大迫害勃発の経緯に関する一考察

概要

論文の詳細を見る
In this paper we reassess Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica 8.1 and offer a new interpretation of the Great Persecution. To elucidate its origin Chap 10 of Lactantius' De Mortibus Persecutorum does not help us since it seems to be affected by a Christian bias, revealing a literary motif of anti-pagan propaganda. Eusebius, on the other hand, who vaguely describes how the Church incurred a persecution as divine punishment for her internal strife gives crucial clues to the present inquiry, though his account needs more careful analyses; internal strife had generally not been a cause, but a result of persecution, as was clearly attested in the letters of Cyprian and some passages from Tertullian(e.g. Scorp 1.5). We should understand that the strife mentioned in HE 8.1 originated from the "persecution" within the army (and not vice versa! Cf. MartPalaest 12.1 [S]) which Diocletian launched in the last decade of the third century. Given this, we could reconstruct the prelude to the Great Persecution as follows. During the Persian War the Emperor realises the necessity of redressing the military discipline and cancelled the exemption (given as a privilege to the Christian soldiers probably by Galienus) from performance of any pagan ritual. Thus there arose a serious difference of opinion in the Church, and this developed in the course of time into a fatal schism among three groups, namely laxists, rigorists and moderates. The moderates to which most of the orthodoxy fathers belonged followed the traditional line endorsed by Callistus the Pope of Roman Church. Feeling obliged as soldiers of Christ (II Tim 2.3) to serve only one master, not two, they called upon all the church members to make a tenacious resistance to the demonic worship imposed by Romans. It was when Diocletian had taken notice of these apparently rebellious and well-organised activities of the Church that the Great Persecution was triggered off. The Church intended in fact nothing but to keep her faith pure by refusing to participate in any pagan rituals whereas the government regarded it as a kind of political sedition or even a declaration of war against the Empire. This interpretation fits in with the fact that at the end of the third century the image of Church held by the government changed. We should emphasise that in this period the Church had been for the first time acknowledged to be, not only a nation εθνοζ at all (e.g. HE 9.9a.1), but a nation seditious and pernicious to the Empire (MartPalaest 9.12; cf. Liv 39.13.14), as was explicitly accused of disloyalty in the "Edict of Toleration" of Galerius who complained of their "assembling various nations" for an evil purpose. Recognition of the Church as a nation means that the government recognised her as a political body with whom to negotiate. Thus the repressive measure could be followed and replaced immediately by a protective one. Persecution and protection were the two contradictory fruits proceeding from one and the same seed.
日本西洋古典学会の論文
2007-03-16

著者

保坂高殿
千葉大学

大迫害勃発の経緯に関する一考察

スポンサーリンク

概要

著者

関連論文

スポンサーリンク