Similar views in favor of religious freedom were expressed by Justin Martyr, and at the end of the period under review by Lactantius, who says: “Faith cannot be imposed by force; the will can only be influenced by words, not by blows. Torture and piety do not go hand in hand; truth cannot be friends with violence, nor justice with cruelty. There is no question freer than faith."

The Church, having won a triumphant victory over paganism, forgot about this lesson and for many centuries treated all Christian heretics, and with them Jews and pagans, just as the Romans treated Christians in ancient times, without distinction between beliefs and sects. All state churches, from the Christian emperors of Constantinople to the Russian tsars and rulers of the Republic of South Africa, to a greater or lesser extent persecuted those who disagreed, directly violating the principles and methods of Christ and the apostles, falling into carnal error regarding the spiritual nature of the kingdom of heaven.

§fourteen. Persecution by the Jews

Sources

I. Dio Cassius: Hist. Rom. LXVIII. 32; LXIX. 12–14; Justin Martyr: apol. I. 31.47; Eusebius: H. Eccl. IV. 2. and 6. Rabbinic traditions in Derenbourg: Histoire de la Palestine depuis Cyrus jusqu "a Adrien(Paris 1867), pp. 402–438.

II. fr. Munter: Der Judische Krieg unter Trajan and. Hadrian. Altona and Leipz. 1821.

Deyling: Aeliae Capitol, origines et historiae. lips. 1743.

Ewald: Gesch. des Volkes Israel, VII. 373–432.

Millman: History of the Jews, Books 18 and 20.

GRATZ: Gesch. der Juden. Vol. IV. (Leipz. 1866).

Schurer: Neutestam. Zeitgeschichte(1874), pp. 350–367.

The stubborn unbelief and fierce hatred of the Jews for the Gospel manifested itself in the crucifixion of Christ, in the stoning of Stephen, in the execution of the elder James, in the repeated imprisonment of Peter and John, in a wild rage against Paul, and in the murder of James the Righteous. No wonder that God's terrible judgment finally befell an ungrateful people; the holy city and temple were destroyed, and the Christians took refuge in Pella.

But such a tragic fate crushed only the national pride of the Jews, and their hatred of Christianity remained the same. They caused the death of Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem (107); they were especially active in the burning of Polycarp of Smyrna; they kindled the fury of the pagans by blaspheming the sect of the Nazarene.

Bar Kokhba Rebellion. New destruction of Jerusalem

The cruel oppression under Trajan and Hadrian, the ban on circumcision, the desecration of Jerusalem by pagan idolatry prompted the Jews to organize a new powerful uprising (132 - 135 AD). The pseudo-Messiah Bar-Kochba (son of the stars, Num. 24:17), later called Bar-Kosiba (son of unrighteousness), stood at the head of the rebels and ordered the cruelest death of all Christians who would not join him. But the commander of Hadrian defeated the false prophet in 135; more than half a million Jews were killed in a desperate resistance, a huge number of people were sold into slavery, 985 settlements and 50 fortresses were razed to the ground, almost all of Palestine was devastated, Jerusalem was again destroyed, and a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, was erected on its ruins , with the image of Jupiter and the temple of Venus. The coins of Aelia Capitolina depict Jupiter Capitolinus, Bacchus, Serapis, Astarte.

Thus the native soil of the venerable Old Testament religion was plowed up and idolatry planted on it. The Jews, on pain of death, were forbidden to visit the holy place, their former capital. Only on the anniversary of the destruction of the temple were they allowed to look at it and mourn for it from a distance. This ban remained in force under the Christian emperors, which does not honor them. Julian the Apostate, out of hatred for Christians, allowed the temple to be restored and encouraged this restoration, but to no avail. Jerome, who spent the last years of his life in monastic seclusion in Bethlehem (died 419), pathetically informs us that in his time the old Jews, "in corporibus et in habitu suo iram Domini demonstrantes", were forced to pay Roman guards for the right to cry and sob over the ruins from the Mount of Olives at the sight of the cross, "ut qui quondam emerant sanguinem Chnsti, emant lacrymas suas, et ne fletus quidem eis gratuitus sit" . The Jews now enjoy the same sad privilege under the Turkish government, but not only once a year, but every Friday at the very walls of the Temple, now replaced by the Mosque of Omar.

As a result of the changes that had taken place, the Jews lost the opportunity to persecute Christians on their own. However, they continued to spread the terrible slander against Jesus and His followers. Their scholars of the school in Tiberias and Babylon continued to be extremely hostile towards Christians. The Talmud, that is, the Teaching, the first part of which (the Mishnah, that is, the Repetition) was compiled around the end of the 2nd century, and the second (Gemara, that is, the Completion) - in the 4th century, is an excellent example of Judaism of that time, stagnant, traditional, stagnant and anti-Christian. Subsequently, the Jerusalem Talmud was superseded by the Babylonian Talmud (430-521), which is four times as large and is an even clearer expression of rabbinic ideas. A terrible curse on the apostates (precatio haereticorum), designed to turn Jews away from conversion to the Christian faith, dates back to the 2nd century; The Talmud claims that it was compiled in the Yamna, where the Sanhedrin was located at that time, by Rabbi Gamaliel the Younger.

The Talmud was compiled over several centuries. This is a chaotic accumulation of Jewish learning, wisdom and madness, a pile of rubbish in which pearls of true sayings and poetic parables are hidden. Dilic calls it "a vast debate club, where myriad voices that have been heard for at least five centuries merge into a single noise, and a unique code of laws, in comparison with which the laws of all other peoples seem midgets." This is a misunderstood Old Testament, turned against the New, if not in form, then in fact. It is a rabbinical Bible without divine inspiration, without a Messiah, without hope. He reflects the stubbornness of the Jewish people and, like him, against his will continues to testify to the truth of Christianity. When an eminent historian was asked what the best argument could be made for Christianity, he immediately replied: "The Jews."

Unfortunately, this people, prominent even during its tragic decline, was in many ways severely oppressed and persecuted by Christians after the era of Constantine, as a result of which their fanaticism and hatred only increased. Laws hostile to the Jews were adopted: first circumcision of Christian slaves and mixed marriages between Jews and Christians were prohibited, and only then, in the 5th century, the Jews were deprived of all civil and political rights in Christian states. Even in our enlightened age there are humiliating Judenhetze in Germany and even more - in Russia (1881). But despite all the vicissitudes of fate, God has preserved this ancient people as a monument of His justice and His mercy, and, without a doubt, He ordained for this people a prominent role in the last days in His kingdom after the second coming of Christ.

§fifteen. Causes of persecution by Rome

The politics of the Roman government, the fanaticism of the superstitious people, and the interests of the heathen priests, led to persecution against the religion that threatened to crush the tottering edifice of idolatry; to wipe Christianity off the face of the earth, laws, violence, insidious tricks and tricks were used to the fullest extent.

First, we will consider the attitude of the Roman state towards the Christian religion.

Rome's Tolerance

The policy of imperial Rome was characterized by moderate religious tolerance. It was repressive, but not preventive. Freedom of thought was not suppressed by censorship, there was no control over learning, which was the business of teacher and student. Armies were stationed at the borders to protect the empire, but were not used within it as instruments of oppression; in order to prevent the people from being carried away by social movements and political indignations, public entertainments were used. The ancient religions of the conquered peoples were acceptable if they did not threaten the interests of the state. The Jews have enjoyed special protection since the time of Julius Caesar.

While the Romans treated Christianity as a Jewish sect, Christians shared hatred and contempt with the Jews, but this ancient national religion enjoyed legal protection. Providence was pleased that Christianity should already take root in the leading cities of the empire, when its true character was understood. Under the protection of Roman citizenship, Paul brought Christianity to the borders of the empire, and the Roman proconsul in Corinth refused to interfere in the apostle's activities on the grounds that it was an internal Jewish problem that was not within the jurisdiction of the tribunal. Pagan statesmen and writers down to the age of Trajan, including the historian Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, regarded the Christian religion as a vulgar superstition, hardly worthy of their mention.

But Christianity was a very important phenomenon, and it developed too quickly to be ignored or despised for a long time. It soon became clear that this new a religion that essentially claims to have universal value and universal acceptance, so it has been declared illegal and treacherous, religio illicit a; Christians were constantly reproached: "You have no right to exist."

Intolerance of Rome

We should not be surprised by this position. The tolerance that the Roman state claimed and actually distinguished for was closely intertwined with pagan idolatry; religion was the tool of Roman politics. There is no example of a state in ancient history in which some major religion and form of worship did not exist. Rome was no exception to the general rule. As Mommsen writes, “the Roman-Hellenistic state religion and the Stoic state philosophy, inextricably linked with it, were not just a convenient, but a necessary tool for any form of government - oligarchy, democracy or monarchy, since it was just as impossible to create a state without a religious element at all. how to find a new state religion that would be a suitable replacement for the old one.

It was believed that the foundations of power in Rome were laid by the pious Romulus and Numa. The brilliant successes of Roman weapons were attributed to the favorable attitude of the deities of the Republic. Priests and vestal virgins existed on funds from the state treasury. The Emperor was ex officio pontifex maximus and even an object of worship, as a deity. The gods were national; the eagle of Capitoline Jupiter, like a good spirit, soared over the legions conquering the world. Cicero states as a legislative principle that no one should be allowed to worship foreign gods unless they are recognized by public law. The philanthropist advised Augustus: “Honor the gods according to the custom of the ancestors and force others to worship them. Hate and punish those who introduce the worship of alien gods."

Really, individuals in Greece and Rome they enjoyed an almost unparalleled freedom to express skeptical and even impious thoughts in conversation, in books and on the stage. Suffice it to mention only the works of Aristophanes, Lucian, Lucretius, Plautus, Terence. But there was a sharp distinction, as will often be found in later Christian governments, between freedom of individual thought and conscience, which was an inalienable right and not subject to laws, and freedom of public worship, although the latter is only a natural consequence of the former. Moreover, when religion becomes a matter of state legislation and coercion, the educated sections of the population are almost inevitably saturated with hypocrisy and insincerity, although outwardly their behavior often conforms, for reasons of policy, interest, or habit, to the norms and legal requirements of the accepted belief.

The Senate and the Emperor, by means of special edicts, usually allowed conquered peoples to practice their worship even in Rome, not because they considered freedom of conscience sacred, but for purely political reasons, with a clearly expressed prohibition of converting adherents of the state religion to their religion; hence harsh laws were issued from time to time to prohibit conversion to Judaism.

What prevented tolerant attitude towards Christianity

As for Christianity, which was not a national religion, but claimed to be the only and universal true faith which attracted representatives of all peoples and sects, attracted Greeks and Romans in even greater numbers than Jews, refused to compromise with any form of idolatry and threatened the very existence of the Roman state religion, there could not even be a question of limited tolerance. The same all-consuming political interest of Rome demanded a different course of action here, and Tertullian is hardly right in accusing the Romans of inconsistency for tolerating the worship of all false gods, whom they have no reason to fear, and forbidding the worship of the only true God, who is the Lord. Total . Born during the reign of Augustus and crucified under Tiberius by the verdict of a Roman magistrate, Christ, as the founder of the universal spiritual empire, became the leader in the most important era of Roman power; it was a rival that could not be tolerated. And the reign of Constantine later showed that through toleration of Christianity, a mortal blow was dealt to the Roman state religion.

In addition, the conscious refusal of Christians to pay divine honors to the emperor and his status and to take part in any idolatrous ceremonies during public festivities, their unwillingness to perform military service for the benefit of the empire, their disdain for politics, for all civil and worldly problems opposed to spiritual and the eternal interests of man, their close fraternal union and frequent meetings brought upon them not only the suspicion and hostility of the Caesars and the Roman people, but also accusations of an unforgivable crime - a conspiracy against the state.

The common people, with their polytheistic ideas, also branded believers in the one God as atheists and enemies of worship. People willingly believed slanderous rumors about various kinds of indecency, up to incest and cannibalism, which Christians allegedly engaged in at their religious meetings and feasts of love; the frequent social disasters that occurred during that period were seen as a just punishment for the angry gods for neglecting their worship. In North Africa, a saying arose: "If God does not send rain, Christians must answer." When there was a flood, or a drought, or a famine, or a plague, the fanatical population shouted: “Down with the atheists! Throw Christians to the lions!”

Finally, sometimes persecution began at the initiative of priests, charlatans, artisans, merchants, and other people who made a living by worshiping idols. They, like Demetrius of Ephesus and the proprietors of the soothsayer of Philippi, stirred up the fanaticism and indignation of the crowd, inciting them to oppose the new religion, which prevented profits.

§sixteen. The position of the church before the reign of Trajan

The imperial persecutions before Trajan belong to the apostolic era, and we have already described them in the first volume. We mention them here only for the sake of establishing a connection. Christ was born during the reign of the first and crucified during the reign of the second Roman emperor. Tiberius (A.D. 14-37) is reported to have been frightened by Pilate's account of the crucifixion and resurrection, and proposed to the senate (unsuccessfully, it is true) that Christ be included in the pantheon of Roman deities; but we know this information only from Tertullian, without much hope for authenticity. The edict of Claudius (42 - 54), issued in 53, according to which the Jews were expelled from Rome, also affected Christians, but as Jews, with whom they were then confused. Nero's furious persecution (54-68) was intended as a punishment not for Christians, but for alleged arsonists (64). However, they revealed what the mood of the society was, and they turned out to be a declaration of war against the new religion. It has become customary among Christians to say that Nero will reappear as the Antichrist.

During the rapidly successive reigns of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, and Titus, the Church, as far as we know, suffered no serious persecution.

But Domitian (81 - 96), a blasphemer tyrant who suffered from excessive suspicion, who called himself "Lord and God" and wanted others to call him that, treated the Christian faith as a state crime and sentenced to death many Christians, even his own cousin brother, consul Flavius ​​Clement, on charges of atheism; he also confiscated their property and sent into exile, like Domitilla, the wife of the aforementioned Clement. Out of jealousy, he destroyed the surviving descendants of David; he also ordered to deliver from Palestine to Rome two relatives of Jesus, the grandsons of Judas, "the brother of the Lord", however, seeing their poverty and peasant simplicity, hearing their explanation that the kingdom of Christ is not on earth, but in heaven, that it will be established by the Lord in the end times, when He comes to judge the living and the dead, the emperor let them go. Tradition (Irenaeus, Eusebius, Jerome) says that in the reign of Domitian, John was exiled to Patmos (in fact, this happened in the reign of Nero), that in the same period he was miraculously saved from death in Rome (Tertullian testifies) and that he was martyred Andrew, Mark, Onesimus and Dionysius the Areopagite perished. The Martyrdom of Ignatius mentions "many persecutions under Domitian".

The humane and justice-loving successor of Domitian, Nerva (96 - 98), returned the exiles and did not want to treat the profession of Christianity as a political crime, although he did not recognize the new religion as religion licita.

§17. Trajan. 98 - 117 A.D.

Prohibition of Christianity.

Martyrdom of Simeon of Jerusalem and Ignatius of Antioch

Sources

Pliny the Younger: Epist.?. 96 and 97 (al. 97 sq.). Tertullian: apol., with. 2; Eusebius: NOT. III. 11, 32, 33, 36. Chron. pasch., p. 470 (ed. Bonn.).

Acta Martyrii Ignatii, in Ruinart, p. 8 sqq.; recent editions: Theod. Zahn, Patrum Apostle. Opera(Lips. 1876), vol. II, pp. 301 sqq.; Funk Opera Patr.Apost., vol. I. 254-265; II. 218–275; and Lightfoot: S. Ignatius, S. Polyc, II. 1, 473-570.

Proceedings

On the reign of Trajan in general: Tillemont, Histoire des Empereurs; Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire.

About Ignatius: Theod. Zahn: Ignatius von Antiochien. Gotha 1873 (631 pages). Lightfoot: S. ignatius and S. Polyc, London 1885, 2 vols.

About the chronology: Adolph Harnack: Die Zeit des Ignatius. Leipzig 1878 (90 pages); see also Keim, l. with. 510–562; but especially Lightfoot, l. with. II. 1, 390 sqq.

We will discuss the Epistles of Ignatius in chapter XIII, which is devoted to ecclesiastical literature, §§ 164 and 165.

Trajan, one of the best and most praiseworthy emperors, who was revered as "the father of his country," like his friends Tacitus and Pliny, did not understand the nature of Christianity at all; he was the first to officially declare Christianity a forbidden religion (before him, such an attitude towards Christianity was informal). He re-established harsh laws against all secret societies, and the provincial authorities applied them to Christians, as they often gathered to worship. Trajan's decision determined the government's attitude towards Christians for more than a hundred years. This decision is mentioned in his correspondence with Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor from 109 to 111.

Pliny made official contact with the Christians. He himself saw in this religion only "perverted and immoderate superstition" and could hardly explain its popularity. He informed the emperor that this superstition was tirelessly spreading not only in the cities, but also in the villages of Asia Minor and captivates people of any age, social status and gender so that the temples are almost abandoned, and no one buys sacrificial animals. In order to stop the spread of faith, he sentenced many Christians to death, while others, who were Roman citizens, sent to the court of the imperial tribunal. But he asked the emperor for further instructions: whether he should show respect for age; should he consider it a crime to take the name of a Christian, if the person has not committed other crimes.

Trajan answered these questions: “You follow the right path, my friend, in relation to Christians; for no general rule, applicable in all other cases, applies here. They are not to be sought; but when the accusation is made and proved, they must be punished; if a man denies that he is a Christian, and proves it by action, namely by worshiping our gods, he should be forgiven as a penitent, though he remains under suspicion because of his past. But it is not necessary to start a process on the basis of anonymous accusations; it sets a bad example and is contrary to our age” (that is, the spirit of Trajan’s reign).

This decision is much milder than one would expect from a pagan emperor of the old Roman type. Tertullian accuses Trajan's decision of being contradictory, both cruel and mild, forbidding the search for Christians, but ordering them to be punished, thus declaring them innocent and guilty at the same time. But apparently the emperor followed political principles and believed that such a temporary, in his opinion, and contagious enthusiasm caused by Christianity, is easier to suppress by ignoring it than by openly speaking out against it. He preferred to ignore it as much as possible. But every day Christianity attracted more and more public attention, spreading with the irresistible force of truth.

Based on this prescription, the rulers, following their feelings, showed excessive cruelty to Christians as members of secret societies and religio illicita. Even the humane Pliny tells us that he sent weak women on the rack. Syria and Palestine suffered fierce persecution during this reign.

Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem, like his predecessor James, a kinsman of Jesus, was accused by fanatical Jews and crucified in A.D. 107 at the age of one hundred and twenty years.

In the same year (or perhaps between 110 and 116) the famous Bishop Ignatius of Antioch was sentenced to death, transported to Rome, and thrown to the wild beasts in the Colosseum. The story of his martyrdom was no doubt greatly embellished, but it must have been based on real facts, and it is a characteristic example of the legendary martyrology of the ancient church.

All we know of Ignatius comes from his unproven epistles, and a few brief mentions by Irenaeus and Origen. Although the very facts of his existence, his positions in the early church, and his martyrdom are considered accepted, everything else that is reported about him is debatable. How many letters he wrote, when he did it, how much truth is in the story of his martyrdom, when it happened, when and by whom it was described - all this is doubtful, and there are long disputes about this. According to tradition, he was a disciple of the Apostle John, and his piety was so famous among the Christians of Antioch that he was elected bishop, the second after Peter (Evodius was the first). But, although he was a man of apostolic character, and he governed the church with great care, he could only be satisfied in his personal aspirations when his testimony was worthy of the honor of being sealed with blood, and he thereby reached the highest throne of honor. The desired crown was finally obtained by him, the passionate desire of martyrdom was fulfilled. In 107 the Emperor Trajan arrived in Antioch and threatened with persecution all those who refused to offer sacrifices to the gods. Ignatius appeared before the court and proudly recognized himself as "Theophorus" ("God-bearer"), for, as he declared, Christ was in his chest. Trajan ordered to take him to Rome and throw him to the lions. The sentence was executed without the slightest delay. Ignatius was immediately put in chains and taken, by land and sea, accompanied by ten soldiers, whom he called "leopards", from Antioch to Seleucia, to Smyrna, where he met with Polycarp, and then wrote to the churches, in particular the Roman one; then to Troas, to Naples, through Macedonia to Epirus, and across the Adriatic to Rome. The local Christians received him with respect, but they were not allowed to prevent or even delay his martyrdom. On the twentieth day of December, 107, he was thrown into the amphitheater: wild beasts immediately attacked him, and soon nothing remained of his body except a few bones, which were carefully transported to Antioch as a priceless treasure. The faithful friends who accompanied him to Rome dreamed that night that they saw him; some claim that he stood next to Christ and was sweating as if he had just been hard at work. Comforted by these dreams, they returned with the relics to Antioch.

Note on the date of the martyrdom of Ignatius

The date A.D. 107 is based on the most common reading in Ignatius' best martyrology. (Colbertine) words?????? ????, for the ninth year that is, since the accession of Trajan, A.D. 98. We have no good reason to depart from this version and resort to a different reading, ???????? ????, in the nineteenth year that is, A.D. 116. Jerome gives the date A.D. 109. The fact that the names of the Roman consuls in Martynum Colbertinum given correctly, proves the correctness of the date adopted by such critical scholars as Asher, Tillemont, Mehler, Hefele and Wiesler. Latest in his labor Die Christrnverfolgungen der Casaren, 1878, pp. 125 sqq., finds confirmation of this date in the words of Eusebius that this martyrdom took place before the arrival of Trajan in Antioch, which took place in the tenth year of his reign, and also in the fact that little time passed between the martyrdoms of Ignatius and Simeon, son of Cleopas (Hist. Ess. III. 32), and finally, in the letter of Tiberius to Trajan, which tells how many longed for martyrdom - as Wiesler suggests, following the example of Ignatius. If we assume that the event took place in 107, we can agree with another assumption of Wisler. It is known that this year Trajan celebrated his victories over the Dacians with an incredibly magnificent triumphal celebration, so why could it not be that the blood of Ignatius irrigated the sand of the amphitheater at that very time?

But not everyone agrees with the date 107 A.D. Keim (Rom und das Christenthum, p. 540) believes that in Martyrium Colbertinum it is incorrectly stated that the death of Ignatius took place during the first consulship of Sura and the second Senetius, because in 107 Sura acted as consul for the third time, and Senetius for the fourth time. He also objects that Trajan was in Antioch not in 107, but in 115, on his way to war with the Armenians and Parthians. But this last objection is irrelevant if Trajan did not personally judge Ignatius at Antioch. Harnack comes to the conclusion that the likelihood of Ignatius martyrdom in the reign of Trajan is very small. Lightfoot places this martyrdom between A.D. 110 and 118.

§eighteen. Adrian. 117 - 138 A.D.

See Gregorovius: Gesch. Hadrians und seiner Zeit(1851); Renan: L "Eglise chretienne(1879), 1–44; and Wagemann in Herzog, vol. v. 501–506.

Adrian, of Spanish origin, a relative of Trajan, adopted by him on his deathbed, was a man of bright talents and an excellent education, a scientist, artist, legislator and administrator, on the whole one of the most capable Roman emperors, but, moreover, he was a man of very dubious morality, walking about his changeable mood, rushing from one side to another and finally lost in internal contradictions and extreme disgust for life. His mausoleum (Moles Hadriani) later renamed the Castle of the Holy Angel, still majestically rises above the bridge built under Hadrian over the Tiber in Rome. Adrian is described as both a friend and an enemy of the Church. He remained faithful to the state religion, vehemently opposed Judaism and was indifferent to Christianity, as he knew little about it. He offended Jews and Christians alike by erecting temples of Jupiter and Venus on the site of the temple and supposed site of the crucifixion. He is said to have ordered the proconsul Asia to check cases where popular wrath was directed at Christians, but to punish only those who should be punished for breaking the laws according to the rules of justice in force. However, there is no doubt that Hadrian, like Trajan, considered belonging to Christianity a crime.

Christian apologies that arose during the reign of this emperor testify to the very negative attitude of society towards Christians and the critical position of the church. The slightest encouragement from Hadrian would have led to bloody persecution. Square and Aristides begged him to forgive their Christian brothers, but we do not know what this led to.

A later tradition asserts that during this reign there was the martyrdom of Saint Eustachius, Saint Symphorose and her seven sons, the Roman bishops Alexander and Telesphorus, and others whose names are little known and whose dates of death are more than disputed.

§nineteen. Antoninus Pius, 137 - 161 A.D.

Martyrdom of Polycarp

Comte de Champagny (Catholic): Les Antonins.(A.D. 69–180), Paris 1863; 3rd ed. 1874. 3 vols., 8 V0. Merivale: history.

Martyrium Polycarpi (the oldest, simplest, and least objectionable of all stories about the deeds of the martyrs), in an epistle from the Church of Smyrna to the Christians of Pontus or Phrygia, quoted by Eusebius, J. Eccl. IV. 15, also published separately, on the basis of various manuscripts, by Asher (1647) and in almost all editions of the works of the Apostolic Fathers of the Church, especially see O. v. Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn, II. 132–168, and Prolog. L–LVI. The text is edited by Tzahn, who deviates from the Bollandist text in 98 places. Best edition - Lightfoot, S. Ign. and S. Polycarp, I. 417 sqq. and 11.1005–1047. See also Greek Vita Polycarpi - Funk, II. 315 sqq.

Ignatius: Ad. Polycarp. Best edition - Lightfoot, I.e.

Irenaeus: Adv. haer. III. 3. 4. His letter to Florinus is given in Eusebius, v. 20.

Polycrates of Ephesus (c. 190), in Eusebius, v. 24.

Concerning the date of Polycarp's death

Waddington: Memoire sur la chronologie de la vie du rheteur Aelius Aristide(in "Mem. de l "Acad. des inscript, et belles letters", tom. XXVI. Part II. 1867, pp. 232 sqq.) and in fastes des provinces Asiatiques, 1872, 219 sqq.

Wieseler: Das Martyrium Polykarps und dessen Chronologie, in his Christenverfolgungen, etc. (1878), 34–87.

