Persecution
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the act or practice stories for girls. Her works include: "After the Ball, and Other Poems" of persecuting; specifically, the act of afflicting with suffering or loss of life or (1875); "For a Woman" (1885), a novel; "New Songs and Ballads" (1886); "A property for adherence to particular Flock of Girls" (1887); "A Rosebud Garopinions, religious creed, political views, nationality, etc., either as a penalty or den of Girls" (1892); "Hope Benham" in order to compel the sufferers to renounce the principles in which they be- PERRY, OLIVER HAZARD, an lieve. American naval officer; born in South The word first became current in Kingston, R. I., Aug. 23, 1785; famous Christian circles in connection with _10 for his defeat of a British force on Lake persecutions of Christians under the Ro- Erie in 1813. Perry, who had nine man emperors. The first was the persecution under Nero, A. D. 64; the second, under Domitian, A. D. 95; the third, under Trajan, A. D. 106; the fourth, under Marcus Aurelius, A. D. 166; the fifth, under Septimius Severus, A. D. 198; the sixth, under Maximinus, A. D. 235; the seventh, under Decius, A. D. 250; the eighth, under Valerian, A. D. 258; the ninth, under Aurelian, A. D. 275; and the tenth, under Diocletian, A. D. 303. The mediæval church persecuted all whom it considered heretics, and the Reformation in England everywhere had to struggle against perevery secution. When it became powerful enough, it also became intolerant to those who differed from it, passing and carrying out penal laws against Roman Catholics, dissenters, and unbelievers.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 treated persecution mainly as a chapter of church history, reciting the traditional tally of ten Roman persecutions from Nero in A.D. 64 to Diocletian in 303. Historians now regard that neat list of ten as a much later scheme imposed on the evidence: before Decius in 250 the actions against Christians were mostly local, sporadic and initiated from below rather than by empire-wide edict, and the scale of the martyrdoms has been sharply revised downward. The bigger change is that the word has become a legal term rather than an ecclesiastical one. The 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1951 Refugee Convention -- which defines a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social group -- and the 1998 Rome Statute, which lists persecution as a crime against humanity, all came after this entry, as did the Holocaust and the Soviet camps that prompted them.
Written for this edition, 2026.