Saint Anthimus of Nicomedia

Maximian mocked this speech; and, imagining it was a bravado that would not last, he ordered that the head of the holy Martyr be bruised with blows from stones and pebbles; but this great man, far from complaining, did not cease to cry out: "May the gods who have not made heaven and earth perish now!" The tyrant then had his heels pierced with long, red-hot iron awls; and, having had him thrown onto sharp potsherds, he had him whipped there with unheard-of cruelty; then he had him put on bronze boots that had been reddened in the fire, thus striving through the rigor of these torments to overcome his constancy. But God, who never distances Himself from His elect, consoled His servant in the midst of his tortures, letting him hear a voice from heaven that encouraged him, and that promised him the reward of his labors after the complete victory: the holy Martyr, regaining new strength and showing in his eyes the sweet consolations that abounded in his soul, said to the emperor: "I will soon make you see that it is pure folly and a vain thought of religion that makes you worship these false divinities, and blaspheme the holy name of Jesus Christ."

This was adding oil to the fire, and increasingly irritating the anger of Maximian; he therefore commanded that the holy Martyr be tied to a wheel; and that, while it turned incessantly, they should little by little burn his whole body with burning torches. The executioners were skilled at carrying out these orders; but when they thought they were reducing his body to pieces and ashes, they were themselves knocked to the ground; and, their instruments falling from their hands, they remained as if paralyzed. Maximian spurred them on with sarcasm and threats; they replied to him that they did not lack the courage to obey him, but that they could not, because three figures full of majesty, and all radiant with light, were assisting the Martyr, and protecting him against their violence. Anthimus, for his part, filled with joy and consolation, sang in the midst of his torments, and rendered a thousand praises to God for the victories He allowed him to win.

The emperor, defeated by the constancy of the Martyr, was forced to have him taken down from the wheel and sent back to prison, laden and almost overwhelmed with chains. But it happened that in the middle of the road they broke miraculously, and fell off his feet and hands of their own accord, which struck such terror into the archers who were leading him that they fell to the ground, seized and trembling with fear. However, they were raised up by Anthimus, who took them by the hand and commanded them to continue to fulfill their duty. He therefore returned to prison with a joy that cannot be expressed. The criminals, who were there in great numbers, received so much consolation from his presence, and were so touched by his holy conversations, that they all converted to the Catholic faith and received the sacrament of Baptism. Maximian, who saw himself defeated whichever way he turned, had the Martyr brought before him again; and, changing his methods of attack, promised him great favors, and even the office of high priest of the gods, if he would offer them incense. But Anthimus, mocking his offers, said to him very generously: "I am a priest of the great and sovereign pontiff Jesus Christ, to whom I offer myself as a sacrifice. As for your gods and their dignities, of which you speak to me, it is but a mockery and pure folly." The emperor, no longer able to endure these slights, finally ordered that he be beheaded. Anthimus thus completed his glorious martyrdom and ceased to conquer only when he ceased to live, on April 27, in the year of Our Lord 303.

## A GLANCE AT THE TENTH AND FINAL GENERAL PERSECUTION.

The Emperor Numerian, son of Carus, having been massacred in 284, the army that was at Chalcedon clothed Diocletian in the purple. Diocletian was a soldier of fortune, born in Dalmatia to parents of low extraction. He had taken up the profession of arms early and had risen by degrees to the highest military honors. The following year, the new emperor defeated Carinus, another son of Carus, who reigned in the West. This victory did not calm all his anxieties. On one hand, he feared succumbing under the weight of affairs; on the other, he distrusted the loyalty of his troops, and especially the Praetorian guards, who, for nearly three hundred years, had been in the habit of disposing of the empire and taking the lives of their masters. Considering, moreover, that he had no male child, he resolved to give himself a colleague. His choice fell upon Maximian-Herculius, in whom he had complete confidence and in whom he recognized great capacity for the art of war. The family of Maximian-Herculius was very obscure. He was born in a village near Sirmium, in Pannonia. He was of a cruel character and given to all sorts of vices. He owed his elevation to his military talents.

