Gradually the long drawn out persecution ceased. After the year 212 we find no more records of martyrdoms in the reign of Caracalla, and now for a long while the Church enjoyed an almost unbroken peace. This period of "stillness" is said to have lasted some thirty-seven years, uninterrupted save by the short outbreak of persecution under the rule of the Emperor Maximinus.
Caracalla was assassinated by a centurion in a military intrigue, A. D. 217, and for a few months the throne of the Empire was occupied by an ambitious soldier, Macrinus, who had filled the office of Praetorian Prefect. He, too, perished in an obscure military sedition, probably fomented by a palace intrigue, without leaving any trace of his short reign behind him. The palace intrigues, under the guidance of Julia Maesa (the sister of the Empress Julia Domna, the widow of Severus), with the assistance of the legionnaires of the Syrian army, procured the succession to the Empire for Elagabalus, her grandson. The close connection of the new Emperor with the great Severus seems to have disarmed any serious opposition, and Elagabalus was quietly acknowledged Emperor A. D. 218. Elagabalus had been brought up and trained as chief priest of the Sun-god of Emesa in Syria, and during his reign of four years seems to have rated his position and privileges as a Syrian Pontiff higher than any titles of Imperial majesty. His sorry distinction among the long line of Roman Emperors was his exaggerated devotion to his Oriental god. His reign was disgraced by nameless infamies, and by his wild extravagances he offended and shocked all that was serious and patriotic in the Empire. His one notable act was the association in the supreme power of his cousin, Alexander Severus; of whom, however, he soon became jealous, and would have destroyed him had he not himself fallen in one of those military seditions which were too common in the powerful and turbulent army of Rome. Elagabalus had reigned for about four years when he was assassinated.
The Christian in the reign of Elagabalus was not merely tolerated, he was even looked on with favor. The Christian religion, coming from the East, was regarded with special reverence by this fanatical Asiatic devotee. The God of the Jew and the Christian he even deigned to admit into the most sacred shrine of his Sun-god.
When Elagabalus (A. D. 218 to A. D. 222) fell, his cousin, whom history knows as Alexander Severus, was at once recognized as sole Emperor. During his reign of thirteen years (A. D. 222 to A. D. 235) the stillness enjoyed by the worshippers of Jesus in the days of his unworthy predecessor and cousin, remained unbroken. The favor shown to them by the half-crazy Emperor-priest was continued for more worthy reasons. It was a quiet time indeed, such as had never yet been experienced by the Christians. Historians are unanimous in the praise of the great-nephew of the wife of Severus. None of the Emperors who in succession sat on the throne of the first great Caesar have a fairer record than he. Surrounded by wise and prudent ministers, his whole thoughts, during his too-short life, were devoted to correct the abuses which disfigured the Imperial administration, and to restore the glories and felicity of the age of the noble Antonines; while every endeavor was made, though with only partial success.
The beautiful character of this Emperor had been formed with exceeding care by his mother Mamsea, the niece, as we have said, of the Empress Julia Domna. Mamsea some believe to have been a Christian; she certainly was strongly influenced by the words and writings of the greatest living Christian teacher, Origen. Eusebius thus writes of this princess: "Mamsea, the Emperor's mother, a woman distinguished for her piety and religion, when the fame of Origen had now been everywhere spread abroad, so that it also reached her ears, was very eager both to be honored with the sight of this man, and to make trial of his skill in divine things so greatly extolled. Therefore, when staying at Alexandria, she sent for him . . . With her he (Origen) stayed some time, exhibiting innumerable matters calculated to promote the glory of the Lord, and to evince the excellence of divine instruction."
And yet it would be an error to imagine that this amiable and earnest Alexander Severus was a Christian. He, too, following the example of such eminent Emperors and statesmen as Augustus and Marcus, was firmly persuaded that the stability of the Roman Empire in large measure rested upon the maintenance of the ancient traditions; and these were inextricably mingled with the old worship. So we find Alexander Severus and his ministers very early in the reign sending back to its original home in Syrian Emesa, the black stone which was said to have fallen from heaven, with its gorgeous setting of gems, which represented the Sun-god; and replacing in their ancient shrines the statues and immemorial emblems of the old gods of Rome, which had been moved therefrom by Elagabalus.
