The Roman emperor’s decree that set everything in motion shows that Mary and Joseph did not manipulate events to “set up their son” as a potential Messiah.
One priority of the Roman Empire was peace for its citizens. However, this privilege was not extended to all. Roman citizens enjoyed the Pax Romana (“peace of Rome”), which allowed them to live and travel safely within the empire. Roads were built to facilitate travel, and a common language helped break down barriers among ethnic groups, providing a shared culture.
The apostle Paul traveled extensively across the Roman Empire, sharing the gospel with diverse Gentiles in the common Greek language. (Greek, not Latin, was the trade language of the empire for several centuries.) Paul’s Roman citizenship gave him freedom of movement and extra protection (Acts 22:22–29). Many Christians spread the gospel throughout the empire during this time.
While Rome is commonly seen as the primary persecutor of the early church, the New Testament suggests otherwise. Widespread persecution by Rome began under Emperor Nero in the late 60s and later emperors. Before that, Rome largely ignored Christians unless pressured by Jewish authorities (Acts 22:30). The Roman governor Pilate wanted to release Jesus, but Jewish leaders insisted on his execution (Matthew 27:15–23).
Similarly, Paul was mainly opposed by fellow Jews, who either acted on their own, stirred up local populations, or appealed to Roman authorities for help. This happened in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1–9) and Corinth (Acts 18:12–17). When Paul was arrested by Romans, he used his citizenship to secure an apology on release (Acts 16:35–40).
When Paul was attacked in the Jerusalem temple, it was his Jewish countrymen who assaulted him; the Romans arrested him to protect him (Acts 21:27–36). The Roman governor saved Paul from a Jewish assassination plot (Acts 23). Felix and Festus, Roman governors, were sympathetic to Paul but hesitant to release him because it would upset Jewish leaders (Acts 24–26). Ultimately, Paul appealed to Caesar, knowing he could not get a fair trial in Jerusalem. Even Festus and King Agrippa agreed: “This man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment” (Acts 26:21).
The Roman authorities demanded absolute allegiance to Rome above all else. Due to the Jews’ long-standing tradition of monotheism, they were exempted from offering sacrifices to the emperor. Initially, Christians were considered a sect within Judaism and shared the same exemption. However, as Jews began to distance themselves more clearly from Christians, Rome started to scrutinize Christians more closely. By the second century, Christians were persecuted as enemies of the state because they refused to honor the emperor as a deity. Notably, this persecution is not evident in the New Testament.
In AD 70, the Roman general Titus, son of Emperor Vespasian, destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, fulfilling Jesus’ prophecy in Luke 21:6.
Three Roman emperors are named in the New Testament: Augustus, mentioned in connection with the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for Jesus’ birth; Tiberius, emperor during John the Baptist’s ministry (Luke 3:1); and Claudius, who expelled all Jews from Rome (Acts 18:1). The Roman historian Suetonius, in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, attributes this expulsion to Jewish disputes over someone called Chrestus, which many scholars interpret as a reference to Christ. Roman officials, generally uninformed about Jewish disputes (see Acts 25:18–20), might have confused the name. The Jews returned to Rome within a few years.
In summary, the Roman Empire played a significant, often negative role in the events surrounding Jesus’ birth and crucifixion. Yet, it also unintentionally provided the infrastructure needed for the apostles to spread the gospel throughout the Mediterranean.
Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was carried out sporadically by both the state and local authorities, often depending on local community attitudes. Empire-wide persecution began only in 250 AD with an edict from Emperor Decius, lasting about eighteen months. During this time, some Christians were executed, while others apostatized to avoid death.
Romans were generally tolerant of various religious beliefs and allowed many sects, cults, and saviors to proselytize freely. Religious belief was considered a private matter, of little concern to the authorities. Roman social cohesion was based on obedience and public loyalty pledges to the state, symbolized through sacrifices to Roman gods. Contrary to later perceptions, early Romans did not oppose belief in Jesus himself. Instead, they persecuted those who refused to demonstrate loyalty to Roman authority, specifically those who would not sacrifice to the Roman gods. Persecution of Gentile Christians lasted over two centuries, including local harassment and official campaigns under emperors such as Marcus Aurelius (161–180), Decius (249–251), Diocletian (284–305), and Galerius (305–311).
Everyone in the Roman Empire was free to worship any deity, as long as they followed the expected symbolic submission to imperial authority. Christianity was outlawed only after two centuries of persistent defiance, seen by Romans as subversive. Pagan Romans interpreted refusal to sacrifice to their gods as political defiance. The core issue was not belief in Jesus but refusal to acknowledge imperial authority. The Roman polytheistic worldview did not accommodate refusal to worship state gods. According to scholar Wilson, Christians (particularly Pauline believers) were suspected of conspiracy and disloyalty, seen as a threat to social order. Eventually, simply confessing to being a Christian could lead to execution. Zetterholm notes that Gentile Jesus-believers in Antioch sometimes had to publicly identify as Jews to avoid prosecution.
