Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
THE BOOK OF LUCIUS CAECILIUS TO DONATUS THE CONFESSOR, ON THE DEATHS OF THE PERSECUTORS. The Lord has heard your prayers, dearest Donatus, which you poured out before him at every hour, day after day, together with those of the rest of our brothers who by their glorious confession sought for themselves an everlasting crown as the reward of their faith. Behold, all our adversaries have been destroyed, calm has been restored throughout the world, and the church, lately thrown down, rises again, and the temple of God, which the impious had overturned, is by the Lord's mercy rebuilt with greater glory than before. For God raised up rulers who cut down the wicked and bloody rule of the tyrants and provided for the human race, so that now, as though the cloud of that most grim age had been scattered, a joyful and untroubled peace gladdens the minds of all. Now, after the violent whirlwinds of that black storm, a calm sky and the longed-for light have shone out again; now God, appeased by the prayers of his servants, has raised up with heavenly help those who lay crushed and afflicted; now, the conspiracy of the wicked being extinguished, he has wiped away the tears of the mourners. Those who mocked God now lie low; those who had overturned his holy temple have fallen in a greater ruin; those who had tortured the righteous have, in payment for their guilt, poured out their wicked lives amid heavenly plagues and torments. Late indeed this came, but heavily and justly. For God had put off their punishment so that he might display in them great and wondrous examples, by which those who came after might learn both that God is one and that he is a judge who fittingly inflicts due punishments on the wicked and on persecutors. I have chosen to bear witness to their end, so that all who are far away, and all who are yet to come, may know how the Most High God has shown his power and his majesty in destroying and blotting out the enemies of his name. It seems fitting, then, that I set forth, beginning from the founding of the church, who its persecutors have been, and with what punishments the severity of the heavenly judge has avenged it upon them.
In the last years of Tiberius Caesar, as we read it written, our Lord Jesus Christ suffered torment at the hands of the Jews, ten days before April's kalends, in the consulship of the two Gemini. Rising on the third day, he brought back together the disciples, scattered in flight by fear of his arrest; staying at their side across forty days, he unlocked their understanding, set out the scriptures that had until then lain dark and hidden, and prepared and trained them to preach his teaching and doctrine, establishing the solemn discipline of the new testament. When this task was completed, a cloud wrapped him about and, snatched from human sight, carried him up into heaven. From there the disciples, who were then eleven, having taken Matthias into the place of Judas the betrayer, and with Paul, scattered over the whole earth to preach the gospel, just as their Lord and master had commanded them, and for twenty-five years, down to the beginning of Nero's reign, they laid the foundations of the church throughout every province and city. Now when Nero was already ruling, Peter came to Rome, and by performing certain miracles, which he worked by the power of that same God who had given him the authority, he turned many to righteousness and established for God a faithful and steadfast temple. When this was reported to Nero, and he observed that not only at Rome but everywhere daily a great multitude was falling away from the worship of idols and abandoning the old ways condemned for the new religion, then—being as he was an execrable and harmful tyrant—he leapt to the task of tearing down the heavenly temple and destroying righteousness, and was the first of all to persecute the servants of God: he had Peter fixed to a cross and killed Paul. Yet he did not go unpunished. For God looked upon the affliction of his people. And so the tyrant, cast down from the height of empire and toppled from the summit, an impotent thing, vanished suddenly and nowhere was he to be found, so that not even a burial place on earth was to be seen for so evil a beast. For this reason some deluded people believe he was carried off and kept alive somewhere, the Sibyl saying that the matricide, a fugitive from the ends of the earth, would come again—so that, since he was the first to persecute, the same one would also be the last to persecute, going before the coming of Antichrist (a thing wicked to believe), just as certain of the saints declare that two prophets were carried off alive, to be kept until the last times, before the coming of Christ's holy and eternal kingdom, when it begins to descend: in the same way they suppose that Nero too will come, to be a forerunner and herald of the devil going before him to lay the earth waste and overturn the human race.
