organizational matters in this period.23 Reconciliation and a tightening of standards for clerical leaders become a key part of the lessons learned after Decius. . The emperor Valerian (253–260), fighting a losing battle with Persia, tried once more to insist on religious devotion to the Roman gods and in 257 became the tenth of the persecuting emperors when he issued an edict that demanded Christian conformity in religion. In the following year he published an even stronger