These two princes, alarmed by the peril that threatened the empire on all sides, and despairing of being able to face all their enemies, each named a Caesar who could help them defend their respective states. They also wished by this means to give themselves each a successor. Diocletian named Maximian-Galerius for the East, and M aximian-Herculi Maximien-Galère Roman emperor and persecutor of Christians. us named Constantius-Chlorus for the West. Maximian-Galeri Constance-Chlore Roman general, Caesar, then emperor, husband of Saint Helena. us was a peasant from Dacia who entered the Roman armies. Everything about him announced a barbaric and ferocious nature. His gaze, his voice, and his bearing had something frightening about them. He was, furthermore, zealous for idolatry to the point of fanaticism. Constantius-Chlorus was from an illustrious family and united in his person all the qualities that make a great prince.

Diocletian did not trouble the Christians during the first years of his reign. This did not prevent several from being martyred by virtue of the old edicts that had not been revoked. As for Galerius, he soon made them feel in all the provinces under his dependency the effects of the implacable hatred he bore them. He tried at the same time to engage Diocletian to adopt his sentiments. He renewed his efforts during the winter of the year 302, which he spent in Nicomedia.

However, Diocletian did not yet allow himself to be won over: he avoided coming to extremes, for fear that the shedding of Christian blood would disturb the peace of the empire. Finally, the oracle of Apollo at Miletus was consulted. The response, says Lactantius, was such as an enemy o Lactance Christian author, primary source for the account of the persecutors. f the Christian religion could expect. The same author reports in two places another incident that did not contribute to softening Diocletian toward the worshippers of Jesus Christ. This prince, being in Antioch in 302, sacrificed a quantity of victims to find in their entrails knowledge of the future. Some Christian officers who were near his person formed the sign of the cross on their foreheads. The haruspices, confounded, not finding in the entrails of the victims what they were looking for, offered new ones, under the pretext that the gods were not yet sufficiently appeased; but they did not succeed any better than the first time. The one who presided over the ceremony suddenly cried out that one should not be surprised at what was happening. "There are here," he said, "profane persons who disturb us in our sacrifices." By these profane persons, he meant the Christians. The irritated emperor immediately ordered that all the Christians who were present, as well as all those who belonged to the court, must sacrifice to the gods. "I want," he added, "those who refuse to obey to be beaten with rods." He also sent orders to the commanders of the troops to dismiss the soldiers who would not sacrifice.

Another thing confirmed Diocletian in his feelings of hatred against Christianity, although it should naturally have produced the opposite effect: it is reported by Constantine the Great in an edict that he addressed to the whole empire. Here is how this prince speaks: "It is sai Constantin le Grand Roman emperor whose conversion ended Christian persecutions. d that Apollo declared, by a voice coming from the depths of a cavern, that just men who lived on the earth prevented him from telling the truth, and that they were the cause of the false predictions he made. Diocletian let his hair grow to mark his grief, and deplored the sad fate of men who no longer had oracles. I call you to witness, gods of heaven! You know that while I was still young, I heard this unhappy emperor ask one of his guards 'who were these just men who lived on the earth?' and that a pagan priest who was present answered him that they were the Christians. Having listened to this answer with great joy, he drew against innocence the sword that should only have been used against crime; and, if one may speak thus, he wrote with the point of his sword bloody edicts against the Christians, and ordered the judges to use all the skill of their minds to invent new torments."

The twenty-third day of February, on which the pagans celebrated the feast of their god Terminus, was chosen to open the persecution. The goal was nothing less than to annihilate our holy religion. Early in the morning, the prefect, accompanied by several officers, went to the church of the Christians. He forced the doors, seized the books of Scripture he found there, and had them burned: everything else was abandoned to pillage. Diocletian and Galerius watched everything that was happening from a balcony, for the church, being situated on an eminence, could be seen from the palace. They deliberated for a long time whether they should order the church to be set on fire. Diocletian, fearing that the flames might spread to other buildings in the city, was of the opinion that they should be content with tearing it down. A considerable body of Praetorians was therefore sent there, who demolished it in a very short time.

