The Governor Who Asked What to Do With Christians

Pliny the Younger served as Roman governor of Bithynia and Pontus in northwestern Asia Minor in the early second century AD. In his correspondence with Emperor Trajan, preserved in the Loeb Classical Library collection, Pliny describes his encounters with Christians in the province and seeks imperial guidance on how to handle them.

In Letter 10.96, Pliny reports what he has learned about Christian gatherings. The accused Christians testified that they would meet before daylight, assemble in groups, sing a hymn "to Christ as to a god," and bind themselves by oath to abstain from theft, brigandry, adultery, and betrayal of trust. This account comes from pagan witnesses and magistrates investigating the movement, not from Christian apologetic literature.

The detail that Christians addressed Christ in worship—singing to him with the same reverence Romans reserved for the gods—reflects how the earliest followers understood and practiced their faith in the reign of Trajan. Pliny's letter offers no interpretation or religious judgment; it records what he found. His mention of early morning assembly aligns with descriptions of Christian practice in the apostolic period.

Bithynia, the very region where this governor reported Christian activity, is identified in 1 Peter 1:1 as one of the provinces to which the apostle addresses his epistle. The letter urges scattered believers to maintain their witness and endurance under pressure—circumstances consistent with what Pliny's report confirms was occurring there some decades later.

Trajan's reply (Letter 10.97) establishes state policy: Christians are not to be hunted out or denounced anonymously, but those brought before magistrates and found to be Christian should be punished. This exchange stands as the earliest official Roman correspondence about Christians as a distinct community within the empire.