# Of The Unheard-Of Cruelties Nero Practiced In Slaying The Pious Christians.

1st century (source section) · Historical source

Source: Martyrs’ Mirror. Original heading: OF THE UNHEARD-OF CRUELTIES NERO PRACTICED IN SLAYING THE PIOUS CHRISTIANS.

Century of containing source section; exact event date not assigned

Touching the manner in which the Christians
were tortured and killed at the time of Nero, A. Mellinus
gives the following account from Tacitus and
other Roman writers: namely, that four extremely
cruel and unnatural kinds of torture were employed
against the Christians:

Firstly, that they dressed them in the skins of
tame and wild beasts, that they might be torn to
pieces by dogs or other wild animals.

Secondly, that they, according to the example of
their Savior, were fastened alive on crosses, and that
in many different ways.

Thirdly, that the innocent Christians were burned
and smoked by the Romans, with torches and
lamps, under the shoulders and on other tender
parts of their naked bodies, after these had been
cruelly lacerated with scourges or rods. This burning
was done also with shavings and fagots, they
(the Christians) being tied to stakes worth half a
stiver.85 Therefore they called the Christians sarmenticii,
that is, fagot people, and semissii, that is,
half stiver people; because they stood fastened to
half stiver stakes, and were thus burned with the
slow fire of fagots.

Fourthly, that these miserable, accused Christian
martyrs were used as candles, torches, or lanterns,
to see by them at night.

Of those who were burned, some were tied or
nailed to stakes, and held still by a hook driven
through the throat, so that they could not move the
head when the pitch, wax, tallow, and other inflammable
substances were poured boiling over their
heads, and set on fire, so that all the unctious matter
of the human body flowing down made long,
wide furrows in the sand of the theatre. And thus
human beings were lighted as torches, and burned
as lights for the wicked Romans at night.

Juvenal and Martial, both Roman poets, and Tertullian,
state this in a different manner, namely,
that the Romans wrapped them in a painful or burning
mantle, which they wound around their hands
and feet, in order to melt the very marrow in their
bones.

Furthermore, it is stated by A. Mellinus (from the
aforementioned authors), concerning those mantles,
that they were made of paper or linen, and, having
been thickly coated with oil, pitch, wax, rosin, tallow,
and sulphur, were wrapped around their whole
body, and then set on fire.

For this spectacle Nero gave the use of his gardens,
and appeared himself among the people in the
garb of a charioteer, taking an active part in the
Circusian games; himself standing in the circus,
and, as charioteer, guiding a chariot.

These proceedings, according to the testimony of
Tacitus, although it had the appearance that the
Christians were punished as malefactors who had
deserved the extremest penalty, nevertheless moved
the people to compassion; for they understood well
enough that the Christians were not exterminated
for the good of the common weal, but simply to
gratify the cruelty of one man, Nero. Compare
Abr. Mellin. 1st book van de Histor. der vervolg. en
Mart. printed Anno 1619. fol. 11. col. 4. and fol. 12.
col. 1. with Tacit. Annal. lib. 15. and Tertul. Apol.
Contr. Gent. cap. 50 and adv. Marc. cap. 5. Martinal.
Epig. 25. lib. 25.





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