Saint Patrick & Names along the Antonine wall

[Nathan Ross]

Can we please stop this nonsense about there being no persecutions.

No we can't.

Gildas was writing 250 years after the event, Bede 400 years after the event. Neither of them are trustworthy sources for the persecution of AD303 when they are directly and explicitly contradicted by contemporary evidence.

There is considerable historical literature on the Great Persecutions, both primary and secondary sources and a wealth of scholarly discussion too. No historian of late antiquity worth the name would suggest that the testimony of Gildas and Bede should be given greater weight that that of Eusebius and Lactantius.

I am afraid we have reached a point of ineluctable difference here. You either follow historical methodology or you do not. I prefer to do so, but if you'd rather follow a different path then I can only wish you all the best with it!