The next day, an edict was published ordering all churches to be torn down and our holy Scriptures to be burned. It was also stated that all Christians, of whatever rank they might be, would be subjected to torture; that they would be ineligible to hold offices and dignities; that all lawsuits brought against them would be accepted; that they, on the contrary, would not be permitted to seek justice for violence, adultery, etc.; and finally, that they would be deprived of all rights attached to the status of a subject of the empire.

No sooner had this edict been posted than a Christian, very considerable by his position, tore it down and tore it to pieces. His zeal, which Lactantius cond emns a Eusèbe Church historian and primary source. s indiscreet, came, according to Eusebius, from a divine principle. The latter author considered only the intention. The Christian was arrested and condemned to various tortures; he was then stretched on a burning gridiron, where he consumed his sacrifice. He showed admirable patience during his torment.

This first edict was soon followed by a second. It ordered the arrest of bishops, that they be loaded with chains, and that they be forced, by dint of torments, to sacrifice to idols. It is believed that Saint Anthimus was arrested on this occasion. Be that as it may, the city of Nicomedia was then flooded with Christian blood.

The hatred that Galerius bore toward the disciples of Jesus Christ was not yet satisfied. To induce Diocletian to treat them with even greater rigor, he devised a means that reveals all the barbarity of his character. He had the imperial palace set on fire by his creatures. The idolaters immediately accused the Christians of being the authors of the fire and gave themselves over to the most violent transports of rage against them. This was what Galerius had foreseen; this was the object of his desires. It was said that the Christians, allied with some eunuchs, had attempted the lives of the two princes and that they had intended to burn them alive in their own palace. Diocletian gave credence to these rumors. He had a cruel interrogation conducted in his presence of all those who composed his household, in order to discover the incendiaries; but they could not be identified, because no investigation was made against the people of Galerius.

Fifteen days later, the palace was set on fire a second time. The author of the conflagration, who was still Galerius, was not discovered either. This prince left the city of Nicomedia the very same day, although it was the middle of winter. To hear him tell it, he was acting in this way only so as not to be burned by the Christians. The palace was little damaged, because the fire was extinguished almost immediately. The Christians were again held responsible for the second fire.

From then on, the fury of Diocletian knew no bounds; the unfortunate Christians felt the full weight of it. The most frightful tortures were the lot of those who refused to adore the idols. Valeria, daughter of the emperor, who had married Galerius, and Prisca, his wife, both Christians, found themselves in the alternative of suffering a cruel death or sacrificing. Both had the cowardice to apostatize; but God punished them for it in a terrible manner. Their lives were thereafter but a web of misfortunes, after which they were publicly beheaded by the order of Licinius, for in 313 he put to death the entire family of Diocletian and the entire family of Maximian-Galerius.

The most powerful of the eunuchs, who until then had been the masters of the palace and the advisors of the emperor, became the first victims of the persecution. They preferred to perish in the midst of tortures rather than betray their religion. The princ ipal among t saint Pierre Eunuch of the imperial palace and martyr. hem were Saint Peter, Saint Gorgonius, Saint Dorotheus, Saint Indes, Saint Migdonius, etc.

From the palace, the persecution extended to the church of Nicomedia, of which Saint Anthimus was bishop. This Saint was beheaded. He was accompanied in his triumph by the priests and other ministers of his church, who died for the faith, along with all those who belonged to the family.

We have said in the Acts of Saint Anthimus that the diocese of Nicomedia provided twenty thousand victims to this hideous butchery. This figure of twenty thousand martyrs spread over the entire diocese of Nicomedia is not exaggerated, if one considers that Galerius killed eight thousand Christians in a single city of Phrygia, whose magistrates and all the inhabitants were Christians! To make quicker work of it, he had the four corners of the city set on fire and had it sacked by his soldiers. We have seen in our own days (1870) the Prussians and their satellites renew a similar process against the peaceful inhabitants of towns and villages, for whom it was a crime to be French, just as it was one under Galerius to call oneself and to be a Christian.

