Decius Edicts Roman Sacrifice: Persecution of Christians Begins

250 AD: Every person in the Roman Empire had to burn incense to the gods. Except Jews, who had special permission. Everyone else got a certificate proving they'd sacrificed. No certificate, no citizenship. No buying or selling in markets. Emperor Decius wanted religious unity. He got the opposite. Christians refused. They went underground. Some bought fake certificates. Others fled to the desert. Thousands died in the first empire-wide persecution. The certificates were called libelli. Archaeologists still find them. Fragments of papyrus that marked the moment Christianity became illegal. The empire that would eventually bow to Christ first tried to eliminate it entirely. Decius's edict was not specifically anti-Christian. It required every inhabitant of the empire, except Jews who had a longstanding exemption, to perform a sacrifice before local magistrates, pour a libation, and eat sacrificial meat. Those who complied received a signed certificate, the libellus, witnessed by officials. The edict was designed to restore traditional Roman religious practice during a period of military crisis, plague, and political instability. But Christians, whose theology prohibited worshiping other gods, faced an impossible choice: comply and commit apostasy, or refuse and face imprisonment, torture, or execution. The responses varied dramatically. Pope Fabian was arrested and died in prison. Bishop Cyprian of Carthage fled into hiding. Many ordinary Christians, called the lapsi or "lapsed," obtained certificates through sacrifice, through bribes, or through sympathetic magistrates who issued blank forms. The persecution lasted roughly eighteen months before Decius was killed in battle against the Goths in 251 AD, and his successor Gallus quietly dropped the policy. But the aftermath tore the Church apart: the question of how to readmit Christians who had obtained certificates consumed ecclesiastical debates for decades and produced the Novatianist schism.