The following is an excerpt (pages 265-272) from Ancient and Medieval History (1946) by Francis S. Betten, S.J. Although some information may be outdated, the Catholic historical perspective it provides remains pertinent. Use the link at the bottom of post to read the previous/following pages. Use the Search box above to find specific topics or browse using the Resources tab above.

CHAPTER XXVII
RISE OF CHRISTIANITY

SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

353. The Times of the Apostles. — The birthday of the Church of Christ is the day of Pentecost after our Lord’s resurrection and ascension into heaven. On this day St. Peter preached the first missionary sermon with the result that 3000 persons joined Christ’s kingdom and were baptized. The apostles at first confined their efforts to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, where numerous communities of fervent Christians soon grew up. A persecution under King Herod Agrippa scattered the flourishing congregation of Jerusalem far beyond the boundaries of Palestine. Before this time St. Peter had already received into the Church the pagan Cornelius, a Roman officer. Now the conversion of pagans began on a large scale. When coming to a city, the apostles indeed started their work among the Jews, who in all larger cities possessed their own quarter with one or more synagogues. Among these Jews, called the “Jews of the Dispersion,” frequently the first Christian congregation of the town was started. As a class, however, the Jews found the kingship of Christ too unworldly and refused to be baptized, while the pagans were converted in large numbers. The apostle St. Paul, miraculously converted by Christ himself, made it his special task to preach to the pagans. Of the labors of no apostle do we possess such detailed records as of those of St. Paul. He preached in all the large cities of Asia Minor and Greece, and came also several times to Rome. St. Peter had already transferred his residence to that capital of the world and founded the Church of Rome.

The arrival of the humble fisherman of Galilee made Rome what she was destined to be: the residence of the Vicars of Christ on earth. It was the greatest event in her history. St. Peter died a martyr’s death by crucifixion during the persecution of Nero. St. Paul was beheaded on the same day. “These are the men, O Rome, through whom the splendor of the Gospel began to shine in thee, so that from a teacher of error thou becamest the disciple of truth. These are they that lifted thee up to thy present glory, that, being the head of the world by the Chair of Peter, thou rulest a wider domain than thy worldly empire ever embraced” (St. Leo I).

354. Supernatural Causes of the Spread of Christianity.
— It is estimated that a hundred years after the death of Jesus Christ there were about a million Christians, and their number increased more rapidly in the following century. The chief cause of this spread was the will of God that it should come about in spite of all obstacles and handicaps, and the greatest means was the power of His grace. If we look for some more detailed causes, we find the following:
(а) Christianity had a most powerful ally in the natural desire of every human heart for truth and happiness. It held out a perfect retribution for the good that remains unrewarded in this world, and the moral evil that remains unpunished. It solved the problem of suffering by pointing to the suffering and dying God-Man, and to the glory that is in store in the other world. All these teachings, in themselves so extremely reasonable, it proposed in so simple a garb as to be intelligible to the learned and the unlearned.
(b) The virtuous life of the Christians made a strong appeal to those not entirely corrupt.
(c) On various occasions, chiefly during the sufferings of the martyrs, miracles happened which it was impossible to deny.
(d) All the Christians, not only the priests and bishops, but the faithful as well, including women and slaves, showed a remarkable missionary zeal. It was through soldiers that many of the Christian communities along the Rhine and Danube and elsewhere were established.

355. Natural Causes of the Spread of Christianity. — In many ways the Roman world had prepared the way for the new religion.
(a) Political unity. “It was part of the divine plan,” says Pope Leo the Great, “that the several kingdoms and realms should be united under one empire, thus making all nations easily accessible to the preaching of the Gospel.” As Roman citizens, or as members of an “allied ” nation, the messengers of Christ could travel to any part of the vast Roman dominions.
(b) Unity of language. Latin and Greek were understood in all the great centers around the Mediterranean.
(c) The excellent Roman roads, and the general safety in traveling by land and sea.
(d) The liberal Roman policy as to religions. All gods of the universe were welcome at Rome, provided they did not get into conflict with the imaginary interest of the state. This enabled the Christians for a long time to live up to the tenets of their faith. That conflict was, however, sure to come.
(e) Greek philosophy had to some extent prepared many minds to a greater seriousness of thought. This was true of the Stoics in particular, whose adherents were rather numerous among the educated classes (§ 189).
(f) There was also growing up among thinking men a conviction that the ridiculous medley of gods and goddesses, all of whom were subject to the cravings and vices of ordinary mortals, could not possibly benefit mankind.

Those who think that these natural conditions explain the spread of Christianity satisfactorily are mistaken. If nothing else had been needed, there is no reason why the whole Empire should not have turned Christian within a few years. Only divine grace was able to help men overcome the fearful array of obstacles which confronted every prospective convert to the new religion.

THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS

356. The Persecutions. — The religion of Christ had to pass through persecutions when still confined to Jerusalem and Palestine. As soon as its adherents became numerous and prominent enough to attract attention in Rome, the emperors at once began to punish them in the most cruel manner (§ 319). The most innocent people were brutally scourged, mutilated, crowded into filthy dungeons, banished, deprived of their possessions, forced to work as slaves in mines, exposed to the wild beasts, and beheaded, crucified, or executed in some other painful and ignominious manner. Those who thus died for Christ are called martyrs, witnesses, because they witnessed with their life to the truth of the Christian religion. These persecutions lasted three hundred years. If a man became a Christian, he knew that he had to be prepared for such suffering.

