The Diocletianic Persecution was the last, and most severe, episode of persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.[1] It took place under Emperor Diocletian, and lasted from 303 to 311.[2]
Christians in the army
At the conclusion of the Persian wars in 299, co-emperors Diocletian and Galerius traveled from Persia to Syrian Antioch (Antakya, Turkey). The Christian rhetor Lactantius records that, at Antioch some time in 299, the emperors were engaged in sacrifice and divination in an attempt to predict the future. The haruspices were unable to read the sacrificed animals, and failed to do so after repeated trials. The master haruspex eventually declared that this failure was the result of interruptions in the process caused by profane men: certain Christians in the imperial household were seen to have made the sign of the cross in an attempt to create a defense against the demons called into service in the pagan ceremonies. Diocletian, enraged by this turn of events, declared that all members of the court need perform their own sacrifice. They sent letters to the military command as well, demanding that the entire army perform the sacrifices or else face discharge.[76] Since there are no reports of bloodshed in Lactantius' narrative, Christians in the imperial household must have survived the event, perhaps after a whipping.[77]
Manichean persecution
Affairs quieted after the initial persecution. Diocletian remained in Antioch for the following three years. He visited Egypt once, over the winter of 301–2, where he began the grain dole in Alexandria.[89] In Egypt, some Manicheans, followers of the prophet Mani, were decried in the presence of the proconsul of Africa. On March 31, 302, in a rescript from Alexandria, Diocletian, after consultation with the proconsul, ordered that the leading followers of Mani, be burnt alive along with their scriptures. Low-status Manicheans were to be executed; high-status Manicheans were to be sent to work in the quarries of Proconnesus (Marmara Island, Turkey) or the mines of Phaeno. All Manichean property was to be seized and deposited in the imperial treasury.[90]
Diocletian believed quite firmly in these policies, and his religious passion motivated him to use violent and hateful language in their expression. He found much to be offended by in Manichean religion.[91] The proconsul of Africa forwarded Diocletian an anxious inquiry on the Manichees. In late March 302, Diocletian responded: the Manicheans "have set up new and hitherto unheard of sects in opposition to the older creeds so that they might cast out the doctrines vouchsafed to us in the past by divine favour, for the benefit of their own depraved doctrine". He continued: "..our fear is that with the passage of time, they will endeavour...to infect...our whole empire...as with the poison of a malignant serpent". "Ancient religion ought not to be criticized by a new-fangled one", he wrote. The Christians of the empire were vulnerable to the same line of thinking.[92]
First Edict
On February 23, 303, Diocletian ordered that the newly-built Christian church at Nicomedia be razed, its scriptures set to flame, and the treasures of the church collected as treasure.[99] February 23 was the feast of the Termnialia, for Terminus, the god of boundaries. The emperors must have thought it appropriate: It was the day they would terminate Christianity.[100] The next day, Diocletian's first "Edict against the Christians" was published.[101] The key targets of this piece of legislation were, as they had been during Valerian's persecution, Christian property and senior clerics.[102] The edict ordered the destruction of Christian scriptures, liturgical books, and places of worship across the empire,[103] and prohibited Christians from assembling for worship.[104] Christians were also deprived of the right to petition the courts,[105] making them potential subjects for judicial torture;[106] Christians could not respond to actions brought against them in court;[107] Christian senators, equestrians, decurions, veterans, and soldiers were deprived of their ranks; and imperial freedmen were reduced to the status of slaves.[108]
Diocletian had requested that the edict be pursued "without bloodshed",[109] in spite of Galerius' demands that all those refusing to sacrifice should be burned alive.[110] The practice nevertheless became quite widespread in the East.[111] In spite of Diocletian's request, the death penalty was widely used, following the discretion of local judges.[112] After it was posted, a man on the street named Eutius tore it down and ripped it up, shouting "Here are your Gothic and Sarmatian triumphs!" He was arrested for treason, tortured, and burned alive soon after, thus becoming the edict's first martyr.[113] The provisions of the edict were known and enforced in Palestine by March or April (just before Easter), and was in use by local officials in North Africa by May or June.[114] The earliest martyr at Caesarea was executed on June 7;[115] the edict was in force at Cirta from May 19.[116]
