Easter is coming, and in recognition of the arrival of the Christian holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, author and scholar Richard Marranca, Ph.D sat down with Professor Frank Korn to discuss the earliest Christian martyrs, who sacrificed everything to promote their fledgling faith in the heart of the Roman Empire. Professor Korn taught Classical Stuies for many years at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and is the author of nine books that cover various aspects of life in the Eternal City (ancient Rome), including the trials and tribulations of Christianity.
Richard: We’ve done a few interviews on Rome and on Christianity. Now we can put them together, as Rome did. Your book, The Tiber Ran Red: The Age of Roman Martyrs, is about Christian martyrs. But first, can you give us a sketch of the Roman Empire?
Frank: In Rome, the Republic was worn out by war. The people and the Senate were in the market for a new form of government for their vast territory, to be headed by a leader capable of bringing back peace and prosperity. In the year 27 BC they turned to the grandnephew of the late dictator, Julius Caesar, Octavian, who was given the honorific “Augustus” by the Senate with the accord of the citizenry, and the title of “Imperator” i.e. “Emperor”. It was the beginning of the Roman Empire, whose far-flung land was divided into senatorial provinces, such as Sicily; Sardinia and Corsica; Macedonia; Crete and Cyprus; and several others. These were under the administration of the Senate through governors, or more precisely – proconsuls.
Then there were also the Imperial Provinces, directly under the authority of the emperor, which included Spain, Cilicia, Syria, Gaul, Dalmatia, Judea, Egypt and North Africa. Augustus – and his successors – ruled over these through “Legati Augusti” i.e. delegates.
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Rome too, the capital, was re-planned by Augustus and divided into 14 political precincts or regions to make the city more manageable. The Roman Empire remained thus for the better part of five centuries, until it was overrun by barbaric hordes such as the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, and others. The complete demolition of ancient Rome is customarily dated to the year AD 476.
Richard: Can you tell us about the origins of Christianity? And how did it arrive in Rome? After Jesus, was St. Paul the most important one to spread Christianity?
Frank: From Acts 2 in the New Testament we learn the following information. At their meeting on the day of Pentecost – in the “Upper Room” of a house somewhere in Jerusalem – the Apostles discussed the mandate given to them by their Divine Master to “Go and teach the Gospel to all nations.” (Mark 16:15). Outside in the street a multitude of the curious, mostly Jews from all points of the Empire who had come to the “Holy City” to mark their feast of Passover, awaited a statement from the Apostles.
From Acts 2, in the New Testament we learn the following information -– Peter stood up with the Eleven and addressed them: “Let the whole house of Israel know that God has made both Lord and Messiah the Jesus whom you crucified. This is the Jesus that God had raised up and we are his witnesses. Exalted at God’s right hand, He first received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father, then poured out the Spirit upon us. Save yourselves from this generation which has gone astray.” Those who accepted this message were baptized. Some three thousand were added that day.
Thus Christianity was born. Some Jews, by now fervent disciples of Jesus, lived on imbued with his Spirit. They believed that they had inherited the power to heal the sick and to cast out demons.
The newly converted Jews who had come all the way from Rome set sail for the Eternal City, bringing with them a fervor for the Faith and an eagerness to introduce it to family, friends, and neighbors of the already thriving Jewish colony there.
In AD 42, the apostle Peter came to Rome to serve as bishop of the small Christian flock. In the spring of AD 60 the apostle Paul set out for Rome. At the port of Puteoli, Paul appreciated the hospitality of the local Christians. After a week’s stay he journeyed to the capital, on foot, along the great highway Via Appia. Acts 28:14-16 notes that a small delegation of Christians from Rome came all the way out on that road to the Forum Appii, a little market town forty-three miles south to meet and greet him. Paul, by his teaching, preaching and writing, was to become the most prominent spreader of the Gospel.
‘The Apostle Paul,’ painting by Rembrandt (1657), currently on display in the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. (Public Domain).
Richard: Did Rome have a large Jewish community? I recall that you mentioned how Augustus and Julius Caesar were favorable toward the Jews? Were the Jews allowed to be excluded from various modes of emperor and state worship?
Frank: The Jewish community in Rome today is known to be the oldest such community in Europe. Thanks to the historian Josephus, we know that in 161 BC Judah Maccabee, the heroic Jewish warrior-statesman, sent a delegation to the Senate there, in the hope of negotiating an alliance with Rome. It is thought that some of the diplomats stayed on and from them a small Jewish population took root.
