A Source Book for Ancient Church History. Joseph Cullen Ayer

III. The Foundation Of The Ecclesiastical Institutions Of The. Middle Ages

       Chapter IV. The Revolution In The Ecclesiastical And Political Situation Due To The. Rise Of Islam And The Doctrinal Disputes In The Eastern Church

       Index

The First Division Of Ancient Christianity: The Church Under The Heathen Empire: To AD 324

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      By the accession of Constantine to the sole sovereignty of the Roman Empire, AD 324, ancient Christianity may be conveniently divided into two great periods. In the first, it was a religion liable to persecution, suffering severely at times and always struggling to maintain itself; in the second, it became the religion of the State, and in its turn set about to repress and persecute the heathen religions. It was no longer without legal rights; it had the support of the secular rulers and was lavishly endowed with wealth. The conditions of the Church in these two periods are so markedly different, and the conditions had such a distinct effect upon the life and growth of the Christian religion, that the reign of Constantine is universally recognized as marking a transition from one historical period to another, although no date which shall mark that transition is universally accepted. The year 311, the year in which the Diocletian persecution ceased, has been accepted by many as the dividing point. The exact date adopted is immaterial.

      The principal sources in English for the history of the Christian Church before AD 324 are:

      The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to AD 325. American edition, Buffalo and New York, 1885–1896; new edition, New York, 1896 (a reprint). The collection, cited as ANF, contains the bulk of [pg 004] the Christian literature of the period, with the exception of the less important commentaries of Origen.

      Eusebius, Church History. Translated with Prolegomena and Notes by Arthur Cushman McGiffert. In A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second series, New York, 1890. The Church History of Eusebius is the foundation of the study of the history of the Church before AD 324, as it contains a vast number of citations from works now lost. The edition by Professor McGiffert is the best in English, and is provided with scholarly notes, which serve as an elaborate commentary on the text. It should be in every library. This work is cited as Eusebius, Hist. Ec. The text used in the extracts given in this source book is that of Ed. Schwartz, in Die Griechischen Christlicher: Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte. Kleine Ausgabe, Leipsic, 1908. This text is identical with the larger and less convenient edition by the same editor.

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Period I. The Apostolic Age: To Circa AD 100

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      The period in the Church before the clash with Gnosticism and the rise of an apologetic literature comprises the apostolic and the post-apostolic ages. These names have become traditional. The so-called apostolic age, or to circa 100, is that in which the Apostles lived, though the best tradition makes John the only surviving Apostle for the last quarter of a century.

      The principal sources for the history of the Church in this period are the books of the New Testament, and only to a slight degree the works of contemporaneous Jewish and heathen writers. It is hardly necessary to reproduce New Testament passages here. The Jewish references of importance will be found in the works on the life of Christ and of St. Paul. As the treatment of this period commonly falls under a different branch of study, New Testament exegesis, it is not necessary in Church history to enter into any detail. There are, however, a few references to events in this period which are to be found only outside the New Testament, and are of importance to the student of Church history. These are the Neronian persecution (§ 1), the death of the Apostles (§§ 2, 3), and the persecution under Domitian (§ 4). The paucity of references to Christianity in the first century is due chiefly to the fact that Christianity appeared to the men of the times as merely a very small Oriental religion, struggling for recognition, and contending with many others coming from the same region. It had not yet made any great advance either in numbers or social importance.

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§ 1. The Neronian Persecution

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      The Neronian persecution took place AD 64. The occasion was the great fire which destroyed a large part of the city of Rome. To turn public suspicion from himself as responsible for the fire, Nero attempted to make the Christians appear as the incendiaries. Many were put to death in horrible and fantastic ways. It was not, however, a persecution directed against Christianity as an unlawful religion. It was probably confined to Rome and at most the immediate vicinity, and there is no evidence that it was a general persecution.

      Additional source material: Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, ch. 2 (ANF, VII); Sulpicius Severus, Chronicon, II. 28 (PNF, ser. II, vol. XI).

      (a) Tacitus, Annales, XV, 44. Preuschen, Analecta, I, § 3:1. Mirbt, n. 3.

       Tacitus (c. 52-c. 117), although not an eye-witness of the persecution, had exceptionally good opportunities for obtaining accurate information, and his account is entirely trustworthy. He is the principal source for the persecution.

      Neither by works of benevolence nor the gifts of the prince nor means of appeasing the gods did the shameful suspicion cease, so that it was not believed that the fire had been caused by his command. Therefore, to overcome this rumor, Nero put in his own place as culprits, and punished with most ingenious cruelty, men whom the common people hated for their shameful crimes and called Christians. Christ, from whom the name was derived, had been put to death in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition, having been checked for a while, began to break out again, not only throughout Judea, where this [pg 007] mischief first arose, but also at Rome, where from all sides all things scandalous and shameful meet and become fashionable. Therefore, at the beginning, some were seized who made confessions; then, on their information, a vast multitude was convicted, not so much of arson as of hatred of the human race. And they were not only put to death, but subjected to insults, in that they were either dressed up in the skins of wild beasts and perished by the cruel mangling of dogs, or else put on crosses to be set on fire, and, as day declined, to be burned, being used as lights by night. Nero had thrown open his gardens for that spectacle, and gave a circus play, mingling with the people dressed in a charioteer's costume or driving in a chariot. From this arose, however, toward men who were, indeed, criminals and deserving extreme penalties, sympathy, on the ground that they were destroyed not for the public good, but to satisfy the cruelty of an individual.

      (b) Clement of Rome, Ep. ad Corinthios, I, 5, 6. Funk, Patres Apostolici, 1901. (MSG, 1:218.) Preuschen, Analecta, I, § 3:5.

       The work known as the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians was written in the name of the Roman Church about 100. The occasion was the rise of contentions in the Corinthian Church. The name of Clement does not appear in the body of the epistle, but there is no good ground for questioning the traditional ascription to Clement, since before the end of the second century it was quoted under his name by several writers. This Clement was probably the third or fourth bishop of Rome. The epistle was written soon after the Domitian persecution (A. D. 95), and refers not only to that but also to an earlier persecution, which was very probably that under Nero. As the reference is only by way of illustration, the author gives little detail. The passage translated is of interest as containing the earliest reference to the death of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and the language used