These persecutions heavily influenced the development of Christianity, shaping its theology and church structure. They also prompted Christians to write defenses and explanations of their faith.
Persecution had occurred sporadically and locally from Christianity’s beginnings. The first government-organized persecution was under Emperor Nero in 64 AD, following the Great Fire of Rome. The Edict of Serdica in 311 AD, issued by Emperor Galerius, ended the Diocletianic persecution in the East. The Edict of Milan in 313 AD officially ended state persecution of Christians.
There was no empire-wide persecution before Decius in the third century. Provincial governors had wide discretion over local matters and could persecute Christians or allow them to live peacefully. For most of the first 300 years, Christians practiced their faith openly, held professions, and rose to positions of influence. Only about ten years within those three centuries saw executions ordered by emperors. Estimates suggest that between 5,500 and 6,500 Christians died due to persecution during this time, a figure accepted by scholars such as Yuval Noah Harari.
Between the crucifixion of Christ and Emperor Constantine’s conversion, Roman emperors launched no more than four major persecutions. Local officials sometimes instigated violence on their own, but total Christian deaths remained in the thousands.
Reasons for Persecution
Before 250 AD, persecution was localized, sporadic, often mob-driven, with occasional official action. Key causes include:
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Clash of Loyalties: The exclusive sovereignty claimed by Christ conflicted with Caesar’s claims to ultimate authority. While Rome tolerated multiple gods and religions, it demanded supreme loyalty to the state, demonstrated through state religious rituals and festivals. Christian monotheism prevented participation in these practices, causing hostility.
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Refusal to Participate: Christians did not attend festivals, processions, or offer sacrifices to Roman gods or the emperor. This refusal was seen as disloyalty to both gods and the empire since the emperor was viewed as the embodiment of Rome.
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Privatization of Religion: Christians moved worship into private homes and avoided public religious activities, which bred suspicion. Rumors spread accusing Christians of horrific crimes such as cannibalism and incest, stemming from misunderstandings of their rituals and language.
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Social Disruption: Christianity’s inclusive nature challenged Rome’s caste and gender-based social order, appearing as a disruptive threat. Christian converts’ renunciations of family and country and their predictions of disasters caused anxiety among pagan neighbors.
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Scapegoating: Christians were blamed for natural disasters and misfortunes, leading to calls for their persecution. Tertullian lamented widespread belief that Christians caused public calamities, such as floods, famines, and pestilences.
The Roman Legal System and Christian Trials
The Roman legal system was informal and personality-driven. A charge against a Christian required only an accuser (a prosecutor, sometimes just a private citizen), the accusation of Christianity, and a governor willing to try the case. Roman law focused mostly on property rights, leaving criminal law vague. To fill this gap, provincial governors conducted cognitio extra ordinem (“special investigations”), overseeing trials from start to finish.
In these trials, an accuser (delator) presented the case and could gain a reward if successful or face punishment if the case failed. Governors could choose whether to hear the case. Christians sometimes voluntarily presented themselves for punishment, and these trials followed the same process.
Trial outcomes often depended on the governor’s personal judgment. Some sought imperial precedent, such as Pliny the Younger’s letter to Trajan, which stated Christians should not be actively sought out but could be punished if they confessed. Governors usually gave accused Christians a chance to recant by offering sacrifices to Roman gods and swearing allegiance. Those who refused were executed.
Some governors in Africa reportedly helped Christians avoid conviction. Generally, Roman authorities preferred apostasy over martyrdom. For example, the proconsul Arrius Antoninus told voluntary martyrs that if they wished to die, they could do so on their own terms.
During the Great Persecution (303–312/313), emperors issued direct orders to governors to destroy Christian churches, forbid worship, and arrest clergy. Christians refusing to recant lost legal protections. However, no specific punishments were mandated, leaving governors discretion in enforcement. Some governors claimed they did not execute Christians, and evidence suggests some ignored or eased enforcement.
When a governor was sent to a province, he was charged with the task of keeping it pacata atque quieta—settled and orderly. His primary interest would be to keep the populace happy; thus when unrest against the Christians arose in his jurisdiction, he would be inclined to placate it with appeasement lest the populace “vent itself in riots and lynching.”
