Introduction: Minimalism from Mommsen to Moss
The story of modern scholarship on the Roman persecutions can be characterized as a gradual but steady progression towards âminimalismâ. Scholars have become increasingly hesitant about the degree to which the state targeted the Christian faith in the three centuries between the death of Jesus in the early first century and the conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in the early fourth. Most scholars today accept that the steps Roman authorities took against Christians in this period were far more limited in both chronological and geographical extent than many early Christian accounts would have us believe.
The traditional view through the nineteenth century was that Christianity was the subject of a continuing and universal legal enactment from the time of either Nero or Domitian in the early first century to the soâcalled âGreat Persecutionâ of the tetrarchic emperors in the early fourth (e.g. Neumann 1890). But at the turn of the twentieth century the German historian Theodor Mommsen challenged this accepted wisdom (Mommsen 1890; in English, see Hardy 1894). Mommsen proposed that until the emperor Decius in the midâthird century, Christians suffered not because they were proscribed, but simply via a police action motivated by Christianityâs threat as a ânational apostasy.â
Mommsenâs intervention sparked over half a century of interâcontinental debate. Though the traditional general law theory found numerous defenders, its critics became increasingly numerous and persuasive. The rearguard action did prompt modifications to Mommsenâs theory, for example that of Hugh Last (1937), arguing that in this period the Roman authorities took suppressive measures against Christians in the same way as against other groups, namely whenâand only whenâthey provoked scandalous behavior in their adherents. This growing consensus produced at the centuryâs midâpoint an important stateâofâtheâquestion article by Adrian SherwinâWhite (1952). Building on Last (1937), SherwinâWhite argued that initially the name âChristianâ served as a marker for other suspected crimes, but that eventually contumacia, or obstinacy in refusing to sacrifice, became the official objection to Christianity. The Roman problem with Christianity, in other words, was not primarily religious.
A decade later, a further scholarly squabble erupted. Geoffrey de Ste. Croix (1964) agreed with SherwinâWhite in accepting Mommsenâs position that Christians did not suffer under a general law. But he vehemently disagreed that contumacia was at issue, and thus that the Roman objection to Christianity was not religious. De Ste. Croix argued instead that Christians were punished in the preâDecian period for their ânameââthat is, for being Christiansâbecause Romans saw Christianity as a form of atheism and thus a threat to traditional religious practice. SherwinâWhite (1964) responded by accepting that âatheismâ may have been an issue after Hadrian, but insisting that it was not before then. De Ste. Croix (1964) did not accept the amendment. His arguments carried the day.
Soon after, Timothy Barnes (1968) approached the question from a different angle. He set out all the available evidence for a juridical basis for Christian persecution before Decius. His list demonstrated plainly that there was no legislation against Christians before the reign of Trajan. But in that emperorâs correspondence with his governor, Pliny the Younger, Barnes identified the precedent that Christians could be executed for their ânameâ.
De Ste. Croix and Barnes are usually taken as statements of the consensus position. They are certainly âminimalistâ in that for the first two and half centuries of Christianityâs existence they affirm Mommsenâs model of police action over and against the general law theory. But in asserting that, at least from Trajan on (and for de Ste. Croix possibly before), it was âChristianityâ itself that Roman authorities objected to, they both withdrew from the more extreme minimalism of SherwinâWhite, who thought that âChristianityâ was not really at issue at all.
All of this debate, as will be apparent, concerned the period before 250 CE. There was no argument, however, that with the reign of Decius a governmentâinstigated, empireâwide persecution of the Christians began, which continued, after an interruption, in the subsequent reign of Valerian. But in the late twentieth century this was also questioned. James Rives (1999) suggested that Deciusâ edict may not have been intended to target Christians at all.
That left only the actions of Valerian and the soâcalled âGreat Persecutionâ of the tetrarchs in the early fourth century. Here we do have evidence for concrete legislation against Christians. But what exactly Valerian legislated for is opaque, and even in the tetrarchic persecution it has become clear that while Christianity was certainly proscribed, the actual violence suffered may have been less severe than traditionally assumed. So where once the Roman persecution of Christians was a given, now the very validity of the term can be questioned, as in the book of Candida Moss (2013), The Myth of Persecution.
The traditional picture, which has persisted in some quarters (e.g. Frend 2006), relied upon reading select, independent pieces of evidence together to identify particular emperors as persecutors, and then merging their reigns to create a picture of ongoing persecution. In what follows, I consider a selection of these persecution âmomentsâ in closer detail. The list is not exhaustive, but rather represents those emperors most often treated as persecutors.