Keim: Die Zwolf Martyrer von Smyrna und der Tod des Bishops Polykarp, in his Aus dem Urchristenthum (1878), 92–133.

E. Egli: Das Martyrium des Polyk., in Hilgenfeld, "Zeitschrift fur wissensch. Theol." 1882, pp. 227 sqq.

Antoninus Pius defended Christians from the chaotic violence that fell upon them as a result of frequent social disasters. But the edict attributed to him, addressed to the governments of the Asian cities, which speaks of the innocence of Christians and sets Christian fidelity and zeal in worshiping God as an example to the pagans, could hardly have come from the pen of the emperor, who bore the honorary name of Pius for conscious loyalty to the religion of the fathers; in any case, he would not have restrained the behavior of the provincial governors and the fury of the people against the illegitimate religion.

The persecution of the church of Smyrna and the martyrdom of its venerable bishop, which, as was previously believed, took place in 167, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, according to later studies, occurred under Antoninus in 155, when Statius Quadratus was the proconsul of Asia Minor. Polycarp was a personal friend and disciple of the Apostle John and chief presbyter of the church in Smyrna, where a simple stone monument still stands on his grave. He was the teacher of Irenaeus of Lyon, that is, the link between the apostolic and post-apostolic periods. Since he died in A.D. 155 at the age of eighty-six or more, he must have been born in A.D. 69, a year before the destruction of Jerusalem, and must have enjoyed the friendship of St. John for twenty or more years. This gives additional weight to his testimony of apostolic traditions and writings. His beautiful epistle has come down to us, which echoes the apostolic teaching; we will talk about it in one of the following chapters.

Polycarp, being before the proconsul, resolutely refused to renounce his King and Savior, whom he served for eighty-six years and from whom he received nothing but love and mercy. He joyfully ascended the fire and in the midst of the flames glorified God that He considered him worthy "to be counted among the martyrs, to drink from the cup of Christ's suffering, to the eternal resurrection of soul and body in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit." A slightly embellished account in an epistle from the Smyrna church says that the flame did not touch the body of the saint, leaving it intact, just as gold is tempered in fire; the Christians present claimed to have smelled a pleasant aroma similar to that of incense. Then the executioner plunged his sword into the body, and the flow of blood immediately extinguished the flames. The body was burned, according to Roman custom, but the church kept the bones and considered them more precious than gold and diamonds. The death of the last witness of the apostolic age calmed the fury of the crowd, and the proconsul ended the persecution.

§20. Persecution under Marcus Aurelius. 161 - 180 A.D.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: (121 - 180): ??? ??? ?????? ?????? ??", or meditations. This is something like a diary or collection of reflections that the emperor wrote down at the end of his life, partly in the midst of hostilities "in the land of Quadi" (on the Danube River in Hungary), with the aim of self-improvement; the emperor's own moral reasoning coexists there with quotations from wise and virtuous men that struck him. Main publications - Xylander Zurich 1558 and Basle 1568; the best edition with a new translation into Latin and extensive notes - Gataker, Lond. 1643, Cambr. 1652, with additional notes in French - Darier, Lond. 1697 and 1704. New edition of the Greek text - J. M. Schultz, 1802 (and 1821); one more - Adamantine Corais, Par. 1816. Translation into English language: George Long, Lond. 1863, another edition - Boston, revised edition - London 1880. There are translations into most European languages: a translation into Italian was made by Cardinal Francesco Barberini (nephew of Pope Urban VIII), who dedicated the translation to his own soul, "so that it becomes redder purple at the sight of the virtue of this pagan." See also the messages of the famous rhetorician M. Corn. fronto, teachers of Marcus Aurelius found and published by Angelo Mai, Milan 1815 and Rome 1823 (Epistolarum ad Marcum Caesarem Lib. V; etc.). However, they are not of great importance, except that they testify to the sincere and lifelong friendship of the kind teacher and his royal student.

Arnold Bodek: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus als Freund und Zeitgenosse des Rabbi Jehuda haNasi. Leipz. 1868. (The connection of this emperor with Jewish monotheism and ethics is traced).

E. Renan: Marc-Aurele et la fin du monde antique. Paris 1882. This is the seventh and last volume of « Origins of Christianity" (Histoire des Origines du Christianisme), the fruit of twenty years of work of the author. This volume is just as brilliant, full of learning and eloquence, and just as devoid of faith as the previous ones. It ends with the final formation of Christianity in the middle of the 2nd century, but in the future the author plans to go back and trace the history of Christianity to Isaiah (or the "Great Stranger", its true founder).

Eusebius: ?. ?. V. 1–3. Message from the churches of Lyon and Vienne to the Christians of Asia Minor. Die Akten des Karpus, des Papylus und der Agathowike, untersucht von Ad. Harnack. Leipz. 1888.

About the legend of Legio fulminatrix see: Tertullian, apol. 5; Eusebius, ?. ?. v. 5.; and Dio Cassius Hist. LXXI. 8, 9.

Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher on the throne, was a well-educated, just, kind and amiable emperor. He achieved the ancient Roman ideal of the virtuous stoic, relying on his own strengths and virtues, but for this very reason he did not sympathize with Christianity and probably considered it an absurd and fanatical superstition. There was no place in his cosmopolitan philanthropy for the purest and most innocent of his subjects, many of whom served in his own army. Melito, Miltiades, Athenagoras bombarded him with apologies on behalf of the persecuted Christians, but he was deaf to them. Only once, in his Meditations, does he mention them, and then with mockery, explaining their noble enthusiasm as martyrs by "pure stubbornness" and love for theatrical gestures. It is justified by ignorance. He probably never read a single line from the New Testament and from the apologies addressed to him.

Belonging to the late Stoic school, which believed that the soul after death was immediately absorbed by the Divine essence, Marcus Aurelius believed that the Christian doctrine of immortality, with its dependence on the moral state of the soul, is vicious and dangerous to the well-being of the state. In his reign, a law was issued that doomed to exile anyone who tried to influence the minds of people through threats of reprisal from above, and, no doubt, this law was directed against Christians. In any case, the period of his reign was a turbulent time for the church, although the persecution did not come directly from him. The Law of Trajan was sufficient to justify the most severe measures against the followers of the "forbidden" religion.

Around 170, the apologist Meliton wrote: “The believers in God in Asia are now being persecuted under the new laws as never before; Shameless greedy sycophants, using edicts, are now robbing the innocent day and night. At that time, a series of great fires occurred in the empire, a devastating flood on the Tiber, an earthquake, riots, especially a plague that raged from Ethiopia to Gaul. All this became the occasion for bloody persecutions, during which the government and the people together took up arms against the enemies of the accepted worship of God, who were supposedly the culprits of all misfortunes. Celsus expresses joy at the fact that the "demon" [Christians] are "not only accused, but also expelled from all lands and from all seas", he saw in this trial against them the fulfillment of the saying: "The mills of the gods work slowly." At the same time, these persecutions and the simultaneous literary attacks of Celsus and Lucian show that the new religion was gradually gaining influence in the empire.

In 177 the churches of Lyon and Vienne, in the south of France, were severely tested. Pagan slaves were forced by torture to confess that their Christian masters indulged in all those unnatural vices of which rumors accused them; this was done to justify the incredible torment to which the Christians were subjected. But the sufferers, “fortified by the source of living water from the heart of Christ,” showed extraordinary faith and perseverance; they believed that "there is nothing terrible where there is the love of the Father, and there is no pain where the glory of Christ shines."

The most prominent victims of this Gallic persecution were Bishop Pofinus, who, at the age of ninety and just recovered from illness, was subjected to every kind of abuse, and then thrown into a dark prison, where he died two days later; the virgin Blandina, a slave who showed almost superhuman strength and perseverance during the most cruel torments and was finally thrown in a net to a wild beast; Pontik, a fifteen-year-old youth, who was not prevented by any cruelty from confessing his Savior. The bodies of the martyrs that covered the streets were shamefully mutilated, then burned, and the ashes were thrown into the Rhone so that the enemies of the gods would not defile the earth even with their remains. In the end, the people got tired of the killing, and a significant number of Christians survived. The martyrs of Lyon were distinguished by genuine meekness. While in prison, they argued that all honors rightfully belong only to the faithful and true witness, the Firstborn from the dead, the Prince of life (Rev. 1:5) and those of His followers who sealed their loyalty to Christ with their blood.

At about the same time a lesser persecution took place at Autun (Augustodunum) near Lyon. Symphorinus, a young man from a good family, refused to prostrate before the image of Cybele, for which he was sentenced to beheading. On the way to the place of execution, his mother told him: “My son, be firm and do not be afraid of death, it certainly leads to life. Look to the One who rules in heaven. Today your earthly life will not be taken from you, but you will exchange it for the blessed life of heaven.”

His much more worthy cousin and heir to the throne, Alexander Severus (222 - 235), was a supporter of religious eclecticism and a higher order of syncretism, pantheistic hero worship. He placed busts of Abraham and Christ in his home sanctuary, along with busts of Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana and the best Roman emperors, and the gospel rule "as you want people to do to you, so do you to them" was engraved on the wall of his palace and on public monuments. His mother, Julia Mammea, was the patroness of Origen.

His murderer, Maximinus the Thracian (235 - 238), who was first a shepherd, then a warrior, again returned to persecution out of pure contradiction to his predecessor and allowed the people to freely unleash fury on the opponents of the deities, which by that time had again increased due to the earthquake. It is not known whether he ordered the killing of all the ministers or only the bishops. He was a rude barbarian who also plundered pagan temples.

The legendary poetry of the 10th century refers to his reign the miraculous martyrdom of St. Ursula, a British princess, and her companions, eleven thousand (according to other versions, ten thousand) virgins, who, returning from a pilgrimage to Rome, were killed by pagans in the vicinity of Cologne. This implausible number probably arose from a misunderstanding of texts such as "Ursula et Undecimilla" (which we find in the ancient breviary at the Sorbonne) or "Ursula et XI M. V.", i.e. Martyres Virgines that (due to the replacement martyres on the milia) led to the transformation of eleven martyrs into eleven thousand virgins. Some historians connect the fact, which seems to form the basis of the legend, with the retreat of the Huns after the Battle of Chalons in 451. Abbreviation Mil., which can mean not only thousands (milia) but also warriors (milites), turned out to be a fairly fertile source for error in that simple-minded and superstitious age.

Gordian (238 - 244) did not bother the church. Philip the Arab (244 - 249) was even presented in some sources as a Christian, and Jerome calls him "primus omnium ex Romanis imperatoribus Christianus" . There is no doubt that Origen wrote letters to him and his wife, Severa.

However, this respite led to a cooling of the moral zeal and brotherly love of Christians, and a powerful storm that fell upon them during subsequent reigns contributed to the restoration of the purity of the church.

§22. Persecution under Decius and Valerian, A.D. 249-260.

Martyrdom of Cyprian

Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius VI. 40–42; VII. 10, 11.

Cyprian: DeLapsis, and especially in his messages of that period. For the martyrdom of Cyprian, see Proconsular Acts, and Pontius: Vita Cypriani.

Franz Gorres: Die Toleranzedicte des Kaisers Gallienus, Jahrbucher fur protest. Theol." 1877, pp. 606–630. His own: Die angebliche Christenverfolgung zur Zeit der Kaiser Numerianus und Carinus, Hilgenfeld Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftl. Theology". 1880, pp. 31–64.

Decius Trajan (249 - 251), an honest and energetic emperor, in whom the Roman spirit was awakened again, decided to eradicate the church as a sect of atheists and rebels and in 250 issued an edict addressed to all provincial governors and calling for a return to the pagan state religion under pain the heaviest punishment. This was the signal for the beginning of the persecution, which surpassed all previous ones in scope, perseverance and cruelty. In fact, these were the first persecutions that engulfed the entire empire, and as a result they gave rise to more martyrs than all previous ones. In order to induce Christians to apostasy, confiscations, exiles, tortures, promises and threats of various kinds were used in pursuance of the imperial decree. Many people who called themselves Christians, especially at the beginning, bowed to the gods (this sacrificati, sacrificing to the gods, and thurificati, who censed incense) or received false certifications from the city authorities that they did so (libellatici), and for this they were excommunicated as apostates (lapsi); hundreds of others, with a burst of zeal, rushed into prisons and into judgment in order to receive the crown of a confessor or a martyr. Roman confessors wrote from prison to their brothers in Africa: “Can a more glorious and blessed fate befall a man than, by the grace of God, to confess the Lord God in the midst of torment and in the face of death itself; to confess Christ, the Son of God, when the body is tormented and the spirit leaves it free; become a partner in Christ's suffering by suffering in the name of Christ? Although we have not shed blood yet, we are ready to do so. Pray for us, dear Cyprian, that the Lord, the best of leaders, will daily strengthen all of us more and more and finally bring us to the battlefield as faithful warriors armed with divine weapons (Eph. 6:12), who can never be defeated " .

The authorities were especially cruel with bishops and ministers of churches. Fabian of Rome, Babyla of Antioch, and Alexander of Jerusalem perished in the course of these persecutions. Others went into hiding, some out of cowardice and some out of Christian foresight, hoping by their absence to assuage the fury of the pagans against their flock, and saving their own lives to serve the good of the church in better times.

Among the latter was Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who was criticized for having made such a choice, but he fully justified himself by his pastoral service during the years of flight and subsequent martyrdom. He puts it this way: “Our Lord told us, in times of persecution, to yield and flee. He taught it and did it Himself. For the one who retires for a while, but remains faithful to Christ, does not renounce his faith, but only lives the time allotted to him, since the crown of the martyr is obtained by the grace of God and it is impossible to receive it before the appointed hour.

A poetic tradition tells of seven brothers from Ephesus who fell asleep in a cave during their flight and woke up two hundred years later under Theodosius II (447), seeing with amazement that the once despised and hated cross now rules the city and country. The tradition itself claims that it dates back to the time of Decius, but in fact there is no mention of him until Gregory of Tours in the 6th century.

Under Gallus (251 - 253) persecution received a new impetus due to invasions of the Goths, plague, drought and famine. During his reign, the Roman bishops Cornelius and Lucius were exiled and then sentenced to death.

Valerian (253 - 260) was at first mild towards the Christians, but in 257 he changed his policy and tried to stop the spread of their faith without bloodshed, by expelling preachers and eminent laity, confiscating their property and banning religious meetings. These measures, however, proved futile, and he again resorted to executions.

The most prominent martyrs of persecution under Valerian were Bishops Sixtus II of Rome and Cyprian of Carthage.

When Cyprian was informed of the death sentence that awaited him as an enemy of the Roman gods and laws, he calmly replied: "Deo gratias!" And then, following to the scaffold, accompanied by a large crowd of people, he prayed again, undressed, blindfolded, asked the presbyter to tie his hands and pay twenty-five gold coins to the executioner, who tremblingly drew his sword - and received his imperishable crown (September 14 258). His faithful friends collected his blood in handkerchiefs and buried the body of their holy shepherd with great solemnity.

Gibbon describes Cyprian's martyrdom in great detail, pointing with obvious satisfaction to the solemn and respectful atmosphere of the execution. But one cannot judge by this example how Christians were executed throughout the empire. Cyprian was a man of high social status, previously famous as an orator and statesman. His deacon, Pontius, relates that "a number of eminent and famous persons, people of high rank, noble and famous in the world, often persuaded Cyprian to hide for the sake of their old friendship." We will return to Cyprian again when we talk about the government of the church, and he will be for us a model of the pre-Nicene leader of the church of the highest level, a supporter of both the visible unity of the church and episcopal independence from Rome.

The story of the martyrdom of the deacon St. Lawrence from Rome, who pointed out to the greedy city authorities the poor and sick parishioners as the greatest treasure of the church, was very well known, and, according to rumors, was burned on a slow fire (August 10, 258). The details of this story are hardly reliable. Ambrose first mentions her a century later, and later she was glorified by the poet Prudentius. A basilica was built in the Via Tiburtina in honor of this saint, who occupies the same place among the martyrs of the Roman Church as Stephen among the martyrs of the Church of Jerusalem.

§23. Temporary break. 260 - 303 A.D.

Gallienus (260 - 268) once again gave a respite to the church and even recognized Christianity religion licita. This tranquility lasted for forty years, because the edict of persecution, subsequently issued by the energetic and warlike Aurelian (270-275), was invalidated by his assassination, and six emperors, who quickly succeeded each other on the throne after him from 275 to 284, leave the Christians alone.

The persecutions under Kara, Numerian and Karin in 284-285 belong to a region not historical, but legendary.

During this long period of peace, the church grew rapidly in numbers, and its external well-being was strengthened. In the main cities of the empire, large and even luxurious prayer houses were built, sacred books were collected in them, as well as gold and silver vessels for performing the sacraments. But the discipline of the church was shaken to the same extent, the number of disputes, intrigues and splits increased, and worldly sentiments poured in in a wide stream.

As a result, new tests were needed for the healing and purification of the church.

§24. Persecution of Diocletian. 303 - 311 A.D.

Sources

Eusebius: H. E. lib. VIII. -X; DeMartyr. Palaest.(ed. Cureton, Lond. 1861); Vita Const,(ed. Heinichen, Lips. 1870). lactation: De Mortibus Persec, c. 7 sqq. Authorship is debatable.

Basil the Great: Oratio in Gordium mart.; Oratio in Barlaham mart.

Proceedings

Baronius: Annal ad ann. 302–305.

Gibbons: Chrs. XIII., XIV. and XVI.

Jak. Burckhardt: Die Zeit. Constantins des Gr. Basel 1853, p. 325.

th. Keim: Der Uebertritt Constantins des Gr. zum Christenthum. Zurich 1852. His own: Die romischen Toleranzedicte fur das Christenthum(311–313), in "Tub. Theol. Jahrb" 1852. (B Rom und das Christenthum it only goes as far as A.D. 192.)

alb. Vogel: Der Kaiser Diocletian. Gotha 1857.

Bernhardt: Diokletian in s. Verhaltnisse zu den Christen. Bonn 1862.

Hunziker: Regierung und Christenverfolgung des Kaisers Diocletianus und seiner Nachfolger. Leipz. 1868.

Theod. Press: Kaiser Diocletian und Seine Zeit. Leipz. 1869.

A. J. Mason: The Persecution of Diocletian. Cambridge 1876. Pages 370. (See also the review by Ad. Harnack, in Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1877. No. 7. f. 169.)

Theod. Zahn: Constantin der Grosse und die Kirche. Hanover 1876.

Brieger: Constantine der Gr. als Religionspoliticer. Gotha 1880. See also the literature on Constantine in vol. III, §§ 10, 11.

After a forty-year respite, the last and most fierce persecutions began, a struggle not for life, but for death.

“The accession of Emperor Diocletian is the beginning of an era that the Coptic churches of Egypt and Abyssinia still call the “era of martyrs.” All previous persecutions were forgotten in comparison with the horror that people remembered as the last and greatest: the tenth (according to the people's preferred calculation) wave of this great storm erased all traces left by the previous ones. The furious cruelty of Nero, the jealous fears of Domitian, the passionless hostility of Mark, the decisive destruction under Decius, the clever tricks of Valerian - all this was overshadowed by the horrors of the last battle that led to the death of the Ancient Roman Empire and the rise of the Cross as a symbol of the hope of the world.

Diocletian (284 - 305) was one of the most sensible and capable emperors; in a difficult period, he saved the declining state from disintegration. He was the son of a slave, or at least of unknown parents, and he himself made his way to the highest power. He turned the republican type of Roman empire into an oriental despotism and prepared the way for Constantine and Constantinople. He had three subordinate co-rulers: Maximian (who committed suicide in 310), Galerius (died in 311) and Constantius Chlorus (died in 306, father of Constantine the Great), with whom he shared the rule of a huge empire; having four rulers instead of one strengthened the provincial administration, but also planted the seed of strife and civil war. Gibbon calls him the second Augustus, that is, the founder of a new empire, and not the restorer of the old one. He also compares him to Charles V, to whom he was somewhat similar in his talent, temporary success and ultimate failure and voluntary resignation of government.

For the first twenty years of his reign, Diocletian observed Gallienus's edict of tolerance for Christians. His own wife Prisca, his daughter Valeria, most of his eunuchs and courtiers, and most of the most eminent public functionaries were Christians, or at least favored the Christian religion. He himself was a superstitious pagan and an oriental-style despot. Like his predecessors Aurelian and Domitian, he claimed divine honors as viceroy of Capitoline Jupiter. He was revered as Lord and Ruler of the whole world, Sacratissimus Dominus Noster; he surrounded his Sacred Majesty with many circles of warriors and eunuchs and did not allow anyone to approach him except on his knees, touching his forehead to the ground, while he himself sat on the throne in luxurious oriental robes. “Show grandeur was the first principle of the new system Diocletian instituted,” says Gibbon. As a practical statesman, he must have seen that the political revival and strengthening of the empire could not take place on a solid and permanent foundation without the revival of the former state religion. Although he had long put off considering the religious question, sooner or later he had to face it. could not be expected in this case so that paganism will surrender to its dangerous rival without making a last desperate effort to save itself.

But the main instigator of the renewal of hostility, according to the account of Lactantius, was Diocletian's co-ruler and son-in-law Galerius, a cruel and fanatical pagan. When Diocletian was already old, Galerius succeeded in gaining superiority over him and obtaining a solution to the persecutions that brought his glorious reign to an inglorious end.

In 303, Diocletian issued three edicts one after the other, each more severe than the one before it. Maximian released the fourth, worst of all, on April 30, 304. The Christian churches were to be destroyed; all copies of the Bible are burned; all Christians are deprived of civil rights and the right to hold public office; and finally, all without exception had to offer sacrifices to the gods under pain of death. The pretext for such cruelty was a fire that happened twice in the palace in Nicomedia, in Bithynia, where Diocletian lived. An additional reason was the behavior of a careless Christian (the Greek Church reveres him under the name of John), who tore up the first edict, thus expressing his disgust for "godless tyrants", and was burned in a slow fire with all kinds of cruelty. However, the assumption that the reason for issuing the edicts was a conspiracy of Christians who, feeling that their power was growing, wanted to seize control of the state by making a coup, has no historical justification. This is inconsistent with the political passivity of the church in the first three centuries, in which there are no examples of riots and upheavals. In the extreme case, such a conspiracy would have been just the work of a few fanatics, and they, like the man who broke the first edict, would have been honored with glory and a martyr's crown.

The persecution began on the twenty-third day of February 303 during the feast Terminalia(as if with the intention of putting an end to the existence of the Christian sect) from the destruction of the magnificent church in Nicomedia and soon spread throughout the Roman Empire, except for Gaul, Britain and Spain, where the co-ruler Emperor Constantius Chlorus and especially his son, Constantine the Great (from 306) intended, to the extent possible, spare Christians. But even there churches were destroyed, and later tradition refers to this period the martyrdom of many confessors in Spain (Saint Vincentius, Eulalia and others glorified by Prudentius) and Britain (Saint Alban).

The longest and most furious persecutions raged in the East, where Galerius and his barbarian nephew Maximinus Daia ruled, whom Diocletian endowed with the dignity of Caesar and commander-in-chief over Egypt and Syria when he abdicated. In the autumn of 308, he issued the fifth persecution edict, which stated that all men with their wives and servants and even children should offer sacrifices and eat from these pagan sacrifices and that all products in the markets should be sprinkled with sacrificial wine. This barbarous law resulted in Christians living a monstrous existence for two years, with no choice but to apostasy or starvation. In order to achieve an unattainable goal, all the torments that iron and steel, fire and sword, rack and cross, wild animals and brutal people can cause were used.

Eusebius witnessed these persecutions in Caesarea, Tyre, and Egypt; he tells us that he saw with his own eyes how prayer houses were destroyed, the Holy Scriptures were thrown into the fire in the marketplaces, shepherds were hunted, tortured and torn to shreds in the amphitheatres. Even the wild beasts, he says, not without rhetorical exaggeration, finally refused to attack the Christians, as if they had exchanged places with the pagans of Rome; the swords were rusted and tarnished with blood; the executioners were tired, they had to support each other; but Christians sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving in honor of Almighty God to their last breath. Eusebius describes the heroic suffering and death of a group of twelve martyrs, including his friend, "the holy and blessed Pamphilus," who, after two years of imprisonment, received the crown of life (309), and calls these people a typical and "perfect representative of the church."

Eusebius himself was imprisoned but released. The accusation that he managed to avoid martyrdom by making a sacrifice is unfounded.

During this, as during previous persecutions, the number of apostates who preferred earthly life heavenly, it was very great. A new variety has now been added to them - traditions, bringing Holy Scripture to the pagan authorities to be burned. But as the persecution became more and more raging, the zeal and fidelity of Christians increased, and the desire for martyrdom spread like a contagious disease. Even children and teenagers behaved with amazing resilience. With many, the heroism of faith has degenerated into a fanatical reverence for death; confessors of the faith were almost worshiped while they were alive; hatred of the apostates led to divisions in many communities and gave rise to schisms between Meletius and Donatus.

The number of martyrs cannot be precisely established. The seven bishops and ninety-two Palestinian martyrs of Eusebius are only a select list, having about the same ratio to the total number of victims as the lists of prominent dead officers to the mass of dead ordinary soldiers, so we consider Gibbon's calculations inaccurate, reducing the total number of victims to less than two thousands. During the eight years of persecution, the number of victims, not to mention the many confessors who were barbarously mutilated and condemned to certain death in prisons and quarries, should have been much greater. But there is no truth in the tradition (which figures in ancient ecclesiastical history) that tyrants erected in Spain and other places commemorative signs with inscriptions announcing the suppression of the Christian sect.

