Trajan to Pliny
In 112 CE, Pliny wrote to Trajan on the problem of the Christians in the province (Epistulae X.96). He needed instructions because he had never presided over a "Christian trial" before. This letter is significant for the earliest historical evidence of such a thing as a Christian trial. Official persecution of Christians began during the reign of Domitian (r. 81-96 CE) in the 90s, for the crime of atheism, defined as disbelief in the traditional gods.
We are fortunate in having Trajan’s response:
You have adopted the right course, my dear Pliny, in examining the cases of those cited before you as Christians; for no hard and fast rule can be laid down covering such a wide question. The Christians are not to be hunted out. If brought before you, and the offense is proved, they are to be punished, but with this reservation -- if any one denies he is a Christian, and makes it clear he is not, by offering prayer to our gods, then he is to be pardoned on his recantation, no matter how suspicious his past. As for anonymous pamphlets, they are to be discarded absolutely, whatever crime they may charge, for they are not only a precedent of a very bad type, but they do not accord with the spirit of our age.
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These letters were written in c. 112 AD when pagan Rome was still struggling with how to handle this popular Christian movement. But in the ensuing two centuries, when a governor or a judge sat in judgment on Christians, he asked, “Are you a Christian?” If the person said, “Christianus sum” (“I am a Christian”), he or she was set aside for capital punishment.—Article by Sandra Sweeny Silver
