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

In part one, we took a look at some of the sociological reasons for persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.

Then last time we began a narrative chronology of the waves of persecution, and we ended with

the Emperor Antoninus Pius. A new approach in dealing with Christians was developed by Marcus Aurelius,

who reigned from 161 to 180. Aurelius is known as a philosopher emperor.

He authored a volume on Stoic Philosophy titled Meditations.

It was really more a series of notes to himself, but it became something of a classic of ancient

literature.

Aurelius bore not a shred of sympathy for the idea of life after death and detested as intellectually inferior anyone who carried a hope in immortality.

Reversing the Trajan policy of not going after Christians, Aurelius crafted a system of spies to gather intelligence and evidence against them.

Rather than Czech riots that frequently

called for martyr's blood, as the previous emperors had done, Aurelius encouraged them. It was

during his reign that Christians began to be blamed for natural catastrophes. The supposition

was that the gods were upset that Christians weren't being persecuted by

good Romans. With this as their moral backing and making up for lost time, persecution under

Aurelius moved to a new level of brutality. Thousands lost their heads or were tossed to beasts.

It was at this time that Justin Martyr became one.

But we have to note that as fierce as the Aurelian persecution was,

no official edict calling for an empire-wide extermination of Christians was issued.

Nor did one come during the reigns of Septimius Severus

from 193 to 211, or Maximinus from 235 to 238, when persecution of the followers of Christ

was renewed. The Severian campaign sought to root out the church in Egypt and North Africa,

...