Dr. David Gwynn

The only thing that's specifically about the Manichaeans is they're also Persian, and that makes them even less acceptable.

But it's only therefore around 300-302 that we get this law against Manichaeans, and we get the first stirrings of what's going to become the Great Persecution.

And do we know what happens during the Great Persecution?

This is where we do get lucky.

Because two eyewitnesses who survived the Great Persecution lived to write about it and write about it within the next 20 years.

So we have Lactantius, the North African Christian who was actually teaching Latin rhetoric in Nicomedia, Diocletian's residence, when the Great Persecution began and describes its very first edict going up and someone tearing it down and being burnt as the first martyr of the persecution.

And we have Eusebius of Caesarea, the church historian.

Caesarea is in Palestine.

Eusebius traveled around Syria, Palestine, and Egypt and recorded the violence that was done.

So we can actually reconstruct a significant portion of the Great Persecution.

What we don't have is its motives, because we don't have any of the edicts.

Interestingly, Lactantius and Eusebius, we think independently,

blamed the same person which isn't diocletian it's galerius it's galerius of the original tetrarchs who's held as the most responsible but yet diocletian is the one who gets the blame pinned on him in later history right i wouldn't think of maximian with the great persecution no i it's remembered as the diocletianic persecution he is the senior augustus

It's sometimes been hypothesized that Galerius forced Diocletian into it.

But firstly, Diocletian doesn't seem to be forced into doing anything else.

But more importantly, ideologically, it does fit.

If you're trying to present yourselves as delivering a recovery,

A key part of that, in a world where everybody believes in divine providence, is the religious element.

You can see exactly the same thing with Augustus, the first emperor.

A key part of how he presents his power is pleasing the gods, showing the religious harmony.