PERSECUTION

PERSECUTION. From its origins until the conversion of Constantine (q.v.), the Christian Church was an illegal organization, a religio illicita or “unlicensed religion,” in the eyes of Roman law and therefore subject to state suppression. Outside the boundaries of the Empire, under Persian rule or in neighboring lands such as Armenia, Georgia, Ethiopia, and far-off India (qq.v.), Christianity either suffered initially until it became the dominant faith, as in Armenia, or else continued to live with persecution. Thus the cult of the martyr (q.v.), in continuity with the Jewish suffering for the Torah revealed in the Maccabean revolt (see 2Macc 7) and adapted to Christian worship of the Crucified Lord, was part of Christian psychology from the very beginning. Subsequent suffering under the rule of Islam (q.v.), whether the Arab Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire (q.v.), and later under Soviet oppression, have continued to reinforce the martyric ideal. Tertullian (q.v.) summed it up in an aphorism whose force is apparent in post-Soviet Russia: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”