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Excerpts from
LEGISLATION AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS
By T. D. BARNES
Queen's College, Oxford
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It is not clear whether Trajan, in his reply, made a change in the legal position of Christians or not. Since Pliny implies that trials of Christians were far from rare, it is hard to believe that no-one before had been accused of Christianity after ceasing to be a Christian.
Governors before Pliny may have set free those who answered 'non sum' to the putting of the charge 'Christianus es?', without enquiring whether they had been Christians in the past. However, whether Trajan's ruling is an innovation or the reaffirmation of a principle already established, Christianity is placed in a totally different category from all other crimes. What is illegal is being a Christian: the crime is erased by a change of heart. The function of the sacrifice is to demonstrate that, even if a man has been a Christian, his change of heart is genuine and not just a matter of words.
Excerpts from
LEGISLATION AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS
By T. D. BARNES
Queen's College, Oxford
---------------
The modern bibliography on the subject of the juridical
basis of the persecutions of the Christians in the Roman Empire before 250 is
vast, contentious-and in large part worthless. For no-one has yet attempted to
gather together in a small compass and to scrutinize without preconceptions all
the primary evidence for specific actions or legal enactments of the Senate or
of emperors before Decius which directly concerned the Christians, or which
were directly rendered necessary by them. Ulpian collected the imperial
rescripts relating to the punishment of Christians in the seventh book of his
De Officio Proconsulis. This chapter has left no discernible trace in the
Digest commissioned by the Christian emperor Justinian. The evidence which
remains, therefore, is scattered and often difficult to evaluate. What follows
is an attempt to present clearly the primary evidence for the legal basis of
the condemnation of Christians before 250 without the accretions of later
hagiography or of modern interpretations.
 |
| Marble bust of Trajan Emperor Glyptothek Munich 28 January 98 – 9 August 117 wikimedia |
(6)
Trajan: rescript to Pliny, with Pliny's original letter,
Pliny, Epp. x, 96/7 ; 45 cf. Tertullian, Apol. 2, 6 f., on which alone Eusebius (Chronicon, GCS xx, 218 f.; XLVII, I95 ; HE III, 33) depends.
Pliny, Epp. x, 96/7 ; 45 cf. Tertullian, Apol. 2, 6 f., on which alone Eusebius (Chronicon, GCS xx, 218 f.; XLVII, I95 ; HE III, 33) depends.
Christians were accused before Pliny, who states in his
letter that he did not know how they were normally punished because he had
never taken part in any trial concerning them. Nevertheless, he executed
those who admitted to being Christians-except for those who were Roman
citizens, whom he sent to Rome.46 After the first trial (or trials),
more were accused in an anonymous libellus and by an informer. Pliny
released those who said that they were not Christians and never had been, but
first he made them invoke the Gods, sacrifice before statues of the Gods
and of the emperor and curse the Christ. He also made those who said that
they had been Christians but were no longer do the same. But,
before releasing them, he wrote to Trajan. Trajan, in reply, professed to
be laying down no universal rule,47 but declared that Christians, though
they were not to be hunted out, were to be punished if openly accused and
convicted. However, if a man said he was not a Christian and proved it by
sacrificing to the Gods, his change of heart should earn him pardon, even
if his past was not free from suspicion.
Pliny, when trying the Christians before him, had no need to
rely on any law which made Christianity a capital crime: indeed he appears
not even to have known whether there was one. There were three categories
of accused: those who confessed to being Christians; those who denied ever
being Christians; and those who admitted having been Christians in the
past, but said that they were no longer. Pliny was certain how he ought to
treat the first two classes. The second he released, while the first he either
executed on the spot (the non-citizens) or sent to Rome
for punishment (the citizens). The third class, however, a very large one,
presented a problem and caused Pliny to write to the emperor. When he
executed or despatched to Rome
those who confessed, he had no doubts that punishment was merited. But his
investigation of the third class revealed that the Christians had
committed no illegal acts like robbery or adultery: their only crime was
a depraved superstition. He accordingly urged on Trajan at some length the
advantages of allowing 'paenitentiae locus '.
It is not clear whether Trajan, in his reply, made a change in the legal position of Christians or not. Since Pliny implies that trials of Christians were far from rare, it is hard to believe that no-one before had been accused of Christianity after ceasing to be a Christian.
Governors before Pliny may have set free those who answered 'non sum' to the putting of the charge 'Christianus es?', without enquiring whether they had been Christians in the past. However, whether Trajan's ruling is an innovation or the reaffirmation of a principle already established, Christianity is placed in a totally different category from all other crimes. What is illegal is being a Christian: the crime is erased by a change of heart. The function of the sacrifice is to demonstrate that, even if a man has been a Christian, his change of heart is genuine and not just a matter of words.
During the second and early third centuries those accused of
being Christians continued to be set free if they performed a symbolic act
of sacrifice, and punished if they did not.
In the language of Pliny and the apologists, condemnation was for the nomen; and, as Tertullian remarked, there was nothing to prevent a man from denying and regaining his liberty ' iterum Christianus'. There is but one example of suspected Christians being punished even after apostasy: in the violent persecution at Lugdunum.
In the language of Pliny and the apologists, condemnation was for the nomen; and, as Tertullian remarked, there was nothing to prevent a man from denying and regaining his liberty ' iterum Christianus'. There is but one example of suspected Christians being punished even after apostasy: in the violent persecution at Lugdunum.
In this case, however, there was apparent evidence of
those flagitia which Trajan had
considered irrelevant: some pagan slaves belonging to Christians were
threatened with torture and denounced the Christian community for
Thyestean feasts and Oedipodean incests.
