Persecution and Martyrdom

46 eventsShow on the timeline

Christians who suffered for their faith, under Rome and under modern states, and the times when Christians themselves persecuted others.

Martyr means witness. The memory of those who died rather than deny their faith shaped the early church, and the experience has been repeated in every century, on the largest scale in the twentieth. This thread also records the occasions when churches and Christian rulers used force against dissenters, heretics and one another.

The thread from start to finish

about 605 BC to 536 BC, traditional date
Daniel at the Babylonian Court
The book of Daniel tells of a young Judean taken to Babylon who serves its kings and stays loyal to his God through the furnace and the lions’ den, and who sees “one like a son of man” receive an everlasting kingdom.
483 BC to 473 BC, traditional date
Esther and the Origin of Purim
The book of Esther tells how a Jewish queen of Persia and her cousin Mordecai turned back a decree to destroy the Jews of the empire. The feast of Purim keeps the memory of that deliverance.
167 BC, estimated date
Antiochus IV Desecrates the Temple
The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes plunders the temple in Jerusalem, forbids the practice of the Jewish law on pain of death and has a pagan altar set up on the altar of burnt offering.
167 BC to 164 BC, estimated date
The Maccabean Revolt and the Rededication of the Temple
The priest Mattathias and his sons take up arms against the decrees of Antiochus IV. Judas Maccabeus defeats the king’s generals, cleanses the temple and rededicates the altar, an event kept each year as the feast of Dedication, Hanukkah.
c. AD 28–32, estimated date
The Execution of John the Baptist
Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, has John the Baptist put to death. The Gospels tell of a beheading in prison and connect it with John’s rebuke of the tetrarch’s marriage to Herodias; Josephus places the death at Machaerus and gives a political motive.
about AD 34, estimated date
The Martyrdom of Stephen
Acts tells how Stephen, one of seven men chosen to serve the Jerusalem church, is accused before the council of speaking against the temple and the law and is stoned to death. The persecution that follows scatters the believers beyond Jerusalem.
AD 44, firm date
Herod Agrippa Kills James and Dies at Caesarea
Acts says that King Herod Agrippa I had the apostle James, son of Zebedee, put to death and imprisoned Peter, who escaped. The king died suddenly at Caesarea. Acts and Josephus both describe his death, and the figures Josephus gives put it in AD 44.
about AD 57 to AD 59, estimated date
Paul’s Arrest and Imprisonment at Caesarea
A riot in the temple puts Paul into Roman custody. He is held for two years at Caesarea under the governor Felix, defends himself before Festus and King Agrippa, and appeals to the emperor.
AD 62, firm date
The Death of James, the Brother of the Lord
While Judaea is between Roman governors, the high priest Ananus has James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, condemned and stoned. Josephus records it within a generation; Christian writers a century later tell a fuller story.
AD 64, firm date
The Great Fire of Rome and Nero’s Persecution
Fire destroys much of Rome in July of AD 64. To turn suspicion from himself, the historian Tacitus says, Nero blames the Christians of the city and has them put to death with public cruelty.
c. AD 64–68, traditional date
The Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul
The New Testament does not tell how Peter and Paul died. A letter from Rome, usually dated about AD 96, says that both suffered and died for their witness; writers from about AD 170 onwards place their deaths at Rome, and later ones under Nero.
about AD 95, estimated date
John’s Revelation on Patmos
A Christian prophet named John, on the island of Patmos, writes down visions addressed to seven churches of Asia. They show Christ in glory, the fall of the city the book calls Babylon and a new Jerusalem, and become the last book of the New Testament.
about AD 110, traditional date
Ignatius of Antioch Writes on the Road to Martyrdom
Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, is taken under guard to Rome to be thrown to wild beasts. On the way he writes seven letters that urge unity around the bishop, insist that Christ truly suffered, and ask the Roman Christians not to save him.
about AD 112, estimated date
Pliny Asks Trajan How to Treat Christians
The governor of Bithynia and Pontus reports to the emperor on his trials of Christians and on what they do when they meet. Trajan rules that they are not to be hunted out, but are to be punished if accused and convicted.
about AD 155 to AD 165, estimated date
Justin Martyr Defends the Faith and Describes Its Worship
Justin, a philosopher turned Christian teacher at Rome, addresses a defence of the Christians to the emperor Antoninus Pius and describes their baptism and Sunday Eucharist. Some years later he is tried by the city prefect and beheaded.
