What was the Decian persecution?

The General Persecution under Decius

Decius, in the year 249, conquered Philip and placed himself on the throne. His reign is remarkable in church history for the first general persecution. The new Emperor was unfavourable to Christianity and zealously devoted to the pagan religion. He resolved to attempt the complete extermination of the former, and to restore the latter to its ancient glory. One of the first measures of his reign was to issue edicts to the governors, to enforce the ancient laws against the Christians. They were commanded, on pain of forfeiting their own lives, to exterminate all Christians utterly, or bring them back by pains and tortures to the religion of their fathers.

The Emperor ordered rigorous search to be made for all suspected of refusing compliance with the national worship. Christians were required to conform to the ceremonies of the pagan religion. In case they declined, threats, and afterwards tortures, were to be employed to compel submission. If they remained firm, the punishment of death was to be inflicted especially on the bishops, whom Decius hated most bitterly. The custom was, wherever the dreadful edict was carried into execution, to appoint a day when all the Christians in the place were to present themselves before the magistrate, renounce their religion, and offer incense at the idol's altar. Many, before the dreadful day arrived, had fled into voluntary banishment. The goods of such were confiscated and themselves forbidden to return, under penalty of death. Those who remained firm, after repeated tortures, were cast into prison, when the additional sufferings of hunger and thirst were employed to overcome their resolution. Many who were less firm and faithful were let off without sacrificing, by purchasing themselves, or allowing their friends to purchase, a certificate from the magistrate. But this unworthy practice was condemned by the church as a tacit abjuration.

Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, in describing the effect of this terrible decree, says, "that many citizens of repute complied with the edict. Some were impelled by their fears, and some were forced by their friends. Many stood pale and trembling, neither ready to submit to the idolatrous ceremony, nor prepared to resist even unto death. Others endured their tortures to a certain point, but finally gave in." Such were some of the painful and disgraceful effects of the general relaxation through tampering with this present evil world. Still it would ill become us, who live in a time of great civil and religious liberty, to say hard things of the weakness of those who lived in such sanguinary times. Rather let us feel the disgrace as our own, and pray that we may be kept from yielding to the attractions of the world in every form. But all was not defective, thank the Lord. Let us look for a moment at the bright side.

Decius became emperor A.D. 249, and ordered a severe and systematic persecution of the Christians. Some of the early christian writers regarded the persecution as needed, because of the low spiritual condition of the church, though that condition is curiously described. Thus christian men are described as "effeminate and self-indulgent, trimming their beards, and dyeing their hair; the women as painting their faces and colouring their eyebrows. The clergy were self-seeking and ambitious."

The same Dionysius tells us that many were as pillars of the Lord, who through Him were made strong, and became wonderful witnesses of His grace. Among these he mentions a boy of fifteen, Dioscurus by name, who answered in the wisest manner all questions, and displayed such constancy under torture, that he commanded the admiration of the governor himself, who dismissed him, in the hope that riper years would lead him to see his error. A woman, who had been brought to the altar by her husband, was forced to offer incense by some one holding her hand; but she exclaimed, "I did it not: it was you that did it;" and she was thereupon condemned to exile. In the dungeon at Carthage the Christians were exposed to heat, hunger, and thirst, in order to force them to comply with the decree; but although they saw death by starvation staring them in the face, they continued stedfast in their confession of Christ. And from the prison in Rome, where certain confessors had been confined for about a year, the following noble confession was sent to Cyprian: "What more glorious and blessed lot can, by God's grace fall to man than, amidst tortures and the fear of death itself, to confess God the Lord — than, with lacerated bodies and a spirit departing but yet free, to confess Christ, the Son of God — than to become fellow-sufferers with Christ in the name of Christ? If we have not yet shed our blood, we are ready to shed it. Pray then, beloved Cyprian, that the Lord would daily confirm and strengthen each one of us, more and more, with the power of His might; and that He, as the best of leaders, would finally conduct His soldiers, whom He has disciplined and proved in the dangerous camp, to the field of battle which is before us, armed with those divine weapons which never can be conquered."

Among the victims of this terrible persecution were Fabian, bishop of Rome, Babylas of Antioch, and Alexander of Jerusalem. Cyprian, Origen, Gregory, Dionysius, and other eminent men, were exposed to cruel tortures and exile, but escaped with their lives. The hatred of the Emperor was particularly directed against the bishops. But in the Lord's mercy the reign of Decius was a short one, he was killed in battle with the Goths, about the end of 251.*

During the violence of the Decian persecution, about the year 251, many Christians fled into voluntary exile. Among these was a young man named Paul of Alexandria, who took up his abode in the desert of Thebais, or Upper Egypt. By degrees he became attached to the mode of life he had adopted from necessity; and is celebrated as the first christian hermit, though without fame or influence at the time. Not so with his immediate and great successor.

In A.D. 248 the bishop of Carthage died, and Cyprian was chosen to succeed him, but chiefly by the poor of the flock; others strongly opposed him, and maintained their opposition, even after his consecration. In the year 250, the emperor Decius began a persecution, principally against the bishops. It was thought that if the bishops could be got rid of, the people would easily be gained. Cyprian fled, defending this course as best he could, but this was taken as an occasion of opposing him. He returned in 251, but then, as we have seen, the question of the lapsi was being hotly discussed. Some at Carthage agreed with Novatian and chose another bishop others agreed with those who received all, and elected still another; Cyprian took a middle course, not refusing the restoration of all, nor admitting any without due repentance (or penance, as it was then called).

