title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: A slide briefly appeared on the Oil Spill Commission's website and republished by "The New York Times" enumerating eight "risky" and "unnecessary" steps that BP was deemed to have taken.


title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: On April 21, 2011, BP filed $40 billion worth of lawsuits against rig owner Transocean, cementer Halliburton and blowout-preventer manufacturer Cameron. The oil firm alleged that failed safety systems and irresponsible behaviour of contractors had led to the explosion, including claims that Halliburton "negligently" failed to use cement-modelling software OptiCem properly to analyze safe well requirements. Part of the modelling concern was about the number of stabilising devices, known as centralisers, the well required; 21 were called for, but only 6 were used.


title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: In May 2011, MOEX Offshore, which owned a 10% stake in the well through a subsidiary and which in turn itself was majority-owned by Mitsui & Co., agreed to pay US$1.08 billion to settle BP claims against it over the accident. Some analysts had thought BP would realize a larger settlement from MOEX but there was also relief to have a first step toward resolving the multiple claims. BP's most recent estimate at the time was that the spill would cost $41.3 billion. Anadarko Petroleum held a 25% stake in the Macondo well and was an immediate focus of attention with MOEX's agreement. Also the Department of Justice was still at the time investigating whether BP was "grossly negligent" in the spill. Such a determination could lead to a "much larger liability under the Clean Water Act," a financial analyst said. With MOEX agreeing to share in the financial burden—though "the agreement isn't an admission of liability by either party"—the possibility of such a ruling by the Department of Justice seemed to some to be perhaps lessened.


title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: In October 2011, Anadarko Petroleum agreed to pay BP $4 billion and the two companies settled all claims between them. Anadarko yielded its 25% stake in Mississippi Canyon Block 252 (Macondo) to BP in the agreement and BP will indemnify Anadarko for damage claims arising under the U.S. Oil Pollution Act, among other costs.


title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: In December 2011, Cameron International agreed to pay a $250 million settlement to BP PLC to settle all claims related to the Deepwater Horizon with neither party admitting responsibility. "BP still has not reached a settlement with Transocean ... nor Halliburton ... A trial date over lawsuits related to the accident awaits BP in February (2013)", the update continued.


title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: In September 2014, Halliburton agreed to settle a large percentage of legal claims against it over the Deepwater spill by paying $1.1 billion into a trust by way of three installments over two years.


title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: On September 4, 2014, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled BP was guilty of gross negligence and willful misconduct under the Clean Water Act (CWA). He described BP's actions as "reckless," while he said Transocean's and Halliburton's actions were "negligent". He apportioned 67% of the blame for the spill to BP, 30% to Transocean, and 3% to Halliburton. Fines would be apportioned commensurate with the degree of negligence of the parties, measured against the number of barrels of oil spilled. Under the Clean Water Act fines can be based on a cost per barrel of up to $4,300, at the discretion of the judge. The number of barrels was in dispute at the conclusion of the trial with BP arguing 2.5 million barrels were spilled over the 87 days the spill lasted, while the court found that 4.2 million barrels were spilled. BP issued a statement disagreeing with the finding, and saying the court's decision would be appealed.


title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: In July 2015 BP reached an $18.7bn settlement with the US government, the states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, as well as 400 local authorities. BP's costs for the clean-up, environmental and economic damages and penalties had reached $54bn.


title: Deepwater Horizon explosion

text: In January 2018 a detailed estimate of the "Ultimate Costs of the Oil Spill", published in the Journal of Corporate Accounting and Finance, amounted to


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The persecution of Christians can be historically traced from the first century of the Christian era to the present day. Christian missionaries and converts to Christianity have both been targeted for persecution, sometimes to the point of being martyred for their faith, ever since the emergence of Christianity.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Early Christians were persecuted at the hands of both Jews, from whose religion Christianity arose, and the Romans who controlled many of the early centers of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Since the emergence of Christian states in Late Antiquity, Christians have also been persecuted by other Christians due to differences in doctrine which have been declared heretical. Early in the fourth century, the empire's official persecutions were ended by the Edict of Serdica in 311 and the practice of Christianity legalized by the Edict of Milan in 312. By the year 380, Christians began to persecute each other. The schisms of late antiquity and the Middle Ages – including the Rome–Constantinople schisms and the many Christological controversies – together with the later Protestant Reformation provoked severe conflicts between Christian denominations. During these conflicts, members of the various denominations frequently persecuted each other and engaged in sectarian violence. In the 20th century, Christian populations were persecuted, sometimes, they were persecuted to the point of genocide, by various states, including the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, which committed the Hamidian massacres, the Armenian genocide, the Assyrian genocide, and the Greek genocide, and officially atheist states such as the former Soviet Union, Communist Albania, China, and North Korea.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The persecution of Christians has continued to occur during the 21st century. Christianity is the largest world religion and its adherents live across the globe. Approximately 10% of the world's Christians are members of minority groups which live in non-Christian-majority states. The contemporary persecution of Christians includes the genocide of Christians by the Islamic State and persecution by other terrorist groups, with official state persecution mostly occurring in countries which are located in Africa and Asia because they have state religions or because their governments and societies practice religious favoritism. Such favoritism is frequently accompanied by religious discrimination and religious persecution, as is also the case in currently and formerly communist countries.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2020 report, Christians in Burma, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Vietnam are persecuted; these countries are labelled "countries of particular concern" by the United States Department of State, because of their governments' engagement in, or toleration of, "severe violations of religious freedom". The same report recommends that Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, the Central African Republic, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Sudan, and Turkey constitute the US State Department's "special watchlist" of countries in which the government allows or engages in "severe violations of religious freedom".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Much of the persecution of Christians in recent times is perpetrated by non-state actors which are labelled "entities of particular concern" by the US State Department, including the Islamist groups Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Houthi movement in Yemen, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province in Pakistan, al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic State and Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, as well as the United Wa State Army and participants in the Kachin conflict in Myanmar.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Early Christianity began as a sect among Second Temple Jews. Inter-communal dissension began almost immediately.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the New Testament account, Saul of Tarsus prior to his conversion to Christianity persecuted early Judeo-Christians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the "Acts of the Apostles", a year after the Roman Crucifixion of Jesus, Stephen was stoned for his transgressions of the Jewish law. And Saul (who later converted and was renamed "Paul") acquiesced, looking on and witnessing Steven's death. Later, Paul begins a listing of his own sufferings after conversion in 2 Corinthians 11: "Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned ..."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 41 AD, Herod Agrippa, who already possessed the territory of Herod Antipas and Philip (his former colleagues in the Herodian Tetrarchy), obtained the title of "King of the Jews", and in a sense, re-formed the Kingdom of Judea of Herod the Great (). Herod Agrippa was reportedly eager to endear himself to his Jewish subjects and continued the persecution in which James the Great lost his life, Saint Peter narrowly escaped and the rest of the apostles took flight. After Agrippa's death in 44, the Roman procuratorship began (before 41 they were Prefects in Iudaea Province) and those leaders maintained a neutral peace, until the procurator Porcius Festus died in 62 and the high priest Ananus ben Ananus took advantage of the power vacuum to attack the Church and execute James the Just, then leader of Jerusalem's Christians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The New Testament states that Paul was himself imprisoned on several occasions by the Roman authorities, stoned by the Pharisees and left for dead on one occasion, and was eventually taken to Rome as a prisoner. Peter and other early Christians were also imprisoned, beaten and harassed. The First Jewish Rebellion, spurred by the Roman killing of 3,000 Jews, led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the end of Second Temple Judaism (and the subsequent slow rise of Rabbinic Judaism).


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Claudia Setzer asserts that, "Jews did not see Christians as clearly separate from their own community until at least the middle of the second century" but most scholars place the "parting of the ways" much earlier, with theological separation occurring immediately. Second Temple Judaism had allowed more than one way to be Jewish. After the fall of the Temple, one way led to rabbinic Judaism, while another way became Christianity; but Christianity was "molded around the conviction that the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, was not only the Messiah promised to the Jews, but God's son, offering access to God, and God's blessing to non-Jew as much as, and perhaps eventually more than, to Jews". While Messianic eschatology had deep roots in Judaism, and the idea of the suffering servant, known as Messiah Ephraim, had been an aspect since the time of Isaiah (7th century BCE), in the first century, this idea was seen as being usurped by the Christians. It was then suppressed, and did not make its way back into rabbinic teaching till the seventh century writings of Pesiqta Rabati.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The traditional view of the separation of Judaism and Christianity has Jewish-Christians fleeing, "en masse", to Pella (shortly before the fall of the Temple in 70 AD) as a result of Jewish persecution and hatred. Steven D. Katz says "there can be no doubt that the post-70 situation witnessed a change in the relations of Jews and Christians". Judaism sought to reconstitute itself after the disaster which included determining the proper response to Jewish Christianity. The exact shape of this is not directly known but is traditionally alleged to have taken four forms: the circulation of official anti-Christian pronouncements, the issuing of an official ban against Christians attending synagogue, a prohibition against reading Christian writings, and the spreading of the curse against Christian heretics: the Birkat haMinim.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The first documented case of imperially supervised persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire begins with Nero (54–68). In 64 AD, a great fire broke out in Rome, destroying portions of the city and impoverishing the Roman population. Some people suspected that Nero himself was the arsonist, as Suetonius reported, claiming that he played the lyre and sang the 'Sack of Ilium' during the fires. In the "Annals", Tacitus wrote:


