11 - The Great Persecution and the Phrygian Fourth Century

Summary

By the end of the third century, in Asia Minor and beyond, the churches had some institutional heft. Conflict with the non-Christian majority stayed below the surface, but it was a phoney peace. The Emperor Diocletian, blaming Christians for difficulties in divination, commenced action, demolishing the church in Nicomedia. In a small town in Phrygia, the Roman army burnt a church down with the congregation inside. Valerius Diogenes, governor of Pisidia, constructed facilities for the imperial cult and dedicated an altar to ‘the pietas of our emperors’. Markos Ioulios Eugenios was tortured then discharged from the army; afterwards, about 315, as bishop of Burnt Laodicea (Ladik) he rebuilt the church, with ‘cloisters, antechambers, murals, mosaics, water fountain, entrance porch … and everything else’. Eugenios and his flock were Novatians: their church and the Montanist church were linked. The Emperor Constantine funded construction of churches in provincial capitals, including Laodicea on the Lycus. Gothic settlers came to Phrygia, including the father of Selenas, bishop of the Goths. Phrygia, still remote from the metropolitan milieu, moved beneath a Christian sacred canopy.