The Cause and Severity of This Persecution

These two Emperors (namely, Diocletian and Maximian) governed the empire together, in harmony and constancy, and remained undivided. However, when they had reigned about ten years, they took counsel together, and resolved to exterminate the Christians, because the discord over religion caused great dissensions, both in the households and in the Roman Empire.

"The apostate Christians acted as the instigators and firebrands in the rising of this persecution, holding out to the Emperors the hope that the Christians could be exterminated. The persecution which followed from this is considered the most grievous."

Then he writes: "But the enemies of the truth took occasion to incite the Emperor Diocletian against the Christians from a certain fire in the city of Nicomedia — at that time the place where the Emperors usually resided — by which the palace of the Emperor was completely destroyed. They charged the Christians with this calamity. The Emperor, enraged beyond measure over it, readily believed the slanderers, thinking he had reason enough for it. So in the nineteenth year of his reign, which corresponds to the year 302, he issued a public decree (as was done in the days of Antiochus) that everyone, in every place, should sacrifice to the gods of the Emperors; that whoever refused to do so should be punished with death; and also that the churches or meeting places, and the books of the Christians, should be utterly destroyed. Indeed, there was scarcely a large city in the empire in which about a hundred Christians were not killed every day. It is also recorded that in one month seventeen thousand Christians were put to death in different parts of the empire, so that the blood which was shed turned many rivers red. Some were hanged, others beheaded, some burned, and some sunk by whole shiploads in the depths of the sea."

Concerning the fearful tortures inflicted, he then writes this: "These tyrants had some of them dragged through the streets, tied to the tails of horses, and after they were mangled and bruised, they had them put back into prison and laid upon beds of broken pottery, so that rest was more excruciating for them than actual torture. Sometimes they bent the branches of trees down with great force, and tied one leg to one branch and the other leg to another, and then let the branches spring back into their natural position, so that their limbs were horribly torn to pieces. They cut off the ears, noses, lips, hands, and the toes of many, leaving them only their eyes, to inflict still more pain upon them. They sharpened wooden pegs, which they inserted between the flesh and the nails; and they had lead or tin melted, and poured as hot as possible over their bare backs." Chron., 3rd book, page 78, columns 1 and 2, and page 79, column 1, from Euseb., book 8, chapters 2, 3, 16, 17, 18. Fasc. Temp., folio 96. Chron. Mich., folio 196. Chron. Carionis, folio 248, 249. Chron. Seb. Fr., folio 19. Paul Merula, folio 232, 238, 239. Pieter Messiw, folio 148. Chron. Leonh., book 1. Hist. [n240-1] Andr., folio 175, 176. Jan Cresp., folio 66, 67, 68, 70. A. Schri., book 13, folio 349, 350. Hist. D. Matth. Jud., book 4, chapter 3. [n240-2]