Persecution. The principles that underlie the persecution of obnoxious opinions, as opposed to the principles of toleration, are regarded by those who persecute as essentially similar to those that arm justice against the criminal. Persecution of unpopular religious views has on religious or political grounds been especially common. The persecutions of the early Christians by the Roman emperors (see CHURCH HISTORY) have been usually, though artificially, counted as ten, viz. under Nero, 64 A.D.; Domitian, 95; Trajan, 107; Hadrian, 125; Marcus Aurelius, 165; Septimius Severus, 202; Maximinus, 235; Decius, 249; Valerianus, 257; Diocletian, 303. Some of the best of the emperors were thus the most strenuous persecutors of the Christians. The persecution seemed in many cases but to fan the zeal of the victims and survivors; in Tertullian's words, the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. But there have been many cases in which minor sects have been extinguished, partly or wholly by systematic persecution. The orthodox persecuted the Arians not without success; and the number of Lapsed (q.v.) raised a serious problem in the church. Cathari and Albigenses were practically persecuted out of existence by the Dominicans and the Inquisition; and the measures adopted to suppress the Reformation were triumphant in Bohemia, Spain, and Italy. In the Huguenot wars religion was complicated with politics (see BARTHOLOMEW, ST); the Dragonnades (q.v.) were part of a deliberate attempt to crush out Protestantism. The name persecution is used in England specially for the sufferings inflicted by Catholics on Protestants and by Protestants on Catholics in Mary's and Elizabeth's reigns; in Scotland also on the measures used against the Covenanters and other recusants in the 17th century. The oppressive legislation against Independents in Charles II.'s reign may also be classed under this head; and Massachusetts and most of the Puritan colonies passed several repressive measures against the Quakers. The persecutions carried on in the Netherlands by the Spanish authorities (see HOLLAND) were especially cruel and persistent. They comprised fine, imprisonment, ban, torture, beheading, strangling, strangling and burning, burning alive, burying alive; and their continuance goaded the people into a great national revolt. It deserves to be noted that the strenuous denunciation by Voltaire of the persecution of the unfortunate Calas (q.v.) family led to a new chapter in the history of toleration. Furious persecutions extirpated Catholicism from Japan in the middle of the 17th century, and Corea in the middle of the 19th. The Orthodox Eastern Church has in Russia had the assistance of the state in repressing the Raskolnik sectaries. Luther and Melanchthon were more pronouncedly hostile to the heretical astronomy of Copernicus than the Catholic authorities. A notable case of the persecution of a Protestant by Protestants is that of Servetus (q.v.; see also CALVIN). In this case Calvin had the sympathetic support of many foreign Protestant churches and their leaders. The 'theocratic' system established in Geneva by Calvin so confounded errors, sins, and crimes as to turn the administration of justice largely into a persecuting organisation; in three years there were fifty-eight sentences of death, and over eight thousand imprisonments for the crime of blasphemy (see Hug and Stead, Switzerland, 1891). The old Scottish discipline of the kirk-session was regarded as persecuting in spirit long ere it ceased to be rigorously applied. The persecutions of the Jews were especially persistent and especially unsuccessful, and have recurred in recent years in Russia, Roumania, and elsewhere.
From the same causes as persecution come much other bloodshed and strife, war and devastation, social oppression, and personal suffering. Metaphysical principles formed the watchwords of political as well as of ecclesiastical parties. 'These evils mostly came from that which has been a permanently disastrous fact in Christian history—the interference of the state, which gave the decrees of the councils that sanction which elevated the resolutions of the majority upon the deepest subjects of human speculation to the factitious rank of laws which must be accepted on pain of forfeiture, banishment, or death' (Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888).
See also the articles named above, especially INQUISITION and TOLERATION; also ALBIGENSES, AUTO DA FÉ, BLASPHEMY, BRUNO, CAMISARDS, CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, GALILEO, HERESY, HUGUENOTS, MORMONS, WALDENSES, WITCHCRAFT; such works as Foxe's Book of Martyrs on one side, and on the other Challoner's Memoirs of Missionary Priests and other Catholics who suffered Death for Religion; Buckle's History of Civilisation; Lecky's Rationalism in Europe; and Draper's Conflict between Science and Religion.