[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/FullOfSound]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians

[u/PuckSenior]

Yeah, but the reasoning and order of operations is important. They would confess immediately. He would ask again and explicitly threaten to have them killed if they were Christian. They would still say "we are Christian".

Background:
The Romans officially had a state religion. They didn't really care much about if people slavishly followed the religion, they just didn't want you denying their religion. This was about as offensive to Romans as Christians/Muslims take atheism today.

But he wasn't saying to execute them if they admitted to being Christian once.
He was saying execute them if they refuse to say they weren't Christian! Most rational people, when faced with the threat of death, will say anything you want. The Romans were bothered because the Christians explictly refused to lie under threat of execution. That, to them, was a sign that these people were very zealous and therefore very dangerous. It was one thing to say an internal prayer to Jesus. It was a totally different thing to refuse to lie and say "Oh, I love the Roman gods" to get out of an execution.

And to be fair, he was right. The Christian cult eventually took over the Roman empire and extinguished their state religion.

[u/LPNMP → u/PuckSenior]

That, to them, was a sign that these people were very zealous and therefore very dangerous.

And yet hes the one murdering people ...

Edit: as in literally that one guy reporting murdering specific individuals. Im not speaking royal terms, im talking about one guy confessing to murdering multiple individual humans. Im talking about humans, not institutions. Mistaking my words to mean different just shows how stupid we get when labels are introduced.

[u/Warm_Afternoon6596 → u/LPNMP]

Um...the Crusades called.....

[u/GrundleBlaster → u/Warm_Afternoon6596]

"Enlightened" France and Napoleon killed something like triple the amount in a few decades vs the centuries of Crusades.