Chapter 31
Cyprian speaks (_Ep._ lxvi.) of both Cornelius and Lucius as martyred. The emperors were probably at this time beginning to realise the power the Bishops of Rome possessed. We know hardly anything of the Decian persecution at Rome except the execution of the bishop; and St. Cyprian says (_Ep._ li.) that Decius would have preferred a pretender to the throne to a Bishop of Rome.
889 Dionysius, Archbishop of Alexandria; see Euseb. vii. 10.
890 Eusebius, vii. 10-12; Cyprian, _Ep._ lx.x.xi. Lactantius says of Valerian, "Multum quamvis brevi tempore justi sanguinis fudit."-_De Mort. Persec._ c. v.
891 Cyprian. _Ep._ lx.x.xi.
892 See his _Life_ by the deacon Pontius, which is reproduced by Gibbon.
893 Eusebius, vii. 13.
894 Tertullian had before, in a curious pa.s.sage, spoken of the impossibility of Christian Caesars. "Sed et Caesares credidissent super Christo si aut Caesares non essent seculo necessarii, aut si et Christiani potuissent esse Caesares."-_Apol._ xxi.
_ 895 Contra Demetrianum._
896 Eusebius, vii. 30. Aurelian decided that the cathedral at Antioch should be given up to whoever was appointed by the bishops of Italy.
897 Compare the accounts in Eusebius, vii. 30, and Lactantius, _De Mort._ c. vi.
898 See the forcible and very candid description of Eusebius, viii. 1.
899 This is noticed by Optatus.
900 See the vivid pictures in Lact. _De Mort. Persec._
901 Lactant. _De Mort. Persec._ 15.
902 Eusebius, viii.
903 These incidents are noticed by Eusebius in his _History_, and in his _Life of Constantine_, and
904 "Italy, Sicily, Gaul, and whatever parts extend towards the West,-Spain, Mauritania, and Africa."-Euseb. _Mart. Palest._ ch.
xiii. But in Gaul, as I have said, the persecution had not extended beyond the destruction of churches; in these provinces the persecution, Eusebius says, lasted not quite two years.
905 The history of this persecution is given by Eusebius, _Hist._ lib.
viii., in his work on the _Martyrs of Palestine_, and in Lactantius, _De Mort. Persec._ The persecution in Palestine was not quite continuous: in A.D. 308 it had almost ceased; it then revived fiercely, but at the close of A.D. 309, and in the beginning of A.D.
310, there was again a short lull, apparently due to political causes. See Mosheim, _Eccles. Hist._ (edited by Soames), vol. i. pp.
286-287.
906 Eusebius.
907 See two pa.s.sages, which Gibbon justly calls remarkable. (_H. E._ viii. 2; _Martyrs of Palest._ ch. xii.)
908 There is one instance of a wholesale ma.s.sacre which appears to rest on good authority. Eusebius a.s.serts that, during the Diocletian persecution, a village in Phrygia, the name of which he does not mention, being inhabited entirely by Christians who refused to sacrifice, was attacked and burnt with all that were in it by the Pagan soldiery. Lactantius (_Inst. Div._ v. 11) confines the conflagration to a church in which the entire population was burnt; and an early Latin translation of Eusebius states that the people were first summoned to withdraw, but refused to do so. Gibbon (ch.
xvi.) thinks that this tragedy took place when the decree of Diocletian ordered the destruction of the churches.
909 Mariana (_De Rebus Hispaniae_, xxiv. 17). Llorente thought this number perished in the single year 1482; but the expressions of Mariana, though he speaks of "this beginning," do not necessarily imply this restriction. Besides these martyrs, 17,000 persons in Spain recanted, and endured punishments less than death, while great numbers fled. There does not appear to have been, in this case, either the provocation or the political danger which stimulated the Diocletian persecution.
910 This is according to the calculation of Sarpi. Grotius estimates the victims at 100,000.-Gibbon, ch. xvi.
911 See some curious information on this in Ticknor's _Hist. of Spanish Literature_ (3rd American edition), vol. iii. pp. 236-237.
912 This was the case in the persecutions at Lyons and Smyrna, under Marcus Aurelius. In the Diocletian persecution at Alexandria the populace were allowed to torture the Christians as they pleased.
(_Eusebius_, viii. 10.)