After him, when some years had passed, another tyrant arose, no less than the first: Domitian. Though he practiced a hateful tyranny, he nevertheless lay heavily upon the necks of his subjects for a very long time and reigned in safety, until he stretched out his impious hands against the Lord. But after he was driven by the instigation of demons to persecute the righteous people, then he was delivered into the hands of his enemies and paid the penalty. Nor was it vengeance enough that he was killed in his own house: even the memory of his name was erased. For though he had built many marvelous works, and had made the Capitol and other noble monuments, the Senate pursued his name so thoroughly that it left no trace of his images or of his inscriptions, branding him even in death, by the gravest decrees, with a mark of everlasting disgrace. So, with the acts of the tyrant annulled, the church was restored not merely to its former state, but shone forth much more brightly and flourishingly than before, and in the times that followed, in which many good emperors held the helm and government of the Roman empire, it suffered no assaults from its enemies and stretched out its hands to east and west alike, until at last—
For after very many years there arose an execrable creature, Decius, to harass the church—for who but a wicked man would persecute righteousness?—and as though he had been raised to that supreme height for this very purpose, he straightway began to rage against God, and just as swiftly he fell. For having set out against the Carpi, who had then seized Dacia and Moesia, he was at once surrounded by the barbarians and destroyed together with the greater part of his army, and could not even be honored with burial, but stripped and naked, as befitted an enemy of God, he lay as food for wild beasts and birds.
Not long after, Valerian too, seized with a like madness, raised his impious hands against God and, although for a short time, shed much righteous blood. But God visited him with a new and singular kind of punishment, that it might be a lesson to those who came after, that the enemies of God always receive a reward fitting their crime. He was taken captive by the Persians, and lost not only the power which he had used so insolently, but also the very freedom which he had taken from others, and lived out his life in the most shameful slavery. For Sapor, king of the Persians, who had captured him, whenever he wished to mount his chariot or his horse, would order the Roman to bend down and offer his back, and setting his foot upon him would say, mocking him with laughter, that this was the true representation—not the sort the Romans painted on tablets or walls. Thus, most fittingly triumphed over, he lived on for some time, so that for a long while the Roman name was a mockery and a laughingstock among the barbarians. And this too was added to his punishment: though he had a son who was emperor, he found no one to avenge his captivity and utter slavery, nor was he ever even demanded back. And after he ended his shameful life in that disgrace, his skin was flayed from him, and the hide, stripped of its flesh, was dyed red, and set up in the temple of the barbarians' gods as a memorial of their most famous triumph, to be always on display to our ambassadors, lest the Romans trust too much in their own strength, when they saw the skin of a captured emperor set before their own gods. Since, then, God has exacted such punishments from the sacrilegious, is it not amazing that anyone afterward would dare, in thought or in deed, to defy the sovereign majesty of the single God who governs and upholds the whole of creation?
Aurelian, who was by nature violent and headlong, though he remembered the captivity of Valerian, nevertheless forgot both his crime and his punishment and provoked the anger of God by his own cruel deeds. But he was not even allowed to accomplish what he had planned; he was struck down at once, at the very outset of his madness. Word of his blood-soaked decrees had not even made it out to the farther provinces before, at Caenofrurium, a town in Thrace, he was already lying in his own blood on the ground, cut down by his own friends over a groundless suspicion. By so many and such examples the tyrants who came after ought to have been restrained; yet they were not merely undeterred, but acted even more boldly and confidently against God.