title: Persecution of Christians

text: This passage in Tacitus constitutes the only independent attestation that Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome, and while it is generally believed to be authentic and reliable, some modern scholars have cast doubt on this view, largely because there is no further reference to Nero's blaming of Christians for the fire until the late 4th century. Suetonius, later to the period, does not mention any persecution after the fire, but in a previous paragraph unrelated to the fire, mentions punishments inflicted on Christians, defined as men following a new and malefic superstition. Suetonius, however, does not specify the reasons for the punishment; he simply lists the fact together with other abuses put down by Nero.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the first two centuries Christianity was a relatively small sect which was not a significant concern of the Emperor. Rodney Stark estimates there were fewer than 10,000 Christians in the year 100. Christianity grew to about 200,000 by the year 200, which works out to about .36% of the population of the empire, and then to almost 2 million by 250, still making up less than 2% of the empire's overall population. According to Guy Laurie, the Church was not in a struggle for its existence during its first centuries. However, Bernard Green says that, although early persecutions of Christians were generally sporadic, local, and under the direction of regional governors, not emperors, Christians "were always subject to oppression and at risk of open persecution." James L. Papandrea says there are ten emperors generally accepted to have sponsored state sanctioned persecution of Christians, though the first empire-wide government sponsored persecution was not until Decius in 249.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to two different Christian traditions, Simon bar Kokhba, the leader of the second Jewish revolt against Rome (132–136 AD), who was proclaimed Messiah, persecuted the Christians: Justin Martyr claims that Christians were punished if they did not deny and blaspheme Jesus Christ, while Eusebius asserts that Bar Kokhba harassed them because they refused to join his revolt against the Romans. The latter is likely true, and Christians' refusal to take part in the revolt against the Roman Empire was a key event in the schism of Early Christianity and Judaism.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: One traditional account of killing is the persecution in Lyon in which Christians were purportedly mass-slaughtered by being thrown to wild beasts under the decree of Roman officials for reportedly refusing to renounce their faith according to Irenaeus. The sole source for this event is early Christian historian Eusebius of Caesarea's "Church History", an account written in Egypt in the 4th century. Tertullian's "Apologeticus" of 197 was ostensibly written in defense of persecuted Christians and was addressed to Roman governors.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Trajan's policy towards Christians was no different from the treatment of other sects, that is, they would only be punished if they refused to worship the emperor and the gods, but they were not to be sought out. The "Historia Augusta" mentions an edict of Emperor Septimius Severus against Christians; however, since the "Historia Augusta" is an unreliable mix of fact and fiction, historians consider the existence of such edict dubious.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to Eusebius, the Imperial household of Maximinus Thrax's predecessor, Severus Alexander, had contained many Christians. Eusebius states that, hating his predecessor's household, Maximinus ordered that the leaders of the churches should be put to death. According to Eusebius, this persecution of 235 sent Hippolytus of Rome and Pope Pontian into exile but other evidence suggests that the persecutions of 235 were local to the provinces where they occurred rather than happening under the direction of the Emperor.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Some early Christians sought out and welcomed martyrdom. According to Droge and Tabor, "in 185 the proconsul of Asia, Arrius Antoninus, was approached by a group of Christians demanding to be executed. The proconsul obliged some of them and then sent the rest away, saying that if they wanted to kill themselves there was plenty of rope available or cliffs they could jump off." Such enthusiasm for death is found in the letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch who was arrested and condemned as a criminal before writing his letters while on the way to execution. Ignatius casts his own martyrdom as a voluntary eucharistic sacrifice to be embraced.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: "Many martyr acts present martyrdom as a sharp choice that cut to the core of Christian identity – life or death, salvation or damnation, Christ or apostacy..." Subsequently, the martyr literature has drawn distinctions between those who were enthusiastically pro-voluntary-martyrdom (the Montanists and Donatists), those who occupied a neutral, moderate position (the orthodox), and those who were anti-martyrdom (the Gnostics).


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The category of voluntary martyr began to emerge only in the third century in the context of efforts to justify flight from persecution. The condemnation of voluntary martyrdom is used to justify Clement fleeing the Severan persecution in Alexandria in 202 AD, and the "Martyrdom of Polycarp" justifies Polycarp's flight on the same grounds. "Voluntary martyrdom is parsed as passionate foolishness" whereas "flight from persecution is patience" and the end result a true martyrdom.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Daniel Boyarin rejects use of the term "voluntary martyrdom", saying, "if martyrdom is not voluntary, it is not martyrdom". G. E. M. de Ste. Croix adds a category of "quasi-voluntary martyrdom": "martyrs who were not directly responsible for their own arrest but who, after being arrested, behaved with" a stubborn refusal to obey or comply with authority. Candida Moss asserts that De Ste. Croix's judgment of what values are worth dying for is modern, and does not represent classical values. According to her there was no such concept as "quasi-volunteer martyrdom" in ancient times.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the reign of the emperor Decius (), a decree was issued requiring that all residents of the empire should perform sacrifices, to be enforced by the issuing of each person with a "libellus" certifying that they had performed the necessary ritual. It is not known what motivated Decius's decree, or whether it was intended to target Christians, though it is possible the emperor was seeking divine favors in the forthcoming wars with the Carpi and the Goths. According to Eusebius, bishops Alexander of Jerusalem, Babylas of Antioch, and Fabian of Rome were all imprisoned and killed. The patriarch Dionysius of Alexandria escaped captivity, while the bishop Cyprian of Carthage fled his episcopal see to the countryside.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The legally-required sacrifices were a formality equivalent to a testimonial of allegiance to the emperor and the established order. Decius authorized roving commissions visiting the cities and villages to supervise the execution of the sacrifices and to deliver written certificates to all citizens who performed them. Christians were often given opportunities to avoid further punishment by publicly offering sacrifices or by burning incense to Roman gods, and were accused by the Romans of impiety when they refused. Refusal was punished by arrest, imprisonment, torture, and executions. Christians fled to safe havens in the countryside and some purchased their "libelli." Several councils held at Carthage debated the extent to which the community should accept these lapsed Christians. The Christian church, despite no indication in the surviving texts that the edict targeted any specific group, never forgot the reign of Decius whom they labelled as that "fierce tyrant". After Decius died, Trebonianus Gallus () succeeded him and continued the Decian persecution for the duration of his reign.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The accession of Trebonianus Gallus's successor Valerian () ended the Decian persecution. In 257 however, Valerian began to enforce public religion. Cyprian of Carthage was exiled and executed the following year, while Pope Sixtus II was also put to death. Dionysius of Alexandria was tried, urged to recognize "the natural gods" in the hope his congregation would imitate him, and exiled when he refused.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Valerian was defeated by the Persians at the Battle of Edessa and himself taken prisoner in 260. According to Eusebius, Valerian's son, co-"augustus", and successor Gallienus () allowed Christian communities to use again their cemeteries and made restitution of their confiscated buildings. Eusebius wrote that Gallienus allowed the Christians "freedom of action".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Great Persecution, or Diocletianic Persecution, was begun by the senior "augustus" and Roman emperor Diocletian () on 23 February 303. In the eastern Roman empire, the official persecution lasted intermittently until 313, while in the western Roman empire the persecution went unenforced from 306. According to Lactantius's "De mortibus persecutorum" ("on the deaths of the persecutors"), Diocletian's junior emperor, the "caesar" Galerius () pressured the "augustus" to begin persecuting Christians. Eusebius of Caesarea's "Church History" reports that imperial edicts were promulgated to destroy churches and confiscate scriptures, and to remove Christian occupants of government positions, while Christian priests were to be imprisoned and required to perform sacrifice in ancient Roman religion. In the account of Eusebius, an unnamed Christian man (named by later hagiographers as Euethius of Nicomedia and venerated on 27 February) tore down a public notice of an imperial edict while the emperors Diocletian and Galerius were in Nicomedia (İzmit), one of Diocletian's capitals; according to Lactantius, he was tortured and burned alive. According to Lactantius, the church at Nicomedia (İzmit) was destroyed, while the "Optatan Appendix" has an account from the praetorian prefecture of Africa involving the confiscation of written materials which led to the Donatist schism. According to Eusebius's "Martyrs of Palestine" and Lactantius's "De mortibus persecutorum", a fourth edict in 304 demanded that everyone perform sacrifices, though in the western empire this was not enforced.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: An "unusually philosophical" dialogue is recorded in the trial proceedings of Phileas of Thmuis, bishop of Thmuis in Egypt's Nile Delta, which survive on Greek papyri from the 4th century among the Bodmer Papyri and the Chester Beatty Papyri of the Bodmer and Chester Beatty libraries and in manuscripts in Latin, Ethiopic, and Coptic languages from later centuries, a body of hagiography known as the "Acts of Phileas". Phileas was condemned at his fifth trial at Alexandria under Clodius Culcianus, the "praefectus Aegypti" on 4 February 305 (the 10th day of "Mecheir").