Political leaders in the Roman Empire were also public cult leaders. Roman religion revolved around public ceremonies and sacrifices to their gods and goddesses personal belief was not as central an element as it is in many modern faiths. Thus while the private beliefs of Christians may have been largely immaterial to many Roman elites, this public religious practise was in their estimation critical to the social and political well-being of both the local community and the empire as a whole. Honouring tradition in the right way – pietas – was key to stability and success.[ Hence the Romans protected the integrity of cults practised by communities under their rule, seeing it as inherently correct to honour one’s ancestral traditions; for this reason the Romans for a long time tolerated the highly exclusive Jewish sect, even though some Romans despised it. Historian H. H. Ben-Sasson has proposed that the “Crisis under Caligula” (37-41) was the “first open break” between Rome and the Jews. After the First Jewish–Roman War (66-73), Jews were officially allowed to practice their religion as long as they paid the Jewish tax. There is debate among historians over whether the Roman government simply saw Christians as a sect of Judaism prior to Nerva‘s modification of the tax in 96. From then on, practising Jews paid the tax while Christians did not, providing hard evidence of an official distinction. Part of the Roman disdain for Christianity, then, arose in large part from the sense that it was bad for society. In the 3rd century, the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry wrote:
How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? … What else are they than fighters against God?
Once distinguished from Judaism, Christianity was no longer seen as simply a bizarre sect of an old and venerable religion; it was a superstitio. Superstition had for the Romans a much more powerful and dangerous connotation than it does for much of the Western world today: to them, this term meant a set of religious practices that were not only different but corrosive to society, “disturbing a man’s mind in such a way that he is really going insane” and causing him to lose Humanitas (humanity). The persecution of “superstitious” sects was hardly unheard of in Roman history: an unnamed foreign cult was persecuted during a drought in 428 BC, some initiates of the Bacchic cult were executed when deemed out-of-hand in 186 BC, and measures were taken against the Celtic Druids during the early Principate.
Even so, the level of persecution experienced by any given community of Christians still depended upon how threatening the local official deemed this new superstitio to be. Christians’ beliefs would not have endeared them to many government officials: they worshipped a convicted criminal, refused to swear by the emperor’s genius, harshly criticized Rome in their holy books, and suspiciously conducted their rites in private. In the early third century, one magistrate told Christians “I cannot bring myself so much as to listen to people who speak ill of the Roman way of religion.”
History
Saint Blaise on Trial Before the Roman Governor, Louvre
Prior to the reign of Decius (249-251 AD), the only known incident of Roman state persecution occurred under Nero in 64 AD. By the mid-2nd century, mobs were willing to throw stones at Christians, possibly motivated by rival sects. The Persecution in Lyon (177 AD) was preceded by mob violence, including assaults, robberies, and stonings. Lucian tells of an elaborate and successful hoax by a “prophet” of Asclepius, who used a tame snake in Pontus and Paphlagonia. When rumor threatened to expose the fraud, the witty essayist reports in his scathing essay that the prophet issued a proclamation designed to scare people, saying Pontus was full of atheists and Christians who abused him, and urged people to drive them away with stones if they wanted the god to be gracious.
Tertullian’s Apologeticus of 197 AD was written in defense of persecuted Christians and addressed to Roman governors.
Reconstruction of the Roman governor’s palace in Aquincum, Hungary
In 250 AD, Emperor Decius issued a decree requiring public sacrifice, a formal act equivalent to a testimonial of allegiance to the emperor and the established order. There is no evidence that the decree specifically targeted Christians; rather, it was intended as a loyalty oath. Decius authorized roving commissions to visit cities and villages to supervise the sacrifices and deliver written certificates to citizens who performed them. Christians were often given opportunities to avoid punishment by publicly offering sacrifices or burning incense to Roman gods. They were accused of impiety when they refused, and refusal was punished by arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution. Christians fled to countryside safe havens, and some purchased certificates called libelli. Several councils held at Carthage debated how to deal with these lapsed Christians.
The persecutions culminated under Diocletian and Galerius at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century. Their anti-Christian actions, considered the largest, were the last major Roman pagan persecutions. The Edict of Serdica, also called the Edict of Toleration by Galerius, was issued in 311 in Serdica (today Sofia, Bulgaria) by Emperor Galerius, officially ending the Diocletianic persecution of Christianity in the East. Constantine the Great soon came to power and, in 313, fully legalized Christianity based on information from the Bishop of Rome.
At this time in Roman history, there were three religious sects: Christianity’s true church of Jesus Christ, the apostate Roman Catholic Church, and Judaism. It was not until Theodosius I in the late 4th century that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The Bishop of Rome had an agenda to diverge from the true church of Jesus Christ, but he needed Emperor Constantine’s authority. The Bishop convinced the Emperor to set aside Sunday worship for all Romans to dedicate the day to their goddess of the “Sun.” Constantine agreed, unaware of the Bishop’s deceit, which was intended to steer people away from the true church. This plan exploited the Roman love for idol worship.