Through the influence of Mamaea, his mother, the youthful Emperor, from the first, was surrounded by a council of sixteen Senators, distinguished for their experience and patriotism. Of these the most eminent was Ulpianus the great Jurist, who afterwards perished in a military emeute, most unfortunately for the Empire.
The young Emperor, so his historians tell us, in the private chapel of his palace, among the images of his deified Imperial predecessors, placed statues of others who he considered had won a right to adoration. Abraham and Jesus Christ were among these. One fact certainly remains unchallenged; during the years of Alexander Severus' rule the Christian lived unmolested. For nigh two hundred years his position in the Empire had been, as Tertullian curtly puts it, "non licet esse vos" (it is not lawful to be you). The historian of Alexander Severus sums up their position under that Prince thus: "Christianos esse passus est" (He suffered men to be Christians). But although anything like a State persecution was unheard of in this time, it is certain that the followers of Jesus were still occasionally exposed to the danger of popular fury, which ever and again, owing to the causes, whether commercial, domestic, or patriotic, on which we have dwelt, broke out against them.
It was in one of these tumultuous rising no doubt that the notorious Bishop of Rome, Callistus, perished. He will come before us presently as the determined opponent of the ascetic or rigorist party in the Church of Rome. Callistus was a great organizer, and was one of those who largely increased and planned out that vast Necropolis known as the Catacombs beneath the suburbs of Rome, to one of which, under the Appian Way, he has bequeathed his name His death apparently took place in a popular uprising against the Christians in A. D. 222-3.
But the Christians of the Empire, before many years had passed, experienced a much ruder awakening from their dreams of peace and quiet, than was occasioned by such temporary outbursts of popular fanaticism. In the year 235 the Roman world was astonished and dismayed to hear that the young Emperor and his mother, Mamsea, after some thirteen years of wise and temperate rule, had been basely assassinated in one of those disastrous military revolts, of too frequent occurrence in the Roman armies, while present with the army of Germany in its camp; and that the chief conspirator, Maximinus, a rude but renowned soldier of barbarian extraction, his father being a Goth and his mother an Alan, had been selected Emperor by the legionnaires composing this great frontier army.
The reign of Maximinus lasted less than three years; the soldier, who in the subordinate position of tribune of a legion had won a high reputation for his admirable powers of discipline and military administration, as Master of the Roman world showed himself a monster of cruelty and oppression. He was dreaded and feared by all ranks and orders, but as long as the army, who admired the rough commander whom they had advanced to the throne, maintained their allegiance, he could defy in safety the hatred and dread of the rest of the Empire. Through an insane jealousy of his murdered predecessor, whose grace and learning formed a strange contrast to his own rough, coarse manners and lack of education, he hunted down, proscribed, and banished all who were in any way associated with him. Hence apparently Maximinus' hatred of Christians, whom Alexander Severus certainly tolerated, if he did not absolutely favor them. For there is no doubt that, in the reign of the late Emperor, there were many Christians in the Imperial household, Mamsea, his mother, being a Christian in all but the name.
The persecution was directed first against the more prominent members of the Church. One of the earliest official documents of the Roman Church, the so-called "Liberian Catalogue" of A. D. 354, which reproduces in its earlier part a yet more ancient document, tells us how. At this time (mentioning the Consuls of A. D. 235) Pontianus the Bishop of Rome and Hippolytus the Presbyter were transported into the unhealthy Island of Sardinia. Pontianus, when banished, resigned his position to Anteros, and the Liber Fontificalis tells us how he was tortured and scourged in his exile and died. The bodies of Pontianus and Hippolytus were eventually brought back to Rome. Anteros only lived a short time after his elevation.
The persecution of Maximinus was by no means confined to Rome; for Origen relates how great were the sufferings endured by the Christians of Cappadocia. We have records, too, telling of sufferings endured at Alexandria and in other parts of the Empire. Origen's treatise, "The Exhortation," addressed to martyrs, was written during the persecution of Maximinus.
