n England, up to the twelfth century, bishops were L to exercise their functions within a certain geo- phical territory called a parish; the word diocese I seldom used, nor was it at all employed in Eng- d, with authority from the popes, until A.D. 1138 •it. and For. Evang, Revieto, No. 211, p. 223). The arch of England now includes twenty-eight dio- es (including the two archbishoprics) ; that of Ire- d twelve. In the United States a diocese is a ter- >ry under the jurisdiction of a single bishop of'the >te8tant Episcopal or Roman Church, whether com- thending one or more states of the Union, or only t of a state. New dioceses can be formed in the Dtestant Episcopal Church with the consent of the hop, the Diocesan Convention, and the General Con- ation. There were in the United States, in 1867, rty-four dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church, a forty-four dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church. 1868, the pope, in accordance *with the proposition ide by the " Second Plenary Council of Baltimore," ablished nine new dioceses, thereby increasing the al number of Roman Catholic dioceses to fifty-three, e Bingham, Orig, Ecdes. book ix, chap, i ; Bilson, Tpetual Government of Christ's Church, chap, xiv ; wk. Church Dictionary^ s. v. ; Ferraris, Prompta Bib- ^^a, B. V. ; Elliott, Delineation of Romamtm, book , chap, ix ; Hooker, EcdetiasOccd Polity, book vii, § Siegel, Handbuch der AUerthumer, iv, 878.
Dioolesian, or Diocletian (DiocxETiAinTs, Cai- AcRELius Valerius), Romsn emperor, was bom out A.D. 246 (others say 256), near Salona, in Dal- atia. From the name of hb mother, Dioclea, he was lied Diocles, which he afterwards made Diocletianus. e entered the army, and rose from the ranks to high >8ition. Dioclesian commanded the household or im- ^1 body-guards when young Nnmerianns, the son
DIOCLESIAN
of Carus, was secretly put to death by Aper, his ik- ther-in-law, while travelling hi a close litter on ac- count of illness, on the return of the army from Persia. The death of Numerionus being discovered, after sev- eral days, by the soldiers near Calchedon, they arrest- ed Aper and proclaimed Dioclesian emperor, who, ad- dressing the soldiere from his tribunal in the camp, protested his innocence of the death of Numerianus, and then, upbraiding Aper for the crime, plunged his sword into his body. The new emperor observed to a fHend that **he had now killed the boar,'* alluding to a prediction made to him by a Druidess in Gaul, that be should mount the throne as soon as he had killed the wild boar (Lat. Aper). He became emperor Sept. 17, 284, and in 286 chose Maximinianus as his col- league in the empire (as Augustus) ; in 292 he added Galerius as Caesar, while Maximinianus chose Con- stantius Chlorus. The empire was parodied out among them, and the theory of the system was that the young- er men, as Caesars, should be trained to rule, and should succeed in time to the frinctions of Augustus. Inter- nal peace was secured for yean by this arrangement.
Coin of Dioclesian. (British HoBeum. Actoal eize.)
The reign of Dioclesian was in many respects a noble and successful one, but its glory was stained by the terrible persecution of the Christians which he author- ized. *' The earlier part of his reign was favorable to the Christians, and it was through the weakness and superstition of the prince, rather than his wickedness, that his name is now inscribed on the tablets of infa- my as the most savage among persecutors. Galerius represented to him that the permanence of the Roman institutions was incompatible with the prevalence of Christianity, which should therefore be extirpated. Dioclesian proposed the subject to a sort of council, composed of some eminent military and judicial offi- cers. They assented to the opinion of Galerius ; but the emperor still hesitated, until the measure was sano* tioned and sanctified by the oracle of the Milepian Apollo. The emperor gave a tardy consent to the commencement >of a plan into which he appears to have entered with the most considerate calmness, though it is also true that during its progress some in- cidents occurred which enlisted his passions in the cause, and even so inflamed them that, in the height of his madness, he certainly proposed nothing less than the extermination of the Christian name. The influ- ence of the Caesar Galerius, who was animated, from whatsoever motive, by an unmitigated detestation of the worehippers of Christ, and who thirsted for thehr destruction, was probably the most powerful of those circumstances. But the second must not be forgotten. In the disputes, now become general, between the Christian ministere and the pagan priests, the teach- ers of philosophy are almost invariably found on the side of the latter ; and as it is not denied — ^not even by Gibbon — ^that those learned persons directed the course and suggested the means of persecution, we need not hesitate to attribute a considerable share in the guilt of its origin to then pernicious eloquence. Dioclesian published his firat edict in the February of 808. Three others of greater severity succeeded it-; and, during a shamefbl period of ten yean, they were very generally and rigorously enforced by himself, his colleagues, and successon. It is needless to particularize the degrees of barbarity by which those edicts were severally die-