**ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS**
These are the insults and calumnies hurled by Jews and pagans against the followers of the religion of Jesus Christ in the first three centuries, which served as a pretext for the Roman State’s persecutory policy against them.
The Jews, who had persecuted and crucified Jesus, showed themselves from the outset bitter enemies of His disciples. The principal accusations they leveled against the Christians can be inferred from the *Dialogue of St. Justin with the Jew Trypho*, according to which the Jews reproached the Christians for: a) not observing the Law, that is, not circumcising themselves and not observing festivals and the Sabbath (Dial., 10); b) professing a false doctrine, namely, that they denied the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Dial., 11); c) placing their hope in a crucified man (Dial., 10), considering him the promised Messiah, whereas the Jews held that he had not yet been born or was living in hiding, since Elijah had not yet returned to prepare the way for him, anoint him, and make him known to all (Dial., 8).
Jewish hostility soon found an echo in the hostile attitude and persecution of the pagans toward Christianity.
In the early period, when the religion of Christ was considered by pagans a sect of Judaism, the Christians, in Tertullian’s words
*Accusations Against the Christians* – Blasphemous caricature against Christians. Graffito from the Paedagogium of the Palatine (3rd century) – Rome, National Museum of the Baths.
(Apologeticum, 21), lived “quasi sub umbraculo insignissimae religionis certe licitae,” but they were not spared the unfriendly treatment that public opinion often reserved for Judaism. This opinion, widespread among anti-Semitic Alexandrians and Egyptians and later passed into Greek and Latin literature, not only ridiculed certain Jewish practices, such as circumcision, Sabbath rest, and abstinence from unclean meats, but openly accused the Jews of: a) venerating the image of an ass, to which they sacrificed a ram or an ox (Tacitus, *Hist.*, V, 4); b) being atheists, because they did not worship the gods but despised them (Josephus, *Contra Apionem*, II, 6; Tacitus, *Hist.*, V, 5; Pliny, *Natural History*, XIII, 4, 46); c) hating the human race and nurturing “adversus omnes alios homines hostile odium” (Tacitus, *Hist.*, V, 5).
When the distinction between Christianity and Judaism became clear—officially during Nero’s persecution (64–68)—the Christians incurred the hostility of both the common people and the educated pagans.
The common people accused them of atheism, cannibalism, and incest: “Three crimes afflict us,” writes Athenagoras, *Legatio pro Christianis*, 3, “atheism, Thyestean feasts, and Oedipal intercourse.”
The charge of atheism, already attributed to the Jews, was also imputed to the Christians during Domitian’s persecution. Dio Cassius (*Hist. Rom.*, LXVII, 14) reports that Flavius Clemens, Flavia Domitilla, and many others were condemned for the crime of atheism. During the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (cf. Eusebius, *Historia ecclesiastica*, IV, 15), the crowd present shouted “Down with the atheists,” and the judge demanded that the martyr repeat the cry. St. Justin (*First Apology*, 6) writes: “We are called atheists,” and refers to the Cynic philosopher Crescens (*First Apology*, 3): “... publicly testifies... that Christians are atheists and impious, to win the favor of the rabble.”
In 177, the martyr Vettius Epagathus, speaking on behalf of the other martyrs of Lyons, openly demonstrated that among Christians there was neither atheism nor impiety (cf. Eusebius, *Historia ecclesiastica*, V, 1). Athenagoras (*Legatio pro Christianis*, 13–14) affirms that the pagans “accuse us of being atheists,” and Minucius Felix (*Octavius*, VIII, 2) has the pagan Caecilius Natalis say that Christians are worse than Diagoras, “to whom antiquity gave the surname *atheus*.” Finally, Tertullian (*Apologeticum*, 24, 27) recalls that the Christians were charged with the “crimen lesae romanae religionis,” “crimen irreligionis,” “crimen lesae divinitatis,” also designated by the term “sacrilege” (*Apol.*, 10).
The charge of cannibalism, commonly called “Thyestean feasts” (Athenagoras, *Legatio pro Christianis*, 3; Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons, in Eusebius, *Historia ecclesiastica*, V, 1) and sometimes also “Mysteries of Saturn” (St. Justin, *Second Apology*, 12) or “infanticide” (Minucius Felix, *Octavius*, IX, 5; XXVIII, 2; Tertullian, *Apol.*, 2, 4, 9), is first mentioned indirectly in the *Dialogue with Trypho*, 10, where St. Justin asks his interlocutor: “whether you too have received this opinion about us, that we eat human flesh.” From the testimonies of the Apologists of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, it appears that this accusation was leveled against Christians almost everywhere: in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Africa, and Italy. There is no doubt that the charge of cannibalism against Christians is connected with the Eucharistic practice of eating the flesh of the divine Lamb.