Diocletian, who was the inventor of crimes and the deviser of evils, while he was ruining everything, could not keep his hands even from God. He overturned the whole world at once through both greed and cowardice. For he made three men partners in his rule, dividing the world into four parts and multiplying the armies, since each of the four strove to have a far greater number of soldiers than earlier emperors had had when a single ruler governed the state alone. To such a degree had the number of those receiving pay begun to exceed the number of those paying for it, that through the enormity of the levies the resources of the farmers were consumed, the fields abandoned, and cultivated land turned back into forest. And so that everything might be filled with terror, the provinces too were cut into fragments: many governors and many more officials pressed down upon single regions, almost upon single cities; likewise many accountants and masters and deputies of the prefects, whose civil business was rare indeed, but whose condemnations and confiscations were frequent, and whose exactions of countless things were not merely constant but perpetual, and in these exactions the wrongs done were unbearable. Nor can what pertained to the maintenance of soldiers be tolerated either. The same man, with insatiable greed, never wished his treasuries to grow smaller, but was forever heaping up extraordinary funds and largesses, so as to keep what he had stored away whole and untouched. The same man, by his various acts of injustice, having driven up prices enormously, tried to fix by law the prices of goods for sale. Then much blood was shed over trifling and worthless things, and out of fear nothing at all appeared for sale, and scarcity blazed up far worse than before, until the law was at last, by sheer necessity, repealed after the ruin of many. To this was added a boundless passion for building, which meant no less an exaction upon the provinces in furnishing workmen and craftsmen and wagons and everything needed for whatever works were being built. Here a basilica, here a circus, here a mint, here an arms factory, here a house for his wife, here one for his daughter. Suddenly a great part of a city would be torn down; everyone would move away with wives and children, as though the city had been captured by an enemy. And when these things had been completed at the cost of the ruin of the provinces, he would say, 'They are not well done—let them be done another way'; and again they had to be torn down and altered, perhaps only to fall once more. So he was forever mad in this way, striving to make Nicomedia equal to the city of Rome. I pass over how many perished for the sake of their property or their wealth—for this had become common and, by the habit of evil men, almost sanctioned. But the worst of it was this: wherever he saw a better-cultivated field or a more handsome building, a false charge and a capital sentence lay ready for its owner, as though he could not seize what belonged to others without bloodshed.
What of his brother Maximian, called Herculius? He was no different from him; indeed, two men could not have clung to so faithful a friendship unless there were in both the same mind, the same purpose, an equal will, the same judgment. In only this did they differ: in the one, greed was greater, but also more fear; in the other, less greed, but more spirit—not for doing good, but for doing evil. For though he held Italy, the very seat of empire, and the wealthiest provinces, Africa and Spain, lay subject to him, he was not so careful in guarding his riches, of which he had abundance to spare. And when there was need, wealthy senators were never lacking who, through suborned informers, were said to have aimed at the throne, so that the leading lights of the Senate were continually being plucked out. His most bloodthirsty treasury overflowed with wealth gained by wickedness. Moreover this pestilential man's lust was directed not only at the corruption of men, a thing hateful and detestable, but even at the violation of the daughters of the foremost families. For wherever he journeyed, young women were at once torn from their parents' embrace and made ready for him. In these things he judged himself blessed; on these he thought the happiness of his rule depended—on denying nothing to his lust and his evil desire. Constantius I pass over, since he was unlike the rest, and worthy to have held the world alone.
But the other Maximian, whom Diocletian had taken to himself as a son-in-law, was worse than not merely those two whom our own times have known, but than all the wicked men who ever were. In this beast there was an inborn barbarity, a savagery foreign to Roman blood—no wonder, since his mother had fled across the Danube into new Dacia when the Carpi were harassing that land. His body, too, matched his character: tall of stature, with flesh so vast and swollen as to be dreadful to see. In short, in his words, his deeds, and his very look he was a terror and a horror to all. Even his father-in-law feared him bitterly, and the reason for that fear was this. Narses, king of the Persians, roused by the example set at home by his grandfather Sapor, was eager, with great forces, to seize the East. Then Diocletian, being timid as ever in any disturbance and downcast in spirit, and moreover fearing the example of Valerian, did not dare to go against him himself, but sent this Maximian by way of Armenia, while he himself remained in the East, watching for the outcome. Maximian, using stratagem, had no great difficulty in crushing the barbarians, who, as is their custom, went to war with all their households and so were burdened by their numbers and encumbered with baggage; and having put King Narses to flight, he returned with vast spoil and plunder, bringing to himself arrogance and to Diocletian fear. For after this victory he was lifted up to such pride that he now disdained the title of Caesar. Upon hearing this read to him from a letter, he shouted, with a savage glare and a dreadful voice, 'Caesar—until when?' From then on he began to act with the utmost insolence, wishing to be thought and called a son of Mars, a second Romulus, and preferred to defame his mother Romula with the charge of adultery so that he himself might appear to be sprung from the gods. But I put off speaking of his deeds, lest I confuse the order of events. For after he received the title of emperor, and once his father-in-law had been stripped of power, only then did he begin to rage and to hold everything in contempt. As for Diocles—for so he was called before he became emperor—though he was overturning the state by such counsels and such associates, and though he deserved every evil for his crimes, he nevertheless reigned for a long time in the greatest good fortune, so long as he did not stain his hands with the blood of the righteous. What cause he had for beginning the persecution, I shall now set forth.
