thoodleoo:

sure! it’s this really interesting exchange of letters, which you can read here. see, prior to decius in 250 AD, legally-sanctioned against christians was mostly on a small scale at the discretion of whoever was locally in charge. this means that there wasn’t a ton of guidance on how exactly to handle accusations that someone was a christian.

pliny wrote this letter to trajan when he was governor of bithynia-pontus, somewhere around 110 AD (the exact years of his governorship are uncertain). what’s fascinating about it is that pliny admits to really having no clue what the procedure he should follow is, since he’s never participated in a trial of christians before. should he treat people differently based on their age? should those who admit to being christians be allowed to go free if they renounce christianity? should he punish people just for being christian, or only if they commit some crime related to being christian? ultimately, the course he tells trajan he took was to ask people three times if they were christian, warning them that they’d be punished if they said yes. those that continued to confirm their christianity, he executed, unless they were roman citizens; in which case he sent them to rome.

pliny then says that after this first incident he faced a more troubling issue that required trajan’s counsel: anonymous accusations of christianity started popping up, and pliny conducted an investigation into what the christians were actually doing. upon torturing two enslaved women referred to as ministrae, pliny couldn’t find any real crime, only that they were under the spell of what he saw as a dangerous and overzealous religion. he concludes the letter by saying he felt it was important to talk to trajan for advice given how many people from all walks of life were getting involved and because, imo interestingly, he believed it would be a manageable problem to solve.

trajan’s reply is succinct, as typical. he says that pliny acted correctly; that it’s hard to really come up with guidelines for this; that christians should not be actively sought out; that they should be punished if found guilty, but let go if they prove that they’ve renounced christianity; and that anonymous accusations are not valid for initiating prosecution.

it’s really interesting to me that pliny’s issue with the christians isn’t so much the practice of the religion itself, although he finds it excessive and wants to stymie it before it can spread further. the only christians he executed were the ones who refused to deny their christianity, so it seems he was more concerned with their refusal to fall in line. he does mention the christians’ insistence that the meals they shared were “innocent,” which may be a response to accusations of cannibalism. but ultimately, a lot of his confusion stems from the fact that he doesn’t entirely know what the christians are doing that warrants prosecution, and as a result what the process for charging them is. he does mention the forbidding of hetaerias, which is a difficult word to translate. it comes up in a previous letter trajan sent to pliny, where he tells pliny that he will not allow the formation of a collegium fabrorum because of the political environment of bithynia, where any sort of association, regardless of its original purpose, tends to become some manner of illicit/secretive gathering. however, the mention of the hetaeria is explicitly in reference to the christians ceasing to gather together after pliny banned such gatherings in accordance with trajan’s command. he definitely doesn’t like what he finds out about christianity, and sees it as something that needs to be stopped, but needs guidance on the actual legal action to take.

the fact that pliny gives the christians so many chances to get out of punishment has always been intriguing to me. it’s a really good example of how faith can become a means of rebellion against a colonizing force, as well as of the political implications of early christianity.