Event · AD 257 · Carthage · Rome
The Valerian persecution, AD 257
The Valerian persecution — Cyprian, Sixtus II, and Lawrence martyred
**Two edicts, and the second one changed the target.** Valerian’s first rescript of 257 required the clergy to sacrifice and forbade assembly in cemeteries; the second, in 258, ordered bishops, presbyters and deacons **executed at once**, senators and knights stripped of rank and property, and imperial household staff sent to the mines in chains. **It was aimed at the church’s leadership and its assets rather than at belief.**
## Cyprian, and the transcript
**Cyprian of Carthage** was first exiled to Curubis under the first edict, and beheaded on 14 September 258 under the second. **The *Acta Proconsularia* of his trial survives**, and it is the closest thing in the archive to a court record of a bishop’s condemnation — the proconsul Galerius Maximus asking whether he is Thascius Cyprianus, Cyprian answering that he is, the sentence that he be executed by the sword, and Cyprian’s reply: **“Thanks be to God.”** His own letters, which the archive holds, describe the exile in his own hand before it happened.
**Sixtus II** of Rome was seized while seated teaching in the cemetery of Callistus and killed on the spot with four deacons — the cemetery clause of the first edict being exactly what caught him. **Lawrence**, the archdeacon, died four days later; the tradition of the gridiron is late and the archive records it as tradition, noting that **Cyprian’s contemporary letter says only that Sixtus and his deacons were beheaded.**
## And it ended by decree
Valerian was captured by the Persians at Edessa in 260. His son **Gallienus** issued a rescript of toleration — which the archive holds as its own event — restoring the churches and cemeteries. **The persecution stopped because the emperor who ordered it was taken prisoner**, which is the plainest instance in the archive of imperial policy turning on a single military defeat.
The sources for this event
Every source the record rests on, with what it says and what it cannot carry.
Cyprian, Epistles 80–81
c. AD 258[Cyprian reports the terms of the second edict as he learned them from Rome: **bishops, presbyters and deacons to be punished forthwith**; senators and men of rank stripped of property and, if they persist, executed; matrons deprived of goods and banished; **members of Caesar’s household confiscated and sent in chains to the imperial estates.** He also reports that **Sixtus suffered in the cemetery on 6 August, with four deacons** — a contemporary notice, written within days. ⚠ **Cyprian says they were beheaded.** The gridiron tradition attached to Lawrence is later, and the archive records it as tradition against this contemporary account.]
Cyprian of Carthage, *Epistles* — held in this library. English: Ante-Nicene Fathers 5, public domain.
Read the source text →Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VII.10–13
c. AD 325[Eusebius gives the reign, the influence of the Egyptian Macrianus on Valerian, and then the text of **Gallienus’s rescript of toleration** — ordering the places of worship restored and the bishops permitted to perform their customary duties. He notes the reversal followed Valerian’s capture by the Persians. **The persecution stopped because the emperor who ordered it was taken prisoner** — the plainest case in the archive of policy turning on one military defeat.]
Eusebius, *Ecclesiastical History* — held in this library. English: A. C. McGiffert, NPNF 2nd ser. 1 (1890), public domain.
Read the source text →Figures in this event (5)
- Emperor Valerian
- Cyprian of Carthage
- Xystus II (Sixtus II) of Rome
- Lawrence (Laurentius) of Rome
- Emperor Gallienus
Scholarship
- The Acta Proconsularia of Cyprianin Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 1972The trial record. In copyright; the public-domain ANF text is used for the letters.