The edict might not actually have been an "edict" in the technical sense; Eusebius does not refer to it as such, and when the Passio Felicis states "exiit edictum imperatorum et Caesarum super omnem faciem terrae", it may simply be as an echo of Luke's Gospel 2:1: "exiit edictum a Caesare Augusto ut profiteretur universus orbis terrae".[117] Elsewhere in the passion, the text is called a programma.[118] The text of the edict itself does not actually survive.[119]
Second, Third, and Fourth Edicts
The First Edict was the sole legally binding edict in the West.[120] In the East, however, progressively harsher legislation was devised. In the summer of 303,[121] following a series of rebellions in Melitene (Malatya, Turkey) and Syria, a Second Edict was published, ordering the arrest and imprisonment of all bishops and priests.[122] The prisons began to fill—they underdeveloped prison system of the time could not handle the deacons, lectors, priests, bishops, and exorcists forced upon them. Eusebius writes that the edict netted so many priests that ordinary criminals were crowded out, and had to be released.[123]
In anticipation of the upcoming twentieth anniversary of his reign on November 20, 303, Diocletian declared a general amnesty in a Third Edict: Any imprisoned clergyman could be freed, so long as they agreed to make a sacrifice to the gods.[124] This was unacceptable to many of the imprisoned, but wardens often managed to obtain at least nominal compliance with the rule. Some of the clergy sacrificed willingly; others did so on pain of torture. Wardens were eager to be rid of the clergy in their midst: Eusebius, in his Martyrs of Palestine, records the case of one man who, after being brought to an altar, had his hands seized and made to complete a sacrificial offering. The clergyman was told that his act of sacrifice had been recognized and was summarily dismissed. Others were told they'd sacrificed even when they'd done nothing.[125]
In 304, the Fourth Edict ordered all persons, men, women, and children, to gather in a public space and offer a collective sacrifice. If they refused, they were to be executed.[126] The precise date of the edict is unknown,[127] but it was probably issued in either January or February 304, and was still being applied in the Balkans in March.[128] This last edict was not enforced at all in the domains of Maximian and Constantius. In the East, it remained applicable until the issue of the Edict of Milan by Constantine and Licinius in 313.[129]
Diocletian and Maximian resigned on May 1, 305. Constantius and Galerius became Augusti, while two new emperors, Severus and Maximinus, took up the office of Caesar.[130] As they left office, Diocletian and Maximian probably imagined Christianity to be in its last throes. Churches had been destroyed, the Church leadership and hierarchy had been snapped, and the army and civil service had been purged. Eusebius declares that apostates from the faith were "countless" (μυρίοι) in number.[131] In the West, however, the loose ends of the Diocletianic settlement were about to bring the whole Tetrarchic tapestry down. Constantine, son of Constantius, and Maxentius, son of Maximian, had been overlooked in the Diocletianic succession, offending the parents and angering the sons.[130] At first, however, the new Tetrarchy seemed to be even more vigorous than the first. Maximinus in particular was eager to persecute.[132] In 306 and 309, he published his own edicts demanding universal sacrifice.[133] Eusebius accuses Galerius of pressing on with the persecution as well.[134]
Britain and Gaul
The sources are inconsistent regarding the extent of the persecution in Constantius' domain, though all portray it as quite limited. Lactantius states that the destruction of churches was the worst thing that came to pass.[160] Eusebius explicitly denies this in both his Historia Ecclesiastica and his Vita Constantini, although he lists Gaul among the areas suffering from the effects of the persecution in his Martyribus Palestinae.[161]
Donatist bishops also declared that "Gaul was immune" (immunis est Gallia) from the persecutions under Constantius.[162] The martyrdom of Saint Alban was once dated to this era, but most now assign it to the reign of Septimius Severus.[163] The second, third and fourth edicts seem not to have been enforced in the West at all.[164] It is possible that Constantius' weak persecutionary spirit was the result of Tetrarchic jealousies: the persecution, after all, had been the project of the Eastern emperors, not the Western ones.[165] After Constantine succeeded his father in 306, he urged the recovery of Church property lost in the persecution, and legislated full freedom for all Christians in his domain.[166]
Just a friendly little FYI, nothing PC about it other than civility. 
