the reign of Theodosius I that pagan practices were overtly deemed punishable offenses, which laid the framework for early Byzantine anti-pagan policies.
Religion in Roman society
Roman religion at the beginning of the Roman Empire was polytheistic and local. Each city worshipped its own set of gods and goddesses that had originally been derived from ancient Greece and become Romanized. This polis-religion was embedded in, and inseparable from, "the general structures of the ancient city; there was no religious identity separate from political or civic identity, and the essence of religion lay in ritual rather than belief". Private religion and its public practices were under the control of public officials, primarily, the Senate. Religion was central to being Roman, its practices widespread, and intertwined with politics.Support for this form of traditional Roman polytheism had begun to decline by the first century BC when it was seen, according to various writers and historians of the time, as having become empty and ineffectual. A combination of external factors such as war and invasions, and internal factors such as the formal nature and political manipulation of traditional religion, is said to have created the slow decline of polytheism. This left a vacuum in the personal lives of people that they filled with other forms of worship: such as the imperial cult, various mystery cults, imported eastern religions, and Christianity.
The Roman approach to empire building included a cultural permeability that allowed foreigners to become a part of it, but the Roman religious practice of adopting foreign gods and practices into its pantheon did not apply equally to all gods: "Many divinities were brought to Rome and installed as part of the Roman state religion, but a great many more were not". This characteristic openness has led many, such as Ramsay MacMullen to say that in its process of expansion, the Roman Empire was "completely tolerant, in heaven as on earth", but to also go on and immediately add: "That was only half the story".
MacMullen says the most significant factor in determining whether one received 'tolerance' or 'intolerance' from Roman religion was if that religion honored one's god "according to ancestral custom". Christians were thought of badly for abandoning their ancestral roots in Judaism. However, how religion was practised was also a factor. Roman officials had become suspicious of the worshippers of Dionysus and their practice of Bacchanalia as far back as 186 BC because it "took place at night". Private divination, astrology, and 'Chaldean practices' were magics associated with night worship, and as such, had carried the threat of banishment and execution since the early imperial period. Archaeologist Luke Lavan explains that is because night worship was private and secret and associated with treason and secret plots against the emperor. Bacchic associations were dissolved, leaders were arrested and executed, women were forbidden to hold important positions in the cult, no Roman citizen could be a priest, and strict control of the cult was thereafter established.
This became the pattern for the Roman state's response to whatever was seen as a religious threat. In the first century of the common era, there were "periodic expulsions of astrologers, philosophers and even teachers of rhetoric... as well as Jews and...the cult of Isis". Druids also received the same treatment, as did Christians.
Reasons, causes, and contributing factors
Reasons
records that serious discussion of the reasons for Roman persecution of Christians began in 1890 when it produced "20 years of controversy" and three main opinions: first, there was the theory held by most French and Belgian scholars that "there was a general enactment, precisely formulated and valid for the whole empire, which forbade the practice of the Christian religion. The origin of this is most commonly attributed to Nero, but sometimes to Domitian". This has evolved into a 'common law' theory which gives great weight to Tertullian's description of prosecution resulting from the 'accusation of the Name', as being Nero's plan. Nero had an older resolution forbidding the introduction of new religions, but the application to Christians is seen as coming from the much older Republican principle that it was a capital offense to introduce a new superstition without the authorization of the Roman state. Sherwin-White adds that this theory might explain persecution in Rome, but it fails to explain it in the provinces. For that, a second theory is needed.The second theory, which originated with German scholars, and is the best-known theory to English readers, is that of coercion. It holds that Christians were punished by Roman governors through the ordinary use of their power to keep order because Christians had introduced "an alien cult which induced 'national apostasy', the abandonment of the traditional Roman religion. Others substituted for this a general aversion to the established order and disobedience to constituted authority. All of school seem to envisage the procedure as a direct police action, or inquisition against notable malefactors, arrest, and punishment, without the ordinary forms of trial".
A third school asserted that Christians were prosecuted for specific criminal offenses such as child murder, incest, magic, illegal assembly, and treason – a charge based on their refusal to worship the divinity of the Roman emperor. Sherwin-White says "this third opinion has usually been combined with the coercion theory, but some scholars have attributed all Christian persecution to a single criminal charge, notably treason, or illegal assembly, or the introduction of an alien cult".Although malicious rumors did exist, this theory has been the least verified of the three by later scholarship.
Social and religious causes
Ideological conflict
Joseph Plescia says persecution was caused by an ideological conflict. Caesar was seen as divine. Christians could accept only one divinity, and it wasn't Caesar. Cairns describes the ideological conflict as: "The exclusive sovereignty of Christ clashed with Caesar's claims to his own exclusive sovereignty."In this clash of ideologies, "the ordinary Christian lived under a constant threat of denunciation and the possibility of arraignment on capital charges". Joseph Bryant asserts it was not easy for Christians to hide their religion and pretend to Romanness either, since renunciation of the world was an aspect of their faith that demanded "numerous departures from conventional norms and pursuits". The Christian had exacting moral standards that included avoiding contact with those that still lay in bondage to 'the Evil One. Life as a Christian required daily courage, "with the radical choice of Christ or the world being forced upon the believer in countless ways".
"Christian attendance at civic festivals, athletic games, and theatrical performances were fraught with danger, since in addition to the 'sinful frenzy' and 'debauchery' aroused, each was held in honor of pagan deities. Various occupations and careers were regarded as inconsistent with Christian principles, most notably military service and public office, the manufacturing of idols, and of course all pursuits which affirmed polytheistic culture, such as music, acting, and school-teaching. Even the wearing of jewelry and fine apparel was judged harshly by Christian moralists and ecclesiastical officials, as was the use of cosmetics and perfumes".In Rome, citizens were expected to demonstrate their loyalty to Rome by participating in the rites of the state religion which had numerous feast days, processions and offerings throughout the year. Christians simply could not, and so they were seen as belonging to an illicit religion that was anti-social and subversive.