And now those who had been released from the mines, coming through the several cities, went forward high-hearted and exalted, and displayed to the churches of God an unspeakable joy and exultation, all along the way passing through the streets and quarters of the cities with psalms and hymns; so that those who a little before had seen them dragged bound and chained into the mines were amazed and glorified God when they now beheld them joyful and exulting, returning to their own homes. From which even those very men who before had seemed hostile and adverse to us now rejoiced with us at the miracle of so sudden a conversion, and accounted our gladness a joy common to themselves.
But while these things were thus being done in the fields and villages and cities, and the peoples of the Christians rejoiced with modest exultation over the peace restored to them, the enemy of all good, the tyrant who, as we said above, held the tyranny over the parts of Egypt through the wickedness bred in him, could not bear it, and suffered our people to remain in peace for not more than six months, and straightway set to work at whatever he could get hold of to disturb it. And so first he attempts to hinder our people under certain pretexts, that they should not gather at the cemeteries. Then next he incites certain most wicked men of the city of Antioch to send an embassy against us, demanding that it should not be permitted for Christians to dwell in their own native land. This was the beginning of that embassy.
He does this through a certain frenzied Theotecnus. About the same time also Peter, of whom we made mention above, bishop of the city of Alexandria, in all things distinguished and adorned with every virtue, and in the divine Scriptures and in the word of God inferior to none of the ancients, of singular prudence too and perfect in all things, truly both a priest and a victim of God, is suddenly seized and, as if by command of Maximinus, is beheaded. And together with him also several other bishops from Egypt are slaughtered. Lucian too, a man pre-eminent in character, self-control, and learning, a presbyter of Antioch, when he had been brought before the tribunal of the judge:
"Why," said the governor to him, "do you, a reasonable and prudent man, follow a sect for which you can render no account? Or if there is any, let us hear it." Then he, being granted the opportunity of speaking, delivered an address of this sort concerning our faith: "It is not hidden that we Christians worship one who is the one God, announced to us through Christ and breathed into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. For we are not, as you suppose, bound fast by the error of any human persuasion, nor, as others are, deceived by the unexamined tradition of our fathers. Our authority concerning God is God himself.
For that sublime majesty could not glide into the perceptions of the human mind unless either conveyed by the power of his own Spirit or made known by the interpretations of his Word and Wisdom. I confess, we too once erred, and thought the images which we ourselves had fashioned to be gods, authors of heaven and earth; but the consecration we bestowed upon them convicted them of their fragile substance. In them there was only as much of veneration as the hand of the craftsmen had conferred of comeliness.
But that almighty God, who was not fashioned by our hands, but whose handiwork it was fitting that we should be, having pity on human errors, sent his Wisdom into this world clothed in flesh, that it might teach us of God, who had made heaven and earth, and that he was to be sought not in things made with hands, but in things eternal and invisible. He also established for us laws of life and precepts of discipline: to keep frugality, to rejoice in poverty, to cultivate gentleness, to be zealous for peace, to embrace purity of heart, to guard patience. But he also foretold that all these things which you now carry out against us would come upon us: that we should be led before kings and set before the tribunals of judges and slaughtered like a victim.
Hence it comes, in fine, that he himself also, though he was immortal, being the Word and Wisdom of God, offered himself to death, that being placed in the body he might furnish us an example of patience. Yet neither did he deceive us by his death, for us he rose again after the third day, not as those things which are now falsely written down, contained in the 'Acts of Pilate,' but innocent, spotless, and pure, he undertook death for this alone, that he might conquer it by rising again. The things I speak were not done in an obscure place, nor do they need witnesses. Already by now the greater part almost of the world attests this truth; whole cities do so, or, if in these anything seems suspect, the country folk too, ignorant of any fiction, bear witness concerning these things.
If it is still less believed, I will bring to you also the testimony of the very place in which the deed was done. This is attested by the place itself in Jerusalem, and the rock of Golgotha rent asunder beneath the burden of the gibbet, and that cave too, which, when the gates of hell were torn away, gave back the body once more restored to life, that thence it might be borne more purely to heaven. Or if even yet these things which have their substance on earth seem to you less worthy, receive also from heaven a faithful attestor. I bring forward the sun itself as witness of these things, which, when it saw these deeds done on earth by the impious, hid its light at midday in the sky. Search in your own annals: you will find that in the times of Pilate, when Christ suffered, the day was broken off by darkness, the sun having been put to flight.
But if you give no credence to the earth, to the heaven, to the blood of those from whom you seek out the truth by torments... And when now by these words he had almost begun to persuade his hearers, he is ordered to be hurried off into prison, and there, as it were without a tumult of the people, to be put to death. But throughout other places likewise the most cruel tyrant stirred up in a short time such things against us, that far more savage and more dreadful things than the former were perpetrated.
For when embassies of provinces or of cities had come against us, when so many and so great imperial edicts had come, so that the laws which had been issued against us were even ordered to be engraved on tablets of bronze; when a school-exercise about Pilate and Jesus was ordered to be held by schoolboys, for the sake of our reproach, and to be chanted the whole day long, filled with fabricated blasphemies. And in these laws, which he had set up engraved in bronze against us in each and every city, as though to abide for ever, boastfully enough and...
