Under the Persecution of Valerian

11. Suddenly, in the summer of that year, the Church was startled by the issue of an edict which revived the reign of terror and threw her into a state of persecution which lasted for more than three years. This unexpected change of treatment is attributed by Dionysius to the influence of Macrianus, who at one time held the office of Rationalis (Treasurer or Accountant-General) to the Emperor. This man was apparently a cripple in body, but mentally and otherwise a person of considerable ability and force of character: but he seems to have associated himself in some way with the soothsayers of Egypt,⁵⁵Dionysius’s phrase about him on p. 66 is “tutor and chief ruler of Egyptian magicians”; see note 3 in loco. and to have conceived a violent hatred against the Christians. Quite early in the proceedings which were instituted against them at Alexandria in consequence of the edict, Dionysius, with several of his clergy, was brought before Æmilianus the Prefect,⁶⁶This Æmilianus was one of several who afterwards attempted to seize the throne; see above, p. 14. Macrianus was another of them in Egypt (p. 68, n.). and after examination—chiefly as to his loyalty to the Emperors, which his refusal to pay them divine honours rendered doubtful—was banished first to a 17 place called Cephro (probably not far from Taposiris, where he had been sent before), and then somewhere on the high road in the district called Colluthion. Dionysius’s own account of the circumstances which led to and attended this second exile is given on pp. 46 ff., an account which is valuable, among other reasons, because it is largely drawn from the official memoranda of the Prefect’s court, and because it shows how both sides did their ineffectual best to understand each other’s position.