c. AD 155–156, estimated date
The Martyrdom of Polycarp
Polycarp, the aged bishop of Smyrna, is arrested, refuses before the proconsul to curse Christ, and is burned in the stadium. His church describes his death in a letter and keeps his bones and the anniversary of his death.
AD 177, estimated date
The Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne
Mob violence against the Christians of Lyon and Vienne ends in trials before the governor. The aged bishop Pothinus dies in prison, and the slave Blandina and others are killed in the amphitheatre. The survivors describe it in a letter to Asia.
7 March AD 203, estimated date
The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity
A group of newly baptised Christians is put to death in the arena in Roman Africa, among them the young mother Perpetua and Felicity, who gave birth in prison. The account preserves Perpetua’s own prison diary and her visions.
AD 250, firm date
The Decian Persecution
The emperor Decius orders the inhabitants of the empire to sacrifice to the gods and obtain a certificate. Bishops are executed or driven into hiding, many Christians comply, and the churches are left divided over how to receive them back.
AD 303 to AD 311, firm date
The Great Persecution under Diocletian
In February 303 Diocletian orders churches demolished and Scriptures burned. Further edicts imprison the clergy and require everyone to sacrifice. The persecution is brief in the West and lasts eight years in the East.
AD 523 (or 518), estimated date
The Martyrs of Najran
Yusuf, the Jewish king of Himyar in south Arabia, makes war on the Christian town of Najran. Syriac writers report that he put its leading men, with their chief Harith (Arethas), and many women to death. Kaleb, king of Aksum, then crosses the sea and overthrows him.
29 December 1170, firm date
The Murder of Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, back from six years of exile for resisting Henry II’s claims over the church, is cut down by four knights in his own cathedral. He is venerated as a martyr, and the king does public penance at his tomb.
1209 to 1229, firm date
The Albigensian Crusade
After a papal legate is murdered, Innocent III calls for arms against the count of Toulouse and the heretics of his lands. Crusaders sack Béziers in 1209, and twenty years of war end with the count’s heir submitting to the church and the French crown.
1231, firm date
The Papal Inquisition Is Established
Gregory IX issues statutes against heretics and commissions Dominican friars to seek them out, try them and hand the unrepentant to the secular power. Papal inquisitors begin work at Toulouse; in 1252 Innocent IV orders the cities of northern Italy to force confessions.
1347 to 1351, estimated date
The Black Death
Plague spreads through Europe, reaching Florence, Avignon and Paris in 1348. Priests and friars die with the rest or flee. Jews are accused of poisoning the wells and burned, though Pope Clement VI calls the charge false. In 1349 he bans the flagellants.
1414 to 1418, firm date
The Council of Constance and the Burning of Jan Hus
A general council ends the papal schism, declares that even a pope must obey it, and orders councils to meet at fixed intervals. It also tries the Czech preacher Jan Hus, who had come under the king’s safe-conduct, and hands him over to be burned on 6 July 1415.
30 May 1431, firm date
The Trial of Joan of Arc
A church court at Rouen under Bishop Pierre Cauchon tries Joan of Arc for heresy, and on 30 May 1431 she is burned as relapsed. In 1456 judges appointed by Pope Callixtus III declare that trial and its sentences null. Both verdicts are known from the courts’ own records.
1478 to 1492, firm date
The Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews
In 1478 Sixtus IV lets Ferdinand and Isabella appoint inquisitors against baptised Jews said to keep Jewish rites. Burnings begin at Seville in 1481; in 1482 the pope writes of complaints against the inquisitors. In 1492 the monarchs order all Jews to leave their kingdoms.
21 January 1525, firm date
The First Anabaptists
In January 1525 former followers of Zwingli at Zurich begin to baptise adults on confession of faith. The council answers with banishment and, from 1526, with death by drowning; Felix Manz is drowned in 1527. The Schleitheim articles of that year state what they believed.
1526, firm date
Tyndale’s English New Testament
William Tyndale, unable to work in England, has his English New Testament printed at Worms in 1526. The bishop of London bans it and Thomas More writes against it. Tyndale is strangled and burned at Vilvoorde in 1536.
1555 to 1558, firm date
The Burning of Protestants under Mary I
Under Mary I, Parliament returns England to obedience to Rome and revives the medieval heresy laws. From 1555 to 1558 Protestants who will not recant are burned, among them the bishops Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. John Foxe’s book records them as martyrs.
