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The persecution in Lyon in AD 177 was an outbreak of persecution of Christians in Lugdunum, Roman Gaul (present-day Lyon, France), during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180), recorded in a contemporary letter preserved in Eusebius 's Ecclesiastical History , book 5, chapter 1, which was written 150 years later in Palestine.
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.
Marcus Aurelius died on 17 March of the year in question, and persecution ceased sometime after the accession of his son Commodus. A group of sufferers called the Madaurian martyrs seems to belong to the same period; in the correspondence of St Augustine , Namphamo, one of their number, is spoken of as an "archimartyr," which appears to mean a ...
The number and severity of persecutions of Christians in various locations of the empire seemingly increased during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The extent to which Marcus Aurelius himself directed, encouraged, or was aware of these persecutions is unclear and much debated by historians. [3]
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 ...
The major sources depicting the life and rule of Marcus Aurelius are patchy and frequently unreliable. The most important group of sources, the biographies contained in the Historia Augusta, claimed to be written by a group of authors at the turn of the 4th century AD, but it is believed they were in fact written by a single author (referred to here as 'the biographer') from about 395. [4]
Lucius Aurelius Commodus Caesar (age 15) and Marcus Peducaeus Plautius Quintillus become Roman Consuls. Commodus is given the title Augustus, and is made co-emperor, with the same status as his father, Marcus Aurelius. A systematic persecution of Christians begins in Rome; the followers take refuge in the catacombs.
The Historia Augusta should be used with extreme caution and supplemented with information from other sources: the works of Aurelius Victor, Pseudo-Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Orosius, Joannes Zonaras, and Zosimus, as well as coins and inscriptions. [2] The future emperor Marcus Aurelius Claudius was born on 10 May 214. [3]
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