The plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale will thrill with horror and melt with pity at what takes place.
—ARISTOTLE, POETICS 14
The authors of the early Christian martyr texts were not mere reporters of events but, rather, consummate storytellers whose tales remain—almost 1,900 years later—among the most moving and inspiring of Christian narratives. The longevity of these texts may be attributed to the ways they provoke in their audiences varied, sometimes contradictory, responses: compassion, horror, admiration, anxiety. Martyr accounts encourage these empathetic responses to the drama by engaging audiences emotionally and by describing seemingly historical events.1 Indeed, these two aspects of the texts function together to make martyr stories powerful: we only empathize with events that seem realistic.
While the narrative spectacle of torture may imagine the experiences of the original spectators, it is constructed to inform and affect an altogether different audience.2 Listeners are drawn into the dramatic action by means of engrossing—if predictable—plots and effective literary strategies, such as historical verisimilitude, first-person narrative, and the collapsing of distinctions between hearing audiences and narrative actors. As Christians hear accounts of interrogation, steadfastness, torture, and execution, they are transformed from the role of listener to that of witness and perhaps even, at times, to that of martyr. The effects of these narrative techniques on the audience often go unnoticed by scholars, perhaps because the accounts tend to be read as realistic. The literary devices succeed, that is, precisely because they are not seen as such. For this reason modern readers have undervalued the narratives as tools for eliciting emotional responses.
This chapter examines multiple ways the martyr texts engage their audiences and direct their emotional responses; how they make the drama of persecution and torture immediate and personal by inviting the audience to witness the action. It investigates the techniques through which the texts engage and (re-)direct their audience’s interpretations of events, draw hearers into the narrative world, and convince them of counterintuitive truths about the corporeal experience of martyrdom.
Prose narratives, if they are effective, draw their audiences into a story; we keep reading when we care about the characters or events in the narrative. But we need not share specific qualities with narrative characters to empathize with them. Indeed, narratives can be successful even if we only vaguely identify with characters or plot elements.3 It is not necessary then for early Christian audiences to share specific historical or personal markers with martyrs in order to be drawn into—and thus emotionally affected by—the narrative action of the texts. Christian hearers might empathize with characters from different locales and with those of a different sex or social class. Christian faithfulness in these texts is not represented only within elite male bodies. Early martyr texts supply characters from a wide variety of backgrounds—elites, slaves, women, men, young, and old—that reflect the diverse makeup of the early church itself.
Prose narratives disarm audiences, encouraging them to engage more fully in the story world than might be expected in the real world.4 Audiences who willingly immerse themselves in a narrative leave behind some of their skepticism and are open to experiencing the emotions elicited by the text. Not all narratives are successful at building empathy, and not all people will respond to narratives in the same way.5 Indeed, empathy may be hindered by a number of situations ranging from inattention to personal crisis.6 We must limit our discussion of the ways a text elicits empathy, therefore, to observing places where a text may invite emotional engagement, where narratives open space for response or identification. We cannot assume that a text succeeds in producing any particular response in any specific individual.
Some texts aim to engage emotionally a broad audience with varying group allegiances, while other texts may target a narrow subset of a population to draw them into the larger culture, on the one hand, or to establish firmer boundaries between groups, on the other.7 Martyr texts represent the latter type of narrative: they support a minority group by emphasizing differences with the world at large. Of particular importance for the present study, therefore, is not only that narratives induce emotional responses but also the kinds of emotions texts elicit, for whom, and to what end. Imagining martyr texts from the perspective of the listening audience—which may include some individuals who are new to the dramatic movements of the texts and some whose familiarity with the stories allows them to navigate deftly the twists and turns of plot—allows us to map the texts’ rhetorical techniques for eliciting emotion and to evaluate their potential effects on the group.
For ancient orators the effect of texts on the emotional lives of their audiences was a primary concern. Along with logos (“argument”), and ethos (“character”), pathos (“affect” or “emotion”) was crucial to effective oration.8 Focusing on the affective qualities of martyr texts keeps the listening audience at the forefront of our inquiry and requires us to consider the way narratives carefully structure their plot sequences to maximize certain emotional experiences.9 Authors can utilize textual violence, for instance, to prompt certain emotional responses, which they can then undermine, reframe, or redefine. Even though affective experiences are neither guaranteed nor universal, focusing on places where texts open space for emotional engagement and response will enrich our understanding of the ideologies constructed by and in early Christian martyr texts.
The first opportunity an audience has to engage with a narrative world is through a text’s genre.10 Genres establish the range of interpretive possibilities of and affective responses to a text. Scholars often distinguish between two genres of martyr narratives, acta and passiones.11 Some scholars differentiate these on the basis of content and narrative focus. Maureen Tilley, for instance, explains that while acta “focus on the interrogation of the martyrs in judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings,” passiones are concerned with “descriptions of the tortures endured by the martyrs.”12 Other scholars, however, differentiate the narrative types principally in terms of the origins—and implied historicity—of their information. Timothy D. Barnes, for example, asserts that acta are “largely in the form of a record of judicial proceedings.”13 Johannes Quasten, furthermore, argues that the documentary status of acta make them “immediate and absolutely reliable sources of history.”14 Passiones, on the other hand, are “literary accounts of the deaths of martyrs composed by Christians for other Christians.” The categories passiones and acta represent scholarly conversations about mediated versus (mostly) unmediated information, text versus document, literature versus history.15
Scholars primarily interested in the affective qualities and social function of martyr texts—rather than in their historical reliability or documentary status—may find the traditional genre categorizations less helpful because they obscure the ways an ancient audience would have received the texts. The categories “acta” and “passiones” not only mark positions within contemporary scholarly debates; they also homogenize the texts.16 Ancient readers would have interpreted these narratives not as documentary versus literary texts but through the lens of recognized contemporary genres such as commentarius, epistle, apology, and biography (e.g., exitus illustrium virorum), though most martyr texts also include various subgenres such as reports of dreams and visions or apocalyptic elements.17 The martyr texts are not “pure” forms of literature: rather, generic lines are blurred, in all likelihood because the texts were designed to serve a variety of communal needs. Although assigning texts to the categories of acta and passiones may draw scholars’ attention to certain aspects of the texts’ authority or narrative focus, it may also distort our understanding of the ways these texts functioned in communities.18 We gain more from our investigation of genre if we push beyond this modern dichotomy to ask why an author might choose one ancient form over another; that is, we should ask not only what genre to assign but also why that form may have been employed. Investigating what an author has to gain by choosing to package his story one way rather than another offers clues to the text’s reception and affective range. In what follows, I examine elements of two literary forms that are prevalent in our early martyr texts—commentarius and epistle—to highlight the ways these genres encourage emotional engagement with dramatized events.