(I5) Septimius Severus:
HA, Severus 17, I. According to the Historia Augusta, Septimius Severus: Iudaeos fieri vetuit. idem sanxit de Christianis.
HA, Severus 17, I. According to the Historia Augusta, Septimius Severus: Iudaeos fieri vetuit. idem sanxit de Christianis.
The putting of Christians and Jews on the same level is an
idea which recurs later in the Historia Augusta in indubitable fiction and that
alone, without supporting arguments, would be enough to bring the statement about
Severus and the Christians under the gravest suspicion, even though the prohibition
of Jewish proselytism may well be historical.
Modern scholars have often claimed that the alleged edict is
genuine because it was immediately followed by a persecution directed precisely
against catechumens, i.e., against recent converts. But in the only contemporary
account of a martyrdom of the time which is extant, the Passio Perpetuae, the charge
is still being a Christian, not having become one. There is, moreover, no close
temporal connection between the alleged edict and the attested outbreaks of persecution. Although the relevant section of
the Vita Severi is highly condensed and slightly confused, it explicitly
places the prohibition of conversion to Judaism and to Christianity after
Severus' departure from Antioch , before
his arrival in Alexandria and during his journey south through Palestine in 199. It is improbable in the extreme that the Historia Augusta has transferred to
the journey south through Palestine actions which its source assigned to a return
journey in 201 for the imperial house almost certainly travelled back from Alexandria
to Antioch by sea. Perpetua and her companions were martyred in March,
203,107 and Eusebius dates the beginning of persecution in Alexandria
to Severus' tenth year (either August, 201 to August, 202 or April, 202 to
April, 203). This persecution seems to have continued sporadically for some years,
since some martyrs were put to death by Subatianus Aquila, who is not attested
as prefect of Egypt until 206. To argue that there is a connection between Severus'
edict and a widespread outbreak of persecution in 202/3 is, therefore, mistaken
in one minor and one major respect. Persecution did not flare up and then cease
at once, but dragged on for some time. It also began (so far as the evidence goes)
not less than two years after the date given for the edict by the only author
who asserts its existence.
There is, however, a still more serious difficulty
in accepting the edict as historical. If Christians are in the same position as
Jews and conversion alone is illegal, then simply being a Christian from birth
is not illegal and Christianity itself is no crime. But there is no hint in any
Christian writer that the legal position of the Christians had been thus alleviated - not
even in the contemporary Tertullian, who cites examples of Severus' favours to the
Christians. Eusebius, on the contrary, thought that Severus stirred up persecution
rather than abated its severity. And, as the Passio Perpetuae shows, men continued,
after 199 as before, to be condemned to death solely because they were
Christians.
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Conclusions (excerpts)
Conclusions (excerpts)
What, therefore, does the primary evidence reveal about the juridical
basis of the persecutions? The central fact is Trajan's rescript to Pliny. The
legal position of Christians continues exactly as Trajan defined it until Decius.
After Trajan's rescript, if not already before, Christianity was a crime in a
special category: whereas all other criminals, once convicted, were punished for
what they had done in the past,'the Christian was punished for what he was in
the present, and up to the last moment could gain pardon by apostasy. There is no
evidence to prove earlier legislation by the Senate or the emperor. Indeed, the
exchange of letters between Pliny and Trajan implies that there was none. Given
the normally passive nature of Roman administration,189 the earliest trial and
condemnation of Christians for their religion should be supposed to have
occurred because the matter came to the notice of a provincial governor in the
same way as it was later brought to the attention of Pliny. (There is no
justification for assuming either that this must have happened first in Rome or
that it had any connection with the fire of Rome in 64 or that the emperor was consulted.)
When Pliny was making his tour of Pontus , Christians were denounced before him by accusers. The earliest magistrate to condemn
Christians presumably had as little hesitation as Pliny in sentencing them to death - and
as little knowledge of the nature of their crime.
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Modern scholarship, besides unearthing purer recensions of acta
martyrum previously known only in a late and unreliable form, has succeeded in
proving that many of the transmitted acta or passiones of pre-Decian martyrs are
neither contemporary nor authentic records of what actually happened. Although there
may be many other acta martyrum which contain nuggets of fact or which are fictitious
compositions based on something authentic, there is a mere handful whose genuineness
as a whole has not been (and perhaps never will be) successfully impugned. These
must, therefore, rank as primary evidence for the trials of Christians. In
this select class, the majority of accounts mention no law or imperial decree
or legal enactment of any kind. The emperor, if mentioned, is for the most part
mentioned almost incidentally: the Christian is urged to swear by his tyche or
genius, to sacrifice for his safety, or is reprimanded for disloyalty to him, or has explained to him the possibility of his pardon. In the descriptions of
three trials, however, there occur more substantial references to the emperor, and
in one to a law or senatus consultum, which require examination.
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The relevance of
these facts to the problem of the legal basis of the condemnation of Christians
ought to be clear. A provincial governor was predisposed to punish those who attacked
the established religions, and would do so without waiting for a legal enactment
by the Senate or the emperor. Mos maiorum was the most important source of
Roman law, and it was precisely mos maiorum in all its aspects that Christians
urged men to repudiate. The theory of' national apostasy ' 216 fails as an explanation
of the legal basis of the condemna- tion of Christians ; but it comes close to
the truth if it is applied, not to the law, but to the attitudes of men. It is in
the minds of men, not in the demands of Roman law, that the roots of the
persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire are to be sought.
