Marseilles--and the different Greek colonies, originally from Asia Minor and settled upon the shores of the Mediterranean or along the Rhone, mark the route and were the places whither the first Christian missionaries carried their teaching: on this point the letters of the Apostles and the writings of the first two generations of their disciples are clear and abiding proof. In the west of the empire, especially in Italy, the Christians at their first appearance were confounded with the Jews, and comprehended under the same name: “The Emperor Claudius,” says Suetonius, “drove from Rome (A.D. 52) the Jews who, at the instigation of Christus, were in continual commotion.” After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 71), the Jews, Christian or not, dispersed throughout the Empire; but the Christians were not slow to signalize themselves by their religious fervor, and to come forward everywhere under their own true name. Lyons became the chief centre of Christian preaching and association in Gaul. As early as the first half of the second century there existed there a Christian congregation, regularly organized as a church, and already sufficiently important to be in intimate and frequent communication with the Christian Churches of the East and West. There is a tradition, generally admitted, that St. Pothinus, the first Bishop of Lyons, was sent thither from the East by the Bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, himself a disciple of St. John. One thing is certain, that the Christian Church of Lyons produced Gaul’s first martyrs, amongst whom was the Bishop, St. Pothinus.