Daily Reading for January 21 • Agnes, Martyr at Rome, 304

The late third and early fourth centuries brought sweeping changes to the Roman Empire and to Christianity. In 284 a successful general named Diocles assumed the imperial throne under the name Diocletian and set out to enact military, political, and economic reorganizations. He instituted fixed prices, new provincial boundaries, and a system of shared governance between two senior emperors (called Augustuses) and two junior emperors (called Caesars). Diocletian also instituted reform that was designed to ensure religious unity in the Roman Empire, including confiscation of Christian churches and property and punishment of Christian leaders. Diocletian retired in 305, and the Augustuses and Caesars continued his policy of enforcing uniformity around the Empire, including the legal proscription of Christianity.

In 306, Constantine, the son of one of Diocletian’s imperial colleagues, was proclaimed Augustus by the imperial troops stationed in York. . . Constantine passed an edict of religious toleration in 313 that recognized Christianity as a legal religion in the Roman Empire. The last “Great Persecution” initiated by Diocletian came to an end.

From the introduction to Christianity in Late Antiquity: 300-450 C. E.: A Reader by Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs (New York: Oxford, 2004).