page_title: Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire
section_title: Valerian
hierarchical_section_title: Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire / History / Valerian
caption_attribution_description: The martyrdom of Saint (Pope) Sixtus II and his deacons. Martyre de saint Sixte II et de ses diacres. Cote: Français 185 , Fol. 96v . Vies de saints, France, Paris
context_page_description: The persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire occurred intermittently over a period of over two centuries between the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD under Nero and the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. Following the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine the Great and his co-Augustus Licinius issued the Edict of Milan which granted religious toleration to all faiths, not just the Christian faith.
  Persecution was carried out by the Roman state and by local authorities on a sporadic, ad hoc basis, often at the whims of local communities. In 250 AD, an empire-wide persecution took place as an indirect consequence of an edict by the emperor Decius. This edict was in force for eighteen months, during which time some Christians were killed while others apostatised to escape execution. W.H.C. Frend estimates that 3,000–3,500 Christians were killed in the persecution.
context_section_description: The emperor Valerian took the throne in 253 but from the following year he was away from Rome fighting the Persians who had conquered Antioch. He never returned as he was taken captive in 260 and died a prisoner. In the year 257 he sent two letters regarding Christians to the Senate. In the first, he ordered all Christian clergy to perform sacrifices to the Roman gods and forbade Christians from holding meetings in cemeteries. A second letter the following year ordered that bishops and other high-ranking church officials were to be put to death, and that senators and equites who were Christians were to be stripped of their titles and lose their property. If they would not perform sacrifices to the gods they also were to be executed. Roman matrons who would not apostatize were to lose their property and be banished, while civil servants and members of the Emperor's staff and household who refused to sacrifice would be reduced to slavery and sent to work on the Imperial estates. The fact that there were such high ranking Christians at the very heart of the Roman imperial establishment shows both that the actions taken by Decius less than a decade before had not had a lasting effect and that Christians did not face constant persecution or hide from public view.
  Among those executed under Valerian were Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, and Sixtus II, Bishop of Rome with his deacons including Saint Lawrence. The public examination of Cyprian by the proconsul in Carthage, Galerius Maximus, on 14 September 258 has been preserved:
  Galerius Maximus: "Are you Thascius Cyprianus?" 
  Cyprian: "I am." 
  Galerius: "The most sacred Emperors have commanded you to conform to the Roman rites." 
  Cyprian: "I refuse." 
  Galerius: "Take heed for yourself." 
  Cyprian: "Do as you are bid; in so clear a case I may not take heed." 
  Galerius, after briefly conferring with his judicial council, with much reluctance pronounced the following sentence: "You have long lived an irreligious life, and have drawn together a number of men bound by an unlawful association, and professed yourself an open enemy to the gods and the religion of Rome; and the pious, most sacred and august Emperors ... have endeavoured in vain to bring you back to conformity with their religious observances; whereas therefore you have been apprehended as principal and ringleader in these infamous crimes, you shall be made an example to those whom you have wickedly associated with you; the authority of law shall be ratified in your blood." He then read the sentence of the court from a written tablet: "It is the sentence of this court that Thascius Cyprianus be executed with the sword."
   Cyprian: "Thanks be to God.”
  Taken directly to the place of execution, Cyprian was decapitated. The words of the sentence show that in the eyes of the Roman state, Christianity was not a religion at all, and the church was a criminal organisation. When Valerian's son Gallienus became Emperor in 260, the legislation was revoked and the persecution ended. The period of relative toleration between the accession of Gallienus to the next mass persecution is known as the Little Peace of the Church.
  A warrant to arrest a Christian, dated 28 February 256, was found among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (P. Oxy 3035). The grounds for the arrest are not given in the document. Valerian's first act as emperor on 22 October 253 was to make his son Gallienus his Caesar and colleague. Early in his reign, affairs in Europe went from bad to worse, and the whole West fell into disorder. In the East, Antioch had fallen into the hands of a Sassanid vassal and Armenia was occupied by Shapur I (Sapor). Valerian and Gallienus split the problems of the empire between them, with the son taking the West, and the father heading East to face the Persian threat.
caption: Martyrdom of Sixtus II under Valerian, 14c.
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