...So after ten years of almost constant persecution, how effective had the ‘Great’ persecution been? The most obvious place to start is to look at the fact that less than ten years after the end of the persecution, a Christian emperor sat on the throne of the Caesars and Christianity was now the official religion of the Roman Empire. This would point to the absolute failure of the persecution and despite the exaggeration of the Liber Pontificalis of those martyred, the numbers of Christians dead appears to be relatively little and confined to the more important and prominent members of the community, such as Marcellinus[37], Bishop of Rome and Eusebius’s[38] mentor Pamphilius. The organisation of the ‘Great’ persecution has been heavily criticised for while the anti-Christian edicts issued by Diocletian and Galerius were meant to be empire wide, the persecution in the west seems to have been confined to some churches being pulled down by Constantius[39] in Gaul, Britain and Spain and no one was executed. Even the obvious Christians in Rome were not arrested in the early years of the persecution suggesting that even the Augustus, Maximian did not enforce the edict, although he may later have used it as an excuse to confiscate land for himself.
Despite not being able to prevent the rise of Christianity, the ‘Great’ persecution did have a lasting effect on Christians. Almost immediately there was an argument about allowing those who had deviated from their faith and taken some part in a sacrifice to re-enter the church.