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the western empire, the Diocletianic Persecution ceased with the usurpation by two emperors' sons in 306: that of Constantine, who was acclaimed "augustus" by the army after his father Constantius I () died, and that of Maxentius () who was elevated to "augustus" by the Roman Senate after the grudging retirement of his father Maximian () and his co-"augustus" Diocletian in May 305. Of Maxentius, who controlled Italy with his now un-retired father, and Constantine, who controlled Britain, Gaul, and Iberia, neither was inclined to continue the persecution. In the eastern empire however, Galerius, now "augustus", continued Diocletian's policy. Eusebius's "Church History" and "Martyrs of Palestine" both give accounts of martyrdom and persecution of Christians, including Eusebius's own mentor Pamphilus of Caesarea, with whom he was imprisoned during the persecution.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: When Galerius died in May 311, he is reported by Lactantius and Eusebius to have composed a deathbed edict – the Edict of Serdica – allowing the assembly of Christians in conventicles and explaining the motives for the prior persecution. Eusebius wrote that Easter was celebrated openly. By autumn however, Galerius's nephew, former "caesar", and co-"augustus" Maximinus Daia () was enforcing Diocletian's persecution in his territories in Anatolia and the Diocese of the East in response to petitions from numerous cities and provinces, including Antioch, Tyre, Lycia, and Pisidia. Maximinus was also encouraged to act by an oracular pronouncement made by a statue of Zeus "Philios" set up in Antioch by Theotecnus of Antioch, who also organized an anti-Christian petition to be sent from the Antiochenes to Maximinus, requesting that the Christians there be expelled. Among the Christians known to have died in this phase of the persecution are the presbyter Lucian of Antioch, the bishop Methodius of Olympus in Lycia, and Peter, the patriarch of Alexandria. Defeated in a civil war by the "augustus" Licinius (), Maximinus died in 313, ending the systematic persecution of Christianity as a whole in the Roman Empire. Only one martyr is known by name from the reign of Licinius, who issued the Edict of Milan jointly with his ally, co-"augustus", and brother-in-law Constantine, which had the effect of resuming the toleration of before the persecution and returning confiscated property to Christian owners.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to legend, one of the martyrs during the Diocletianic persecution was Saint George, a Roman soldier who loudly renounced the Emperor's edict, and in front of his fellow soldiers and tribunes claimed to be a Christian by declaring his worship of Jesus Christ.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The "New Catholic Encyclopedia" states that "Ancient, medieval and early modern hagiographers were inclined to exaggerate the number of martyrs. Since the title of martyr is the highest title to which a Christian can aspire, this tendency is natural". Attempts at estimating the numbers involved are inevitably based on inadequate sources.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Christian church marked the conversion of Constantine the Great as the final fulfillment of its heavenly victory over the "false gods". The Roman state had always seen itself as divinely directed, now it saw the first great age of persecution, in which the Devil was considered to have used open violence to dissuade the growth of Christianity, at an end. The orthodox catholic Christians close to the Roman state represented imperial persecution as an historical phenomenon, rather than a contemporary one. According to MacMullan, the Christian histories are colored by this "triumphalism".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Peter Leithart says that, "[Constantine] did not punish pagans for being pagans, or Jews for being Jews, and did not adopt a policy of forced conversion". Pagans remained in important positions at his court. He outlawed the gladiatorial shows, destroyed some temples and plundered more, and used forceful rhetoric against non-Christians, but he never engaged in a purge. Maxentius' supporters were not slaughtered when Constantine took the capital; Licinius' family and court were not killed. However, followers of doctrines which were seen as heretical or causing schism were persecuted during the reign of Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, and they would be persecuted again later in the 4th century. The consequence of Christian doctrinal disputes was generally mutual excommunication, but once Roman government became involved in ecclesiastical politics, rival factions could find themselves subject to "repression, expulsion, imprisonment or exile" carried out by the Roman army.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 312, the Christian sect called Donatists appealed to Constantine to solve a dispute. He convened a synod of bishops to hear the case, but the synod sided against them. The Donatists refused to accept the ruling, so a second gathering of 200 at Arles, in 314, was called, but they also ruled against them. The Donatists again refused to accept the ruling, and proceeded to act accordingly by establishing their own bishop, building their own churches, and refusing cooperation. This was a defiance of imperial authority, and it produced the same response Rome had taken in the past against such refusals. For a Roman emperor, "religion could be tolerated only as long as it contributed to the stability of the state". Constantine used the army in an effort to compel Donatist' obedience, burning churches and martyring some from 317 – 321. Constantine failed in reaching his goal and ultimately conceded defeat. The schism remained and Donatism continued. After Constantine, his youngest son Flavius Julius Constans, initiated the Macarian campaign against the Donatists from 346 – 348 which only succeeded in renewing sectarian strife and creating more martyrs. Donatism continued.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The fourth century was dominated by its many conflicts defining orthodoxy versus heterodoxy and heresy. In the Eastern Roman empire, known as Byzantium, the Arian controversy began with its debate of Trinitarian formulas which lasted 56 years. As it moved into the West, the center of the controversy was the "champion of orthodoxy", Athanasius. In 355 Constantius, who supported Arianism, ordered the suppression and exile of Athanasius, expelled the orthodox Pope Liberius from Rome, and exiled bishops who refused to assent to Athanasius's exile. In 355, Dionysius, bishop of Mediolanum (Milan) was expelled from his episcopal see and replaced by the Arian Christian Auxentius of Milan. When Constantius returned to Rome in 357, he consented to allow the return of Liberius to the papacy; the Arian Pope Felix II, who had replaced him, was then driven out along with his followers.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty, Constantine's half-brother's son Julian () opposed Christianity and sought to restore traditional religion, though he did not arrange a general or official persecution.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the "Collectio Avellana", on the death of Pope Liberius in 366, Damasus, assisted by hired gangs of "charioteers" and men "from the arena", broke into the Basilica Julia to violently prevent the election of Pope Ursicinus. The battle lasted three days, "with great slaughter of the faithful" and a week later Damasus seized the Lateran Basilica, had himself ordained as Pope Damasus I, and compelled the "praefectus urbi" Viventius and the "praefectus annonae" to exile Ursicinus. Damasus then had seven Christian priests arrested and awaiting banishment, but they escaped and "gravediggers" and minor clergy joined another mob of hippodrome and amphitheatre men assembled by the pope to attack the Liberian Basilica, where Ursacinus's loyalists had taken refuge. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, on 26 October, the pope's mob killed 137 people in the church in just one day, and many more died subsequently. The Roman public frequently enjoined the emperor Valentinian the Great to remove Damasus from the throne of Saint Peter, calling him a murderer for having waged a "filthy war" against the Christians.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the 4th century, the Terving king Athanaric in ordered the Gothic persecution of Christians. Athanaric was perturbed by the spread of Gothic Christianity among his followers, and feared for the displacement of Gothic paganism.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: It was not until the later 4th century reigns of the "augusti" Gratian (), Valentinian II (), and Theodosius I () that Christianity would become the official religion of the empire with the joint promulgation of the Edict of Thessalonica, establishing Nicene Christianity as the state religion and as the state church of the Roman Empire on 27 February 380. After this began state persecution of non-Nicene Christians, including Arian and Nontrinitarian devotees.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: When Augustine became coadjutor Bishop of Hippo in 395, both Donatist and Catholic parties had, for decades, existed side-by-side, with a double line of bishops for the same cities, all competing for the loyalty of the people. Augustine was distressed by the ongoing schism, but he held the view that belief cannot be compelled, so he appealed to the Donatists using popular propaganda, debate, personal appeal, General Councils, appeals to the emperor and political pressure, but all attempts failed. The Donatists fomented protests and street violence, accosted travelers, attacked random Catholics without warning, often doing serious and unprovoked bodily harm such as beating people with clubs, cutting off their hands and feet, and gouging out eyes while also inviting their own martyrdom. By 408, Augustine supported the state's use of force against them. Historian Frederick Russell says that Augustine did not believe this would "make the Donatists more virtuous" but he did believe it would make them "less vicious".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Augustine wrote that there had, in the past, been ten Christian persecutions, beginning with the Neronian persecution, and alleging persecutions by the emperors Domitian, Trajan, "Antoninus" (Marcus Aurelius), "Severus" (Septimius Severus), and Maximinus ("Thrax"), as well as Decian and Valerianic persecutions, and then another by Aurelian as well as by Diocletian and Maximian. These ten persecutions Augustine compared with the 10 Plagues of Egypt in the "Book of Exodus". Augustine did not see these early persecutions in the same light as that of fourth century heretics. In Augustine's view, when the purpose of persecution is to "lovingly correct and instruct", then it becomes discipline and is just. Augustine wrote that "coercion cannot transmit the truth to the heretic, but it can prepare them to hear and receive the truth". He said the church would discipline its people out of a loving desire to heal them, and that, "once compelled to come in, heretics would gradually give their voluntary assent to the truth of Christian orthodoxy." He opposed the severity of Rome and the execution of heretics.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: It is his teaching on coercion that has literature on Augustine frequently referring to him as "le prince et patriarche de persecuteurs" (the prince and patriarch of persecutors). Russell says Augustine's theory of coercion "was not crafted from dogma, but in response to a unique historical situation" and is therefore context dependent, while others see it as inconsistent with his other teachings. His authority on the question of coercion was undisputed for over a millennium in Western Christianity, and according to Brown "it provided the theological foundation for the justification of medieval persecution."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Callinicus I, initially a priest and "skeuophylax" in the Church of the Theotokos of Blachernae, became patriarch of Constantinople in 693 or 694. Having refused to consent to the demolition of a chapel in the Great Palace, the "Theotokos ton Metropolitou", and having possibly been involved in the deposition and exile of Justinian II (), an allegation denied by the "Synaxarion of Constantinople", he was himself exiled to Rome on the return of Justinian to power in 705. The emperor had Callinicus immured. He is said to have survived forty days when the wall was opened to check his condition, though he died four days later.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Violent persecutions of Christians began in earnest in the long reign of Shapur II (). A persecution of Christians at Kirkuk is recorded in Shapur's first decade, though most persecution happened after 341. At war with the Roman emperor Constantius II (), Shapur imposed a tax to cover the war expenditure, and Shemon Bar Sabbae, the Bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, refused to collect it. Often citing collaboration with the Romans, the Persians began persecuting and executing Christians. "Passio" narratives describe the fate of some Christians venerated as martyrs; they are of varying historical reliability, some being contemporary records by eyewitnesses, others were reliant on popular tradition at some remove from the events. An appendix to the "Syriac Martyrology of 411" lists the Christian martyrs of Persia, but other accounts of martyrs' trials contain important historical details on the workings of the Sassanian Empire's historical geography and judicial and administrative practices. Some were translated into Sogdian and discovered at Turpan.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Under Yazdegerd I () there were occasional persecutions, including an instance of persecution in reprisal for the burning of a Zoroastrian fire temple by a Christian priest, and further persecutions occurred in the reign of Bahram V (). Under Yazdegerd II () an instance of persecution in 446 is recorded in the Syriac martyrology "Acts of Ādur-hormizd and of Anāhīd". Some individual martyrdoms are recorded from the reign of Khosrow I (), but there were likely no mass persecutions. While according to a peace treaty of 562 between Khosrow and his Roman counterpart Justinian I (), Persia's Christians were granted the freedom of religion; proselytism was, however, a capital crime. By this time the Church of the East and its head, the Catholicose of the East, were integrated into the administration of the empire and mass persecution was rare.