Then came another lull. With Constantius as the senior Augustus the persecution came to an end in the West, and even in the East there was an interval of peace. For Maximin, who was soon to develop into the most ferocious of all the persecutors,—so St. Jerome speaks of him in comparison with Decius and Diocletian,—gave a brief respite to the Christians in his provinces of Egypt, Cilicia, Palestine, and Syria. “When I first visited the East,” Maximin wrote,[67] some years later, in referring to his accession, “I found that a great number of persons who might have been useful to the State had been exiled to various places by the judges. I ordered each one of these judges no longer to press hardly upon the provincials, but rather to exhort them by kindly words to return to the worship of the gods. While my orders were obeyed by the magistrates, no one in the countries of the East was exiled or ill-treated, but the provincials, won over by kindness, returned to the worship of the gods.” ----- Footnote 67: Eusebius, _Hist. Eccles._, ix., 9. ----- Direct contradiction is given to this boast as to the number of Christian apostates by the fact that, within a twelvemonth, the new Cæsar grew tired of seeking to kill Christianity by kindness and revoked his recent rescript of leniency. Maximin developed into a furious bigot. He fell wholly under the influence of the more fanatical priests and became increasingly devoted to magic, divination, and the black arts. Lactantius declares that not a joint appeared at his table which had not been taken from some victim sacrificed by a priest at an altar and drenched with the wine of libation. Edict followed edict in rapid succession, until, in the middle of 306, what Eusebius describes as “a second declaration of war” was issued, which ordered every magistrate to compel all who lived within his jurisdiction to sacrifice to the gods on pain of being burnt alive. House to house visitations were set on foot that no creature might escape, and the common informer was encouraged by large rewards to be active in his detestable occupation. It would seem indeed as if the Christians in the provinces of Maximin suffered far more severely than any of their brethren. The most frightful bodily mutilations were practised. Batches of Christians were sentenced to work in the porphyry mines of Egypt or the copper mines of Phænos in Palestine, after being hamstrung and having their right eyes burnt out with hot irons. The evidence of Lactantius, who says that the confessors had their eyes dug out, their hands and feet amputated, and their nostrils and ears cut off, is corroborated by Eusebius and the authors of the _Passions_.