Commentarius.Many of the earliest martyr texts—those described by scholars as acta—fit into the ancient genre known as commentarii. These narratives tend to be streamlined stories that focus principally on the interrogation of Christians by a pagan ruler. The commentarius—or hypomnēma, as it was known in Greek—was used for both public and private records.19 Content notwithstanding, ancient authors used commentarii as aide-mémoire, as Columella explains: “whereas it commonly happens that the memory of things we have learned fails us, it must be restored often from notes [commentariis].”20 Individuals and small groups (such as families) used commentarii; their semiprivate nature indicates they may have engaged audiences in ways similar to letters.21 The genre might invite listeners to imagine themselves as having access to “behind-the-scenes” information, as Andrew Riggsby suggests.22
Ancient audiences would likely assume that martyr texts employing the commentarii form contained information copied from official archives, and preserved the ipsissima verba of the martyrs.23 Court records, as Gary Bisbee has shown, included four sections: introductory formulae (e.g., name of the judge, date and location of the trial, list of the accused), the body of the trial (including a transcript of the interrogation), the judgment, and concluding matters.24 Although early martyr accounts are not identical to extant court records in the form of commentarii, there is enough overlap to suggest that the martyr texts are modeled on this genre.
Scholars’ assessments of the historical reliability of martyr accounts in this form are diverse. As we have seen, some scholars argue that these are copies of official court records and thus preserve documentary evidence for trials of Christians. “Christians,” Barnes avers, “must have had the opportunity to make copies of official transcripts of the trials of Christians, so there is [not] (and never was) any good reason to deny on a priori grounds that shorthand notes taken in court and later written up for official archives could form the basis of those accounts of the trials of martyrs which observe protocol style.”25 Barnes admits, though, that Christians sometimes mimicked the style of court records to meet their hagiographical interests.26 By contrast, other scholars read commentarius-style texts as utilizing the form of trial transcript for strategic literary purposes.27 Martyr acts are not historically reliable records of trial procedures, Fergus Millar argues, but they do intentionally evoke court records and trial protocol.28 Regardless of these texts’ origins, their audiences likely received the stories as trial transcripts. Whether or not these texts preserve the ipsissima verba of the martyrs, therefore—or even an approximation of them—is a question motivated by scholarly interests in historicity and reliability. Even if we could definitively resolve the issue of historicity, it is not the only question about the commentarius form that we might usefully ask.
What does an author gain by presenting a martyr story as if it is derived from court records? This question shifts our focus away from origins to audience reception because a text’s genre informs its interpretation. Authors choose one genre over another either because the subject matter demands a certain form or because a specific form elicits a desired response from the audience. Indeed, ancient rhetorical theory taught precisely this, as Nikolaus attests: “it is necessary to adapt the form of the narrative to the suggested subject.”29 Similarly, Theon instructs writers that “the narrative must be completely assimilated to the things given below [in the text] . . . and that the expression not be at variance with their nature.”30 Early Christian authors may have selected the commentarius form because it was subject-appropriate for a martyr text: judicial interrogation of Christians is presented as such. Since other authors chose different genres by which to narrate the arrest and execution of Christians, however, the commentarius may have more going for it than merely fitting the occasion.
In addition to being appropriate for delivering the martyrs’ testimonies, the commentarius engages hearers in the narrative action by presenting a full and detailed picture of a martyr’s trial experience. As the narrative begins, authors provide important details about setting that help an audience to visualize the scene. Lists of consuls, procurators, emperors, and other historical persons mark specific geographical and chronological destinations; these details allow hearers to imagine the specific scene—the who, what, when, and where of the drama. Names, dates, and cities, therefore, are not merely objective data for encyclopedia-type entries; they indicate to audiences whose court and what world they are entering.31 The narratives are not set “once upon a time, in a land far, far away,” but in Pergamum or Rome or Carthage under the rule of particular individuals at specific moments in time—times and spaces that inform the picture sketched by the mind’s eye. Whether or not the events narrated in the martyr accounts are historically reliable, the texts prime their audiences to accept them as such by supplying basic historical data.32 Unless hearers consciously apply a hermeneutic of suspicion, they will accept the historiographical information given in the text.33
Historical data are included in martyr texts of all forms but take on a central role in the commentarius: this is typically the first information given to the audience and so it serves as an entrée into the narrative world. Hearers can imagine both the place of dramatic action as well as the primary players. The “why” of the event—namely, specific charges leveled against Christians that initiate a trial and then lead to torture and death—is typically absent from the stories. Perhaps the charges were unknown to Christians, but the omission may reflect the texts’ ideological needs and rhetorical interests, as Elizabeth Castelli has argued.34 On the one hand, governors had considerable latitude in governing and peacekeeping measures, so charges of specific crimes may not have been required; on the other hand, Christians had good reason to shift attention from judicial procedure to cosmic conflict.35 Martyr texts make meaning, therefore, by giving—but also by withholding—information.
To take one example, the earliest Latin martyr text, the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, begins like many other martyr accounts with a historiographical notice. The text orients the reader to the names of the consuls (Praesens and Claudian), the day the court proceedings commence (July 17), the location of the trial (Carthage; specifically, in the governor’s chambers), and the names of the Christians being arraigned (Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Donata, Secunda, and Vestia).36 These concrete markers progress from general to increasingly specific information; they provide the audience with the historical verisimilitude that is required for emotional engagement.37 In his praise of Herodotus’s work, Longinus notes how careful descriptions can transport listeners to faraway places, engaging them in past action: “Do you see, comrade, how he takes you through the regions, turning hearing into sight?” (On the Sublime, 26). The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs transports its listeners by providing a map whose focus becomes increasingly detailed as hearers travel toward the location of the trial. The audience does not have to imagine Carthage in its vast totality but instead they are guided carefully to the specific location of the interrogation: the governor’s chambers. It is only when they arrive there—creating an image of that particular locale in the mind’s eye—that they see the arrested Christians and learn their names.
Listeners who willingly engage with the story allow themselves to be transported by it to another world: they find themselves in the governor’s chambers as the trial begins.38 At this point the narrator’s voice recedes into the background, which helps the audience experience the immediacy of the courtroom drama. No longer sitting in the house church listening to the recitation of a text about a past event, the Christians sit among those attending the trial, witnessing both the accusations and the defense. They are not, however, disinterested observers of events; their sympathies are firmly allied with the Christians who have been arrested.39 As audiences align themselves with the innocent Christians on trial, they participate in some of the most important work of the narrative. Martyr texts are intracommunal literature and as such their audiences do not choose sides: engaged hearers can only reasonably side with accused Christians, not with persecutors or torturers.40 Aligning themselves with the plight of the protagonists is a crucial step in developing empathy and differentiating social groups, as Lucy Grig observes: “the intention of the text is to allow for no impartial observers: impartiality is not a narrative option. The action of the text and the martyr’s death necessarily involve and polarize.”41 Martyr texts are therefore both social and binary. They build community by envisioning the world in dualistic terms: Christians are good and their goodness is manifest by God’s favor; pagans and other persecutors are bad.
