The first references to Christianity in the Peninsula date from the 2nd century. Christian communities were persecuted by Valerian and Diocletian. The martyrdom of Sant Fructuós is evidence of the existence of a Church hierarchy with bishops and deacons in the cities of Catalonia in the 3rd century. The fact that martyrs such as St. Cugat and St. Feliu came from North Africa demonstrates the role of the African Church in the spread of Christianity in Hispania, which, in its early days, was an urban phenomenon. The countryside was much slower to convert, to the extent that the word for someone living in the countryside, paganus, came to be synonymous with non-Christian.