History of Christendom reading

Chapter 2 notes:

For the first 300 years, the church was constantly being persecuted. That time period has been named The Heroic Age of the Church. Many of the apostles died the martyr death because of their faith. Many of the earliest persecutions were administered by the Jews, but eventually included the Roman government.
In the year 64 at the time of Emperor Nero, a fire broke out. After it was rumored to be Nero's fault, he blamed it on the Christians therefore beginning a whole host of sufferings and deaths among them. Many Christians suffered at the hands of Nero. These persecutions were throughout the whole empire. From 68-161, there was no large slaughters of Christians, but plenty of individual deaths of strong Christians. A few of these were Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, and Justin Martyr.
During the rule of Marcus Aurelius (161-180), a decree was made that the property of Christians would be given to their accusers. This would obviously lead to many people accusing Christians of things they didn't do. For many more years, the Christians were murdered in the most cruel ways. For about 70 years, there was a lull in the persecutions with a few exceptions.
In Alexandria in Egypt there began to be persecutions including the father of Origen, and Irenaeus.
The first emperor to make an effort to persecute Christians to destroy the Church was Decius. He only reigned for two years. They had a break and then had more persecution from Valerian. Another forty years went by quietly and then in 303, Diocletian began the oppression again which was continued by his successor, Galerius until the year 311. Many Christians found refuge in the catacombs, the underground passages. This was the last of all the persecutions. As Galerius lay on his deathbed, he issued a decree to let the Christians to hold their worship services again. The complete victory for the Church was near at hand.

1) It destroyed its foundations by forbidding Christians to worship and by killing off strong Christians.
2) The catacombs were the places that Christians sought refuge from Galerius's persecutions
3) To suffer for Christ
4) They persecuted them because Christianity was a threat to their faith.
5) Because of the desolation of Jerusalem in 70 AD