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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. Early Christians were persecuted at the hands of both Jews, from whose religion Christianity arose, and the Romans who controlled many of the early ...
Dirk Willems etching from Martyrs Mirror "Death of Cranmer", from the 1887 Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos, 1523, burned at the stake, early Lutheran martyrs; Jan de Bakker, 1525, burned at the stake; Martyrs of Tlaxcala, 1527-1529; Felix Manz, 1527; Patrick Hamilton, 1528, burned at the stake, early Lutheran martyr ...
Christians were persecuted by local authorities on an intermittent and ad hoc basis. In addition, there were several periods of empire-wide persecution which were directed from the seat of government in Rome. Christians were the targets of persecution because they refused to worship the Roman gods or to pay homage to the emperor as divine.
The persecution of Christians in the New Testament is an important part of the Early Christian narrative which depicts the early church as being persecuted for their heterodox beliefs by a Jewish establishment in the Roman province of Judea.
A. N. Sherwin-White records that serious discussion of the reasons for Roman persecution of Christians began in 1890 when it produced "20 years of controversy" and three main opinions: first, there was the theory held by most French and Belgian scholars that "there was a general enactment, precisely formulated and valid for the whole empire, which forbade the practice of the Christian religion.
The First Martyrs of the Church of Rome were Christians martyred in the city of Rome during Nero's persecution in 64. The event is recorded by both Tacitus and Pope Clement I , among others. They are celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church as an optional memorial on 30 June.
The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom is a 2013 book by Candida Moss, an award-winning historian and professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to the writing of this book Moss had published two other works on early Christian martyrdom.
The reign of the emperor Diocletian (284−305) marked the final widespread persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. The most intense period of violence came after Diocletian issued an edict in 303 more strictly enforcing adherence to the traditional religious practices of Rome in conjunction with the Imperial cult.