In martyrology, several legends belong to this period, the basis of which cannot be clearly separated from later poetic additions. The story of the destruction of the Theban legion is probably an exaggeration of the story of the martyrdom of Saint Mauritius, who was executed in Syria as tribunus militum seventy soldiers on the orders of Maximinus. The martyrdom of Barlaam, a simple believing peasant, distinguished by amazing stamina, and Gordius (a centurion who, nevertheless, was tortured and executed a few years later, under Licinius, 314) was sung by Saint Basil. A thirteen-year-old girl, Saint Agnes, whose memory the Latin Church honors since the 4th century, was, according to legend, brought in chains to Rome for trial, publicly accused and, after her firm confession, killed with a sword, but later she appeared to her grieving parents near her grave with a white lamb and a group of shining maidens from heaven and said to them: “Weep no more for me as if I were dead, because you see that I am alive. Rejoice with me, because now I am forever in heaven with the Savior, Whom on earth I loved with all my heart. Hence the lamb in the images of this saint; hence in her church in Rome during her feast day (January 21) the consecration of the lambs, from whose wool the mantle of the archbishop is made. According to legend, Agricola and Vitalius from Bologna, Gervasius and Protasius from Milan, whose relics were discovered in the time of Ambrose, Januarius, Bishop of Benevento, who became the patron saint of Naples and astonishes believers with the annual miracle of boiling blood, became martyrs under Diocletian; and Saint Alban of Britain, who betrayed himself to the authorities in place of the priest he had hidden in his house, and converted his executioner.

§25. Edicts on religious tolerance. 311 - 313 A.D.

See bibliography for §24, especially Keim and Mason (Persecution of Diocletian, pp. 299, 326 sq.).

Diocletian's persecution was the last desperate attempt by Roman paganism to win. It was a crisis that was supposed to lead one of the parties to complete extinction, and the other to complete superiority. At the end of the struggle, the old Roman state religion was almost exhausted. Diocletian, cursed by Christians, retired from the throne in 305. Growing cabbages in Salona, ​​in his native Dalmatia, he liked more than ruling a vast empire, but his peaceful old age was disturbed by a tragic incident with his wife and daughter, and in 313 when all the achievements of his reign were destroyed, he committed suicide.

Galerius, the true instigator of persecution, was made to think by a terrible illness, and shortly before his death he put an end to this massacre by his remarkable edict on religious tolerance, which he issued at Nicomedia in 311, together with Constantine and Licinius. In this document, he declared that he had not succeeded in compelling the Christians to renounce their evil innovations and to subject their numerous sects to the laws of the Roman state, and that he now allowed them to organize their religious meetings if they did not disturb the public order in the country. In conclusion, he added an important instruction: Christians “after this manifestation of mercy should pray to your God the well-being of the emperors, the state, and themselves, so that the state may prosper in all respects, and they may live in peace in their homes.

This edict practically ends the period of persecution in the Roman Empire.

For a short time, Maximinus, whom Eusebius calls "the chief of tyrants," continued to oppress and torment the church in the East in every way, and the cruel pagan Maxentius (son of Maximian and son-in-law of Galerius) did the same in Italy.

But young Constantine, originally from the far East, already in 306 became emperor of Gaul, Spain and Britain. He grew up at the court of Diocletian in Nicomedia (like Moses at the court of the pharaoh) and was appointed his successor, but fled from the intrigues of Galerius to Britain; there his father proclaimed him his heir, and the army supported him in that capacity. He crossed the Alps and, under the banner of the cross, defeated Maxentius at the Milvian bridge near Rome; the pagan tyrant, along with his army of veterans, died in the waters of the Tiber on October 27, 312. A few months later, Constantine met in Milan with his co-ruler and brother-in-law Licinius and issued a new edict on religious tolerance (313), with which Maximinus was forced to agree in Nicomedia shortly before his suicide (313). The second edict went further than the first, 311; it was a decisive step from hostile neutrality to benevolent neutrality and protection. He prepared the way for the legal recognition of Christianity as the religion of the empire. It ordered the return of all confiscated church property, Corpus Christianorum, at the expense of the imperial treasury and all the provincial city authorities were ordered to execute the order immediately and vigorously, so that complete peace would be established and God's mercy would be provided to the emperors and their subjects.

Such was the first proclamation of the great principle that every man has the right to choose his religion according to the dictates of his own conscience and sincere conviction, without coercion or interference from government. Religion is worthless if it is not free. Faith under duress is not faith at all. Unfortunately, Constantine's successors, beginning with Theodosius the Great (383-395), promoted the Christian faith to the exclusion of all others, but not only that - they promoted orthodoxy as well, to the exclusion of any form of dissension, which was punished as a crime against the state.

Paganism made another desperate breakthrough. Licinius, having quarreled with Constantine, on short time resumed persecution in the East, but in 323 he was defeated, and Constantine remained the sole ruler of the empire. He openly defended the church and was supportive of it, but did not forbid idolatry, but generally remained faithful to the policy of proclaiming religious tolerance until his death (337). This was sufficient for the success of the church, which had the vitality and energy necessary for victory; paganism quickly declined.

With Constantine, the last pagan and first Christian emperor, a new period begins. The Church ascends to the throne of the Caesars under the banner of the once despised, but now revered and triumphant cross, and gives new strength and the splendor of the ancient Roman Empire. This sudden political and social upheaval seems miraculous, but it was only the legitimate consequence of the intellectual and moral revolution that Christianity, since the second century, quietly and imperceptibly carried out in public opinion. The very cruelty of Diocletian's persecution showed the inner weakness of paganism. The Christian minority, with their ideas, already controlled the deep currents of history. Constantine, as a wise statesman, saw the signs of the times and followed them. The motto of his policy can be considered the inscription on his military banners, associated with the cross: "Nose signo vinces" .

What a contrast between Nero, the first persecuting emperor, who rode in a chariot between the rows of Christian martyrs who were burned in his gardens like torches, and Constantine, seated at the Council of Nicaea in the midst of three hundred and eighteen bishops (some of them, like the blinded Paphnutius the Confessor, Paul from Neocaesarea and ascetics from Upper Egypt, in coarse clothes, bore the marks of torture on their crippled, mutilated bodies) and giving the highest consent of the civil authorities to the decision on the eternal Divinity of the once crucified Jesus of Nazareth! Never before or since has the world seen such a revolution, except perhaps for a quiet spiritual and moral transformation accomplished by Christianity itself at the time of its inception in the first and a spiritual awakening in the sixteenth century.

§26. Martyrdom of Christians

Sources

Ignatius: epistolae. Martyrium Polycarpi. Tertullian: Ad Martyres. Origen: Exhortatio ad martyrium(???????????? ????? ??? ?????????). Cyprian: Er. 11 ad mart. Prudentius: ???"? ???????? hymni XIV. See the list of references to § 12.

Proceedings

Sagittarius: Demart, cruciatibus, 1696.

H. Dodwell: De paucitate martyrum - Dissertationes Cyprianicae. Lond. 1684.

Ruinart (Catholic): Praefatio generalis in Acta Martyrum.

F. W. Gass: Das christl. Martyrerthum in den ersten Jahrhunderten, in Niedner's Zeitschrift f. hist. Theol." 1859-"60.

De Pressense: The Martyrs and Apologists. Translation from French. London and?. Y. 1871. (Ch. II p. 67 sqq.).

Chateaubriand: Les martyrs ou le triomphe de la rel. chret. 2 vols. Paris 1809 and many other editions (best English translation O. W. Wight, N. York 1859.) Has no critical or historical value, only poetic.

See also Jameson: Sacred and Legendary Art. Lond. 1848. 2 vols.

The church responded to these long and cruel persecutions not with revolutionary violence, not with carnal resistance, but with the moral heroism of suffering and death for the truth. However, this heroism was her brightest decoration and her most effective weapon. With this heroism, the church proved that it was worthy of its divine Founder, who died on the cross for the salvation of the world and even prayed for the forgiveness of His murderers. The patriotic virtues of Ancient Greece and Rome were manifested here in the most exalted form, in self-denial for the sake of a heavenly country, for the sake of a crown that never fades. Even children became heroes and rushed towards death with sacred enthusiasm. In these difficult times, people were guided by the words of the Lord: “He who does not bear his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple”; "Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me." And every day the promises came true: "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven"; “He who saves his soul will lose it; but he who loses his life for my sake will save it.” These words applied not only to the martyrs themselves, who exchanged a restless life on earth for the bliss of heaven, but also to the church as a whole, which became purer and stronger from each persecution, thereby demonstrating its indestructible vitality.

This virtue of suffering is one of the sweetest and noblest fruits of the Christian faith. Our admiration is not so much the scale of suffering, although it was terrible enough, but the spirit with which they were endured by the first Christians. Men and women of all walks of life, noble senators and educated bishops, illiterate artisans and impoverished slaves, loving mothers and tender virgins, gray-haired shepherds and innocent children endured their torment not with insensible indifference and stubborn determination, but, like their Divine Master, with calm composure. , humble self-denial, gentle meekness, joyful faith, triumphant hope and all-forgiving mercy. Such spectacles were often able to move even inhuman killers. “Go on,” Tertullian mockingly addresses the pagan rulers, “drag us on the rack, torture us, grind us to powder: the more you mow us, the more we become. The blood of Christians is the seed of their harvest. Your persistence is instructive. For who, observing him, would not wonder what is the essence of the problem? And who, having joined us, does not want to suffer? .

No doubt, and at this time, especially after periods of relative calm, there were many Christians whose faith was superficial or insincere; a storm of persecution swept them away, as if separating the straw from the grain; they either smoked incense to the gods (thurificati, sacrificati), or obtained false evidence of their return to paganism (libellatici, from libellum), or issued holy books (traditores). Tertullian relates with righteous indignation that whole communities, led by clerics, sometimes resorted to dishonorable bribery in order to avoid persecution by pagan magistrates. But, of course, these were rare exceptions. In general, renegades (lapsi) all three types were immediately excommunicated, and in many churches, although this was excessive severity, they were even denied reinstatement.

Those who joyfully declared before the pagan magistrates their faith in Christ, risking their lives, but were not executed at the same time, were revered as confessors . Those who suffered for the faith, endured torment and accepted death, were called martyrs or witnessed by blood .

Among the confessors and martyrs there were many people in whom the pure and calm fire of enthusiasm grew into a wild flame of fanaticism, whose zeal was perverted by impatience and haste, self-conceit, inciting to provoke the pagans, and ambition. These include Paul's words: "And if I ... give my body to be burned, and have no love, it profits me nothing." They handed themselves into the hands of the pagan authorities and strove in every possible way for a martyr's crown in order to receive merit in heaven and be revered on earth as saints. Tertullian tells of a group of Christians from Ephesus who asked the pagan ruler for martyrdom, and he, after executing a few, sent the rest away with the words: "Poor creatures, if you really want to die, there are enough cliffs and ropes around." Although such a delusion was far less shameful than its opposite (cowardly fear of people), it was contrary to the precepts and examples of Christ and the apostles and the spirit of true martyrdom, which consists in a combination of sincere meekness and strength and possesses divine power at the expense of the very awareness of human weakness. Accordingly, the wise teachers of the church condemned such impulsive, uncontrolled zeal. The Smyrna church says this: "We do not praise those who themselves ask for martyrdom, for the Gospel does not teach this." Clement of Alexandria says: “The Lord Himself ordered us to flee to another city if we are being persecuted; not because persecution is evil; not because we are afraid of death, but so that we do not become the cause of an evil deed and do not contribute to it. According to Tertullian, martyrdom is perfected in divine patience; for Cyprian, this is a gift of God's grace, which cannot be hastily seized, it must be patiently waited for.

Nevertheless, despite the instances of betrayal and rejection, the martyrdom of the first three centuries remains one of the greatest events in history, as well as a testament to the indestructible and divine nature of Christianity.

No other religion could have so long resisted the combined assaults of Jewish fanaticism, Greek philosophy, and Roman politics and power; no other religion could finally defeat so many enemies by sheer moral and spiritual strength, without resorting to any fleshly weapons. This all-encompassing and enduring martyrdom is the special crown and glory of the early church; his spirit permeated all the literature of that time and gave it a predominantly apologetic character; he deeply penetrated the organization and discipline of the church, influenced the development of Christian doctrine; he influenced public worship and private prayer; he gave birth to legendary poetry; and at the same time it has unconsciously given rise to many superstitions and to the improper exaltation of human merit; this same spirit underlies the worship of saints and relics in the Catholic Church.

Skeptical authors tried to belittle the moral impact of martyrdom by pointing to the ferocious and cruel episodes of the papal crusades against the Albigensians and Waldensians, the massacres of the Huguenots in Paris, the Spanish Inquisition and other later persecutions. Dodwell expresses the opinion, recently authoritatively confirmed by the impartial scholar Niebuhr, that the persecution of Diocletian is nothing compared to the persecution of Protestants in the Netherlands under the Duke of Alba, who championed Spanish fanaticism and despotism. Gibbon goes even further, boldly declaring that "the number of Protestants executed by the Spaniards in just one province during one reign greatly exceeds the number of martyrs of the first three centuries throughout the Roman Empire." It is also said that the number of victims of the Spanish Inquisition exceeds that of the Roman emperors.

While we acknowledge these sad facts, they do not justify skeptical conclusions. For those crimes and cruelties that were committed in the name of Christianity by unworthy believers and which were the result of an unholy union of politics and religion, Christianity is no more responsible than the Bible is responsible for all the nonsense that people put into it, or God for daily and hourly abuse His gifts. The number of martyrs must be judged by comparison with the total number of Christians, who constituted a minority of the population. The lack of specific information from the authors of that era does not allow us to establish the number of martyrs even approximately. Dodwell and Gibbon, of course, underestimate him, as does Eusebius; folk traditions since the era of Constantine and the legendary poetry of the Middle Ages - overestimate. This is a conclusion from recent discoveries and studies that authors such as Renan fully acknowledge. Indeed, Origen wrote in the middle of the 3rd century that the number of Christian martyrs is small and can be easily counted, and God will not allow such people to disappear. But these words should be attributed mainly to the reigns of Caracalla, Elagabalus, Alexander Severus and Philip the Arab, who did not persecute Christians. Decius' terrible persecution broke out shortly thereafter, when Origen himself was thrown into prison and subjected to ill-treatment. As for previous centuries, his statements should be compared with the equally valuable testimonies of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria (the teacher of Origen) and Irenaeus, who lived even earlier, who clearly says that the Church, out of love for God, “everywhere and at all times sends many martyrs to the Father » . Even the pagan Tacitus speaks of "an enormous multitude" (ingens multitudo) Christians killed in Rome only during the persecution of Nero in 64 AD. To this should be added the tacit but very eloquent evidence of the Roman catacombs, which, according to Mark and Northcote, had a length of 900 English miles and concealed, according to some estimates, almost seven million graves, most of which contained the remains of martyrs, as indicated by countless inscriptions and instruments of death. Moreover, the suffering of the church during this period should be measured, of course, not only by the number of actual executions, but also by much more, a thousand times worse than death, insults, accusations, litigation and torture, which the cruelty of heartless pagans and barbarians could only invent. or whatever the human body could be subjected to.

Finally, although Christian believers have at all times suffered to some extent from persecution by the wicked world, bloody or bloodless, and have always been ready to sacrifice themselves for their service, in no other period than these first three centuries did the whole church denied the right to a peaceful, lawful existence, never again was faith in Christ itself declared a political crime and punished as such. Before Constantine, Christians were a helpless and outcast minority in an essentially pagan world under a pagan government. They died not just for some doctrine, but for the very fact of faith in Christ. It was a war not against any church or sect, but against Christianity in general. The significance of ancient martyrdom is connected not so much with the number of victims and the cruelty of their suffering, but with the great opposition and its final result, which saved the Christian faith for all future times. Consequently, the first three centuries are the classic period of pagan persecution and Christian martyrdom. The martyrs and confessors of the pre-Nicene period suffered for the common cause of Christians of all churches and denominations, therefore all Christians rightfully treat them with reverence and gratitude.

NOTES

Dr. Thomas Arnold, not given to superstition and the idolatrous cost of venerating saints, remarks on a visit to the church of San Stefano in Rome: “No doubt many of the particular stories thus embellished do not stand up to critical examination; it is also likely that Gibbon rightly calls conventional claims exaggerated. But it's a thankless job. Divide the total number of martyrs by twenty—fifty if you like; after all, in all ages, believers have endured cruel torments and gone to death for the sake of their conscience and for the sake of Christ; and their sufferings were blessed by God, which ensured the victory of the gospel of Christ. I don't think we even half feel the magnificence of this spirit of martyrdom. I don't think that pleasure is a sin; but though pleasure is not sinful, suffering for Christ's sake is without a doubt the most necessary thing for us in our day, when suffering seems so far removed from our daily lives. God's grace has enabled rich and sophisticated people, women and even children, to endure extreme pain and abuse in the old days, and this grace is no less powerful now; if we do not close ourselves off from it, it can manifest itself no less gloriously in us in the hour of trials.

Leckie, a very able and impartial historian, rightly criticizes Gibbon's chapter on persecution as insensitive. "Total absence," he says (History of European Morals, I. 494 sqq.), - any sympathy whatsoever for the heroic courage shown by the martyrs, and the cold, truly unphilosophical severity with which the historian judges the words and deeds of people who suffered in mortal combat, should be unpleasant to every magnanimous nature, while the stubbornness with which he evaluates persecution on the basis of the number of deaths, and not the degree of suffering, does not allow the mind to realize the truly unprecedented cruelty of pagan persecution ... Indeed, in one Catholic country, a terrible custom was introduced to arrange a spectacle, burning people alive during public holidays for their religious opinions. Indeed, the vast majority of the deeds of the martyrs are the obvious fabrication of deceitful monks; but it is also true that among the authentic records of pagan persecution there are stories that testify, perhaps more vividly than anything else, to the depths of cruelty into which human nature, and the heroism of the resistance she is capable of. There was a time when the Romans rightly boasted that their harsh but simple penal code did not allow for unnecessary cruelty and prolonged torture. But the situation has changed. The violent influence of games, which made the spectacle of human suffering and death an amusement for all classes of society, spread everywhere where the name of the Romans was known, and millions of people became completely indifferent to the sight of human suffering; many people living in the very center of advanced civilization have awakened a taste and passion for torment, delight and excitement at the sight of extreme agony, which only African or American savages experience. The worst of the torments described were usually inflicted either by the population themselves or in their presence, in the arena. We read of how Christians were shackled in red-hot chains and the stench of burning flesh rose like a suffocating cloud to heaven; about how their flesh was torn to the bone with tongs or iron hooks; about the holy virgins, betrayed by the lust of a gladiator or at the mercy of a pimp; of two hundred and twenty-seven converts sent to the mines, after each of them had the sinews of one leg torn with a red-hot iron, and one eye was gouged out; about such a slow fire that the agony of the victims lasted for hours; of bodies that had their limbs torn off or sprinkled with molten lead; about various tortures that lasted for days. Out of love for their Divine Master, for the sake of a cause that they considered right, men and even weak girls endured all this without flinching, while one word was enough to free them from suffering. Whatever our opinion about the behavior of the clergy in subsequent centuries, it will not prevent us from bowing with reverence before the tomb of the martyr» .

§27. The emergence of the worship of martyrs and relics

Sources

In addition to the works mentioned in $12 and 26, see Eusebius ?. ?. IV. fifteen; DeMart. Palaest., with. 7. Clement of Alexandria: Strom. IV, r. 596. Origen: Exhort, ad mart., with. 30 and 50. In Num. Cat.?. 2. Tertullian: Decor. mil., with. 3; De Resurr, earn. with. 43. Cyprian: delapsis, with. 17; Epist. 34 and 57. Const. Apost.: 1. 8.

Proceedings

C. Sagittarius: De natalitiis mart. Jen. 1696.

Schwabe: De insigni veneratione, quae obtinuit erga martyres in primit. eccl. Altd. 1748.

Remembering with gratitude the fidelity of this "noble army of martyrs", recognizing the inviolability of the communion of the saints and anticipating the bodily resurrection, the Church began to venerate the martyrs and even their dead remains; however, this veneration, in itself quite justified and completely natural, soon went beyond the scope of Scripture, and subsequently degenerated into the worship of saints and relics. Pagan hero worship quietly continued in the church and was baptized with a Christian name.

In the Smyrna church, judging by its message of 155, we find this worship in its still innocent, childlike form: “They [the Jews] do not know that we can never forsake Christ, who suffered for the salvation of the whole world. redeemed, nor worship anyone else. We adore Him alone (????????????) as the Son of God; and we love the martyrs as they deserve (???????? ?????), for their great love for their King and Teacher, and we also want to be their comrades and fellow students. The day of the death of the martyr was called his heavenly birthday, this day was celebrated annually on his grave (mainly in a cave or catacombs), praying, reading the story of his suffering and victory, taking communion and arranging a holy supper.

But the early church didn't stop there. Starting from the end of the 2nd century, martyrdom began to be perceived not only as the highest Christian virtue, but at the same time as baptism with fire and blood, a wonderful substitute for water baptism, as cleansing from sin and providing entry to heaven. Origen went so far as to attribute to the sufferings of martyrs the value of the redemption of others, an efficacy similar to that of the sufferings of Christ, on the basis of passages such as 2 Cor. 12:15; Qty. 1:24; 2 Tim. 4:6. According to Tertullian, the martyrs immediately attained heavenly bliss, and they did not have to, like ordinary Christians, go through an intermediate position. This is how the blessing for those persecuted for righteousness' sake was interpreted in Mt. 5:10–12. Consequently, according to Origen and Cyprian, the prayers of the martyrs before the throne of God were especially effective for the church at war on earth, and, in accordance with the example given by Eusebius, not long ago before their deaths already asked for future petitions.

In Roman catacombs we find inscriptions in which the dead are asked to pray for their living relatives and friends.

Thus, the respectful attitude towards the personalities of the martyrs was to some extent transferred to their remains. The Smyrna church considered the bones of Polycarp to be more precious than gold or diamonds. The remains of Ignatius were also venerated by the Christians of Antioch. Cyprian's friends collected his blood in handkerchiefs and built a chapel on his grave.

Often, the worship of not only the deceased martyrs, but also the confessors, the surviving believers who did not want to renounce their faith, reached the extreme. It was the special duty of the deacons to visit them in prison and minister to them. The pagan Lucian, in his satire De morte Peregrini, describes the tireless care of Christians for their brothers in prison: heaps of gifts were brought to them, expressions of sympathy came from afar, and all this, of course, according to Lucian, was done out of pure good nature and enthusiasm. Tertullian of the Montanist period criticizes the church's excessive attention to confessors. Intercessions of confessors about apostates - libelli pacts, as they were called - usually led to the restoration of the latter in the church. The opinion of the confessors had a special weight in the selection of bishops and was often considered more authoritative than the opinion of the clergy. Cyprian is most eloquent when he praises their heroism. His letters to the imprisoned confessors of Carthage are full of glorifications, their style is in some way even offensive to the gospel ideas. However, in the end, Cyprian protests against the abuse of privileges from which he himself had to suffer, and sincerely calls those who suffered for their faith to the holiness of life, so that the honors they receive do not become a trap for them, so that they do not go astray because of pride and neglect. He always presents the crown of a confessor and martyr as a free gift of God's grace and sees its real essence rather in an internal predisposition than in an act turned outward. Commodian accepted the idea of ​​martyrdom in all its fullness when he extended it to those who, without shedding blood, endured to the end in love, humility, longsuffering and in all Christian virtues.

Notes:

Isaac Taylor, in his "Ancient Christianity", where he clearly opposes the superstitious overestimation of the period of the "fathers of the church", nevertheless observes (vol. i, p. 37): "Our brethren of the early church deserve respect and love; for they zealously sought to preserve faith in the invisible and eternal; they had the ability to humbly endure the most severe persecution; they bravely defended their good faith against the discontent of philosophy, secular tyranny, blinding superstition; they were removed from this world and distinguished by extreme self-denial; they passionately did works of love, whatever the cost; they were generous and engaged in charity like no other; they treated with respect and scrupulous care scriptures; and this merit alone, if they had no others, is extremely important and should arouse reverence and gratitude for them in the modern church. How little many readers of the Bible today think of what it cost the Christians of the second and third centuries simply to preserve and protect the sacred treasures from the fury of the pagans!

"Blood is the seed of Christians." - Approx. ed.

This is what Augustine says, De Civit. dei, xviii. 52, however, he mentions Antoninus instead of Marcus Aurelius. Lactantius has six persecutions, Sulpicius Severus has nine.

Ref. 5 - 10; Rev. 17:12 ff. Augustine considered the reference to the Egyptian executions to be inappropriate and called it a pure invention of the human mind, which "sometimes catches the truth, and sometimes errs". He also specifies the number of persecutions, referring to the persecutions before Nero, mentioned in the NT, and to the persecutions after Diocletian, for example, under the emperor Julian and the Arian emperors. "About this and things like that," he states, "I don't think it's possible to determine the exact amount of persecution that the church has been tested with."

For the relationship between Christianity and the laws of the Roman Empire, see Aube, De la legalite du Christianisme dans l "empire Romain au I er siecle. Paris 1866.

See the remarkable passage from Ad Scapulum, with. 2: “Tarnen humani juris et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putaverit colere, nec alii obest, aut prodest alterius religio. Sed nec religionis est cogere religionem, quae sponte suscipi debeat non vi, cum et hostiae ab animo libenti expostulentur. Ita etsi nos compuleritis ad sacrificandum, nihil praestabitis diis vestris. Ab invitis enim sacrificia non desiderabunt, nisi si contentiosi sunt; contentiosus autem deus non est. Wed with a similar passage in Apolog., with. 24, where Tertullian, after listing the various forms of idolatry tolerated in the empire, continues: “Videte enim ne et hoc ad irreligiositatis elogium concurrat, adimere libertatem religionis et interdicere optionem divinitatis, ut non liceat mihi colere quem velim sed cogar colere quem nolim. Nemo se ab invito coli volet, ne homo quidem."

Reported by Justin Martyr, a native of Palestine and a contemporary of this destruction of Jerusalem. apol. I, p. 47. Tertullian also says that "a decree was issued forbidding the Jews to cross the borders of this region" (Adv. Jud., with. thirteen).

Ad Zephan. 1:15 sqq. Schurer quotes this passage, p. 363.