The following two decades must have seen another influx of Jewish immigrants – probably from Alexandria – for by 139 BC they were causing quite a stir.
Conditions improved greatly for Rome’s Jews when Julius Caesar came to power in the mid first-century BC. He granted official recognition of Judaism as a legal religion, a policy followed by his successor, Caesar Augustus. So close did the Jews hold Caesar to their hearts that when he fell to the knives of Brutus and other other conspirators they mourned his death in their week-long ancient rite of Shivah, according to Suetonius.
In time, the Jewish population in Rome grew significantly. No less than eleven synagogues flourished under the benevolent rule of Augustus. One of these houses of worship, in fact, was named in his honor: Synagogus Augustensis.
Richard: Around when did some Jews start seeing themselves as Christians?
Frank: This happened early on. Indeed, the first Christian community in Rome consisted mainly of local Jewish converts.
Richard: Can you talk about some of the prominent and average Christians in Rome such as St. Peter, St. Paul and others? What brought them to Rome and what happened to them?
Frank: In light of numerous Scriptural passages, there can be little doubt as to Peter’s role of leadership among the apostles. This primacy he took with him on his journey to Rome, Caput Mundi, the Capital of the World, where he thought was a great opportunity to showcase and spread the Faith.
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Paul came to Rome after claiming his right as Civis Romanus, a Roman citizen, to appeal the charges against him directly to the emperor in Rome. Both apostles were ultimately arrested, imprisoned, and then executed by order of the tyrant, Nero.
Richard: Can you tell us about Aquila and Priscilla and others who gave hospitality to Peter and others in Rome?
Frank: This Jewish couple were victims of the exile imposed on all the Jews of Rome by the Emperor Claudius. In their wanderings they eventually settled down in Corinth where they were destined to become dear friends of Paul, by whom they were converted to Christianity. In his letter to the Romans, Paul credits the couple with saving his life.
Richard: Who were some prominent Romans who converted to Christianity?
Frank: In the first Christian century there was a certain Roman senator by the name of Pudens. The story goes that the senator had chanced one day to hear Peter preaching to a small group of believers, liked what he heard, and invited the apostle to make his home with him. Pudens, his wife, and their two daughters, Praxedes and Pudentia, all embraced the Christian message and asked Peter, the Bishop of Rome to baptize them.
When Sebastian, an officer in the Roman army during the vicious reign of Valerian (253-259), witnessed daily the persecuted Christians willing to die for their belief in Christ, he converted and was himself martyred for it.
Fresco showing the persecution and martyrdom of church leader Saint Lawrence, as part of crackdown on Christianity ordered by the Roman Emperor Valerian in the third century. (Public Domain).
During the same reign, a sixteen-year old daughter of a family of the nobility, Cecilia, converted to the forbidden religion and devoted herself to caring for the sick and poor among the Christians and to burying her martyred religious brethren. She was, in time, ordered to appear before Almachius, the prefect of Rome, and indicted on charges of practicing and promoting an outlawed cult which resulted in her execution.
Christianity had by then spread to the senatorial ranks and to the military. Of course the most prominent Roman to become a disciple of Christ was the Emperor Constantine himself in the early fourth century.
Richard: A few years ago, you and Camille encouraged me to visit Santa Prisca in Rome – an amazing experience. The hill, the church, the archaeological ruins in the basement… Can you tell us the story of this very early church?
Frank: The ancient and storied church of Santa Prisca (i.e. Priscilla) stands on a slope of the Aventine Hill and was built over the ruins of the home she shared with her husband and fellow convert, Aquila. The pious couple had in Apostolic times let their place be used for Christian worship. Below the current church edifice are some excavated rooms of the original domus ecclesiae or house-church.
The interior of Santa Prisca Church in Rome. (WikiRomaWiki/CC BY-SA 4.0).
Richard: What is martyrdom? Also, why did early Christians show such perseverance and courage even in the worst of times?
Frank: Martyrdom is the act of voluntary death or suffering for the sake of a faith. The early Christians were so committed to their belief in Christ that they truly accepted his promise of eternal life and joy in Heaven, and thus feared not terrestrial death.