While he was in the regions of the East, being, out of fear, a searcher into future events, he was sacrificing cattle and seeking in their livers what was to come. Then some of his attendants, who knew the Lord, standing by while he sacrificed, made the sign of immortality upon their foreheads; at this the demons were put to flight and the rites were thrown into confusion. The soothsayers trembled, not seeing the usual marks in the entrails, and as though the sacrifice had not been accepted, they offered the victims again and again. But time after time the slaughtered beasts revealed nothing, until at last Tages, the master of the soothsayers, said, either from suspicion or from some vision, that the sacred rites were not answering because profane men were present at the divine ceremonies. Then, raging with fury, he ordered not only those who ministered at the sacrifices, but everyone in the palace, to sacrifice, and that any who refused be punished with blows; and having sent letters to the military commanders, he ordered that soldiers too be compelled to the abominable sacrifices, so that any who did not comply should be dismissed from the army. Thus far his fury and anger went, and he did nothing further against the law and the religion of God. Then, after some time had passed, he came to Bithynia to winter there, and at the same time Maximian Caesar too, inflamed with wickedness, arrived, to spur on the vain old man—who had already made a beginning—to persecute the Christians. I have learned that this was the cause of his madness.
His mother was a worshiper of the mountain gods, and being an exceedingly superstitious woman, she offered sacrificial feasts almost daily and gave banquets for the people of her village. The Christians abstained, and while she feasted with the pagans, they persisted in their fasting and prayers. From this she conceived a hatred against them, and her womanish grumbling stirred her son—every bit as superstitious as she was—into a drive to wipe out these people. So, having taken counsel together throughout the whole winter, with no one else admitted, and everyone supposing that matters of the highest state were being discussed, the old man for a long time resisted his fury, pointing out how ruinous it would be to disturb the whole world and to shed the blood of so many; that these people were accustomed to die willingly; that it would be enough if he merely forbade this religion to those in the palace and to the soldiers. Yet he could not turn aside the madness of that headlong man. It was therefore decided to test the opinion of his friends. For this was his malice: when he had decided to do something good, he did it without consulting anyone, so that he alone might be praised; but when it was something evil, since he knew it would be blamed, he called in many to counsel, so that whatever wrong he committed might be laid to the fault of others. So a few judges and a few military officers were admitted, and, in order of their rank, asked their opinion. Some, out of their own hatred of the Christians, judged that these enemies of the gods and of the public religions ought to be destroyed; and those who thought otherwise, perceiving the man's will, whether from fear or from a wish to please him, agreed to the same opinion. Yet even so the emperor was not so moved as to give his assent outright, but decided rather to consult the gods, and sent a soothsayer to Apollo of Miletus. The god answered as an enemy of the divine religion would. And so he was drawn away from his former resolve, and since he could resist neither his friends nor Caesar nor Apollo, he tried to keep to this much moderation: that the matter be carried out without bloodshed, though Caesar wished those who resisted the sacrifice to be burned alive.
A suitable and auspicious day for carrying out the deed was sought, and above all the Terminalia was chosen, which falls on the seventh day before the Kalends of March, as though a boundary were being set upon this religion. That day was the first cause of death and of evils, both for the emperors themselves and for the whole world. When that day dawned, in the eighth and seventh consulships of the two old men, suddenly, while the light was still uncertain, the prefect came to the church with commanders and tribunes and finance officers, and, the doors having been forced open, the image of God was sought; the scriptures that were found were burned, plunder was granted to all, there was seizing, panic, running to and fro. The emperors themselves, watching from a height—for the church, being set on high ground, could be seen from the palace—debated at length between themselves whether fire ought rather to be set to it. Diocletian's opinion prevailed, being wary lest, a great fire being started, some part of the city should burn, for many great houses surrounded it on every side. So the praetorian guards came, drawn up in battle order, with axes and other iron tools, and, sent in from every side, in a few hours leveled that towering shrine to the ground.