The "Jewish Wailing Wall" is a giant wall that stands at the outer side of the El-Ask Mosque next to the "Robinson Arch". There, on a clean Friday, 1877, I saw a large number of Jews, old and young, men and women, venerable rabbis with beards like patriarchs, and dirty and repulsive subjects kissing a stone wall and watering it with tears, repeating from the Hebrew Bible and prayer books Lamentations of Jeremiah, Psalm 75 and Psalm 78 and various prayers . Wed tobler, Topographie von Jerusalem, I. 629.

For literature on the Talmud, see: Herzog; McClintock & Strong; and especially Schurer, Neutestamentl. Zeitgeschichte(Leipz. 1874), pp. 45-49, to which I add Schurer's essay: Die Predigt Jesu Christi in ihrem Verhaltniss zum Alten Testament und zum Judenthum, Darmstadt 1882. The relation of the Talmud to the Sermon on the Mount, and the few similarities between them, are discussed by Pick in McClintock & Strong, vol. ix. 571.

Er. X. 34, al. 43). Wed buttner, Geschichte der politischen Hetarien in Athen(1840); Mommsen, De collegiis et sodalius Romanorum(Kiel 1843).

In three editions, two Greek and one Syriac. The seven shorter Greek epistles are authentic. See further §165.

Hadrian's prescriptions to Minucius Fundanus (124 or 128), preserved by Eusebius in Greek translation (?. ?., IV. 8, 9), are almost a decree on religious tolerance, therefore Baur, Keim and Aube doubt their authenticity, but they are defended as genuine Neander (I. 101, Engl, ed.), Wiesler, Funk, Renan (I.c., R. 32 sqq.). Renan describes Adrian as rieur spirituel, un Lucian couronne prenant le monde comme un jeu frivole(“a man who laughed at the spiritual, crowned Lucian, who perceives the world as a frivolous game”) (p. 6), and therefore more inclined towards religious freedom than the serious Trajan and the pious Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. But Friedlander (III. 492) agrees with the words of Pausanias that Hadrian zealously revered the gods. Keim calls him a visionary, notes his hostility to both Judaism and Christianity.

Pius himself always offered sacrifices as high priest. Friedlander III. 492.

Thus, Waddington almost certainly proved that Quadratus was Roman consul in A.D. 142 and proconsul of Asia from 154 to 155, and Polycarp died on February 23, 155. He is echoed by Renan (1873), Ewald (1873), Aube ( 1875), Gilgenfeld (1874), Lightfoot (1875), Lipsius (1874), O. W. Gebhardt (1875), Zahn, Harnack (1876), Elie (1882) and again Lightfoot (1885, I.e. I. 647 sqq.). Wisler and Keim skillfully defend the old date (166 - 167), relying on the testimony of Eusebius and Jerome, as well as on the opinion of Masson and Clinton. But Lightfoot refutes their objections (I. 647, sqq.) and supports Waddington.

Med. xi. 3: ?? ???? ????? ?????????, ?? ?? ??????????, ???? ???????????? ??? ?????? ???, ???? ??? ????? ??????, ?????????.

Bodek (I.c.,?. 82 sqq.) states, contrary to popular belief, that Marcus Aurelius was personally indifferent to paganism and Christianity, that his homage to the gods, associated with the Capitoline cult and others, was only official and that, most likely, he was not the initiator of the persecution of Christians. "Er war eben so wenig ein Feind des Christenthums, als er ein Feind des Heidenthums war: was wie religioser Fanatismus aussah, war in Wahrheit nur politischer Conservatismus"(p. 87). On the other hand, Bodek states that he had a friendly sympathy for Judaism, for its monotheistic and ethical features, and claims that he maintained close relations with a certain Jewish rabbi. But in his twelve books, De seipso et ad seipsum, there is nothing that would contradict the piety of an enlightened pagan, unconsciously influenced by Christianity, but hostile to him, partly from ignorance of his true nature, partly from a conscious understanding of his duties as the supreme pontiff of the state religion. This was the position of Trajan and Decius. Renan (p. 262 sqq.) calls the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius "le livre le plus purement humain qu" il y ait. Il ne tranche aucune question controversee. En theologie, Marc Aurele flotte antre le deisme pur, le polytheisme enterprete dans un sens physique, a la facon des stoiciens, et une sorte de pantheisme cosmique"(“The most humanist book there can be. It does not deal with any controversial issues. Theologically, Marcus Aurelius oscillates between pure deism; polytheism, interpreted in a physical sense, in the manner of the Stoics; and something like cosmic pantheism.”)

Thus begins Arthur James Mason's The Persecution of Diocletian.

Maximian (nicknamed Herculius) ruled in Italy and Africa, Galerius (Armentary) - on the banks of the Danube, and later in the East, Constantius (Chlorine) - Gaul, Spain and Britain; Diocletian himself kept Asia, Egypt and Thrace, his residence was in Nicomedia. Galerius married the daughter of Diocletian (the unfortunate Valeria), Constantius married the (named) daughter of Maximian (Theodora), both separated from their former wives. Constantine, the son of a divorced Helen, married Fausta, daughter of Maximian (this was his second marriage; father and son were married to two sisters). He became Caesar July 25, 306. See Gibbon, chs. XIII, XIV.

lactation (De Mort. Persec, with. 9) calls him a "wild beast" in which there was a "natural barbarity and savagery alien to Roman blood." He finally died of a terrible disease, which Lactantius describes in detail (chap. 33).

Lactantius calls Galerius an arsonist, who, like the second Nero, was ready to endanger the palace, only to punish innocent Christians. Constantine, then living at court, later publicly declared that the fire was caused by lightning. (Orat. ad Sanct., with. 25), but the repetition of the event gives weight to the suspicions of Lactantius.

Gibbon in ch. XVI speaks of the possibility of a political conspiracy. Speaking of the fire in the imperial palace at Nicomedia, he states: “Suspicion naturally fell on the Christians; it has been hypothesized, with some degree of probability that these desperate fanatics, provoked by their present sufferings and aware of the coming disasters, conspired with their faithful brothers, the eunuchs of the palace, plotting to kill the two emperors, whom they hated as implacable enemies of the church of God. Gibbon's suggestion is echoed by Burckhardt in his work on Constantine. (Constantine, pp. 332 ff.), but without any evidence in his favor. Baur dismisses it as artificial and unlikely (Kirchengesch. I.452, note). Mason (p. 97 sq.) refutes it.

cm. Lactant., De Morte Persec, ch. 18–19, 32, and Gibbon, ch. XIV (vol. II, 16 in Smith's edition). Maximin's real name was Daiya. He should not be confused with Maximian Herculius (who was older and died three years earlier). He was a rude, ignorant and superstitious tyrant, equal to Galerius in cruelty and superior to him in incredible debauchery (see Lact. I.c., ch. 37 sqq.). He died of poison after being defeated by Licinius in 313.

For the edict of Maximin, see Euseb. mart. Pal. IX. 2; The Acts of Martyrs in Boll., May 8, p. 291, and Oct. 19, p. 428; mason, l. c. 284 sqq.

Lightfoot justifies it in his documented article Euseb., smith and wace, Diet, of Christ. biogr. II. 311.

Or ten years, if we include here the local persecutions of Maximinus and Licinius after the first edict on religious tolerance (311-313).

For example: Nomine Christianorum deleto; superstitione Christiana ubique deleta, et cultu Deorum propagato". See the full texts of the inscriptions at Baronius adapII. 304, no. 8, 9; but they do not correspond to the recognition of failure in the edict on religious tolerance, and even Gamay recognizes them as meaningless (K. Gesh. ?. Spanien^ I. 387).

For details, see the Martyrology, the Lives of the Saints, and also the Annals of Barony. This historian is so deeply convinced of “insigne et perpetuum miraculum sanguinis S. Januarii”, which considers it unnecessary to refer to specific witnesses, because “tota Italia, et totus Christianus orbis testis est locupletissimus!” Ad ann. 305 no. 6.

M. de Broglie (M. de Broglie, L "Eglise et l" Empire, I. 182) gives this manifesto an excellent characterization: "Singulier document, moitie insolent, moitie suppliant, qui commencement par insulter les chretiens et finit par leur demander de prier leur maitre pour lui"(“an unusual document, half offensive, half pleading, which begins with an insult to Christians and ends with a request that they pray for it to their Lord”). Mason (l.c., p. 299) writes: “The dying emperor does not repent, confesses nothing but his impotence. He wants to deceive and outwit the angry Christ, pretending not to be a persecutor, but a reformer. He curses the church with his edict of tolerance and superstitiously hopes that he will earn immunity.

Usually approved (including in Keim, I.c., Gieseler, Baur, vol. I. 454 sqq.) that Constantine and Licinius issued two edicts on religious tolerance, one in 312 and one at Milan in 313, since the latter edict refers to the first, but this reference seems to represent is a reference to the now lost instructions to government officials in addition to the edict of Galerius (311), signed jointly with Constantine. There were no edicts in 312. See Zahn and especially Mason (p. 328 sq.), also Uhlhorn (Conflict, etc., p.497, Engl, translation).

"Ut daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem, quam quiscunque uoluisset." See Euseb. H.E. x.5; Lactant. Demort. pers., c. 48. Mason (p. 327) says that the Edict of Milan is “the very first exposition of a doctrine which is now regarded as the hallmark and principle of civility, the firm foundation of liberty, the feature of modern politics. It decisively and clearly affirms the perfect freedom of conscience, the unrestricted choice of faith.

History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. II. 504) speaks of the terrible reign of Alba: “The cruelties that were committed during the robbery and destruction of these burnt and starving cities are almost unbelievable; unborn children were pulled out of the mother's womb; women and children were raped by the thousands; the population was burned or cut to pieces by the soldiers; everything that cruelty in its vain immediacy can think of was going on. Buckle and Friedlander (III. 586) state that during the eighteen years of Torquemada's leadership, the Spanish Inquisition punished at least 105,000 people, among whom 8,800 were burned. In Andalusia in one year there were 2000 Jews executed and 17.000 punished.

?????? ???? ??????? ??? ?????? ??????????? ?????????. Adv. Cels. III. 8. An older testimony of Meliton of Sardis in a well-known passage from his apology recorded in Eusebius, IV. 26, refers to only a small number emperors– persecutors to Marcus Aurelius.

Adv. haer. IV, p. 33, §9: Ecclesia omni in loco ob earn, quam habet erga Deum dilectionem, multitudinem martyrum in omni tempore praemittit ad Patrem.

Martyrium Polycarpi, cap. 17; cf. with Eusebius, NOT. IV. fifteen.

????? ?????????, ????????, natales, natalitia martyrum.

Lavacrum sanguinis,??????? ??? ?????, cf. s?f. 20:22; OK. 12:50; Mk. 10:39.

It is worth noting, however, that some of the striking events described in Martyrium Polycarpi community of Smyrna, are absent from Eusebius' narrative (IV. 15) and may be a later addition.

CHAPTER I. THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN POLICY OF THE ROMAN AUTHORITIES AND ITS EVALUATION BY THE CHURCH.

§ 1. The question of the causes, quantity and nature of persecution.

§ 2. The reaction and views of the Christian Church on persecution.

§ 3. Judicial proceedings against Christians.

CHAPTER P. THE ESSENCE OF MARTYRY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE ACCORDING TO THE WORKS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS.

§ 1. The essence and purpose of martyrdom.

§ 2. Martyrdom and confession: meaning, significance and differences.

§ 3. Readiness and desire for martyrdom and their reflection in the writings of Christian writers.

§ 4. Veneration of martyrs and confessors and attitude towards the "fallen" in the Christian Church.

CHAPTER P1. ATTITUDE OF THE ROMAN AUTHORITIES AND SOCIETY TO THE MARRHY OF THE CHRISTIANS.

§ 1. Martyrdom through the eyes of the Roman authorities and their attitude towards accused Christians.

§ 2. Attitude towards martyrdom in Roman society.

CHAPTER IV. MARRHYTY AS A MODEL OF BEHAVIOR.

§ 1. Naturalism of martyrdom, its purpose and meaning.

§ 2. The motives that impelled a Christian to the feat of confession and martyrdom.

§ 3. Martyrs' perception of their own deed and various models of their behavior.

§ 4. Voluntary confession and its place in the history of persecution.

Recommended list of dissertations

• Christianity in the Roman Empire in the II-III centuries: On the problem of the relationship between new religious movements and traditional society and the state 2004, Candidate of Historical Sciences Panteleev, Alexey Dmitrievich

• Greco-Jewish Traditions in Christian Apologies of the 2nd-4th Centuries 2002, Candidate of Historical Sciences Bolshakov, Andrey Petrovich

• The Experience of New Martyrdom in the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century: Religious and Ethical Analysis: Based on the Works of Hegumen Damaskin (Orlovsky) 2004, candidate of philosophical sciences Kapura, Natalia Vladimirovna

• The Poetics of Dreams in Early Christian Literature: On the Material of "The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity", "The Martyrdom of Marian and James" and "The Martyrdom of Montanus, Lucius, Flavian and Other Martyrs" 2013, candidate of philological sciences Kryukova, Anna Nikolaevna

• The persecution of Christians and the crisis of the ancient worldview 1998, candidate of historical sciences Amosova, Elena Valentinovna

Introduction to the thesis (part of the abstract) on the topic "The phenomenon of martyrdom in the relationship between the Christian Church and the Roman Empire: II - beginning of the IV century."

In connection with the aggravation of religious contradictions, both between different religious systems, and interfaith, due to an increase in the activity of missionary activity, the relevance of scientific research on the history of world religions in general and Christianity in particular. Of considerable interest from the point of view of both historical science and modern society is the history of the development of the Christian Church in the Roman Empire; and such a phenomenon as martyrdom plays an important role in building relationships, on the one hand, between the Christian Church and the Roman Empire, and on the other, between ordinary Christians and pagans. The reason is that martyrdom was a product of these relationships and itself, in turn, influenced their development: after all, in order for repressions against Christians to begin, certain changes were necessary in the views of the authorities on this new religion for the whole world - changes, who turned the followers of Christ on the one hand, and the pagan population on the other, from deeply indifferent groups into bitter rivals. At the same time, it was the appearance among Christians of the first victims who suffered for nothing but their religion that gave rise to such a phenomenon as martyrdom, which received its ideological justification and its heroes and had a huge impact on further pagan-Christian relations.

The study of the phenomenon of martyrdom acquires additional relevance, given the religious background of some modern international and interethnic conflicts, which are partly the result of intolerance towards each other of adherents of various religions and confessions, as well as in connection with claims for martyrdom by members of modern terrorist religious groups (the Arabic word "shahid" in translated means the same as the Greek word r.arti<; - «свидетель»1).

1 Bolotov VV Lectures on the history of the ancient Church. In 4 vols. M., 1994. T. I. S. 2.

Moreover, it is also interesting that early Christianity in the Roman Empire, by its position, may remind the modern student of the position of present-day religious sects,2 with the exception, of course, of martyrdom, which became so widespread in the first centuries of our era. The similarities that can be traced during their detailed examination and comparison can serve as additional reasons for the relevance of this topic in modern Russia. After all, as in the first centuries of our era, many people who have lost confidence in representatives of traditional Christian denominations join “totalitarian” sects, which at first offer their adherents something that they seemed to have been looking for so long and unsuccessfully. And the attitude of the rest of the population and authorities towards these phenomena partly repeats the attitude of the pagan people and Roman rulers towards Christians before the era of persecution and martyrdom, of course, not counting the active manifestation of aggression and violence.

The chronological framework of this study is the 2nd century and the beginning of the 4th century before the Mediolan Edict of 313, which equalized the position of Christians and pagans. These boundaries are explained by the fact that it was at the beginning of the II century. AD there are more or less detailed testimonies about the death for the faith of Christians, on the basis of which it is possible to investigate the phenomenon of Christian martyrdom. The upper limit is more arbitrary, since it is known that after the signing of the Edict of Mediolanum, Licinius tried to resume the persecution of Christians. But the persecution as such was not started, and besides, it was illegal, unlike the previous ones, when the Christians themselves were accused of violating the laws and customs of the state.

2 We do not compare the activities of Christian communities in the era of persecution in the Roman Empire with the destructive activities of some sects and, moreover, Islamic terrorists. Similarities with some modern sects can be observed in such signs as a small number of believers, hostility and even fear on the part of others and, as a result, a break with the family and the usual way of life characteristic of the majority, as well as passive or active denial of religious norms accepted in society. .

The degree of study of the topic. Despite the seemingly sufficient degree of study of the topic of persecution of Christians in foreign literature and the increased interest in this topic in domestic science, the problem of martyrdom as the most significant phenomenon within the framework of persecution has so far been touched upon only in relatively few monographs; in a number of works by church historians, the predominantly Christian point of view on martyrdom is considered almost without comparing it with the views of the pagan population and authorities on this problem. However, it should be noted that among the works on this problem there are quite a few that deserve careful study.

Back in the 18th century Edward Gibbon devoted two chapters of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire3 to the persecution and martyrdom of Christians. He ventured to assert that the number of martyrs was greatly exaggerated, and that “during their internal strife, Christians did much more harm to each other than they suffered from the zeal of unbelievers”4. However, Gibbon himself goes to the other extreme, speaking of the merciful and gentle attitude of the majority of pagan judges towards Christians. His attacks on Christians and Christianity are sometimes too harsh for the cautious and attentive reader to accept as reliable some of his conclusions, which may stem from a deep personal disappointment in the Christian Church.

In the 19th century the French scientist E. Renan devoted a number of pages of his book Marcus Aurelius and the End of the Ancient World to the problem of martyrdom, trying to describe the mental state of the martyrs, the reasons that prompted them to act in this way and not otherwise, and also to describe some heresies that had a considerable influence on the minds of ordinary Christians, for example, the heresy of the Montanists, known for their excessively harsh moral code even by early Christian standards. Despite some shortcomings such

3 Gibbon E. The history of the decline and destruction of the Roman Empire. SPb., 1997. T.I.

4 Ibid. pp. 118-120.

5 Renan E. Marcus Aurelius and the end of the ancient world. Yaroslavl, 1991. both the narrow chronological framework of the period under study (the very title of the book sets the upper limit - the end of the 2nd century) and the insufficient coverage of some issues related to the problem of martyrdom, for example, the issue of the status of martyrs and confessors, the work is of considerable value, since in it tells about the attitude towards martyrdom and asceticism both of the Montanists and representatives of orthodox Christianity, and of the Gnostic sects, as well as of the martyrs themselves; the attitude towards the martyrs and their desire for suffering and death for Christ on the part of enlightened pagans, etc.

In 1944, the third volume of The History of Civilization by the American scientist Will Durant was published, which he called “Caesar and Christ”6 and dedicated to the history of the struggle between the Roman pagan state and Christianity and the victory of the latter: “Caesar and Christ met in the arena of the amphitheater, and Christ won »7. The author briefly outlines the history of the persecution of Christians and describes the main heresies that existed in that era. When describing the suffering of Christians, Durant's skepticism cannot be overlooked. For example, he notes the "intense hyperbole" and the "captivating fabulousness" of the martyrs' acts; and the phrase he accidentally threw about the description of the torture of Christians by Eusebius - “we do not have at our disposal a single description of these events left by the pagans”8 - suggests that the scientist doubts the reliability of this description. Of course, much in the story of the church historian was really an exaggeration, but after all, besides Eusebius, we have other sources that tell about the torments Christians were subjected to9. If we take it as a fundamental

6 Durant W. Caesar and Christ / Per. from English. V. V. Fedorina. M., 1995.

7 Durant W. Caesar and Christ. S. 701.

8 Ibid. pp. 700-701.

9 For example, the descriptions of Lactantius in his book "On the deaths of persecutors" (Lact. De mort., XVI, 5-8; XXI, 7-11) and "Divine institutions" (Lact. Div. Inst., V, 11, 9-17), in the book of Eusebius "On the Palestinian Martyrs", as well as a letter from the Bishop of Philea, preserved thanks to the same Eusebius (Eus. NOT, VIII, 10, 4-9). From pagan sources, we can name, for example, the “Annals” of Tacitus, where in the story of Nero it is told what tortures the Christians accused of arson were subjected to (Ann., XV, 44), evidence of the exaggeration of the stories of Eusebius is the absence of descriptions created by pagans, then about many persecutions and martyrs, one could say that they did not occur at all.

Among the generalizing works on the history of early Christianity, which also touch upon the problem of persecution, one can name the book of the Italian communist scientist A. Donini "At the Origins of the Christian Religion"10, where the author describes the events of the first centuries of the history of Christianity and expresses his opinion on certain issues, related to the persecution of Christians, such as the reasons for the persecution of Christians, the acts of the martyrs and their authenticity, etc.

In W. H. K. Friend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus, 11 published at Oxford in

10 see Christianity as a social movement. The monograph is devoted to a detailed analysis of persecution and martyrdom as an integral part of them, but no more; such a problem as the essence, origin and role of martyrdom in the relationship between Christians and pagans - ordinary people - and those who were in power, as well as the perception of martyrdom by Christians and pagans, Friend concerns only insofar as it is relevant to the subject of his research. However, Friend's monograph is of undoubted value due to the use of extensive archaeological and literary material with its analysis and comparison with other sources. "Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church" is one of the fundamental works devoted to these problems in the history of early Christianity. as well as Octavia by Minucius Felix, in which Caecilius also mentions torture and painful executions prepared for Christians (Min. Fel. Oct., 12).

10 Donini A. At the origins of the Christian religion / Per. with it. I. I. Kravchenko. M., 1989.

11 Frend W. H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus. Oxford, 1965.

12 Friend W. H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. P. 13.

It is impossible not to pay attention to an interesting idea about the role of martyrdom in the conversion of pagans, expressed by the English scholar E. R. Dodts in his work “The Pagan and the Christian in Troubled Times”13, published in 1965. Dodds believes that often people accepted Christianity, “ consciously or unconsciously attracted to death," because of the possibility of martyrdom afforded to the Christian,14 in proof of which he points to some primary sources and the work of other scholars. However, he touches on the problem of martyrdom only in passing and does not develop his thought further.

In addition to the monograph by V. Friend and the work of E. R. Dodds, there are also separate articles in collections devoted both to the problem of martyrdom in general and to individual, more or less extended episodes in the history of the persecution of Christians; in particular, articles by the English Marxist J. de Saint-Croix, T. D. Barnes, W. Friend himself, and others. However, in most articles, the problems associated with the phenomenon of martyrdom are covered only in so far as it seems appropriate to the authors themselves.

Timothy David Varne, in his articles "The Acts of Martyrdom before Decius"15 and "Eusebius and the Dating of Martyrdoms"16, examines the primary sources that have come down to us from the point of view of their authenticity and correspondence to the period in which the event described took place ("The Martyrdoms before Decius"), and the degree of accuracy in the dating of this or that martyrdom by the church historian Eusebius Pamphilus (“Eusebius and the dating of martyrdoms”). The skepticism with which the author treats the primary sources, especially the works of Eusebius, and one or another opinion that seems to be well-established in science, is noticeable. The undoubted advantage of his articles is the use of all sources available to him in Latin and ancient Greek, as well as

13 E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in Troubled Times. Some aspects of religious practices in the period from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine / Per. from English. A. D. Panteleeva. SPb., 2003.

14 Dodds, E. R. Pagan and Christian in Troubled Times. pp. 216 - 217.

15 Barnes T. D. Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum // Barnes T. D. Early Christianity and the Roman Empire. London - Harvard, 1984. P. 509 - 531.

16 Barnes T. D. Eusebius and the Date of the Martyrdoms // Les martyrs de Lyon. Paris, 1978. P. 137-141. high scientific level and well-constructed conclusions, although raising some doubts. However, apart from articles, Barnes does not have a single monograph on martyrdom or persecution of Christians in general.

J. de Saint-Croix is ​​the author of several scholarly articles on the subject of persecution of Christians, which contain some very interesting ideas. For example, in his article “Why were early Christians persecuted?”17 he rejects the view of his opponent A. N. Sherwin-White that Christians were tried and sentenced because of their “stubbornness” during interrogation at court18. Saint-Croix also touches upon the problem of voluntary martyrdom in his article, but does not go beyond the assertion that voluntary martyrdom could provoke persecution or intensify the persecution that had already begun,19 and the assumption of an earlier time for the appearance of cases of voluntary martyrdom.

20 tenge of martyrdom than the middle of the 2nd century. This article is only part of the scientific discussion that began between the author and his opponent A.N.

11 of oo Law" and "Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament".

M. Finley "Studies in Ancient History". In this article, Friend examines the problem of the failure of the anti-Christian policy of the Roman Empire in the second half of the 3rd - early 4th centuries, and also touches on the issue of mu

17 Ste-Croix G. E. M. de. Why were the Early Christians Persecuted? // Studies in Ancient Society / Ed. M. Finley. London, 1984. P. 210 - 249.

18 Ste-Croix G. E. M. de. Why were the Early Christians Persecuted? P. 229 - 231.

19 Ibid. P. 234.

20 Ibid. P. 236.

21 Sherwin-White A. N. The Early Persecutions and Roman Law again // JTS, new ser. Vol. III. 1952. P. 199-213.

22 Sherwin-White A. N. Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Oxford, 1963.

23 Frend W. H. C. The Failure of the Persecution in the Roman Empire // Studies in Ancient Society. P. 263 - 287. Martyrdom. Noteworthy is the author's assertion that the strength to survive was given to the Christian Church by the willingness of its members to die for it24.

In 1978, a collection devoted to the persecution in Gaul and the martyrs of Lyons was published, in which articles by European and American scholars were published, among which the works of Willg lg pp yama Friend, Heinrich Kraft and Joseph Richard are of particular interest. Thus, Friend in his article compares the martyrdom of these two Christian women and, uniting them in one period, notes that Christianity of that time was still very characteristic of moods that originated from the late Jewish apocalyptics and

28 stories of the Maccabees. In the articles by Richard and Kraft, respectively, the problems of the relationship between the concepts of "martyr" and "confessor" and the interaction of the Church with the Montanists are considered. In addition to these works, we also note the articles by R. M. Grant and D. Fishwick, the first of which devoted his work to elucidating the fate of the Gallic martyrs and the personal attitude of this author towards them in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, and the latter considers the question of how the provincial cult “moved from living Augusts to deified characters, and then back to the reigning emperor”31.