The charge of incest or Oedipal unions was imputed to Christians in much the same places as the charge of cannibalism (St. Justin, *First Apology*, 26; *Dial.*, 10; Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons, in Eusebius, *Historia ecclesiastica*, V, 1; Athenagoras, *Legatio*, 3 and 31; Theophilus of Antioch, *Ad Autolycum*, III, 4; *Epistle to Diognetus*, V, 7; Minucius Felix, *Octavius*, IX, 6–7; XXXI, 1; Tertullian, *Apol.* 4, 9).
Alongside these three accusations, there were others of lesser importance and less widespread. These include, for example: the charge of onolatry (Minucius Felix, *Octavius*, IX, 3; XXVIII, 7; Tertullian, *Ad nationes*, I, 11, 14; *Apol.* 16; Tacitus is said to have accused the Christians of this; Palatine Graffito); the charge of worshipping the “genitalia sacerdotis” (Minucius Felix, *Octavius*, IX, 4; XXVIII, 10).
In Minucius Felix’s *Octavius* (IX, 3–7), the pagan Caecilius Natalis sets forth the last four accusations we have enumerated against the Christians: “I hear that they (Christians) worship the head of a most shameful beast, an ass, consecrated by some silly persuasion... Others say that they honor and worship, as if a parent, the very private parts of their priest... Then there is the story, as infamous as it is well known, of their initiation rites. A baby, covered in meal to deceive the unwary, is placed before one who is to be initiated into their mysteries. This baby is then killed by the initiate, who, while striking what seems to be harmless blows, inflicts unseen and secret wounds. Oh, horror! They greedily lap up his blood, eagerly divide his limbs, and by this victim they bind themselves in fellowship, and by this consciousness of crime they pledge themselves to mutual silence! These rites are more abominable than any sacrilege. And their feasts are well known; everyone talks about them, even our own speaker from Cirta attests to it in his oration. On a fixed day they gather for a solemn banquet with all their children, sisters, mothers—people of every sex and age. After many courses, when the feast has grown heated and the frenzy of incestuous lust has blazed forth, a dog, tied to a lampstand, is provoked by the throw of a morsel beyond the line by which it is bound to leap and rush forward. Thus, with the light overturned and extinguished, in shameless darkness they are enveloped in the snares of unholy desire, and though not all may take part in the act, they are all equally guilty of incest in intention, since all desire whatever may happen in the act of each.”
The accusation of sun-worship, mentioned by Tertullian (Apol. 16) and Minucius Felix (Octavius, XXVIII, 10), is connected with the position Christians assumed during prayer, facing toward the East.
St. Justin repeatedly attributes to the Jews the responsibility for inventing and spreading the calumnies that pagans attributed to Christians: “...you sent wicked men, then (after the resurrection and ascension of Christ) from Jerusalem into the whole world, saying that an impious heresy of Christians had arisen, and spreading abroad those charges which are made against us by all those who do not know us. Thus you are not only the cause of injustice to yourselves, but to all men absolutely...” (Dialogue with Trypho, 17). The same claim is made by Origen, especially regarding the accusations of cannibalism and incest (Contra Celsum, VI, 27).
Christians were also accused of magic—of raising winds and storms, of summoning famine and pestilence, and of exercising malignant influence over sacrifices. Tertullian, echoing popular sentiment that presented Christians as the cause of all evils, wrote (Apol., 40): “If the Tiber rises to the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky stands still, if the earth moves, if there is famine or plague, immediately it is shouted: ‘Christians to the lion!’” Lactantius (De mortibus persecutorum, 10) relates that the persecution of Diocletian was occasioned by the malignant influence through which Christian officials allegedly prevented the response that the emperor awaited from the augury practiced at Antioch after the offering of sacrifice. At least this was the explanation given to Diocletian by the chief of the haruspices, a man named Tagi. Often the vain and terrifying fantasies spread by Christians were emphasized (Minucius Felix, Octavius, V, 6 sq.).
The educated class of the pagan world did not treat Christians any better than the common people, whose prejudices they did not hesitate to adopt when called upon to render judgment.
Pliny the Younger (d. 113) judged Christianity to be a “prava et immodica superstitio” (Epist., X, 96, 8); Tacitus (d. 119) called it a “exitialis superstitio” (Annales, XV, 44); Suetonius (d. 160) a “nova ac malefica superstitio” (Vita Neronis, 16, 2).
