By James Hitchcock
A accomplished heritage of the Catholic Church from its beginnings in Jesus' ministry to its present prestige in an more and more secular world.
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Trajan (98-117), one of the five “good emperors” of the era, laid down a common-sense policy: provincial administrators were not to seek Christians out nor pay attention to irresponsible accusations but were to act only on credible charges, examine the accused, and persuade them to recant their beliefs. 46 Some Christians hoped for sympathy from the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius (161180), but he despised them for not fully supporting the Empire and ordered a persecution that was particularly severe in Gaul (modern France).
Since Jesus Himself is the new Temple, the Church transformed the sacrificial worship of the Jews, with Jesus as the unbloody sacrifice who replaces the holocaust of animals, a sacrifice that is properly celebrated with solemn ceremonies, requiring meticulous attention to ritual practices. For a long time, the Eucharist was celebrated only on Sunday, but by the later third century, it was being celebrated daily in Carthage (North Africa), a practice that gradually spread in the West but not in the East.
Complete toleration was granted to Christianity by the Edict of Milan of 313, and the emperor soon returned all confiscated Church property, exempted the Church from taxes and the clergy from military service, and appointed bishops to be civil judges in their local communities. A Moral Revolution By his decrees, Constantine also sought to bring about a kind of moral revolution: establishing Sunday as the day of rest, in commemoration of Christ’s Resurrection; abolishing crucifixion; forbidding the branding of criminals on the face, since the face is the image of the soul; depriving slave-owners of the power of life and death over their slaves.