This is Communio Sanctorum, the history of the Christian Church, season two.

This is part two in our follow-up series on the first centuries in church history.

We're concentrating on the persecution that Jesus'

followers endured. In part one, we examine the social and civic reasons for persecution in the

Roman Empire. The suspicion of nefarious intent by Christians, fueled by their withdrawal from

society due to its tacit connection to paganism,

morphed into a suspicion of covert actions that Jesus' followers were taking to subvert society.

Why were those Christians so secretive if they weren't in fact doing something wrong?

And if the rumors were true, Christians were doing odd things, like pretending that slaves

had the same dignity as Freeman, that women and children were to be honored as equal to men,

and they were rescuing exposed infants. Why, if they kept all that up and more joined their

cause, what was to become of the world?

It would look very different from the one that had been.

Another concern was the reaction of the gods.

What would they do if the Christians had their way and everyone came to faith in a single deity?

Well, those gods and goddesses, responsible as they were for things like the weather and fertility,

might throw one of their classic hissy fits and call up a drought or a storm or a war.

All of this helps explain the first official wave of persecution at Roman hands.

In AD 64 during Nero's reign, fire leveled whole neighborhoods in Rome.

This was neither the first nor the last fire to devastate the city, but it was one of the most severe.

For days it raged, leaving a large part of the heart of Rome in ash. A rumor pointed the finger at

Nero as the cause of the fire.

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