Current Trends in the Study of Early Christian Martyrdom
Candida R. Moss, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Department of Theology,
University of Notre Dame, candida.moss@nd.edu
Martyrdom is a subject of perennial interest to his-
torians and scholars of early Christianity. Since the
early church the spread and success of Christianity
has been attributed in part to the willingness of its
members to embrace suffering and death for Christ.
The important role that martyrdom is assumed to
play in the dissemination of the Christian message
together with the exceptional nature of the supposed
persecution of Christians has generated volumes of
scholarship on the causes of persecution, the extent
of Christian martyrdom, and the historicity and reli-
ability of Christian literature on the subject. In re-
cent years the study of martyrdom has experienced
something of a renaissance. The cultural turn and
an increased focus on issues surrounding the body,
coupled with a heightened p o st-9 /II awareness of
the relevance of martyrdom to the modern world,
has meant that the twenty-first century has seen a
relative boom in the study of Christian martyrdom.
In many ways the critical study of martyrdom be-
gan during the counter-reformation with the forma-
tion of the Society of Bollandists in 1643. The pur-
pose of the Bollandist project, as well as that of their
predecessor Héribert Rosweyde (1607), was to use
historical and linguistic criteria in order to produce
authoritative statements on the historicity of the
saints' lives. Their primary concerns were the assem-
bly of manuscripts, critical assessment of traditions,
and analysis of the growth of martyrdom traditions
(Delehaye 1922; Godding 2007). The publication of
the Acta Sanctorum and the supporting Bollandist
publications Subsidia Hagiographica and Analecta
Bollandiana whittled down the unwieldy corpus of
early Christian texts on the basis of historicity and
authenticity.
This interest in historicity had ramifications for the
ways in which the study of martyrdom was bound-
ed. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars
like Hippolyte Delehaye were attentive to issues of
genre, especially in so far as genre categories could
assist them in determining the reliability of a partie-
ular text. Traditional scholarship on martyrdom cat-
egorized martyrdom stories as belonging either to
22 BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION
the acta (acts) or passio (passion) genres.1The former
genre was concerned with the report or proceedings
of a trial during which Christians were condemned
to die. The latter described the sufferings, tortures,
and execution of the martyrs in greater depth. The
generic difference between these two forms of writ-
ing was overlaid with notions of historicity. The
rather blander acts of the martyrs were adjudged by
the Bollandists to be the more historically reliable
of the two. The "passions" dealt more with stylized
narratives and legends and were deemed less trust-
worthy (Delehaye 1921). The boundaries between
these two genres are at best fragile. Some stories
combine elements of both genres and scholars have
come around to the opinion that while this distinc-
tion is notionally helpful its utility and precision has
been overestimated.
Similarly, the generic boundaries between mar-
tyr acts and apologetics are at best permeable. Jus-
tin Martyr, the author of some of the most famous
apologetic works (First Apology, Second Apology, and
the Dialogue with Trypho), incorporated a martyr-
dom account into his work and he himself died as
a martyr in Rome around 165 CE. The use of marty-
rological topoi in apologetics demonstrates the rhe-
torical force that martyrdom lends to the apologetic
rhetorical program. The impact of this distinction,
however, is still keenly felt: stories about martyrs,
or proto-hagiographical material, tend to be treated
separately from the related genres of "apologetics"
and "apocryphal acts of the apostles." In her recent
book, Helen Rhee (2005, 1-8) has drawn attention
to the ways in which this distinction is also related
to ideas about historicity. She has argued for a more
comparative approach in which the apocryphal acts
stand on equal footing with the martyrdom accounts
and writings of "apologists."
Even as the boundaries between genres have be-
come blurred, scholars have become interested in
broadening the scope of early Christian martyrdom
so that it includes the manuscript history of martyr-
dom traditions (Cooper 2000), the reception of bib-
lical and hagiographical traditions in martyrdom
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 3 /SEPTEMBER 2012
literature (Moss 2010), the rhetoric of martyrdom
(Castelli 2004), and the sermons of late homilists
(Lamberis 2011). Nonetheless, certain key themes in
the study of early Christian martyrdom continue to
persist in scholarship even as they are reset and re-
shaped in light of more recent discoveries and meth-
odologies.
