Year 177 (CLXXVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Commodus and Plautius. The denomination 177 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Pope Zephyrinus was the bishop of Rome from the year 199 until his death on 20 December 217. He was born in Rome, and succeeded Victor I. Upon his death on 20 December 217, he was succeeded by his principal advisor, Callixtus I. He is known for combating heresies and defending the divinity of Christ.
The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity is a diary by Vibia Perpetua describing her imprisonment as a Christian in 203, completed after her death by a redactor. It is one of the oldest and most notable early Christian texts.
June 1 - Eastern Orthodox Church calendar - June 3
The Scillitan Martyrs were a company of twelve North African Christians who were executed for their beliefs on 17 July 180 AD. The martyrs take their name from Scilla, a town in Numidia. The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs are considered to be the earliest documents of the church of Africa and also the earliest specimen of Christian Latin.
The Diocletianic or Great Persecution was the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. In 303, the emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding Christians' legal rights and demanding that they comply with traditional religious practices. Later edicts targeted the clergy and demanded universal sacrifice, ordering all inhabitants to sacrifice to the Roman gods. The persecution varied in intensity across the empire—weakest in Gaul and Britain, where only the first edict was applied, and strongest in the Eastern provinces. Persecutory laws were nullified by different emperors at different times, but Constantine and Licinius' Edict of Milan in 313 has traditionally marked the end of the persecution.
Euphemia, known as Euphemia the All-praised in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was a virgin martyr, who died for her faith at Chalcedon in 303 AD.
The persecution in Lyon in AD 177 was an outbreak of persecution of Christians in Lugdunum, Roman Gaul, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, recorded in a contemporary letter preserved in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chapter 1, which was written 150 years later in Palestine. Gregory of Tours also describes the persecution in the 6th century in De Gloria martyrum.
Flavia Domitilla was a Roman noblewoman of the 1st century AD. She was a granddaughter of Emperor Vespasian and a niece of Emperors Titus and Domitian. She married her second cousin, the consul Titus Flavius Clemens, a grand-nephew of Vespasian through his father Titus Flavius Sabinus.
Saint Pothinus was the first bishop of Lyon and the first bishop of Gaul. He is first mentioned in a letter attributed to Irenaeus of Lyon. The letter was sent from the Christian communities of Lyon and Vienne to the Roman province of Asia.
Felicitas of Rome, also anglicized as Felicity, is a saint numbered among the Christian martyrs. Apart from her name, the only thing known for certain about this martyr is that she was buried in the Cemetery of Maximus, on the Via Salaria on a 23 November. However, a legend presents her as the mother of the seven martyrs whose feast is celebrated on 10 July. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates their martyrdom on 25 January.
Elias and four companions, Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Samuel were Egyptian martyrs. Their feast day is February 16.
Christians were persecuted throughout the Roman Empire, beginning in the 1st century AD and ending in the 4th century. Originally a polytheistic empire in the traditions of Roman paganism and the Hellenistic religion, as Christianity spread through the empire, it came into ideological conflict with the imperial cult of ancient Rome. Pagan practices such as making sacrifices to the deified emperors or other gods were abhorrent to Christians as their beliefs prohibited idolatry. The state and other members of civic society punished Christians for treason, various rumored crimes, illegal assembly, and for introducing an alien cult that led to Roman apostasy. The first, localized Neronian persecution occurred under Emperor Nero in Rome. A number of mostly localized persecutions occurred during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. After a lull, persecution resumed under Emperors Decius and Trebonianus Gallus. The Decian persecution was particularly extensive. The persecution of Emperor Valerian ceased with his notable capture by the Sasanian Empire's Shapur I at the Battle of Edessa during the Roman–Persian Wars. His successor, Gallienus, halted the persecutions.
Basilides and Potamiaena were Christian martyrs now venerated as saints. Both died in Alexandria during the persecutions under Septimius Severus.
December 9 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - December 11
The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom is a 2013 book by Candida Moss, an award-winning historian and professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to the writing of this book Moss had published two other works on early Christian martyrdom. In her book, Moss advances the thesis that:
- The traditional idea of the "Age of Martyrdom", when Christians suffered persecution from the Roman authorities and lived in fear of being thrown to the lions, is largely fictional. Here she adapts and emends the work of G. E. M. de Ste. Croix.
- There was never sustained, targeted persecution of Christians by Imperial Roman authorities. Official persecution of Christians by order of the Roman Emperor lasted for at most twelve years of the first three hundred of the Church's history. Moss writes: "This does not mean, however, that there were no martyrs at all or that Christians never died. It is clear that some people were cruelly tortured and brutally executed for reasons that strike us as profoundly unjust."
- Most of the stories of individual martyrs amassed by the early modern period are pure inventions. She agrees with Bollandist scholar Hippolyte Delehaye that most martyrdom literature developed in the fourth century and beyond.
- Even the oldest and most historically accurate stories of martyrs and their sufferings have been altered and re-written by later editors, so that it is impossible to know for sure what any of the martyrs actually thought, did or said.
The Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonice is a martyrdom account about three Christians traveling through Pergamum until they are discovered by the pagan authority of the city and put to death by them. The date of the text is disputed amongst biblical scholars. Either from the second century AD of Marcus Aurelius's reign or the third century AD of Decius's reign.
The Martyrdom of Pionius is an account dating from about 250 AD to 300 AD of the martyrdom of a Christian from Smyrna named Pionius. It is also known as The Martyrdom of Pionius the Presbyter and His Companions, The Acts of Pionius, and in Latin as Martyrium Pionii or Passio Pionii. Pionius was a presbyter, and was most likely killed between 249 and 251 AD during the rule of the Roman Emperor Decius. The feast day of Saint Pionius is kept on March 11 in Eastern Orthodox churches, and on February 1 in Roman Catholicism.
Agathodorus was an early Christian martyr in Pergamon, Asia Minor.
Saints Plutarch, Serenus, Heraclides, Heron, Serenus, Rhais, Potamiœna and Marcella were Christian martyrs in Egypt under the persecution of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus. Their feast day is 28 June.
