The atrocities of the evil Rome as the real and the real false prophet revealed to me by our Lord Jesus Christ

Edward Gibbon wrote:

By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred.^[22]

Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence(Christian heroes and martyrs, 1895)

Christianity practised inclusivity not found in the social caste system of the Roman empire and was therefore perceived by its opponents as a “disruptive and, most significantly, a competitive menace to the traditional class/gender-based order of Roman society”.^{[18]:120–126} Gibbon argued that the seeming tendency of Christian converts to renounce their family and country and their frequent predictions of impending disasters instilled a feeling of apprehension in their pagan neighbours.^[23]

Much of the pagan populace believed that bad things would happen if the established pagan gods were not properly worshipped and reverenced.^[24][25] By the end of the second century, the Christian apologist Tertullian complained about the widespread perception that Christians were the source of all disasters brought against the human race by the gods. ‘They think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, “Away with the Christians to the lions!”‘^[26]

Roman Legal System

The Condemnation of Saint Lawrence by the emperor Valerian (Fra Angelico, c. 1450)

Due to the informal and personality-driven nature of the Roman legal system, nothing “other than a prosecutor” (an accuser, including a member of the public, not only a holder of an official position), “a charge of Christianity, and a governor willing to punish on that charge”^[21]:123 was required to bring a legal case against a Christian. Roman law was largely concerned with property rights, leaving many gaps in criminal and public law. Thus the process cognitio extra ordinem (“special investigation”) filled the legal void left by both code and court. All provincial governors had the right to run trials in this way as part of their imperium in the province.^[21]:114f