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from Part II - Religious Violence in the Graeco-Roman World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
Only a few years before freedom of religion was proclaimed within the Roman empire, the last empire-wide persecution of Christians was instigated.1 An imperial edict that ordered the razing of churches, the burning of the Scriptures, the loss of civil rights especially for Christians of high status and the re-enslavement of (Christian) Caesariani was published in Nicomedia on 23 February 303.2 This act, appropriately planned on the day of the feast of Terminalia (in honour of Terminus, the god of boundaries), ended the ‘peace of Gallienus’, which lasted for approximately forty years.3 The issuance of this particular edict was not an isolated incident; more edicts were to follow. A second one was issued in the summer of the same year and prescribed the imprisonment of the clergy. In November 303, the third imperial edict was posted, which ordered that clergy in prison must sacrifice (and, after doing so, be freed).
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