The Origins of Martyrdom
Toward the beginning of the twentieth century,
scholars began to probe the origins of martyrdom
itself. The great ecclesiastical scholar Hans Freiherr
von Campenhausen (1936) proposed that the notion
of martyrdom originated within Christianity itself as
a distinctive feature of this new religious group. For
Campenhausen and his followers, the Greek term
martys describes a particular kind of death in which
an individual dies as a result of his or her religious
confession or witness. This view was supported and
promulgated by the linguistic studies of a cohort of
German scholars, most notably Norbert Brox, whose
1961 Zeuge und Märtyrer traced the origins of the term
from its roots in legal terminology to its current lexi-
cal definition. Brox's ultimate conclusion was that
martys does not become a terminus technicus until the
Martyrdom of Polycarp in the mid-second century and
it is at this point that martyrdom is born.2
The difficulty with this approach was that it equat-
ed the origins of martyrdom with a linguistic shift
that was varied, graduated, and irregular. Even if the
Martyrdom of Poly carp uses martys in a new way, this
does not mean that all Christians across the Mediter-
ranean automatically followed suit.
In contrast to this sui generis understanding of mar-
tyrdom that ties origins to philology, other scholars
have—following the traditions of the history of reli-
gions school—argued that the concept or values inher-
ent and endemic to early Christian martyrdom have
their origins in other ancient ideologies and cultures.
This approach began with W. H. C. Frend, whose
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church argued
for a strongly Jewish background and located the ori-
gins of martyrdom within the history of the suffering
of the Jewish people (Frend 1965). A less monolithic
version of this theory is reproduced in Jan Willem
van Henten's study of the Maccabean martyrs, in
which he posits that the deaths of Jewish heroes for
the "salvation" of their people formed the notion of
martyrdom in the early church.3Others looked to an­
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 3 / SEPTEMBER 2012
cient Greek and Roman examples or to the literary
ancestry of the martyrdom story for clues to martyr-
dom's "origins" (Eigler 1998); for the relationship
between the noble death tradition and the literature
of the Jesus Movement see Seeley 1990; Droge and
Tabor 1992. There are a number of startling literary
and thematic similarities between Jewish and Chris-
tian martyrdoms and Greco-Roman narratives that
are more usually termed "noble deaths." The iconic
figures of Achilles and Socrates, the rousing patrio-
tism of death for country found in Athenian funeral
orations, and the tragic deaths of Euripidean heroes
and heroines exerted great influence on the forma-
tion of ideas about self-sacrifice and noble death.
Intrinsic to all of these theories about the origins of
martyrdom in human history is a commitment to the
notion that martyrdom is a stable theological con-
cept or practice with a single source and a constant
character. Yet ancient views of martyrdom were not
monolithic or genetically identical to one another. As
studies of regional or "sectarian" varieties of martyr-
dom (Tilley 1996), individual martyr cults (Eastman
2011), and recent histories of martyrdom have shown
(Moss 2012a), martyrdom was as diverse and hetero-
geneous as any other Christian practice or doctrine.
Martyrdom, Identity, Gender, and the Body
With the etymological origins and historical basis of
martyrdom largely discounted as resources for un-
derstanding martyrdom in early Christianity, a num-
ber of scholars have looked to the discursive func-
tion that martyrdom played in the formation of early
Christianities and Christian identity in general. The
work of Judith Lieu (1996) and Daniel Boyarín (1999)
explored the ways in which martyrdom served to
rhetorically and ideologically divorce what it meant
to be "Christian" from what it meant to be a "Jew"
or a "Pagan" (see also Castelli 2004; Leemans 2006).
While many scholars have recognized that the stark
division between Christian and Jew or Christian and
Pagan is overstated in our sources and secondary lit-
erature, these scholars demonstrated how Christian
identity was carved out of the body of the martyr,
the ways in which the figure of the martyr served to
solidify notions of what it means to be a Christian.