On the first rumours of the persecution, Cyprian became a marked man. A glance at his previous history will not be out of place here. He was born in the year 200, of noble family, and received an education suited to his station. In later years he publicly taught rhetoric with great success at Carthage, where he lived in princely style. It is said he dressed gorgeously, and maintained a stately retinue, and that whenever he went abroad he was besieged by a crowd of clients and followers. Converted from Paganism at the age of forty-five, he immediately sold his estate and gave the chief part of the produce to the poor. He now made wonderful progress in the truth, and after three years, during which he applied himself closely to the scriptures, was made bishop of Carthage. In the reign of Decius an order was issued for his arrest, but Cyprian withdrew to some secure retreat till the storm was over, where he spent his leisure in writing consolatory epistles to the suffering Christians. It was not fear, however, which led him to take this step, as his conduct on a later occasion sufficiently proved. He was back again at Carthage at the commencement of Valerian's reign, when a plague broke out in that city; and was enabled to render valuable assistance to the sufferers. He exhorted the Christians to forget their injuries and to manifest the graces of the gospel by ministering not only to their own brethren, but to their plague-stricken enemies. The appeal was heartily responded to, and the Christians went about their new work with cheerful alacrity.

I add Cyprian's account (A.D. 251). He is accounting for the Decian persecution, and says it is only too light a chastisement — "exploratio potius quam persecutio videretur." All devoted to increasing their patrimony; no devoted religion in the priests, no upright faithfulness in ministers, no piety in works, no discipline in morals. Men's beards false, women's faces painted, eyes adulterated from what God had made them, their hair falsely coloured — cunning frauds to deceive the hearts of the simple. Artful deceit (subdolae voluntatis) in circumventing brethren, marriages with unbelievers, prostituting to Gentiles the members of Christ; not only rash swearing, but perjury too; despising authority with haughty pretension; to speak evil with poisoned lip oneself; mutual discord with pertinacious hatred. Very many bishops, who should be an exhortation and example to others, despising their divinely-committed service (divina procuratione), make themselves agents (procuratores) of secular affairs, leave their see, desert the people, wandering through others' provinces, hunt after markets for gainful traffic, etc. (De Lapsis, 124, Fell's Ox. ed.).

But this question of practice our author avoids; it is too practical a one. Only, after a quotation from Tertullian on apostolic succession as a security for doctrine, which has nothing to say to holiness (Tertullian, who broke with the Catholic church, so called, because of its looseness), we just find "holy" in the virtuous lives of her children who observe her precepts. That reserve saves a good deal. We are told too, that the Fathers say there cannot be sanctity out of the Catholic church; but would it not be better to shew that there was in what called itself so? Now I have already given a quotation from Cyprian (and others could be added) which shews that, in some two hundred years after Christ, the self-called Catholic church was sunk into the lowest excesses of vanity, corruption, fraud, and avarice, bishops and all; so that God, he says, treated them most gently in sending the Decian persecution. Indeed the choice of bishops was more than once the occasion of bloodshed and war; yet Cyprian was a great stickler for unity.

And now allow me to suggest that there is another witness of holiness, which it would be important to have if we are to judge of the church by it; and that is, the church itself being holy, really and practically. In that there is something; for "by their fruits ye shall know them." But I never find this in the holiness alleged as proof of the true church by Romanists. Dr. Pusey reminds Mr. Newman that it is only by faith we can know the church to be holy. What a bitter sarcasm! If it is to be a proof, would it not be a nice way to know it by fact, not by a few individuals of questionable sanctity; but the body being taken in the mass, by the practical holiness produced by the Spirit of God? And here I shall be brief, for it is dismal to think of: but the church of Rome has been the unholiest body of persons probably ever found in the world; and their leaders, the clergy, the worst of them; and the popes, perhaps the worst of them all. Even so early as Cyprian, he declares (De lapsis, 124, Ox. ed.) that the Decian persecution was a light chastisement for nominal Christians. Jerome (Ep. ad Nep., 52, ed. Vall., 1, 261) has to mourn that the Emperor has to make an edict to prevent the clergy surrounding dying beds, to get money from the sick by legacies, an edict not needed for heathen priests; and declares that they were characterized by excessive luxury. Drunkenness in church to celebrate the martyrs' memories was common; Augustine speaks of it (Ep. 22, 29, ed. Ben.) in Africa and elsewhere; and Prudentius in Europe, both testify it. Not only does he state the fact that they mixed their cups with the holy thresholds (Natal. 9 and elsewhere); but, though regretting and disapproving it, he thinks such errors are to be pardoned, because error breaks into rude minds, fancying the saints delight in it. A strange holiness for teachers and taught! This was in the fourth century. Long before this, the pretended holiness of great saints was sleeping with the other sex; proving how holy they were above sinning. And this was common enough to have a name given to it, and, at last, to be forbidden. I mention so sad a thing here with reluctance, only because it came in quite early in the primitive church, as it is called. It was prevalent in the second and third centuries, and is freely spoken of as excellent, in a book read in the churches (the Shepherd of Hermas, 3, tom. 9, 11), in the middle of the second century, long believed to be the Hermas known to Paul. Irenaeus charges the Gnostics with it. Later down, what pretended to be the church became a sink of corruption.