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What human rights violations happened to the Christians in the early Roman Empire?
Wiki User
∙ 9y ago
First of all, the origin of the concept of human rights dates to the late 18th century. It did not exist in antiquity, the Middle Ages and even Early Modernity. Acts such as the persecutions of Christians were not seen as violations of human rights.
We do not actually know much about what was done to the Christians in the Early Empire. Some of the information is contradictory, and the reliability of other information has been questioned. The true persecutions of Christians started after the Early Empire period. The persecutions by the emperor Decius (250) and the emperor Valerian (257-260) occurred during the Crisis of the Third Century. The worse persecution, the Diocletianic Persecution or Great Persecution (305-311), occurred in the Later Empire
We are told that the emperor Nero blamed the Christians for the Great Fire of Rome of 64 BC and persecuted them, but we are not told what he actually did. All were have is Tacitus saying Nero accused and punished the already detested Christians to dispel rumours that he had started the fire and Suetonius briefly mentioning that Christians were killed under the reign of Nero. There are modern historians who doubt that this could actually have happened.
Eusebius, a Christian writer of the late 3rd century/early 4th century, suggested that the emperor Domitian carried out excessive and cruel exiles and executions of Christians. However, he wrote this 200 year after Domitian's reign (81-96) and there is no evidence of this. Moreover, he suggested that the wife of a consul was exiled because she was a Christian. However, an earlier Roman historian, Cassius Dio, wrote that she was guilty of sympathy for Judaism.
A provincial governor under the reign of Trajan (98-117) executed people who had been accused of being Christians, confessed this, and did not prove that they were no longer Christian by honouring the Roman gods.
Eusebius wrote during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180) some Christians in Lugdunum (present day Lyons, France) were imprisoned, tortured or fed to the beasts.
Eusebius wrote that there were Christian persecutions during the reign of Septimius Severus (193-211). However another Christian writer, Tertullian, wrote that Septimius Severus was well disposed towards the Christians, that his doctor was a Christian and that he protected high-born Christians.
Eusebius also wrote that the emperor Maximinus the Thracian (reigned 235-238) persecuted the heads of the Christian church in 325 and exiled a pope (Pontian) and a theologian (Hippolytus). With regard to Hippolytus, however, according to Pope Pius IV he was martyred by Maximinus the Thracian's predecessor, Alexander Severus (reigned 222-235). Once again we have contradictory versions.
Wiki User
∙ 9y ago
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In 313 CE Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan. What effect did this law have?
It promoted the spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire by allowing people to worship freely. -APEX
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