The attitude of the Roman government to the Christian society spreading among the Empire was expressed in the second, third, and early fourth centuries, as is well known, in the persecution of Christians. In order to properly understand the characteristics and nature of these persecutions, it is necessary to study the very causes of them more rigorously beforehand.

These reasons are of three kinds: 1) State. The government noticed the incompatibility of Christianity with the ideas of state power, which lay at the basis of the Roman state. Christianity's requirements ran counter to what constituted the essence of the ideas about state power and its relations to all aspects of the life of citizens. 2) Religious causes, although not in their pure form. It is precisely the incompatibility of Christianity with the established relations of the Roman government with its own religion and the cults of foreign peoples. Christianity could not expect to be tolerated by the Roman government, because it was hostile to the interests of the Roman religion of its country, and in its essence stood outside the circle of peace-loving factual relations in which the government placed itself with regard to religions other than the Romans. 3) Public. Incompatibility of Christianity with the social requirements of pagan Rome. The Christians did not want to accept any of the social demands of the government as obligatory for themselves, and the government could not excuse such a evasion of social demands on the part of the followers of the new religion.

I. Christianity with its principles was incompatible with the prevailing pagan ideas about state power. What does that mean? This means that the view of pagan state power established over the centuries regarding its unconditional domination in all spheres of human activity was opposed from Christianity by a view by virtue of which a whole sphere of human activity, the sphere of man's religious life, was rejected from under the aegis of this power. Pagan antiquity was alien to the ideas of freedom of belief in matters of religion and conscience, of freedom to choose the kind and manner of religious worship in accordance with one's inclinations. The pagan idea of the state contained the right to sovereignly dispose of the entire life of citizens. Everything that did not closely connect itself with this idea, everything that wanted to live and develop without serving the goals of the state — all this was incomprehensible to antiquity, alien to its spirit. Hence, religion and everything religious were subordinated to the interests of the state. The greatest minds of antiquity knew nothing of religious independence, of religion and religiosity not subordinate to the state. Plato, in his Ideal State, resolutely declared that in the state everyone has the opportunity to fulfill his purpose and to attain the full measure of his happiness and well-being, and in consequence Plato gives the state such power over man that there is no room for either personal or religious freedom. In the opinion of another great thinker of antiquity, Aristotle (in his Politics), man is an exclusively political being, and the life of the state is everything for him. The most remarkable Roman thinker, Cicero, also says: "The state gave birth to us and brought us up in order to use the best and highest powers of our soul, reason and intellect for its own (state) benefit, and to leave for our personal benefit as much as will remain for the satisfaction of its own needs." The Roman state was only the realization of these ideas of antiquity. For the Romans, the state was the center from which all thoughts and feelings, beliefs and convictions, ideals and aspirations of the people revolved and to which they inevitably returned. It was the only supreme ideal and guiding star, which, as the highest rock (Fata Romana, Dea Romana), gave direction to all the forces of the life of the people and imparted a definite meaning and character to the inclinations and actions of the individual. It was, as it were, a deity, and everything that stood outside of relation to the state was useless, illegal. Therefore, the most sacred thing – religion – was one of the functions of state power. Power was in charge of religion as peace and war, as taxes and duties, as administration and police. In the Roman state, the conduct of religious affairs and the supervision of the religious status of the people were first entrusted to the Senate, and then joined the attributes of imperial power. All the emperors of Rome, beginning with Augustus, were at the same time supreme high priests; the emperor was at the same time called Pontifex maximus. In short, religion in the Roman Empire did not have the slightest independence, it was under the strict control of state power. Hence, the religious system was part of the state system, and religious law — sacrum jus — was only a subdivision of the common law — publicum jus. For this reason Varro distinguishes between theologia philosophica et vera, then theologia poetica et mythica, and finally theologia civilis. Characteristic of the last expression that determines the position of religion in the Roman state is theologia civilis. It must be translated into our language by the expression: state theology.

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* De republ. I, 4.

** Augustin. De civitate Dei, VI, 5.

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What about Christianity now?.. Christians openly declared their desire to get out of state control in their religious beliefs, in their religious life. They declared that a person subject to state power in other respects is free from subordination to this authority in the religious sphere. This idea of the essential difference between civil (pagan) and religious (Christian) activity, the thought of their non-identity, was the principle by which the young Church of Christ was guided. The faith of Christians did not tear them away from their obligations to the state, but this was as long as the laws of the state and the authority of the state did not dare to interfere in the affairs of their faith and confession. Therefore, Christians, both by their lives and by the voice of apologists, demanded from the state freedom of conscience, the freedom to express their religiosity regardless of the prescriptions of the state. They wanted to live in this respect without state control, but the state authorities did not recognize this and did not want to admit it. The apologist of the second century, Tertullian, declares before the Roman government that every man is a free being, "everyone can dispose of himself, just as man is free to act in matters of religion." Tertullian says: "Natural law, universal law, requires that everyone should be allowed to worship whom he wants. The religion of one can be neither harmful nor beneficial to another.'" To force free people to make sacrifices means to commit a flagrant injustice, to commit unheard-of violence. What folly it is to compel a man to render honours to the Deity, which he should have done for his own benefit! Is he not justified in saying: I do not want Jupiter to favor me! Why are you interfering here? Let Janus be angry with me, let him turn his face to me as he pleases!" * The same Tertullian says: "What evil does my religion bring to another? It is contrary to religion to force a religion that is voluntarily accepted, and not by coercion, because every sacrifice requires the consent of the heart. And if you compel us to offer sacrifices, yet no honour of your gods is achieved, because they cannot find any pleasure in forced sacrifices, which would mean that they love violence." At the same time, Tertullian combines the demand that the Roman government should renounce those rights in matters of religious conviction which it had hitherto arrogated to itself: "Let the one therefore worship the true God, and others Jupiter, the one to raise his hands to heaven and the other to the altar, the one to sacrifice themselves to God, and the other goats. Beware lest you show some kind of impiety, when you take away the freedom of worship and the choice of divinity, when you do not allow me to worship the God whom I want, and compel me to worship such a god whom I do not want. What kind of God would demand forcible honors for himself? And man will not want them." In these words, Tertullian clearly expresses the idea that Christianity decidedly does not recognize the right of the pagan state to sanction in matters of religion, an idea that went against all the traditions of Rome. With all the strength of steadfastness in convictions, another great apologist of antiquity, Origen, develops the same idea in the third century. He openly declares himself a warrior of the new supreme Christian principle, in opposition to the established principle to which the Roman state adhered." "We are dealing," he says, "with two laws. One is a law of nature, the culprit of which is God, the other is a written law, which is given from the state (cities). If they agree with each other, they must be observed equally. But if the natural, divine law commands us that which is at variance with the legislation of the country, then this latter, the legislation of the country, should be ignored; and, disregarding the will of human legislators, to obey only the will of God, whatever dangers and labors may be associated with it, even if it were necessary to suffer death and shame. We, Christians, recognizing the natural law (or, what is the same thing, the law of conscience) as the supreme divine law, we strive to observe it and reject the impious laws. A Christian apologist of the beginning of the fourth century, as if summing up the demands made by Christians in the era of persecution, said: "There is nothing freer than religion, and it is completely destroyed as soon as the sacrificer is forced to do so"*****

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* Origenis. Contra Celsum. V, 37.

**Лактанций. Божеств, установления, V, 20.

*** Тертуллиан. Апология, гл. 28.

**** Он же. Послание к Скапуле, гл. 2.

***** Он же. Апология, гл. 24.