24 Frend W. H. C. The Failure of the Persecution in the Roman Empire. P. 267.

25 Frend W. H. C. Blandina and Perpetua: two Early Christian Heroines // Les martyrs de Lyon // Colloques Internationaux du Center National de la Recherche. Paris, 1978. P. 167-175.

26 Kraft H. Die Lyoner märtyrer und der montanismus // Les martyrs de Lyon. S. 233-244.

27 Ruysschaert J. Les "martyrs" et les "confesseurs" de la lettre des églises de Lyon et da Vienne // Les martyrs de Lyon. P. 155-164.

28 Frend W. H. C. Blandina and Perpetua: two Early Christian Heroines. P. 175. About the influence, direct or indirect, of the book of Maccabees on the Christian narratives about the martyrs, as well as on the work of such writers as Irenaeus, Eusebius Pamphilus, Augustine and John Chrysostom, writes R. McMullen (MacMullen R. Enemies of the Roman Order, Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire, Cambridge, 1966, p. 84).

29 Grant R. M. Eusebius and the Martyrs of Gaul // Les martyrs de Lyon. P. 129-135.

30 Fishwick D. The Federal Cult of the Three Gauls // Les martyrs de Lyon. P. 33-43.

In 1993, the British Journal of Sociology published one hundred

32 Thia J. Bryant, in which the author explores the process of the transition of the Christian community from a closed sect to the church and its expansion, considering the period from the second half of the 2nd century to 315 and, of course, without ignoring the persecution of Christians, in which he is interested in change the relationship of the Church to those who have sinned, including the so-called "fallen".

In the article by E. Ferposon "Early Christian martyrdom and civil disobedience" in the collection "Christianity in connection with the Jews, Greeks and Romans", martyrdom is considered as an act of civil disobedience to the authorities in order to defend religious freedom and is compared with the activities of Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King Jr. in the movement for civil rights in the United States. In his article, however, due to its small volume, Ferguson does not dwell on any issue relating to the problem of martyrdom, but summarizes what has already been said and gives his opinion on this subject, naturally, in accordance with his stated point of view, and, thus nevertheless, his work is of considerable interest for the study of the problem of martyrdom, its nature and its role in the life of the Christian Church, since it contains another, not quite familiar view of this problem.

Another article from this collection, by Stuart George Hall, "Women Among the Early Christian Martyrs"34, deals with the role and place of women among Christian martyrs. Having examined some of the most famous cases of female martyrdom, such as the martyrdom of Agathonica, Blandina, Perpetua and Felicity, Charita, as well as the martyrdom of Irene, Hall comes to the conclusion that although the martyrdom staged

32 Bryant J. M. The Sect-Church Dynamic and Christian Expansion in the Roman Empire: Persecution, Penitential Discipline, and Schism in Sociological Perspective // ​​BJSoc. 1993 Vol. 44, No. 2. P. 303 - 339.

33 Ferguson E. Early Christian Martyrdom and Civil Disobedience // Christianity in Relation to Jews, Greeks, and Romans. New-York; London, 1999. P. 267 - 277.

34 Hall Stuart G. Women among the Early Martyrs // Christianity in Relation to Jews, Greeks and Romans. P. 301-321. a woman on the same level as a man, however, if she managed to survive, then in the orthodox church she could not count on the honorary position of a teacher or priest. Indeed, we do not find in early Christian literature any mention of female confessors who became teachers or presbyters. However, in fairness, it should be said that, firstly, we are not much more likely to come across references to women who survived after their confession: in most cases, stories about them end in execution; secondly, we have too little evidence of those cases when confessors became presbyters, since sources usually keep silent about their life after persecution, unless they are clergymen and writers. Hall's statement about the relationship between the terms "martyr" and "confessor" is also noteworthy: the author claims that "confessor" and "martyr" are one and the same, and that the existence of living martyrs is quite possible36. On this basis, he constantly calls his heroines either martyrs or confessors, without even citing convincing evidence from Christian sources for the identity of these terms.

Recently, a large number of articles have appeared on various problems of the history of Christianity and martyrdom, and the most popular are gender issues and the problem of violence in ancient society, for the study of which the history of persecution of Christians provides rich material. For example, in 1985 an article by Mary Ann Rossi "The Martyrdom of Perpetua, an Ordinary Woman of Late Antiquity"37 was published, where the author examines this hagiographic monument in great detail38; in 1993, an article by Chris Jones “Women, death and

35 Ibid. R. 321.

36 Ibid. R. 302.

37 Rossi Magu Ann. The Passion of Perpetua, Everywoman of Late Antiquity // http://www.womenpriests.org/theology/rossi2.asp.

38 It should be noted that the martyrdom of Perpetua generally attracts the attention of many researchers in the history of the early Church. law during Christian persecution”, dedicated to the issue of the executions of Christian

39 Stian martyrs according to Roman law.

At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century, monographs were also published on the history of persecution and martyrdom, for example, the book by the English researcher E. Joyce Salisbury “The Blood of the Martyrs. Unforeseen Consequences

40 Violence of Antiquity" in which the author examines "some of the ideas that took shape in this fundamental era" and demonstrates that already in the fourth century "Christian leaders realized how powerful martyrs are and how difficult it is to manage this influence"41. In 1995, Professor H. W. Bowersock published a short but very valuable monograph Martyrdom and Rome, which examines the relationship between martyrs and the pagan Roman state, and also explores the civic role of martyrdom and the problem of the connection between martyrdom and suicide, which he devoted two chapters of his monograph42.

In pre-revolutionary domestic science, the problem of martyrdom was touched upon in the works of such well-known scientists as Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy A.P. Lebedev43 and Professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy V.V. Bolotov44.

Arguing about the reasons for the persecution of Christians, A.P. Lebedev speaks about the martyrs and the significance of their suffering in the same spirit in which E. Ferposon wrote his article almost a century later: the most precious of all human rights is the right of free Christian conviction. This is perhaps the only statement of a scientist from which one can learn about his position on

Jones C. Women, Death and Law during the Christian Persecutions // Martyr and Martyrolo-gies / Ed. D.Wood. Cambridge (Mass.), 1993. P. 23 - 34.

Salisbury Joyce E. The Blood of Martyrs. Unintended Consequences of Ancient Violence. New York - London, 2004.

41 Salisbury Joyce E. The Blood of Martyrs. P. 3.

42 Bowersock G. W. Martyrdom and Rome. Cambridge, 1995. P. 41-74.

43 Lebedev A.P. The era of persecution of Christians and the establishment of Christianity in the Greco-Roman world under Constantine the Great. SPb., 2003, passim.

44 Bolotov VV Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. At 4 tg. M., 1994. T. I. S. 2 - 9.

45 Lebedev A.P. The era of persecution of Christians. C. 9. attitude towards martyrdom. In the future, when mentioning any Christians who died for their faith, he confines himself to an analysis of martyrdom and other testimonies from the point of view of their authenticity and the correspondence to the truth of the information they report. Lebedev's monograph is of considerable importance and is interesting in that, firstly, the church historian analyzes the surviving sources with his usual thoroughness and conscientiousness, and, secondly, somewhat losing sight of the attitude towards the martyrdom of Christians and its influence on their behavior, he pays great attention to the attitude towards Christians of the Gentiles - ordinary people and officials.

V.V. Bolotov, whose lectures on the history of the Ancient Church were published shortly after his death, attaches such importance to the problem of martyrdom as is generally possible when lecturing on the history of the Church in general. Thus, describing some of the heresies, he necessarily mentions the attitude of their founders and adherents towards martyrdom. In addition, at the very beginning of the second volume, several pages are devoted to the problem of martyrdom, where the scientist analyzes in detail the origin and meaning of the words "martyr" and "confessor", arguing that it would be more correct to use the word "witness" instead of the word "martyr" as the closest meaning to the ancient Greek word "tsartod"47.

In the 20th century, monographs devoted to the history of early Christianity were published in the Soviet Union, among which are the books by I. S. Sventsitskaya “From the Community to the Church”48 and “The Secret Writings of the First Christians”49, by A. B. Ranovich “Essay on the History early Christian church"50, A.P.

46 See, for example, his description of Montanism. Bolotov VV Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. T. I. S. 351-364.

47 Bolotov VV Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. T. II. pp. 2 - 9.

48 Sventsitskaya I. S. From the community to the church // Early Christianity: pages of history. M., 1989.

49 Sventsitskaya I. S. Secret Writings of the First Christians. M., 1981.

50 Ranovich A. B. Essay on the history of the early Christian church // Ranovich A. B. About early Christianity. M., 1959. S. 196-454.

Kazhdan "From Christ to Constantine"51, R. Yu. Vipper "Rome and Early Christianity"52. There are also articles devoted, in particular, to the persecution of Christians, for example, articles by E. M. Shtaerman53, M. E. Sergeenko54. However, since studies on the history of Christianity had to be based on the theory of scientific atheism, scholars who touched on the topic of persecution of Christians had to either assert that there were much fewer persecutions and, accordingly, martyrs than they write about it55, or consider the struggle of paganism with Christianity as the struggle of the exploiters against the growing masses of the people and the struggle for independence56. So, for example, I. S. Sventsit-kaya in his book “From the Community to the Church” claims that Septimius Severus issued a special order in Egypt against conversion to Christianity and Judaism, since “in Egypt these religions were quite common, and their religious slogans were used to oppose

51 Each A. From Christ to Constantine. M., 1965.

52 Vipper R.Yu. Rome and Early Christianity // Selected Works in 2 vols. T. II. Rostov-on-Don, 1995. S. 205 - 477.

53 Shtaerman E.M. Persecution of Christians in the 3rd century // VDI. 1940. No. 2. S. 96-105.

54 Sergeenko M.E. Persecution of Decius // VDI. 1980. No. 1. S. 170-176.

55 For example, V. A. Fedosik, based on a small number of inscriptions with the word “martyr” in the western part of the empire dating back to the 3rd-4th centuries, refutes “the thesis widespread among theologians about a large number of Christians who died during persecution” (Fedosik V A. Church and State: Criticism of Theological Concepts, Minsk, 1988, p. 6). But after all, Christians did not necessarily beat out this word on a tombstone or in a catacomb next to a niche for the deceased; moreover, they often bought ready-made tombstones from pagan masters, which is why in Christian inscriptions there is even a dedication to the gods Manam (letters D M) more than once (See: Fedorova E. V. Introduction to Latin epigraphy. M., 1982. C .200). Finally, we must not forget that many Christians, especially from the middle of the 3rd century, died as confessors, not martyrs, and also that the authorities could not give the bodies of the executed martyrs to their fellow believers. A. B. Ranovich also considered the number of deaths as a result of persecution in some cases exaggerated (Ranovich A. B. Essay on the history of the early Christian church // Ranovich A. B. On early Christianity. M., 1959. P. 335,411). J. Bryant also writes that the number of victims in the first two centuries of Christianity was negligible (Bryant J. M. The Sect-Church Dynamic and Christian expansion in the Roman Empire. P. 314).

56 Similar arguments (regarding the socio-economic and political background of the persecution) are also found in some foreign scientists, for example, in A. Donini (Donini A. At the Origins of the Christian Religion, pp. 179, 185, 188, etc.); hints at the political background of J. Johnson (Johnson G. J. De conspiration delatorum: Pliny and Christians Revisited / / Latomus. 1988. T. 47, fasc. 2. P. 418,421-422). authorities, that is, that the North thus sought to protect Egypt and the entire empire from rebellions and popular uprisings; and E. M. Shtaerman directly points out that “Christianity arose as a movement of slaves and the poor, powerless and oppressed, conquered and scattered by Rome peoples”, and that this is the main reason for the government persecution of Shve

SO ca. But, if you do not pay attention to the inevitable (and often used by the author himself against his will) ideological clichés, you can see that on the pages of these works many interesting remarks are made regarding the history of the persecution of Christians and the relationship of the Christian Church with the Roman state - that background and those circumstances, without the study of which the study of the phenomenon of Christian martyrdom would be difficult.

In modern Russian science, the situation is such that, despite the seemingly large number of works on the history of the early Christian church, a significant number of them are reprinted works of pre-revolutionary Russian scientists or works of foreign historians of antiquity and the church translated into Russian, as well as survey works, including popular science literature on the history of Christianity, in which the problem of martyrdom and its role is at best awarded a few pages, and most often only a few mentions in cases where the authors consider it necessary59.

However, now domestic science is also awakening interest in the history of early Christianity, which is mainly devoted to scientific articles, but not monographs. Various issues related to the persecution of Christians and - indirectly - to Christian martyrdom, are explored in the work

57 Sventsitskaya I. S. From the community to the church // Early Christianity: pages of history. M., 1989. S. 169.

58 Shtaerman E. M. Persecution of Christians in the III century. P. 99. See also: Ranovich A. B. Essay on the history of the early Christian church. S. 327.

59 See, for example: Lortz J. History of the Church. M., 1999; Gonzalez Justo JI. History of Christianity. St. Petersburg, 2003; Talberg N. History of the Christian Church. M., 2000; Posnov M. E. History of the Christian Church (before the division of the Churches in 1054). Moscow, 2005. E. V. Sergeeva (Amosova)60, Yu. K. Kolosovskaya61, E. M. Rosenblum62, A. D. Panteleeva63, A. V. Kolobov64 etc

So, despite the seemingly large number of works, we see that the topic of Christian martyrdom as one of the phenomena in the history of early Christianity has not yet found a more or less interested researcher in modern Russian science.

Source base. The sources available to us are plentiful and varied, but mostly written sources.

It seems expedient to divide all written sources into sources of pagan65 and Christian origin. Last, once

60 Amosova E. V. The persecution of Christians and the crisis of the ancient world outlook / Abstract of the thesis. diss. for the competition uch. step. cand. ist. Sciences. Veliky Novgorod, 1998; she: Spontaneous persecution of Christians as a manifestation of the crisis of ancient mass consciousness // Antique World and Archeology. Issue. 10. Saratov, 1999. P. 88 - 97; she: "Golden Age" in the Roman Empire, the persecution of Christians and the problem of tolerance in ancient society // Bulletin of NovGU. Series "Humanities: history, literary criticism, linguistics". 2003. No. 25. S. 4-8.

61 Kolosovskaya Yu.K. Christian communities of the late Roman city on the Danube // Man and society in the ancient world / Ed. ed. d. ist. Sciences JI. P. Marinovich. M., 1998. S. 224 - 266; she: Hagiographic works as a historical source // VDI. 1992. No. 4. S. 222-229. l)

Rosenblum E. M. Antique heroic tradition and Christian martyrdom on the example of St. Ignatius and Anaxarch // Antiquitas Juventae / Ed. E. V. Smykova, A. V. Mosolkina. Saratov, 2006. S. 203 - 211; he: Ideas about the behavior of the martyr on the material of the “Martyrdom of St. Justin the Philosopher" // Antiquitas Juventae. Saratov, 2007, pp. 271 - 280; he: The ideal of the martyr's behavior in Prudent's poem "On the Crowns" // Antiquitas Juventae. Saratov, 2008, pp. 150 - 175.

63 Panteleev A. D. “Let's assume that prison is a burden even for Christians”: early Christianity and prison // Power and Culture. Collection of the conference in memory of the founder of the Center for Historical Psychology V.P. Denisenko (November 25, 2006). SPb., 2007, ss. 87-101 // Access mode: http://sno.7hits.net/html-textes/pant; he: Christians and the Roman army from Paul to Tertullian // Mnemon. Research and publications on the history of the ancient world / Ed. prof. E. D. Frolova. Issue. 3. St. Petersburg, 2004, pp. 413 - 428; he: Christianity in the Roman Empire in the 11th - III centuries. (On the problem of the relationship between new religious movements and traditional society and the state) / Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of Cand. ist. Sciences. St. Petersburg, 2004; he: Christians in the reign of Marcus Aurelius // Mnemon. Issue. 4. 2005. S. 305 - 316; he: Victims of globalism: the edict of Caracalla and the situation of Christians at the beginning of the III century. // Mnemon. Issue. 5. 2006. P. 95 - 110; he: Religious tolerance and intolerance in Rome in the II - III centuries. // Mnemon. Issue. 5.2006. pp. 407 - 420.

64 Kolobov A.V. The Roman army and Christianity in the east of the empire (I - the beginning of the 4th century AD) // Bulletin of the Perm State University. Issue. 5. 2005. S. 21-25. Access mode: http://paxb2.narod.ru/rome/kolobovarmy.doc.

6 Pagan sources here refer to sources created by non-Christian authors. perhaps more numerous, because, firstly, the Church was interested in preserving the testimony of the valor and faith of its martyrs, and, secondly, martyrdom was a reality that any Christian inevitably faced in an era of persecution, and, Faced with this reality, he could not remain indifferent. Hence the many acts of martyrs who were witnesses to the death of their brethren for the faith immediately after this event or some time later, sometimes several years later; a large number of treatises on martyrdom and martyrs, sometimes with detailed instructions on how to behave, what should and should not be done; letters to and from the martyrs, as well as references both to those who completed their testimony with death and those who remained alive after all the trials, and to those who, frightened or unable to withstand the torment and threats, performed the action required by the authorities; finally, even poetic works dedicated to the martyrs.

Direct memories of witnessing for the faith and the death of Christian martyrs have come down to us in acts and passions (passiones, fxccpTUpicx), which have been repeatedly published and republished since modern times in one composition or another, depending on the principle by which these testimonies were selected. Acts and passions are two distinct types of hagiographic literature. The acts are records of the trials of the martyrs, which were not necessarily verbatim, but could be based on the recollections of witnesses: most of the acts retell the dialogues between the martyrs and the judges66; the passions are descriptions of the last days and the death of the martyr; finally, the Lives represent the latest

66 Yu. K. Kolosovskaya calls hagiography “a special genre of late antique culture”: “hagiographic works were written in the form of dialogues and elogies, which was favorite for antiquity, most suitable for glorifying the Christian martyr and his victory over pagan polytheism” (Kolosovskaya Yu.K. Christian communities of the late Roman city on the Danube, p. 242).

67 Salisbury Joyce E. The Blood of Martyrs. P. 4. A curious classification was proposed back in the first half of the 20th century by I. Delaye, who singled out historical passions, panegyrics to martyrs and “artificial” passions in hagiographic literature. See Delehaye H. Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires. Bruxelles, 1921. P. 9. A new type of hagiographic literature according to the time of occurrence. The latter were created according to a certain canon developed over a long period of time.

At present, historical science has established how confidently one or another act or passion can be considered genuine and related to the time in which the given martyr suffered. Of course, this is important information that helps to find out what really happened to the heroes of these descriptions and how these events were perceived. We can confidently declare the authenticity of many acts of martyrdom, primarily due to their origin: in the Roman system of administration, the recording of trials was given considerable attention, and a secretary or other person who was responsible for recording the progress of the trial had to sit next to the judge. , including the verdict (Pas. Seil., 14; Mart. Pion., 9, 1-3 etc.). It is probably for this reason that many acts of martyrs have come down to us: Christians took care to seek out and preserve as much evidence as possible about the exploits of the martyrs and sometimes paid a lot of money to be admitted to the judicial archives68. Subsequently, when the Church ceased to be persecuted, this task became easier.

However, as A. G. Dunaev writes, work with hagiographic literature is complicated by the fact that, firstly, Christians were interested in the “liturgical and spiritually edifying use” of martyr acts; secondly, the task of determining the actual reliability is difficult

68 For example, the compiler of the acts of Tarakh, Probus and Andronicus paid, as indicated in the prologue to these acts, two hundred denarii to the official for access to the necessary materials (See: Acts of the Holy Martyrs Tarakh, Probus and Andronicus. Epistle of the Cilician Christians to the Iconians / / Journal "Spiritual conversation, weekly published at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. St. Petersburg, 1859. T. VIII. S. 41 - 57, 91 - 108). Yu. K. Kolosovskaya also notes the use by the compilers of hagiographic monuments of historical sources and data from oral tradition (Kolosovskaya Yu. K. Hagiographic works as a historical source // VDI. 1992. No. 4. P. 223). At the same time, A. Donini excludes the use of state judicial archives by the compilers of the acts of martyrs and writes that “in the best case, we could talk about the notes of some believer who was present at the trial” (Donini A. At the Origins of the Christian Religion, p. 203) . due to the fact that "the usual methods (historical details, chronology, formal analysis, comparison with papyri and genuine legal

69 documents, etc.) are not always evidence”.

The lives of the saints differ in many ways from the acts and passions of the martyrs, and it is more difficult to use them as a historical source, primarily because of the conditional nature of the narrative: the most important thing in the life is the feat of the martyr and his suffering, and the year in which they took place, in what locality and who was present at the trial, as well as the circumstances associated with the martyrdom, and the historical era, were considered secondary, and although some indications are still given, they are most often not entirely accurate. But we must not forget that the lives were created by their authors not as a historical source in the proper sense of the word, and even, perhaps, not as a source on the history of Christianity, but rather as a pious reading (in Russia, for example, monthly collections of lives compiled first by Metropolitan Macarius, and then by St. Demetrius of Rostov, received the name of the Four Mena and was a favorite reading for every day). It would occur to a rare believer to analyze the life and suffering of this or that saint as a source of knowledge on the history of the church. Moreover, the lives appear much later than the acts and passions of the martyrs, and most often are their literary processing. And yet this does not mean that the lives of the saints cannot be used. In a number of cases, this is the only, albeit heavily revised, version of more ancient hagiographic monuments that, for one reason or another, have not survived to our time, and here one cannot do without hagiographic literature. You just need to be careful about the event outline of a life, if possible, separating reliable or at least plausible information from unreliable.

69 Dunaev A. G. Preface to the martyrdom of St. Polycarp // Writings of the Apostolic Men. M., 2003. S. 393 - 394.

Finally, it should be noted that even sources recognized as unreliable or embellished can shed light on some issues related to martyrdom in the history of the Church and the Roman state: additional details may indicate an emotional attitude towards the martyrs and the authors' ideas about martyrdom. The creation of embellished or even completely unreliable testimonies of the author in most cases was driven by well-defined goals.

This work uses the Oxford Collection of Acts of the Martyrs, edited by Herbert Musurillo, who performed a parallel translation of these documents from ancient Greek and Latin into English and provided the texts with some necessary comments. Some of these texts have already been translated into Russian, such as Martyrdom

71 St. Justin the Philosopher and his comrades and the life of Saint Apollonius the Hermit72, however, most of it remains untranslated into Russian.

Undoubtedly, the source of our information about Christianity and some ideas about martyrdom is Holy Scripture, from which the knowledge in the field of Christian morality was drawn, which guided both all Christians, and, in particular, martyrs. However, in addition to the books of Holy Scripture, which were already revered by the ancient Christians and were included in the canonical list, there were other writings about the holy family and the apostles that were not included in the Christian canon and were called apocrypha. Of course, they cannot be taken literally.

70 The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford, 1972.

71 Martyrdom of St. Justin the Philosopher // Works of ancient Christian apologists / Per. from ancient Greek A. G. Dunaeva. SPb., 1999. S. 362 - 372.

72 Life of St. Apollonius the Hermit // Works of ancient Christian apologists / Per. from the ancient V. A. Arutyunova-Fidanyan. pp. 394 - 406.

73 A. P. Skogorev writes that those works that meet three conditions at once can be called Christian apocrypha: “firstly, the plot of the work is connected with biblical history, and its characters are the characters; secondly, this text was not included in the Holy Scriptures; and, most importantly, at one time or another he claimed the role of a source of faith, or was perceived as such” (italics by A. P. Skogorev). Skogorev A.P. Early Christian Apocrypha and religious searches of the masses of the late antique era // Skogorev A.P. Apocryphal deeds of the apostles. Arabic gospel of the childhood of the Savior. SPb., 2000. S. 11-12. toric sources, because they are often full of fantastic or too naturalistic details, but the apocryphal writings reflected the mood of the believers of the era in which they were written, and partly formed religious stereotypes in those circles where they were considered a source of faith. From the apocrypha, as well as from the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures, comparative turns, symbolism and ways of perceiving the world were drawn. Indeed, the final list of the books of the New Testament was compiled at the Council of Carthage in 419, and even after that some apocryphal writings continued to be popular, and it was they who became the source of the information from the life of Mary, Joseph, the apostles that we now have: stories about Christmas and childhood Mary, about the method of crucifixion of the Apostle Peter (upside down), etc.

An interesting group of primary sources of Christian origin are apologies, which appeared especially often in II - early. 3rd century Their authors are Justin the Philosopher (early II century - 165-166)74, Tatian (c. 120 - c. Melito (P century), Tertullian (c. 160 - after 220) - addressed both individuals and the entire pagan population of the empire in order to convince them that, thanks to their moral behavior and obedience to laws, Christians are not only harmless, but even useful subjects, and, consequently, their

74 Justin is a philosopher and martyr. Creations / Per. arch. P. Preobrazhensky. M., 1995.

75 Tatian. Word to the Hellenes / Per. D. E. Afinogenova // Early Christian apologists of the II-IV centuries. M., 2000. S. 93-105.

76 Athenagoras. Intercession for Christians by Athenagoras the Athenian / Per. A. V. Muravyova // Early Christian Apologists. pp. 45 - 73.

77 A fragment of Melito's apology is preserved in Eusebius Pamphilus' Church History (NE, IV, 26:5-11).

Tertullian. Apologetic // Tertullian. Apology / Per. from lat. Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. M.; SPb., 2004. S. 210-297.