The text relates the interrogation in the first-person, which further engages the listening audience as a part of the viewing audience. Longinus argues this point when he teaches that all passages using direct address “set the hearer in the place of action” (On the Sublime, 26). Direct address not only transports the audience; it also makes them “at the same time more affected, more attentive, and full of active participation, being awakened by the appeals to himself” (26). For our ancient Christian audience, differences in time and space collapse as they find themselves in the governor’s chambers within earshot of the accusations leveled by Roman officials, their attempts to persuade the martyrs to apostasy, and the Christians’ steadfast resistance.42 This emotional connection guides audiences’ interpretation of the interrogation: “If you return to your senses,” the proconsul promises, “you are able to earn the pardon of our lord the emperor” (Scill. 1). Speratus, refusing to acquiesce to the proconsul’s demands and emphasizing the innocence of Christians, responds: “At no time have we done wrong; we have never resigned ourselves to the work of injustice. We have never been slanderous; but we have accepted bad things, we have given thanks, for we regard our own emperor in honor” (2). Cittinus, Donata, Vestia, and Secunda likewise affirm their innocence and their allegiance to the Christian faith (8–9). The interrogation scenes are not merely discursive exchanges that took place in some distant time and place; they are affective oratory with the potential to engage audiences across time.43 The trial protocol invites the audience to enter into the narrative, to participate fully by becoming eyewitnesses themselves to the trial and the resulting Christian testimonies.
The communal aspect of these texts invites imaginative overlap between hearers and martyrs, as Grig has demonstrated: “The Christian is encouraged through heightened drama to visualise the martyr, then to identify with, and finally to imitate him/her.”44 But listeners likely do not identify with specific aspects of the characters because in the commentarius style of martyr text we are given little if any information about the saints.45 Rather than the specific characteristics of fictional characters inviting identification, therefore, these texts emphasize Christian motivations for action.46 The focus changes from a particular individual, who embodies a specific principle, to the principle itself, which may be embodied by anyone. This shift from individual to ideal informs our interpretation of the texts since it highlights the texts’ communal nature. Martyr texts tell their stories through examples of specific individuals, but the point they make is social and moral, as Elliott observes: “Passion literature is a celebration of community, and the values depicted are those of an entire society. Although the accounts describe acts of great personal courage, the purpose is not the glorification of the individual per se but the affirmation of the ideals for which the saint has given his or her life.”47 In his analysis of group dynamics in the martyr acts, Charles Altman reaches similar conclusions: trial dialogues “identify the values of the [text] not with the individuals portrayed, but with the groups and religions they represent.”48 The texts principally champion an ideal—Christian faith—and martyrs serve as examples of individuals who successfully embody that ideal.
In addition to illustrating communal behaviors and virtues, the commentarius form of martyr text depicts competing communal principles: pagans value sacrifice to the gods and worship of the emperor, while Christians value confession of faith and steadfastness even to death.49 The conflict is not so much between individuals as between groups and ideals. Although the martyrs—as unique individuals—are typically seen as the primary focus of these texts, the narratives are more focused on the Christians’ motivations. The martyrs embody fidelity to Christianity, and it is this faithfulness with which an audience is to identify.50 Martyr texts therefore demonstrate the discontinuity between two opposing groups. In this, martyr texts are as much social as they are binary: they build community by envisioning the world in dualistic terms. Christians stand firm against persecutors; faithfulness and steadfastness in confession trump lawlessness and persuasion.51 But it is not only the martyr who stands against pagan lawlessness. Listening audiences, having been transported into the narrative world through historical verisimilitude and through the presentation of the trial scenes in first-person narration, attend the trial and they too embody the dualism of the texts by aligning themselves with the Christians and against the persecutors. By subordinating the individual martyr to the group ideal, martyr texts elicit the audience’s engagement, emotion, and empathy.
The Greek recension of the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, another example of the commentarius form, provides further opportunity to investigate the ways texts collapse distinctions between audiences and martyrs. Like the Scillitan Martyrs, the Martyrdom of Carpus opens with a historiographical notice: the events take place in Pergamum, while the proconsul was in residence (1). Carpus and Papylus—in this recension, not Agathonike—are brought before the proconsul, as “witnesses [martyres] of Christ” (1). Again, as in the Scillitan Martyrs, the audience who hears this text assumes the position of eyewitness as the trial begins, because they hear first-person testimony. The proconsul asks the Christians biographical questions, their answers to which are rarely straightforward but instead betray a hint of Christian insider humor. When Papylus is asked if he has children, for instance, he answers in the affirmative—he claims to have children in “every district and city”—but the crowd points out the lie (pseudē): they are spiritual children (30).
The proconsul orders the men to sacrifice, but they stand firm in their refusal to betray their faith. Before long the proconsul loses patience and orders that the men be hanged and scraped. The audience attends this spectacle too, visualizing the bodies being tortured, but the torture does not achieve the persecutor’s goal: neither man recants his faith. Finally the proconsul orders the Christians to be burned alive. As the audience watches the bravery of these martyrs, they join the spectators described in the narrative itself, who are also observing the steadfastness of these martyrs. Among them is a woman named Agathonike.52
The audience as yet knows nothing about Agathonike. She does not enter the narrative action until after the interrogation, torture, and deaths of Carpus and Papylus are narrated. The text depicts her as an emotionally engaged spectator: “Agathonike, who was standing there and who saw the glory of the Lord, as Carpus said he had seen it, and realizing it to be a call from heaven, immediately lifted up her voice: ‘This is a meal that was prepared for me, it is necessary for me, partaking, to eat of the glorious meal’” (42). The crowd, urging Agathonike to rethink her position, resorts to emotional blackmail by imploring her to pity her child. Agathonike, however, like the martyrs whom she observed and whose actions inspired her, is firm in her resolve: “And stripping, she stretched herself out on the stake” (44). After watching Carpus and Papylus die for their faith, Agathonike does likewise.
This story is particularly interesting because of the fluidity of its boundaries between spectator and martyr. The listening audience—having been transported to Pergamum—stands alongside Agathonike. Together they watch Carpus and Papylus testify steadfastly to their faith. But immediately after the men’s deaths the narrative lens pans out, adding more depth of field to the listening audience’s imaginative gaze. Agathonike no longer stands with the audience. Instead, she becomes the object of their gaze: her role shifts from spectator (one who watches Carpus and Papylus) to actor (one who is watched). This change in position invites the audience to imagine doing the same. The text’s challenge is clear: the spectacle of martyrdom should affect observers so deeply that they can no longer distinguish between their role as audience member and martyr.
