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The Following also we found in a Certain Copy in the Eighth Book.
was
in the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian, in the month
Xanthicus, which is called April by the Romans, about the time of the feast of our Saviour’s passion, while Flavianus was governor of the province of Palestine, that letters were published everywhere, commanding that the churches be leveled to the ground and the Scriptures be destroyed by fire, and ordering that those who held places of honor be degraded, and that the household servants, if they persisted in the profession of Christianity, be deprived of freedom.
Such was the force of the first
edict against us. But not long after other letters were issued, commanding that all the bishops of the churches everywhere be first thrown into prison, and afterward, by every artifice, be compelled to sacrifice.