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| The Persecution under Domitian. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XVII.—The Persecution under
Domitian.
Domitian, having shown great cruelty toward many, and having unjustly put
to death no small number of well-born and notable men at Rome, and
having without cause exiled and confiscated the property of a great
many other illustrious men, finally became a successor of Nero in his
hatred and enmity toward God. He was in fact the second that stirred up
a persecution against us,711
711 The
persecutions under Nero and Domitian were not undertaken by the state
as such; they were simply personal matters, and established no
precedent as to the conduct of the state toward Christianity. They were
rather spasmodic outbursts of personal enmity, but were looked upon
with great horror as the first to which the Church was subjected. There
was no general persecution, which took in all parts of the empire,
until the reign of Decius (249–251), but Domitian’s cruelty
and ferocity were extreme, and many persons of the highest rank fell
under his condemnation and suffered banishment and even death, not
especially on account of Christianity, though there were Christians
among them, but on account of his jealousy, and for political reasons
of various sorts. That Domitian’s persecution of the Christians
was not of long duration is testified by Tertullian, Apol. 5.
Upon the persecutions of the Christians, see, among other works,
Wieseler’s Die Christenverfolgungen der Cäsaren, hist.
und chronolog. untersucht, 1878; Uhlhorn’s Der Kampf des
Christenthums mit dem Heidenthum, English translation by Smyth and
Ropes, 1879; and especially the keen essay of Overbeck, Gesetze der
römischen Kaiser gegen die Christen, in his Studien zur
Gesch. der alten Kirche, I. (1875). | although his father
Vespasian had undertaken nothing prejudicial to us.712
712 The
fact that the Christians were not persecuted by Vespasian is abundantly
confirmed by the absence of any tradition to the opposite effect.
Compare Tertullian’s Apol. chap. 5, where the persecutions
of Nero and Domitian are recorded. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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