ablish any certain general
rule; there must be no quest set on foot against them, and no unsigned
indictment must be accepted; but if they be accused and convicted, they
must be punished." To be punished, it sufficed that they were convicted
of being Christians; and it was Trajan himself who condemned St.
Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, to be brought to Rome and thrown to the
beasts, for the simple reason that he was highly Christian. Marcus
Aurelius, not only by virtue of his philosophical conscientiousness, but
by reason of an incident in his history, seemed bound to be further than
any other from persecuting the Christians.

During one of his campaigns on the Danube, A.D. 174, his army was
suffering cruelly from fatigue and thirst; and at the very moment when
they were on the point of engaging in a great battle against the
barbarians, the rain fell in abundance, refreshed the Roman soldiers,
and conduced to their victory. There was in the Roman army a legion, the
Twelfth, called the _Melitine_ or the _Thundering_, which bore on its
roll many Christian soldiers. They gave thanks for the rain and the
victory to the one omnipotent God who had heard their prayers, while the
pagans rendered like honor to Jupiter, the Rain-giver and the Thunderer.
The report about these Christians got spread abroad and gained credit in
the empire, so much so that there was attributed to Marcus Aurelius a
letter, in which by reason, no doubt, of this incident, he forbade
persecution of the Christians.

Tertullian, a contemporary witness, speaks of this letter in perfect
confidence; and the Christian writers of the following century did not
hesitate to regard it as authentic. Nowadays, a strict examination of
its existing text does not allow such a character to be attributed to
it. At any rate the persecutions of the Christians were not forbidden,
for in the year 177, that is, only three years after the victory of
Marcus Aurelius over the Germans, there took place, undoubtedly by his
orders, the persecution which caused at Lyons the first Gallic
martyrdom. This was the fourth, or, according to others, the fifth great
imperial persecution of the Christians.

Most tales of the martyrs were written long after the event, and came to
be nothing more than legends laden with details often utterly puerile or
devoid of proof. The martyrs of Lyons in the second century wrote, so
to speak, their own history; for it was their comrades, eye-witnesses of