The Edict at Nicomedia

Galerius’ mother was an extremely superstitious woman, a devotee of the gods of the mountains. Being what she was, she offered sacrifice almost every day and feasted her household on the meat that had been offered to idols. But the Christians in her household would not join those dinners; while she feasted with the pagans, they went on fasting and praying. So she conceived a grudge against them, and with a woman’s constant complaining she pushed her son — no less superstitious than herself — to destroy them. [a]

So all that winter Diocletian and Galerius held councils together, with no one else present, and everyone assumed that their conferences concerned the most serious business of the empire. The old man held out a long time against Galerius’ fury. He showed how ruinous it would be to stir up trouble across the whole world and spill so much blood; that the Christians were in the habit of going to their deaths eagerly; and that it would be enough for him to shut people of that religion out of the court and out of the army. Even so, he could not restrain the madness of that stubborn man.

He decided, then, to take the opinion of his friends. Now this was a mark of the bad streak in Diocletian: whenever he had determined to do something good, he did it without advice, so that the credit would be all his own; but whenever he had determined to do something bad, which he knew would be blamed, he called in a crowd of advisers, so that his own fault could be charged to other men. And so a few civil magistrates and a few military commanders were admitted to give their counsel, and the question was put to them in order of rank. Some, out of personal hatred toward the Christians, gave it as their opinion that they ought to be wiped out, as enemies of the gods and opponents of the established rites. Others thought otherwise; but having understood what Galerius wanted, they came round to the opinion given against the Christians, either from dread of displeasing him or from a wish to gratify him.

Not even then could the emperor be brought to consent. Above all he was determined to consult his gods, and to that end he sent a diviner to inquire of Apollo at Miletus, whose answer was what you would expect from an enemy of the religion of God. So Diocletian was drawn away from his own purpose. But although he could struggle no longer against his friends, against Caesar and against Apollo, he still tried to keep to this much moderation: he ordered the business to be carried through without bloodshed. Galerius, for his part, would have had everyone who refused to sacrifice burned alive.

A fitting and favorable day was looked for to carry out this undertaking, and the festival of the god Terminus, held on the twenty-third of February, was chosen ahead of all others, so that the Christian religion might, as it were, be terminated. [f]

troubles that fell not on the Christians alone, but on the whole earth. When that day dawned, in Diocletian’s eighth consulship and Maximian’s seventh, suddenly, while it was still hardly light, the prefect came to the church in Nicomedia together with the chief commanders, the tribunes and the officers of the treasury. The doors were forced open, and they searched everywhere for an image of the God. The books of the Holy Scriptures were found and thrown into the fire; the vessels and furniture of the church were handed over to plunder. It was all robbery, confusion, uproar.

That church stood on rising ground, in full view of the palace, and Diocletian and Galerius stood watching as if from a tower, arguing a long while over whether it ought to be set on fire. Diocletian’s view prevailed: he was afraid that once so great a fire had been kindled, some part of the city might burn with it, for there were many large buildings surrounding the church. Then the Praetorian Guard came up in battle order with axes and other iron tools and, let loose on every side, in a few hours they levelled that very tall building to the ground.

The next day an edict was published stripping the Christians of every honor and rank; ordering also that, with no distinction of rank or standing, they were to be subjected to torture; that any lawsuit against them was to be accepted, while they themselves were barred from bringing suit over an injury, an adultery or a theft; and finally, that they were to be capable neither of freedom nor of a vote. [j]

A certain man tore this edict down and cut it to pieces — improperly, but with high spirit — saying in scorn, “These are the triumphs of Goths and Sarmatians.” He was seized on the spot and brought before the court, and not merely tortured but burned alive, in due form of law; and having shown admirable endurance under his sufferings, he was consumed to ashes.

But Galerius was not satisfied with the terms of the edict, and looked for another way to work on the emperor. To drive him to greater cruelty in the persecution, he used secret agents to set the palace on fire; and when part of it had burned, the blame was laid on the Christians as public enemies. The very name Christian became hateful because of that fire. It was said that the Christians, in league with the eunuchs, had plotted to kill the emperors, and that the two of them had come near to being burned alive in their own palace. [l]

Diocletian, shrewd and quick as he always liked to appear, suspected nothing of the contrivance. Inflamed with anger, he immediately ordered all his own household servants to be tortured to force a confession of the plot. He sat on his tribunal and watched innocent men tormented with fire to make them talk. Every magistrate, and everyone holding a supervisory post in the imperial palace, was given a special commission to apply the torture, and they competed with one another over who would be first to bring the conspiracy to light. But no facts of the matter were uncovered anywhere — for no one applied the torture to any servant of Galerius. He himself was always at Diocletian’s side, urging him on continually, never letting the passions of the rash old man cool.

