Diocletian's Great Persecution

The event

Diocletian, who came to the throne in AD 284, was in most respects one of Rome's most effective administrative reformers, reorganizing the empire's government, army, and economy after decades of chaos. Late in his reign, however, egged on by his ambitious junior colleague Galerius, he turned decisively against the church, issuing a series of edicts beginning in AD 303 that ordered church buildings torn down, copies of Scripture confiscated and burned, Christian clergy imprisoned, and eventually all citizens compelled to offer sacrifice to the traditional Roman gods on pain of death.

The intensity of the persecution varied sharply by region — it raged with particular ferocity in the eastern provinces under Galerius, while the western emperor Constantius (father of the future Constantine) enforced the edicts only half-heartedly, leaving most western Christians relatively untouched. Across the empire as a whole, though, thousands of believers were imprisoned, tortured, or executed in what later Christian writers simply called 'the Great Persecution' — the worst the church had yet endured, and it came shockingly close to being permanent state policy for good.

It failed. In AD 311, Galerius himself, dying of a painful illness, issued an edict of toleration acknowledging that the persecution had not succeeded in stamping out Christianity and granting Christians the right to worship again, asking in return only that they pray for his recovery. Within barely a year of Galerius's death, the political landscape would shift dramatically further still, as a new emperor named Constantine began moving decisively in the church's favor — a reversal so sudden and complete, coming right on the heels of the worst persecution in the church's history, that it is hard not to see in it the hand of God's providence at work.

Dating

The persecution began with Diocletian's first edict of 24 February AD 303 (firm). The AD 311 endpoint marks Galerius's Edict of Toleration (April 311), the conventional close of the empire-wide persecution. Two nuances: in the West the persecution had effectively lapsed by around 306 under Constantius and Constantine, while in the East Maximinus Daia resumed persecution after 311, so that it did not fully end there until 312/313 (the era of the Edict of Milan). Some references accordingly give 303-313; 303-311 remains the standard framing.

Other witnesses

• Eusebius, Church History, Book 8
• Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors

Further reading

• Christian History Magazine 27: Persecution in the Early Church — free full issue
• Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): Diocletian