79 A. V. Vdovichenko writes that the authors of the apologia pursued a twofold goal: “to defend Christianity by means of literary struggle and at the same time to announce in the truth their explicit or implied addressees - interested interlocutors, which was thought to be useful for both sides.” Vdovichenko A. V. Christian Apology. Brief review of the tradition // Early Christian apologists. P. 5. to the form of addressing the audience, and to the genre of dialogue, popular among ancient writers, as, for example, Minucius does in his apology

Felix (second half II - early III century). Most likely, the appearance of apologia in such a quantity in the 2nd century was indeed, as Gaston Boissier believed, connected with the hopes of Christians for reasonable and humane emperors, whom, as they thought, they could try to convince of the expediency of pursuing a more lenient policy towards believers in Christ,81 without fear of further reprisals, which are generated by outbursts of anger and irritation when the state is led by less balanced rulers. Subsequent events, however, did not justify these hopes, but new apologies from time to time called the pagan population and authorities to humanity and common sense. The presence of apologies shows that Christian writers still did not leave hope for an end to persecution in the state, despite the fact that it was precisely these persecutions that delivered so many martyrs to the Church, which were then glorified.

A considerable number of theological treatises were devoted to martyrdom and the behavior of Christians during persecution. The earliest among these are the writings of the African Christian writer Tertullian, probably the most prolific of all Latin Christian authors. It is known that he became a Christian already at a mature age, and around 203 - 204 he became interested in Montanism, in which he found that severity of morals and that mysticism that he could not find in the orthodox Church, and around 213 he finally switched to Montanism. If we trace the development of Tertullian's views in his works, we will notice that until 203-204. they depict a true adherent of the Church, a fighter against heresies and an eloquent apo

80 Minucius Felix. Octavius ​​/ Per. arch. P. Preobrazhensky // Works of ancient Christian apologists. pp. 226 - 271.

81 Boissier G. The fall of paganism. A Study of the Last Religious Struggle in the West in the 4th Century // Collected Works in 10 vols. SPb., 1998. T. V. S. 348.

82 On Tertullian himself, see: Preobrazhensky P. Tertullian and Rome. M., 2004. logeta. Such, in particular, are his “Apology”83, “To the Gentiles”84, “The Antidote for Scorpions” - a treatise directed against the Gnostics, and also, perhaps, the treatises “On Baptism”, “To the Martyrs”, “On Spectacles”, "About repentance." Further, in his treatises, the bias towards Montanism is more and more clearly traced; for example, this is clearly seen in such treatises as "O du

OS OfC n "t OQ she" , "To the Scapula" , "On the wreath of a warrior" , "On the flight during the persecution" , "On

89 Lent, against "spiritual" Christians, etc.

Literature specifically devoted to the question of the behavior of Christians during persecution and martyrdom can also include Origen’s “Exhortation to Martyrdom” (c. 185-254)90 and the writings of Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200-258), among them “ Book of the Fallen"91, "Praise to Martyrdom"92 and "Letter to Fortunatus on Exhortation to Martyrdom".

Origen, as you know, was born into a Christian family, his father suffered a martyr's death during the persecution under Septimius Severus. Origen himself soon became a teacher at the Alexandrian catechumens school. During the persecution under Decius, Origen was captured and imprisoned, but he did not become a martyr and was released, and died two or three years later.

The life of Cyprian of Carthage is known to us thanks to his deacon Pontius, who wrote a biography of the bishop, as well as from his own letters and

83 Tertullian. Apology / Per. from lat. Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. M.; SPb., 2004. S. 210-297.

84 Tertullian. To the Gentiles // Tertullian. Apology. pp. 145 - 209.

85 Tertullian. About the soul / Per., in stupas. Article, comments and index by A. Yu. Bratukhin. SPb., 2004.

86 Tertullian. To the Scapula / Per. from lat. Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. pp. 308 - 314.

87 Tertulliani De corona // PL. Vol. 2.Col. 73 - 102.

88 Tertulliani De fuga in persecutionis // PL. Vol, 2. Col. 101-120.

89 Tertulliani De jejuniis // PL. Vol. 2.Col. 953 - 978.

90 Origen. Exhortation to martyrdom // Fathers and teachers of the Church of the III century. Anthology in 2 vols. / Comp. Hieromonk Hilarion (Alfeev). M. 1996. T. II. pp. 36 - 67.

91 Cyprian. On the Fallen // Works of the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage. M., 1999. S. 208 - 231.

92 Cyprian. Praise to Martyrdom // Works of the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian. pp. 386 - 404. It is difficult to prove the authenticity of this work, but it is also difficult to recognize them as false. This is probably why the "Praise to Martyrdom" was included by the editors of this edition among the works of Cyprian.

93 Cyprian. To Fortunatus on exhortation to martyrdom // Works of the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian. pp. 354 - 376. treatises. Having become a Christian already in adulthood, Cyprian was subsequently consecrated as a bishop of the Carthaginian church. During the persecution under Decius, he went into hiding, but continued to take care of his church through correspondence, and during the years of persecution under Valerian he was executed. From his letters and treatises, we can trace what questions worried Christians of that time and how the position of the Church changed in relation to the problem of the power of the bishop and the problem of those who fell away, that is, those who sacrificed to other gods, as well as to infant baptism and other problems.

In other theological treatises, martyrdom is only mentioned, but these few paragraphs, and sometimes only a few lines, found in sometimes very extensive works, provide the researcher with a lot of valuable information about those details regarding the attitude of the Christian Church to martyrdom, which could escape the attention of the authors of the treatises. devoted entirely to this phenomenon. Thus, for example, the special privileges of martyrs and confessors are mentioned in the Apostolic Tradition by Hippolytus of Rome (Hipp., 9) and in Tertullian's writings On the Soul and On Fasting; the question of readiness for martyrdom and the desire for it is also touched upon by Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 - c. 215) in his Stromata (Clem. Alex., Strom., IV, passim)95.

The epistolary heritage of Christian writers also contains a lot of valuable information about how martyrdom and persecution were perceived in their contemporary era, and how they themselves treated this issue, for example, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch96, the correspondence of Cyprian of Carthage97,

94 St. Hippolytus of Rome. Apostolic Tradition / Per. from Latin and preface. priest P. Buburuza // Theological Works. M., 1970. Issue. 5. S. 276 - 296.

9 Clement of Alexandria. Stromata / Per. from ancient Greek E. V. Afonasina. In 3 vols. SPb., 2003. T. II.

96 Ignatius of Antioch. The messages of St. Ignatius the God-bearer / Per. arch. P. Preobrazhensky. SPb., 1902.

97 Van Eysing, however, doubts that the letters of St. Cyprian, as well as later Church Fathers, were indeed real letters, although they were addressed and sent to a certain circle of people. He points out that these letters were written for public reading, and that Cyprian, Lactantius and other Church Fathers were greatly influenced by the legacy of Seneca (Van den Bergh van Eysinga G. A. Early Christianity "s Letters /

Dionysius of Alexandria, as well as the collective letters of the Gallic Churches to the Churches in Asia Minor and the Church of Smyrna to the Church of Philomelia. The latter, like the letters of Dionysius of Alexandria, have been preserved only in more or less extensive quotations in the Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius Pamphilus (c. 260 - c. 340), which is valuable for us not only as the first attempt to fully present the history of Christianity from the time of Jesus Christ to the period contemporary to Eusebius, but also as a work that includes fragments of written monuments of that era that have not come down to us in their original form98.

Finally, one of the most interesting groups of sources of Christian origin are poetic works dedicated to martyrdom and martyrs, among which, for example, the work of Aurelius Prudentius Clement "On the Crowns"99.

Actually church-historical works are also of considerable interest for the study of the phenomenon of martyrdom, as they illuminate the events, situation and ideas of the people of that time: after all, it is difficult to understand a phenomenon or process if you do not know the conditions under which they arose and passed. One of these works is the "Ecclesiastical History" of the Bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius Pamphilus (c. 265 - c. 340), covering the first three centuries of the history of the development of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. True, the significance of the work of Eusebius is somewhat reduced when studying the phenomenon of martyrdom and the history of persecution in the western provinces, since he knew very little about this part of the empire (perhaps because he did not read Latin)100, but this is compensated by the abundance of

Tg. By F. J. Fabri, Dr. M. Conley, 2001 // Godsdienstwetenschappelijke Studien, 1951. S. 3 - 31. // Access mode: http://www.ecclesia.reUgmuseum.ru/word/EARLY%20CHRISTIANITY.doc.

According to scientists, the number of these almost verbatim extracts reaches 250. See Krivushin IV Birth of church historiography: Eusebius of Caesarea. Ivanovo, 1995. S. 9.

99 Aurelii Prudentii Clementi Liber Peristaphanon // PL. Vol. 60 // Access mode: http:// thelatinlibrary.com/prud.html.

100 Barnes T. D. Eusebius and the Date of Martyrdoms. P. 139. the formation he gives in the East. In addition, Eusebius Pamphilus' "Ecclesiastical History" is not limited to describing the events of the past; it also contains the author's memoirs about the Great Persecution he himself experienced, and, of course, tells about the martyrs and the sufferings that they endured for their faith. And since Eusebius, talking about events that he heard about or which he himself was a witness, also reported his opinion, we get very valuable information about the perception of persecution and, consequently, martyrdom at the beginning of the 4th century, of course, with the reservation that his statements are not entirely impartial: the historian himself admits that he sought to tell “only about what can be beneficial, firstly, to ourselves, and then to our descendants” (Eus. HE, VIII, 2, 3 ). Eusebius describes in most detail the events of the 1st century AD, connected with the life of Jesus Christ and the deeds of the apostles, up to the death of John the Theologian (the first two books and half of the third are dedicated to them) and the end of the 3rd - first quarter of the 4th century, when the Great Persecution took place and then the approval of Constantine on the throne and his reprisal against Licinius (books eight, ninth and tenth); the remaining four and a half books are devoted to the history of the Church in the second and third centuries, although it was in these centuries that most (six out of eight) persecutions of Christians took place. I. V. Krivushin explains this by the fact that for Eusebius this period does not have much independent significance: “by removing everything new and unusual from history, Eusebius tries to compress the time between the apostles and Diocletian as much as possible in order to put Christ and Constantine face to face”101. From Krivushin's point of view, the church historian pays the most attention to precisely these two macro-events, between which all other events in the history of Christianity of that period are placed. Even earlier, a similar point of view was expressed by A.P. Lebedev, arguing that Eusebius “sees in the persecution a visual expression of the triumph of the Evans.

101 Krivushin IV Birth of church historiography: Eusebius of Caesarea. S. 51.

102 Ibid. pp. 23-24. gel truth over the forces that oppose it. Perhaps, precisely in order to show this triumph, the church historian dwells in most detail on the earthly history of Christ and the victory of Christianity under Constantine the Great. Eusebius tries to do this with the help of stories about the moral victory of the weakest side (martyrs) over the strong (persecutors of Christianity). In fact, according to the just opinion of A.P. Lebedev, “the history of Christianity is positively resolved for Eusebius into the history of martyrdom”104.

Outlining the history of Christianity, Eusebius sometimes exaggerates or understates the significance of certain events. But in his work, he also cites entire excerpts from documents related to the era he describes, and it is from them that we learn about the events that took place before the beginning of the 4th century. (True, it is sometimes very difficult to verify the accuracy of his citation, and we have to rely only on Eusebius himself, since many of the sources quoted by him have been lost). He is not always accurate in determining the number of martyrs, even if he himself witnessed their suffering, but many of his information are supported by the correspondence of Christian clergy, acts of martyrs and other documents that he often cites on the pages of his work.

Another work that can be called church history is the book “On the deaths of the persecutors” by Lactantius (c. 260 - after 326)105. The main focus of the author in this book is on the Great Persecution and the fate of persecuting emperors; the same persecutions that preceded it are given just enough attention to tell about the transgression of the persecuting emperors and the punishment that befell them for it. In other words, the story of these persecutions "turns in Lactantius into a series of exetria", with

103 Lebedev A.P. Church historiography in its main representatives from the 4th to the 20th centuries. SPb., 2001. S. 79.

104 Lebedev A.P. Church historiography in its main representatives from the 4th to the 20th centuries. pp. 80-81.

105 Lactants. About the deaths of the persecutors. SPb., 1998. called to show the fate of emperors who persecuted Christians106. It is interesting that Lactantius dwells only on those emperors who persecuted Christians, whose fates served as evidence of God's wrath: these are Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian and the tetrarch emperors.

It is impossible not to pay attention to the writings that came out from the pen of Gnostic authors. Most of the Gnostic literature was considered lost until in 1945 in Upper Egypt, not far from the town of Nag Hammadi, papyri were found, among which were Gnostic writings that were considered long and irretrievably lost. Gnosticism was studied by such scholars as E. V. Afonasin107, M. K. Trofimova108, A. JI. Khosroev109, G. Jonas110. It is known that the Gnostics denied martyrdom as a feat or, like Heracleon, placed it below a righteous life111, and since their teaching was successful, their judgments about martyrdom undoubtedly also influenced Christians.

Despite the obvious in many cases subjectivity of sources of Christian origin, we cannot but take them seriously and regard them only as propaganda literature, since, firstly, most of these sources are of great interest as evidence of the moods that prevailed during this period, which influenced on the behavior of martyrs and those changed under the influence of orthodox and heretical thinkers; and, secondly, a considerable number of written documents that have not survived have come down to us in quotations and retellings of subsequent authors, including Eusebius Pamphilus, in whose “Ecclesiastical History” one can find fragments of letters from Dionysius of Alexandria (Eus. NOT,

106 Tyulenev V. M. Lactantsy: Christian historian at the crossroads of eras. SPb., 2000. S. 16.

107 Afonasin E. V. Antique Gnosticism. Fragments and evidence. SPb., 2002.

108 Trofimova M. K. Historical and philosophical questions of Gnosticism (Nag Hammadi, II, op. 2,3,6,7). M., 1979.

109 Khosroev A. L. Alexandrian Christianity according to texts from Nag-Khalshadi. M., 1991.

110 Jonas G. Gnosticism. SPb., 1998.

111 Khosroev A. L. Alexandrian Christianity according to texts from Nag Hammadi. S. 166.

VI, 40, 1-42, 5; 44; 45, 1) and a letter from Bishop Phileas to the Tmuites (Eus. HE, VIII, 10, 2-10), authentic fragments of Meliton's apology (Eus. HE, IV, 26, 5-11), letters from the Smyrna Church and the Gallic Churches (Eus NE, IV, 15, 345; V, 1, 3 - 3, 3), as well as the acts of some Christian martyrs, for example, the martyrdom of Potamiena and Basilides (Eus. NE, VI, 5), acts of Marina (Eus. NE, VD, 15).

Another group is represented by sources of pagan origin, no less diverse than Christian sources. Among the pagan writings, in which there are some remarks concerning Christian martyrdom, it is necessary to single out, firstly, scientific and philosophical treatises, among which are the works of the famous ancient physician Galen, * 1 I L of the Stoic philosophers Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius; secondly, polemical literature (“The True Word” by Celsus114; “Against the Christians” by Porphyry115) and fiction (the writings of Lucian116); thirdly, biographies of Roman emperors, especially emperors of the II - IV centuries

11 * 7 kov, in which one can also find reports about the policy pursued by them in relation to Christians, albeit rare; and finally Pliny's correspondence

Jr., which touches upon the problem of Christianity and provides information about the author's personal attitude to this issue.

Let's take a closer look at some of the aforementioned writings. The "true word" of Celsus has come down to us in the form of extensive fragments in Origen's book "Against Celsus" (passim), and there is no doubt about their authenticity, since Origen set as his goal the refutation of the conclusions, made

112 Epictetus. Conversations / Per. from ancient Greek and note. G. A. Taronyapa. M., 1997.

113 Marcus Aurelius. Reflections / Per. from Greek S. Rogovina. Magnitogorsk, 1994.

114 Celsius. True Word / Per. A. B. Ranovich // Ranovich A. B. Ancient Critics of Christianity. M., 1990. S. 270 - 331.

115 Porfiry's work has come down to us only in fragments preserved by Augustine the Blessed and Macarius. See: Ranovich A. B. Antique Critics of Christianity. M., 1990. S. 351-391.

116 Lucian. Works in 2 tg. / Per. N. P. Baranov, D. V. Sergeevsky. SPb., 2001.

117 Rulers of Rome. Biographies of Roman Emperors from Hadrian to Diocletian / Per. S. N. Kondratiev. SPb., 2001.

118 Pliny the Younger. Letters / Per. M. E. Sergeenko, A. I. Dovatura. M., 1982. nykh in the "True Word"119. If Celsus had even the slightest sign of sympathy for Christians or approval, Origen would not hesitate for a moment to use this treatise for propaganda purposes.

In the second half of the 2nd century, the friend and teacher of Marcus Aurelius, Cornelius Fronto, delivered a speech against Christians, which, unfortunately, has not survived to our time in its original form. However, W. Friend believes that Cecilius's speech in Octavia by Mark Minucius Felix is ​​nothing more than a "fragmentary retelling" of Fronto's speech against Christians120. It is difficult to both agree and completely refute this statement: after all, at that time Christians were really interested, and many educated people often put forward similar claims against Christians, so it is very likely that Minucius Felix used speeches already delivered and recorded, and then that he himself reproduced the arguments and accusations that Christians have so often heard in their address.

The writings of Lucian of Samosata were not devoted to the problem of Christianity; moreover, the followers of Christ appear only occasionally in some of them, and the author mentions Christians only when it is required in order to describe the next adventure of his character. Only one work, "Friend of the Fatherland, or Instruction", contains many allusions to Christianity and the manner of Christians to preach, exposing the vices and weaknesses of the gods. However, the satirical works of Lucian are interesting for the researcher because they show, albeit in passing, what the relationship between Christians was like. Particularly interesting from this point of view is the essay “On the Death of Peregrine”, where Lucian, leading his hero Peregrine-Proteus through various trials, also describes the episode with his short stay in prison for confessing Christianity. Lucian go

119 Origen. Against Celsus / Per. L. Pisareva. SPb., 2008.

120 Frend W. H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. P. 251 - 252.

121 Lucian. Friend of the Fatherland, or Teaching / Per. N. P. Baranova // Works in 2 tg. T. II. 306-316.

122 Lucian. On the death of Peregrine / Per. N. P. Baranova // Works in 2 vols. T.II. pp. 294 - 305. he also speaks about the attitude of Christians towards confessors, one of whom they

123 read Peregrine: about their respect, readiness to help both in word and deed, the desire to get their brother in faith out of prison by any means. Both the book "On the Death of Peregrine" and "Alexander, or the False Pro

124 rock" draw us a picture of the relationship between Christians and pagans, up to the author's personal position on this issue. It is easy to see that Lucian treats Christians with the condescending contempt of a deeply secular and rational person rather than with open hostility or superstitious fear; he knows them well and is calm enough to notice both positive and negative features of the Christian social character.

Epictetus, like Socrates, never wrote anything, and the “Conversations” that have come down to us are written by one of his students Arrian Flavius, who wrote down the speeches of his teacher. Epictetus may well have known about Christians, since he apparently died in the 120s, during the reign of Hadrian; besides, G. A. Taronyan, referring to the letter of the Apostle Paul to Titus (Titus, 3:12), suggests that in Nikopol, where the philosopher lived, “there already existed one

19s on from the earliest Christian communities". True, in the Conversations only two mentions are made of a sect that bears some resemblance to Christians, and it is not even known whether Christians are spoken of here at all, but not only this meager and not always clear information is important to us, but also, probably, to a greater extent. degree, the attitude of Epictetus to suffering and death, and this material in the "Conversations" is quite enough.

Speaking about the sources of pagan origin, one cannot fail to note the correspondence of Pliny Secundus, the governor of Bithynia and Pontus, with the emperor Trajan. These are the first documents on the basis of which you can draw up your own

The book "On the Death of Peregrine" is a satire where Lucian ridicules, including Christians. But Stefan Benko directly calls Peregrine a Christian who has returned to paganism. See: Benko S. Pagan Rome and the Early Christians. Bloomington, 1984. P.X.

124 Lucian. Alexander, or the False Prophet / Per. D. V. Sergeevsky // Works in 2 vols. T. II. pp. 317-336.

125 Epictetus. Conversations. S. 285, approx. 5. Judgment on the form of legal proceedings against Christians and on the reasons for the persecution by the pagan government. Pliny probably first encountered the problem of Christians and could not help but turn to his friend and patron Trajan about this (Er. X, 96; 97). It is curious that Pliny considers the stubbornness of Christians in confessing their faith, and not any crime, to be perhaps the most important reason for the death penalty. However, not only these two letters, which directly concern Christianity, are of interest, but also other letters of Pliny, as they help us to imagine the situation in which the persecution of Christians in Bithynia and Pontus took place.

The paucity of information in pagan sources about Christians in general, and especially about martyrdom, can be explained by the fact that neither educated citizens nor representatives of the authorities attached much importance to this problem and did not consider it necessary to devote more than one or two phrases or, at best, pages to it. Another reason for the small number of pagan sources about Christianity and, in particular, about the problem of martyrdom, is, in our opinion, that not all sources have survived to our time, either because they were lost, or, perhaps, thanks to the efforts the Christian Church, which, like once Plato, whose disciples burned, according to legend, the writings of Democritus, was unprofitable for the presence of literature containing sometimes very insulting attacks against it.

The object of our study is martyrdom during the years of persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire from the 2nd century to the Edict of Milan in 313. The subject of the study is the manifestation of the phenomenon of martyrdom and the perception of this feat by the Christian Church, as well as its role in the emerging relationship between the Church and its members, on the one hand side, and pagan Rome, on the other.

The methodological basis of the dissertation was the principle of historicism, as well as traditional historical-critical and historical-philological methods, which exclude both excessive trust in the historical source and hypercriticism, which makes one reject the reliability of most of the information reported in the sources, as well as a systematic approach that allows us to consider the phenomenon of martyrdom as an important component of the system of views and relationships that connect the Christian Church and its members with the Roman Empire as a state and its population.

The purpose of the study is to study the phenomenon of martyrdom and to establish its role in the relationship between Christians and pagans, both at the state and at the household level.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

1) to reveal the features of Christian martyrdom, which make up its essence, and the ideas about the martyr's feat both among ordinary Christians and among the fathers of the Church;

2) to trace how these features manifested themselves in the behavior of Christians themselves - martyrs and confessors;

3) find out how attitudes towards Christians changed at the state level and among the pagan population, and what impact the phenomenon of martyrdom had on Roman society.

Defense provisions.

1. The feat of a martyr was regarded as a cleansing from all sins and a second baptism; in addition, the martyr was considered the only one who, after death, goes directly to paradise.

2. In the Christian Church, two degrees of this feat were distinguished: a confessor - a Christian who did not renounce the faith and did not refuse to honor the gods, but still remained alive, even after torture, and a martyr - a confessor who died as a result of torture or in prison or was executed.

3. With the change in the relationship between the Christian Church and the Roman Empire, the attitude towards martyrdom and martyrs also changes: if in the 2nd - early 3rd centuries, when the persecutions were mostly local, the authorities more often sentenced Christians to death, and the crowd was outraged and infuriated by the very the courage of those who go to death for their faith, then with the beginning of widespread persecution, the attitude of the population towards Christians begins to change, and the cruelty of the judges is already indignant. At the same time, the view of Christians themselves on persecution and martyrdom also changes: from demands and requests for protection from persecution to reproaches against those judges and pagans who tried to save the confessors' lives and prevent their martyrdom.

4. The most common in Christian literature was the so-called moderate point of view on martyrdom, which boiled down to the fact that one should not arbitrarily denounce oneself and ask for martyrdom, since “the crown is given according to God’s honor”, ​​and an unauthorized confessor risked renunciation of the faith, because he could be unprepared for a martyr's feat.

5. The martyrs differed in their behavior during the trial and in prison. They can be (conditionally) divided into those who craved suffering and even demanded the most cruel tortures; martyrs-"orators" who delivered long speeches in defense of Christianity or denounced idolatry; as well as the so-called "simple heroes", who did not make speeches, did not require special torture, but simply and humbly confessed their faith. A special category was represented by "voluntary martyrs" or, rather, voluntary confessors, who independently appeared before the rulers or made a mess in order to be captured.

6. The main motives that prompted martyrdom were the impossibility of breaking the commandments (“Thou shalt have no other gods but Me”; “everyone who confesses Me before men, I will confess him before My Father in Heaven”), the desire the torments of Christ, the desire to be cleansed of sins and enter paradise, and - as a more earthly motive - the expectation of glory, even after death.

Similar theses in the specialty "General History (of the corresponding period)", 07.00.03 VAK code

• Voluntary martyrs of Cordoba IX-X centuries. The problem of social identification 2010, Candidate of Historical Sciences Rybina, Maria Vladimirovna

• Verbalization of the concept "martyrdom" in Old Slavonic manuscripts of the 10th-11th centuries. and ancient Russian monuments of the 11th-14th centuries: a comparative analysis 2008, candidate of philological sciences Mishina, Lyudmila Nikolaevna

• Historical concept of lactation 1999, Candidate of Historical Sciences Tyulenev, Vladimir Mikhailovich

• The Concept of History in Byzantine Orthodox Church Historiography of the 4th-6th Centuries 1998, Doctor of Historical Sciences Krivushin, Ivan Vladimirovich

• The problem of relations between the Christian church and the state in the Roman Empire I - IV centuries. in the coverage of domestic historiography of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. 2004, candidate of historical sciences Vorobieva, Natalia Nikolaevna

Dissertation conclusion on the topic "General history (of the corresponding period)", Sofyan, Anna Borisovna

Conclusion

The whole history of early Christianity passed under the sign of persecution, so it can be said without exaggeration, following the well-known scientist E. Renan, that “persecution. was the natural state of the Christian. It was persecution that had a decisive influence on the development of the early Church and predetermined many of its features; The Church is indebted to persecution for her first saints, who became her martyrs.

