Case Study 2: The Decian Persecution of 250 AD
To the Commissioners of Sacrifice of the Village of Alexander’s Island:
From Aurelius Diogenes, the son of Satabus, of the Village of Alexander’s Island, aged 72 years: ---scar on his right eyebrow.
I have always sacrificed regularly to the gods, and now, in your presence, in accordance with the edict, I have done sacrifice, and poured the drink offering, and tasted of the sacrifices, and I request you to certify the same. Farewell.
-----Handed in by me, Aurelius Diogenes.
-----I certify that I saw him sacrificing [signature obliterated].
Done in the first year of the Emperor, Caesar Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius Pius Felix Augustus, second of the month Epith. [June 26, 250 A.D.]
COMMENTARY
The text of this libellus is noteworthy for its brevity. Aurelius Diogenes, an elderly resident of Upper Egypt, protests his enduring commitment to the state religion. Whether a Christian or merely under suspicion of being one cannot be determined from the text itself, but the wording would have been no different had he indeed been a follower of the ‘Sect of the Nazarene.’ If he was indeed a Christian who bowed to the injunctions of the Emperor Decius, we can but speculate on his state of mind. Did he view his action as rank apostasy or a necessary compromise with imperial authorities who had shown no desire to confiscate Christian property or prohibit their acts of worship? Was his decision reached after much heart-searching or did it come relatively easily? Was he inspired by a concern for personal safety or perhaps for the well-being of other members of his family? These, and other, questions remain unanswered and unanswerable, but the words of a late 19th century observer reporting on the discovery of this fragment of papyrus from Fayum seem all too apt:
The Decian persecution of 250 represented a dramatic departure from earlier anti-Christian episodes in that it reflected a reorientation of imperial religious policy to achieve a basic uniformity across the Roman Empire. J. B. Rives has nevertheless argued that while Decius cannot have been unaware of the implications for Christians of his edict (which required all citizens to make public sacrifice, taste the sacrificial meat and swear they had always sacrificed to the gods), his principal goal appears to have been the strengthening of religious ties between the individual and the Empire at the expense of local religious cults. That his reign witnessed none of the assaults on the institutional Church common under Valerian and Diocletian is suggestive of a willingness to tolerate Christianity, although his death at the hands of the Goths in 251 leaves it uncertain as to whether such measures might not later have been adopted.
Beyond formalizing a corpus of martyrologies that would serve to inspire later generations of persecuted Christians, the aftermath of the Decian persecution led Christians in both the Carthaginian and Roman churches to ponder anew how to address the problem of apostasy and the restoration to full communion of those who were had compromised their profession of faith. Disagreement over the nature and duration of penance provoked divisions in both North Africa and Italy in which partisans of “laxist” and “rigorous” approaches, respectively, challenged the prevailing position in their churches. What began as a debate over apostasy, therefore, swiftly became a confrontation over the nature of the Church and the problems of heresy, schism and ecclesiastical order that would not be resolved until at least the time of Augustine of Hippo.
During the sectarian phase of the Early Church, the Sacrament of Baptism functioned as a ritual both of initiation and penitence. Expectations of post-baptismal purity and holiness led many to delay Baptism until late in life, and meant that post-baptismal sin constituted a serious pastoral problem. A potential solution identified by the North African theologian Tertullian was an extreme form of penitential act termed exomologesis or open confession in full, characterized by public expressions of penitence, fasting and prayer. The penitent was ultimately reconciled and restored to full communion by the laying on of hands by the bishop and presbyters in the presence of the full congregation. As Bryant puts it:
As the Church’s membership expanded, however, there was increasing pressure to relax certain standards of membership, including penitential discipline, which provoked such clashes as that between Callistus, Bishop of Rome, and the theologian Hippolytus who charged the former with corrupting Christian morals by permitting absolution for the sins of fornication and adultery. A quarter of a century before the Decian persecution the tensions surrounding church discipline were thus already fully evident.