Agathonike’s actions exemplify the text’s construction of an appropriate response to martyrdom: conversion, confession, and death. Tertullian’s famous taunt—“the blood of the martyrs is seed”—is apt here: Carpus and Papylus lay the groundwork for Agathonike’s, and the listening audience’s, heroic imitatio.53 The text’s silence concerning Agathonike’s personal background adds to the utility of her character because audiences can readily see themselves in her. Perhaps she is already a Christian and the sight of Carpus’s and Papylus’s faithfulness motivates her to confess publically; or perhaps the spectacle of martyrdom and the vision she receives mark a moment of conversion, followed immediately by martyrdom. Her unwritten biography creates space for hearers to enter the narrative world, to make their own confessions, and to imagine making the same sacrifice. The listening audience is invited to move from spectator to martyr, from one type of witness to another (martus).
Agathonike’s unelaborated history is functionally similar to another narrative technique: the tendency in many texts for the martyr to eschew individual identity in favor of a generic, collective Christian identity.54 When texts record a Christian confessing “Christianus sum,” they privilege the community over the individual. In the Martyrdom of Carpus, for example, the martyr’s individuality is rejected when he claims the collective name “Christian.” Carpus rejects his earthly name—a name that differentiates him from other individuals—in favor of a claim to a social group. His “first” and “preferred” name, “Christian,” is one that any person of faith may also claim (3). This text suggests that the lesson imparted by the narrative action is not constrained by its specifics—the trial of Carpus in Pergamum—but rather it has cosmic consequences. “Christianus” is, for the listening audience, everyone’s name: it differentiates social and religious groups, not individuals.55
Commentarius-style martyr texts are presented as trial records. As such, they open with specific historical data that ground the events in time and place, and they embed courtroom testimony—presented as the ipsissima verba of the martyrs—to authenticate the account. More important than the historical reliability of this form is its effect on ancient audiences. An author might choose to utilize this form because of its ability to transport willing audiences to the courtroom where they witness the events and even imagine themselves among the martyrs. The narratives appear as straightforward trial transcripts, but the ideological work of these texts should not be underestimated. Regardless of the origins of their information, they are literary products that draw audiences into the narrative action, inviting them to identify with the martyrs’ actions and motivations and thereby to stand on the side of Christianity and God. Thus even as the narratives transport audiences to specific locales, they push the boundaries of time and space by describing the cosmic scale of the conflict. Christians stand with God against their pagan persecutors and Satan. These narrative effects, so easily overlooked, are critical to other work the texts will do to engage and then redefine a narrative of pain vis-à-vis the Christian body.
Epistle.While some authors of Christian martyr texts presented their stories as commentarii, others preferred to utilize the letter format. Indeed, the earliest Christian martyr text, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, is a letter.56 Giuseppe Lazzati went so far as to argue that the epistle was the original form of literature about the martyrs.57 As Barnes notes, however, we cannot account for the variety of genres in which ancient martyr accounts survive by positing an original epistolary form.58 What is most important to the current study is not the identification of an ur-genre but rather an appreciation of the affective qualities of epistles.
Much has been written on ancient epistolography since Adolf Deissmann, a pioneer in studies of Christian epistolography, argued for a distinction between letters—“real letters”—and epistles—“non-real letters.”59 Letters, Deissmann argued, are not literature; they merely communicate information from one party to another. Epistles, on the other hand, are literary products with interests that extend beyond the mere transmission of information. M. Luther Stirewalt attempted to nuance Deissmann’s binary categories by focusing on the epistle’s setting, which in Jennifer Ebbeler’s words merely “replaced a binary with a spectrum but without fundamentally altering the terms of the discussion.”60 Since all letters adhere to literary conventions, they are all—despite Deissmann’s differentiation—literary products.61
As with the commentarii, we must not be lulled into accepting epistles as simple vehicles for the transmission of objective reports of events. Martyr acts do of course purport to communicate events that led to a Christian’s death. But they do much more: they may construct group identities; they may promote gender ideals; they may subvert social norms. Thus, while modern readers may equate letters with content communication, the ancient genre served a much wider set of needs. Our understanding of the Christian martyr texts is richer when we ask what an author gains from the genre rather than simply identifying the genre. Indeed, Ruth Morello and A. D. Morrison caution against undervaluing “the rhetorical, literary, and intellectual advantages for a writer of choosing the epistolary form.”62 Letters, for instance, create an intimacy between author and audience.63 The ancient epistolographer was responsible for welcoming us “into an intimate space where we’ll nest snug and safe,” as John Henderson points out.64 Morello and Morrison identify intimacy as one of the appeals of the genre.65
Not all epistolary martyr texts appear as full letters. Some, like the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, may begin with an epistolary address but not include other formal elements of the genre.66 While the epistolary presentation in cases such as this may merely be a conceit that serves an author’s purposes, this does not diminish its effect on the audience. Recent studies in epistolography tend toward broader—rather than narrower—definitions of epistle, arguing that “epistolary colour” is enough to warrant an investigation into the ways a text may capitalize on a reader’s expectations of the genre.67 A Christian author, therefore, might be drawn to the epistolary genre precisely because of its affective nature: epistles invite audiences into the narrative, and skilled epistolographers can exploit these psychological aspects of the genre to good effect. The epistle was a particularly effective form by which authors communicated teachings about torture, pain, and the Christian body because the genre creates intimacy between the author and his audience and because it draws the audience into the narrative world.68
The Martyrdom of Polycarp is an example of an epistolary martyr text; it appears to be a letter from the church at Smyrna to the church at Philomelium.69 The epistolary convention of direct address draws audiences into the narrative world described. “We,” the account begins, “are writing to you” (1.1). “We,” the Smyrnaeans, write to “you,” the church at Philomelium. But the epistle is also addressed “to all those of the holy and catholic church dwelling in every place,” which invites future readers to join the church at Philomelium in hearing and testifying to the events narrated.70 The pronoun used in the address—“you”—allows any audience to imagine itself as the recipient of the correspondence, and they are thereby invited into Polycarp’s story.
The author assumes the first-person plural voice, which is similarly ambiguous. On the one hand, behind “we” is likely an “I”: there is presumably an author of this text. Indeed, we are told the author’s—or at least the scribe’s—name: Evaristus (20.2). But “we” in almost every case is referring to an authoritative collectivity: it represents the members of the Smyrnaean church who supposedly witnessed the events that are narrated.71 In 2.2, for instance, the church testifies to the endurance of unnamed martyrs who were tortured, “showing to all of us” that they were not in the flesh. In 9.1 a voice exhorts Polycarp as he stands in the arena, “Be strong, and be a man.” The text authenticates this claim by providing reliable witnesses: “While no one saw the one who spoke, the ones of us who were there heard the voice.” And in 17.1 the “evil one . . . prevented us” from collecting Polycarp’s remains. The first-person plural grounds the testimony in truth by attributing it to members of the Smyrnaean church.