Christians were persecuted for many reasons, among which several groups can be distinguished: state-political, religious, social and psychological reasons. Among the state reasons are the refusal of Christians to participate in the veneration of the official Roman gods and the fact that they constituted cope ^ae HHskae (unauthorized colleges), from which, as the authorities believed, one could expect some kind of conspiracy. As religious reasons, the suspicions of Christians in atheism are indicated; their refusal to participate in the "cult of the Caesars" and the traditional Roman cult; finally, that Christians were considered apostates from the Jewish laws and customs from which the Christian religion was believed to have originated. As social reasons, one should indicate the refusal of Christians to participate in the life of society, from holidays and occupy certain positions, as well as their secretive way of life and the suspicions of the most terrible criminal offenses arising from it. Finally, the psychological reasons for the persecution lay in the fact that the level of anxiety in Roman society was increased due to an unconscious feeling of contradiction between centuries-old traditions and real life, and Christians, by their very existence and behavior, forced

1 Renan E. Christian Church / Per. from French V. A. Obruchev. Yaroslavl, 1991, p. 172. feel this contradiction2; perhaps, unwittingly, they annoyed their fellow citizens by being different from them.

The main sources for studying the phenomenon of martyrdom are hagiographic sources: acts and passions of the martyrs, as well as lives that are the latest in terms of creation and contain, along with historical, a large layer of legendary information. The main feature of passions and hagiographical literature (this concerns the acts of the martyrs to a lesser extent) is naturalism and great attention to everyday details, often of symbolic significance, especially in visions.

There are several explanations for this. Firstly, on the one hand, the passions of the martyrs were sometimes composed by the same former pagans as all the rest of the inhabitants of the empire, brought up on bloody spectacles and murders in the arena and only in adulthood converted to Christianity. By virtue of their new faith, they could no longer afford such gross entertainment, but other people are arranged in such a way that, even describing other people's physical suffering, they experience unhealthy pleasure. On the other hand, in this way it was possible to release the accumulated aggression and negative emotions that inevitably arose among the persecuted Christians, who forbade themselves even an attempt to take revenge on the persecutors. Secondly, such naturalism was explained by the desire to inspire the surviving Christians and give them a lesson in courage, as well as a constant focus on current and future suffering and perceiving it as one of the most important events for the martyrs themselves and for the community in which they lived. As for everyday details in acts and visions, they, as already mentioned, most often had a symbolic meaning and were supposed to resemble the story of Christ and the words spoken by Him.

2 Amosova E. V. The persecution of Christians and the crisis of the ancient worldview / Abstract of the dissertation for the academic study. step. cand. history Sciences. Veliky Novgorod, 1998. S. 12.

The martyrdom of Christians was, in essence, a reaction to persecution, a "passive resistance" so to speak, to the state's attempts to force them to act like everyone else did; but gradually it also became the goal for many of the Christians: in the feat of martyrdom they saw the atonement of sins and the second baptism - baptism with blood; the martyr was a witness to the true faith (the very word "martyr" - martyr - is Greek and in the original translation sounds like "witness") and a soldier of Christ; finally, he was a preacher and missionary, even if he did not make any speeches: his very suffering and death for the faith made such a strong impression that the audience (and the executions were public) were imbued with sympathy, and some of them converted to the Christian faith.

Over time, ideas about the martyr's feat began to become more complicated; there is a division into two degrees: a confessor is a Christian who has been brought to trial, confessed his faith, perhaps even been tortured, but still survived, and the actual martyr is a Christian who has suffered death for his faith, no matter how painful was this death. Sometimes, however, those Christians who had already managed to become confessors, but were still alive, were called martyrs in advance, but their end was known. For the first time, the distinction between martyrs and confessors appears in Hermas' Shepherd, and the very word "confessors" was uttered, speaking of themselves, by the Lugdun martyrs. Then this distinction appears in the writings of Hippolytus of Rome, Cyprian of Carthage, in the letters of Dionysius of Alexandria; in historiography, it was emphasized by a number of scientists and theologians, for example, V.V. Bolotov, I. Meyendorff, W. Friend, and others. The veneration of confessors and martyrs differed: if confessors, having survived after persecution, received their reward already in earthly life, then the martyrs, having left this world, could not enjoy it, but were revered as saints.

First of all, the martyrs were considered the only ones whose souls went straight to paradise after their death (Tert. De anim., LV, 4-5). In addition, on earth, their bodies were not only tried to be buried as worthy as possible, but (later) their relics and drops of shed blood were considered sacred relics, for which, if there was no persecution in this area, they were sometimes sent to another. The days of the death of the martyrs were obligatorily recorded and subsequently celebrated as the days of their birth into eternal life. Such celebrations began to be practiced as early as the 2nd-3rd centuries: after all, in the martyrdom of Pionius it is indicated that the presbyter and his comrades were captured “on the second day of the sixth month, on the occasion of Great Saturday and the anniversary of the blessed Polycarp” (Mart. Pion. 2, 1); consequently, the day of the martyrdom of the Bishop of Smyrna was recorded and celebrated for quite a long time.

Confessors were revered no less than martyrs. While they remained in the dungeon, they were visited by their brethren in the faith, trying in every possible way to ease their imprisonment; some, in a fit of reverence, even kissed their chains and wounds left after torture. If the confessor was released, then in the wild a more honorable ceremony of consecration to presbyters or deacons awaited him (in the case when he applied for this rank). Finally, confessors and martyrs, by virtue of their deeds, were granted the right to intercede before God and the Church for forgiveness for their weaker and therefore backslidden fellow believers.

However, confessors and martyrs (until their death) could not share the views that the Church considered heretical, and had to monitor their behavior even more carefully, since, according to Cyprian, the temptations of confessors only increased in comparison with those experienced by ordinary believers ( Cypr. Deimitate, 21).

At the same time, the attitude towards the fallen away was very strict: in order to receive forgiveness, they all had to go through a long period of repentance, and some of them did not receive this forgiveness until their death. Only one means could shorten this period - the already mentioned intercession of some confessor or martyr, attested in writing. If the “fallen one” wanted to make amends as soon as possible, he could take the path more dangerous for his life and make a confession of his faith before the court. In this case, he was considered a martyr or a confessor (depending on whether he remained alive or not) on an equal footing with others.

Martyrdom was considered the most glorious end of a Christian's life, and members of some rigorous sects, such as the Montanists, even considered it shameful for a Christian to die in his own bed. At the same time, one had to be ready for martyrdom, otherwise it threatened with renunciation of Christ instead of confession of faith. First of all, it was necessary that it be God's will; in addition, readiness for martyrdom was achieved in various ways: it could be the acquaintance of Christians with Holy Scripture and strengthening them in the faith, or there could be strict fasts and hardships, which Tertullian especially insisted on. Such preparation aroused in Christians such a strong thirst for martyrdom that some rushed to it themselves.

At the same time, the attitude of the Church towards such unauthorized confessors was complex and contradictory: on the one hand, self-denunciations were condemned as one of the varieties of suicide, on the other hand, such arguments were not taken into account if the unauthorized confessor ended his life with martyrdom.

Initially, when the persecutions were random and local, and the rulers from the Antonine dynasty, and then Severus, were in power, Christians were sentenced to death for their very name, and the executions were mainly carried out to calm the people, who were indignant and enraged at the very the courage of those going to death for their faith. At this time, especially in the 2nd - early 3rd century, the most educated Christian authors turned to the emperors with an apology for their faith in the hope that they would be heard, and in addition to proving the truth of Christianity, they asked for protection from the harassment of the crowd and local rulers, being convinced that the "good" emperors themselves do not persecute Christians.

Over time, the attitude of the government and the simple pagan population towards Christians changes: the authorities, having sufficiently convinced that Christians are good subjects, and at the same time understanding what the danger of Christianity consisted in, demanded from them the same proof of loyalty as from the rest, that is, offering sacrifices to the Roman gods. From the time of Emperor Decius, from the almost immediate execution of Christians, they move on to long-term imprisonment in the most difficult conditions and to torture aimed at breaking the will of the confessor and, forcing him to make a sacrifice, to save his life. During the Great Persecution, the authorities were content even with a fictitious sacrifice.

In their attitude towards confessors and martyrdom, some magistrates, depending on their position and their character, were distinguished by almost savage cruelty, others were merciful and patient and brought matters to torture and execution only as a last resort, trying with all their might to save the accused. Most educated pagans, especially officials, considered the persistence of Christians in confessing their faith as "stubbornness", which infuriated the least balanced and, as Pliny the Younger considered (Plin. Sec. Ep. X, 96, 3-4), deserved punishment, which was carried out.

At the same time, for Christians, even false evidence of devotion to the gods was impossible; in hagiographic literature and in church history and apologetic writings we read reproaches against cruel rulers who tried to prevent the martyrdom of Christians.

Similar reproaches are addressed to the pagan population, which, convinced of the harmlessness of Christians, was imbued with compassion at the sight of the suffering they endure, and sometimes with sympathy for their individual representatives, and tried to do everything possible to only save them from death.

The main motive that influenced the behavior of the martyrs and their desire to die for Christ was the impossibility of violating the commandment to prohibit idolatry and the desire to partake in the torments of Jesus Christ himself, which were perceived by the martyrs themselves so vividly that sometimes they even imagined how they would suffer inside them. Christ himself, or saw Him in his companions (Eus. NOT, V, 1, 41). At the same time, many of them were not alien to the hopes for glory on earth, even posthumous, and for cleansing from all sins and gaining paradise.

The social composition of the martyrs, as, indeed, of the entire Christian Church, was not homogeneous, and this, in part, together with their mental state and motives, determined their behavior at trial during interrogations and in prison. Several groups of martyrs can be distinguished depending on their behavior (of course, conditionally, since nothing prevented the same martyrs from showing courage and being rewarded with visions, striving for suffering and defending the faith with the help of their eloquence). Among them were martyrs who called upon themselves all the suffering that an unhealthy imagination could invent - their own or the judge and the executioner; one can also single out the so-called martyrs-"orators" who delivered long apologies of the Christian faith and denunciations of paganism at the trial. There were also "simple heroes" who humbly confessed their faith and endured all the tortures and executions that fell to their lot. More often than not, nothing came out of their mouths except for a short phrase, “I am a Christian.” Basically, they were simple, uneducated people, artisans, soldiers, slaves and freedmen, who did not have the gift of eloquence and were unable to understand the sometimes subtle play on words, as a result of which they limited themselves only to recognition in Christianity in response to any remark addressed to them.

An important role in the behavior and motivation of the martyrs was played by the visions that some of them were honored with (or attributed to them). Most often, these visions were directly related to the end of the life of such visionaries or to the afterlife, in which they saw a reward for their suffering.

Finally, a special group is formed by voluntary or, rather, unauthorized confessors, who declared their faith without interrogation and without demand from the magistrate, and sometimes accompanied their confession with some defiant act. Most likely, the majority of voluntary confessors became such out of good intentions, striving to set an example for fellow believers or to join their friends and relatives who died for the faith; there could also be a protest against the injustice and cruelty of the magistrate. However, it is difficult to talk about the direct influence of such voluntary confessions on the beginning of persecution or even on its toughening on the part of the provincial administration.

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Nikolsky E.V.

Throughout the history of the Church, the feat of martyrdom has been especially revered by her. What is martyrdom and whom do we call martyrs?

Saint Ephraim the Syrian (II century) wrote: “This is life in the bones of the martyrs: who will say that they do not live? These are living monuments, and who can doubt that? They are impregnable strongholds, where I can enter a robber, fortified cities, not knowing traitors, tall and strong towers for those who took refuge in them, inaccessible to murderers, death does not approach them.

These words, spoken in ancient times, have not lost their truth in our time. Let us turn to the patristic legacy. St. John Chrysostom wrote about the martyrs of the saints: “Their age is different, but one faith; feats are not the same, but the same courage; those are ancient in time, these are young and recently killed. Such is the treasury of the Church: it contains both new and old pearls... and you do not revere otherwise the ancient and otherwise the new martyrs... You do not explore for a while, but are looking for courage, spiritual piety, unshakable faith, winged and ardent zeal... ".

In the Christian Church, only those who have suffered for Christ and the Christian faith are honored with the crown of martyrdom. All other suffering - for your loved ones and loved ones, for your homeland and compatriots, for great ideas and ideals, for scientific truths, no matter how high, have nothing to do with holiness.

In Byzantium, a pious emperor suggested that the patriarch officially glorify all the soldiers who died in the war waged by the empire against the barbarian peoples. To this, the high priest reasonably replied that the soldiers who fell on the battlefield are not, in the proper sense of the word, martyrs for Christ. Therefore, the Christian Church has established a number of special days in the year when a certain rite of prayer is performed for the repose of the souls of slain soldiers.

Issues related to the veneration and glorification of the victims in the name of Christ for Russian Orthodox Christians have now acquired special significance. After all, in 2000 our Church glorified a host of martyrs for Christ and the Orthodox faith who suffered in Russia in the 20th century. This undertaking, which is very important for the entire Church of Christ, in one way or another concerns - or should concern - every Christian. I would like to hope that this short essay on martyrdom will help the reader to better understand why the work of glorifying martyrs is so important for us, and how exactly he can help in it and take part in it.

Martyrdom in the history of Christianity

The holiness of martyrs is the oldest form of holiness that has received recognition in the Church. The word itself comes from the Greek word "martis". The main meaning of this Greek word is “witness”, and in this meaning it can refer to the apostles who saw the life and resurrection of Christ and received the gift of grace to testify before the world about His divinity, about the manifestation of God in the flesh and about the good news of salvation brought by Him.

Holy Scripture applies this word to Christ Himself, "who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth" (Rev. 1:5). The resurrected Lord, appearing to the Apostles, says to them: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect witness of our Heavenly Father, who died out of love for us and for our salvation, can indeed be called a Martyr; moreover, He is the Model and Example of any other Christian martyrdom.

From the very beginning, persecution accompanied the Church. Already in Holy Scripture we find the first examples of martyrdom for Christ. For example, the story of the first martyr Stephen. Standing before the Sanhedrin that condemned him to death, St. Stephen “looked up into heaven, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said: Behold, I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56). From these very words it is clear how martyrdom, striving in a special way towards the triumph of the Kingdom of God, closely unites the martyr with Christ, introduces him into a special relationship with Him. When St. Stephen was stoned, he exclaimed with a loud voice: Lord! Do not impute this sin to them. And having said this, he rested” (Acts 7:60). We see that in his martyrdom St. Stephen to the end follows the model and example given by Christ Himself, who prayed to the Father: “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). The subsequent persecution of the Church by the Roman authorities also led to the martyrdom of many Christians. For its part, the church, meeting with this experience, could more clearly and deeply realize its meaning and value, as well as its significance for itself.

In the early period of the history of the Church, martyrdom, the strongest evidence of the truth of the Christian faith, proved to be especially effective in its dissemination. Sometimes even executioners and persecutors turned to Christ, shocked by the example of the inexplicable courage of the martyrs in the face of suffering and death. It is precisely this, in the true sense of the word, the missionary meaning of martyrdom, that the Christian writer of the third century, Tertullian, had in mind when he wrote that the blood of a martyr is the seed of new Christians.

Subsequently, the Church was persecuted more than once. It would be fair to say that these persecutions have always continued - in different forms and in different territories. Therefore, the testimony of martyrdom has never ceased, and the martyrs have always confirmed the truth of the Christian faith by their feat, which contains the most obvious and direct imitation of Christ.

Veneration and Feat of Martyrs in the History of the Orthodox Ecumenical Church

From the very beginning of their history, Christians have attached special importance to martyrs and recognized their special holiness. Martyrdom was seen as the triumph of grace over death, the city of God over the city of the devil. It is martyrdom - the first form of holiness recognized by the Church - and on the basis of the development of an understanding of the meaning of martyrdom, any other veneration of saints subsequently develops.

The tradition of reverently preserving the memory of the martyrs and surrounding it with pious veneration arose very early. In the days of the death of the martyrs, which were considered as the days of their birth to a new life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Christians gathered at their graves, performing prayers and services in memory of them. They are addressed in prayers, seeing in them the friends of God, endowed with a special gift of intercession for the members of the Earthly Church before the throne of the Most High. Special reverence was paid to their graves and remains (relics). Descriptions of their martyrdom were recorded and documents about them were collected (the so-called “acts of martyrs”).

According to the "Martyrdom of Polycarp of Smyrna", every year, on the anniversary of his death, the community gathered at his grave. The Eucharist was celebrated and alms were distributed to the poor. Thus gradually appeared those forms in which the veneration of the martyrs, and then other saints, is clothed. By the 3rd century, a certain tradition of universal veneration of martyrs was established.

Saint Ambrose of Milan, who lived in the 4th century, says: “... We should pray to the martyrs, whose protection, at the cost of their bodies, we have been honored. They can atone for our sins, because they washed them away with their blood, even if they themselves committed them in some way. They are the martyrs of God, our patrons, they know our life and our deeds. We are not ashamed to have them intercessors for our weakness, for they also knew bodily weaknesses, although they overcame them. And so, since ancient times, the Church has believed that her holy martyrs intercede for her before God.

Special buildings were erected over the graves of the martyrs in their memory, and this tradition leads, after the end of the first persecutions, to the custom of building churches near the resting places of the bodies of the saints. It should be noted that pagan customs, as a rule, ordered to avoid places of burial of the dead. The fact that among Christians the graves of martyrs become the centers of the religious life of the community shows that they were not perceived as dead, but rather as living and active members of the Church, especially united with Christ and able to bestow His grace on others.

After the cessation of persecution, in the 4th-5th century, the need arose in the Church to regulate the veneration of the martyrs in a certain way. From that time, the procedure for the formal glorification of the martyrs begins to exist - the recognition by the Church of the authenticity of their holiness, their martyrdom. The celebration of the memory of the martyrs develops from a private ceremony performed over the grave into a solemn event for the entire Church - first locally, and then universally. The days of remembrance of the martyrs are recorded in special "martyrology", on the basis of which a fixed annual cycle of worship is subsequently created.

The era that came after the death of the Christian holy monarchs Constantine Equal-to-the-Apostles and Theodosius the Great (+ 395; memory in the Greek Church is celebrated on January 17/30) favored the spread of the Christian faith, in other words, the era of martyrdom was replaced by the time of righteousness (monasticism, hierarchy, etc., and also the pious life of worldly Christians). However, this period continued until the twelfth century, when iconoclast emperors came to power in the Byzantine Empire and state repressions began again against Christians who did not agree with the official policy of the Constantinople court.

If you carefully consider and study the calendar of the Orthodox Church, then you can find there many names of saints who suffered for the faith no longer at the hands of the pagans, but from heretics. This time can be called the second era of persecution, the second era of mass martyrdom.

The Seventh Ecumenical Council and the local councils that followed it officially approved the dogma on the need to venerate the icons of saints. The persecution has stopped. However, in the period from the 9th century until the fall of Constantinople, we meet with isolated facts of martyrdom, without which not one of the “prosperous” eras of the existence of Christian civilization could do.

Let us especially note that faith in the Savior itself and the fulfillment of His commandments have always been a challenge to the world, “lying in evil”, sometimes the conflict between the “city of God” and the “city of the devil” reaches its highest point, when a Christian faces a choice: loyalty to Christ (or His commandments) or death. If a person chose the second, then he became a martyr. To a certain extent, this group of confessors of Christ can also include missionaries who died during a sermon among the pagans (for example, St. Wojciech-Adalbert, Archbishop of Prague, who was killed in 997

in East Prussia, or svjashmuch. Misail of Ryazan, who suffered during a sermon in the Volga region in the 16th century).

The situation changed after the capture of Constantinople and the enslavement of the Slavic and Greek settlements on the Balkan Peninsula by the Turks. Although the Istanbul government did not pursue an officially targeted policy of state proselytism, the life of Christians in the Ottoman Empire became much more difficult. In particular, a ban was imposed on the preaching of the Gospel among Muslims; conversion from Islam to Orthodoxy was punishable by death. During this period, there were repeated cases of persecution for the Orthodox faith, often ending in the death of the ascetic.

We adopted the very name “new martyrs” from the 16th, 19th, 11th, and 19th centuries in connection with the suffering in the Balkans of Greek and Serbian Christians, who were killed only because they refused to blaspheme faith in Christ and accept Mohammedanism. This term was specially introduced in order to distinguish in the practice of church piety the holy confessors who suffered in antiquity (before the holy emperor Constantine) and during the period of iconoclasm from the new passion-bearers who died in a collision with the world of Islam in new historical conditions.

Such sufferers were usually immediately ranked by the Orthodox Church as holy martyrs. They are not required to lead a godly life before suffering. Suffering for Christ, for the name of Christ, is imputed to them as righteousness, since they died with Christ and reign with him. (After all, it is enough to remember the last of the forty martyrs of Sebaste, who knew nothing about Christ, but was accepted along with the rest of the martyrs for his determination to die with them.)

One can recall John the New from Ioannina, John Kulik from Epirus, who suffered in the 16th century; Great Martyr John the New Sochaevsky, who refused to blaspheme faith in Christ and after terrible torments was beheaded, and thousands of Greek, Serbian and other Balkan martyrs for the faith, who were killed only because they professed to be Christians. They were also forced to change their faith, they were also killed for one word "Christian" or "Orthodox".

In the distant times of Turkish rule in the Crimea, the Cossacks defended the Russian land from the raids of foreigners and infidels. In one of the battles, the wounded Cossack Mikhail was captured by the Turks. With terrible torture, they tried to force the Cossack to betray his faith and his brothers, renounce Christ and convert to Islam. They baked it at the stake, but the Cossack Mikhail did not become an apostate and a traitor.

And now in the Cossack village of Urupskaya in the temple there is an icon, which depicts the feat of the Zaporizhzhya Cossack Michael - a martyr for the faith.

130 years ago, it became known about the martyrdom of a non-commissioned officer of the 2nd Turkestan rifle battalion Foma Danilov, who was captured by the Kipchaks and barbarously killed by them after numerous and refined tortures for not wanting to convert to Mohammedanism and to serve them. The khan himself promised him pardon, reward and honor if he agreed to renounce Christ the Savior. The soldier replied that he could not betray the Cross and, as a royal subject, although in captivity, he must fulfill his duties to Christ and the king. Having tortured him to death, everyone was surprised at the strength of his spirit and called him a hero ...

Unfortunately, to this day the feat of the warrior-martyrs Michael and Thomas has not become known to the general public. And their names are still not included in the calendar.

A special fact of Christian history was the feat of 222 Orthodox Chinese who died in 1901 at the hands of pagans, supported by the government of the Celestial Empire, during the so-called boxer uprising. This event became a kind of fatal omen of bloody persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. For those who did not heed the voluptuous speeches of the false prophets of earthly paradise and remained faithful to Christ, the Way, Truth and Life, accepted various sufferings and hardships for their faith, up to martyrdom.

The situation that developed in the USSR, in some ways, resembled what took place in the pre-Constantine Roman Empire and iconoclastic Byzantium and, partly, in the Commonwealth, during periods of active planting of the union (the suffering of St. Martyr Athanasius of Brest, the confession of St. George of Konissky and many others) .

In the year 2000 and thereafter, about 2,000 new martyrs for the faith were canonized as saints. Their icons decorated (placed for worship) many churches in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.

However, it is impossible, in our opinion, to unsubstantiately announce that the era of the New Martyrs ended with the death of the last surviving confessors who died in freedom in the 70-80s. Such a statement carries only a fraction of the truth: the period of state persecution of believers has come to its historical end. For this, it is only fitting to thank the Lord. However, with the advent of the era of democracy, Christianity and the gospel have not ceased to be a challenge to the world, "lying in evil"; the struggle between the "city of God" and the "city of the devil" took on other forms. Therefore, the appearance of new sufferers for Christ and His Gospel, unfortunately, did not pass from the present into the past. This is especially characteristic on the border of the world of the Cross and the world of the crescent.

Therefore, the term “new martyrs” should not be considered something related only to history, but the ascetics of the last two decades (m. Veronica, m. Varvara, father Methodius from Russian Jerusalem; priests - Fr. Igor Rozov, Fr. Anatoly Chistousov, warrior Yevgeny Rodionov, who died in Chechnya) deserve not only the title of new martyrs and, if the fact of their martyrdom is confirmed, canonization as a saint.

On the feast of the New Russian Martyrs and Confessors, we remember not only those who suffered during the years of communist persecution, but also those who suffered for Christ in our day. We know the names of Hieromonk Nestor, Hieromonk Vasily and other Optina monks, Archimandrite Peter and many innocently murdered Orthodox Christians, among whom there are many priests, monks, maidens and children. Many people know about the murder in Moscow in 1997 of the altar boy, the youth Alexy, after the night Easter service, when the killers forced him to take off his cross.

Just like about the brutal murder of the keeper of the myrrh-streaming Iberian Icon of the Mother of God Joseph and many others.

The coming era, let's hope, will bring its spiritual fruit in the form of new saints of God. Among them, of course, there will be saints, and reverends, and the righteous, perhaps missionaries. But neither Christian conscience nor scientific objectivity allows us to exclude from their number the few (God forbid) New Martyrs.

Martyrdom in Modern Orthodox Theology

Existing since ancient times, martyrdom has not lost its significance today. Since ancient times, the Church has applied the words of Christ to the martyrs: “There is no greater love than if a man lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The contemporary Magisterium of the Church does not forget to remind the faithful of the significance of the feat of martyrs for all Christians.

Indeed, since Jesus Christ, the Son of God, showed His love by laying down His life for us, no one has greater love than the one who lays down his life for Him and for his brothers. From the very beginning, some Christians have been called - and will always be called - to give this greatest testimony of love before everyone, especially before persecutors. Therefore, martyrdom, by which a disciple (that is, a Christian who consciously perceives faith) is, as it were, “likened” (that is, follows in the footsteps) of his Divine Teacher, who voluntarily accepted death for the salvation of the world, and is conformed to Him through the shedding of blood, is revered by the Church as a most precious gift and the highest proof of love.

Let us especially note that martyrdom is the highest evidence of the truth of faith. It means witness unto death. The martyr bears witness to the dead and risen Christ, with whom he is united by love. He testifies to the truth of faith and Christian teaching. He accepts a violent death. The Church, with the most careful attention, preserves the memories of those who gave their lives to testify to their faith. The deeds of the martyrs constitute the testimonies of the Truth, written in blood.

