The Emperor Who Asked Who the Righteous Were

“I call on you now, most high God, as my witness that when I was young I heard the man who was then the chief of the Roman emperors — unhappy, truly unhappy as he was, and suffering under a delusion of mind — earnestly asking those around him who these righteous people on earth were. And one of the pagan priests who were there answered that they were surely the Christians. He swallowed this answer eagerly, like a honeyed drink, and drew the sword ordained for the punishment of crime against those whose holiness was beyond reproach. At once, then, he issued those bloody edicts, written, if I may put it so, with the point of a sword dipped in blood; and at the same time he ordered his judges to strain their wits to invent new and more terrible punishments. [a]