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The Tiber Ran Red: The Age of the Roman Martyrs

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The evidence that Christianity exploded like a bomb, causing shock waves throughout the empire, is clear.

Within a decade or two of Christ's death, there were riots with Christians in the Jewish communities in Rome. By the early 60s, Paul was under custodia militaris--a kind of house arrest--before he was decapitated.

According to Tacitus, soon after the terrible fire in Rome, Nero had a "vast multitude" of Christians crucified or burned to death as living torches for his dinner parties. So within a mere 30 years after the death of Christ there were so many Christians in Rome that Tacitus could refer to those who died, not just as a multitude, but as a 'vast multitude.

And not only that, but all the classes were affected the Christ. "Tacitus implies that Flavius Sabinus, brother of the Emperor Vespasian...had accepted the message of Christ. The historians Dio Cassius and Suetonius both record that Emperor Domitian...ordered his own niece, Flavia Domitalla, into exile, for the crime of atheism" (p 31), meaning belief in Christianity.

By 110 or so AD, Pliny was writing to the Emperor Trajan that the temples in his area were 'practically deserted" before he began a systematic campaign of murdering every Christian who wouldn't renounce Christ.

Until the time of Constantine, Christians would undergo one persecution after another. Some would be thrown into prison. Recounted one prisoner "I was terrified. Never before had I known such darkness. Oh, that day of horror! The overpowering heat caused by the jamming in of so many prisoners! THe brutality of the guards'" (p 111).

The early Christians were careful to revere and care for the bodies of the martyrs. These were so carefully marked that by the 3rd century, Caius could boast "I can show you the trophies (i.e., the gravemarkers) of the apostles. If you should go either over to the Vatican or out along the Ostian Way you will come upon the trophies of those two who founded the Church of Rome" (p 122).

The Christian Church was founded by Jesus, and many chose death rather than renounce their faith.

Protestants do not believe in saints, or even in the efficacy of praying for the dead (Martin Luther had the Book of Maccabees deleted from the Bible as it had been written, where this is specifically addressed).

No matter: Moving and inspiring to read of those who endured the persecutions of emperors (such as Diocletian, who visited horrors upon mere children who were loyal to Christ and His Church).

This is a fine book if one wants a basic history of the early Christian martyrs. It's a quick read that will answer several questions about this period of early church history. Those with a more developed interest in the subject will naturally want to read other, more comprehensive works.

It should be noted that this is a Catholic book, intended for Roman Catholic readers. The author sees the early Christians as early Catholics, something Protestants and others will take issue with.