Richard: Can you discuss the growth of Christianity in the first century and thereafter? Can you tell us about some of the beliefs and sacred rituals? Was the community close knit?
Frank: Christianity, originating in the Middle East, spread rather rapidly through evangelism and missionary work, and over the last two millennia reached every corner of the globe. The principal belief is that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God. Of all its rituals, the Mass and the Eucharist are the most revered among Catholic Christians. They hold that on the eve of his passion and death, Christ hosted the Passover supper for his Twelve, at the end of which he bestowed on the Apostles, and all those they and their successors would ordain to the priesthood, the power to consecrate bread and wine into his body and blood.
The community was extremely close knit. The pagans used to marvel: “Look how deeply they love one another.”
Richard: Next, the persecutions. In your book, you wrote, “The era of the martyrs (AD 64 to 313) was about to dawn.” How did that come about? What happened – can you give some examples? Was it continuous or intermittent? Who was the first martyr?
Frank: In its first three decades Christianity enjoyed an unofficial tolerance as a peculiar sect within Judaism. But the political winds were about to shift and the persecutions were about to begin, and in their wake leave the beaten, tortured bones of thousands upon thousands of the faithful. The era of the martyrs was about to dawn (AD 64 to 313).
Over this period of two and a half centuries the persecutions raged with varying degrees of intensity, with some stretches in between of relative calm for the young Church.
It would be a mistake to think that all Roman emperors were blood-thirsty tyrants and Christian haters. Had they been, the persecutions would not have been as intermittent as they were.
The first martyr is thought to have been St. Stephen, one of seven deacons ordained by the apostles to minister to the poor. By order of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, which did not really have the authority to hand down the death penalty, he was nonetheless condemned to death by stoning.
‘Martyrdom of St. Stephen,¨painting by Giovanni Battista Lucini (1680), depicting events involving the death of the first Christian martyr in Rome around 36 AD.(Public Domain).
Richard: You quoted Tacitus and Suetonius relating to the fire in Rome. What was that conflagration, and how did it encourage Nero to persecute the Christians?
Frank: On July 19, AD 64 three decades of calm would be broken by the conflagration that leveled eleven of the city’s fourteen political precincts. The fire broke out on that day in some storage sheds of the Circus Maximus. After gutting the wooden spectator stands of the vast arena, the flames raced up the slopes of the surrounding hills, engulfing one neighborhood after another until the entire inner city was turned into a fiery furnace. The blaze raged for ten days.
Worried about the growing unrest among the surviving citizenry and their increasing suspicion of Nero ordering the arson, the emperor looked about frantically for someone or some group to whom he might shift the blame and clear himself in the eyes of the public. He found the perfect scapegoats in the Christian community and its leaders, and soon ordered and launched the first persecution.
The Crucifixion of Saint Peter (1601) by Caravaggio, portraying the murder of Peter on the order of Nero. (Public Domain).
Richard: Can you tell us about Pliny’s letter to Emperor Trajan? And how about the various emperors that persecuted the Christians?
Frank: In the year 111 Pliny the Younger, serving as the provincial governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, wrote to the Emperor Trajan to express alarm at the vast multitudes of Christians in his territory:
The contagion of the Christian cult is no longer confined to the cities. It has even invaded the villages and countryside and has seized upon people of every age, class, rank, and gender. Our temples are almost entirely abandoned and the sacred rites honoring our gods utterly neglected.
Well-bred and highly educated, Pliny was a true gentleman and surely anything but blood thirsty. He was simply concerned about the unrest of the pagan majority that this state of affairs was provoking and looking for the emperor’s help in coming up with a peaceful solution. The bewildered governor considered the Christian Faith to be a “superstitio prava et immodica…” a depraved and excessive superstition.
Trajan, a refined and erudite individual, wrote back that while he could not abrogate the laws already on the books that forbade the practice of Christianity, he too was reluctant to crack down on its followers. So he toned down the law to eliminate some of its severity. He stated that anonymous allegations against them must be completely disregarded, that if any one of them was caught taking part in Christian rituals he or she must be arrested but given the chance to venerate the images of the pagan divinities and renounce Christ. In so doing, the accused was to be set free. Above all, the emperor firmly stated, “Christiani non conquirendi sunt!” (There must never be any roundups of Christians!)
Richard: Toward the end, your chapter is “How the Christians Suffered? Can you tell us about this, including early Popes?