The simple faithful were no more spared than the ecclesiastics. There were judges in the temples to condemn to death all those who refused to sacrifice. New kinds of torments were invented to torture them. Altars were set up in all the courts of justice; and no one was admitted to claim the protection of the laws unless he had first abjured the Christian religion. It was not permitted, says Eusebius, for the people to sell or buy, to carry water into their house, to grind wheat, or to conduct any kind of business, unless they offered incense to certain idols placed at street corners, at public fountains, in markets, etc. But all the tortures were useless, if one sought in vain for expressions energetic enough to represent the courage with which an innumerable multitude of Christians sacrificed their lives for Jesus Christ. People of all ages and both sexes were burned in groups. Many were beheaded, and others were thrown into the sea. The Roman Martyrology commemorates, under April 27, those who suffered on this occasion.

From Nicomedia the persecution passed into all the provinces of the empire. The edicts followed one another. The fourth appeared at the beginning of the year 304: it ordered the execution of all Christians, whoever they might be, if they persisted in their religion. The governors, says Lactantius, regarded it as a great glory to triumph over the constancy of a Christian; thus they employed all the tortures that the most refined cruelty could imagine. The blood of the faithful flowed on all sides. Meanwhile, couriers had been dispatched to the Emperor Maximian Herculius and to the Caesar Constantius to bring them the new decrees. The old Maximian welcomed them with joy: they had long been the object of his desires. Constantius Chlorus, after having taken note of them, called all the Christian officers of his palace and proposed the double alternative: either to remain in their positions if they sacrificed to the idols, or if they refused, to be banished from his presence and lose his good graces. Some, preferring the interests of this world to their religion, declared that they were ready to sacrifice. The others remained unshakable in their faith. The surprise of both was at its height when they heard Constantius declare to them that he considered the apostates to be cowards; that, not hoping to find them more faithful to their prince than to their God, he was removing them forever from his service: he retained, on the contrary, the others near his person, entrusted them with his private guard, and treated them as the most devoted of his servants.

The Gauls, which were under the jurisdiction of Constantius Chlorus, escaped the general persecution: as if God had been content with the martyrs that Maximian Herculius had sown th ere on Gaules Roman province where the events take place. his passage, sixteen years earlier (287), while the rest of the Church was at peace. However, Constantius, so as not to irritate the other emperors by mocking their decrees too openly, allowed the material churches to be torn down in the Gauls, "considering," says Lactantius, "that after the storm they could be rebuilt." The persecution thus extended in a moment from the banks of the Tiber to the extremities of the empire, the Gauls excepted. Constantius Chlorus could not ward off the storm from Great Britain, where he commanded.

Our religion would have been finished if its origin had been human; but God, who watched over His Church, used the very means that men employed to destroy it to expand it. Those who had raged most against it suffered the punishment that their injustice and cruelty deserved.

The authors of the first general persecutions also visibly experienced the effects of heaven's wrath. This can be seen in the excellent treatise by Lactantius, entitled: *De mortibus persecutorum* (On the Deaths of the Persecutors). Thus, while the martyrs gained immortal crowns, their enemies suffered in this life the punishments due to their crimes.

It is very glorious for the Christian religion, Tertullian once said, that the first emperor to draw the sword against it was Nero, the declared enemy of all virtue. Reduced to despair, four years after he had begun to persecute the Christians, that is to say in 64, he wished to take his own life, but he only completed his crime with the help of Epaphroditus, his secretary. He died detested by the empire and all of mankind because of his cruelties and abominations.

Domitian, who persecuted the Church in 95, was massacred the following year by his own servants. Trajan, Hadrian, Titus, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius did not perish by a violent death; but they did not issue edicts against the Christians, and their crime consisted in not preventing the persecutions or in tolerating them.

