Wykonywanie edyktów o prześladowaniu chrześcijan na terenie Palestyny w relacji Euzebiusza z Cezarei "O męczennikach palestyńskich"

Abstract

“The great persecution”, which took place during the reign of Diocletian, is known to us very well thanks to the account of Eusebius of Caesarea, who witnessed it. He described it in The Eclesiastical History and in a separate book about the martyrs in Palestine, where he was the metropolitan as the bishop of Caesarea. On the basis of The Martyrs of Palestine, this article presents the execution of emperors’ edicts ordering to persecute Christians on the territory of Palestine. The Diocletian persecution was the last attempt at stifling the Christian religion, which was granted freedom of worship several years later. The attack on Christianity resulted from political reasons. Diocletian longed for return of the traditional old Roman religion and religious unity in order to reconstruct the power of the state. The persecution was most intensive in the eastern provinces of the empire, whereas in the West, it was more lenient and lasted shorter. In the East, there were actually more Christian communes and they were most numerous. The persecution on the discussed territory peaked in 306, when Maximin added to the edict a regulation ordering municipal authorities to execute it according to the detailed registers of names of all inhabitants. The next escalation of persecution took place in 309 and it continued through 310 when it started to weaken. It did not bring the expected results.