When it comes to the ways in which martyrdom
literature shapes Christian identity, one particularly
fruitful avenue of exploration has been the way that
BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION 23
the body works in, is shaped by, and shapes theolo-
gies of martyrdom. Drawing upon the pioneering
work of Peter Brown, Caroline Walker-Bynum, Vir-
ginia Burrus, and others, a number of scholars have
discussed the ways the body of the martyr serves as a
site of cultural resistance and negotiation.4This area
of study has focused especially on gender and power
in early Christian martyrdom. Gender is something
of a leitmotif in early Christian martyrdom stories.
Not only are a number of prominent and important
martyrs women—Perpetua, Felicitas, Blandina, Ag-
athonike, Agnes, and Agatha—but their gender is
often ambiguous, shifting, and contested.5 As is of-
ten noted, the female martyr is often masculinized.
In scholarly analyses this rejection of femininity is
interpreted as a rejection of Greco-Roman construc-
tions of sex, a challenge to the patriarchal ideology
of the Roman empire, and as an appropriation of
Roman constructions of power. These depictions of
gender and power are often tied to interpretations
of athletic and gladiatorial imagery in the acts of the
martyrs. Yet, as Stephanie Cobb's (2008) work has
shown, the depiction of masculinity in martyrdom
stories goes far beyond the amphitheatre and en-
compasses not only the martyrs themselves but also
other characters in the narratives—Jews, mobs, and
governors.
Martyrdom and "Orthodoxy"
Christianity maintains that martyrdom is the juris-
diction of the orthodox. In his Miscellanies Clement of
Alexandria describes "true martyrdom" as standing
as the via media between two extremes: the position
of enthusiasts for "foolishly" rushing headlong into
the flames and the opinion of another group who
flee martyrdom, deeming it unnecessary for salva-
tion (Van den Hoek 1993). Clement's taxonomy has
been influential in scholarly assessments of the posi-
tion of the orthodox and proto-orthodox positions
on martyrdom in contrast to the opinions of other
groups of Christians, most notably adherents of the
New Prophecy Movement (or Montanists) and the
"Gnostics" (Ste Croix 1963; Ste Croix 2006; Dearn
2006); for the view that the orthodox also practiced
voluntary martyrdom see Droge 1995, 155-70). The
former are assumed to be the enthusiasts decried by
Clement and the latter his reluctant heretics.
Recent scholarship both on the New Prophecy
24 BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION
Movement and on the "Gnostics" has challenged
the assumptions that either of these groups strin-
gently adhered to a single position on the question
of martyrdom. With respect to the New Prophecy
Movement, the assumption that Montanists were
particularly predisposed towards martyrdom to
the point of volunteering has been shown by Wil-
liam Tabbernee to be a fallacy (1978,3.128-139; 1985;
2007, 201-242). Montanists were no more likely to
volunteer for martyrdom than their proto-Catholic
peers. In fact, as Paul Middleton (2006) has argued,
this form of "radical martyrdom" was generally ac-
cepted in the ancient world. Others have pushed
farther, arguing that as a category voluntary mar-
tyrdom is anachronistic and was the product of dis-
eussions at the turn of the third century about true
martyrdom (Moss 2012b).
Scholarship on martyrdom and "Gnosticism,"
following statements made by Irenaeus and Clem-
ent, has traditionally maintained that the so-called
"Gnostics" were vehemently opposed to the prac-
tice of martyrdom. This opposition was, in turn, tied
to their understanding of the body in general and
the resurrection of the body in particular (Pagels
1980; fuller discussion in Pagels 1979, 70-101). This
characterization of the "Gnostic" attitudes to mar-
tyrdom has returned to the forefront of discussions
about martyrdom as a result of the discovery of the
Tchacos Codex, a volume of texts that includes the
notorious Gospel of Judas. While initial responses to
the Gospel of Judas reinforced the idea that Sethians,
Valentinians and other "Gnostics" were anti-martyr-
dom (Pagels and King 2007,59-75; Painchaud 2008),
more recent studies of the First Apocalypse of James
have shown that while notions of what constituted
martyrdom were constantly debated, there was no
strict binary between the orthodox and the heretical
(King 2009). That there was considerable diversity
of thought about martyrdom among the plethora of
groups designated as "Gnostic" should not surprise
us as the "Gnostics" were never a homogenous en-
tity (Brakke 2012) and martyrdom was never a ho-
mogenous practice (Moss 2012a, 2-7).
