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

In cognitio extra ordinem, an accuser called a delator brought before the governor an individual to be charged with a certain offence—in this case, that of being a Christian. This delator was prepared to act as the prosecutor for the trial, and could be rewarded with some of the accused’s property if he made an adequate case or charged with calumnia(malicious prosecution) if his case was insufficient. If the governor agreed to hear the case—and he was free not to—he oversaw the trial from start to finish: he heard the arguments, decided on the verdict, and passed the sentence.^[21]:116 Christians sometimes offered themselves up for punishment, and the hearings of such voluntary martyrs were conducted in the same way.

More often than not, the outcome of the case was wholly subject to the governor’s personal opinion. While some tried to rely on precedent or imperial opinion where they could, as evidenced by Pliny the Younger’s letter to Trajan concerning the Christians,^[27] such guidance was often unavailable.^[28]:35 In many cases months’ and weeks’ travel away from Rome, these governors had to make decisions about running their provinces according to their own instincts and knowledge.

Even if these governors had easy access to the city, they would not have found much official legal guidance on the matter of the Christians. Before the anti-Christian policies under Decius beginning in 250, there was no empire-wide edict against the Christians, and the only solid precedent was that set by Trajan in his reply to Pliny: the name of “Christian” alone was sufficient grounds for punishment and Christians were not to be sought out by the government. There is speculation that Christians were also condemned for contumacia—disobedience toward the magistrate, akin to the modern “contempt of court”—but the evidence on this matter is mixed.^[21]:124 Melito of Sardis later asserted that Antoninus Pius ordered that Christians were not to be executed without proper trial.^[28]:37

Given the lack of guidance and distance of imperial supervision, the outcomes of the trials of Christians varied widely. Many followed Pliny’s formula: they asked if the accused individuals were Christians, gave those who answered in the affirmative a chance to recant, and offered those who denied or recanted a chance to prove their sincerity by making a sacrifice to the Roman gods and swearing by the emperor’s genius. Those who persisted were executed.