Persecution at Lyon and Vienne, AD 177

**The best-documented persecution before Decius, and the document is the congregation’s own letter.**

The churches of Lyon and Vienne wrote to the churches of Asia and Phrygia describing what had happened, and Eusebius preserved it. The archive holds it as `lyonletter`. **It is not a martyrology composed later; it is a report written by people who had just watched it.**

## Who it names

**Pothinus**, the bishop, over ninety years old, who died in prison after being beaten. **Sanctus** the deacon of Vienne, who under torture would say nothing but **“I am a Christian”** — no name, no city, no status. **Maturus**, newly baptised. **Attalus**, led round the amphitheatre with a placard reading “This is Attalus the Christian”. **Ponticus**, a boy of fifteen. **Biblis**, who had denied under torture and then recovered her confession. And **Blandina**.

## Blandina

The letter dwells on her, and the reason it gives is the reason the archive holds her: **she was a slave**, physically weak, and the Christians had feared she would not hold out. She outlasted every torturer they put on her. The letter says her tormentors were exhausted and confessed themselves beaten, and that all she said was **“I am a Christian, and there is nothing vile done by us.”**

She was kept to the last, made to watch the others die, and then killed — scourged, exposed to beasts, put in a net before a bull. **The congregation that wrote the letter chose to give more space to a slave woman than to their own bishop**, and that editorial decision is itself a historical fact about the community.

## And Irenaeus

The letter is connected to the archive’s wider record: Irenaeus was a presbyter of Lyon at the time and became bishop after Pothinus. **The persecution is why the see fell to the man who wrote *Against Heresies*.**