357. Causes of the Persecutions. — The real reason was the opposition of the world and the “prince of the world” to God and His Son, Jesus Christ. “If they have persecuted Me they will also persecute you” (John XV, 20). But there are certain circumstances and conditions which served as pretexts in accusing the Christians, or which roused the rabble in the streets to demand the death of the Christians.
(a) Rome would have allowed the Christians to adore whatever they pleased, if the Christians had not at the same time declared that there was no God but theirs, the God “Who made heaven and earth,” and if they had not refused to worship the gods of Rome. This opposition became very acute when the worship of the deceased emperors had developed into a sort of state religion, which everybody was obliged to perform. (See § 308.)
(b) The Christians, of course, could not be present at the gladiatorial and theatrical shows or participate in the lascivious feastings given in honor of the false gods. For this reason they were called “enemies of the human race.”
(c) The Christians were said to be guilty of horrible crimes such as eating the flesh of children, adoring a goat’s head, fostering conspiracies against the Empire and the “divine” emperors, etc. They were blamed for any calamity which befell the Empire. “When the Tiber rises above its banks, when the Nile does not overflow, when the earth quakes, up goes the cry, ‘The Christians to the lions.’”

358. The Principal Persecutions. — Since Nero began his persecution, it was the principle of the Roman government “that there must be no more Christians.” Some emperors made new efforts to destroy Christianity, and Church historians commonly distinguish ten persecutions, named after the emperors who ordered them. These persecutions covered, in all, perhaps eighty years out of the nearly three hundred between the death of Christ and the Edict of Milan, 313, which put a stop to them for good. But since the imperial decrees which inaugurated them were never revoked, the governors of the various provinces could always, if they felt inclined to do so, proceed against the Christians under their jurisdiction. Thus it is that in reality there was hardly ever any time when the Church was not persecuted in some part of the Empire.

359. The fiercest persecutors were Decius (250-253) and Diocletian (294-305). Both carried on their persecutions more systematically than any of the previous emperors had done. Under Decius the number of apostates was great, because just before him there had been comparative peace for about forty years. But greater was the number of those who followed in the footsteps of former heroes. Diocletian, otherwise a man to whom the Empire owed very much, was persuaded by bad advisers that the Christians were enemies to the state. He bent his whole indomitable energy to the task of destroying the new religion altogether. The dungeons were so overcrowded with bishops and clerics that there was no room for robbers and other criminals. The death sentences sometimes amounted to a hundred a day. Whole cities were surrounded by the soldiers and set on fire, thus killing the entire population. Uncountable numbers were condemned to work in the mines. Men and women of the highest positions, including the emperor’s household, were among the slain. After Diocletian this persecution was for many years continued by the several rulers of the East. It was doomed to failure. With it ended the period of bloody conflicts through which the Church had to pass. The prince of darkness who had been enthroned in his idols for thousands of years in the temples of antiquity fled before the Prince of Light and Peace.

360. The Church was assailed with intellectual weapons also. There were literary attacks, both satirical and “scientific,” upon the Christian religion, its founder, its promoters, and its members. The philosopher Celsus, in the second century, was the author of the most clever and most bitter assault in the form of a book. Other attacks employed a more direct method. The Neo-Pythagoreans attempted to raise Pythagoras (see § 112) and the magician Apollonius to a level with Jesus Christ by representing them as models of human virtue and as miracle workers. The Neo-Platonists (see § 188) explained the stories of the gods and goddesses as allegories, established a rough kind of monotheism, and adopted a number of Christian teachings. The fight with them was carried through triumphantly by such able Christian apologists as the Syrian philosopher Justin; by Clement and Origen of Alexandria; and by the Africans, Tertullian, and Cyprian. Unwittingly, all these pagan efforts showed the hopelessness and insufficiency of the old religion.

361. The catacombs are underground galleries, excavated in the soft rock in the neighborhood of the city of Rome, running in every direction, often on several levels or “stories,” and widening here and there into rooms and more spacious halls. The uppermost of them are about thirty or forty feet below the surface. Their purpose was to serve as regular burial places for the Christians. On both sides of the galleries niches were hollowed out. After the bodies had been deposited in these, the niches were closed by stone slabs which usually received inscriptions. There were more notable graves for prominent persons, and for the martyrs. If placed in a straight line, these galleries would stretch through the whole length of Italy.

During the many periods of persecution the Christians held their religious services in these abodes of the dead. The tombs of the martyrs served as altars. Hence the custom of inclosing relics of martyrs in all our altars.

About 1100 A.D. the memory of the very existence of the catacombs had disappeared. They had to be rediscovered. Prominent men now devote all their talents to the study and further exploration of this forgotten world. The inscriptions on the tombs, the pictures on the walls — very frequent is the representation of Christ as the Good Shepherd — disclose a living faith in the resurrection, in the value of the prayers for the dead, in the power of the intercession of the deceased for the living. They reveal a touching love between the faithful in general, and between the members of families in particular. They show that the saintly men and women that buried their dear ones in those rows of graves and were buried there themselves believed what we believe, and what the Church will believe to the end of the world.

362. The number of the martyrs has often been overrated. It is simply impossible to give definite figures. But from the indications preserved in the writings of the time, pagan as well as Christian, historians conclude that at least a hundred thousand laid down their lives for the religion of Jesus Christ. This amounts to one martyr for nearly every day of the three centuries.

Christianity had to conquer the world in the face of overwhelming obstacles. It had to enforce the observance of the Ten Commandments upon a population which had contracted the strongest habit of violating them in the most outrageous manner. All the physical force the mightiest of empires could muster was arrayed against the Church. As the world persecuted Christ, it also persecuted His followers. If we add to this the religious, moral, and social conditions prevailing in the Roman Empire, and the fact that the new religion could have no attraction for man’s natural inclinations, we gladly agree with those who see in its victory a miracle which alone would suffice to prove its divine origin.