#Diocletian war of all against all series#

In the first fifteen years of his rule, Diocletian purged the army of Christians, condemned Manicheans to death, and surrounded himself with public opponents of Christianity. Diocletian's assumption of power in 284 did not mark an immediate reversal of imperial inattention to Christianity, but it did herald a gradual shift in official attitudes toward religious minorities.

After Gallienus's accession in 260, these laws went into abeyance. In the 250s, under the reigns of Decius and Valerian, Roman subjects including Christians were compelled to sacrifice to Roman gods or face imprisonment and execution, but there is no evidence that these edicts were specifically intended to attack Christianity. Persecutory laws were nullified by different emperors ( Galerius with the Edict of Serdica in 311) at different times, but Constantine and Licinius' Edict of Milan (313) has traditionally marked the end of the persecution.Д¬hristians had been subject to intermittent local discrimination in the empire, but emperors prior to Diocletian were reluctant to issue general laws against the faithful. The persecution varied in intensity across the empire-weakest in Gaul and Britain, where only the first edict was applied, and strongest in the Eastern provinces. Later edicts targeted the clergy and demanded universal sacrifice, ordering all inhabitants to sacrifice to the gods.

#Diocletian war of all against all series#

In 303, the emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding Christians' legal rights and demanding that they comply with traditional religious practices. The Diocletianic or Great Persecution was the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by Jean-LГ©on GГ©rГґme (1883)