...and proudly had described how, ever since the Christians were driven from their abodes and cities, both the temperature of the air was cheerful and the fruitfulness of the earth more abundant — only that they should observe this the more diligently, that the Christians should in no way... and resources were straitened, so that, according to that which is written, in these things the men... it seemed that our affairs were left over; the providence of almighty God does not suffer the feeble minds of men to be endangered by despair itself. For at once and without delay, while as yet the impious edicts were being sent to certain cities set farther off, curbing the arrogance of the tyrannical voice, ...the fields, restrains the rains in the clouds, and abandons the crops exhausted by arid barrenness.
The grass of the fields also withers, and denies not only fruit to men but even fodder to the cattle, and a foul and loathsome famine rages everywhere. The temperature of the air too, which for his impious ones... human bodies were filled with the worst ulcers, which are called 'holy fire' (erysipelas), and also with those which are called 'carbuncles,' so that they took possession even of men's mouths and eyes, so that if any perchance escaped death from these, he was bereft of his sight. But others likewise fell by pestilential diseases of the men.
There was added also to these evils this, that the nation of the Armenians, long since instructed both by their own accustomed manner and unto mercy even toward enemies by the dominical precepts, each one vied to contribute food as best he could, and to sustain, refresh, and restore the perishing, and not only to share food with them, but also affection; whence even small things seemed to suffice the needy, because they were bestowed with a great affection of piety.
Those too who laboured under the contagion of the disease, to whom none of the heathen — not even of their kinsfolk — would go in, they tended with assiduous and frequent visitation, nor suffered any harm at all through the contagion, inasmuch as divine grace encompassed them; and they bore also to the very corpses of the dead the office of burial, and fulfilled what are the just claims of nature. Thus by the mere entry of the Christians for a short while into the cities and villages, the face of the evils being changed, by the very facts and works the true and pious religion of the Christians was inscribed in the hearts of all far more tenaciously than the tyrant had engraved on tablets of bronze that it was false.
So then, when these things were thus carried on by our people, and by the goodness of what was done, with a certain silent proclamation, the truth of our God came to be known, so that there seemed fulfilled that which is written in Genesis, that 'to the Egyptians there was palpable and thick darkness, but to the children of Israel there was light in all their dwellings' — the Lord our God nonetheless proceeds to be magnified in his saints, and to advance the work of the virtue he had begun with more prosperous successes, and, when we were again placed in obscurity, to kindle the splendour of his light. For according to the prophetic saying, 'he fed us with the bread of tears, and gave us tears to drink' — but in measure.
This, then, is the measure of his correction and amendment, that he will not be indignant for ever, nor be angry with us unto eternity, but will be made propitious again to his servants who hope in him.
For indeed, when the most religious emperor Constantine, son of Constantius — a most moderate and excellent prince alike — was preparing war against Maxentius, the tyrant of the city of Rome, and was leading his army (he was indeed even then a supporter of the Christian religion and a worshipper of the true God, though he had not yet, as it is customary for our people to be initiated, received the sign of the Lord's passion); when therefore, anxious and revolving much within himself concerning the necessity of the impending war, he was going on his march and often raised his eyes to heaven and thence prayed for divine aid for himself, he sees in his sleep, toward the eastern quarter, in heaven the sign of the cross glowing red with fiery brightness. And when he... confesses that he pays the penalty he deserves.
Yet at the last, his sight having first been lost by disease, and then all the more seeing what impiety he had committed against Christ, he made an end of living. But when he was dead — he who toward the Christians now with unheard-of cruelty... and without any further suspicion, the condition of the churches, much more brilliant even than before it had been, began to be restored, and the word of God and the doctrine of Christ was propagated far more gloriously and freely. Then indeed the last repentance of their atrocity and cruelty came upon the enemies of the faith, so that they were ashamed... For indeed when Maximinus himself first, by imperial edicts, a tyrant and...
...impious and hateful to God and to men had been pronounced, and his painted tablets or other bronze images were ordered to be cast down and hurled headlong, while others, smeared with black colours, were ordered to be blotted out — so great a change of affairs having suddenly come to pass, it was decreed for eternity that now even his name should either be plucked out from the memory of men or be preserved with reproach and disgrace; and that the lawful princes should order his judges also, whom he had had as ministers of his crimes in his tyrannical dominations, to be slain as accomplices of his impiety and cruelty.
Among whom the greatest standard-bearer of his outrages was Peucetius, who was advanced by him to a second and third consulship and held the summit of the prefecture; but Quintianus likewise, having discharged the foremost honours with him, ran riot in savagery and cruelty; and also very many others, through whom the impiety of Maximinus had conceived its fuel. Among these Theotecnus too found God at last the avenger of profane deeds — he who, for the sake of an idol consecrated at Antioch, had ordered that even those skilled in the presidial fasces from Maximinus be sought out for punishment; those priests and soothsayers of the new idol are apprehended as either the associates or even the masters of these things.
And when it was inquired of these by what means the idol either gave responses or seemed to work certain prodigies, at first dissembling, they lay open the contrivance and confess that by the craft of Theotecnus all was counterfeited. And so he orders first the very author of so great a deception, Theotecnus, then next the other ministers of the magic art, whom that man had appointed as priests and soothsayers of the new demon, to be led off, tortured with fitting punishments. ...had taken up; but his kinsfolk too, who on account of a relationship of this sort had shown themselves most troublesome toward the citizens and provincials, he afflicts with equal punishments. Foolish and senseless men, who would not hear the admonition of the divine writings which says: 'Put not your trust in princes.'