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Sassanian policy shifted from tolerance of other religions under Shapur I to intolerance under Bahram I and apparently a return to the policy of Shapur until the reign of Shapur II. The persecution at that time was initiated by Constantine's conversion to Christianity which followed that of Armenian king Tiridates in about 301. The Christians were thus viewed with suspicions of secretly being partisans of the Roman Empire. This did not change until the fifth century when the Church of the East broke off from the Church of the West. Zoroastrian elites continued viewing the Christians with enmity and distrust throughout the fifth century with threat of persecution remaining significant, especially during war against the Romans.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Zoroastrian high priest Kartir, refers in his inscription dated about 280 on the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht monument in the Naqsh-e Rostam necropolis near Zangiabad, Fars, to persecution ("zatan" – "to beat, kill") of Christians ("Nazareans "n'zl'y" and Christians "klstyd'n""). Kartir took Christianity as a serious opponent. The use of the double expression may be indicative of the Greek-speaking Christians deported by Shapur I from Antioch and other cities during his war against the Romans. Constantine's efforts to protect the Persian Christians made them a target of accusations of disloyalty to Sasanians. With the resumption of Roman-Sasanian conflict under Constantius II, the Christian position became untenable. Zoroastrian priests targeted clergy and ascetics of local Christians to eliminate the leaders of the church. A Syriac manuscript in Edessa in 411 documents dozens executed in various parts of western Sasanian Empire.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 341, Shapur II ordered the persecution of all Christians. In response to their subversive attitude and support of Romans, Shapur II doubled the tax on Christians. Shemon Bar Sabbae informed him that he could not pay the taxes demanded from him and his community. He was martyred and a forty-year-long period of persecution of Christians began. The Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon gave up choosing bishops since it would result in death. The local "mobads" – Zoroastrian clerics – with the help of satraps organized slaughters of Christians in Adiabene, Beth Garmae, Khuzistan and many other provinces.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Yazdegerd I showed tolerance towards Jews and Christians for much of his rule. He allowed Christians to practice their religion freely, demolished monasteries and churches were rebuilt and missionaries were allowed to operate freely. He reversed his policies during the later part of his reign however, suppressing missionary activities. Bahram V continued and intensified their persecution, resulting in many of them fleeing to the eastern Roman empire. Bahram demanded their return, beginning the Roman–Sasanian War of 421–422. The war ended with an agreement of freedom of religion for Christians in Iran with that of Mazdaism in Rome. Meanwhile, Christians suffered destruction of churches, renounced the faith, had their private property confiscated and many were expelled.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Yazdegerd II had ordered all his subjects to embrace Mazdeism in an attempt to unite his empire ideologically. The Caucasus rebelled to defend Christianity which had become integrated in their local culture, with Armenian aristocrats turning to the Romans for help. The rebels were however defeated in a battle on the Avarayr Plain. Yeghishe in his "The History of Vardan and the Armenian War", pays a tribute to the battles waged to defend Christianity. Another revolt was waged from 481–483 which was suppressed. However, the Armenians succeeded in gaining freedom of religion among other improvements.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Accounts of executions for apostasy of Zoroastrians who converted to Christianity during Sasanian rule proliferated from the fifth to early seventh century, and continued to be produced even after collapse of Sasanians. The punishment of apostates increased under Yazdegerd I and continued under successive kings. It was normative for apostates who were brought to the notice of authorities to be executed, although the prosecution of apostasy depended on political circumstances and Zoroastrian jurisprudence. Per Richard E. Payne, the executions were meant to create a mutually recognised boundary between interactions of the people of the two religions and preventing one religion challenging another's viability. Although the violence on Christians was selective and especially carried out on elites, it served to keep Christian communities in a subordinate and yet viable position in relation to Zoroastrianism. Christians were allowed to build religious buildings and serve in the government as long as they did not expand their institutions and population at the expense of Zoroastrianism.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Khosrow I was generally regarded as tolerant of Christians and interested in the philosophical and theological disputes during his reign. Sebeos claimed he had converted to Christianity on his deathbed. John of Ephesus describes an Armenian revolt where he claims that Khusrow had attempted to impose Zoroastrianism in Armenia. The account, however, is very similar to the one of Armenian revolt of 451. In addition, Sebeos does not mention any religious persecution in his account of the revolt of 571. A story about Hormizd IV's tolerance is preserved by the historian al-Tabari. Upon being asked why he tolerated Christians, he replied, "Just as our royal throne cannot stand upon its front legs without its two back ones, our kingdom cannot stand or endure firmly if we cause the Christians and adherents of other faiths, who differ in belief from ourselves, to become hostile to us."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Several months after the Persian conquest in AD 614, a riot occurred in Jerusalem, and the Jewish governor of Jerusalem Nehemiah was killed by a band of young Christians along with his "council of the righteous" while he was making plans for the building of the Third Temple. At this time the Christians had allied themselves with the Eastern Roman Empire. Shortly afterward, the events escalated into a full-scale Christian rebellion, resulting in a battle against the Jews and Christians who were living in Jerusalem. In the battle's aftermath, many Jews were killed and the survivors fled to Caesarea, which was still being held by the Persian army.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Judeo-Persian reaction was ruthless – Persian Sasanian general Xorheam assembled Judeo-Persian troops and went and encamped around Jerusalem and besieged it for 19 days. Eventually, digging beneath the foundations of the Jerusalem, they destroyed the wall and on the 19th day of the siege, the Judeo-Persian forces took Jerusalem.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the account of the Armenian ecclesiastic and historian Sebeos, the siege resulted in a total Christian death toll of 17,000, the earliest and thus most commonly accepted figure. Per Strategius, 4,518 prisoners alone were massacred near Mamilla reservoir. A cave containing hundreds of skeletons near the Jaffa Gate, 200 metres east of the large Roman-era pool in Mamilla, correlates with the massacre of Christians at hands of the Persians mentioned in the writings of Strategius. While reinforcing the evidence of massacre of Christians, the archaeological evidence seem less conclusive on the destruction of Christian churches and monasteries in Jerusalem.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the later account of Strategius, whose perspective appears to be that of a Byzantine Greek and shows an antipathy towards the Jews, thousands of Christians were massacred during the conquest of the city. Estimates based on varying copies of Strategos's manuscripts range from 4,518 to 66,509 killed. Strategos wrote that the Jews offered to help them escape death if they "become Jews and deny Christ", and the Christian captives refused. In anger the Jews allegedly purchased Christians to kill them. In 1989, a mass burial grave at Mamilla cave was discovered in by Israeli archeologist Ronny Reich, near the site where Strategius recorded the massacre took place. The human remains were in poor condition containing a minimum of 526 individuals.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: From the many excavations carried out in the Galilee, it is clear that all churches had been destroyed during the period between the Persian invasion and the Arab conquest in 637. The church at Shave Ziyyon was destroyed and burnt in 614. Similar fate befell churches at Evron, Nahariya, 'Arabe and monastery of Shelomi. The monastery at Kursi was damaged in the invasion.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In AD 516, tribal unrest broke out in Yemen and several tribal elites fought for power. One of those elites was Joseph Dhu Nuwas or "Yousef Asa'ar", a Jewish king of the Himyarite Kingdom who is mentioned in ancient south Arabian inscriptions. Syriac and Byzantine Greek sources claim that he fought his war because Christians in Yemen refused to renounce Christianity. In 2009, a documentary that aired on the BBC defended the claim that the villagers had been offered the choice between conversion to Judaism or death and 20,000 Christians were then massacred by stating that "The production team spoke to many historians over a period of 18 months, among them Nigel Groom, who was our consultant, and Professor Abdul Rahman Al-Ansary, a former professor of archaeology at the King Saud University in Riyadh." Inscriptions documented by Yousef himself show the great pride that he expressed after killing more than 22,000 Christians in Zafar and Najran. Historian Glen Bowersock described this massacre as a "savage pogrom that the Jewish king of the Arabs launched against the Christians in the city of Najran. The king himself reported in excruciating detail to his Arab and Persian allies about the massacres that he had inflicted on all Christians who refused to convert to Judaism."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Ancient Arabian Christianity has largely vanished from the region. The main reason for is Prophet Muhammad's direct orders to eliminate Jews and Christians from Arabia.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Since they are considered "People of the Book" in the Islamic religion, Christians under Muslim rule were subjected to the status of "dhimmi" (along with Jews, Samaritans, Gnostics, Mandeans, and Zoroastrians), which was inferior to the status of Muslims. Christians and other religious minorities thus faced religious discrimination and persecution in that they were banned from proselytising (for Christians, it was forbidden to evangelize or spread Christianity) in the lands invaded by the Arab Muslims on pain of death, they were banned from bearing arms, undertaking certain professions, and were obligated to dress differently in order to distinguish themselves from Arabs. Under the Islamic law ("sharīʿa"), Non-Muslims were obligated to pay the "jizya" and "kharaj" taxes, together with periodic heavy ransom levied upon Christian communities by Muslim rulers in order to fund military campaigns, all of which contributed a significant proportion of income to the Islamic states while conversely reducing many Christians to poverty, and these financial and social hardships forced many Christians to convert to Islam. Christians unable to pay these taxes were forced to surrender their children to the Muslim rulers as payment who would sell them as slaves to Muslim households where they were forced to convert to Islam.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the tradition of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Muslim conquest of the Levant was a relief for Christians oppressed by the Western Roman Empire. Michael the Syrian, patriarch of Antioch, wrote later that the Christian God had "raised from the south the children of Ishmael to deliver us by them from the hands of the Romans". Various Christian communities in the regions of Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Armenia resented either the governance of the Western Roman Empire or that of the Byzantine Empire, and therefore preferred to live under more favourable economic and political conditions as "dhimmi" under the Muslim rulers. However, modern historians also recognize that the Christian populations living in the lands invaded by the Arab Muslim armies between the 7th and 10th centuries AD suffered religious persecution, religious violence, and martyrdom multiple times at the hands of Arab Muslim officials and rulers; many were executed under the Islamic death penalty for defending their Christian faith through dramatic acts of resistance such as refusing to convert to Islam, repudiation of the Islamic religion and subsequent reconversion to Christianity, and blasphemy towards Muslim beliefs.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the Ḥanafī school of Islamic law ("sharīʿa"), the testimony of a Non-Muslim (such as a Christian or a Jew) was not considered valid against the testimony of a Muslim in legal or civil matters. Historically, in Islamic culture and traditional Islamic law Muslim women have been forbidden from marrying Christian or Jewish men, whereas Muslim men have been permitted to marry Christian or Jewish women ("see": Interfaith marriage in Islam). Christians under Islamic rule had the right to convert to Islam or any other religion, while conversely a "murtad", or an apostate from Islam, faced severe penalties or even "hadd", which could include the Islamic death penalty.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In general, Christians subject to Islamic rule were allowed to practice their religion with some notable limitations stemming from the apocryphal "Pact of Umar". This treaty, supposedly enacted in 717 AD, forbade Christians from publicly displaying the cross on church buildings, from summoning congregants to prayer with a bell, from re-building or repairing churches and monasteries after they had been destroyed or damaged, and imposed other restrictions relating to occupations, clothing, and weapons. The Umayyad Caliphate persecuted many Berber Christians in the 7th and 8th centuries AD, who slowly converted to Islam.