thumb|right|Sculpture of Constantine I (emperor)|Constantine I in York, England. Traditor, plural: traditores (Latin), is a term meaning "the one(s) who had handed over" and defined by Merriam-Webster as "one of the Christians giving up to the officers of the law the Scriptures, the sacred vessels, or the names of their brethren during the Roman persecutions". The word traditor comes from the Latin transditio from trans (across) + dare (to hand, to give), and is the source of the modern English words traitor and treason. The same root word, with a different context of what is handed to whom, g
thumb|right|Sculpture of Constantine I (emperor)|Constantine I in York, England. Traditor, plural: traditores (Latin), is a term meaning "the one(s) who had handed over" and defined by Merriam-Webster as "one of the Christians giving up to the officers of the law the Scriptures, the sacred vessels, or the names of their brethren during the Roman persecutions". The word traditor comes from the Latin transditio from trans (across) + dare (to hand, to give), and is the source of the modern English words traitor and treason. The same root word, with a different context of what is handed to whom, gives the word tradition as well.
In the history of the Christian church, it refers to bishops and other Christians who turned over sacred scriptures or betrayed their fellow Christians to the Roman authorities under threat of persecution. During the Diocletianic Persecution between AD 303 and 305, many church leaders had gone as far as turning in Christians to the authorities and "handed over" sacred religious texts to authorities to be burned. Philip Schaff says about them: "In this, as in former persecutions, the number of apostates who preferred the earthly life to the heavenly, was very great. To these was now added also the new class of the traditores, who delivered the holy Scriptures to the heathen authorities, to be burned".
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