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.
It was under Marcus Aurelius, the most philosophical and most conscientious of the emperors, that there was enacted for the first time in Gaul, against nascent Christianity, that scene of tyranny and barbarity which was to be renewed so often and during so many centuries in the midst of Christendom itself.