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In Umayyad al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula), the Mālikī school of Islamic law was the most prevalent. The martyrdoms of forty-eight Christian martyrs that took place in the Emirate of Córdoba between 850 and 859 AD are recorded in the hagiographical treatise written by the Iberian Christian and Latinist scholar Eulogius of Córdoba. The Martyrs of Córdoba were executed under the rule of Abd al-Rahman II and Muhammad I, and Eulogius' hagiography describes in detail the executions of the martyrs for capital violations of Islamic law, including apostasy and blasphemy.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: George Limnaiotes, a monk on Mount Olympus known only from the "Synaxarion of Constantinople" and other synaxaria, was supposed to have been 95 years old when he was tortured for his iconodulism. In the reign of Leo III the Isaurian (), he was mutilated by rhinotomy and his head burnt.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Germanus I of Constantinople, a son of the "patrikios" Justinian, a courtier of the emperor Heraclius (), having been castrated and enrolled in the cathedral clergy of Hagia Sophia when his father was executed in 669, was later bishop of Cyzicus and then patriarch of Constantinople from 715. In 730, in the reign of Leo III (), Germanus was deposed and banished, dying in exile at Plantanion (Akçaabat). Leo III also exiled the monk John the Psichaites, an iconodule, to Cherson, where he remained until after the emperor's death.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According only to the "Synaxarion of Constantinople", the clerics Hypatios and Andrew from the Thracesian "thema" were, during the persecution of Leo III, brought to the capital, jailed and tortured. The "Synaxarion" claims that they had the embers of burnt icons applied to their heads, subjected to other torments, and then dragged though the Byzantine streets to their public execution in the area of the city's VIIth Hill, the so-called near the Forum of Arcadius.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Andrew of Crete was beaten and imprisoned in Constantinople after having debated with the iconoclast emperor Constantine V (), possibly in 767 or 768, and then abused by the Byzantines as he was dragged through the city, dying of blood loss when a fisherman cut off his foot in the Forum of the Ox. The church of Saint Andrew in Krisei was named after him, though his existence is doubted by scholars.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Having defeated and killed the emperor Nikephoros I () at the Battle of Pliska in 811, the First Bulgarian Empire's "khan", Krum, also put to death a number of Roman soldiers who refused to renounce Christianity, though these martyrdoms, known only from the "Synaxarion of Constantinople", may be entierely legendary. In 813 the Bulgarians invaded the "thema" of Thrace, led by Krum, and the city of Adrianople (Edirne) was captured. Krum's successor Dukum died shortly after Krum himself, being succeeded by Ditzevg, who killed Manuel the archbishop of Adrianople in January 815. According to the "Synaxarion of Constantinople" and the "Menologion of Basil II", Ditzevg's own successor Omurtag killed some 380 Christians later that month. The victims included the archbishop of Develtos, George, and the bishop of Thracian Nicaea, Leo, as well as two "strategoi" called John and Leo. Collectively these are known as the Martyrs of Adrianople.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Byzantine monk Makarios, of the Pelekete monastery in Bithynia, having already refused a enviable position at court offered by the iconoclast emperor Leo IV the Khazar () in return for the repudiation of his iconodulism, was expelled from the monastery by Leo V the Armenian (), who also imprisoned and exiled him.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople dissented from the iconoclast Council of Constantinople of 815 and was exiled by Leo V as a result. He died in exile in 828.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In spring 816, the Constantinopolitan monk Athanasios of Paulopetrion was tortured and exiled for his iconophilism by the emperor Leo V. In 815, during the reign of Leo V, having been appointed "hegoumenos" of the Kathara Monastery in Bithynia by the emperor Nikephoros I, John of Kathara was exiled and imprisoned first in Pentadactylon, a stronghold in Phrygia, and then in the fortress of Kriotauros in the Bucellarian "thema". In the reign of Michael II he was recalled, but exiled again under Theophilos, being banished to Aphousia (Avşa) where he died, probably in 835.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Eustratios of Agauros, a monk and "hegumenos" of the Agauros Monastery at the foot of Mount Trichalikos, near Prusa's Mount Olympus in Bithynia, was forced into exile by the persecutions of Leo V and Theophilos (). Leo V and Theophilos also persecuted and exiled Hilarion of Dalmatos, the son of Peter the Cappadocian, who had been made "hegumenos" of the Dalmatos Monastery by the patriarch Nikephoros I. Hilarion was allowed to return to his post only in the regency of Theodora. The same emperors also persecuted Michael Synkellos, an Arab monk of the Mar Saba monastery in Palestine who, as the "syncellus" of the patriarch of Jerusalem, had travelled to Constantinople on behalf of the patriarch Thomas I. On the Triumph of Orthodoxy, Michael declined the ecumenical patriarchate and became instead the "hegumenos" of the Chora Monastery.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to Theophanes "Continuatus", the Armenian monk and iconographer of Khazar origin Lazarus Zographos refused to cease painting icons in the second official iconoclast period. Theophilos had him tortured and his hands burned with heated irons, though he was released at the intercession of the empress Theodora and hidden at the Monastery of John the Baptist "tou Phoberou", where he was able to paint an image of the patron saint. After the death of Theophilos, and the Triumph of Orthodoxy, Lazarus re-painted the representation of Christ on the Chalke Gate of the Great Palace of Constantinople.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Symeon Stylites of Lesbos was persecuted for his iconodulism in the second period of official iconoclasm. He was imprisoned and exiled, returning to Lesbos only after the vernation of icons was restored in 842. The bishop George of Mytilene, who may have been Symeon's brother, was exiled from Constantinople in 815 on account of his iconophilia. He spent the last six years of his life in exile on an island, probably one of the Princes' Islands, dying in 820 or 821. George's relics were taken to Mytilene to be venerated after the restoration of iconodulism to orthodoxy under the patriarch Methodios I, during which the hagiography of George was written.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The bishop Euthymius of Sardis was the victim of several iconoclast Christian persecutions. Euthymius had previously been exiled to Pantelleria by the emperor Nikephoros I (), recalled in 806, led the iconodule resistance against Leo V (), and exiled again to Thasos in 814. After his recall to Constantinople in the reign of Michael II (), he was again imprisoned and exiled to Saint Andrew's Island, off Cape Akritas (Tuzla, Istanbul). According to the hagiography of by the patriarch Methodios I of Constantinople, who claimed to have shared Euthymius's exile and been present at his death, Theoktistos and two other imperial officials personally whipped Euthymius to death on account of his iconodulism; Theoktistos was active in the persecution of iconodules under the iconoclast emperors, but later championed the iconodule cause. Theoktistos was later venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, listed in the "Synaxarion of Constantinople". The last of the iconoclast emperors, Theophilos (), was posthumously rehabilitated by the iconodule Orthodox Church on the intervention of his wife Theodora, who claimed he had had a deathbed conversion to iconodulism in the presence of Theoktistos and had given 60 Byzantine pounds of gold to each of his victims in his will. The rehabilitation of the iconoclast emperor was a precondition of his widow for convoking the Council of Constantinople in March 843, at which the veneration of icons was restored to orthodoxy and which became celebrated as the Triumph of Orthodoxy.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Evaristos, a relative of Theoktistos Bryennios and a monk of the Monastery of Stoudios, was exiled to the Thracian Chersonese (Gallipoli peninsula) for his support of his "hegumenos" Nicholas and his patron the patriarch Ignatios of Constantinople when the latter was deposed by Photios I in 858. Both Nicholas and Evaristos went into exile. Only after many years was Evaristos allowed to return to Constantinople to found a monastery of his own. The "hegumenos" Nicholas, who had accompanied Evaristos to the Chersonese, was restored to his post at the Stoudios Monastery. A partisan of Ignatios of Constantinople and a refugee from the Muslim conquest of Sicily, the monk Joseph the Hymnographer was banished to Cherson from Constantinople on the elevation of Ignatios's rival Photios in 858. Only after the end of Photios's patriarchate was Joseph allowed to return to the capital and become the cathedral "skeuophylax" of Hagia Sophia.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Euthymius, a monk, senator, and "synkellos" favored by Leo VI (), was first made a "hegumenos" and then in 907 patriarch of Constantinople by the emperor. When Leo VI died and Nicholas Mystikos was recalled to the patriarchal throne, Euthymius was exiled.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Abbasid Caliphate was less tolerant of Christianity than had been the Umayyad caliphs. Nonetheless, Christian officials continued to be employed in the government, and the Christians of the Church of the East were often tasked with the translation of Ancient Greek philosophy and Greek mathematics. The writings of al-Jahiz attacked Christians for being too prosperous, and indicates they were able to ignore even those restrictions placed on them by the state. In the late 9th century, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Theodosius, wrote to his colleague the patriarch of Constantinople Ignatios that "they are just and do us no wrong nor show us any violence".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Elias of Heliopolis, having moved to Damascus from Heliopolis (Ba'albek), was accused of apostasy from Christianity after attending a party held by a Muslim Arab, and was forced to flee Damascus for his hometown, returning eight years later, where he was recognized and imprisoned by the ""eparch"", probably the jurist al-Layth ibn Sa'd. After refusing to convert to Islam under torture, he was brought before the Damascene "emir" and relative of the caliph al-Mahdi (), Muhammad ibn-Ibrahim, who promised good treatment if Elias would convert. On his repeated refusal, Elias was tortured and beheaded and his body burnt, cut up, and thrown into the river Chrysorrhoes (the Barada) in 779 AD.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the "Synaxarion of Constantinople", the "hegumenos" Michael of Zobe and thirty-six of his monks at the Monastery of Zobe near Sebasteia (Sivas) were killed by a raid on the community. The perpetrator was the ""emir" of the Hagarenes", "Alim", probably Ali ibn-Sulayman, an Abbasid governor who raided Roman territory in 785 AD. Bacchus the Younger was beheaded in Jerusalem in 786–787 AD. Bacchus was Palestinian, whose family, having been Christian, had been converted to Islam by their father. Bacchus however, remained crypto-Christian and undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, upon which he was baptized and entered the monastery of Mar Saba. Reunion with his family prompted their reconversion to Christianity and Bacchus's trial and execution for apostasy under the governing "emir" Harthama ibn A'yan.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: After the 838 Sack of Amorium, the hometown of the emperor Theophilos () and his Amorian dynasty, the caliph al-Mu'tasim () took more than forty Roman prisoners. These were taken to the capital, Samarra, where after seven years of theological debates and repeated refusals to convert to Islam, they were put to death in March 845 under the caliph al-Wathiq (). Within a generation they were venerated as the 42 Martyrs of Amorium. According to their hagiographer Euodius, probably writing within a generation of the events, the defeat at Amorium was to be blamed on Theophilos and his iconoclasm. According to some later hagiographies, including one by one of several Middle Byzantine writers known as Michael the Synkellos, among the forty-two were Kallistos, the "doux" of the Koloneian "thema", and the heroic martyr Theodore Karteros.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 850 al-Mutawakkil made a decree ordering Dhimmi (Christians and Jews) to wear garments to distinguish them from Muslims, that their places of worship be destroyed and demonic effigies nailed to the doors, and that they be allowed little involvement in government or official matters.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: During the 10th-century phase of the Arab–Byzantine wars, the victories of the Romans over the Arabs resulted in mob attacks on Christians, who were believed to sympathize with the Roman state. According to Bar Hebraeus, the "catholicus" of the Church of the East, Abraham III (), wrote to the grand vizier that "we Nestorians are the friends of the Arabs and pray for their victories". The attitude of the Nestorians "who have no other king but the Arabs", he contrasted with the Greek Orthodox Church, whose emperors he said "had never cease to make war against the Arabs. Between 923 and 924, several Orthodox churches were destroyed in mob violence in Ramla, Ashkelon, Caesarea Maritima, and Damascus. In each instance, according to the Arab Melkite Christian chronicler Eutychius of Alexandria, the caliph al-Muqtadir () contributed to the rebuilding of ecclesiastical property.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to the "Synaxarion of Constantinople", Dounale-Stephen, having journeyed to Jerusalem, continued his pilgrimage to Egypt, where he was arrested by the local "emir" and, refusing to relinquish his beliefs, died in jail .