One peculiar feature of this bitter feeling displayed by the Emperor Maximinus against the followers of Jesus seems to have been the unchaining of the evil passions of the populace, among whom, as we have seen, many ill-wishers to Christianity were always found, a hostile element never difficult to arouse. Origen gives us a vivid picture of how this spirit of enmity was stirred up at this time. Several disastrous shocks of earthquake had been experienced. The great teacher is no doubt alluding to pro-consular Asia and the neighboring provinces of Asia Minor. The Pagan foes of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus spread abroad the rumor that all such unforeseen calamities as earthquakes, pestilences, famines, and even wars were the outcome of Christian teaching, which urged the abandonment of the worship of the gods, who by means of the earthquake, the famine, etc., avenged their insulted majesty. In this persecution of the Christians Origen alludes especially to the burning of their churches.
Happily the sufferings of the Church in the evil reign of Maximinus continued but a short time. During the two to three years of his rule he never visited Rome; his cruelty, however, and extraordinary avarice stirred up bitter animosity in all parts of the Empire. The temples were stripped of much of their wealth, and the very statues of the gods were melted down; much of this sacrilegious plunder was distributed among the soldiers. The Emperor was generally looked upon by all outside the camps of the legionnaires as a common enemy of humanity. In the great pro-consular province of North Africa, the universal discontent first took shape in the form of a rebellion against the unworthy and hated Maximinus, and Gordian, the Pro-consul, an illustrious and wealthy senator, was saluted as Emperor. With this Gordian, who was over eighty years of age, his son was associated. Rome and the Senate ratified the election of pro-consular Africa. Their reign was, however, brief. For the forces at the disposal of the Gordians were defeated by a band of legionnaires faithful to Maximinus, and Gordian and his son perished: the son in battle, the father by his own hand after the defeat.
The elder Gordian was an admirable example of a Roman "grand seigneur." Descended on his father's side from the Gracchi, on his mother's from the Emperor Trajan, he owned one of those vast estates situate in Italy and Sicily, in Africa and Asia, which have never fallen to the lot of any private individual save to the members of these patrician houses of the earlier days of the Empire. Besides his stately Roman palace with its ancient trophies and gorgeous decoration, once the dwelling of the great Pompey, his villa on the road to Praeneste was celebrated for its splendor among a host of similar beautiful houses. It contained, we read, besides baths of rare magnificence and size, three stately halls, each of a hundred feet in length, and a mighty portico, resting on two hundred columns of rare and costly marbles. This great noble was at once a writer and philosopher, a student of Plato, and an imitator and passionate admirer of Virgil, the patriot poet who sang the immortal glories and virtues of immemorial Rome. This eminent patrician spent his life in the enjoyment of the most pure and lofty tastes; and yet he thought it a righteous act to use his well-nigh countless revenues in entertaining the people, when he filled the offices of sedile or of consul, by repeated shows, month after month, of the shameful amphitheatre games; those games which inflamed the minds of the populace with a passion for blood and lust, and taught them to disregard human sufferings and to hold cheap human life and happiness—games in which three hundred to a thousand gladiators fought! Such were the strange contrasts which filled the lives of the noblest and most cultured of the Masters of the world—of the men who for two hundred and eighty years fought the life and death battle with that quiet, unresisting sect who followed Jesus of Nazareth, who counted it the highest honor to die for His Name and then to lie in those long corridors of death adorned with the rough paintings of the Good Shepherd, and the symbols of a redeemed soul and of a blessed Paradise Home.
But although the revolt of North Africa ended with the defeat and death of the Gordians, father and son, the Roman Senators, powerless in the face of the mighty armies of the Emperor though they seemed to be, flinched not from their determination to dethrone the detested soldier-tyrant Maximinus, and immediately invested two of the most worthy members of their august body with the Imperial purple. These were Maximus and Balbinus, patricians and men of consular dignity. With these two they associated a third, a scion of the Gordian family, out of respect for the memory of the princes who had just laid down their lives for the State. The Emperor Maximinus, hearing of this revolt against his authority, hurried from the banks of the distant Danube to meet the forces raised by the Emperors chosen by the Senate. For a brief time the issue of the war was doubtful, but happily for the fate of Rome the cruel tyrant was murdered as he was besieging the frontier city of Aquileia, by his own soldiers (A. D. 238). The joy of the Roman world at the fall of the cruel and avaricious soldier was universal, but alas, Maximus and Balbinus soon perished, assassinated by some soldiers in a military tumult at Rome. The boy Gordian, however, who, by the Senate, had been associated with them in the purple, survived, and was universally acknowledged Emperor.