Martyrdom, Persecution, and Violence
Traditional studies of early Christian martyrdom
were interwoven with the topic of persecution. Since
Gibbon's defense of the Romans and rebuttal of the
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 3 /SEPTEMBER 2012
myth of Christian martyrdom, classicists and reli-
gious studies scholars had asked the questions, were
the Christians persecuted? and, if so, how much,
how often, and why?
Standard treatments of this subject divided the pe-
riods of persecution into three parts: the ministry of
Jesus to the fire of Rome in 64 CE, the period from the
great fire until 250 CE, and the persecutions begun
under Decius in 250-51 CE to the conversion of Con-
stantine in 313 CE.6Until relatively recently, scholars
followed the historical narrative provided by the NT
Gospels and Acts and subscribed to the view that Je-
sus' followers were initially subject to persecution at
the hands of the Jews. This perspective is now almost
universally rejected, on the basis that until the end
of the first century Jesus' followers were widely re-
garded as another small sect within the complex web
of practices and traditions that made up ancient Ju-
daism.
The question of persecution by Romans, however,
is another matter entirely. While the authors of the
documents currently found in the New Testament
protest that they are mistreated and persecuted by
others, scholarly consensus maintains that it was
only at the beginning of the second century that the
Romans began to recognize the Christians as a dis-
crete, problematic group (Mommsen 1899, 340-341,
346-351).
At the heart of this second period lies the Pliny-Tra-
jan correspondence—an exchange of letters between
the emperor Trajan and the governor of Bithynia,
Pliny, ca. 110 CE. Traditional scholarship by clas-
sicists has used the Pliny-Trajan correspondence to
ascertain the legal basis for the prosecution of Chris-
tians. The formative work on this subject is a scholar-
ly dialogue between G. E. M. de Ste. Croix and A. N.
Sherwin-White (Ste. Croix 1963; Ste. Croix 1964; Sher-
win-White 1964); Ste. Croix's position was reaffirmed
by Barnes 1968). In this conversation Ste. Croix and
Sherwin-White debated the motivation for Roman
interest in and "persecution" of the Christians. Sher-
win-White argued that the Christians were targeted
for their stubbornness, while Ste. Croix contended
that it was for the name of being Christian that Chris-
tians were prosecuted. To these formal legal charg-
es can be added suspicions of crimes—not only the
great fire of Rome ca. 64 CE, but also charges of incest
and cannibalism—and a general sense that Christians
were insubordinate and anti-social. Whatever the le-
gal grounds for the Pliny-Trajan correspondence, it
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 3 / SEPTEMBER 2012
is clear that prior to this point there was no formal
legislation against Christians and that even after the
exchange there was no imperial mandate about how
to deal with the Christians. Each governor was free to
act on his own behest.
Whatever the legal situation at the beginning of the
second century, many scholars have worked under
the assumption that, beginning in the middle of the
third century, Christians were the victims of imperi-
ally organized persecution by the emperors Decius,
Valerian, and Diocletian. Yet even this so-called age
of persecution has been reevaluated. Recent stud-
ies have questioned the conventional opinion that
Christians were "persecuted" by the emperor Decius
(ca. 250) (Rives 1999). They have also added further
texture and greater dimension to the causes of per-
secution. To the general arguments about how the
Christians were politically subversive and socially
suspicious, Allen Brent and James Rives (1996) have
argued that the piety of individuals played a role in
their approach to Christians in the empire and their
region (see also Brent 2010). In a similar vein Eliza-
beth DePalma Digeser (2012) has argued that contes-
tations over philosophy and philosophical principles
formed the underpinnings for the Diocletian Persecu-
tion. A medley of individual perspectives, religious,
political, and social motivations, and personal com-
petition fanned the flames of the persecutor's fires.
