vol. 1 (Front Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 1985), 406.
13. See 2 Cor 11:23–29.
14. Paul’s focus on the strategic centers of Roman rule is found in Gray and Cavins, 282.
15. Gray and Cavins, 275.
16. Ibid.
17. Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, revised edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 20.
18. Philip Hughes, A History of the Church: Volume 1: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded, second edition (London: Sheed and Ward, 1998), 20.
19. Acts 10:1–8.
20. For the Roman legion military structure, see Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 46–47.
21. See Galatians 2. This episode is sometimes overblown by Protestants, who use it to illustrate 1) that Peter’s primacy was not respected in the early Church or his leadership was suspect, because he gave in to the Circumcision Party; and 2) that Paul was the real leader of the early Church. Paul’s rebuke of Peter is nothing more than fraternal correction, which even popes are liable to experience.
22. See Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 21.
Two
The Empire and the Church
“Two ways there are, one of life and one of death, but there is a great difference between the two ways.” 1
The Didache
The philosophy teacher was perplexed. He had mastered ancient Greek thought, but this new teaching threatened to turn the philosophical world upside down. How was he to interpret this new way of life? It gave purpose and meaning to his life in a way the Greeks had never done. His contact with the God-man Jesus, in the sacraments and teachings of the Catholic Church, led him to understand that the only authentic source of philosophical truth was Christ. He believed it was his duty to share that truth with others. As a young man, he had left his native Palestine to study philosophy in Ephesus. After his conversion at the age of thirty-eight, he settled in Rome, where he opened a school of Christian philosophy and allowed students to attend free of charge — because the truth of Christ was so important, it had to be made accessible to all. The philosopher poured his life into studying the Scripture, where he saw how the life of Jesus fulfilled the ancient Old Testament prophecies. He studied history and was the first to understand that there is a twofold dimension to history: sacred and secular, with Christ at the center.2 He utilized his intellectual talents to combat early heresies, and when the Roman Empire turned its violent attention to the nascent Church, he wrote to defend and explain the Faith to the emperor and pagan society. When persecution came under the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180), the philosopher’s ardent love for Christ drove him to give his life in martyrdom. He is forever known as Saint Justin Martyr (100–165).
What was the Roman Empire?
In his study of the impact of the Catholic faith on Europe, the historian Hilaire Belloc asked two important questions: “What was the Roman Empire?” and “What was the Church in the Roman Empire?” Answering these questions helps us understand the history of the early Church.
In the centuries before Christ, the city of Rome was a republic governed by elected magistrates, advised by the Senate. This form of government was designed to prevent one person or group from gaining supreme power. The Roman Republic began to change during the life of the outstanding general Julius Caesar, whose conquests (especially of Gaul) increased the power, prestige, and wealth of Rome. After Caesar’s murder in 41 B.C., three men, Marc Antony (one of Caesar’s generals), Octavian (Caesar’s nephew and adopted son), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (a close ally of Caesar), stepped into the political void caused by Caesar’s death and established a dictatorship known as the Second Triumvirate. Eventually, infighting and civil war ensued among the three, which ended when Octavian exiled Lepidus and defeated Marc Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. Octavian was acknowledged as imperator (emperor) by the army and given the title “Augustus” by the Senate years later. Although Octavian kept the outward governmental framework of the Republic, he was a military dictator; thus the Roman Empire was born. The Empire reached its height of power, influence, and expanse in the mid-second century, when it encompassed all of Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Danube Rivers, including most of Britain, as well as North Africa, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine. The Empire was organized into forty provinces with a total population of sixty million people, most of whom lived an agrarian lifestyle (only 15 percent of the Empire lived in cities).3 Above all, the Empire united a vast, diverse civilization in a “common mode of life,” consisting of shared language, culture, and commerce, which all citizens embraced and preserved.4 The Roman army was the foundation of the Empire. It was deployed in garrisons in cities that were connected by a well-maintained and extensive road network, allowing the free flow of resources and ideas.5 It was into this political organization that the Church grew, and that growth raised the ire of the Empire, with violent results.
The Burning of Rome
The night of July 18, A.D. 64, began 250 years of government-sanctioned persecution against the Catholic Church. On that night, a great fire flared up in the city of Rome. The fire raged for days, ultimately destroying several districts of the city and causing serious property damage as well as loss of life. When it subsided, the angry populace demanded answers about the fire’s origin. Rumors circulated that the emperor was to blame for the fire, as it was known he wanted to remake the city according to his own design and even rename it after himself (“Neropolis”).6 In an effort to deflect criticism, the emperor fabricated a scapegoat. He blamed the fire on a small sect in the city that refused to honor the pagan gods: the Christians.
Nero became emperor of Rome in A.D. 54 at the young age of seventeen. The history of the Roman emperors illustrates that many men who came to the throne before the age of thirty-five went insane.7 Nero certainly fits that description — the man was a psychopath. He was known to practice all forms of vice and was a cruel, “neurotic hedonist” who poisoned his brother, ordered the murder of his mother, and kicked his pregnant wife, Poppaea, to death because she scolded him for coming home late from the races one night.8 Nero was a man “of about average height, his body was pockmarked and smelly, while he had light yellow hair, good but not handsome features, blue, rather weak eyes, too thick a neck, a big belly, and spindly legs” and was “ridiculously fussy about his person and his clothes, having his hair done in rows of curls.”9
Nero blamed the Christians for the great fire and initiated the first of many persecutions against the early Church. He outlawed the Christian faith, ordering the arrest and imprisonment of Christians in Rome.10 Those arrested who refused to abandon the Faith were horribly tortured and killed. Tacitus, a Roman senator and historian, described the horrors suffered by Christians under Nero: “[they] were covered with wild beasts’ skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed, were burned to serve as lamps by night.”11 Although Nero tried to use the Christians as a scapegoat for the fire, his punishments served to bring about “a sentiment of pity [among the Roman people], due to the impression that they [Christians] were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man.”12
Tradition holds that during Nero’s persecution the twin pillars of the early Church, Saints Peter and Paul, were martyred in Rome. Peter demanded to be crucified