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah () engaged in a persecution of Christians. Al-Hakim was "half-insane", and had perpetrated the only general persecution of Christians by Muslims until the Crusades. Al-Hakim's mother was a Christian, and he had been raised mainly by Christians, and even through the persecution al-Hakim employed Christian ministers in his government. Between 1004 and 1014, the caliph produced legislation to confiscate ecclesiastical property and burn crosses; later, he ordered that small mosques be built atop church roofs, and later still decreed that churches were to be burned. The caliph's Jewish and Muslim subjects were subjected to similarly arbitrary treatment. As part of al-Hakim's persecution, thirty thousand churches were reportedly destroyed, and in 1009 the caliph ordered the demolition of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, on the pretext that the annual Holy Fire miracle on Easter was a fake. The persecution of al-Hakim and the demolition of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre prompted Pope Sergius IV to issue a call for soldiers to expel the Muslims from the Holy Land, while European Christians engaged in a retaliatory persecution of Jews, whom they conjectured were in some way responsible for al-Hakim's actions. In the second half of the eleventh century, pilgrims brought home news of how the rise of the Turks and their conflict with the Egyptians increased the persecution of Christian pilgrims.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 1013, at the intervention of the emperor Basil II (), Christians were given permission to leave Fatimid territory. In 1016 however, the caliph was proclaimed divine, alienating his Muslim subjects by banning the "hajj" and the fast of "ramadan", and causing him to again favor the Christians. In 1017, al-Hakim issued an order of toleration regarding Christians and Jews, while the following year confiscated ecclesiastical property was returned to the Church, including the construction materials seized by the authorities from demolished buildings.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 1027, the emperor Constantine VIII () concluded a treaty with Salih ibn Mirdas, the emir of Aleppo, allowing the emperor to repair the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and permitting the Christians forced to convert to Islam under al-Hakim to return to Christianity. Though the treaty was re-confirmed in 1036, actual building on the shrine began only in the later 1040s, under the emperor Constantine IX Monomachos (). According to al-Maqdisi, the Christians seemed largely in control of the Holy Land, and the emperor himself was rumored, according to Nasir Khusraw, to have been among the many Christian pilgrims that came to the Holy Sepulchre.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In the Middle Ages, the crusades were promoted as defensive response of Christianity against persecution of Eastern Christianity in the Levant. Western Catholic contemporaries believed the First Crusade was a movement against Muslim attacks on Eastern Christians and Christian sites in the Holy Land. In the mid-11th century, relations between the Byzantine Empire and the Fatimid Caliphate and between Christians and Muslims were peaceful, and there had not been persecution of Christians since the death of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. As a result of the migration of Turkic peoples into the Levant and the Seljuk Empire's wars with the Fatimid Caliphate in the later 11th century, reports of Christian pilgrims increasingly mentioned persecution of Christians there. Similarly, accounts sent to the West of the Byzantines' medieval wars with various Muslim states alleged persecutions of Christians and atrocities against holy places. Western soldiers were encouraged to take up soldiering against the empire's Muslim enemies; a recruiting bureau was even established in London. After the 1071 Battle of Manzikert, the sense of Byzantine distress increased and Pope Gregory VII suggested that he himself would ride to the rescue at the head of an army, claiming Christians were being "slaughtered like cattle". In the 1090s, the emperor Alexios I Komnenos () issued appeals for help against the Seljuks to western Europe. In 1091 his ambassadors told the king of Croatia Muslims were destroying sacred sites, while his letter to Robert I, Count of Flanders, deliberately described emotively the rape and maltreatment of Christians and the sacrilege of the Jerusalem shrines.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Pope Urban II, who convoked the First Crusade at the 1095 Council of Clermont, spoke of the defense of his co-religionists in the Levant and the protection of the Christian holy places, while ordinary crusaders are also known to have been motivated by the notion of persecution of Christians by Muslims. According to Fulcher of Chartres, the pope described his holy wars as being , while the pope's own letters indicate that the Muslims were barbarians fanatically persecuting Christians. The same idea, expressed in similar language, was evident in the writings of the bishop Gerald of Cahors, the abbot Guibert of Nogent, the priest Peter Tudebode, and the monk Robert of Reims. Outside the clergy, the "Gesta Francorum"'s author likewise described the Crusaders' opponents as persecuting barbarians, language not used for non-Muslim non-Christians. These authors, together with Albert of Aix and Baldric of Dol, all referred to the Arabs, Saracens, and Turks as . Peter the Venerable, William of Tyre, and "The Song of Roland" all took the view that Muslims were barbarians, and in calling for the Third Crusade, Pope Gregory VIII expounded on the Muslim threat from Saladin, accusing the Muslims of being "barbarians thirsting for the blood of Christians". In numerous instances Pope Innocent III called on the Catholics to defend the Holy Land in a holy war against the . Crusaders believed that by fighting off the Muslims, the persecution of Christians would abate, in accordance to their god's will, and this ideology – much promoted by the Crusader-era propagandists – was shared at every level of literate medieval western European society.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to Guibert of Nogent, a Catholic writer, the persecution suffered by the Eastern Christians and the attacks on the empire by the Turks were caused by the Christians' own doctrinal errors. He claimed that "Since they deviate from faith in the Trinity, so that hitherto they who are in filth become filthier, gradually they have come to the final degradation of having taken paganism upon themselves as the punishment for the sin proceeding from this, they have lost the soil of their native land to invading foreigners ...". Western Christians considered the Byzantine position in the filioque controversy to be heresy and akin to Arianism; Guibert claimed that heresy was an Eastern practice, almost unknown in the Latin West. Further blame was attached to the Eastern Christians by the crusaders for the Crusade of 1101's defeats in Asia Minor; Alexios Komnenos was accused of having collaborated with the Turks to attack the crusaders. The Norman prince Bohemond, citing the supposed transgressions of the emperor and the Eastern Church, which the pope had declared heretic and whose doctrinal errors Bohemond blamed on Alexios, seized the Muslim-held and formerly Byzantine city of Antioch (Antakya) for himself after the Siege of Antioch and subsequent Battle of Antioch left Kerbogha defeated, becoming Bohemond I of the Principality of Antioch. This contravention of the agreement to return conquered lands to the emperor's control, was justified in the crusaders' letter to Pope Urban II by the statement that the Greek Christians were heretics. Later, Bohemond took the opportunity of a crusade to attack Dyrrachium (Durrës), justifying his attack on the Christians in a letter to Pope Paschal II enumerating Alexios's faults and blaming him for the EastWest Schism and for having taken the imperial throne by force. Besides Guibert, other crusader writers to accuse Eastern Christians of sabotaging the crusade include Raymond of Aguilers, Albert of Aix, Baldric of Dol, and the author of the "Gesta Francorum". Alexios's departure from the crusade, followed by the departure of his envoy Tatikios, was seen as proof of the Eastern Christians' treachery. Though Fulcher of Chartres displayed a positive assessment of Eastern Christianity, he too accused the emperor of attacking Christian pilgrims, and of being a "tyrant".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: When First Crusade's Siege of Jerusalem ended successfully for the crusaders, the patriarchate of Jerusalem was vacant, and the crusaders elevated a Latin patriarch without reference to either the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox churches. An Orthodox candidate for the patriarchate was forced to flee to Constantinople. Only when Saladin's Siege of Jerusalem was concluded and the city was returned to Muslim control were the Orthodox Christians allowed to practise in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Crusade scholars continue to debate crusading, its causes, and its effects, so scholarship in this field repeatedly undergoes revision and reconsideration. Many early crusade scholars saw the source-histories as simple recitations of how events actually transpired, but by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scholarship was increasingly skeptical of that assumption. By 1935, Carl Erdmann published "Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens" (The Origin of the Idea of Crusade), changing the direction of crusader studies more than any other single work by focusing on the ideology of crusade. This ideology indicated the crusades were essentially defensive, which meant that soldiers were there to provide protection for pilgrims and fellow Christians in the East and to reclaim formerly Christian lands lost to Islamic expansion and forced conversion. This ideology remained throughout the Middle Ages despite the failure to finalize these goals. Constable adds that those "scholars who see the crusades as the beginning of European colonialism and expansionism would have surprised people at the time. Crusaders would not have denied some selfish aspects... but the predominant emphasis was on the defense and recovery of lands that had once been Christian and on the self-sacrifice rather than the self-seeking of the participants".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Historian Robert Irwin points out that “Christians living under Muslim rule suffered during the crusading period. They were suspected of acting as spies or fifth columns for the Franks and later the Mongols as well.” According to Coptic chronicles, Saladin had many Christians in Egypt crucified in revenge against his Crusader enemies.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In 1951, Steven Runciman, a Byzantinist who saw the crusades in terms of East-West relations, wrote in the conclusion of his crusade history, that the "Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance". Giles Constable says it is this view of the crusades that is most common among the populace. The problem with this view, according to political science professor Andrew R. Murphy, is that such concepts as intolerance were not part of eleventh century thinking about relationships for any of the various groups involved in or affected by the crusades, neither the Latins, the Byzantines, the Turks, the Baybars, nor others. Instead, concepts of tolerance began to grow during the crusades from efforts to define legal limits and the nature of co-existence, and these ideas grew among both Christians and Muslims.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: These wars produced multiple massacres perpetrated by both sides. According to Mary Jane Engh's definition of religious persecution, which identifies it as "the repressive action initiated or condoned by authorities against their own people on religious grounds," it is not possible to term these acts of war as religious persecution.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: After the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Fall of Acre, the last of the Crusaders' possessions in Asia in 1291, one of the main Christian military orders was suppressed from 1307 on trumped-up charges by the papacy. The Knights Templar were accused of sodomy, heresy, and corruption and the members were persecuted. In the crusades waged against non-Muslims, including Christians described as heretics, Catholic participants were promised the same spiritual rewards as were believed to be received by those who fought against Muslims in the Holy Land.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Pope Innocent III, with the king of France, Philip Augustus, began the military campaign known as the Albigensian Crusade between 1209 and 1226 against other Christians known as Cathars. Scholars disagree, using two distinct lines of reasoning, on whether the war that followed was religious persecution from the Pope or a land grab by King Philip. Historian Laurence W. Marvin says the Pope exercised "little real control over events in Occitania". Four years after the Massacre at Beziers in 1213, the Pope cancelled crusade indulgences and called for an end to the campaign. The campaign continued anyway. The Pope was not reversed until the Fourth Lateran council re-instituted crusade status two years later in 1215; afterwards, the Pope removed it yet again. The campaign continued in what Marvin refers to as "an increasingly murky moral atmosphere" for the next 16 years: there was technically no longer any crusade, no indulgences or dispensational rewards for fighting it, the papal legates exceeded their orders from the Pope, and the army occupied lands of nobles who were in the good graces of the church. The Treaty of Paris that ended the campaign left the Cathars still in existence, but awarded rule of Languedoc to Louis' descendants.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Northern (or Baltic crusades), went on intermittently from 1147 to 1316, and the primary trigger for these wars was not religious persecution but instead was the noble's desire for territorial expansion and material wealth in the form of land, furs, amber, slaves, and tribute. The princes wanted to subdue these pagan peoples and stop their raiding by conquering and converting them, but ultimately, Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt says, the princes were motivated by their desire to extend their power and prestige, and conversion was not always an element of their plans. When it was, conversion by these princes was almost always as a result of conquest, either by the direct use of force or indirectly when a leader converted and required it of his followers as well. "While the theologians maintained that conversion should be voluntary, there was a widespread pragmatic acceptance of conversion obtained through political pressure or military coercion." The Church's acceptance of this led some commentators of the time to endorse and approve it, something Christian thought had never done before.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: During the Ilkhanate, massacres were perpetrated by Hulagu Khan against the Assyrians, particularly in and around the ancient Assyrian city of Arbela (modern Erbil).