Severus, who became a persecutor in 202, fell into all sorts of misfortunes. He died of grief, leaving a son who had wanted to take his life and who later killed his own brother. His entire family perished miserably.

Decius perished in a swamp while going to fight the Goths, after a very short reign. Gallus was killed a year after he had lit the fire of persecution. Valerian, Aurelian, and Maximian had a violent death.

Diocletian became unhappy by becoming a persecutor of the Christians. Intimidated by the power and threats of Galerius, he abdicated the empire at Nicomedia on April 1, 304. Maximian-Herculius did the same in Milan. The former went to lead a private life in Dalmatia, near Salona (today Spalato), where the ruins of his palace are still shown. When Maximian-Herculius exhorted him to take up the purple again, he replied: "If you had seen the vegetables that I have planted with my own hands at Salona, you would not speak to me of the empire." This response, apparently philosophical, came only from a foundation of cowardice and timidity. Diocletian had the pain of seeing his wife and daughter condemned to death by Licinius, and the Christian religion protected by the laws in 313. Constantine and Licinius wrote him a threatening letter, in which they accused him of favoring the party of Maxentius and Maximin. Finally, this unhappy prince, reduced to despair, ended with poison a life that was a burden to him. This is at least how Aurelius Victor recounts his death. The account of Lactantius is different. Diocletian, according to this author, was deeply struck by the general contempt into which he had fallen; he experienced continuous agitation and would neither eat nor sleep. He was heard to groan and sigh incessantly. His eyes were often bathed in tears; and in despair he rolled, sometimes on his bed, sometimes on the ground. He thus perished from hunger, melancholy, and grief. His death occurred in 318.

Maximian-Herculius wanted three times to take back the purple, and even to snatch it from Maxentius, his own son. All his efforts having been useless, he hanged himself in despair in 319. Maxentius, Galerius, and Maximin Daia also perished miserably.

Maximian-Galerius was attacked by a horrible disease. Rot and worms took hold of his body. He exhaled such an infectious odor that his own servants could not bear it. See Eusebius, *Hist.*, I. 8, c. 16.

Maxentius, having been defeated by Constantine, fell into the Tiber and drowned. Maximin II, defeated by Licinius, saw himself obliged to revoke the edicts he had issued against the Christians, and died in atrocious pain. Here is how it happened. While his army was drawn up in battle, he cowardly hid in his palace. Victory having declared itself for Licinius, he fled to Tarsus; and as he found no secure retreat, he experienced all the agitation that a vivid fear of death can cause. A horrible wound covered his whole body at the same time. In the redoubling of pain, he rolled on the ground like a madman. Exhausted by long fasts, his body offered nothing more than the form of a hideous skeleton. He lost the use of his sight, and his eyes came out of his head. He still lived, however, and made a confession of his crimes. In vain he called death to his aid; it only came to end his evils when he had recognized that he deserved all that he was suffering for having so cruelly treated Jesus Christ in the person of His disciples. See Eusebius, *Hist.*, I, IX, c. 10. This author adds that the governors of the provinces who had served the rage of Maximin against the Christians were all put to death. He names Picentius, Culcianus, Theotecnus, Urbanus, Firmilian, etc.

Licinius was a prince as cruel as he was ignorant. He knew neither how to read nor write his name; a declared enemy of men of letters, he had several put to death. He favored Christianity for some time to court Constantine, and it has even been claimed that he had intended to embrace it; but in the end he lifted the mask and persecuted the Church. Constantine, having defeated him, condemned him to death in 323. See M. Jortin, vol. III, and Tillemont, *Hist. des Empereurs*.

The account of the martyrdom of Saint Anthimus is taken from a Greek manuscript and reproduced by the Bollandists. The picture of the tenth persecution is taken from Lactantius, *L. de mort. persecut.*, and from Eusebius, *Hist.*, I, VIII, c. 4, 6. See Tillemont, vol. V.