January 19 - Severus ... Snape?

January 19 – Severus … Snape?

If Christians thought they had it bad before, it was about to get much worse. Septimius Severus was the emperor and faced constant threats from outside his borders and civil war from within his empire. He decided that there needed to be religious harmony. So … he proposed that every one of his subjects would worship Sol Invictus – the Unconquered Sun. All gods would be accepted as long as they acknowledged that the Sun reigned over all.

Hmmm … guess who was stubborn about that? Yup … Jews and Christians. So, he outlawed, under penalty of death, all conversions to Christianity and Judaism. This was in addition to the earlier legislation of Trajan. 202 AD? Many, many, many new converts and existing Christians all over the Empire were executed.

In 203, Perpetua, a young, fairly wealthy woman was arrested with her slaves – Felicitas and Revocatus and two young men named Saturninus and Secundulus. She was a young mother and her father begged her to abandon her faith. Her answer was that, just as everything has a name and it is useless to try to give it a different name, she had the name of Christian, and this could not be changed (a rose by any other name?).

Felicitas was pregnant when she was arrested. Her greatest fear was that her life would be spared for that reason, or that her martyrdom would be postponed and she wouldn’t be able to join her friends. In her eighth month, she gave birth to a child who was adopted by another Christian woman.

When the jailers heard her moan during childbirth, they asked how she expected to face the beasts in the arena. Her response was, “Now my sufferings are only mine. But when I face the beasts, there will be another who will live in me, and will suffer for me since I shall be suffering for him.”

The three males were the first to be put in the arena. When the women came out, they were told they would be attacked by a ferocious cow. It didn’t end up killing them. They stood in the middle of the arena, bid each other farewell and died by the sword.

Not long after, persecutions slowed. For the first half of this century, Christianity grew rapidly. But, this was the calm before the storm.