Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire

1 week ago - 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 (curtailment). 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', [and] the abandonment of the traditional Roman religion.

November 1, 2025 - In 298, Maximilian, a soldier in Tebessa, had been tried for refusing to follow military discipline; in Mauretania in 298, the soldier Marcellus refused his army bonus and took off his uniform in public. Once persecutions began, public authorities were eager to assert their authority. Anullinus, proconsul of Africa, expanded on the edict, deciding that in addition to the destruction of the Christians' scriptures and churches the government should compel Christians to sacrifice to the gods.

After him, as emperor succeeded emperor, some were mild in their treatment of the Christians and others were the reverse. A good deal, too, depended upon the proconsuls* and the magistrates. Some of these avoided persecution, as far as they could with safety to themselves, while others went as far as their power extended in rooting out the hated disciples of Christ.

Normally the prosecution of Christians followed the forms of the cognitio system of penal jurisdiction, in which proconsular coercitio found its usual expression. Under this system the Governor enjoyed much freedom in the first and second centuries in recognizing crimes and determining sentences.

Rarely did this persecution come from the government; usually it was from other religious groups (such as the Jews or the pagans). Nero (54–68) and Domitian (81–96) were known to have blamed Christians for problems of their own administration. The legal basis for these persecutions is known from the correspondence between Pliny and the emperor Trajan around 110: If a resident did not make offerings to the Roman gods, he or she could be executed.

April 16, 2021 - His father, however, was not, as some have maintained, a “closet-Christian” — and, worse, Galerius made up for Constantius’ diffidence on Christianity with all-out full-bore persecutions. It’s worth noting that this list is incomplete on a number of levels. For one, the transition from one emperor to another was almost never a smooth transition of power in pre-Christian Rome. For another, there were often several competing combatants for the throne, sometimes lasting years at a time. Finally, there was the “tetrarchy,” where there were four rulers simultaneously. But these are the men who, for good or ill, ruled the Roman empire while it tried its best to put-down the “heresy” of Christianity.

Christians were punished by loss of property, exile, imprisonment, or execution by the sword or wild beasts. Some were sent to the Roman labor camp where they were worked to death in the mines or starved to death. These persecutions were a determined and systematic attempt to uproot Christianity completely and to wipe the Church off the face of the earth.

These were the attitudes common among the patrician and equestrian orders which governed the empire; in the first two centuries, it was local Roman officials who were largely responsible for persecutions. Another great objection to Christianity for was simply that it was new; it offended the innate conservatism of the Roman ruling classes. This objection became harder to sustain with time; yet in 311, the emperor Galerius could write that "instead of following those constitutions of the ancients which peradventure their own ancestors had established, they were making themselves laws for their own observance, merely according to their own judgement and pleasure".

2 days ago - However, followers of doctrines which were seen as heretical or causing schism were persecuted during the reign of Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, and they would be persecuted again later in the 4th century. The consequence of Christian doctrinal disputes was generally mutual excommunication, but once Roman government became involved in ecclesiastical politics, rival factions could find themselves subject to "repression, expulsion, imprisonment or exile" carried out by the Roman army.

October 28, 2021 - During his rise to power in 1930s Germany, Adolf Hitler exploited anti-Semitic feelings among some Christians, as well as fears of communist secularism, to gain support from segments of German Christianity. However, opposition arose when the government acted to bar Jewish Christians from being members of the church. Nazi propaganda also tried to meld paganism with Christianity into what Hitler termed ''Positive Christianity.'' Christians that opposed these reforms formed the Confessing Church that declared the lordship of Christ over the church as opposed to the German government.

It was during his reign that the Institutes of Gaius, an elementary handbook about which our modern knowledge of classical Roman law is based, was written. Also, numerous measures were taken to soften the harshness of the law against the weak and helpless. Except those Christians. Officially, Marcus took the position of his predecessor Trajan, also followed by Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.

July 31, 2025 - The government, and the Romans in general, tended to be tolerant towards most religions and religious practices. Some religions were banned for political reasons rather than dogmatic zeal, and other rites which involved human sacrifice were banned. When Christianity became the state church of the Roman Empire, it came to accept that it was the Roman emperor's duty to use secular power to enforce religious unity.

December 27, 2024 - In a famous exchange with Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor in modern-day Turkey, Trajan instructed him not to seek out Christians actively but to punish those who refused to renounce their faith. This policy created a precarious situation for early Christians, who faced execution if they openly practiced their beliefs. Other Roman emperors, like Decius and Diocletian, launched more aggressive campaigns against Christians. These rulers sought to enforce loyalty to the Roman state through mandatory sacrifices, which Christians refused to perform.

Place the events of that change in chronological order. Diocletian instituted the Great Persecution, stripping Christians and Manicheans of their citizenship rights and government jobs.

April 29, 2017 - Because the Christians belonged to a different cult than the Roman Empire, they developed a different culture and became a counterculture movement — a counterculture that the authorities sometimes deemed subversive and periodically sought to violently suppress. The Christian refusal to venerate Rome and the emperor in even benign and symbolic ways was viewed as unpatriotic. This was the impetus for periodic persecutions of Christians.

Then, suddenly, the old emperor ordered his army purged of Christians. Imperial edicts followed, commanding officials to destroy church buildings, prohibit Christian worship, and burn the Scriptures. Bishops were rounded up wholesale, imprisoned, tortured, and many put to death, while the power ...

August 5, 2024 - Ehrman proposed in his study The Triumph of Christianity, that there were around 3 million Jesus’ followers at the beginning of the 3rd century. At the center of Christianity is Jesus of Nazareth - the model of the first martyr. Every attempt to violently destroy Christianity only strengthens the cult of martyrdom even more. The Roman government wasn’t aware of that. In the year 311 C.E. the emperor Galerius issued the Edict of Serdica which granted Christianity the status of religio licita (legal religion) and ended the persecution.

Professor Wayne A. Meeks told PBS: “After a long period in which the persecutions of Christianity were really spasmodic, local, [and] involved very few people, suddenly in the middle of the 3rd century, the year 250, the Emperor Decius decides that Christians are a real enemy of the Roman order, that they must be dealt with empire-wide, with all the police power that the emperor can bring to bear upon them.

February 10, 2021 - Romans 13 becomes a challenging passage when we consider that many governments in history have done great evil, killing innocent people and even persecuting Christians (e.g. ancient Rome, Stalinist Russia).

October 22, 2024 - Suspicious of the loyalty of Christians to the Roman state, Diocletian started persecuting them. He demanded that all Christian soldiers resign from the Roman army. He forbade gatherings for Christian worship and ordered the destruction of churches and sacred writings. Christian members of the government were tortured and executed. Other edicts followed when Christian uprisings took place in the eastern parts of the empire where Christianity was strongest.