Are we only considering actual people, or would Satan count?
No one’s going to take me up on the Nero or Caligula suggestion? I mean, they are reviled pretty widely today in western culture. Were they as widely reviled and considered EVIL 100 years or more ago?
That’s what I figured. Thanks.
Only because Elagabalus is unknown. They are seen as crazy twisted perverts, but aren’t known for genocides.
And I would guess that many Christians would consider him a hero, because the people he actually tortured were Muslims.
Ceaucescu certainly did.
Not that Vlad restricted himself to Muslims. In the interests of civil order, he did some rather nasty things to his Orthodox Christian subjects as well.
Nero certainly was (the myth of him fiddling while Rome burned is a few centuries old). Also the Roman Emperor Diocletian was vilified as evil incarnate because of his persecutation of Christians, especially in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox areas were there was wide veneration of saints who reached martyrdom under these emperors.
My German-American grandmother told us that “the Kaiser” was used as the boogeyman for kids when she was growing up, e.g. if you don’t behave the Kaiser will come get you.
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