PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS PERSEPOLIS. 



471 



their secret meetings for religious exercises, often 

 held by night, were sufficient to furnish materials 

 for suspicion ; and the extravagant expectations 

 which many among them entertained of the near 

 return of Christ, their zeal against heathen manners 

 and customs, and their open opposition to the worship 

 of idols, from which they annually converted thou 

 sands, excited the heathen priests and magistrates 

 against all that bore the name of Christian. Yet 

 the followers of the new religion, being almost 

 entirely confined to the lower class, and being split 

 into a variety of sects, chiefly Gnostics, which were 

 continually increasing, were objects rather of con- 

 tempt Ulan of fear ; and, next to the protection of 

 an overruling Providence, it is principally owing to 

 this circumstance that, notwithstanding several occa- 

 sions for new persecutions, and notwithstanding the 

 zeal with which their doctrines were assailed by 

 heathen philosophers (as, for example, Celsus, who 

 wrote against Christianity about 140), they enjoyed 

 above fifty years of undisturbed tranquillity, until the 

 fourth persecution so called. In Asia Minor, they 

 were violently assailed, about the year 160, by the 

 heathen populace ; and the Christian apologist 

 Justin Martyr, and the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, 

 were put to death. About the year 177, Marcus 

 Aurelius treated the new congregations in Gaul, 

 at Vienne and Lyons, with great severity, and many 

 Christians suffered martyrdom (fourth persecution). 



About the end of the second century, a strong 

 disposition was manifested to unite the congrega- 

 tions, which had been hitherto independent of one 

 another, into one church. The spiritual teachers, 

 too, growing bolder with the increase of their dis- 

 tinctions and privileges, showed a disposition to 

 grasp more authority, and often came into collision 

 with the civil magistrates ; and the Christians, 

 having become numerous and powerful, openly 

 derided the pagan worship, now sinking into 

 decline. These circumstances led to wild outbreaks 

 of the heathen populace, bent on revenging the 

 insults offered to their gods (about 192), and a 

 dreadful slaughter ensued. The emperor Septimius 

 Severus, moreover, in 202, forbade the accession of 

 new converts to the Jewish and Christian religions, 

 and this decree was followed by still severer oppres- 

 sions of the Christians. See Martyrs, and Saints. 



After this fifth persecution, the Christians enjoyed 

 toleration and peace from 211, under Caracalla, 

 Macrinus, and Heliogabalus, and, under Alexander 

 Severus, even privileges and distinction. The re- 

 straints imposed upon them by the emperor Maxi- 

 mian (235) received the name of the sixth persecution, 

 although, properly speaking, only Christian teachers 

 and clergymen were oppressed by this emperor ; but 

 the oppressions which many of the congregations 

 underwent were inflicted without his command. 

 Private hatred, in fact, often led to outrages against 

 the Christians, and excited the populace to assail 

 them. This happened at Alexandria, in the latter 

 years of the reign of the emperor Philip the Arabian, 

 who was, personally, well-affected towards them. 

 But his successor, Decius, began his reign (249) with 

 a persecution of the Christians (the seventh) through- 

 out his kingdom. The universality of this persecu- 

 tion, and the perseverance and cruelty with which it 

 was pursued, made it plain that the emperor's pur- 

 pose was to extirpate them entirely, and induced 

 many to fall from their faith. Fortunately, however, 

 from the rapid changes in the government at this 

 period, the persecuting policy was not very steadily 

 followed. Valerian, in 257, put to death few but 

 the clergy (eighth persecution) ; and the execution 

 of the edict of Aurelian against the Christians (274, 

 the ninth persecution, as it was called) was prevent- 



ed by his violent death. A severe persecution (the 

 tenth) took place under the emperor Diocletian, at 

 the instigation of his ministers, Galerius and other 

 enemies of the Christians, in 303. Throughout the 

 Roman empire, their churches were destroyed, their 

 sacred books collected and burned, and all imagin- 

 able means of inhuman violence employed to induce 

 them to renounce their faith. As they were accused, 

 moreover, of a rebellious spirit, and of kindling a 

 conflagration in the royal palace at Nicomedia, thou- 

 sands suffered martyrdom. Constantius Chlorus, a 

 sovereign favourable to them, was unable to protect 

 them entirely in his Gallic and British provinces ; and 

 in Greece, Illyria, Italy, and Spain, Galerius, Maxi- 

 minus, and Licinius pursued them with imprison- 

 ments and executions, principally directed against 

 the clergy, till 310. These were the last oppres- 

 sions of the Christians under the Roman government. 

 Constantine the Great (312 and 313) restored to the 

 Christians full liberty, and the use of their churches 

 and goods ; and his conversion to Christianity made 

 it the established religion in the Roman empire. 



Christianity afterwards experienced oppression 

 without the limits of the Roman empire ; for instnnce, 

 in 343 and 414 in Persia, and from 437, with little 

 interruption, till the commencement of the sixth 

 century, in the African kingdom of the Vandals ; 

 but the efforts of some Roman emperors favourable 

 to heathenism, as Julian and Eugenius, for the res- 

 toration of the pagan worship in the Roman empire, 

 were more prejudicial to themselves than to the 

 Christians. After the establishment of islamism, the 

 caliphs in Asia and Africa laboured, with success, 

 for the extirpation of Christianity, and spared only 

 particular schismatic sects, which still enjoy, under 

 the protection of the Mohammedans, the free exercise 

 of their religion. 



Christians themselves, after it had become a crime 

 to be a heretic (see Heretic and Inquisition), perse- 

 cuted one another most bitterly ; and the outrages 

 which the early Christians had suffered from the 

 heathens were tolerable, compared to the religious 

 wars which they waged against each other in the 

 middle ages, and to the sufferings inflicted on heretics, 

 so called, by the inquisition, and by fanatical princes, 

 even to the eighteenth century. But, as heathen 

 Rome could not stop the spread of Christianity, so 

 Protestantism, in later times, rooted itself the more 

 firmly in proportion to the tempests which assailed 

 it ; for the direct tendency of persecution is to awak- 

 en a spirit of heroic resistance, and a zeal to make 

 sacrifices for the cause of truth. 



PERSEPHONE. See Proserpine. 



PERSEPOLIS. In a northern direction from the 

 Persian capital of Shiraz are the ruins of ancient 

 structures of different ages, among which are the 

 only remains of ancient Persian architecture, belong- 

 ing to the most flourishing period of that powerful 

 nation. There are other architectural remains, with 

 inscriptions, belonging to the time of the modern 

 Persian empire, which originated in the third century 

 of the Christian era, out of the Parthian empire. 

 (See Parthians.) These latter remains lie about 

 four or five miles from the ruins of Persepol is proper, 

 and consist partly of works of sculpture, partly <>f 

 inscriptions in the ancient Pehlvi language, cut in the 

 rocks. They are railed, by the Arabs, Kakshi 

 Rustam (the image of Rustam) because they were 

 regarded as intended to commemorate the deeds of 

 this ancient hero ; but, according to De Sacy's satis- 

 factory explanation, they relate to the kings of thf- 

 modern Persian race (the Sassanides). (See Persia.) 

 Many inscriptions in Arabic, the later Persian, and 

 other languages, were put here in the century after 

 Mohammed. The ancient Persian monuments diftes 