The Cynic philosopher Crescens (fl. c. 160), an opponent of St. Justin, in his διατριβαι publicly repeated against Christians the accusation of atheism and impiety (St. Justin, II Apol., 3).
Fronto of Cirta (d. c. 170), tutor to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, in a speech delivered either in court or in the Senate, repeated against Christians the vulgar calumnies of cannibalism and incest (Minucius Felix, Octavius, IX, 6; XXXI, 2). Lucian of Samosata (d. 180), in De morte Peregrini, wishing to satirize Cynic philosophers in general and his contemporary Theagenes in particular, chose as the protagonist of his dialogue Proteus Peregrinus, who had been a Christian, then an Egyptian ascetic, and finally a Cynic philosopher and suicide. In this way he succeeded in casting ridicule upon Christians for their heroic contempt of torments and even of death.
Celsus (d. c. 180) wrote in 175 a major refutation of Christianity, Ἀληθῶς λόγος, now lost, but which Origen, in refuting it about 248, preserved almost half of in his own text and also provided its entire outline. According to this, the work consisted of four parts: in the first, a Jew refuted the Christians’ faith in the promised and come Messiah; in the second, a pagan criticized the messianism of the Jewish people; in the third, the same pagan polemicized against Christianity, denying the incarnation of the Word as contrary to Plato’s theory of divine transcendence, and regarding Jesus as a mere man who deserved the condemnation of crucifixion and the betrayal of his own disciples as “omni peccato nequiores”; in the fourth, Celsus defended the state religion as the principal source of the greatness of the Roman Empire and urged Christians to abandon their faith and return to the religion of their fathers.
A century after Celsus, about 268, Porphyry took up the struggle against Christianity with a major work in fifteen books, κατά χριστιανών. In its details it often coincides with Celsus, from whom it differs in its polemical methods and in the lively concern for the fate of the Roman Empire, concerns alien to Porphyry’s mind or at least leaving him indifferent. Judging from the surviving fragments of the work, preserved in the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes, Porphyry sees in Christianity nothing but obscurity, inconsistency, illogicality, and falsehood. For him, a decisive struggle is underway between ancient civilization, represented by tradition and law, and the new, shameless, and barbarous civilization represented by Christianity, which threatens its very existence. In this struggle he threw himself wholeheartedly on the side of the former.
During the persecutions of Diocletian, some pagan writers joined in that great religious war. Lactantius (Institutiones divinae, V, 7) recalls a philosopher, unnamed, who had “vomited” three books against the “Christian name,” with only mediocre success. By contrast, he judges dangerous the libellus of a judge who is unanimously identified as Sossianus Hierocles, governor of Lower Egypt. Internal elements of the libellus, entitled λόγος Φιλαλήθης, suggest that its author knew Porphyry’s great work and skillfully made use of II.
Not a few philosophers, sophists, rhetoricians, and grammarians, even after the official recognition of Christianity by the Roman state, persisted obstinately in the schools in the veneration of ancient literature and the old religion, thus contributing to its persistence among the intellectual class.
Once the Roman state clearly distinguished Christianity from Judaism and, in the Christian program, saw the destruction of paganism—that is, the official religion of the Empire (cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius, VIII, 1: “...it has brought religion... to dissolve a shameful...”)—it began against Christians that bloody struggle which runs from Nero to Constantine, from 64 to 313, and from which Christianity emerged victorious (v. PERSECUZIONI CONTRO I CRISTIANI). In the trials of Christ’s followers there emerged nearly all the accusations that the people and the educated class attributed to them, but the one on which the Roman state based its repressive action—denying Christianity the right to exist—was always the accusation of atheism. The refusal to sacrifice to the statues of the gods and of the emperor was the sole point of contention between state and Church, and it placed them irreconcilably at odds. Tertullian (Apol., 10) wrote: “We are charged with sacrilege and treason; this is the main charge, indeed the whole of it,” and consequently Christian apologists rightly affirmed that the “name itself” was punished with death, since experience showed that true followers of Christ would never sacrifice: “quorum nihil posse cogit dicuntur qui sunt revera Christiani” (Pliny, Ep., X, 96, 5).
The sad impression left by the foregoing accusations upon the minds of all contemporaries is confirmed by the Apologies that, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, were addressed by Christian writers to emperors they deemed more amenable, or to pagans in general, or to private individuals. All were aimed at dispelling that bad impression, whether by describing the pure and charitable life of Christians and their perfect loyalty, or by turning the accusation back upon the pagan world with just and severe criticism.