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Rh searches of the police; the catacombs were dug out at great expense by communities with large resources at their disposal, under land belonging generally to powerful families which protected the new cult. Nobody has any doubt now that before the end of the first century Christianity had its followers among the Roman aristocracy; "in the very ancient catacomb of Priscilla … has been found the family vault in which was buried from the first to the fourth century the Christian line of the Acilii." It seems also that the old belief that the number of the martyrdoms was very great must be abandoned.

Renan still asserted that the literature of martyrdom should be taken seriously. "The details of the Acts of the Martyrs," he said, "may be false for the most part; the dreadful picture which they unroll before us was nevertheless a reality. The true nature of this terrible struggle has often been misconceived, but its seriousness has not been exaggerated." The researches of Harnack lead to quite another conclusion: the language of the Christian authors was entirely disproportionate to the actual importance of the persecutions; there were very few martyrs before the middle of the third century. Tertullian is the writer who has most strongly indicated the horror which the new religion felt for its persecutors, and yet here is what Harnack says: "If, with the help of the works of Tertullian, we consider Carthage and Northern Africa we shall find that before the year 180 there was in those regions no case of martyrdom, and that from that year to the death of Tertullian (after 220), and adding Numidia and the Mauritanias, scarcely more than two dozen could be counted." It must be remembered that at that time there was in Africa a rather large number of Montanists, who extolled the glory of martyrdom,