“Persecution of the Christians,” Young Folks’ History of Rome (1878)
Before Nero’s accusation of arson and anti-Christian actions in 64 AD, hostility was mostly limited to internal Jewish conflicts. The New Testament (Acts 18:2-3) introduces Aquila, a Jew who, with his wife Priscilla, recently came from Italy after Emperor Claudius “ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.” It is generally agreed that from Nero’s reign until Decius’s widespread measures in 250 AD, Christian persecution was isolated and localized.
Although Christians are often said to have been persecuted for refusing to worship the emperor, general dislike likely stemmed from their refusal to worship Roman gods or participate in sacrifices, which was expected of residents. Jews were tolerated because they followed ancestral Jewish ceremonial law. Christians, however, were thought to engage in strange rituals and nocturnal rites and were seen as a dangerous, superstitious sect.
During this period, anti-Christian actions were accusatory rather than inquisitive. Governors played a larger role than emperors; Christians were not actively sought out but prosecuted when accused through a process called cognitio extra ordinem. Trials varied widely, with sentences ranging from acquittal to death.
Main article: Great Fire of Rome
See also: Early Centres of Christianity § Rome
According to Tacitus, Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, which destroyed parts of the city and caused economic hardship. Tacitus’s Annals (15.44) report:
“…To get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”
This is the only independent attestation that Nero blamed Christians for the fire. Although generally accepted as reliable, some modern scholars question it due to lack of references before the late 4th century. Suetonius, writing later, does not mention any persecution after the fire but notes punishments for Christians as “men following a new and malefic superstition” without specifying reasons.
It is unclear whether Christians were persecuted solely for arson or for other crimes. Tertullian mentions an institutum Neronianum in his apology To the Nations, which some interpret as a law against Christians under Nero, but others argue it merely describes anti-Christian activity without legal basis. No known writers indicate a law specifically targeting Christians.
Domitian’s Reign (89-96 AD)
Some historians suggest heavy persecution of Jews and Christians toward the end of Domitian’s reign. The Book of Revelation, which references martyrdom (Rev 2:13; 6:9), is often dated to this period. Early church historian Eusebius wrote that Revelation reflects Domitian’s harsh banishments and executions of Christians, though these claims may be exaggerated or false. Other historians argue there was little or no anti-Christian activity under Domitian. The debate stems from sparse and disputed accounts.
Reference is often made to the execution of Flavius Clemens, a Roman consul and cousin of the Emperor, and the banishment of his wife, Flavia Domitilla, to Pandateria. Eusebius says Domitilla was banished for Christianity, but Cassius Dio reports she was guilty of sympathy for Judaism. Suetonius does not mention the exile. It’s more probable, according to Keresztes, that they were converts to Judaism attempting to avoid the Fiscus Judaicus tax. No legal ordinances against Christians are referenced during Domitian’s reign.
Trajan’s Reign
As a civilian emperor, Trajan corresponded with Pliny the Younger about Christians in Pontus. He instructed Pliny to continue persecuting Christians but not to accept anonymous accusations, balancing justice with the spirit of the age. Non-citizens who admitted Christianity and refused to recant were executed, while citizens were sent to Rome for trial. Despite this, medieval Christian theologians regarded Trajan as a virtuous pagan.
Hadrian’s Reign (117-138 AD)
Hadrian responded to a provincial governor’s request on dealing with Christians by granting more leniency. Being Christian alone was insufficient cause for punishment; an illegal act had to be committed. Additionally, “slanderous attacks” against Christians were not to be tolerated—false accusers faced punishment.
From Marcus Aurelius to Maximinus the Thracian
Sporadic anti-Christian activity occurred during this period, with governors continuing to play a greater role than emperors. In the early third century, imperial policy remained mostly passive, activated only by local pressures.
Apostasy in the form of symbolic sacrifice could free a Christian from punishment. It was standard to imprison Christians after initial trials, applying pressure to recant.
Persecutions increased during Marcus Aurelius’s reign (161-180 AD), though his direct involvement is unclear. One notable instance occurred in 177 AD at Lugdunum (modern Lyon, France), home to the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established by Augustus. The sole account comes from Eusebius. The persecution began unofficially as ostracism from public spaces but escalated to official arrest, trial, and imprisonment in the forum. Christians were condemned to death by wild beasts, torture, and harsh imprisonment. Slaves accused their masters of incest and cannibalism. Barnes cites this as an example of suspected Christians punished even after apostasy.
However, Eusebius wrote about this roughly 120 years later, and it’s unclear if the event occurred. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon and contemporary to the event, makes no mention of persecution in his writings, instead stating, “The Romans have given the world peace, and we [Christians] travel without fear along the roads and across the sea wherever we will.” (Against Heresies, Book IV, Chapter 30).
