Galerius Grants Toleration

Eusebius calls Galerius the author of the whole persecution (Eusebius, Church History 8.16.2–8.17.2). Lactantius relates that in the eighteenth year of his reign he was attacked by an ulcer of the lower body that the doctors could not check, and that he suffered for a year (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 33). Lactantius and Eusebius both describe the disease in detail and both present it as God’s punishment (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 33) (Eusebius, Church History 8.16.2–8.17.2). The anonymous Origo Constantini says that he had returned to Serdica when the disease attacked him, and that he died of it (Origo Constantini 3.8).

Near the end he issued an edict. Lactantius gives it in Latin and Eusebius in a Greek translation, and the two agree in substance. The emperors, it says, had wished to restore everything to the ancient laws and public order of the Romans, and to bring back to a sound mind the Christians, who had abandoned the religion of their ancestors and made laws for themselves. Many had submitted under threat and many had suffered. But since very many persisted, and now neither worshipped the gods nor honoured their own God, the emperors in their clemency thought it right to extend their pardon: Christians might exist again and restore their meeting places, provided they did nothing against good order. In return they were to pray to their God for the safety of the emperors, of the state and of themselves (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 34) (Eusebius, Church History 8.17.3–11). In the copy Eusebius translated, the heading carried the names of Galerius, Constantine and Licinius (Eusebius, Church History 8.17.3–11).

Lactantius says that the edict was posted at Nicomedia on 30 April 311, that the prisons were opened and Donatus, the friend to whom he addressed his book, came out after six years, and that Galerius died within days (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 35).

In the eastern provinces the edict had a short life. Eusebius says that Maximinus, who ruled in the East, did not publish it but gave a spoken order, which his chief official, Sabinus, passed to the governors by letter: Christians were no longer to be molested. Prisoners were released (Eusebius, Church History 9.1.1–7). Within six months, by the same account, he was forbidding Christian meetings in the cemeteries and encouraging cities to petition for the Christians’ expulsion (Eusebius, Church History 9.2); Lactantius also tells of petitions from the cities (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 36). Toleration was secured in the East only two years later, when Licinius published at Nicomedia the letter that he and Constantine had agreed on at Milan (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 48). That step is told under the Edict of Milan.

The edict does not praise the Christians or say that the persecution had been wrong. It records that the attempt to bring them back had failed, grants pardon, and asks them to pray to their God for the emperors and the state (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 34).