In the wake of the persecution, very different strategies came to be adopted in Rome and Carthage for reconciling those who had fallen short. While the Roman Church upheld the principle of an extended period of repentance for the lapsi (lapsed), the Carthaginian Church (whose bishop, Cyprian, had been in hiding during the persecution) was sustained by a network of martyr confessors who proved willing to grant letters of peace to their weaker brethren. On the death of the martyr, many lapsi proffered such letters as grounds for their readmission to the communion of the Church. On his return, Cyprian insisted that all those not in danger of death should undertake a period of penance, but in so doing he found himself opposed by a significant “laxist” party, which rejected his authority to determine the basis of the Church’s membership and so produced a schism within the North African Church. Cyprian’s opponents were concerned that a failure to reintegrate the wealthier members of the lapsi had led to suffering on the part of poorer Christians who were beneficiaries of their financial contributions, but disagreements over the form of repentance posed a fundamental challenge to the nature of authority within the Church.
At a synod in 251, Cyprian secured a pastoral distinction between the sacrificati (those who had sacrificed) and the lapsi (who had merely acquired the libellus by other means), requiring of the former that they continue in a pattern of penance and only be readmitted to communion as they approached death. Equally important, however, was the excommunication of the laxist party, whose consecration of a rival bishop ran directly counter to Cyprian’s insistence that there can be but one Church and communities set up in opposition to it are fundamentally lacking in Christian identity. For Cyprian the modern distinction between belief and practice was incomprehensible; there could be no schism without heresy and, equally, no heresy without schism. It was this belief that enabled him to lend support to Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, whose moderate policies regarding reconciliation of the lapsi had provoked the secession of more rigorist clergy who chose Novatian as a rival bishop. Ironically, even as the more rigorist (in African terms) Cyprian lent his support to Cornelius, his laxist opponents gave succour to the supporters of Novatian, a vocal critic of the laxist failings of the Roman Church:
The initial common ground established between Carthage and Rome was subsequently disrupted by a conflict between Cyprian and Cornelius’s successor, Stephen, regarding the African practice of rebaptism of heretics and schismatics, which had been confirmed by an African Synod of 356. Cyprian’s understanding of the nature of the Church left no room for the possibility that heretical sacraments were capable of incorporating believers into the One True Church, and Stephen’s insistence on the traditional Roman practice of receiving those who had been baptized within a schismatic community solely by the laying on of hands led to a period of severed communion between the two churches. Profoundly different theologies were evident here:
Unlike the later persecutions of Valerian and Diocletian, it is clear that the scars inflicted on the Early Church by the persecution of Decius were at least as much a consequence of self-inflicted wounds as of the fury of the civil authorities. The clear ecclesiological differences between the Church in North Africa and the Church in Rome foreshadowed the later theological disputes of the post-Constantinian era and brought to the fore questions regarding the nature of heresy and schism and the Church’s response to it that endure to the present day.
J. H. Breasted (1894). ‘The Latest Discovery from the Egyptian Fayum.’ The Biblical World 3(4): 295–298.
J. M. Bryant (1993). ‘The Sect-Church Dynamic and Christian Expansion in the Roman Empire: Persecution, Penitential Discipline, and Schism in Sociological Perspective.’ The British Journal of Sociology 44(1): 303-339.
J. P. Burns (1993). ‘On Rebaptism: Social Organization in the Third Century Church.’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 1(4): 367-403.
D. J. DeVore (2014). ‘Character and Convention in the Letters of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History.’ Journal of Late Antiquity 7(2): 223–252.
G. D. Dunn (2004). ‘Heresy and Schism according to Cyprian of Carthage.’ The Journal of Theological Studies, New Series 55(2): 551-574.
(2005). ‘Cyprian's Rival Bishops and Their Communities.’ Augustinianum 45 (1): 61-93.
(2006) ‘Validity of Baptism and Ordination in the African Response to the ‘Rebaptism’ Crisis: Cyprian of Cathage’s Synod of Spring 256.’ Theological Studies 67(2): 257-273.
J. B. Rives (1999). ‘The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire.’ The Journal of Roman Studies 89: 135-154.
K. Shuve (2010). ‘Cyprian of Carthage’s Writings from the Rebaptism Controversy: Two revisionary proposals reconsidered.’ The Journal of Theological Studies, New Series 61(2): 627-43.
A. Stewart-Sykes (2002). ‘Ordination Rites and Patronage Systems in Third-Century Africa.’ Vigiliae Christianae 56(2): 115-130.
M. A. Tilley (2007). ‘When Schism Becomes Heresy in Late Antiquity: Developing Doctrinal Deviance in the Wounded Body of Christ.’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 15(1): 1-1.
