- tians; the wife and daughter of the Emperor were
believers.
From this chain of references to the presence of Christians in the imperial court from the days of S. Paul to the latter years of the third century, we are compelled to conclude that large allowances on the part of the Emperor were not unfrequently made to the sect, and even that not a few concessions outwardly to take part in the ceremonies of official paganism must have been allowed to the Christian courtier all through the period when Christianity was an unlawful and forbidden religion.
In the army a similar spirit of mutual allowance and concession must have been often shown. It is clear that from the very first there were not a few Christian soldiers in the Legions. There must have been many cases in which the superior officers connived at the scruples of Christian soldiers; while, on the other hand, the Christian Legionary must have consented generally to share in the more public and official ceremonies in which the old worship of the gods was inextricably mixed up. Nowhere were the difficulties, however, for believers more acute than in the army, and the slightest ill-will or pagan bigotry on the part of the superior officer made the position of a Christian soldier absolutely untenable even when the soldier belonged to what we have termed the gentler and more accommodating school of Christian teaching. Martyrs in the army, it has been noticed, were relatively more numerous than in the civil callings.[1]
The civil service contained undoubtedly many Christians in the early centuries of the era; see Aristides (Apol. xv.), who, writing of Christians, says: "Where they are judges they judge righteously." Tertullian refers to the presence of Christians
- ↑ The well-known recital of the martyrdom of S. Maurice and of the Theban Legion, whether it be accepted as absolutely genuine or not, is an admirable instance of the ever-present dangers and difficulties of a Christian soldier of the Empire. The scene of the terrible and wholesale martyrdom was Agaunum (S. Maurice), some nine miles distant from Octodurus (Martigny) in the Canton of Valais, and the date was circa A.D. 292-6. Maximian was then reigning as colleague of Diocletian. The authenticity of the story is maintained by Ruinart, who includes it in his Acta Sincera; by Tillemont, and in our days by Allard, who, however, cuts down the Legion to a cohort. Harnack, on the other hand, and others doubt its authenticity.