Then, after an interval of fifteen days, he attempted a second fire; but that one was noticed quickly and put out. Still, its author remained unknown. On that very day Galerius, who had made ready to leave in the middle of winter, suddenly rushed out of the city, protesting that he was fleeing to escape being burned alive.

And now Diocletian raged, not against his own household only, but against everyone without distinction. He began by forcing his daughter Valeria and his wife Prisca to defile themselves by sacrificing. Eunuchs who had once been the most powerful of men, who had held the chief authority at court and with the emperor himself, were killed. Elders and other officers of the church were seized — with no witness’s testimony and no confession — condemned, and led out to execution along with their families. [n]

In burning people alive, no distinction of sex or age was observed; and because there were so many of them, they were not burned one after another, but a whole herd of them was ringed with the same fire. Household servants had millstones tied around their necks and were thrown into the sea. Nor did the persecution fall any less heavily on the rest of God’s people: the judges, dispersed through all the temples, tried to compel everyone to sacrifice. The prisons were crowded. Tortures nobody had heard of before were invented. And so that justice should not be handed to a Christian by inadvertence, altars were set up in the courtrooms, right beside the judge’s bench, so that every litigant had to offer incense before his case could be heard. That is how judges came to be approached in no other way than gods were.

Orders had gone out as well to Maximian Herculius and to Constantius, requiring them to join in carrying out the edicts; for in matters even of that magnitude their opinion had never once been asked. Herculius, a man of no merciful temper, obeyed readily and enforced the edicts throughout his own territory of Italy. Constantius, on the other hand — so as not to seem to dissent from his superiors’ instructions — permitted the churches to be demolished, mere walls, and able to be built up again; but he preserved unharmed that true temple of God, which is the human body.

So the whole earth was afflicted; and from east to west, except in the territories of Gaul, three ravening wild beasts went on raging. [r]

nor could I run through the punishments that the governors inflicted, in every province, on devout and innocent men.

But what need is there to give a detailed recital of these things, and to you above all, my dearest Donatus — you who were exposed to the storm of that violent persecution beyond all others? For when you had fallen into the hands of the prefect Flaccinian, no puny murderer, and afterward of Hierocles, who from a deputy had become governor of Bithynia, the author and adviser of the persecution, and last of all into the hands of his successor Priscillian, you set before the human race a pattern of unconquerable greatness of soul.

Nine times you were exposed to the rack and to torments of every kind; nine times, by a glorious confession of your faith, you foiled the adversary; in nine combats you subdued the devil and his picked soldiers; by nine victories you triumphed over this world and its terrors. How pleasing a spectacle it must have been to God, when he saw you a conqueror, harnessing to your chariot not white horses, not enormous elephants, but the very men who had led the nations away captive! To lord it over the lords of the earth in that fashion — that is a triumph indeed.

It was your courage that beat them, when you set their shameful edicts at defiance and, through steadfast faith and the fortitude of your soul, routed all the empty terrors of tyrannical power. Against you neither whips nor iron claws nor fire nor sword nor any of the varieties of torture availed anything; no violence could rob you of your loyalty and your persevering resolve. This is what it is to be a disciple of God; this is what it is to be a soldier of Christ — a soldier whom no enemy can dislodge from the heavenly camp and no wolf can snatch out of it, whom no trick can ensnare, no bodily pain subdue, no torments overthrow.

At last, after those nine glorious combats in which the devil was vanquished by you, he did not dare enter the lists again with a man whom repeated trials had shown him to be unconquerable; and he gave up challenging you any more, for fear you should lay hold of the victor’s wreath already being held out to you — an unfading wreath which, although you have not received it yet, is stored up for your courage and your deserts in the kingdom of the Lord. But let us now return to the thread of the narrative.

Once that wicked plan had been carried out, Diocletian — whom good fortune had now abandoned — set out at once for Rome, to celebrate the opening of the twentieth year of his reign. That ceremony was performed on the twentieth of November; and suddenly the emperor, unable to bear the plain speaking Romans allow themselves, broke away from the city in a fit of irritation and impatience. [y]

The first of January was approaching, the day on which the consulship was to be offered to him for the ninth time; yet rather than stay thirteen days longer in Rome, he chose to make his first appearance as consul at Ravenna. Having begun the journey in winter, however, through bitter cold and unceasing rain, he contracted a slight but lingering illness. It harassed him without a break, so that for most of the way he had to be carried in a litter. Then, at the close of summer, he made a circuit along the banks of the Danube, and so came to Nicomedia.

By now his illness had grown heavier and more oppressive; yet he had himself brought out in order to dedicate the circus he had built for the close of the twentieth year of his reign. Immediately afterward he became so languid and feeble that prayers for his life were offered up to all the gods.

