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Pentecost
Persecution

The Great Fire of Rome and the Neronian Persecution

The first persecution of Christians by the Roman state.

64 ADRome

After a fire destroyed much of Rome, the Emperor Nero blamed the city's Christians and put many to death with notorious cruelty. It was the first persecution by the imperial power; tradition holds that Peter and Paul died in it.

Nero's Torches — the Neronian persecution of Christians, by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1882.
Henryk Siemiradzki, 1882, National Museum in Kraków — Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In the summer of 64, fire swept through Rome and burned for days. Rumor blamed the Emperor Nero himself. To deflect suspicion, the Roman historian Tacitus records, Nero fixed the guilt on the Christians — a group already disliked — and subjected them to punishments of appalling cruelty.

This was the first time the Roman state, rather than a local mob or a synagogue, turned its power against the Church. It would not be the last. Over the next two and a half centuries, persecution would come and go with the temper of emperors.

Christian tradition holds that both Peter and Paul died at Rome in or around this persecution — Peter crucified, Paul beheaded. The blood of the martyrs, Tertullian would later write, became the seed of the Church.