The text of this libellus is noteworthy for its brevity. Aurelius Diogenes, an elderly resident of Upper Egypt, protests his enduring commitment to the state religion. Whether a Christian or merely under suspicion of being one cannot be determined from the text itself, but the wording would have been no different had he indeed been a follower of the ‘Sect of the Nazarene.’ If he was indeed a Christian who bowed to the injunctions of the Emperor Decius, we can but speculate on his state of mind. Did he view his action as rank apostasy or a necessary compromise with imperial authorities who had shown no desire to confiscate Christian property or prohibit their acts of worship? Was his decision reached after much heart-searching or did it come relatively easily? Was he inspired by a concern for personal safety or perhaps for the well-being of other members of his family? These, and other, questions remain unanswered and unanswerable, but the words of a late 19th century observer reporting on the discovery of this fragment of papyrus from Fayum seem all too apt:
Out of those far centuries which seem so unreal to us of today, has come this little fragment, like a voice from the dead, to tell us more vividly what that period of storm and stress brought to the individual believer in the early church. (Breasted 298)
The Decian persecution of 250 represented a dramatic departure from earlier anti-Christian episodes in that it reflected a reorientation of imperial religious policy to achieve a basic uniformity across the Roman Empire. J. B. Rives has nevertheless argued that while Decius cannot have been unaware of the implications for Christians of his edict (which required all citizens to make public sacrifice, taste the sacrificial meat and swear they had always sacrificed to the gods), his principal goal appears to have been the strengthening of religious ties between the individual and the Empire at the expense of local religious cults. That his reign witnessed none of the assaults on the institutional Church common under Valerian and Diocletian is suggestive of a willingness to tolerate Christianity, although his death at the hands of the Goths in 251 leaves it uncertain as to whether such measures might not later have been adopted.
Beyond formalizing a corpus of martyrologies that would serve to inspire later generations of persecuted Christians, the aftermath of the Decian persecution led Christians in both the Carthaginian and Roman churches to ponder anew how to address the problem of apostasy and the restoration to full communion of those who were had compromised their profession of faith. Disagreement over the nature and duration of penance provoked divisions in both North Africa and Italy in which partisans of “laxist” and “rigorous” approaches, respectively, challenged the prevailing position in their churches. What began as a debate over apostasy, therefore, swiftly became a confrontation over the nature of the Church and the problems of heresy, schism and ecclesiastical order that would not be resolved until at least the time of Augustine of Hippo.
During the sectarian phase of the Early Church, the Sacrament of Baptism functioned as a ritual both of initiation and penitence. Expectations of post-baptismal purity and holiness led many to delay Baptism until late in life, and meant that post-baptismal sin constituted a serious pastoral problem. A potential solution identified by the North African theologian Tertullian was an extreme form of penitential act termed exomologesis or open confession in full, characterized by public expressions of penitence, fasting and prayer. The penitent was ultimately reconciled and restored to full communion by the laying on of hands by the bishop and presbyters in the presence of the full congregation. As Bryant puts it:
Not only would the self-abasing and humbling prospect of exomologesis serve as a kind of pre-emptive ‘rigorist’ check against sinning, but, more importantly, the procedure involved the congregation as a whole in the moral life of its individual members, collectively evaluating the sincerity of the contrition exhibited by supplicating penitents and ultimately judging the worthiness of their continued participation in the assembly of saints. (Bryant 312)
In the wake of the persecution, very different strategies came to be adopted in Rome and Carthage for reconciling those who had fallen short. While the Roman Church upheld the principle of an extended period of repentance for the lapsi (lapsed), the Carthaginian Church (whose bishop, Cyprian, had been in hiding during the persecution) was sustained by a network of martyr confessors who proved willing to grant letters of peace to their weaker brethren. On the death of the martyr, many lapsi proffered such letters as grounds for their readmission to the communion of the Church. On his return, Cyprian insisted that all those not in danger of death should undertake a period of penance, but in so doing he found himself opposed by a significant “laxist” party, which rejected his authority to determine the basis of the Church’s membership and so produced a schism within the North African Church. Cyprian’s opponents were concerned that a failure to reintegrate the wealthier members of the lapsi had led to suffering on the part of poorer Christians who were beneficiaries of their financial contributions, but disagreements over the form of repentance posed a fundamental challenge to the nature of authority within the Church.