25 February 1570, firm date
Regnans in Excelsis and the Execution of Catholic Priests under Elizabeth I
In 1570 Pope Pius V declares Elizabeth I deposed. Parliament makes reconciliation with Rome treason, and priests such as the Jesuit Edmund Campion are executed: as traitors, says the government; for their religion, say Catholic writers.
24 August 1572, firm date
The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
After the king’s Catholic sister marries the Protestant Henry of Navarre, the Huguenot leader Coligny is shot in Paris. From 24 August 1572 he and thousands of French Protestants are killed there and in other towns. Accounts of who decided it differed from the first.
1597 to 1614, firm date
The Martyrs of Nagasaki and the Ban on Christianity in Japan
In 1597 the Japanese ruler Hideyoshi has twenty-six Christians, foreign friars and Japanese converts, crucified at Nagasaki. In 1614 the Tokugawa government orders Christianity suppressed throughout Japan as a threat to the country of the gods and of Buddha.
October 1685, firm date
Louis XIV Revokes the Edict of Nantes
By an edict given at Fontainebleau in October 1685, Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes, orders the Reformed churches of France demolished, bans Reformed worship and forbids his Protestant subjects to leave. The Elector of Brandenburg offers those who flee a refuge.
1784, firm date
Korean Scholars Found a Church
Korean scholars who had read Christian books from Beijing send one of their own with an embassy; Yi Seung-hun is baptized there in 1784, returns to Seoul and baptizes his friends. A church grows with no priest in the country, and meets persecution.
1790 to 1801, firm date
The French Revolution and the Church
The National Assembly takes the church’s lands and in 1790 remakes the French church by law, demanding an oath that Pius VI condemns. Priests who refuse it are killed in Paris in 1792 and outlawed in 1793. In 1801 Bonaparte and Pius VII restore Catholic worship by a concordat.
17 March 1865, firm date
The Hidden Christians of Japan Come Forward
On 17 March 1865 villagers from Urakami tell the French missionary Bernard Petitjean, in his new church at Nagasaki, that their hearts are the same as his. They had kept baptism in secret under the ban. Deported from 1868, the survivors come home in 1873.
1885 to 1886, firm date
The Martyrs of Uganda
In 1885 and 1886 King Mwanga of Buganda has Christian converts killed, Anglicans and Catholics alike, many of them burned together in 1886, and an Anglican bishop put to death. Both churches honour them as martyrs.
1915 to 1916, firm date
The Destruction of the Armenian and Assyrian Christians
From April 1915 the Ottoman government deports Armenians from across the empire toward the Syrian desert, and the American ambassador reports massacre, starvation and the destruction of a people. Assyrian Christians of Urmia and Hakkari are attacked in the same months.
1917 to 1918, firm date
The Russian Church under the Bolsheviks
In November 1917 a council of the Russian Orthodox Church restores the patriarchate and Tikhon takes the patriarchal seat. Two months later the Soviet government separates church and state by decree and declares all church property to be the people’s.
1921, firm date
Simon Kimbangu and the Kimbanguist Church
In 1921 Simon Kimbangu, a Baptist of the Lower Congo, begins to preach and to pray over the sick at Nkamba, and crowds come to him. A Belgian military court sentences him to death; reprieved, he dies in prison thirty years later, and a church grows from his followers.
9 April 1945, firm date
The Execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, held for two years for his part in the German resistance, is condemned by an SS court-martial at Flossenbürg concentration camp and hanged the next morning. His letters from prison are published in 1951.
1950 to 1954, firm date
The Chinese Church under the People’s Republic
Protestant leaders in the new People’s Republic sign a manifesto pledging loyalty to the state and an end to foreign ties, and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement is organised. Some pastors refuse to join, and Rome rejects a self-governing Catholic church.
24 March 1980, firm date
The Assassination of Óscar Romero
On 24 March 1980 the archbishop of San Salvador is shot dead while celebrating Mass, the day after he had called on soldiers to stop the repression. A UN truth commission later finds that former Major Roberto D’Aubuisson gave the order.
15 February 2015, firm date
The Twenty-One Martyrs of Libya
In February 2015 twenty-one Christian workers, twenty Egyptian Copts and one man from Ghana, are beheaded on the coast of Libya. The Coptic Orthodox Church enters them in its Synaxarium within a week, and in 2023 Pope Francis announces their inclusion in the Roman Martyrology.