The first-person narrative, on the one hand, functions to authenticate the report of the eyewitnesses, as Bart D. Ehrman argues. The “we” of this text, Ehrman asserts, is limited to those who were physically present at the events narrated. The voice that spoke to Polycarp in the arena, for instance, “was not heard by anyone else; it was a miraculous exhortation available only to the Christians with privileged access to the heavenly realm.”72 And regarding the miracles that saved Polycarp from the pyre, Ehrman writes, “Not everyone noticed this, though, but only the eyewitness who can guarantee the truth of the report since he and the other Christians were there, were really there.”73 In these cases first-person narration shores up the reliability of the narrative by attributing it to specific, trustworthy Christian witnesses.
Reading with an eye to the way first-person elicits a response from the reader, on the other hand, suggests there may be meaningful slippage in the first-person narration. In other words, the “we” of this text may not be strictly limited to, though it surely includes, that historically located voice that testifies to the miraculous. Often in the narrative all Christians—those contemporaries of the author as well as those who come to the text in later times—are incorporated into the first-person plural pronoun. The audience hearing this letter read aloud becomes the guarantor of the events, of the miracles, and therefore of the truths inscribed on the bodies that are constructed within. “Those who call the Christians ‘martyrs,’” as Carlin Barton observes, “are the martyrs of the martyrs”: they are those who testify on behalf of the ones who testified.74 The text conflates the eyewitnesses who testify to Polycarp’s martyrdom and the later listening audience. Those in the past merge with present and even future listeners; all are witnesses.
Not surprisingly, the text blurs distinctions between the original eyewitnesses and the subsequent audience when it draws our attention to theological implications of martyrdom. In the opening chapter of the letter, for example, the narrator explains: “For he waited in order to be handed over—just as the Lord did—so that we might also become imitators of him, not only looking out for ourselves, but also for our neighbors” (1.2). The “we” who are exhorted to become imitators of Polycarp (and thus of Jesus) is not restricted to those in Smyrna who saw Polycarp die or even to the recipients of the letter in Philomelium; it includes all subsequent hearers of the text. All Christians are to imitate Polycarp and Jesus by caring about other believers. Later in the narrative the Jews prohibit the Christians from collecting Polycarp’s remains because the Christians might “let go the one who was crucified and begin to worship” Polycarp (17.2). The author counters this possibility with a theological assertion that is surely meant to reflect truth not merely for Smyrnaean Christians but for those in all times and places:
They do not know that we would neither be able to forsake Christ who suffered without blame on behalf of sinners for the salvation of all those being saved in the world, nor to worship any other. For this one we worship being the Son of God, but we love the martyrs as disciples and imitators of the Lord who are worthy because of their persistent affection for their own king and teacher, with whom may it be for us to be both companions and fellow disciples. (17.2–3)
In this case the first-person plural must surely testify to slippage from the purported community of origin—Smyrna—to Christians in general. This section, imagined as exhortation to Christian congregations across the Empire, reads like catechesis: it details what all Christians believe; it carefully limits the power of and honor due to martyrs; it offers directives for the Christian life.
The genre of epistle therefore affords an opportunity for bringing later audiences into the narrative, not only by collapsing distinctions between the implied audience—the church at Smyrna—and an actual audience, but also by collapsing distinctions between author and audience, between those who testify to events and those who receive them. In fact the text lays the groundwork for members of the church at Philomelium—and subsequent recipients—to become witnesses themselves to Polycarp’s martyrdom: they are to “send the letter to more distant brothers” (20.1). Recipients become senders; hearers become witnesses. Divisions between past and present are easily elided in a genre like epistle because theological statements draw later audiences into the narrative, thereby collapsing historical differentiations.
Although the Martyrdom of Polycarp is primarily an epistle, it also incorporates elements of commentarius, the court record. The central chapters of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, 5–14, transport the audience to Smyrna, where they follow Polycarp as he hides from the authorities; they watch as he is arrested; they observe his steadfast refusal to swear by the emperor’s genius; and they witness him being burned and his eventual death.75 The audience is drawn into the events because the text presents a great deal of the narrative in Polycarp’s own words. The audience, for instance, hears Polycarp and the proconsul argue. “Are you Polycarp?” the proconsul asks. “Have regard for your age,” he implores (9.2). Then he orders the bishop to say, “Away with the atheists.” Polycarp obeys but with a twist of Christian humor: he looks up to heaven, shakes his fists, and says the very words he was commanded to utter, but with a diametrically opposed intent: “Away with the atheists!” (9.2). The dialogue invites the audience into the courtroom; they see and hear the two men vying with each other, one a Roman proconsul in his prime, the other an elderly but revered Christian bishop; one with the power of life and death, the other with the power to choose for himself death over life (or, he might argue, eternal life over eternal torture). The audience is drawn even further into the scene as the tension mounts: “Swear and I will acquit you.” “For eighty-six years I have been his slave and he has not wronged me. How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?” (9.3). The audience is not impartial or unknowing: the story told is of a patently innocent person. Indeed, the emotion evoked by martyr texts “depends upon the complete and recognizable innocence” of the martyr, as Elizabeth Castelli has observed.76 Emotionally engaged in the time-flow of Polycarp’s trial, the audience may find themselves identifying and participating—cheering, laughing, gasping, crying—with the Smyrnaean Christians, a collapsing of identification that brings with it a reward: they become ones who can testify to the events because they are now witnesses to them.
The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, which is preserved by Eusebius, also follows the form of ancient letters. It begins by identifying the authors—the “slaves of Christ” in Gaul—and the addressees, “our brothers in Asia and Phrygia” (1.3). The specificity of the text soon fades, however, as the audience is taken into a narrative world in which the opponent is not identified principally with a specific person but a cosmic being: “The adversary darted in with great might, inaugurating his final coming which is about to happen” (1.5). Any hearer sympathetic to a worldview built on cosmic dualism may identify with the narrative world—including its descriptions of ostracism and of neighbors turning on neighbors—created in the opening scenes of this epistle.
As in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the pronouns in the text may refer to different groups, depending on where the audience stands vis-à-vis the events narrated. “We” could refer to the Christians in Gaul, or a listening audience may claim the pronoun for themselves. This text, furthermore, presents a number of characters and groups—not only a variety of individual martyrs but also larger distinctions among Christian groups, as well as pagans—that challenge the audience’s identity constructions. We will examine these options in subsequent chapters, but I offer one example here. After detailing the social rejection experienced by the Christians in Gaul, the author describes a man named Vettius Epagathus. He had not been arrested when others were, but he was at the trial and “could not bear the irrational judgment that was passed” (1.9). Vettius Epagathus interrupted the proceedings to defend the Christians against charges of atheism or impiety (1.10). When asked if he was a Christian, he affirmed his faith and was promptly executed (1.10). This short story tests the audience’s identification: will they be like Vettius Epagathus, who even though not initially arrested stands up for his fellow believers, one who bears witness even at the cost of his life?
