From persecution to Christian Empire

At the beginning of the fourth century, the Church went through the most violent trial of its early history, then, almost immediately, a complete reversal of its situation.

The Great Persecution

On 23 February 303, the emperor Diocletian issued the first of four edicts against the Christians. It ordered places of worship to be destroyed, the Scriptures seized and burned, and Christians of high rank stripped of their dignities. The following edicts targeted the clergy and then all believers. The persecution lasted until 313.

It put a very concrete question to every Christian: which books should be hidden, and for which should one be willing to die? The question of the canon was no longer a matter for theologians.

Martyrs and traditores

Some resisted to the death and became martyrs. Others handed the books over to the authorities: they are called traditores, those who “handed over”. The word gave us “traitor”.

After the persecution, what was to be done with those who had faltered? In North Africa, the question triggered the Donatist crisis. When Caecilian became bishop of Carthage, some seventy Numidian bishops excommunicated him, partly because one of those who had consecrated him was said to have been a traditor. They elected Majorinus, then Donatus. The Donatists saw themselves as “the pure Church of the martyrs”, the only one whose sacraments were valid. Yet they too counted traditores in their ranks.

Constantine

In 312, Constantine converted, or at least placed himself under the protection of the Christians’ God. In 313, the Edict of Milan granted freedom of worship. Everything was reversed: according to the historian Jules-Marcel Nicole, it soon became dangerous not to be part of the Church.

Constantine saw religious unity as a way to stabilise the Empire and strengthen his power. So he intervened directly. Appealed to by the Donatists, he had tribunals of bishops convened in 313 and 314, then ruled on the case himself in 316, each time in Caecilian’s favour. He also summoned councils and threatened with exile those who refused the common decisions. Later, in 347, his son Constans would order the dissolution of the Donatist Church.

The Church gained peace, buildings and new influence. But the line between spiritual and political power became blurred.

Eusebius and the fifty Bibles

Constantine commissioned Eusebius of Caesarea to produce fifty copies of the Scriptures for the churches of Constantinople. Their contents therefore had to be decided. Eusebius, the first great historian of the Church, had gathered many testimonies. In his Ecclesiastical History (III.25), he had already classified the books into three groups:

• the homologoumena, recognised by all;
• the antilegomena, known to most but still disputed;
• the writings to be rejected.

His classification is not perfectly clear-cut, and some see in it a hesitation between the historian and the churchman. According to Bruce Metzger, it is on the contrary the mark of his honesty: he did not impose too tidy a classification on a reality that was not tidy.

A few decades later, in 367, Athanasius would publish the list of twenty-seven books that we know. The Church of the first centuries gave way to the imperial Church.