Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Huon · 07-31-2008, 01:50 PM

My post wants to show that Diocletian did not persecute the Christians "always and everywhere", far from it. Diocletian persecuted the Manicheans after 297 and the Christians after 303.
We know that the Christians had built a church in Nicomedia, in front of the palace of Diocletian. That could be understood as a provocation.

At that time, the tetrarchy was composed of Diocletian (Augustus East) and Maximianus (Augustus West) with Constantius Chlorus (Caesar West) and Galerius (Caesar East) until 305.

After 305, Constantius Chlorus (Augustus West) and Galerius (Augustus East) with Severus (Caesar West) and Maximinus Daia (Caesar East).

Diocletian, Galerius and Maximinus Daia are regarded as the most anti-christian emperors, all three in the Eastern part of the Empire.

Eusebius in HE Book VIII, chapter 13 writes this :

Quote:

12. Not long after, the Emperor Constantius, who through his entire life was most kindly and favorably disposed toward his subjects, and most friendly to the Divine Word, ended his life in the common course of nature, and left his own son, Constantine, as emperor and Augustus in his stead. He was the first that was ranked by them among the gods, and received after death every honor which one could pay to an emperor.

13. He was the kindest and mildest of emperors, and the only one of those of our day that passed all the time of his government in a manner worthy of his office. Moreover, he conducted himself toward all most favorably and beneficently. He took not the smallest part in the war against us, but preserved the pious that were under him unharmed and unabused. He neither threw down the church buildings, nor did he devise anything else against us. The end of his life was honorable and thrice blessed. He alone at death left his empire happily and gloriously to his own son as his successor,—one who was in all respects most prudent and pious.

Note that Constantius was the dad of Constantine, and that it was good politics to speak well of the dad in front of the son...

After the death of Constantius in 306, the tetrarchy does not work any more, and the Christians form a sort of political party supporting Constantine.

andrewcriddle · 07-31-2008, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

My post wants to show that Diocletian did not persecute the Christians "always and everywhere", far from it. Diocletian persecuted the Manicheans after 297 and the Christians after 303.
We know that the Christians had built a church in Nicomedia, in front of the palace of Diocletian. That could be understood as a provocation.

If someone wants an excuse then almost anything can be understood as a provocation.

However from Gallienus onwards Christianity had been an officially tolerated religion until Diocletian et al tried to turn the clock back.

Building a church near the imperial palace should not be regarded as an attempt to stir up trouble. There seem to have been numerous Christians among Diocletian's attendants and civil servants until the persecution started.

Andrew Criddle

mountainman · 07-31-2008, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

My post wants to show that Diocletian did not persecute the Christians "always and everywhere", far from it. Diocletian persecuted the Manicheans after 297

I thought there was evidence to substantiate an earlier date for this, around 292 CE?

Quote:

and the Christians after 303.

We have Eusebius and his continuators asserting this claim.

Quote:

We know that the Christians had built a church in Nicomedia, in front of the palace of Diocletian. That could be understood as a provocation.

That must firstly be understood as an assertion by Eusebius and his continuators. Evidence of christian house-churches are extremely rare, and evidence of christian church-houses and/or churches before Constantine is as far as I am aware entirely non-existent. Buyer beware.

Quote:

At that time, the tetrarchy was composed of Diocletian (Augustus East) and Maximianus (Augustus West) with Constantius Chlorus (Caesar West) and Galerius (Caesar East) until 305.

After 305, Constantius Chlorus (Augustus West) and Galerius (Augustus East) with Severus (Caesar West) and Maximinus Daia (Caesar East).

Diocletian, Galerius and Maximinus Daia are regarded as the most anti-christian emperors, all three in the Eastern part of the Empire.

Eusebius in HE Book VIII, chapter 13 writes this :

Quote:

13. The end of his life was honorable and thrice blessed. He alone at death left his empire happily and gloriously to his own son as his successor,—one who was in all respects most prudent and pious.

