Shocking Tortures Ordered by Emperor Diocletian During the Great Persecution
In February of the year 303 AD, Emperor Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletian issued the first of four edicts that would ignite what is now known as the Great Persecution — the most systematic and brutal imperial campaign ever waged against Christians in the Roman Empire.
This edict, promulgated from Nicomedia, the imperial eastern capital, did not merely curtail Christian rights — it criminalized their very existence. According to Lactantius, a contemporary Roman historian and later Christian apologist, Diocletian, influenced by his co-Augustus Galerius and traditionalist Roman priests, sought to purge the empire of what he viewed as a destabilizing, irreverent sect that rejected the imperial cult and Roman gods.
The edict mandated the demolition of Christian churches, the burning of sacred texts, the prohibition of Christian gatherings, and the dismissal of Christians from all public offices. Even those of senatorial or equestrian rank were not spared. The intent was unmistakable: to erase Christianity from Roman society. Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in his Ecclesiastical History, describes how soldiers stormed churches across the eastern provinces, tearing down altars, looting sanctuaries, and incinerating scriptures in public squares. In Nicomedia itself,
the grand church was razed to the ground under imperial orders — on the very day the edict was posted. That same week, Christian bishops were arrested en masse. Some were tortured for refusing to hand over sacred texts; others were executed. This imperial decree marked a turning point.
What had been intermittent and localized persecution for two centuries became, under Diocletian, an official, empire-wide policy of terror. The edict legitimized systematic torture, imprisonment, and martyrdom — all in the name of preserving Rome’s ancestral gods and imperial unity. The Empire-Wide Executions of Bishops. Between 303 and 305 AD, the Roman Empire, under the authority of Emperor Diocletian and his fellow Tetrarchs, launched a coordinated extermination campaign not only against Christians in general — but specifically against their leaders: the bishops. This was not an incidental
byproduct of religious suppression. It was intentional decapitation of the Christian command structure — carried out through systemic torture, mutilation, and execution. In Nicomedia, Bishop Anthimus was captured and subjected to prolonged interrogation. According to Eusebius, he was scourged — beaten with metal-tipped whips — then paraded through the streets before being beheaded. His severed head was displayed to terrorize the local Christian population.
In Alexandria, Peter of Alexandria, a revered theologian and bishop, was secretly arrested. Lactantius recounts that Peter was imprisoned in total darkness for months, deprived of food, and regularly beaten before being dragged to his execution and beheaded. The bishops of North Africa faced some of the most gruesome fates.
Felix of Thibiuca, who refused to hand over the Scriptures, was subjected to red-hot metal branding across his face and chest. His skin was scorched while Roman guards forced open his mouth and attempted to burn Scripture pages before his eyes — a symbolic destruction of the Word through the body of its guardian. He was eventually burned alive.
These executions were public, ritualized, and strategically planned. The aim was terror. Bishops were not merely killed; they were broken, both physically and symbolically. Their bodies became warnings. Their blood, offerings to the empire’s gods. Their silence, the empire’s command. Rome had turned martyrdom into spectacle — and under Diocletian’s will, the bishops of the early Church became the tortured foundation stones of a persecuted faith.
Public Burnings During the Great Persecution. Among the most horrific spectacles of Diocletian’s Great Persecution were the public burnings — executions designed not only to kill but to intimidate, silence, and destroy Christian identity in full view of Roman citizens. These burnings, carried out across the empire between 303 and 305 AD, were often staged in city centers, theaters, and military camps, serving as both punishment and propaganda.
According to Eusebius of Caesarea in his Martyrs of Palestine, entire groups of Christians were condemned to the flames for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods. In cities such as Nicomedia, Caesarea, and Antioch, pyres were built in public squares.
Those who persisted in their refusal were bound, doused in oil, and thrown alive into the fire. These were not spontaneous acts of mob violence — they were ordered by Roman governors under imperial edict and executed with military precision. One of the earliest recorded cases occurred in Nicomedia, where, shortly after the first edict, a fire broke out in the imperial palace.
Blame fell on the Christians, and as a result, executions intensified. Eusebius notes that men and women, young and old, were “committed to the flames” in mass executions. Some were burned with their scriptures in hand — the empire intending not only to erase lives but sacred memory itself. Lactantius, in De Mortibus Persecutorum, describes how Christian virgins were burned alive after being stripped and paraded publicly.
In Phrygia, an entire Christian village — including a church filled with worshipers — was reportedly surrounded and set ablaze under orders from the regional governor. No one was permitted to escape. Burning was symbolic. Fire, in Roman ritual, was purifying — but here, it was weaponized to exterminate.
The act served two purposes: it destroyed the body irreversibly and denied Christians traditional burial, a final insult to their hope of resurrection. These executions were not just punishments — they were public warnings, engineered to incite fear and obedience through spectacle. The Great Persecution made fire a tool of the state. Systematic Executions by Beasts in Roman Arenas.
Under Diocletian’s Great Persecution, the Roman state reactivated one of its most feared and theatrical tools of execution: damnatio ad bestias — the condemnation of Christians to death by wild beasts in public arenas. This method, rooted in earlier imperial persecutions, now became a calculated and systematic form of state terror, ordered across multiple provinces and overseen by imperial governors tasked with enforcing Diocletian’s anti-Christian edicts.
Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Martyrs of Palestine, provides graphic accounts of mass executions carried out in the amphitheater of Caesarea Maritima. There, Christians were dragged into the arena before roaring crowds and torn apart by lions, leopards, and bears.
The condemned were stripped, shackled, and left defenseless — many praying aloud as the gates were opened. Some were first scourged or mutilated to heighten the spectacle. In 304 AD, a particularly brutal instance occurred in the city of Tyre. Eusebius recounts how both men and women were paraded into the arena. Some were pierced with iron hooks, others tied to stakes while wild beasts were released.
Children were not spared. The Roman authorities staged these events with deliberation, often aligning them with public festivals to maximize attendance and reinforce imperial power. In North Africa, martyr acts such as the Passion of the Scillitan Martyrs and the Acts of the Martyrs of Carthage — though based on earlier records — reflect the continuity of these methods during the Diocletianic era.
Eyewitnesses described Christians kneeling in prayer as beasts lunged, refusing to flee or fight back. The purpose was terror through entertainment. The arenas served as both execution chambers and instruments of psychological warfare. Executions by beasts were choreographed public rituals meant to display Rome’s dominance over both nature and dissent.
They weaponized fear, humiliation, and spectacle to send a clear message: any refusal to bow to the gods of Rome would end not in silent death, but in a public, agonizing obliteration of body and faith. These brutalities revealed not just Rome’s desperation to preserve its gods, but the extremes to which power will go to crush what it cannot control.
And in that effort, it forged legends, saints, and a defiance that endured beyond empire. How did these acts of violence backfire and ultimately strengthen what they sought to destroy? Comment below. “The prisons—prepared for murderers and grave-robbers—were filled with bishops, priests, and readers.” — Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Book 8.