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Advocates of lay piety called for church reform and met with persecution from the Popes. John Wycliffe (1320–1384) urged the church to give up ownership of property, which produced much of the church's wealth, and to once again embrace poverty and simplicity. He urged the church to stop being subservient to the state and its politics. He denied papal authority. John Wycliff died of a stroke, but his followers, called "Lollards", were declared heretics. After the Oldcastle rebellion many were killed.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Jan Hus (1369–1415) accepted some of Wycliff's views and aligned with the Bohemian Reform movement which was also rooted in popular piety. In 1415, Hus was called to the Council of Constance where his ideas were condemned as heretical and he was handed over to the state and burned at the stake.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Fraticelli, who were also known as the "Little Brethren" or "Spiritual Franciscans", were dedicated followers of Saint Francis of Assisi. These Franciscans honored their vow of poverty and saw the wealth of the Church as a contributor to corruption and injustice when so many lived in poverty. They criticized the worldly behavior of many churchmen. Thus, the Brethren were declared heretical by John XXII (1316–1334) who was called "the banker of Avignon".


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The leader of these brethren, Bernard Délicieux (c. 1260–1270 1320) was well known as he had spent much of his life battling the Dominican-run inquisitions. He confessed, after torture and threat of excommunication, to the charge of opposing the inquisitions, and was defrocked and sentenced to life in prison, in chains, in solitary confinement, and to receive nothing but bread and water. The judges attempted to ameliorate the harshness of this sentence due to his age and frailty, but Pope John XXII countermanded them and delivered the friar to Inquisitor Jean de Beaune. Délicieux died shortly thereafter in early 1320.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Timur (Tamerlane) instigated large scale massacres of Christians in Mesopotamia, Persia, Asia Minor and Syria in the 14th century AD. Most of the victims were indigenous Assyrians and Armenians, members of the Assyrian Church of the East and Orthodox Churches, which led to the decimation of the hitherto majority Assyrian population in northern Mesopotamia and the abandonment of the ancient Assyrian city of Assur. Tamerlane virtually exterminated the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity but afterwards became largely confined to a small area now known as the Assyrian Triangle.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation provoked a number of persecutions of Christians by other Christians and the European wars of religion, including the Eighty Years' War, the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years' War, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Savoyard–Waldensian wars, and the Toggenburg War. There were false allegations of witchcraft and numerous witch trials in the early modern period.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Beginning in the late 17th century, Christianity was banned for at least a century in China by the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty after Pope Clement XI forbade Chinese Catholics from venerating their relatives or Confucius or the Buddha or Guanyin.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Boxer rebellion targeted foreign and Chinese Christians. Beginning in 1899, Boxers spread violence across Shandong and the North China Plain, attacking or murdering Christian missionaries and Chinese Christians. They decided the "primary devils" were the Christian missionaries, and the "secondary devils" were the Chinese converts to Christianity. Both had to recant or be driven out or killed. Boxers burned Christian churches, killed Chinese Christians and intimidated Chinese officials who stood in their way. Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic missionaries and their Chinese parishioners were massacred throughout northern China, some by Boxers and others by government troops and authorities. Yuxian implemented a brutal anti-foreign and anti-Christian policy. The Baptist Missionary Society, based in England, opened its mission in Shanxi in 1877. In 1900 all its missionaries there were killed, along with all 120 converts. By the summer's end, more foreigners and as many as 2,000 Chinese Christians had been put to death in the province. Journalist and historical writer Nat Brandt has called the massacre of Christians in Shanxi "the greatest single tragedy in the history of Christian evangelicalism." During the Boxer Rebellion as a whole, a total of 136 Protestant missionaries and 53 children were killed, and 47 Catholic priests and nuns, 30,000 Chinese Catholics, 2,000 Chinese Protestants, and 200 to 400 of the 700 Russian Orthodox Christians in Beijing were estimated to have been killed. Collectively, the Protestant dead were called the China Martyrs of 1900.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: During the Northern Expedition, the Kuomintang incited anti-foreign, anti-Western sentiment. Portraits of Sun Yat-sen replaced the crucifix in several churches, KMT posters proclaimed "Jesus Christ is dead. Why not worship something alive such as Nationalism?" Foreign missionaries were attacked and anti-foreign riots broke out. In 1926, Muslim General Bai Chongxi attempted to drive out foreigners in Guangxi, attacking American, European, and other foreigners and missionaries, and generally making the province unsafe for foreigners. Westerners fled from the province, and some Chinese Christians were also attacked as imperialist agents.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: From 1894 to 1938, there were many Uighur Muslim converts to Christianity. They were killed, tortured and jailed. Christian missionaries were expelled.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution is a conventional description of a campaign, conducted by various Robespierre-era governments of France beginning with the start of the French Revolution in 1789, to eliminate any symbol that might be associated with the past, especially the monarchy.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The climax was reached with the celebration of the Goddess "Reason" in Notre-Dame de Paris, the Parisian cathedral, on 10 November.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Under threat of death, imprisonment, military conscription or loss of income, about 20,000 constitutional priests were forced to abdicate or hand over their letters of ordination and 6,000 – 9,000 were coerced to marry, many ceasing their ministerial duties. Some of those who abdicated covertly ministered to the people. By the end of the decade, approximately 30,000 priests were forced to leave France, and thousands who did not leave were executed. Most of France was left without the services of a priest, deprived of the sacraments and any nonjuring priest faced the guillotine or deportation to French Guiana.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The March 1793 conscription requiring Vendeans to fill their district's quota of 300,000 enraged the populace, who took up arms as "The Catholic Army", "Royal" being added later, and fought for "above all the reopening of their parish churches with their former priests."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: With these massacres came formal orders for forced evacuation; also, a 'scorched earth' policy was initiated: farms were destroyed, crops and forests burned and villages razed. There were many reported atrocities and a campaign of mass killing universally targeted at residents of the Vendée regardless of combatant status, political affiliation, age or gender. By July 1796, the estimated Vendean dead numbered between 117,000 and 500,000, out of a population of around 800,000.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Tokugawa Ieyasu assumed control over Japan in 1600. Like Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he disliked Christian activities in Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate finally decided to ban Catholicism in 1614, and in the mid-17th century it demanded the expulsion of all European missionaries and the execution of all converts. This marked the end of open Christianity in Japan. The Shimabara Rebellion, led by a young Japanese Christian boy named Amakusa Shirō Tokisada, took place in 1637. After the Hara Castle fell, the shogunate's forces beheaded an estimated 37,000 rebels and sympathizers. Amakusa Shirō's severed head was taken to Nagasaki for public display, and the entire complex at Hara Castle was burned to the ground and buried together with the bodies of all the dead.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Many of the Christians in Japan continued for two centuries to maintain their religion as Kakure Kirishitan, or hidden Christians, without any priests or pastors. Some of those who were killed for their Faith are venerated as the Martyrs of Japan.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Christianity was later allowed during the Meiji era. The Meiji Constitution of 1890 introduced separation of church and state and permitted freedom of religion.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Muslim Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, took action against the Mangalorean Catholic community from Mangalore and the South Canara district on the southwestern coast of India. Tipu was widely reputed to be anti-Christian. He took Mangalorean Catholics into captivity at Seringapatam on 24 February 1784 and released them on 4 May 1799.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Soon after the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784, Tipu gained control of Canara. He issued orders to seize the Christians in Canara, confiscate their estates, and deport them to Seringapatam, the capital of his empire, through the Jamalabad fort route. There were no priests among the captives. Together with Fr. Miranda, all the 21 arrested priests were issued orders of expulsion to Goa, fined Rs 2 lakhs, and threatened death by hanging if they ever returned. Tipu ordered the destruction of 27 Catholic churches.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: According to Thomas Munro, a Scottish soldier and the first collector of Canara, around 60,000 of them, nearly 92 percent of the entire Mangalorean Catholic community, were captured. 7,000 escaped. Observer Francis Buchanan reports that 70,000 were captured, from a population of 80,000, with 10,000 escaping. They were forced to climb nearly through the jungles of the Western Ghat mountain ranges. It was from Mangalore to Seringapatam, and the journey took six weeks. According to British Government records, 20,000  of them died on the march to Seringapatam. According to James Scurry, a British officer, who was held captive along with Mangalorean Catholics, 30,000 of them were forcibly converted to Islam. The young women and girls were forcibly made wives of the Muslims living there and later distributed and sold in prostitution. The young men who offered resistance were disfigured by cutting their noses, upper lips, and ears. According to Mr. Silva of Gangolim, a survivor of the captivity, if a person who had escaped from Seringapatam was found, the punishment under the orders of Tipu was the cutting off of the ears, nose, the feet and one hand.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: The Archbishop of Goa wrote in 1800, "It is notoriously known in all Asia and all other parts of the globe of the oppression and sufferings experienced by the Christians in the Dominion of the King of Kanara, during the usurpation of that country by Tipu Sultan from an implacable hatred he had against them who professed Christianity."


