"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."--_Matt_ v. 10
It had been revealed to St. John that the Church should have tribulation for ten days; and accordingly, in her first three hundred years, ten emperors tried to put out her light. Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Antoninus, and Aurelius, have been mentioned; and the next persecutor was Severus, an emperor who went to Britain, firmly established the Roman power over England, and built the great wall to keep the Scots from injuring the northern settlers.
In his time died the glorious band of martyrs of Carthage--five young converts, two men, named Satur and Saturninus, a noble young married lady, called Perpetua, who had a young infant, and two slaves, Revocatus and Felicitas, the last of whom gave birth to a daughter in the prison. But not even love to their babes could lead these faithful women to dissemble their belief; Perpetua left her child with her family; Felicitas gave hers to a Christian woman to bring up; and the lady and the slave went out singing, hand in hand, to the amphitheatre, where they were to be torn by beasts. A wild cow was let loose on them, and threw down the two women; but Perpetua at once sat up again, covered herself with her garments, and helped up Felicitas, but as if in a dream, for she did not remember that the cow had been loosed on her. Satur had an especial horror of a bear, which was intended to be the means of his death, and a good soldier named Pudens put meat in front of the den, that the beast might not come out. A leopard then flew at him, and tore him; Satur asked the soldier for his ring, dipped it in his own blood, and gave it back as a memorial, just before he died under the teeth and claws of the animal. The others were all killed by soldiers in the middle of the amphitheatre, Perpetua guiding the sword to her own throat.
The persecution of the Emperor Decius was one of the worst of all, for the heathen grew more ingenious by practice in inventing horrible deaths.
Under the Emperor Valerian died St. Lawrence, a young deacon at Rome, whom the judge commanded to produce the treasures of the Church. He called together all the aged widows and poor cripples who were maintained by the alms of the faithful, "These," he said, "are the treasures of the Church." In the rage of the persecutors, he was roasted to death on bars of iron over a fire. St. Cyprian, the great Bishop of Carthage, was beheaded; and one hundred and fifty martyrs at Utica were thrown alive into a pit of quick-lime. At Antioch one man failed; Sapricius, a priest, was being led out to die, when a Christian named Nicephorus, with whom he had a quarrel, came to beg his forgiveness ere his death. Sapricius would not pardon, and Nicephorus went on humbly entreating, amid the mockery of the guards, until the spot of execution was reached, and the prisoner was bidden to kneel down to have his bead cut off. Then it appeared that he who had not the heart to forgive, had not the heart to die; Sapricius's courage failed him, and he promised to sacrifice to the idols; and Nicephorus was put to death, receiving the crown of martyrdom in his stead. The persecuting Valerian himself came to a miserable end, for he was made prisoner in a battle, in 258, with the Persians, and their king for many years forced the unhappy captive to bow down on his hands and knees so as to be a step by which to climb on his elephant, and when he died, his skin was taken off, dyed red, and hung up in a temple. After his captivity, the Church enjoyed greater tranquillity; many more persons ventured to avow themselves Christians, and their worship was carried on without so much concealment as formerly.