The Church endured general criticisms from a host of pagan authors in addition to Celsus and Porphyry, which included the charges that Christians were atheists, ignorant and poor people, bad citizens, cannibals, and sexual deviants. These pagan critics believed Christians were atheists because they did not participate in the traditional and imperial polytheistic religious cults. This angered the Romans, since they thought the Christian lack of faith in the gods could bring divine wrath and vengeance on the Empire. Pagan critics attempted to dissuade members of the upper class from joining the Church by arguing — falsely — that only members of the socially inferior class (women, children, slaves, the poor) were attracted to the Christian faith. Imperial Roman society and its religious cults were highly class-stratified. The Church, teaching that all believers were equal regardless of social standing, threatened the established social order. Additionally, pagan authors charged Christians with a lack of patriotism because they refused to worship the emperor, which was considered blasphemy and treason, and were allegedly not interested in political affairs or the welfare of the Empire. In reality, Christians were very much concerned with state affairs and, despite the persecutions, prayed for the prosperity of the Empire and the well-being of the emperor.
Early Christians believed in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist — that they were eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ. Pagans, misunderstanding, applied the charge of cannibalism to the Eucharist. Roman society tolerated many vices, but cannibalism was something not even immoral Rome abided. One of the earliest Christian apologists, Marcus Minucius Felix (c. 200), was a lawyer who wrote a dialogue between a Christian and a pagan, addressing the primary attacks of Roman pagans on the Church. The pagan labeled Christians as sexual deviants, baby-killers, and cannibals:
The story about the initiation of new recruits is as detestable as it is well known. An infant, covered with flour, in order to deceive the unwary, is placed before the one who is to be initiated into the mysteries. Deceived by this floury mass, which makes him believe that his blows are harmless, the neophyte kills the infant. They avidly lick up the blood of the infant and argue over how to share its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together, and it is because of their complicity in this crime that they keep mutual silence! Everyone knows about their banquets, and these are talked of everywhere. On festivals they assemble for a feast with all their children, their sisters, their mothers, people of both sexes and every age. After eating their fill, when the excitement of the feast is at its height and their drunken ardor has inflamed incestuous passions, they provoke a dog which has been tied to a lampstand to leap, throwing it a piece of meat beyond the length of the cord which holds it. The light which could have betrayed them having thus been extinguished, they then embrace one another, quite at random. If this does not happen in fact, it does so in their minds, since that is their desire.42
Despite these libelous attacks, by the third century, the Christian apologist Tertullian could boast “we are but of yesterday and we have filled all you have — cities, islands, forts, towns, assembly halls, even military camps, tribes, town councils, the palace, senate and forum. We have left you nothing but the temples.”43
The Time of Major Persecutions
From the first to the fourth centuries, there were twelve major imperial Roman persecutions of the Catholic Church. Many of these were confined to Rome and the surrounding areas or particular provinces, but some were Empire-wide. At times, Christians were ignored by the state, although Nero’s law against the Church remained on the books. At other times, Christians were violently persecuted because they were an identifiable minority; or because they were suspected of nefarious activity (they necessarily maintained a certain secrecy due to their illegal status); or because Romans considered them antisocial, since they tended to live close together while rejecting elements of Roman society, such as the public baths, and spectacles like the gladiatorial games. Saint Justin commented, “The world suffers nothing from Christians but hates them because they reject its pleasures.”44 Frequently, imperial politics and affairs of state determined whether Christians were persecuted or left in peace. Christians were easy scapegoats, blamed for various regional and national events. Tertullian mocked the Roman tendency to scapegoat Christians when he wrote: “If the Tiber rises too high or the Nile too low, the cry is ‘the Christians to the lion.’ All of them to a single lion?”45
The Persecution of Trajan
Early in the second century, Emperor Trajan sent a man known as Pliny (called “the Younger” to distinguish him from his well-known uncle, Pliny the Elder, who had died in the blast of Mount Vesuvius in 79) to be the imperial legate in the province of Bithynia (modern-day Turkey). Pliny the Younger was instructed to conduct a financial audit, examine local governments, stop political disorder, and investigate the military situation. Soon after his arrival in the region, a group of butchers filed a complaint against Christians. The butchers were angry because the new sect was gaining converts, which impacted their business; pagan converts to the Faith refused to buy their sacrificial meat for use in the pagan temples. Pliny knew that Christians were an illegal sect, but wondered whether he needed to initiate a new persecution. He wrote a letter to Trajan, requesting instruction. The emperor responded with a benign neglect policy, telling Pliny to not actively pursue Christians if they were quiet and not public in the manifestation of their faith. But if the Christians caused trouble, Pliny was to arrest them.46 Trajan’s sensible policy, designed to limit the unnecessary involvement of the state in private affairs, was discarded several years later when a large earthquake rocked the city of Antioch in Bithynia. Aftershocks from the earthquake continued for days, causing the city to suffer terrible destruction and many deaths. Trajan had been visiting the city and was injured when the natural disaster struck. The people were angry. They believed the pagan gods had allowed the earthquake because the city housed a significant number of Christians.47 Trajan acquiesced to the blood lust of the people and ordered a persecution of Christians in the city. He arrested the long-standing and well-known bishop of the city, Ignatius. The elderly bishop, who had direct apostolic ties as a disciple of Saint John the Evangelist, had overseen the Antiochene Christian community for three decades. Trajan wanted to make an example of Ignatius, so he commanded the bishop be taken to Rome under armed guard and executed in the Flavian amphitheater. That decision proved providential for the history of the Church, since during his long journey to the capital Ignatius wrote letters to six Christian communities (the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans, Philadelphians, and Smyrnaeans), and to one fellow bishop, Saint Polycarp.
These letters not only provide detail into the life of the early Church, but also illustrate Ignatius’s deep love of Christ and the Church. His letters verify early Christian belief in the central doctrines of the Faith, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Divinity of Christ, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the hierarchical structure of the Church (unified by the primacy of the bishop of Rome).48 Ignatius uses special language in his letter to the Romans, referring to the Roman Church as “worthy of God, worthy of honor, worthy of being called blessed, worthy of praise, worthy of success, worthy of veneration.”49 Ignatius was concerned that influential members of the Church in Rome might try to intervene on his behalf and prevent his martyrdom. He had embraced his cross and desired to fulfill the Lord’s plan for the end of this earthy life, writing, “God’s wheat I am, and by the teeth of wild beasts I am to be ground that I may prove Christ’s pure bread.”50 Ignatius also exhorted his fellow Christians to remain obedient to their bishops and priests. He gave the Church her name — the Catholic Church — when he wrote to the Smyrnaeans, “Where the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where