What happened after the Roman government began to persecute Christians under Nero?

Answer 1

A:Historians say that the Christians were probably not responsible for the Great Fire of Rome, but Nero found them a convenient scapegoat. He banished the Christians from Rome, but there is no evidence of any widespread persecution other than that one penalty. All the evidence up to the second century implies that Nero set no imperial precedent for the active persecution of Christians.

An exchange of letters between Pliny the Younger and the Emperor Trajan regarding the regulation of trials involving those accused of being Christians, in about 112, is illuminating because Pliny seems unaware of any previous trials of Christians and also because neither Nero, Domitian nor any previous emperor could have issued an edict or set any imperial precedent for the official persecution of Christians.

B:

In Eusebius The History of the Church, Eusebius describes to us the Neronian persecution in which Paul and Peter died. He describes Nero as one "whose power was now firmly established, he gave himself to unholy practices and took up arms against the God of the universe. To describe to monster of depravity that he became lies outside the scope of the present work." He continues that "many writers have recorded the facts about him in minute detail, enabling anyone who wished to get a complete picture of his perverse and extraordinary madness, which led him to the senseless destruction of innumerable lives, and drove him in the end to such a lust for blood that he did not even spare his nearest and dearest but employed a variety of methods to do away with mother, brothers, and wife alike, to say nothing of the countless other members of his family, as if they were personal and public enemies." With regards to Christians, Eusebius describes Nero as "the first emperor to be declared the enemy of the worship of Almighty God."

To this the Roman Tertullian refers in the following terms: "Study your records: there you will find that Nero was the first to persecute this teaching when, after subjugating the entire East, in Rome especially he treated everyone with savagery. That such a man was author of our chastisement fills us with pride. For anyone who knows him can understand that anything not supremely good would never have been condemned by Nero."

Shortly after the Great Fire of Rome, Nero used it as the catalyst for the first assault against the Christian Church. Nero purposed to make Christians scapegoats. As Roman historian Tacitus explains in The Annals of Imperial Rome:

"To get rid of the report, Nero fastened guilt and inflicted the most exquisite torture on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace." Tacitus records, "Covered with skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs, and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offer his garden for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in a circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer." Dr. Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, provides a gut wrenching color commentary in a documentary novel titled The Flames of Rome explaining how vast numbers of Christians were arrested, convicted, tortured, and sentenced to death under Nero.