Even as the question of Roman persecution of Chris-
tians has been reappraised and the sharp indictment
of the Romans softened, scholarly interest has lighted
upon the ways in which ideologies of martyrdom and
persecution themselves foster violence by Christians.
This is not just the case in the enduring targeting of
Christian sects or schismatics by the "orthodox" (and
vice versa).7 Work by Drake (2011; 1996), Sizgorich
(2008), and Gaddis (2005) has explored how, after the
peace of Constantine the rhetoric of persecution was
used to justify violence against members of other re-
ligious groups and to patrol the boundaries of what
could be considered Christian.
Manuscripts, Dating, and Archaeology
The interest in martyrdom as discourse and means
of forming identity has been a fruitful and challeng-
ing field of inquiry, which promises to hold court for
many more years. Even so, the question of the dat-
ing of martyrdoms and their subsequent accounts,
BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION 25
 as well as the historicity of the events described in
martyrdom literature, remains a question of central
importance. This is true if only because of the linger-
ing commitment of newer generations of scholars to
the work of such historically minded academics as
Delehaye (1921; 1906), von Ruinart (1689), and von
Gebhardt (1902). The majority of texts discussed in
contemporary scholarship on martyrdom are those
texts adjudged authentic eyewitness accounts by
nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars. Yet
even with the rise of academic skepticism about
the ability of the scholar to retrieve historical mar-
tyrs, many scholars continue to use the canon as-
sembled by the Bollandists and their heirs and the
traditional dates ascribed to these accounts. This
leads to a methodological cleft: texts are treated as
representations of what Christians thought during a
particular period, but the ascription of these texts to
that period is based in the assumption that the texts
themselves are eyewitness testimony. There is little
coherence to, for instance, a study of how women
martyrs were portrayed in the second to fourth cen-
turies when the primary evidence for the study is
arbitrarily selected.
Recent work has reopened more traditional ques-
tions about the date, authenticity, and corpus of
hagiographical material in light of recent archaeo-
logical excavations and methodological develop-
ments (e.g., Barnes 2009; Moss 2010). David East-
man's study of the reception of the Apostle martyr
combines archaeological studies, reception history,
and traditional hagiographical methods to trace the
emergence and spread of the cult of Paul in early
Christianity (Eastman 2011). Timothy Barnes's col-
lected volume of studies, Early Christian Hagiography
and Roman History, treats topics in the study of mar-
tyrdom afresh in light of recent archaeological and
inscriptional research (Barnes 2010). And, building
upon earlier studies of material culture and the cult
of the saints, Kate Cooper's studies of Roman mar-
tyrdom in the fifth century has paved the way for
serious study of the collection of martyrdom stories
and relics in late antiquity (Cooper 1999; see also the
interesting work of Denzey-Lewis 2008 and Bowes
2008, both of whom examine the social, economic,
and personal roles of the cult of the saints). These
initial forays into medieval hagiography and ancient
archaeology in many ways resurrect the issues that
plagued the Bollandists, while, at the same time,
they bring sophisticated and serious methodologies
26 BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION
to the question of sources and data. Clearly it is time
to consider afresh the provenance and function of
traditions about early Christian martyrs.
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Notes
1. An additional problem that w e should note at the
outset is one of terminology. The resurgence of interest
in the study of martyrdom, together w ith the recognition
that martyrdom stories have been artificially cordoned
off from other forms of early Christian literature, has led
to disagreem ent about the term inology used to describe
martyrdom stories. A s a result, a number of early Chris-
tian scholars have attempted to circumvent this problem
by using the broader term "martyrologies." The difficulty
w ith this word is that it invites unnecessary confusion. In
other fields of history, most notably m edieval studies and
early modern history, the term martyrology is a terminus
technicus used for catalogues or lists of martrys arranged
in calendar order by feast day. These martyrologies, the
earliest exam ple of which survives from the fourth centu­
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 3 /SEPTEMBER 2012
ry, were based on earlier stories and played an important
role in the com pilation of manuscripts and the formation
of Christian liturgy. Given the importance, the m isuse of
the term signals a lack of familiarity w ith the manuscript
history and reception of martyrdom stories and is, in gen-
eral, to be avoided.