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Tipu Sultan's invasion of the Malabar Coast had an adverse impact on the Saint Thomas Christian community of the Malabar coast. Many churches in Malabar and Cochin were damaged. The old Syrian Nasrani seminary at Angamaly which had been the center of Catholic religious education for several centuries was razed to the ground by Tipu's soldiers. Many centuries-old religious manuscripts were lost forever. The church was later relocated to Kottayam where it still exists to this date. The Mor Sabor church at Akaparambu and the Martha Mariam Church attached to the seminary were destroyed as well. Tipu's army set fire to the church at Palayoor and attacked the Ollur Church in 1790. Furthernmore, the Arthat church and the Ambazhakkad seminary was also destroyed. Over the course of this invasion, many Saint Thomas Christians were killed or forcibly converted to Islam. Most of the coconut, arecanut, pepper and cashew plantations held by the Saint Thomas Christian farmers were also indiscriminately destroyed by the invading army. As a result, when Tipu's army invaded Guruvayur and adjacent areas, the Syrian Christian community fled Calicut and small towns like Arthat to new centres like Kunnamkulam, Chalakudi, Ennakadu, Cheppadu, Kannankode, Mavelikkara, etc. where there were already Christians. They were given refuge by Sakthan Tamburan, the ruler of Cochin and Karthika Thirunal, the ruler of Travancore, who gave them lands, plantations and encouraged their businesses. Colonel Macqulay, the British resident of Travancore also helped them.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: Tipu's persecution of Christians also extended to captured British soldiers. For instance, there were a significant amount of forced conversions of British captives between 1780 and 1784. Following their disastrous defeat at the battle of Pollilur, 7,000 British men along with an unknown number of women were held captive by Tipu in the fortress of Seringapatnam. Of these, over 300 were circumcised and given Muslim names and clothes, and several British regimental drummer boys were made to wear "ghagra cholis" and entertain the court as "nautch" girls or dancing girls. After the 10-year-long captivity ended, James Scurry, one of those prisoners, recounted that he had forgotten how to sit in a chair and use a knife and fork. His English was broken and stilted, having lost all his vernacular idiom. His skin had darkened to the swarthy complexion of negroes, and moreover, he had developed an aversion to wearing European clothes.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: During the surrender of the Mangalore fort which was delivered in an armistice by the British and their subsequent withdrawal, all the Mestiços (Luso-Indians and Anglo-Indians) and remaining non-British foreigners were killed, together with 5,600 Mangalorean Catholics. Those condemned by Tipu Sultan for treachery were hanged instantly, the gibbets being weighed down by the number of bodies they carried. The Netravati River was so putrid with the stench of dying bodies, that the local residents were forced to leave their riverside homes.


title: Persecution of Christians

text: In accordance with the traditional custom at the time, Sultan Mehmed II allowed his troops and his entourage three full days of unbridled pillage and looting in the city shortly after it was captured. Once the three days passed, he would then claim its remaining contents for himself. However, by the end of the first day, he proclaimed that the looting should cease as he felt profound sadness when he toured the looted and enslaved city. Hagia Sophia was not exempted from the pillage and looting and specifically became its focal point as the invaders believed it to contain the greatest treasures and valuables of the city. Shortly after the defence of the Walls of Constantinople collapsed and the Ottoman troops entered the city victoriously, the pillagers and looters made their way to the Hagia Sophia and battered down its doors before storming in.