The Age of Persecution

Summary

A history of Christianity between roughly AD 200 and 325 — the age when being a Christian was most dangerous. It opens at the Council of Nicaea, where survivors of torture gathered before a Christian emperor, then rewinds to ask how the church got there: through the oldest known church building at Dura-Europos, the empire-wide sacrifice demanded by Decius, persecution in the Persian Empire, the systematic crackdown under Diocletian, and the surprising way the faith kept growing through plague and pressure until toleration finally arrived under Constantine.

Key Points

Opening at Nicaea (325)

• The video begins at the Council of Nicaea, the largest assembly of Christians yet — thousands of believers and over 200 overseers, some bearing scars, missing eyes, and crippled limbs from recent persecutions.
• These survivors were called confessors: people who had endured torture and forced labor in the Roman mines for their faith, gathered now under the Emperor Constantine. The film then rewinds 100 years to explain how Christianity went from one persecuted sect among many to this.

The oldest church: Dura-Europos (c. 240)

• In the eastern Roman city of Dura-Europos (in today's Syria, on the Persian frontier), archaeologists found the earliest known church building — a Roman townhouse converted for Christian worship, set among temples to Zeus and the Babylonian god Bel and a synagogue.
• The community was diverse — Latin, Greek, and Syriac speakers; men and women; slaves and citizens; likely many Roman soldiers. Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic Jesus spoke, became the key language of Asian Christianity from Syria to China.
• They read from a Bible whose core was already settling into a strong consensus — the four Gospels, Paul's letters, 1 John, 1 Peter, Revelation — plus the Diatessaron, a Syriac harmony of the four Gospels into one narrative.
• Its baptistry, the oldest ever found, was covered in some of the earliest Christian art, including the Good Shepherd — a beardless youth carrying a sheep, borrowing Roman visual style to picture Jesus' words in John's Gospel.
• For the first few centuries Christians generally didn't depict Jesus directly, alluding to him through other images instead; at Dura-Europos appear some of the first direct depictions — Jesus walking on water and healing the paralyzed man.
• The church lasted only 16 years: in 256 the Persians besieged the city, and Roman soldiers buried the building while reinforcing the walls, preserving it until its discovery in the 1920s. The site was later bulldozed by ISIS, but the paintings survive at the Yale University Art Museum.

The persecution under Decius (250)

• By 200 Christian communities stretched from Gaul to Afghanistan, generally living as trusted neighbors and citizens through about 50 years of relative peace.
• In 250 the empire was in crisis — civil war, seven emperors killed in 15 years, invasions, and massive inflation. The emperor Decius, believing the gods were angry, ordered an empire-wide sacrifice.
• Everyone — citizen, slave, child — had to visit a temple, offer incense, pour wine, and eat sacrificial meat, then receive a certificate proving they had done so.
• For Christians even these small acts meant worshiping the Roman gods, which they could not do. This triggered the most widespread and systematic persecution so far: some complied, some bought certificates, but many refused and were executed, tortured, or imprisoned.
• Key leaders died, including the theologian Origen (tortured, dying later of his wounds) and Fabian, leader of the Roman church.
• After Decius died, the church debated whether those who had lapsed could return. Cyprian of Carthage argued that, for the repentant, nothing is beyond God's forgiveness — and that became the general position.

Pressure in Persia (c. 280)

• Persecution wasn't only Roman. In the Sassanian Persian Empire, Zoroastrian priests (Magi) grew alarmed at the growing Christian community.
• Believing the world was locked in a battle between order and chaos, and seeing themselves as defenders of order, they treated the new faith as a demonic, existential threat.
• An inscription among the tombs of the Persian kings records the chief priest Kartir boasting of "smiting the Nazarenes" — Christians, along with Jews and Buddhists — and destroying their meeting places.

The Great Persecution under Diocletian (303)

• In 303 a hardened soldier-emperor, Diocletian, faced the same crises and split the empire among four co-emperors — a near military dictatorship — while concluding that the Christians specifically were the problem angering the gods.
• Under him Christians were forbidden to meet, house-churches were torn down, and their handwritten Scriptures — among people's most prized possessions — were burned. Christians in the army and public office were especially targeted: killed, tortured, enslaved, imprisoned, or sent to the mines.
• Much of this is recorded by Eusebius, the first church historian, who lived through it and saw his own teacher Pamphilius killed. Stories of martyrs reached as far as Britain (Saint Alban) and the Middle East (Saint George).

Growing through plague and pressure

• Remarkably, the faith kept growing. Amid the empire's instability, Christianity kept offering dignity to slaves and women, communal unity, and satisfying teaching — all the more attractive in unsettled times.
• A series of pandemics swept the empire, and here Christians stood out: obeying Jesus' command to love their neighbor, they organized to nurse the sick, bury the dead, and care for the poor. Dionysius of Alexandria wrote that many "transferred the deaths of others to themselves," dying in their place.
• Later the emperor Julian, hostile to the faith, grumbled that Christians cared not only for their own poor but for everyone's, and urged Romans to be more generous to compete.

Toleration at last (311–313)

• In 311 the emperor Galerius, on his deathbed, abruptly reversed course and declared toleration — the persecution simply hadn't worked; the gods were still angry and Rome still in turmoil.
• Two years later another emperor, who had been consolidating the western territories, issued the Edict of Milan, officially declaring toleration across the empire. His name was Constantine — and, most surprising of all, he called himself a Christian.

Notable Quotes

"Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you… But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ." — 1 Peter 4:12-13

"Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their deaths to themselves and died in their place." — Dionysius of Alexandria, on Christians during the plague (3rd century)

"It is disgraceful that… these impious Galileans support not only their own poor, but ours as well." — The emperor Julian, complaining that Christians out-loved the Romans (4th century)