You'll note the THRICE BLESSED REFERENCE to Hermes for the sake of the political situation with the pagans.

Quote:

Note that Constantius was the dad of Constantine, and that it was good politics to speak well of the dad in front of the son...

Especially if the son (Constantine) was actually sponsoring the writing of the ecclesiatical history of the new and strange emperor cult he was about to support. The entire narrrative of the Eusebian ecclesiastical history is a preface to the political situation of the Nicaean Oath to the Boss.

Quote:

After the death of Constantius in 306, the tetrarchy does not work any more, and the Christians form a sort of political party supporting Constantine.

Who were these christians who formed a sort of political party supporting Constantine before his military acquirement of the city of Rome? This is news! They must have been important people. Was Pamphilus one of them? Did they move with the army from the north west, or were they cunningly deployed at places like Dura Europa?

Best wishes,

Pete

mountainman · 07-31-2008, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWallack

JW:
Maybe you have something here regarding Eusebius' report of Of Marcellinus (296-304). Eusebius writes:

We have the following additional evidence that Marcellinus renounced the Faith:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/...pe_Marcellinus

We all know the wretched Eusebius is writing bullshit. But Eusebius is writing for somebody, he is not writing for the pleasure of the experience. He is writing so that he can sit at the right hand of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea. He is the chief researcher for the christian history. People will ask Eusebius questions. He is Constantine's technical expert. The minister for socio-religious propaganda in the eastern ROman empire c.324 CE.

Best wishes,

Pete

Huon · 08-01-2008, 02:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

My post wants to show that Diocletian did not persecute the Christians "always and everywhere", far from it. Diocletian persecuted the Manicheans after 297

I thought there was evidence to substantiate an earlier date for this, around 292 CE?

In my book of history, this date (297) is justified by a quote from William Seston, Diocletian and the tetrarchy (or something like that, the title is in french, Paris, 1946). Jstor has something about Diocletian and the Manicheans, but I cannot go farther (un-authorized).

JoeWallack · 08-01-2008, 06:35 AM

Hi, this is your resident Church Historian Eusebius, coming to all you Bishops live and hoping you're the same. The one who faithfully reported to you whatever was useful from Papias as Gospel even though I didn't know him from Adam except for a book he supposedly wrote 200 years ago that shows he didn't know what he was talking about. In contrast I have direct personal knowledge of the persecution of the Church by Diocletian, he's still dead isn't he, that I will now report on:

I have "Good News" and bad news regarding Diocletian's persecutions. First the bad news, there is no "Good News". And now the Good News, I won't tell you the bad news!

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250108.htm

[Eusebius Church History Book VII Chapter 32.]

Quote:

1. At this time, Felix, having presided over the church of Rome for five years, was succeeded by Eutychianus, but he in less than ten months left the position to Caius, who lived in our day. He held it about fifteen years, and was in turn succeeded by Marcellinus, who was overtaken by the persecution.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250108.htm

Quote:

Chapter 2. The Destruction of the Churches.

1. All these things were fulfilled in us, when we saw with our own eyes the houses of prayer thrown down to the very foundations, and the Divine and Sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the midst of the market-places, and the shepherds of the churches basely hidden here and there, and some of them captured ignominiously, and mocked by their enemies. When also, according to another prophetic word, Contempt was poured out upon rulers, and he caused them to wander in an untrodden and pathless way.

2. But it is not our place to describe the sad misfortunes which finally came upon them, as we do not think it proper, moreover, to record their divisions and unnatural conduct to each other before the persecution. Wherefore we have decided to relate nothing concerning them except the things in which we can vindicate the Divine judgment.

3. Hence we shall not mention those who were shaken by the persecution, nor those who in everything pertaining to salvation were shipwrecked, and by their own will were sunk in the depths of the flood. But we shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be usefull first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity. Let us therefore proceed to describe briefly the sacred conflicts of the witnesses of the Divine Word.