Recognizing the martyr texts’ various generic forms is important for contextualizing individual texts’ social or historical settings, but similarities in ways commentarius and epistle function are crucial to our understanding the communal work they accomplish within the early Christian church. The authors of these accounts communicated the story of a martyr’s death by means of particular genres—from among a number of options—and the choices they made have consequences for the story’s reception.77 Court records and letters evoke an immediacy that collapses distinctions of time and space: author, audience, martyr, and eyewitness blur together.78 Focusing our attention on the reception of the texts, on the audience not only as hearers but also as collaborators in the construction of meaning, makes genre choice an important aspect of study.
Averil Cameron discusses the relative unpopularity of the genre of history among early Christians. Indeed, the genre is “conspicuously absent from the fourth-century list of Christianized literary forms.”79 Although Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History was popular and spurred imitators, it did not in the end “inspire the development of a new and perhaps more pragmatic Christian history.”80 Cameron surmises that history was “too recalcitrant” a genre for Christians. The vita, on the other hand, was a “more congenial and flexible genre” because it allowed Christians to “express the intimacy of family and personal feelings.”81 Cameron points to authorial interest in intimacy and immediacy in Lives, aspects I have argued are equally central to commentarius and epistle, the generic forms of the earliest martyr texts.82 All of these texts, to borrow Cameron’s words, “spoke to the individual and to the heart.”83 When Christians told stories about their heroes—whether martyrs or saints—they told them in such a way as to activate emotions in their audiences, to effect particular behaviors, and to obtain specific outcomes.
Intimacy and immediacy are useful to the communal work accomplished by martyr texts because, as scholars regularly point out, martyrs are only martyrs if they have an audience. The term “martyr” originates in legal spheres and refers to one who testifies, which is an activity that is necessarily communal. As Elliott notes, martys “in its literal sense is meaningless in solitude.”84 Similarly, Tessa Rajak notes that verisimilitude is essential to martyr texts because martyrdom “demands a public, a response, and a record. In the Christian tradition, the terminology itself is a clue, for the deaths of the martyrs bear witness (martureisthai) to their faith, in front of an assumed audience immeasurably greater than the immediate one at the scene.”85 Martyr stories demand an audience in order to confirm the witness given. Whatever their genre, these texts foster emotions that transport audiences into the narrative action and offer opportunities for them to identify with the actors, all of which confirms anew the witness, the martyrdom.
In addition to confirming the authenticity and efficacy of the witness, drawing audiences into the storyline allows the text to manipulate the audience’s sympathy for the martyr’s experience during torture. Textual bodies are adaptable and may embody a variety of truths.86 The textual bodies of the martyrs are not limited by our experiences and expectations of injury and pain; the truths they speak, therefore, are surprising: gruesome depictions of bodily torture are juxtaposed with assertions of impassivity and impassibility. When we think about this counterintuitive narrative assertion in terms of its effect on the audience, we see that the texts use thick descriptions of torture to shift their audience’s interpretations of events. Martyr narratives replace the audience’s preliminary expectation—that of pain—with a new reading that asserts painlessness. The narrative descriptions of torture lead audiences past superficial observations to deeper, spiritual insights.
Ellen M. Ross makes a similar argument regarding the function of pain in medieval sermons: although these sermons focus on the wounded Christ, they are not a glorification of pain per se but a demonstration of divine mercy that spurs readers to particular acts of compassion, in imitation of Christ. The textual (and visual) imagery functions as a “‘rhetoric of appeal and response’ by which viewers and readers were encouraged affectively to experience the full meaning of God’s love definitively demonstrated through the Passion of Jesus.”87 “Flooding the viewers’ senses” with portrayals of pain effected a sense of urgency for action; the very physicality of Jesus’ wounds, as depicted in medieval homilies and art, brought the reader into proximity with him and invited the reader to engage in a relationship with him.88 Ross’s conclusions regarding the medieval “gospel of gore” are, mutatis mutandis, applicable also to martyr texts: graphic descriptions of torture are not necessarily glorifications of—or even teachings about—pain. In medieval homilies, descriptions of Jesus’ bodily experiences function as invitations to intimacy with the divine; in martyr texts the “gospel of gore” highlights the miraculous work of God in the Christian body during what appears to be—but is not—excruciating torture.
The Christian audience that has been emotionally engaged with the narrative events by any of the means discussed above becomes even more so as it witnesses—through hearing but also through visual imaginations—the horrific tortures applied to Christian bodies. Sometimes the physical effects of torture are explicitly described and thus easily connected to audiences’ memories of seeing the application of similar types of corporal punishment. At other times it is the listener’s imagination—still aided of course by cultural knowledge—that fills in the literary gaps.89 In both cases texts rely on the audience’s cultural familiarity with the Roman penal system and its effects on the criminalized body.90 The descriptions of bodily torture lead the audience to draw conclusions—or perhaps more accurately, allow them to follow their own assumptions—about the pain experienced by the martyrs. We may imagine the audience recalling the screams of victims in the amphitheater, accompanied by its other gruesome sights, smells, and sounds, all of which fill in detail that the texts have no need to supply explicitly. The texts thereby activate ancient audiences’ expectations of bodily pain resulting from torture.
The Martyrdom of Polycarp illustrates the activation of the audience’s expectation that the martyred body experiences excruciating pain. Following the epistolary introduction, the text moves directly to its most graphic description of bodily dissolution. The hearer is asked to “marvel” (thaumaseien) at the endurance of a group of unnamed martyrs who had been “torn to shreds by scourging until the very structure of their flesh was visible, down to the inner veins and arteries” (2.2). The description itself builds a visual picture in the mind’s eye: whips lash these Christians, cutting through flesh and muscle, carving their bodies so deeply and so thoroughly that the biological mechanisms that carry life—veins and arteries—may be observed. The text allows the audience to peer into open bodies—sparking memories, perhaps, of broken bodies previously seen—bodies that are now on display for their visual consumption and that demand their admiration.
The Martyrdom of Justin also efficiently paints a picture of the bodily effects of torture. At the command of the magistrate the Christians “were whipped until their flesh was torn to shreds and the ground grew red with the blood” (C.5). An audience can easily imagine shredded flesh, but the mental image is further defined by the visual movement encouraged by the description: the mind’s eye begins with the torn body but then it pans down to the arena sands stained red with blood. Listeners cannot turn their heads away from the action; they cannot imagine instead a more sanitized scene. The description is detailed enough that the image comes together quickly and is unavoidable: the sand on which the martyrs stand is saturated by the blood flowing freely from their torn bodies.91 The image of the bloody sand resulting from mutilated flesh engages the audience’s expectations for the experience of pain.
