This may suffice as a specimen of what was done during a course of years throughout the dominion of Galerius, Maximin, and Maxentius. It is in this persecution especially that the virgin martyrs suffered the extremity of the heathen malignity in the threatened loss of that purity which they valued more than life. And here a fellow-Christian at Alexandria disguising himself as a soldier was to S. Theodora the guardian which her angel himself became to S. Agnes at Rome. In this persecution also S. Vincent repeats in Spain the trial and the triumph of S. Laurence at Rome. The authentic account of his martyrdom shows the utmost point to which the most ingenious and the most ferocious cruelty could reach on the one side, and the most enduring patience on the other. But the numberless details concerning the sufferings of this time preserved to us show that it was indeed a conflict prolonged during eight years, in which the Roman state put forth the utmost strength which unlimited power guided by unhesitating cruelty could exert to destroy the Christian Church and name.
At the end of this time the conflict was terminated by the Emperor Galerius, the chief mover of the whole persecution, being struck by a mortal disease, in which reduced to impotence by his sufferings he withdrew his edicts against the Christian Faith. One after another the persecuting emperors are taken away by death. Constantine inheriting his father's justice towards Christians, and preserving them in his own territory from these outrages, gradually appears as their champion. It is when advancing to Rome against Maxentius that he sees in the Cross the token of victory over all enemies: enrolling it on his banner he rules with Licinius the Roman world, and by a decree issued at Milan in 313 assures to all Christians the free exercise of their religion.
In the year 64 Nero had declared by initiating a persecution against Christians that their religion was illicit, and fell under the ban of the old Roman laws which forbade the exercise of any worship not approved by the senate. From that time down to the edict of Constantine no Christian could stand before a Roman tribunal plainly avowing his faith in one God and one Christ without incurring the liability of capital punishment. In this period of two hundred and forty-eight years it is true that there were intervals of comparative peace when the emperors did not themselves call into action the laws against Christians. During the whole second century there would seem to be no emperor who set himself to destroy the Christian name and people as a whole. In the time of Commodus it was even forbidden to accuse a Christian of his religion; yet even then, if the accusation was made and proved, it was a capital offence, followed, and that too in the case of a senator after defence before the senate, by the infliction of the penalty. Alexander Severus is the first of whom it is said that "he suffered the Christians to be;" Philip also favoured them; so again Valerian at first; Gallienus gave back their churches; Diocletian trusted them and filled his palace with them: but no one of these emperors ventured to declare the Christian religion to be according to the laws of Rome a "licit" religion, and no one therefore enabled Christians to avow it without danger of suffering. The most favourable suspended the action of the laws either by positive edict, or by letting it be understood that they did not wish Christians to be disturbed. A change either of the ruler, or of the ruler's inclination, as was seen in the cases of Valerian, Aurelian, and Diocletian, induced at once that full state of penality under which Christianity was as much forbidden as homicide or treason, and in virtue of which Roman magistrates could as little refuse to judge the crime of being a Christian as those other crimes. Thus it is that we find martyrdoms assigned to times at which there is not known to have been any general persecution: and in unnumbered cases Christians won their crown through private enmity or local tumults, when any one of the thousand motives which awaken ill-will was sufficient to cause an appeal to that great and unchanged enemy, the Law of Rome, which proscribed them. To Constantine belongs the glory of having removed this enemy. He made the profession of Christianity no longer a crime. He accomplished that which Justin and Tertullian and every Christian apologist had asked for in vain, that every Christian in the Roman empire might profess and practise the Christian Faith without suffering punishment for it.