Edict of Toleration of Galerius
Imperial · Edict · 311 · Latin
The Great Persecution ends in a confession of failure. Galerius, who had driven it hardest and was dying of the disease Lactantius describes with some relish, permits Christians 'again to be Christians, and to establish the places of their religious assemblies' — but only after putting on record that they had been wilful and foolish, that they had abandoned the religion of their forefathers, and that the whole policy had been meant to bring them back to right opinions. The one thing asked in return is prayer: for the emperor's welfare, for the state's, and for their own. Lactantius' next chapter has it published at Nicomedia and its author dead a few days later. Two years before Milan, this is the legal end of the Great Persecution. The text is in Lactantius ch. 34, and also in Eusebius, HE 8.17.
The text
The edict
"Amongst our other regulations for the permanent advantage of the commonweal, we have hitherto studied to reduce all things to a conformity with the ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans.
"It has been our aim in an especial manner, that the Christians also, who had abandoned the religion of their forefathers, should return to right opinions. For such wilfulness and folly had, we know not how, taken possession of them, that instead of observing those ancient institutions, which possibly their own forefathers had established, they, through caprice, made laws to themselves, and drew together into different societies many men of widely different persuasions.
"After the publication of our edict, ordaining the Christians to betake themselves to the observance of the ancient institutions, many of them were subdued through the fear of danger, and moreover many of them were exposed to jeopardy; nevertheless, because great numbers still persist in their opinions, and because we have perceived that at present they neither pay reverence and due adoration to the gods, nor yet worship their own God, therefore we, from our wonted clemency in bestowing pardon on all, have judged it fit to extend our indulgence to those men, and to permit them again to be Christians, and to establish the places of their religious assemblies; yet so as that they offend not against good order.
"By another mandate we purpose to signify unto magistrates how they ought herein to demean themselves.
"Wherefore it will be the duty of the Christians, in consequence of this our toleration, to pray to their God for our welfare, and for that of the public, and for their own; that the commonweal may continue safe in every quarter, and that they themselves may live securely in their habitations."
Chapter 34 of Lactantius is nothing but the edict.
Roberts & Donaldson, ANF vol. 7 (1886) · Alexander Roberts & James Donaldson · ANF VII, Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died, chapter 34