At a synod in 251, Cyprian secured a pastoral distinction between the sacrificati (those who had sacrificed) and the lapsi (who had merely acquired the libellus by other means), requiring of the former that they continue in a pattern of penance and only be readmitted to communion as they approached death. Equally important, however, was the excommunication of the laxist party, whose consecration of a rival bishop ran directly counter to Cyprian’s insistence that there can be but one Church and communities set up in opposition to it are fundamentally lacking in Christian identity. For Cyprian the modern distinction between belief and practice was incomprehensible; there could be no schism without heresy and, equally, no heresy without schism. It was this belief that enabled him to lend support to Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, whose moderate policies regarding reconciliation of the lapsi had provoked the secession of more rigorist clergy who chose Novatian as a rival bishop. Ironically, even as the more rigorist (in African terms) Cyprian lent his support to Cornelius, his laxist opponents gave succour to the supporters of Novatian, a vocal critic of the laxist failings of the Roman Church:
Each subset of church has its own set of goals which it had to balance, complicated by change over time. Cyprian’s community at Carthage balanced unity, holiness, and ritual efficacy in one way at one time and in a different way at another. Rome balanced them differently from the time of Cornelius to that of Stephen . . . The adroit leadership and personal respect of Cyprian, Cornelius, and Stephen helped keep the African and Roman churches from internal fission. Likewise, they kept the transmarine churches united to each other. Because Cyprian focused on different goals relative to Rome at different times, it does not mean that he was inconsistent, but that in response to different circumstances, he made different prudential judgments about balancing ends or goals in pursuit of greater church identity.” (Tilley 12-13)
Cyprian recognized a unique church communion as the presence of the heavenly Kingdom of Christ in the world. Outside that church neither did the Holy Spirit sanctify nor did Christ acknowledge any disciples; all who died in that exterior darkness were damned without so much as a hearing. Stephen, without specifying the precise status of heretical and schismatic communities, believed that those who confessed Christ and were baptized in his Name might hope for salvation through his sovereign mercy in the final judgment. The clash of these two ideologies would plague the churches for the next two centuries. (Burns 403)
Unlike the later persecutions of Valerian and Diocletian, it is clear that the scars inflicted on the Early Church by the persecution of Decius were at least as much a consequence of self-inflicted wounds as of the fury of the civil authorities. The clear ecclesiological differences between the Church in North Africa and the Church in Rome foreshadowed the later theological disputes of the post-Constantinian era and brought to the fore questions regarding the nature of heresy and schism and the Church’s response to it that endure to the present day.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. H. Breasted (1894). ‘The Latest Discovery from the Egyptian Fayum.’ The Biblical World 3(4): 295–298.
J. M. Bryant (1993). ‘The Sect-Church Dynamic and Christian Expansion in the Roman Empire: Persecution, Penitential Discipline, and Schism in Sociological Perspective.’ The British Journal of Sociology 44(1): 303-339.
J. P. Burns (1993). ‘On Rebaptism: Social Organization in the Third Century Church.’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 1(4): 367-403.
D. J. DeVore (2014). ‘Character and Convention in the Letters of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History.’ Journal of Late Antiquity 7(2): 223–252.
G. D. Dunn (2004). ‘Heresy and Schism according to Cyprian of Carthage.’ The Journal of Theological Studies, New Series 55(2): 551-574.
(2005). ‘Cyprian's Rival Bishops and Their Communities.’ Augustinianum 45 (1): 61-93.
(2006) ‘Validity of Baptism and Ordination in the African Response to the ‘Rebaptism’ Crisis: Cyprian of Cathage’s Synod of Spring 256.’ Theological Studies 67(2): 257-273.
J. B. Rives (1999). ‘The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire.’ The Journal of Roman Studies 89: 135-154.
K. Shuve (2010). ‘Cyprian of Carthage’s Writings from the Rebaptism Controversy: Two revisionary proposals reconsidered.’ The Journal of Theological Studies, New Series 61(2): 627-43.
A. Stewart-Sykes (2002). ‘Ordination Rites and Patronage Systems in Third-Century Africa.’ Vigiliae Christianae 56(2): 115-130.
M. A. Tilley (2007). ‘When Schism Becomes Heresy in Late Antiquity: Developing Doctrinal Deviance in the Wounded Body of Christ.’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 15(1): 1-1.