Decius is one of the more well-known rulers of the Crisis of the Third Century (235-284 AD), the period in which the Roman state nearly disintegrated amid civil war, external invasions, and rampant inflation. His short reign of only two years, standard in this chaotic era of coups and wars, is best remembered for his short-lived (and short-sighted, as we shall see) persecution of the Christians. The first persecution of the faith had occurred under Nero (r. 54-68), when there were very few Christians in the empire. The Decian Persecution, two centuries later, was different. Christianity had spread throughout the Roman East, particularly taking root in the Asian territories of the Roman Empire – modern Turkey, Syria, and Egypt.

Decius sought to restore Roman values of days gone by – indeed, he adopted the name of the popular military ruler Trajan (r. 98-117 AD) – and saw Christianity as subversive both to Roman religious practices and to citizens’ loyalty to the state. The emperor issued an edict in 250 forcing all Christians to swear an oath of allegiance to him, which somewhat ambiguously carried the connotation of “worshipping” him alongside certain gods of the Roman state. It is an important distinction – Decius was not merely asking Roman Christians to declare their loyalty to the state, which most were completely willing to do (many Christians by this time served in the Roman army). Decius wanted them to go further, to profess their loyalty through worship of other gods, including the emperor.

Christians, fierce monotheists, objected. Those that refused to swear the worship/loyalty oath were imprisoned or killed. The famous and heroic martyr stories of Christians being “thrown to the lions” in the Colosseum, steadfastly maintaining their faith to their deaths, were not merely apocryphal and date to this period. 

In a great irony, the Decian Persecution was the first time a wider Roman audience became interested in Christianity – the exact opposite of what the emperor had intended. In the first and second centuries, Christianity was an underground, somewhat secretive sect – believers met in caves, rarely discussed their faith in public, and were mysterious to most. The persecutions brought the faith into the open, and more than a few Romans were struck by what they saw. Romans in their amphitheaters, watching Christians burned alive or torn limb from limb by wild beasts, saw shades of the same discipline, stoicism, and courage that they valued in their own Roman ancestors. Curiosity about the religion and its values grew.