After all, a sign of the truth of Christian love, constant, but especially eloquent in our day, is the memory of the martyrs. Their testimony must not be forgotten.

The Church of the first millennium was born from the blood of martyrs: “Sanguis martirum - semen christianorum” (“the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians”). Historical events connected with Constantine! The great ones would never have provided the Church with the path that she passed in the first millennium, if there had not been a sowing of martyrs and a legacy of holiness that characterizes the first Christian generations. By the end of the second millennium, the Church became again the Church of the martyrs. The persecution of believers - priests, monastics and laity - caused a plentiful sowing of martyrs in different parts of the world.

The testimony brought to Christ, up to the testimony of the blood, has become the common property of Orthodox Christians. This testimony must not be forgotten. Despite great organizational difficulties, the Church of the first centuries collected testimonies of the martyrs in martyrology. In the 20th century martyrs appeared again - often unknown, they are like "unknown soldiers" of the great cause of God. We must do our best not to lose their testimony to the Church.

We must do everything possible so that the memory of those who accepted martyrdom does not sink into oblivion, and for this we must collect the necessary testimonies about them. By proclaiming and honoring the holiness of her sons and daughters, the Church has given the highest honor to God Himself. As martyrs, she revered Christ, the source of their martyrdom and holiness. Later, the practice of canonization spread, and to this day exists in the Orthodox Church. The reckoning to the Face of saints has multiplied in recent years. They testify to the vitality of the Church of Christ, which are now much more numerous than in the first centuries and in general in the first millennium.

The Holy Orthodox Church not only has not changed its reverent attitude to the feat of martyrdom and to the martyrs, but also constantly reminds of the need to preserve the memory of their testimony.

Theological meaning of martyrdom

By thinking about martyrdom from a theological point of view, we can understand its true meaning for the Christian faith and life. Briefly, there are several particularly important points in this reflection:

The feat of martyrdom is directed to Christ: The martyr correlates his whole life with Christ, whom he regards as the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus Christ is placed for him as the center of history - not only the history of mankind, but also his own, personal history. Christ for the martyr is the center of the entire universe and the measure of all things and events. Man's life acquires true significance only in the light of the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the martyr realizes that he is called to follow Him and imitate Him in everything, including His martyrdom on the Cross. The death of a martyr, thanks to its striving for Christ, thus becomes a sign of true Life, and the martyr himself enters into a relationship of deepest unity and union with Christ. (The moment of martyrdom is sometimes even likened to the moment of marriage between the soul of the martyr and its Lord).

The feat of martyrdom is directed to the triumph of the Kingdom of Heaven: In the death of the martyr, the final triumph of the Kingdom of God, to which his life was directed, is realized. Martyrdom makes us compelled to re-realize the meaning, meaning and ultimate goal of human life and human history. Martyrdom is the triumph of the kingdom of grace and life, the Kingdom of God over the kingdom of sin and death, the forces of darkness acting in a transient reality. This is an event indicating that without the presence of Christ, reality would have no meaning and no value.

The feat of martyrdom is addressed to the Church: The martyr dies in the Church and in the faith of the Church. He dies not for convictions or views, but for the Person of Christ, embracing the fullness of Truth. Therefore, the death of a martyr is unthinkable outside the Body of Christ, which is the Church. Dying in the faith of the Church, the martyr is born into a new life and is reckoned among the Triumphant Church, remaining involved in the life of his Christian community, interceding for it and strengthening its faith.

Finally, the feat of martyrdom is also addressed to the world: Martyrdom is always a public testimony of Christ and His truth in the face of the world and in the face of persecutors. Therefore, in his feat, the martyr is likened to Christ, who came into the world so that the world would know the Father. Accepting death for Christ, the martyr proclaims Him to the whole world. In every martyr for the faith there is a particle of the Spirit of Christ, a particle of Christ's destiny. Their hard way of the cross, suffering and torment became our salvation. And it is precisely thanks to them, those bright and courageous soldiers of Christ, that our Church has grown strong and endured, and subsequently revived and returned in even greater glory and majesty.

And even now, being with the Lord somewhere in another, absolutely perfect world of eternal rest, they remain for us that bright light that shows the way to God, our intercessors before Him, our spiritual salvation.

Since all of them, like Him, the God-man, chose the thorny path to the light, doomed themselves to patience, suffering, to death for the sake of saving their people, for the sake of truth, for the sake of holy truth. These ordinary, humble ministers of the Church were people of great faith, strong spirit, which nothing could break. Their whole life was an example of true fidelity to the Lord, His Holy Church and His people.

It seemed that not so long ago, from the point of view of time itself, the names of many martyrs for the faith had sunk into oblivion. They were not officially remembered, however, many witnesses of those times kept their memory, considered themselves their disciples, spiritual followers, taking an example from their church deeds and spiritual convictions. After all, the holy truth cannot be destroyed.

Concluding this brief review of the theological meaning of martyrdom, we note that the refusal of the martyr to “sacrifice” the idols of the theomachy state, to heed the false prophets who proclaimed heaven on earth or the culture of the “city of the devil” is interpreted as a refusal to follow anachronism, as overcoming the decline and decrepitude of the “city of the devil” and its criteria. The martyr realizes that the fullness of times has come in Christ, which gives meaning to everything and frees everything. Therefore, a martyr is a truly free person and the only true martyr of freedom. In his "unpredictable persistence" he shows that he wants to dwell in a new history, born from the pierced rib of Christ, from which "the meaning of time poured out." He declares his desire to live, and not to remain a corpse or a ruin on the sidelines of the true Church. He entered into Christ. And it gave him eternal life.

The process of glorifying the martyr

In the Orthodox Church, the glorification of a person among the saints is a complex process that has many components. The purpose of all existing norms of canon law is to give the Church the opportunity to verify the authenticity of the holiness of the candidate proposed for glorification or the reality of his martyrdom. After all, the Church is called, glorifying her son or her daughter, to give all the faithful a proven and reliable example of faith and a model to follow, to authoritatively confirm that this person is really a saint, and the death of a martyr was really a true testimony of his faith in Christ and Christian love.

In order to begin the process of glorifying the candidate, it is also necessary that there be an opinion among believers that he is really a martyr and that he was given private veneration. Public veneration - such as the image of a candidate with the attributes of holiness, the display of his image in temples along with images of saints, prayers to him during the official services of the Church, etc. - unacceptable and prohibited by the laws of the Church. But it is quite acceptable - and necessary for glorification - private veneration: reverent preservation of photographs and images of the alleged martyr, belonging to him, private prayer appeals to him by believers - such treatment is quite acceptable even from a group of believers, say, members of a community or an association of laity unless it occurs during liturgical services. Publications and articles about the candidate may be published, and the authors may express their personal belief in his holiness there.

At least 5 years must elapse from the date of death of the candidate to start the process. Usually the process is started by the initiator - it can be an individual believer, a community, a parish, etc. In the case of the process of the Russian "new martyrs", the initiators were various groups of believers who approved the program for its preparation; all the materials necessary for its beginning were collected - information about the life of the candidate, documents about his martyrdom and certificates about him, confirmation of the existence of an opinion about his martyrdom and his private veneration, his manuscripts and printed works. Information is also collected about miracles that are attributed to the petition of the candidate, if they took place. The biography of the candidate is being prepared.

The collected materials are presented to the bishop, who has the right to begin the process of canonization of the candidate. This is usually the bishop of the diocese in which the candidate was buried. The Bishop asks the Synodal Commission if it has any objections to starting the process. When the permission of the Church Authorities is received, a Diocesan Council is created, which reviews all the collected documentation and interrogates the witnesses, making the first judgment on the candidate for sainthood.

In the history of the Church, there has been a long development of legal norms relating to the canonization of saints and regulating the public cult rendered to them.

Since ancient times, canon law has provided a traditional definition of the elements necessary to speak of a person as a martyr. Let us describe some of the conditions necessary for this.

The candidate must be persecuted or persecuted for their faith. These persecutions can be carried out by individuals, as well as by their groups or societies. In order to speak of persecution, it must be proven that the “persecutors” really persecuted a person because they harbored hatred for God, the Church, the Christian faith, or any of its essential and irremovable parts (for example, they considered it a crime to carry out some any Christian obligation, commandment of God, laws and regulations of the Church). In the case of persecution for the faith by the Soviet authorities, such motives undoubtedly existed, which has a huge amount of evidence.

The fact of the actual physical death of the martyr must be proven. In order to be able to talk about martyrdom, it must be confirmed that this death occurred as a direct result of persecution (execution, death from beatings, death in prison or exile) or as their direct consequence (death resulting from severe damage to human health and prison , camp, in special settlements, etc.).

The decisions of the Diocesan Council and the necessary documents are then transferred to the Commission for the Causes of Saints, where the study of the collected materials about the candidate continues, which has several stages. In the case of the glorification of the martyrs, it is not required that the miracles attributed to the intercession of the candidate necessarily take place. Therefore, soon after such an approval, the canonization of the candidate, or his reckoning among the saints of the Orthodox Church, may already take place.

Honoring Candidates and Helping Prepare Their Worship

Candidates are proposed, documents about them are collected, witnesses are sought. As at other stages, the help of volunteers who would approach this matter from different angles is very important at this time.

Some people and parishes may help spread the private veneration of a particular candidate. Articles and publications dedicated to candidates may be published, private prayers may be offered to them, their photographs or portraits may be distributed (but without a halo of holiness). Outside the liturgical part of the temple, you can hang a photo of a candidate, and pay respect to her. For example, bring flowers to her. When the burial place of a candidate is known, one can come there to honor his memory or pray to him. It is even possible to organize pilgrimages to such a grave, but only in private and not on behalf of the Church.

In addition, there is a need for direct assistance to the Church-wide program "New Martyrs of Russia" from volunteers with various experience and qualifications. We need people who would help in collecting materials, in archival work in different parts of the country, editors, specialists in book business, people who would search for witnesses (people who remember candidates or heard stories about them from eyewitnesses). The donations of believers transferred to the program would also be invaluable. It faces a lot of tasks that are still difficult to implement due to a lack of financial and other resources. And here the help of volunteers and philanthropists would be invaluable.

In Christianity, martyrdom plays a special role. This is a feat that characterizes the Christian path.

Martyrdom, as a religious phenomenon belonging exclusively to the Christian religion, at all times raised many questions among the inhabitants and contemporaries of those persecutions that at different times were directed against Christians. As an example, I would like to recall those saints whose memory the Orthodox Church celebrates on September 16th. First of all, these are St. Anthimus, Bishop of Nicomedia, and the ten martyrs who suffered with him, as well as several representatives of the so-called “Russian Golgotha”, who suffered at the hands of representatives of the godless authorities at a time when atheistic ideology dominated the territory of Holy Russia.

According to some, the fact that on the same day the Church commemorates both the ancient martyrs of the times of the Roman Empire and the martyrs of the twentieth century suggests that martyrdom, in the broadest sense of the word, is in some way an integral part of the history of Christianity and the Christian worldview in general. Indeed, a careful study of the gospel texts, as well as the apostolic letters, makes it clear that neither Christ nor the apostles promised their followers a calm, well-fed, carefree life. That is why the so-called "prosperity theology" that is gaining momentum in the Protestant world mainly bases its teaching on Old Testament quotations taken out of context. According to their concept, a true Christian must be successful, and if a Christian does not succeed materially, then this indicates that he has been shipwrecked in faith. However, we know that the thought of bearing the cross, of the need to endure the mournful path that passes through the narrow gates, runs like a red thread through the entire teaching of Christ, since the Lord Himself says: If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also. A similar teaching is rooted in the works of the Holy Fathers. For example, St. Isaac the Syrian writes: “It is not the Spirit of God that dwells in those who are at rest, but the spirit of devils…. This is what distinguishes the sons of God from others, that they live in sorrows, while the world rejoices in pleasure and peace.

The phenomenon of martyrdom and its inner content and meaning is much deeper than it might seem at first glance. It is not just the lack of flexibility in a critical situation or the firmness in upholding certain beliefs. The most accurate translation of the ancient Greek word is not "martyr", but "witness". That is, by his death, the martyr testifies to the truth that the kingdom of death has been defeated by the power of the Resurrection of Christ, which has undermined the very foundations of hell; that from now on, in the light of the prospect of eternal life and endless communion with God, temporal life loses all the value that it had before. As Professor V.V. Bolotov, a well-known church historian of the 19th century, writes: “The martyrs, by their personal example of high self-sacrifice, showed the outside world that religion is such an important matter that sometimes it is better to sacrifice life itself than to sacrifice it.” Martyrdom shows that from now on the carnal side of life ceases to be dominant in relation to the spiritual, and that from now on a person, contrary to the instinct of self-preservation, is even ready to part with his life in order not to shame and blaspheme the One True God, in whom he believed and with whom experienced an internal ontological connection.

As you know, in the days of the Roman Empire, the main formal reason for executing a Christian was his refusal to sacrifice to pagan idols, which was regarded as a lack of recognition of the legitimacy of Roman power. Of course, in our time, when the Christian faith has long since become predominant and dominant, such actions are no longer required of Christians. But do idols exist in our time? It seems to me that the well-known modern Catholic theologian, Cardinal Walter Kasper, spoke most accurately on this subject, who wrote that idols can exist in a variety of shapes and forms. According to his book The God of Jesus Christ, mammon (Matt. 6:24), the womb (Philippians 3:19) may well become an idol, one's own honor (John 5:44) or uncontrolled, sensual enjoyment of life can turn into an idol. An idol can be any elevation of worldly things to the status of an absolute. Based on the foregoing, it can be boldly asserted that in our days, when a consumerist attitude to life is being promoted in every possible way, the rejection of worldly pleasures can be safely called one of the modern forms of martyrdom.

Therefore, it seems to me, remembering the numerous examples of martyrdom from the history of the Church, we must also remember that the fact that we belong to the same faith with these people imposes on us an enormous responsibility. Each of our actions, each of our words and even thoughts is either a proof, discovery and revelation of our faith, or evidence of our renunciation of faith. With this in mind, let us ask in our prayers for help from the holy martyrs to pass the field of earthly life and strength for spiritual development and growth in faith.

Martyrs of the Ancient Church (before the Edict of Milan 313)

The history of New Testament martyrdom begins with the gospel narrative of Christ. It was He, the Founder of all types of Christian achievement, who was the first New Testament Martyr.

“Our Lord,” writes St. Dimitry of Rostov, - having assumed human nature ... passed the ranks of all the saints. And nowhere did He take on humanity the glory that He had with the Father "before the world was"(John 17.5), as soon as in the rank of martyr. St. Demetrius explains that Christ was a prophet, “for he prophesied about the captivity of Jerusalem and foretold the Last Judgment Day, but he was not glorified in the prophetic rank”; was also an apostle, for “passed through the cities and villages, preaching and proclaiming the Kingdom of God(Lk.8.1)”, but he did not become famous in the apostolic rank; was a hermit and a faster "He was led by the spirit into the wilderness"(Luke 4.1) fasted for forty days, "but neither in the wilderness nor in the fasting rank He was glorified." Christ was a miracle worker, cast out demons, healed the blind, the lame, the paralytic, and raised the dead, "however, He does not say that He was glorified in this rank." When, after the Last Supper, the Savior prepared for martyrdom, embarked on this path, only then did He say to the disciples: "Now the Son of Man is glorified." And after suffering on the Cross, appearing after the Resurrection to Luke and Cleopas, the Lord said: “Should not Christ have suffered in this way and entered into His glory?”(Luke 24:26). “Look,” exclaims St. Demetrius, - how high was the greatness of martyrdom, that even Christ Himself through martyrdom should enter into His glory.

The Gospel also contains indications of the nature of the persecution: on the one hand, the rejection of Christianity by the political system of that time, on the other, the rejection of it by the adherents of Judaism. All subsequent persecutions had these reasons to one degree or another: Christians were persecuted either for religious or political reasons.

The first Christian martyrs appeared during the apostolic period. Their deaths were the result of persecution by the Jews, who viewed Christians as a dangerous sect and accused them of blasphemy. During this period, the Roman authorities did not persecute Christians, not distinguishing them from the Jews (Judaism was in Rome a permitted - licita - religion).

The persecution by the Jews is mentioned more than once in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. From the year 37, the Roman authorities expanded the rights of King Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great. He got the opportunity to start persecuting Christians in order to gain popularity among the Jews. The victim of this persecution was St. James Zebedee, brother of John the Evangelist. The same fate threatened St. app. Peter, but he was miraculously released from prison (Acts 12:1-18). It is known that the Jews tried several times to betray St. Paul to the judgment of the Roman authorities, however, these authorities refused to condemn the apostle, because they considered the accusations against him as religious disputes within Judaism, in which they did not want to interfere (Acts 18:12-17). Moreover, these authorities prevented the Jews from killing St. Paul during the rebellion in Jerusalem in 58 or 59 (Acts 23:12–29) and sent him, as a Roman citizen, to Rome to be judged by Caesar (Acts 26:30–31). In the year 62, taking advantage of the death of the Roman ruler in Judea Festus, the high priest Ananus ordered the death of St. apostle James the Righteous, brother of the Lord, the first bishop of the Jerusalem Church. Anan demanded that Jacob recognize Christianity as a delusion from the roof of the Jerusalem temple. But Jacob uttered a confession of faith, for which he was thrown from the roof and finished off with stones. For this unauthorized act, King Agrippa deprived Anan of the high priesthood. All this indicates that the Roman authorities at first even tried to somehow restrain the persecutors.

The persecution of Christians by the Roman state began from the time of Emperor Nero (54-68). In the history of these persecutions, three periods are distinguished_

By the first period include the persecution under Nero in 64 and the persecution under Domitian (81-96). The persecution under Nero was short-lived and did not cover all areas of the Roman Empire. But it entered the history of the Church as one of the most terrible, apparently because of its suddenness and unpreparedness of Christians. Among the martyrs of this persecution are the holy apostles Peter and Paul. But during this period, the Roman authorities still did not consider Christianity as a special religion hostile to it. Under Nero, Christians are persecuted, blamed for the fire in Rome. Under Domitian, they are persecuted as Jews who do not declare their Judaism and refuse to pay the "Jewish tax". According to the church history of Eusebius, among the many martyrs of this persecution, Clement, wife of the consular Flavius, who was burned for her faith in 95. By this time, Tradition refers to the reference to Fr. Patmos St. apostle John the Evangelist.

The spread of Christianity in different strata of Roman society (far beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community) makes the Roman authorities realize that they are dealing with a special religion, hostile, in their opinion, both to the Roman state system and to the traditional cultural values ​​of Roman society. Since that time, the persecution of Christians as a religious community begins.

The most important document for this second period persecution is the well-known correspondence of the Roman governor in Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, with the emperor Trajan (98-117). Trajan writes about the legitimacy of the persecution of Christians "for the very name", that is, for one belonging to the Christian community. However, the emperor points out that there is no need to "seek out" Christians, they are subject to trial and execution only when someone brings charges against them. Trajan also writes that “those who deny that they are Christians and prove it in practice, that is, pray to our gods, should be pardoned for repentance, even if in the past they were under suspicion.” On these principles - with some deviations - and based persecution of Christians in the second period.

Under Trajan, among many, St. Clement, Pope of Rome, St. Ignatius the God-bearer, her. Antioch (107 or 116) and her. Jerusalem Simeon, 120-year-old elder, son of Cleopas, successor in the chair of St. app. James the Righteous (c. 109).

Near 137 years under Emperor Hadrian (117–138) young girls hurt Faith Hope and Love. Their mother, martyr Sofia, she was present during torture, strengthened her daughters in feat and patience until death. The emperor allowed Sophia to take the bodies of her daughters, wanting to prolong her mental anguish. Saint Sophia honorably buried the bodies of her children, sat at their grave for three days, and then died there from the suffering of her heart.

The second period of persecution is marked by the martyrdom of saints like her. Polycarp of Smyrna († c. 156) and Justin the Philosopher († c. 165). The famous church historian Eusebius reports that during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180) there were severe persecutions in Lyon and vienne. You can read more about them in the appendix to this section of the course.

Under the emperor Septimius Severus (196-211), St. Irenaeus, her. Lyon (202). The martyrs were especially remarkable for their courage. Carthaginian region, where persecution was stronger than elsewhere. So, a young mother of noble birth, Phoebe perpetua (Commemorated February 1), despite the pleas of her father and love for her child, she declared herself Christian and died in the circus from hungry animals. The same fate befell her slave Felicity, giving birth in prison, and her husband Revokata( 1-202).

Periods of persecution gave way to comparatively calm times. On the eve of the third period of persecution, the Church lived for about thirty years almost without persecution. During these years, Christianity spread so widely throughout the Roman Empire that there was a large community in almost every city. The new faith was adopted by rich and noble citizens, the masses became less hostile to it, some emperors were even supportive of Christianity. Nevertheless, there were forces in the empire that wanted its decisive extermination.

It is obvious that the outbreaks of persecution were due not only to political reasons. Hieromartyr Cyprian of Carthage, who lived at that time, explains that the onset of persecution after the world is not accidental, persecution has a spiritual cause and a spiritual goal. The judgments of this saint are especially valuable for us, since he himself crowned his life's feat with a martyr's death.

“The Lord wanted to test His family,” writes the Hieromartyr Cyprian, “and since the long peace has damaged the teachings betrayed to us from Above, the Divine Providence itself restored the lying and, so to speak, almost dormant faith.” According to him, during that calm period, the morality of Christians was significantly damaged: everyone began to take care of increasing their property, “forgetting how the believers acted under the apostles and how they should always act.” “Sincere piety has not become noticeable in priests, in ministers - pure faith, in deeds - mercy, in morals - deanery. Men have disfigured their beards, women have rouged their faces... They enter into marital alliances with infidels... They despise the primates of the Church with proud arrogance, slander each other with poisonous lips, create mutual strife with stubborn hatred...”. “Why did we not deserve to endure for such sins, when even earlier, in our warning, the following Divine decree was expressed: unless they forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; If they defile my righteousness and keep not my commandments, I will visit their iniquity with the rod and the stripes of their iniquity(Ps. 88:31-33)?” - asks the holy martyr. And he continues: “We ... despised the commandments of the Lord, made it our sins that more severe means were required to correct the crime and for the Divine test.”

Third period persecution begins with the reign of Emperor Decius (249-251) and continues until the Edict of Milan in 313. In the edict issued by Decius, the legal formula for the persecution of Christians is changed. The persecution of Christians was now made the responsibility of government officials, that is, it became not the result of the initiative of a private prosecutor, but the state policy. The aim of the persecution, however, was not so much the execution of Christians as the compulsion of them to renounce. For this, sophisticated torture was used, but those who withstood them were not always executed. Therefore, the persecutions of this period, along with the martyrs, give many confessors.

At the same time, whole groups of so-called fallen away. Their appearance was a natural consequence of the impoverishment of faith, which the schmch wrote about. Cyprian. According to the form of renunciation, those who fell away were divided into several groups: those who sacrificed incense to the image of the emperor; buyers of false certificates that they allegedly made a sacrifice; giving false testimony in the protocols.

Saint Cyprian describes how easily some members of the Church renounced their faith. “They did not even wait to go, at least when they were seized; recant when asked. Many ... have not even left a visible excuse for themselves that they sacrificed to idols under duress. Willingly (themselves. - E. N.) they flee ... as if they were glad of the opportunity that presented itself ... How many rulers did there a respite because of the evening that had come, and how many even asked that their destruction not be postponed! ”... For many, their own destruction was still not enough ...“<они>mutually offered each other to drink death from a deadly vessel. Moreover, for the perfect completeness of the crime, even babies brought or attracted by the hands of their parents ... lost what they received shortly after their birth ... And alas! There is no just and right reason that would justify such a crime.”

This picture of numerous renunciations even more emphasizes the greatness of the feat of those who, not fearing death, remained faithful to Christ. In the third period, the primates of the Churches were the first to be persecuted. Then the schmch suffered. Cyprian of Carthage (258), dad Sixtus of Rome with the deacon Lawrence (261), Bishop of Thyatira Carp, Bishop of Babylon of Antioch, Bishop of Alexandria Alexander. The feat of St. mch. Tryphon.

Persecution, as before, alternated with times of almost complete tolerance. For example, the edict of the emperor Gallen (260-268) granted the primates of the Churches the freedom to engage in religious activities.

The most severe persecutions of the third period occur at the end of the reign of Diocletian (284-305) and subsequent years.

These persecutions began with the troops. In 298, a decree was issued ordering all troops to make sacrifices. As a result, a mass exodus of Christians from military service began. In Tingis (Africa) a warrior Marcel, when it was his turn to make a sacrifice, he dropped his weapon and refused to serve the emperor. He was executed. Diocletian's co-ruler Maximian ordered the extermination of an entire legion of warriors who refused to make sacrifices. This is the so-called Thebaid (Theban -) legion, led by St. Marcius . (According to other sources, among the commanders of this legion, in the first place is named St. Mauritius). See Appendix to Topic 3.

In 303-304 a number of edicts are issued depriving Christians of all civil rights, ordering the imprisonment of all representatives of the clergy and demanding that they renounce Christianity through sacrifice. The last edict of 304 ordered all Christians in general to be compelled everywhere to make sacrifices, achieving this by any torture.

Martyrdom in these years was massive, but in different provinces the persecution was carried out with different intensity. The most severe persecutions were in the east of the empire. So, in Nicomedia (Asia Minor) on the feast of the Nativity of Christ in 303, Maximian ordered to burn up to 20 thousand Christians (commemoration Nicomedia martyrs December 28th). The exceptions were Britain, Gaul and Spain, which were ruled by Caesar Constantius Chlorus, who favored Christians, the father of Constantine the Great. The feat of the holy martyrs belongs to the period of Maximian's persecution. Adriana and Natalia. Adrian was martyred in Nicomedia of Bithynia in front of his wife. After the execution of her husband, Natalia died, exhausted by mental suffering.

The persecution by the Roman authorities ceased after the issuance of an edict in 311, in which Christianity was recognized as a permissible religion, and in full measure after the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed complete religious tolerance.