Then suddenly, on the thirteenth of December, there was heard in the palace grief and weeping and lamentation, and the courtiers ran back and forth; there was silence throughout the city, and word went around of the death, and even of the burial, of Diocletian. But early the next morning it was suddenly rumored that he was still alive, and the faces of his household servants and his courtiers changed from mourning to gladness. Even so, there were people who suspected that his death was being kept quiet until Galerius Caesar could arrive, in case the soldiers should meanwhile attempt some change in the government. The suspicion grew so universal that no one would believe the emperor alive until, on the first of March, he appeared in public — so wan, after an illness of almost a year, that he was hardly to be recognized.

The fit of stupor, so like death, had come on the thirteenth of December; and although he recovered in some measure, he never attained perfect health again, for his judgment was disordered: at some times insane, at others of sound mind.

Within a few days Galerius Caesar arrived — not to congratulate his father-in-law on the recovery of his health, but to force him to lay down the empire. He had already pressed Maximian Herculius to the same purpose, terrifying the old man into compliance with the alarm of civil war; and now he went at Diocletian. [aa]

At first he spoke in gentle and friendly terms: age and growing infirmity had disabled Diocletian for the charge of the commonwealth, and after such labors he had need of some rest. In confirmation of his argument Galerius produced the example of Nerva, who had laid the weight of the empire on Trajan.

But Diocletian answered that it was unfitting for a man who had held a rank eminent above all others and conspicuous to sink into the obscurity of a low station; nor indeed was it safe, because in the course of so long a reign he must unavoidably have made many enemies. The case of Nerva was quite different: after reigning a single year, he had felt himself, whether from age or from inexperience in business, unequal to affairs so momentous, and had therefore thrown aside the helm of government and gone back to the private life in which he had already grown old. And Diocletian added that if Galerius wanted the title of emperor, there was nothing to hinder its being conferred on him and on Constantius, as well as on Maximian Herculius.

Galerius, whose imagination already grasped at the whole empire, saw that little but an unsubstantial name would come to him from this proposal, and therefore replied that the settlement Diocletian himself had made ought to be kept inviolable: a settlement which provided that there should be two of higher rank vested with supreme power, and two others of lower rank to assist them. Concord could easily be preserved between two equals, never among four. And if Diocletian would not resign, he must consult his own interests, so as to remain no longer in the lower rank, and the last of that rank; for fifteen years past he had been confined like an exile to Illyricum and the banks of the Danube, forever struggling against barbarian nations, while others at their ease governed dominions more extensive than his and better civilized.

Diocletian already knew, from letters of Maximian Herculius, everything Galerius had said at their conference, and knew too that he was building up his army. Now, hearing him speak, the spiritless old man burst into tears and said, “Have it as you will.”

It remained to choose Caesars by common consent. “But,” said Galerius, “why ask the advice of Maximian and Constantius, since they must acquiesce in whatever we do?” “Certainly they will,” replied Diocletian, “for it is their sons we must elect.”

Now Maximian Herculius had a son, Maxentius, married to the daughter of Galerius — a man of bad and mischievous disposition, and so proud and stubborn besides that he would never pay the customary respect either to his father or to his father-in-law, and on that account was hated by them both. Constantius also had a son, Constantine, a young man of very great worth and well deserving the high station of Caesar. The distinguished handsomeness of his figure, his strict attention to every military duty, his upright conduct and his singular affability had endeared him to the troops and made him the choice of every individual. He was at court at the time, having long before been created by Diocletian a tribune of the first order.

“What is to be done?” said Galerius. “Maxentius does not deserve the office. He treated me with contempt while he was still a private man; how will he act once he obtains power?” “But Constantine is well liked, and will govern in such a way that people afterward will reckon him to have surpassed his father’s mild virtues.” “Be it so, if my own inclinations and judgment are to be disregarded. The men appointed ought to be men at my disposal, who will dread me and never do anything except by my orders.” “Whom shall we appoint, then?” “Severus.” “What — that dancer, that habitual drunkard, who turns night into day and day into night?” “He deserves the office. He has proved himself a faithful paymaster and purveyor of the army; and indeed I have already sent him off to receive the purple from the hands of Maximian.” “Very well, I consent. But whom else do you suggest?” “Him,” said Galerius, pointing out Daia, a young man, half barbarian. Galerius had lately bestowed part of his own name on the youth and called him Maximin, in the same way that Diocletian had once bestowed on Galerius the name Maximian, for the omen’s sake, because Maximian Herculius had served him with unshaken fidelity. “Who is this you present?” “A kinsman of mine.” “Alas!” said Diocletian, heaving a deep sigh, “you are not proposing men fit for the charge of public affairs!” “I have tried them.” “Then you look to it, since it is you who are about to take up the administration of the empire. As for me, while I continued emperor, long and diligent were my labors in providing for the security of the commonwealth; and now, should anything disastrous follow, the blame will not be mine.”