4. It was in the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian, in the month Dystrus, called March by the Romans, when the feast of the Saviour's passion was near at hand, that royal edicts were published everywhere, commanding that the churches be leveled to the ground and the Scriptures be destroyed by fire, and ordering that those who held places of honor be degraded, and that the household servants, if they persisted in the profession of Christianity, be deprived of freedom.

5. Such was the first edict against us. But not long after, other decrees were issued, commanding that all the rulers of the churches in every place be first thrown into prison, and afterwards by every artifice be compelled to sacrifice.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2505.htm

Quote:

Chapter 12

1. I think it best to pass by all the other events which occurred in the meantime: such as those which happened to the bishops of the churches, when instead of shepherds of the rational flocks of Christ, over which they presided in an unlawful manner, the divine judgment, considering them worthy of such a charge, made them keepers of camels, an irrational beast and very crooked in the structure of its body, or condemned them to have the care of the imperial horses—and I pass by also the insults and disgraces and tortures they endured from the imperial overseers and rulers on account of the sacred vessels and treasures of the Church; and besides these the lust of power on the part of many, the disorderly and unlawful ordinations, and the schisms among the confessors themselves; also the novelties which were zealously devised against the remnants of the Church by the new and factious members, who added innovation after innovation and forced them in unsparingly among the calamities of the persecution, heaping misfortune upon misfortune. I judge it more suitable to shun and avoid the account of these things, as I said at the beginning. But such things as are sober and praiseworthy, according to the sacred word—and if there be any virtue and praise, Philippians 4:8 — I consider it most proper to tell and to record, and to present to believing hearers in the history of the admirable martyrs. And after this I think it best to crown the entire work with an account of the peace which has appeared unto us from heaven.

JW:
It appears likely that Eusebius had first-hand knowledge that Marcellinus, the Bishop of Rome, renounced the Faith, but suppressed this knowledge in his Church History. So we have a Church Historian who doesn't want to give us Church History. The lesson for the unwise here (but as Gibbon or Gibson would say, "how would you know who you are?) is that Eusebius was a Church Historian and not a Historian. There's a difference. For an illustration of the difference see O's article in Shattering the Christ Myth.

Joseph

FEAST, n.
A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic Church feasts are "movable" and "immovable," but the celebrants are uniformly immovable until they are full. In their earliest development these entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead; such were held by the Greeks, under the name Nemeseia, by the Aztecs and Peruvians, as in modern times they are popular with the Chinese; though it is believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were light eaters. Among the many feasts of the Romans was the Novemdiale, which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

mountainman · 08-01-2008, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

I thought there was evidence to substantiate an earlier date for this, around 292 CE?

In my book of history, this date (297) is justified by a quote from William Seston, Diocletian and the tetrarchy (or something like that, the title is in french, Paris, 1946). Jstor has something about Diocletian and the Manicheans, but I cannot go farther (un-authorized).

From WIKI

Quote:

In 296 AD, Diocletian decreed against the Manichaeans:

"We order that their organizers and leaders be subject to the final penalties and condemned to the fire with their abominable scriptures",

resulting in many martyrdoms in Egypt and North Africa. By 354 AD, Hilary of Poitiers wrote that the Manichaean faith was a significant force in southern France. In 381 AD Christians requested Theodosius I to strip Manichaeans of their civil rights. He issued a decree of death for Manichaean monks in 382 AD.

essenes.net has a Manichaean Chronology page. There is an earlier edict from Diocletian in 287 CE.

IMO the public execution and persecution of the manichaeans formed the core of the historical truth upon which Eusebius framed his fiction of the christian persecutions under Diocletian. We have plenty of evidence for the existence of the Manichaeans in the pre-nicene, such as these edicts. Any and all such edicts related to the persecutions against "christians" have been tendered by Eusebius, but we have no epigraphic and/or archaeological substantive support Eusebius, that I am aware of.

Best wishes,

Pete

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