In the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons Blandina is tortured “from dawn to dusk” until the persecutors themselves are worn out. Her “entire body was broken and torn,” and those who beat her testify that “even one kind of torture was sufficient to release her soul,” let alone the multiplicity of tortures they applied (1.18). The audience is not told what types of torture (basanizontas) were employed. Perhaps they imagine tortures they have witnessed. Or perhaps they imagine instead the utter exhaustion—both physical and emotional—of torture applied for a full day. In either case audiences import their cultural knowledge to make meaning of the text. Thus the narrative does not need to specify forms of torture since those details will be supplied by the audience’s imaginations. The question raised by this text is not one of technique—“in what way was Blandina tortured?”—but rather one that evokes empathy: “how must she have felt if even her torturers were worn out?”
The same text describes the torture applied to Sanctus, and it invites a more visceral response. Sanctus refused to answer questions about himself—his name, his race, the city he was from, whether he was a slave or a freedman—declaring only his identity as a Christian (1.20). His refusal “aroused the great obstinacy of the governor and the torturers against him,” and they devised a particularly horrific plan: they pressed “red-hot copper plates . . . against the most delicate features of his body” (1.21). As with the description of Blandina’s torture, so also here, the text relies on the power of vagueness: an empathetic listener automatically imagines what parts of the body might be chosen and what red-hot copper plates must do to them. The imprecision of the text functions to engage the audience’s imaginations and they fill in the blanks. Whatever the specific torments were, they left Sanctus alive, but barely: he was “all one wound [trauma] and bruise, being contracted and degraded out of any human form” (1.23). The body the audience imagined before it was marred by red-hot copper plates is now unidentifiable. But can the mind’s eye recognize the unrecognizable? The narrative, it seems, presents the hearer with an impossible task: we cannot visualize someone we know and simultaneously not recognize him. The mental exercise nevertheless works toward the narrative’s goals. The description of Sanctus’s body as “one wound and bruise” invites the hearer to search the imagined body—from top to bottom—to try to find a spot, any spot, where flesh is unharmed; but the narrative simultaneously asserts the futility of the endeavor. It is, however, through this unresolvable conflict that hearers confront the reality of the text’s claim: in the process of searching their mental image of Sanctus’s body, hearers must transform recognizable flesh into “one wound and bruise.” It is therefore the work of the listener to convert Sanctus’s body into the unrecognizable. The ancient Christian listener likely can imagine bodies beaten and tortured to such an extent that their identities are no longer recoverable. And so perhaps it is those bodies—bodies encountered in the amphitheater—that stand in for Sanctus, thereby infusing this narrative with pain.
As a final example of the ways texts open spaces for audiences to imagine the pain of torture informed by their own particular experiences of Roman violence, I turn to the Martyrdom of Marian and James. Marian and James were “attacked with numerous harsh tortures” in the hopes—the narrator reports—that “faith could be fractured by the rending of limbs” (5.1). The tortures devised are described as “novel” (noua). Marian, for instance, “was suspended on the rack until he was wounded” (5.5), and “being suspended, the ties that bore his weight were bound not about his hands but the uppermost part of his thumbs, so that these, undoubtedly because of their slightness and weakness, might labor more in supporting the rest of his limbs. In addition, moreover, unequal weights were fastened to his legs, so that his whole body—being torn apart from each side by the unequal punishment and weakened by the perforation of his bowels—was suspended by his muscles” (5.6–7). The detailed description of the unequal distribution of the weights, maximizing the pain of dismemberment, invites the audience to see and to imagine the martyr’s torment.
Stories like these, I suspect, foster the view that martyr texts are narratives depicting the endurance of excruciating pain. The descriptions are detailed and graphic, seeming to revel in the discomfort of both the martyr and the listening audience. When we read a story about someone being beaten, burned, or hanged, we imagine—as Morris suggests—what it would feel like if it happened to us. We have no way of understanding the narrated event otherwise. As we have seen, the detailed depictions of the torture of Christians and the painstaking descriptions of the dissolution of the Christian body heighten expectations for a narrative about excruciating pain.
If the stories ended here, there would be no relief from these associations. The stories would end in defeat: Rome’s power—according to the dominant discourse of the day—would triumph over Christian obstinacy.92 The Roman penal system was interested not merely in inflicting pain but “also the total humiliation of the victim.”93 Christian martyrs endured excruciating torture for God—but a theologically sensitive ancient Christian might rightly ask, where was God? Stories that engage expectations of excruciating pain demand an answer to the question of theodicy. But these stories emphatically do not end here; they do not affirm listeners’ expectations about the tortured Christian body. What has been overlooked or undervalued in scholarly assessments of martyr literature is the text’s rejection of the audience’s associations of torture and pain. This rejection destabilizes the audience’s assumptions and opens up a path to a new, countercultural, theologically informed interpretation.
Torture scenes are crucial to the narrative climax of these stories, but in perhaps surprising ways: these episodes revolve around a “gotcha!” moment; or if you prefer texts that taunt you less, an “aha!” moment.94 By paying careful attention to narrative movements—Moore’s “consecutive mode of exegesis” that attends to the “time-flow of the text”—we see that the texts’ own machinations radically undermine what they have previously led the audience to believe: the body that should be in pain is not. This revelation invites listeners to reevaluate their previous interpretations, revising their understandings of events in light of the new information they have received. “The basic rules of meaning,” to borrow Winkler’s words, “are changed near the end of the game.”95 It is not until hearers reach the point of unambiguous disjunction—the dissolution of the body does not hurt—that they are confronted with a problem of interpretation. That is, an audience can make sense of the narratives as texts about pain only up to the point at which the texts explicitly reject that interpretation. Winkler’s observation about the narrative conundrum presented in The Golden Ass is, mutatis mutandis, applicable to martyr texts: “the problem did not exist until the answer was given.”96 The radical shift in meaning requires the audience to return to the scene and reassess it with new eyes and more complete information. In these texts torture scenes, as we shall see, are inevitably followed by assertions of impassibility or impassivity, which shifts the locus of meaning away from the audience’s initial expectations (viz., for pain) to a radically new way of viewing the events.97
The anonymous martyrs in Smyrna whose veins and arteries have been exposed for our viewing, for example, do not demonstrate signs of discomfort. Rather, the text directs its listeners to admire the martyrs’ disposition: “who would not marvel at their nobility and show of endurance and love of the master?” (Mart. Pol. 2.2). Even when their flesh was torn by whips, these martyrs were so noble that “they neither grumbled nor groaned” (2.2). Indeed, the martyrs “thought little of the tortures of this world,” a feat surely aided by the fact that the “fire of their savage torturers was cold to them” (2.3). Hearers who continue to imagine the excruciating pain of being whipped and then burned alive either have not yet read to the “gotcha!” moment or have rejected the text’s assertion.98 The narrator insists that the fire was cold; it did not burn. Although the text has raised the audience’s expectation for pain by its thick description of bodily assault, it immediately disconfirms that expectation, substituting a body immune to torture.
