15 - The Great Trial

Antonius, the stable boy slave of Tigellinus, endured every form of torture the ingenuity of the Romans had devised. The bones in his hands, arms, and legs were cracked one by one between the claws of iron pincers. His skin was torn, strip-by-strip, from his quivering flesh. His fingernails were pulled out from the roots one by one, and his flayed feet were held over a slow fire. He no longer looked human but was reduced to a bundle of raw, blistered flesh.

And yet for all that, he still wouldn’t reveal what he’d done with his master’s child. A fellow slave had betrayed him under similar torture, and now Tigellinus himself directed and witnessed the torturing of Antonius, while two physicians ensured that he remained alive and sensitive to pain. When he fainted, the torture was relaxed and he was nursed back to consciousness with drinks and unguents. He was promised his freedom if he would confess that he’d turned the child over to the Christians to use its blood for their mystic rituals. But Antonius kept his eyes and his lips closed.

In the fiery ring that rotated around his head, Antonius saw a great stairway rising from earth to heaven. At the top Christ floated in the midst of luminous blue clouds, his arms stretched out to the slave, who was rising heavenward with agonizing steps. Antonius was seeing the reality of what everyone had been telling him, that “Christ waits for all who suffer for him.” Every pang was now dear to him. The deeper the claws of iron crushed into his flesh, the hotter the flames under his crippled feet, the nearer he knew himself to be to glory.

Antonius could feel the cool touch of the marble steps, which then softened and became blue clouds that wafted him toward the outstretched arms. He floated higher and higher and the radiant figure drew nearer and nearer. Now he was in the very middle of the inmost blue that surrounded his savior, a bright fiery blue that did not burn but soothed and healed and filled him with bliss.

Antonius lifted his arms, and all his being was filled with one desire, one thirst, one cry, “Take me, lord, take me to you!”

Tigellinus was stupefied as he looked at the ripped carcass of the slave. His attendants were equally amazed. They couldn’t understand what they’d never seen before, that a slave could endure such tortures and not betray his kind.


The comfort of death was not granted to Antonius on this day. Instead he was saved for the arena.

Other slaves, of course, did not show the same fortitude. Some needed only to see the flagrum and they recanted in terror, confessed their association with the Christians, or anything else that their tormentors wanted to hear. They “revealed” that there was a day of judgment coming when a rain of fire would pour down from heaven, to sweep away the sins of mankind.

Aha! So the believers in Christ had set fire to Rome to fulfill the prophecies.

Some slaves told of secret meetings of Christians, where unity with the godhead was achieved by “eating his flesh and drinking his blood.” What else could this mean but that Christians truly did eat human flesh and drink human blood?

The same scenes took place in other households. Torture was applied to any slave suspected of association with the Christians; the same “proofs” of Christian guilt in the burning of Rome were obtained everywhere.

The Roman masters planted suspicion widely and nourished it skillfully, so that the cry to condemn the Christians would come from the people rather than from the rulers. Agitators even visited the homeless. They said that they themselves had heard Christian fiends confessing to the torching. They said that the torch carriers seen on the first night of the fire had been identified as black-bearded Jews. Slowly the widening ring of accusation spread.

“You see how the fire began at the Porta Capena, where the Jews have lately settled, and ended at the Tiber, where they have their old settlement? The Jewish quarters alone were untouched by the fire!”

Thus were the Christians linked with the Jews. Day by day the tide of popular resentment set in toward both. The people cried out for vengeance. Only blood could wipe out the unspeakable guilt. Only the wild beasts of the arena could carry out the punishment.

Then when the temper of the masses had been roused to the right pitch and turned in the right direction, the first public measures were taken.


The Jews could see the darkening storm clouds. Their good fortune at escaping the fire now turned out to be an immeasurable calamity. And as they watched the inevitable approach of the day of wrath, they did what Jews have always done in times of great trial; they assembled in their synagogues, they fasted, and they recited psalms.

* * * * *

Even though assembling together increased the danger of detection, the Christians gathered in their usual places of prayer, in the synagogue courts and in homes. They also chanted the Jewish prayers from the Psalms.

Now, more than ever, they all felt the imminence of judgment day. The signs of prophecies spoken by Peter and Paul had been fulfilled. The heavens had rained down fire, Rome-Babylon, the city of sin, was leveled with the dust, and above its ruins Messiah/Christ would shortly appear.

Many Christians claimed to see special signs in the heavens: new stars blazing up in the night sky, a fiery sword suspended above the city and great comets appearing, pointing toward Rome. Some claimed they saw the clouds opened, revealing the heavenly sanctuary and hosts of angels gathered around Christ.

The lord was coming; the long awaited event was about to happen!


Two conflicting moods appeared among Jews and Christians. There was panic and hope, terror of death and expectation of salvation, the judgment of Nero and the judgment of the lord. Some saw a ravening beast coming from its cage in the arena, while some saw the savior descending from heaven. Some felt they were sinking as the ground gave way under their feet. Others were being lifted to the glory of heaven.

But in all this confusion and vacillation they were aware of one single desire. “Whatever happens let it happen soon!”