2. Brox 1961. See also Strathmann 1939; Baumeister 1980,
239-45; and Buschmann 1998,98-107. A ll of these scholars
maintain the scholarly consensus that the notion of "mar-
tyr" emerges in the m id-second century.
3. Van Henten 1997. The identification of the Maccabees
as the "original martyrs" is a critical com ponent of W. H.
C. Frend's magisterial Martyrdom and Persecution, in which
the Maccabees form the opening chapter. The idea is also
prevalent in individual studies of martyrdom accounts.
For example, Thomas Heffernan (1988, 201) argues that
the thoughts of the Maccabean mother are "echoed" in the
diary of Perpetua. The idea pre-dates Frend. See, with re-
spect to Ignatius of Antioch, Othmar Perler 1949.
4. Important studies that nurtured this avenue of explo-
ration in the study of early Christian martyrdom include
When The Hindu-Goddess Moves To Denmark: The Establishment O f A Sakta-Tradition
Marianne C. Qvortrup Fibiger, Associate Professor, The Study of Religion, Aarhus University
mf@teo.au.dk
In the history of religion, especially in the compara-
tive study of religion, goddess worship is a neglect-
ed field of research. General books on the history of
religion either emphasize the peripheral role of the
goddess as the spouse of a god, or they portray god-
dess worship in an evolutionary scheme, where it is
seen as part of an archaic state of religion, or as a part
of a primitive fertility cult, or perhaps discussed in
relation to small, isolated, non-patriarchal societies.
Moreover, some scholars even attempt to explain the
current veneration of goddesses—for example, the
Virgin Mary in Christianity—as weak survivals of
these earlier stages. The reason behind these tenden-
cies could be that we have not been used to thinking
of the god principle as represented by the feminine
Jacobsen 2007, 7).
As an exception, Hinduism has had, and still has,
a vigorous and diverse goddess mythology, as well
as an independent goddess worship. A significant
number of regional studies have been conducted in
India see a good bibliographical survey in Bose 2010)
and survey books on important goddesses within
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 3 / SEPTEMBER 2012
Peter Brown's magisterial The Body and Society (1988); Car-
oline Walker Bynum 1995; and Virginia Burrus 2008.
5. The literature on w om en martyrs is enorm ous and fo-
cuses largely on the figure of Perpetua. See, for example,
Lefkowitz 1976; Frend 1993; Cardman 1993; Jensen 1996,
90-95; Salisbury 1997, 87-88; Corrington 2006, 254-64;
Corrington 2009; Perkins 2007, 313-32; Cobb 2008, 102‫־‬
5, 108-9, 112-13, 115, 119, 120-22; Farina, 2009; Bremmer
2002, 77-120; Trevett 1996.
6. There w as a brief period in 362 c e , during the short
reign of the emperor Julian "the Apostate," w hen Pagan-
ism w as revived and wealthy and powerful Christians
were driven out of the governing classes; but this is not,
by and large, included in studies of persecution.
7. On martyrdom among the Donatists see Frend 1952a
and his subsequent studies (1952b; 1969; and 1985). For a
recent reappraisal of the Circumcellion question see Shaw
2004.
the Hindu tradition have been produced Rose 1986
and Kinsley 1986). Therefore, Hinduism can be seen
as an important exploratory field for examining god-
dess worship in general, especially nowadays, when
goddess worship, in different forms, is growing in
the West many of which I will argue are either di-
rectly or indirectly inspired from the East). This can
be explained as part of the so-called "easternisa-
tion process" Campbell 2007), where concepts and
worldviews from the East are becoming increasingly
common in the West, but it can also be due to ethnic
Hindus and Buddhists moving to the West as immi-
grants or refugees.1And, whilst the first can be seen
in relation to the growing spirituality or alternative
religiosity, the latter can be seen in relation to religion
as such, where a particular form of religion is moved
to the West together with the bearers of the tradition,
who wish to retain their tradition in their new en-
vironment. This article explores what the adaption
process means for a säkta cult goddess cult) com-
ing from Sri Lanka to Denmark. It will argue that
the adaption process provides this formerly locally
BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION 29
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