“This is the course that I have adopted in the case of those brought before me as Christians. I ask them if they are Christians. If they admit it, I repeat the question a second and a third time, threatening capital punishment; if they persist, I sentence them to death. For I do not doubt that, whatever kind of crime it may be to which they have confessed, their pertinacity and inflexible obstinacy should certainly be punished…[those] who denied that they were or had been Christians I considered should be discharged…especially because they cursed Christ, a thing which, it is said, genuine Christians cannot be induced to do.” – Pliny the Younger, appointed governor of Bithynia c. 110 AD, in a letter to the Roman emperor Trajan