The Great Persecution: A Historical Re-Examination by Min Seok Shin

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Great Persecution: A Historical Re-Examination by Min Seok Shin H. A. Drake Min Seok Shin The Great Persecution: A Historical Re-Examination Studia Antica Australiensis 8 Turnhout: Brepols, 2019 Pp. xii + 280. €55.00. Given how central the Great Persecution of 303–313 was to the history of the fourth century and the Christian church, and the number of studies that have been devoted to it over the years, it comes as something of a surprise to read that this is the first book-length treatment by a single author in almost a century. So, the immediate question is, was it worth it? The immediate answer, happily, is yes. Shin has meticulously assembled all the relevant evidence needed to understand Diocletian’s decision to launch this crucial policy, its impact, and the reason it failed. Additionally, he has put many of his results, including the names, dates, and places of martyrdoms, and the sequence of the persecuting edicts and their contents, into tabular form. The result is a book that will be useful to novices and more advanced scholars alike. Shin divides his study into three parts. The first, and longest, deals with antecedents to the first persecuting edict in 303. Despite, or maybe because of, a growing convergence with pagan thought at the philosophical level, Christians came to be seen as a threat once the emperor Gallienus loosened restrictions in 260. Shin cautions against regarding this action as the equivalent of legalization, and he supports this argument by looking at the vulnerability of Christians serving in the army, as well as evidence for Christians serving in the imperial household. Diocletian’s edict against the Manichees provides insight into his state of mind and, along with his creation of the Jovian and Herculian dynasties, helps explain his reaction when priests told him Christians were responsible for failed [End Page 447] divinations. Scholars have been preoccupied with dating these events and weighing their relative importance, and Shin provides a balanced assessment of the results. The second part systematically goes through the reasons for each of Diocletian’s edicts and the ensuing edicts issued by Maximinus Daia. Although all of this information will be familiar to specialists, Shin adds two features to his study: (1) he uses another of Diocletian’s actions, his famous Edict on Prices, to gauge the value of church goods seized during the persecution, and (2) he classifies known martyrdoms by diocese and date in order to chart the way the edicts were implemented in different parts of the empire. Finally, in a relatively brief third part, Shin carries the story down to Constantine’s defeat of the eastern emperor Licinius in 324, listing official actions taken by each of the emperors in turn. Shin broadens the horizon of his study by a generous use of excursus—everything from dye-making (44) to imperial birthdays (79) to the history of book-burning (109). These may not be strictly necessary, but neither are they irrelevant. A good example is Shin’s treatment of one Aurelius Gaius (34–38). Gaius, a Phrygian, comes up as part of a longer discussion of the spread of Christianity. Shin first presents Gaius’s lengthy tombstone in Greek with an English translation. He then turns to the military appointments that Gaius listed and gives the history of each of them, remarking on the geographical extent of Gaius’s travels (during the course of which we learn that “India” does not refer to the Asian country, but a territory in the south of Egypt). The ranks in which Gaius served leads to a discussion of legionary tactics from Polybius in the second century b.c.e. to Vegetius in the fourth century c.e., which ends with scholarship on legionary titles. None of this is strictly necessary, but it lightens the load for the reader while providing the kinds of tidbits one expects from a genial tour guide, which Shin surely is. When dealing with the issues connected to study of the Great Persecution, Shin engages with other scholars and summarizes their conclusions before presenting his own. There are occasional bouts of circular reasoning (on whether Armenian king Tiridates III issued...