Galerius

Lactantius says that Galerius, urged on by his mother, pressed Diocletian through a whole winter to act against the Christians, wanted those who refused to sacrifice burnt alive, and had the palace at Nicomedia set on fire so that the Christians could be blamed (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 11, 14). Eusebius also calls him the author of the persecution (Eusebius, Church History 8.16–17 and appendix). Both are Christian writers hostile to him, and the sources cited here include no account from his own side.

Lactantius relates that in the eighteenth year of his reign he fell ill with an ulcer that spread through his lower body, and that after a year of suffering he issued an edict allowing the Christians to exist again and asking for their prayers; it was posted at Nicomedia on 30 April 311, and he died a few days later (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 33–35). The anonymous Origo Constantini places his last illness and death at Serdica (Origo Constantini 3.8). His twentieth anniversary would have fallen on 1 March 312 (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 33–35).