CHAPTER XVI.

PEACE IS RESTORED TO THE CHURCH--GALLIENUS ISSUES AN EDICT FAVORABLE TO THE CHRISTIANS-THE EXILED BISHOPS ARE PERMITTED TO RETURN-THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNORS HOWEVER STILL PERSECUTE— CLAUDIUS BECOMES EMPEROR-HE PERSECUTES HE IS PUNISHED BY GOD-GENERAL PEACE OF THE CHURCH-DIOCLETIAN'S REIGN-THE GREATER PART OF IT FAVORABLE TO THE CHRISTIANS-HE PERSECUTES -VIOLENCE OF THE PERSECUTION IN ROME.

The death of Valerian brought peace to the Church. His son and successor abstained from walking in his steps, and even published an edict favorable to the Christians. He tolerated their worship, permitted the bishops to return to their flocks and prohibited any interference with them in the discharge of their religious obligations. Another document of a like nature secured to them the restoration of their forfeited temporalities of which they were unjustly deprived in the preceding reign. The edict permitting the clergy to return from exile was addressed to the bishops of Egypt and was as follows: "The Emperor Cæsar Publius Licinius Gallienus Pius Felix Augustus to Dionysius, Prima, Demetrius and others.-The benefit of the privilege granted by me I have ordered to be issued throughout the whole world that all may depart from their religious retreats; and therefore you also may make use of this copy of my edict that no one may molest you. And this liberty, indeed, which you are now permitted to have, has been long since granted by me. Aurelius Cyrenius therefore who has the chief administration of affairs will observe the copy here given to you."*

*Eusebius, book vii., chap xiii.

From the language of this document, it is evident that liberty of worship had been previously secured to the faithful in other parts of the empire. This accounts for the fact that it was not till 262, on the return of the troops against Marcion that Egypt acknowledged Gallienus.

Though by the emperor's orders complete liberty of conscience was accorded to the faithful, this did not entirely restrain the intolerant governors from occasionally exercising their cruelty against the believers. In fact, even then Christian blood was made to flow. The martyrdom of Marin by the governor of Cæsarea is evidence of this. He was an officer in the Roman army and should according to the regular order of promotion have attained to the post of captain. But his faith becoming known, he obtained three hours to determine between torments and death or apostasy and promotion. The former he cheerfully accepted, and thus consummated a glorious martyrdom. With this single exception, the reign of Gallienus was otherwise wholly free from the blood of the Christians. Gallienus perished in northern Italy in the year 268, the victim in all probability of the ambitious designs of Claudius II, his successor in the empire.

Entirely different in character from the late ruler, Claudius from the very beginning of his reign set himself to persecuting the faithful. Though a wise and provident ruler in a purely temporal sense, and a powerful defender of the empire, he showed himself an unrelenting enemy of the Christian name and faith. It is a noteworthy fact that under the least capable and most dissolute of the emperors the condition of the Christians was the most favorable. A spirit of opposition and contradiction more than a wise and impartial administration of justice, influenced the rulers in the case of the faithful, and the Christians in consequence became alternately the sport of the whims, the caprices, and prejudices of those in authority.

The absence of historical evidence has caused many to doubt the severity of the persecution under Claudius. It is true the pen of contemporary historians has transmitted nothing to us of the sufferings of the faithful at this epoch; but from various martyrologies it is clear that a vast number of Christians perished during this emperor's reign. His superstitious fears probably more than any natural ferocity led him to this and caused him to wield the sword with such terrible severity against the faithful. Ludicrous and grotesque, indeed, were the former, as is evidenced by the fact of his having slain at Rome 269 soldiers with their commander St. Blaste, as a holocaust to his favorite god, Mars. On the 24th of the same month he had St. Quirinus decapitated in prison and his body cast into the Tiber. To these may be added 248 others whose names occur in various martyrologies. But what establishes better than any thing else the persecuting propensity of this emperor is a document entitled the "Acts of the mar

tyrs of Ostia."* It begins as follows: "Under the emperor Claudius, Ulpius Romulus being his vicar, a violent persecution arose against the Christians." And farther on it says: "The vicar Ulpius Romulus being come to the city of Ostia ordered all the saints without exception to be cast into prison." The document then relates the sufferings of some of the condemned.

While these proceedings were being enacted against the faithful by the sanction and under the authority of Claudius, the angel of destruction was preparing to execute the divine vengeance upon him. At Sirmium, where he was engaged in a contest with the Goths, he was taken ill with the plague and died of that disease, in the fifty-sixth year of his age and the second of his reign. The death of the tyrant brought another period of repose to the Christians.

* See Belouino, vol. ii,p. 349.

Claudius was succeeded by Aurelian who, like so many of his predecessors, showed himself at the commencement of his reign favorable to the faithful. This was owing, however, more to the difficulties of his position than to any leaning towards divine truth. The subjugation of his political rivals he found at first sufficient to engross all his attention. But when successful against these, he was not slow in manifesting his real propensities. The sentiments with which he was actuated, were clearly displayed in the sanguinary edict which he issued against the religion, but before it had reached the extremity of the empire, he was a corpse. The document, in consequence, never received from the governors that attention which it otherwise would; yet during the interregnum that followed, several of the faithful suffered for the cause of divine truth.

From the death of Aurelian, A. D. 275, till the accession of Diocletian 285, the imperial command passed through the hands of five successive rulers. Except under the last, the Christians did not suffer anything worth mentioning. This little repose, however, was quickly disturbed. Diocletian assumed the purple in 285, and, though at first friendly enough, towards the close of his reign he showed himself the most implacable of tyrants. During his rule more lives were forfeited in the cause of divine truth than in almost the entire two preceding centuries. The powers of darkness were then unchained and exercised for a brief period all the evil of which their perverted natures were capable. It was the darkness of night preceding the glorious light of day. In one sense it was deplorable, but in another most comforting. The mangled, lifeless bodies of the martyrs at the feet of their tormentors, were indeed a pitiable spectacle, if contemplated apart from the end attained; but regarded with the light of faith and in view of the rewards awaiting the faithful soldiers of Christ, they

were a subject more for rejoicing than mourning. In no other period did the Church receive such glory from the constancy of her children. Their sufferings are still her honor and shall ever continue to cast a halo of glory around her name. Nor was this testimony to divine truth confined to any particular class. It was shared in equally by all. The soldier from the ranks, the monk from his cell, and the maiden from her enclosure, went forth equally to death. Freedmen and slaves, philosophers and plebeians, clerics and laics, maidens and matrons, all alike rendered testimony to the Son of God and died nobly for the faith in the ranks of the martyrs. What appeared at the moment most certain, if judged after the fashion of the world, was the inability of the Church to hold out against so powerful an adversary. Humanly speaking, the last days of the Church had come. She was then, according to the notions of worldlings, in her last agony. But what then was so discouraging and disheartening, is now and ever shall be the most brilliant and glorious period of her career.

During the first seventeen years of his reign, Diocletian did not issue any edicts against the Christians. It was only during the last three years of his rule that the faithful were formally persecuted, by virtue of his diabolical ordinances. Those who were martyred during the first part of his reign, suffered in consequence of the ancient, existing law of the empire. Justice to his memory also demands the avowal that all the Christian blood, shed from his accession in 285 till his death in 303, is not to be entirely laid to his charge. In 286, Diocletian associated with himself in the empire, Maximian, a man of equally low and brutal instincts and of the most profligate manners. After governing for nine years, they found it expedient to associate with themselves, two others. The empire was thus parcelled out amongst four, and became, in a measure, four independ