Antoninus pius and the christians
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
The information gathered in documents concerning the relation between the said emperor and Christians is scarce and somehow unclear. Despite that fact, though, The Shepherd of Hermas, the
Dialogue with Trypho and the posterior compilation carried out by
Eusebius of Caesarea allow for an approach to real facts.
The contents of the letter sent to the Koinón of Asia, in spite of
the fact that the breach between Judaism and Christianity was not
then yet complete (since the works mentioned allude to a degree
of both dialogue and confrontation), seem to establish a link with
Trajan’s behaviour in response to Pliny the Younger, which Adrian
would later on also adopt.
This degree of continuity would not leave out the existence of isolated and occasional accusations against members of Christian communities in times of Antoninus Pius. However, numbers cannot be
quantified, Policarpus’s case being the most evident one among them.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright notice:
The Publishing Service of the Pontifical University of Salamanca (the publisher) retains the copyright of the works published in HELMANTICA.
The reuse of the content is allowed under a license:
CC BY Recognition
This license allows others to distribute, remix, tweak and build upon your work, even for commercial purposes, as long as you are acknowledged as the author of the original creation. This is the most helpful license offered. It is recommended for maximum dissemination and use of the materials subject to the license.
For more information see the following links:
References
-