PERSECUTIONS OF CHRISTIANS 965 PERSECUTIONS OF CHRISTIANS
is a cordial approbation of the use of the sword against the Albigenses and their fellows, who dared to mar the unity of the Church. The late dean Hurter retained the presidency of the Protestant clergj' at Sehaffhausen for many years after he wrote his Life of Innocent III ; yet in that work he boldly advocates the propagation of Christianity by force, and. notwith- standing some hypocritical reserves, can hardh' be said to conceal his synipath}' with the crusaders of Simon de Montfort and the inquisitors of the Middle Ages. Wo have an autiioritative declaration of liomish doc- trine in the bull of I'iiis VI, A.I>. 179-t, which condemns the reforming Synod of Hicci, bishop of Pistoia. The synod had aflirnicd, "Abusum fore auctoritatis ecclesire transferendo illam ultra liraites doctrinas ac morum, et earn extendondo ad res cxteriores, et per vim exigendo id quod pendet a persnasione et corde, turn etiara multo minus ad earn pcrtinere, exigere per vim exteriorem subjeclionem suis decretis;" and this proposition is de- clared heretical so far as by the indeterminate words " extendendo ad res exteriores" is denoted an abuse of Ciuirch power; and "Qua parte insinuar, ecclesiam non habere auctoritatem subjectionis suis decretis cxigendaj aliter quam per media qu;c pendent a persuasione — qua- tenus intendat ecclesiam; non habere collatam sibi a Deo potestatem, non solum dirigendi per consilia et sua- siones, scd etiani jubendi per leges, ac devios contuma- cesquc exteriore jiulicio ac salubribns pccnis coercendi atque cogendi" (ex Bened. XI V^ in brevi Ad Assiduas, anni 1755; comp. Datnnatio Synodi Pistoiemis, art. iv, v, in the Appendix to Cunones Cone. Trident. Tauchnitz ed. p. 298), By this determination of two popes must be interpreted the oath taken by a bishop upon consecra- tion : " Hsereticos, schismaticos, et rebelles eidem Domi- no nostro vel successoribus pnedictis, pro posse persequar et impugnabo" (^Pontijicale Rom.). The claim from the Church of the power of temporal punishment is distinct. The union of civil sovereignty over tlie Papal States with the ecclesiastical primacy makes such a claim more natural to the head of the Komish Church; but as the history of the Papal States does not recommend such a union of the temporal and civil powers, so neither docs the history of the Komisli obedience recommend a trans- fer of coercive jurisdiction from the civil to the ecclesi- astical tribunals. That there is no such power divinely given to the Church we have endeavored to show. See the art, in Blunt, Diet, of Doclr. and Hist. TIteol. s, v., of which we have largely availed ourselves; Elliott, Ro- manism; Milman, Lot. C'krislianitt/ ; Leakey, //ist. of Europ. Moi-als, and his //kf. of Ratiomdism., i, 74, 150, Sol, 350, and csp. ii, 11, 09; Thompson, I'apacij and the Civil Power (see Index); liitidk', Perseeiilions of the Papacy (Lond. JS59, 2 vols. 8vo). See Kojian-
ISM.
PERSECUTIONS OF CHRISTIANS. The perse- cution of Christians dates from the day when Jesus Christ appeared among men to preach the glad tidings of redemption from sin and salvation eternal. The very earliest sufferings of the Church of Christ and its Head are subjects of New-Testament history. It is clear that these earliest sufferings Christians endured from the Jews. But the persecutions were of no great severity so long as the Jews were the persecutors. When, how- ever, the Roman authorities assumed the exercise of the state's sovereignty persecution took a more terrible form, and there were tiien inaugurated a series of measures in- tended to compel the rising community of Christians to renounce their new creed, and to conform to the estab- lished religion of the empire. In later times persecu- tions of heretics and dissenters have been not uncom- mon on the part of certain Christian bodies, especially the Romish and Anglican churches.
I. Payan I'ersecittions. — These are called the ten per- secutions in ecclesiastical history, and designate cer- tain periods of special severity. The Christian com- munity were at all times regarded with suspicion and dislike in the Roman empire— the constitution of Rome
not only being essentially intolerant of those new relig- ions which, like the Christian, were directly aggressive against the established religion of the state, but being particularly hostile to private associations and private assemblages for worship, such as those which every Christian congregation by its very nature presented ; and thus there are very few periods during the first three centuries in which it can be said that the Church enjoyed everywhere a comjilete immunity from perse- cution. But the name is given particularly to certain periods when cither new enactments were passed against Christianity, or the existing ones were enforced with unusual rigor. The notion of ten such periods is com- monly accepted almost as a historical axiom ; and it is not generally known that this precise determination of the number is comparatively recent. In the 4th cen- tury no settled theory of the number of persecutions seems to have been adopted. Lactantius reckons up but six ; Eusebius does not state what tiie number was, but his narrative supplies data for nine. Sulpicius Severus, in the 5th century, is the first who expressly states the number as ten; but he only enumerates nine in detail, and in completing the number to ten, he adds the gen- eral persecution which, at the coming of Antichrist, is to precetle the end of the world. The fixing of ten as the nimnber seems to have originated in a mystic allu- sion to the ten horns of the beast in the Apocalypse (xvii, 12). It need hardly be said, however, that this is only a question of words, the diversity of enumera- tion arising from tlie different notions attached by the several historians to the designation yeneral. If taken quite strictly to comprise the entire Roman empire, the number must fall below ten ; if used more loosely of lo- cal persecutions, the number might be very largely in- creased. Tlie ten persecutions commonly regarded as general are the following :