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 II

HADRIAN'S POLICY TOWARDS CHRISTIANITY IN HIS CLOSING YEARS

IN the last years of Hadrian and during the reigns of Pius and Marcus must be dated not a few of the accounts of early martyrs. The "Acts" which contain these recitals, it is true, are for the most part of doubtful authority.[1] They contain details which are clearly not historical, and critical investigation generally pronounces them untrustworthy. But the studies of later years, especially in the lore of the catacombs, show us that even for the more improbable and precarious records, evidently edited and enlarged at a date considerably later than the events which they purport to chronicle, there is evidently a basis of truth; and it is clear that the men and women whose sufferings and brave deaths for the faith are told in the "Acts," for the most part were historical persons.

But we possess a much more dependable foundation for our statement that the last years of Hadrian and the prolonged reigns of Hadrian's two successors, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Antoninus, were periods of bitter persecution for the Christian sect in Rome and in the provinces; that the years which elapsed between A.D. 135 and A.D. 180 were years of a persecution graver and more sustained than anything endured previously by the followers of Jesus.

There has come down to us a group of contemporary Christian writings,[2] the authenticity of which no critic friendly

[Footnote]1 A certain number of them, however, are by all responsible critics received as absolutely genuine, such as: The Letters relating the Martyrdom of Polycarp; the recital of the sufferings and death of the martyrs of Lyons; the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs; and a few years later the passion of S. Perpetua and of her companions in suffering.[Footnote]

[Footnote]2 Extracts from them are given on pp. 177-191.[Footnote]