The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom

Paul Middleton

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119100027
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

A unique, wide-ranging volume exploring the historical, religious, cultural, political, and social aspects of Christian martyrdom

Although a well-studied and researched topic in early Christianity, martyrdom had become a relatively neglected subject of scholarship by the latter half of the 20 th century. However, in the years following the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the study of martyrdom has experienced a remarkable resurgence. Heightened cultural, religious, and political debates about Islamic martyrdom have, in a large part, prompted increased interest in the role of martyrdom in the Christian tradition. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom is a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon from its beginnings to its role in the present day. This timely volume presents essays written by 30 prominent scholars that explore the fundamental concepts, key questions, and contemporary debates surrounding martyrdom in Christianity.

Broad in scope, this volume explores topics ranging from the origins, influences, and theology of martyrdom in the early church, with particular emphasis placed on the Martyr Acts, to contemporary issues of gender, identity construction, and the place of martyrdom in the modern church. Essays address the role of martyrdom after the establishment of Christendom, especially its crucial contribution during and after the Reformation period in the development of Christian and European national-building, as well as its role in forming Christian identities in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This important contribution to Christian scholarship:

• Offers the first comprehensive reference work to examine the topic of martyrdom throughout Christian history
• Includes an exploration of martyrdom and its links to traditions in Judaism and Islam
• Covers extensive geographical zones, time periods, and perspectives
• Provides topical commentary on Islamic martyrdom and its parallels to the Christian church
• Discusses hotly debated topics such as the extent of the Roman persecution of early Christians

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of religious studies, theology, and Christian history, as well as readers with interest in the topic of Christian martyrdom.

II.
Early Christian Martyrdom

CHAPTER 3
The Roman Persecutions

James Corke‐Webster

Introduction: Minimalism from Mommsen to Moss

The story of modern scholarship on the Roman persecutions can be characterized as a gradual but steady progression towards “minimalism”. Scholars have become increasingly hesitant about the degree to which the state targeted the Christian faith in the three centuries between the death of Jesus in the early first century and the conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in the early fourth. Most scholars today accept that the steps Roman authorities took against Christians in this period were far more limited in both chronological and geographical extent than many early Christian accounts would have us believe.

The traditional view through the nineteenth century was that Christianity was the subject of a continuing and universal legal enactment from the time of either Nero or Domitian in the early first century to the so‐called “Great Persecution” of the tetrarchic emperors in the early fourth (e.g. Neumann 1890). But at the turn of the twentieth century the German historian Theodor Mommsen challenged this accepted wisdom (Mommsen 1890; in English, see Hardy 1894). Mommsen proposed that until the emperor Decius in the mid‐third century, Christians suffered not because they were proscribed, but simply via a police action motivated by Christianity’s threat as a “national apostasy.”

Mommsen’s intervention sparked over half a century of inter‐continental debate. Though the traditional general law theory found numerous defenders, its critics became increasingly numerous and persuasive. The rearguard action did prompt modifications to Mommsen’s theory, for example that of Hugh Last (1937), arguing that in this period the Roman authorities took suppressive measures against Christians in the same way as against other groups, namely when—and only when—they provoked scandalous behavior in their adherents. This growing consensus produced at the century’s mid‐point an important state‐of‐the‐question article by Adrian Sherwin‐White (1952). Building on Last (1937), Sherwin‐White argued that initially the name “Christian” served as a marker for other suspected crimes, but that eventually contumacia, or obstinacy in refusing to sacrifice, became the official objection to Christianity. The Roman problem with Christianity, in other words, was not primarily religious.

A decade later, a further scholarly squabble erupted. Geoffrey de Ste. Croix (1964) agreed with Sherwin‐White in accepting Mommsen’s position that Christians did not suffer under a general law. But he vehemently disagreed that contumacia was at issue, and thus that the Roman objection to Christianity was not religious. De Ste. Croix argued instead that Christians were punished in the pre‐Decian period for their “name”—that is, for being Christians—because Romans saw Christianity as a form of atheism and thus a threat to traditional religious practice. Sherwin‐White (1964) responded by accepting that “atheism” may have been an issue after Hadrian, but insisting that it was not before then. De Ste. Croix (1964) did not accept the amendment. His arguments carried the day.

Soon after, Timothy Barnes (1968) approached the question from a different angle. He set out all the available evidence for a juridical basis for Christian persecution before Decius. His list demonstrated plainly that there was no legislation against Christians before the reign of Trajan. But in that emperor’s correspondence with his governor, Pliny the Younger, Barnes identified the precedent that Christians could be executed for their “name”.

De Ste. Croix and Barnes are usually taken as statements of the consensus position. They are certainly “minimalist” in that for the first two and half centuries of Christianity’s existence they affirm Mommsen’s model of police action over and against the general law theory. But in asserting that, at least from Trajan on (and for de Ste. Croix possibly before), it was “Christianity” itself that Roman authorities objected to, they both withdrew from the more extreme minimalism of Sherwin‐White, who thought that “Christianity” was not really at issue at all.

All of this debate, as will be apparent, concerned the period before 250 CE. There was no argument, however, that with the reign of Decius a government‐instigated, empire‐wide persecution of the Christians began, which continued, after an interruption, in the subsequent reign of Valerian. But in the late twentieth century this was also questioned. James Rives (1999) suggested that Decius’ edict may not have been intended to target Christians at all.

That left only the actions of Valerian and the so‐called “Great Persecution” of the tetrarchs in the early fourth century. Here we do have evidence for concrete legislation against Christians. But what exactly Valerian legislated for is opaque, and even in the tetrarchic persecution it has become clear that while Christianity was certainly proscribed, the actual violence suffered may have been less severe than traditionally assumed. So where once the Roman persecution of Christians was a given, now the very validity of the term can be questioned, as in the book of Candida Moss (2013), The Myth of Persecution.

The traditional picture, which has persisted in some quarters (e.g. Frend 2006), relied upon reading select, independent pieces of evidence together to identify particular emperors as persecutors, and then merging their reigns to create a picture of ongoing persecution. In what follows, I consider a selection of these persecution “moments” in closer detail. The list is not exhaustive, but rather represents those emperors most often treated as persecutors.

Persecuting Emperors

Nero

Nero (54–68 CE) has traditionally been seen as the emperor under whom persecution of Christians began. Later Christian sources, like the first Christian historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, remember how the increasingly tyrannical youth “having plunged into unholy pursuits, even took up arms against piety toward the God of all” (H.E. 2.25.1; translations throughout my own). The key testimony here, however, is that of the Roman historian Tacitus, which ties Nero’s actions against Christians to another historical, landmark, the Great Fire of Rome in July 64. In arguably the most discussed passage of his early second‐century oeuvre, Tacitus regales his reader with the destructive horrors of the fire (Ann. 15.38–41), before turning to its aftermath:

But the infamy did not wane—neither by human influence, nor the bribery of the emperor, nor divine appeasement—that it was believed that the fire was ordered. Therefore, in order to put an end to the rumor, Nero supplied as culprits, and punished with the most artificial penalties, those detested for their shameful acts whom the people called Christians. The originator of this name, Christus, had suffered punishment in the reign of Tiberius at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate. Restrained for the moment, the destructive superstition broke out again, not only in Judaea, the origin of the evil, but even in Rome, to which place all terrible and shameful things flow together from every side and are celebrated....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• I: Introductory Matters
• II: Early Christian Martyrdom
• III: Martyrdom in the Medieval and Reformation World
• IV: Martyrdom in Global Perspective
• V: Legacies of Martyrdom
• Index
• End User License Agreement