medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
In a message dated 14/4/2003 17:23:50, [log in to unmask] writes:
<< There is a rarely mentioned 3-volume collection of translated sources by
P. R. Coleman-Norton entitled "Roman state & Christian Church: a
collection of legal documents to A.D. 535" (London: S.P.C.K., 1966). I
haven't looked at it for years, and our library's copy is in remote
storage, but it *might* provide an easy way to identify some of the
materials you are looking for. >>
There is nothing directly relevant in Coleman-Norton (which, indeed, contains
only 9 documents from prior to the Edict of Milan), and I am not aware of any
official Roman documents of the kind the original question asked about, at
least for the pre-Constantinian period. Pliny's famous letter X.96 to Trajan
is a notable first hand account of persecution of Christians by a Roman
governor, but as far as I know is unparalleled in providing such a
perspective. (An anti-Christian work was written by a fourth-century
governor, Hierocles, who had experience of persecuting Christians, but it
does not survive - it has been argued that it was the work refuted by the
apologist Macarius Magnes.)
There is a critical analysis of the earliest literary sources for Christian
martyrdom in G. W. Bowersock, _Martyrdom and Rome_ (Cambridge, 1995), but
the standard account is often considered to be T. D. Barnes, 'Pre-Decian Acta
Martyrum', Journal of Theological Studies, new series, 19 (1968), pp. 509–31.
Graham Gould
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