With the fall of the tyrant Maximinus the persecution of the Christians ceased.
During the five or six years when the boy Gordian was nominally Emperor (he was only nineteen years old when he in turn was murdered), the Christians were not interfered with. After a period of some confusion in the Government, an able and distinguished minister, Timesitheus, came into power as Praetorian Prefect, and the young Emperor Gordian married his daughter; but once more the overbearing intrigues of the all-powerful army put an end to the anticipation of a wise and beneficent rule. Timesitheus, the minister, died suddenly, not without the gravest suspicion that his end had been hastened by poison, and the year following Gordian the Emperor was cruelly murdered with the consent, if not by the direct command, of Philip, a successful and popular general, whom the arbitrary aim of the soldiery had raised to the throne.
Again and again the historian of the Roman Empire has to relate the sudden advent to supreme power of a military chief who, by his success in war and his skill in attaching to his person the affection of the soldiers, had won the devotion and support of the legionnaires under his command. The great Roman armies, mostly stationed in the frontier provinces, were composed of men drawn not only from the various provinces of the Empire, but also largely recruited from the barbarian hordes beyond the borders. This great mass of trained soldiers was bound by but slender ties to the Senate, who still wielded a nominal superintendence over the Government; the ancient time-honored traditions of Rome exercised but little influence over these armed and powerful mercenaries-Now it is the army of Germany, now the legionnaires of Gaul and Britain, now the soldiers of the force guarding the frontiers of distant Asia, whom we find by their tumultuous election exalting to the throne of the Empire some favorite general.
In this particular instance, the army of Asia chose an Emperor known in history as Philip the Arabian, who possesses in our story of the fortunes of the early Church a peculiar interest, for he is said to have been the first Christian Emperor. Philip's reign lasted from A. D. 244 to A. D. 249.
Little is known of the early years of this Philip, an Arab by birth. We hear of him first in command of the Roman force in the Persian campaign undertaken in the days of the younger Gordian. When Timesitheus, the father-in-law of the Emperor, died, Philip received from the young Emperor the appointment of Praetorian Prefect, and in the obscure intrigues which followed the death of Timesitheus, Philip was saluted Emperor by the army, Gordian meeting with the tragic fate so sadly common in the case of the sovereigns not in favor with the turbulent legionnaires. In this murder Philip was apparently deeply implicated.
Immediately after his accession the new military sovereign, having concluded a peace with the Persians, set out for Rome, passing Antioch on his way. A strange story is told of a scene which, in the course of his journey, took place in the Syrian capital.
The Emperor, we read, was a Christian, and on the Easter Eve of the year 244, he presented himself at the church at the hour of prayer. The Bishop of Antioch, Babylas, who subsequently received the honors of saint-ship, sternly refused admission to the sovereign till he should have gone through the appointed discipline of a penitent for some grave crime which he had committed. Most probably this crime was his complicity in the murder of Gordian. The story is told by Eusebius, who speaks of the "many crimes which he had committed," and adds that the Emperor is said ''to have obeyed willingly, and to have exhibited a genuine and religious disposition in regard to his fears of God."
Chrysostom repeats the story with more details, commenting on the conduct of Bishop Babylas, who he says "acted like a good shepherd who drives away the scabby sheep lest it should infect the flock." This same Babylas afterwards suffered martyrdom in the course of the persecution of the Emperor Decius.
Orosius, the Christian historian, speaks of Philip as the first Christian Emperor, and dwells on his devotion to the Church; be that how it may, there is no doubt that the Christian Church during his reign enjoyed a time of perfect quietness, and was absolutely free from all persecution.