Frank: Thousands of Christians suffered martyrdom at the hands of Roman authorities. They were imprisoned, starved, beheaded, drowned, quartered, crucified, or thrown to the hungry beasts in the arenas.
Christians who were arrested were not always sentenced to death but perhaps to an even worse fate. Some were shipped off to the mines of Sardinia where they were forced to labor without rest for sixteen or more hours a day, a sentence crueler than death. They wore Iron chains on their wrists so as to be easily recognizable in case of escape. They worked in what is known today as “chain gangs.” They toiled in a blood-chilling blackness relieved only slightly by the weak light of their oil lanterns. The dank air was scarcely fit to breathe. Even the strongest and most robust of the prisoners would often succumb to this living hell.
Peter, the original bishop of Rome and therefore the first Pope, was put to death, as were, eventually his next thirty-two successors. In that era, to ascend to the papal throne was tantamount to signing up for a violent death.
Illustration of Constantine's dream or vision that led to his conversion to Christianity, in a ninth century Byzantine manuscript held in the National Library of France. (Public Domain).
Richard: Can you speak about Emperor Constantine (and his mother), and how he embraced Christianity? Was he also trying to stabilize the Roman empire with a common belief system?
Frank: In 306 a popular Roman general, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, whom history knows as Constantine the Great, was serving as commander of the Roman legions in Britain. The people of Rome – pagans, Jews, and Christians alike – were living under the oppressive regime of the Emperor Maxentius. The Romans kept sending emissaries to Britain to plead with Constantine to come and liberate them. At last he heeded their pleas and with his vaunted troops came sweeping down through the continent and Italy and in 312 reached the banks of the Tiber and the outskirts of Rome.
According to an interview he years later gave to the historian Eusebius, Constantine, on the eve of battle, encamped on the far side of the Milvian Bridge, saw a shining cross in the sky encircled by the words: “In Hoc Signo Vinces” (In this sign thou shalt conquer). The following day, having replaced the army’s standard with a cross (in place of the eagle) and having his soldiers paint crosses on their shields and helmets, he crushed Maxentius and his forces and afterwards credited the Christian God for his triumph, eventually was baptized, and began to pave the way for Christianity to become the official state religion.
In 313 he met with the Licinius, emperor of the eastern portion of the Empire, in the northern city of Milan and thence proclaimed the historic Edict of Milan permitting the Christians complete freedom of worship. By declaring their creed as the official state religion, he stabilized the tumultuous Roman world. He made his suffering mother, Helena, the Empress. She, too, converted and went on to sainthood for her service to the Church, which included the discovery of the True Cross.
Richard: Years ago, we did an interview on the catacombs. Can you tell us about this amazing place?
Frank: The Christians of Rome in the first century buried their dead in public graveyards, among the bodies of those pagans who practiced inhumation instead of the more common custom of cremation.
In the middle of the next century the Christian community, many of whom were converts from Judaism, adopted the Jewish custom of subterranean tunneling for cemeterial purposes.
Over the next two centuries or so the Christians developed some seventy or so underground burial properties, outside the walls of Rome, which came to be known by the generic term, Catacombs.
Catacombs of Domitilla, some of the ancient burial chambers under Rome. (Dnalor 01/CC BY-SA 3.0).
Professor Frank J. Korn is a Fulbright Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, and he is the author of The Tiber Ran Red: The Age of the Roman Martyrs, a classic study of the lives and times of the earliest Christians to be persecuted for their dedication to their faith. This book was written nearly four decades ago, but remains one of the fundamental texts for anyone interested in learning more about the tragedies and ultimate triumph of Christianity in the ancient Roman world.
Top image: ‘The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer (between 1863 and 1883), by Jean Leon-Gerome, found in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland.
Source: Public Domain.
Dr Richard Marranca is an author, teacher and filmmaker. He has a strong interest in history and religion in the ancient world and publishes in these areas. His Egyptian manuscript Speaking of the Dead: Mummies & Mysteries of Egypt , will be published by Blydyn Square Books in New Jersey. Richard has a doctorate and MA that included a semester in Athens. He has had a Fulbright to teach at the University of Munich, as well as seven National Endowments for the Humanities summer grants -- the most recent was at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts in June 2022. His books are available online. See more at https://www.richardmarranca.com/
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