THE DATE OF THE PERSECUTION OF

CHRISTIANS IN THE ARMY

IN the 1992 volume of this journal David Woods undertook to
analyse the difficult problem of the date of the beginning of the
persecution of Christians in the army.
1
The now standard date,
as he states, is 299, but he offers the evidence of Eusebius'
Chronicle, or more properly Chronici canones, as the basis for a
new date of 297. Eusebius specifically dated the beginning of the
military persecution to Year 16 of Diocletian in an entry that read,
OveTovpios aTpaTOTreSdpxrjS TOVS kv OTpareCq Xpiariavovs fjXavve
IATpiws, KTore roil Kara, TTOLVTCOV VTTOTV<J>OVTOS StcuyfioO.
Woods' date of 297 must be incorrect, however, since it is based
upon an association of the Veturius entry with two others, one
before and one after, concerning Galerius' campaigns and victory
over the Persians, which we know from other sources to date to
297. Woods has not realized that these two entries, 227 and 227
f
of Helm's edition of Jerome's translation, are additions by Jerome
himself, and not a part of Eusebius' original text.
3
The chrono-
logical relationship among these three entries is therefore illusory,
since Jerome derived these entries on the Persian war from the
Kaisergeschichte* an undated narrative source, and his chronology
is simply mistaken supposition on his part.
The date of 299, on the other hand, does receive some support
from the Eusebius passage. Year 16 of Diocletian is not 301, as
all commentators have supposed, but 300, since Eusebius' regnal
1
David Woods, ' Two Notes on the Great Persecution: 1. The Date of the
Persecution of Christians within the Army', JTS, NS, 43 (1992), 128-31.
2
Since the Canones is lost we must reconstruct the wording and the chronology
from a number of later translations and witnesses, especially Jerome's translation
and continuation, entry 227** ( = Year 16 of Diocletian), in Rudolf Helm (ed.),
Eusebius Werke 7: Die Chronik des Hieronymus (GCS 47; Berlin, 1984
3
), and the
Armenian translation, in Josef Karst (ed.), Eusebius Werke 5: Die Chronik aus dem
Armenischen Vbersetzt mit textkritischem Commentar (GCS 20; Leipzig, 1911), 227.
I evaluate all these translations and witnesses in the reconstruction that I present
in ' The Chronici canones of Eusebius of Caesarea: Content and Chronology,
284-325' , which is forthcoming.
3
Helm marks these entries with an asterisk to indicate their derivation from
Jerome, rather than Eusebius (see p. XLVIII) Helm's judgement should not
always be trusted, however. For instance, 229' and 23i
d
should have asterisks, and
228', 229*
Cpd
, 230', and 231 should have bracketed asterisks (to indicate a combina-
tion of material from Eusebius and Jerome). On the other hand, the text of entry
22S
C
has lost its bracketed asterisk through a typographical error (cf. p. 440, 1. 27).
4
See R. W. Burgess, 'Jerome and the Kaisergeschichte', Historia 44 (1995),
349-69.
Oxford University Press 1996
[Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol. 47, Pt. 1, April 1996)

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158 NOTES AND STUDIES
year chronology is out by one year at this point.
5
This can be
confirmed by counting back from the outbreak of the persecution
of 303 in Year 19, which is the equivalent of 304 in Eusebius.
Unless Eusebius has made an error and dated the episode a year
too late (which is a possibility), a date of (early) 300 is probably
correctEusebius obviously knew nothing of the events of 299 at
court in Antioch
6
and the entry and its chronology thus repre-
sent Eusebius' earliest specific memory of actual persecution in
the army at the time he was writing the canones.
7
R. W. BURGESS
s
On this, see my forthcoming article cited in n. 2.
6
T. D. Barnes puts Diocletian and Galerius together in Antioch in the spring
of 299: The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, Mass., 1982),
55 and 63.
7
Which I would argue is c.310/311, on the basis of a forthcoming study that I
have made. Barnes suggests that Veturius may have been Galerius' praetorian
prefect (New Empire, 136), but on my interpretation he was just the local dux that
implies.

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