In his reign the secular games were celebrated at Rome with extraordinary pomp, for the fifth time since the famous representation by Augustus, A. D. 17, when Horace wrote his well-known Carmen Secidare. The occasion, in the days of Philip, was the accomplishment of the full period of a thousand years from the foundation by Romulus. Orosius, who wrote about a century and a half after the days of Philip, saw the hand of Providence in the fact of a Christian Emperor of Rome being chosen to presided over so memorable a celebration.
It is, however, very doubtful if Philip ever publicly declared himself a Christian, for the secular games, which were celebrated in the year 248, were accompanied with an elaborate Pagan ritual. Mystic sacrifices were offered during three nights on the bank of the Tiber, and a chorus of noble youths and virgins prayed in their religious hymns to the immortal gods to maintain the virtue, the happiness.
Orosius, a Christian writer, born in Spain at the close of the fourth century, was a pupil of S. Augustine and a friend of S. Jerome. His most celebrated work, "Historiarum adversus Paganos Ubri septem," was undertaken at the suggestion of Augustine. It had once a wide circulation, and was translated and slightly abridged by King Alfred of England, whose rendering of the work is still extant.
Only one circumstance in the public life of Philip seems to point to any public acknowledgment of his profession of Christianity. The Arval Brotherhood, one of the most ancient and distinguished of the Pagan sacred colleges, appears to have suddenly come to an end in this reign. After the times of Gordian we find no mention on any tablet of the acts and ceremonies of the Arvals. There is still in existence a long series (some sixty-seven tablets in all) of memoranda of the proceedings of this religious college drawn up by themselves and engraved on stone or marble tablets, beginning in A. D. 14 and extending to the time of Gordian; but then they cease. Among the twelve noble personages who formed this exclusive Pagan brotherhood during the time of the Empire, the Emperor himself seems to have been always included. Since, after an almost immemorial history (for they date back to the legendary period of Romulus), the Arvals evidently had come to an end in the reign of Philip, it seems, at least, a probable conclusion to draw that Philip himself put an end to this important Pagan association. The share which he, as Emperor and head of the order, would have to take, as each year came round, in the strange idolatrous rites of the Arvals before the harvest, would be eminently distasteful to one who had accepted the teaching of Christianity.
We have thus, in the sketch of the life of the first reputed Christian Emperor—in which he appears now a devout and even a penitent member of the Christian community, now a worshipper, and a Chief Pontiff of the old gods of Rome—a notable but evidently not an unusual example of the extreme difficulty in which a high official of the Empire, who was a Christian, in the middle of the third century, was placed.
Such a man in the course of his duties found himself mixed up with, positively hemmed in by. Pagan rites of An immemorial antiquity, which it was difficult, even dangerous, to ignore; for such an ignoring would signify a breaking off abruptly mth all the storied past of Rome, a past very dear and precious to not a few patriotic and serious Romans.
Some, possibly many, like Philip, seem to have adopted a naiddle course, complying with certain of the more prominent official requirements of Paganism, and generally ignoring the less public functions when deeply colored with idolatrous rites and customs. Such men professed Christianity, which they felt was true, but continued to hold their official position, making such concession to old customs as they deemed necessary.
At all events, while Philip reigned, the "vast body of Christians in the Empire were unmolested, and as a consequence of the "stillness" they enjoyed, their numbers rapidly increased.
The reign of Philip, like the reign of so many of his predecessors, was cut short in a military revolt. The successive murders of a line of Emperors had effectually destroyed all feeling of loyalty in the Empire, and a sudden revolt of one of the greater armies at any moment might make or unmake the sovereign of the Roman world.
Such an uprising took place the year following the celebration of the secular games, in the army of Moesia, a vast province on the Danube, roughly corresponding with the modern states of Bulgaria and Servia. Strangely enough, Philip seems to have been unnerved at the intelligence of the military revolt in question. He appointed Decius, an able administrator of Senatorial rank, to restore order among the Moesian legionnaires. But his emissary was saluted by the revolted army as Emperor. In the short war that followed Philip perished—it is uncertain whether in battle or by assassination—and Decius was at once acknowledged as sovereign in his room, in the autumn of the year 249.
Orosius suggests that the Christianity of Philip had raised up many enemies among the Pagan party, and that his sudden fall must partly, at least, be attributed to his marked favor towards the dreaded religion.