A Roman Governor Asks the Emperor How to Handle Christians
Pliny finds only stubborn superstition, and Trajan tells him not to go looking for it
Quick facts
- Governor
- Pliny the Younger, Pontus-Bithynia
- Dates in office
- 111-113 CE
- Emperor
- Trajan (r. 98-117 CE)
- Trajan's rule
- Do not seek out; punish if denounced and convicted; pardon if recanted
What happened
Pliny the Younger, serving as governor of Pontus and Bithynia in Asia Minor, encountered Christians for the first time in his post and was unsure how imperial law applied to them. He wrote to Emperor Trajan describing his practice: he interrogated the accused, executed those who refused three times to renounce the faith, and forwarded Roman citizens to Rome for trial. He reported that Christians met before dawn on a fixed day, sang responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves by oath against theft, adultery, and breach of faith rather than to any crime; torturing two female slaves described as deaconesses, he found nothing beyond what he called a depraved and excessive superstition. Trajan's reply told Pliny not to seek Christians out, to punish those who were denounced and convicted, but to pardon anyone who recanted by worshipping the Roman gods, and to disregard anonymous accusations entirely.
Why it matters
This exchange is the earliest surviving internal Roman government document on how to handle Christians, and Trajan's answer, punish if accused but do not hunt, became the empire's default policy for most of the following two centuries, applied unevenly by different governors and emperors until the systematic persecutions of the third and early fourth centuries.
How we know
The correspondence survives as Letters 10.96 and 10.97 in Pliny's own published collection of official letters from his governorship, an administrative record rather than a Christian composition.
Sources
- Internet History Sourcebooks Project, Fordham University. Pliny and Trajan · Primary source (author-declared)sourcebooks.fordham.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Christian History Institute. Pliny's Letter to Trajan · Reputable sourcechristianhistoryinstitute.org · The domain "christianhistoryinstitute.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of Christianity28 events · A crucified Jewish teacher, a persecuted sect that became an empire's official religion, and two thousand years of councils, schisms, and missions that carried it to every continentView all →