The Decian Persecution

Decius became emperor in succession to Philip (Eusebius, Church History 6.39.1). Soon afterwards an order went out that people should sacrifice to the gods. None of the writers cited here quotes the order, and what it demanded is seen in certificates on papyrus that survive from Egypt. In one of them, dated June 250, a villager and his two children declare before the local commission for sacrifices that they have always sacrificed to the gods and have now done so in the commissioners’ presence, poured a libation and tasted the offerings; two officials sign as witnesses (P.Mich. inv. 262). The certificate does not mention Christians. Christian writers took the measure as an attack on the church, and Eusebius puts it down to Decius’s hatred of his predecessor (Eusebius, Church History 6.39.1).

At Rome the bishop, Fabian, died in January 250, and two presbyters and a deacon were imprisoned (Chronograph of 354 part 13 (Liberian Catalogue), Fabius and Cornelius) (Chronograph of 354 part 12, 20 January). The list dates his successor from the consuls of the following year (Chronograph of 354 part 13 (Liberian Catalogue), Fabius and Cornelius); Cyprian wrote that the emperor, whom he calls a tyrant, would rather have heard of a rival emperor than of a new bishop at Rome (Cyprian, Letters 51.9 [55.9]). In the East, Eusebius reports, the bishops of Jerusalem and Antioch died in prison, and Origen was tortured (Eusebius, Church History 6.39.2–5).

Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, in a letter that Eusebius quotes, described what happened when the decree arrived there. Many of the more prominent Christians came forward at once; others went because their public offices required it, or were pressed by their friends; called by name, they went up to the sacrifices, some of them pale and shaking. Others fled or were arrested, and of those some gave way after days in prison or under torture. Some held out and were burned or beheaded (Eusebius, Church History 6.41.10–16).

Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, went into hiding when the crowd called for him, and governed his church by letter (Cyprian, Letters 14.1–2 [20.1–2]). On his return he said that most of his people had denied their faith at the first threat, that some had hurried to the forum before they were summoned, and that parents had carried their infants with them to the altar (Cyprian, On the Lapsed 7–9). Others had obtained a certificate without sacrificing. He counted that a lesser fault but still a denial (Cyprian, On the Lapsed 27–28).

Cyprian opened his address to his church with the words that peace had been restored (Cyprian, On the Lapsed 1). Decius was killed in battle after a reign of less than two years (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 4) (Eusebius, Church History 7.1). The order had been applied at Rome and in Africa, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, and it left behind baptised Christians who had sacrificed or obtained certificates and now asked to return. A council of African bishops ruled that those with certificates might be readmitted after their cases were examined, and that those who had sacrificed should do penance and be reconciled when in danger of death (Cyprian, Letters 51.6, 51.17 [55.6, 55.17]). The dispute that followed is told under Cyprian on the Unity of the Church.