They were also aware that the two extremes did meet at a certain point. The terror of death was the portal to eternal life. The last evil on earth heralded the beginning of the reign of eternal justice. Therefore they didn’t hide themselves but met together to confront the danger and the hope.


In the chapel that adjoined the synagogue court in the Trans-Tiber, the Christians gathered in the evening and lit their lamps. The women brought cakes of bread, and Peter sat down and broke bread with them. The cup was filled and passed around, and when all had drunk, Peter lifted his hands and spoke.

This time he didn’t tell them of the life and death of the lord, as he normally did. Instead he recited a chapter of the Psalms in Hebrew, and after each verse the congregation repeated it in Greek.

“As the hart pants after the living streams,
So my soul pants after You, O God!
My soul thirsts for the living God.
How long before I see the face of my God?”

As the responsive murmur rose from the chapel, a band of soldiers, led by a centurion, appeared. The men were armed. Their shields and helmets shone in the night, their swords swung at their sides. No one turned to greet them. The murmur of prayer continued without interruption.

The centurion strode forward, and the worshippers, lifting their eyes, saw that it was old Gabelus, of the Praetorian Guard.

“Come with us,” Gabelus said to Peter. “It’s time.”

Peter rose, not sure what to do.

“Tonight,” said Gabelus, “they will come for all of you. The command has been issued to arrest the Christians.”

The elder Andronicus addressed Peter, “You must go, Simon. The congregation needs you. Go with them.”

Peter accepted the decision.

“I leave the congregation in your hands, Andronicus. Lead them to the cross, where he waits for them. It’s his desire that we have our part in his pain and that our blood be mixed with his, in order that we may be one with him.”

“For his sake we will endure everything,” answered the congregation, and the prayers were resumed under the leadership of Andronicus.

Gabelus and his men led Peter across the bridge and through the city to the district of the Via Appia. They hid him there in the house of Hermas, near the catacombs.

* * * * *

The command had indeed been issued to the police and the Praetorians to arrest all Christians, whether they were Jews or non-Jews in whatever household they might be found. But the line between Jew and Christian was so faint that no one was sure where one ended and the other began. Among non-Jews the task was simple. If a slave admitted to being a Christian, he was immediately taken. But the Christian Jews looked like any other Jews. They spoke the same language, worked side by side, and observed the same Sabbath ritual. The same books could be found in all Jewish homes.

Now a non-Jewish Christian could easily clear himself of the charge by calling on the names of Jupiter and Apollo and throwing a pinch of incense on their altars, or on those of the deified Caesars. But all Jews, Christian and non-Christian, refused to call on the names of their gods, or to offer incense on their altars. The police and the military therefore arrested them indiscriminately, on the assumption that anyone who denied the gods of Rome must be of the hated sect.

* * * * *

The Roman courts were always heavily overloaded even in normal times. But with the mass arrest of “Christians” anything like an orderly judicial procedure became utterly impossible. The judges had neither the time nor the informational background needed to question each individual intelligently. Nor was the public mood one that encouraged such care and discrimination. All day long the judges sat in the basilicas on the Forum, and hour after hour new batches of prisoners were brought in. There were men and women, Jews and non-Jews, young and old, dragged from the homes of patricians or from the Trans-Tiber and Via Appia quarters.

The procedure became automatic.

“Who are you?”
“I’m a Christian,” was the answer in most cases.

This was equivalent to a confession of complicity in setting fire to the city.

Occasionally a case might take a few minutes.

A young man of noble appearance was brought in, having been taken in a raid on a Christian chapel. The young man wore a toga, so he was a freeman and probably from a patrician family.

“Who are you?” asked the judge.
“I’m a Christian.”
“Who are your parents?”
“I have no parents. My father is the Lord of the world, my faith is my mother.”
“What is your occupation?”
“I am a slave of Christ.”
“What land do you come from?”
“I’m a stranger on this earth, a wanderer, until I go to my heavenly homeland.”

A mother and child were brought before the judge and answered similarly.

An elderly Jew who’d been dragged out of his home appeared before the judge.

“Do you believe in Christ?”
“I believe in a Messiah whom God will send to free us and all the world.”
“A Christian, like the rest,” said the judge, curtly.
“But I’m a Hebrew, and my faith is sanctioned by the law,” protested the Jew.
“Throw incense on the altar of the divine Augustus!” commanded the judge.
“I do not recognize Caesar as a god. My God is the one only God of Israel, and Him alone I worship.”
“A Christian, like all the others!” repeated the judge, impatiently.

Slaves weren’t even brought to court. Their “trials” took place in the slaves’ quarters, and their purpose was not to obtain a confession, since suspicion itself was tantamount to guilt, but the names of other Christians. And whether the torture yielded the desired result or not, the trial ended in one of two ways. Either the slave died under the torture, or else he was carried off and thrown into the cellars of Nero’s private circus on the Vatican hill.

In this way Nero prepared a spectacle for the masses such as Rome had never seen before. It would be a gigantic bloodbath that he hoped would be remembered through the ages.