CHAPTER VI. AGGREGATE SUM OF THE PERSECUTIONS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS -MORE PEACE THAN PERSECUTION UNDER THESE MONARCHS-THE CATACOMBS-HOW THEY WERE FORMED-HOW THE CHRISTIANS WERE GENERALLY TREATED BY THE ROMAN EMPERORS-STATE OF THE CHURCH AT THE CLOSE OF THE THIRD CENTURY. In assigning our reasons for the existence of millions of martyrs in the primitive ages, it was not our intention to convey to the mind of the reader the idea of continuous persecution and bloodshed down to the accession of Constantine. Such would be entirely inaccurate. In fact there was more peace than persecution under the Roman emperors. All indeed in some sense,* and particularly in the liberty they allowed their subordinates, may be said to have persecuted, but not in a manner that could be regarded as violent. According to Lactantius the sum of the Pagan persecutions down to the year 250 was exceedingly limited not exceeding in the aggregate more than sixteen years. This is readily adduced from his language. After speaking of Nero and Domitian as the only two of the Roman emperors who persecuted the Church in any formidable manner down to the reign of Decius, he says: "And in the times that followed (that is from the death of Domitian, A. D. 96, till the accession of Decius, A. D. 250.), while many well-deserving princes guided the helm of the Roman empire, the Church suffered no violent persecution from her enemies.”+ In Chrysostom, vol. I., p. 823. Lactantius Liber de Morte Persecutorum, chap. iii., p. 199. : the concluding part of the sentence he continues to state how in consequence of that protracted peace the religion was propagated far and wide all over the world. "And she (the Church) extended her hands unto the east and the west insomuch that now there was not any the most remote corner of the earth to which the divine religion had not penetrated or any nation of manners so barbarous that did not, by being converted to the worship of God, become mild and gentle." According to the foregoing, from Nero to Decius. inclusive, there were only three really persecuting emperors in all, the sum of whose persecutions amounted in the aggregate, as we have affirmed, to no more than sixteen years at the utmost. This appears thus: Nero reigned fourteen years, that is, from 54 to 68; but the precise date at which he began to persecute is unknown. Lactantius merely says that when the emperor learned of the success of Peter and what vast numbers were abandoning idolatry he then drew the sword of persecution.* Granting, however, that the persecution began in the first year of his reign, it could not have been more than thirteen years in all, for the reason assigned. Again though Domitian ruled fifteen years, that is from 81 to 96, it was not till the fifteenth or last year of his reign that he persecuted, so that under this emperor there was only one year of actual persecution. This is clear from the testimony of Eusebius who speaks as follows: "To such a degree indeed did the doctrine which we profess flourish, that even historians who are very far from befriending our religion have not hesitated to record this persecution and # Qua re (nempe conversio paganorum) ad Neronem delata, cum animadverterit non modo Romæ, sed ubiqne quotidie magnam multitudinem deficere a cultu idolorum et ad religionem novam, damnata vetustate, transire; ut erat execrabilis et nocens tyrannus prosilivit ad excidendum celeste templum, &c." its martyrdoms in their histories. These also have accurately noted the time, for it happened according to them in the fifteenth year of Domitian." It is evident from this that the persecution under that monarch was only for about the space of a year, while that inaugurated by Decius was not of greater extent inasmuch as that emperor ruled only for the space of a single year. If we take Lactantius, then, as our authority, we will have to acknowledge that at most there were only sixteen years of serious persecution down to the year 250! In this we find a solution of the otherwise inexplicable difficulty regarding the Christian origin of the Catacombs. For supposing these works to be exclusively Christian as is now freely admitted,* the fact of their construction in opposition to the will of the civil authorities. and in the face of continued oppression and persecution, could in no sense be reconciled with any reasonable theory. The explanation offered by Northcote,† to the effect that the Christians endeavored to conceal from the pagans the entrances to the Catacombs, though they only partially succeeded in this, according to the writer, is wholly insufficient to satisfy a critical mind. Equally unsatisfactory is the same author's suggestion that the Catacombs being in the vicinity of sand-pits, the excavated matter may have been brought to the surface as if pure pozzolana without exciting the suspicions of the pagans. Or again that the Catacombs being the private property of Christians concealment was comparatively easy. Not all nor any of these theories satisfactorily meet the difficulty; they are puerile and imaginative. It is surely demanding too much of the reader to ask him *Il n'y a pas longtemps encore, soutenir que les Catacombes avaient une origine exclusivement Chretienne etait pour le moins une opinion singuliere. Aujourd'hue les savans n'ont plus de doute a se sujet." Rome et ses Monuments par Le Chanoine de Blesser, p. 567. The Roman Catacombs, chap. i. to believe that sixty large subterranean cemeteries with streets of from fifteen to twenty miles and more in length the united extent of which is probably from 900 to 1,000* miles in all could have been constructed by a poor, persecuted community without the knowledge and approval of the civil authorities. The fact is the Catacombs were not constructed under such circumstances at all. They were not formed in the face of such difficulties as many, if not most, modern writers on the subject generally suppose and vainly attempt to explain. On the contrary they were made with the full knowledge, consent and approval of the pagan Roman emperors. Down to the year 64 when the first great persecution broke out, the Christians buried their dead in this fashion, not from necessity but from choice, after the manner of the Jewish mode of burial. So that in the beginning at least it can not be denied that the Catacombs were formed by the Christians for their own personal use without opposition on the part of the authorities. Nor can it be shown that this right which the Christians, in common with Jews and gentiles enjoyed, of burying their dead as they pleased, was subsequently interfered with until the reign of Valerian in the latter half of the third century, when for the first time the Christians were prohibited entering the Catacombs.§ In fact nothing except the gods was more sacred at Rome in the eyes of the pagans than the tombs of the dead. They were under the protection of the law and so carefully guarded that they could not even be sold. The Christians accordingly in common with Jews and pagans availed themselves of the liberty accorded them by the law in regard to . the manner of the burial of their dead. That is they buried them in the Catacombs formed for that purpose with the sanction and approval of the authorities. In like manner * See Northcote, chap. i, p. 14. + Ibid. + See Blesser. See Blesser, p. 554. the Jews had two catacombs of their own, one in Trastavere and the other on the Appian Way. The Catacombs were first the property of private individuals who suffered their brethren, in the faith to share with them their use. Time, however, altered those relations so that what originally belonged to individul members of the Church, became eventually the common property of all the faithful, under the guardianship and protection of the Sovereign Pontiff. Thus at the beginning of the third century, Pope Zephyrinus entrusted the care of one of the three Catacombs on the Appian way, and probably the largest of those in the vicinity of Rome, to an individual named Calixtus, from whom it has taken its name. Although Lactantius, as we have seen, has asserted that down to the year 250, there were only three persecutions of any formidable character, it is to be borne in mind, that the testimony of this writer is to be received with great caution and limitation. Indeed the very passages we have quoted from his writings, show the looseness and indefinitness of his assertions, for in saying that the Church, at that period, had extended her limits all over the earth, and had converted the entire world, he evidently was speaking in a figurative sense, and meant nothing more, if he intended conveying any definite ideas to the minds of his readers, than that the gospel was morally preached all over the earth, in the sense implied by the Apostle when quoting the words of the psalmist: "But I say, have they not heard? Yea, verily, their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world."* In like manner, the assertion regarding the absence of all violent persecution, except in the instances referred to, is to be received with very considerable caution; for as we shall see farther on, numbers of Christians died for the * St. Paul, Rom., chap. iv, v. 18, |