Justin, Chariton, Charito, and the other martyrs with them, whose blood stained the arena sands, did not groan in pain; they did not react at all to the events. The narrator simply states that the magistrate saw “that the martyrs would by no means give way” (5). In this case the rejection of pain as a narrative locus is more tempered than in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, but it is worth noting, nonetheless, that there is no language of pain in this text. The moment of interpretive revision then may work slightly differently here than in the Martyrdom of Polycarp—indeed, we should not expect identical textual interpretations across the Empire and across a century or more—but the rejection of the audience’s expectation nevertheless appears: what would be an understandable, even involuntary, response to pain (i.e., groaning) is absent in the martyrs’ responses, a fact that is underscored by the magistrate’s observation and frustration.
Revisionary interpretation is again abundantly clear when we turn to the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons. Blandina’s persecutors—who worked from dawn to dusk—were left not merely weary and exhausted but “vanquished” (nenikēntai). The narrator explains that her persecutors were “amazed that she was still breathing, for her whole body was broken and laid open” (1.18). Listeners might take this statement at face value. After all, these men were there; they inflicted the beatings; their report must be accurate. But this narrative is built on the discontinuity between two opposing groups, so the listener should be suspicious of the persecutors’ report. In this the attentive listener is affirmed: the narrator rejects the observation that Blandina was broken and laid open. Rather, the text offers a diametrically opposed interpretation of the effects of torture on this Christian body: “this blessed one, like a noble athlete, was made young again [aneneazen] by her confession, which brought to her recovery [analēpsis], rest [anapausis], and insensitivity [analgēsia]” (1.18). Blandina is far from broken by torture; through it she experiences analgesia.
If the audience comprehends and accepts the information gleaned from the story of Blandina, which functions as a paradigm shift for understanding the effects of torture on the Christian body, they will not be caught in the text’s subsequent “gotcha!” moment. Although Sanctus’s torture—red-hot copper plates—is on the surface horrific, the listener who has learned from Blandina’s story will anticipate the text’s subversive move. Indeed, although the plates burned, the martyr was “bedewed and strengthened by the heavenly fountain of the water of life that issues forth from the body of Christ” (1.22). Hot copper plates bring not pain but coolness and strength.
Marian, who was hanged with weights placed unequally to maximize the pain of torture, is yet another example of the rewritten script involving torture and pain. The narrator taunts the persecutors for not recognizing their own impotence, taunts that equally indict audience members who imagine a Christian body in pain:
Wicked heathen! You could accomplish nothing against God’s temple, the coheir with Christ. You may have suspended his limbs, shattered his sides, torn apart his bowels, but our Marian, with his faith in God, grew great in body as well as mind. . . . What now, heathen? Do you believe Christians—for whom awaits the joy of eternal light—feel the punishments of prison or dread the darkness of the world? For the soul that has mentally embraced heaven with faithful hope in the favor to come no longer attends to its punishment. (5.8–6.2)
The movement of the narrative is important to the communal work it is accomplishing: this text purports to record the observations of a companion of Marian and James. He was there—it claims to be eyewitness testimony—and his authority guides the listener through the emotional terrain of torture and death. But the “gotcha!” moment in this narrative, as indeed in many martyr texts, is startling because the audience realizes that assigning pain to the Christian body at the hands of pagan persecutors is to stand in ignorance of reality; more importantly, it is to side with the enemy. Christians who believe Marian is in pain are themselves subject to the narrator’s contempt. “Do you believe Christians feel the punishments?” If so, you have not learned an important lesson the text seeks to impart. The Martyrdom of Marian and James demonstrates a desire to counter perceptions of the physical vulnerability of Christians. In a number of episodes the author juxtaposes the audience’s expectations—or the torturer’s desires—with the reality of a Christian body immune to external assaults. The author, for instance, insists that the two bishops Agapius and Secundinus did not go from punishment to punishment (poena ad poenam) as the Gentiles think, but from glory to glory (sed a gloria potius ad gloriam; 3.2).
Though martyr texts do not shy away from detailed descriptions of the dissolution of the body, these descriptions serve in surprising and varied ways to distance the Christian body from the experience of torture, and an attentive listener should find it progressively more difficult to sustain the belief that martyrdom is painful. Further support for the texts’ claims are also found in various, perhaps more subtle, narrative elements: persecutors’ tools and best-laid plans, for instance, are defeated. A number of martyr texts disrupt narrative expectations by including plot twists that depict uncooperative weapons or ineffective applications of torture. These stories destabilize audience expectations by narrating surprising outcomes of torture. In some cases the forces of nature that typically destroy bodies choose not to do so. In other cases standard tools of judicial torture produce quite unexpected results. In every situation the persecutors’ aims are foiled. But the stories do more than merely report thwarted plans. They also upend assumptions about authority and power: the forces of nature are marshaled as evidence of the opposition between persecutors and God, or the persecutors are depicted as dimwits unable to bring to fruition the most straightforward execution plans. On the one hand, audiences listening to these texts are assured of God’s presence with and protection of the martyr; on the other, audiences can ridicule the persecutors whose impotence to cause injury and pain is on full display.
The Martyrdom of Marculus, for example, describes the “weapon” of death—mountains—as unwilling to participate in his persecution. According to the narrative, ten bishops including Marculus met with imperial representatives in Numidia in 347 CE. They were stripped, bound to a column, and whipped. The other bishops fade from narrative sight—they are eventually released—as the passio focuses on Marculus. When the persecutors realized that they could not defeat the bishop through torture, “the enemy destined [Marculus] for the harshest sentence, or so it looked to them.”99 The text foreshadows the failure of the plan when it insists that the horribleness of the torture is semblance rather than reality. Marculus’s persecutors devised an execution that would not merely kill him but would make his body unrecoverable by tearing it limb to limb: he would be thrown off a cliff. Without a body to bury, the persecutors thought, the bishop could not be venerated. Their desire to obliterate the body, however, was thwarted by the very instrument they chose for its destruction: the mountains—more pious than the persecutors—“feared to injure” him.100 As Marculus’s body plummeted downward, the divine hand interceded and slowed its descent: “moderation of his speed was controlled from heaven so that, immune to all roughness, his limbs might be deposited upon the harshness of the hard rocks just like upon the softest cushion or the most welcoming valley.”101 His soul rose to heaven while his “intact body” was “encircled by soothing breezes” and “supported by softly attending winds.”102 The hard stones “spared his holy limbs” so that his body could be found and properly buried.103 Mountains, breezes, and winds refused to cooperate with the persecutors, conspiring instead to preserve the bishop’s body. The account of Marculus’s torture and death is filled with unexpected twists that invite the audience to reevaluate their starting assumptions. This body, though frail, is not vulnerable—in life or in death—to the persecutors’ designs. Nature refuses to participate in the wicked plot, allying instead with God to protect the martyr’s body from violent disintegration.
The Passion of Maximian and Isaac also depicts the forces of nature foiling an attempt to desecrate martyrs’ bodies. In this case the persecutors sought to deny proper burial to the martyrs by weighing down the bodies with barrels of sand and casting them into the sea. The narrator mocks the plan as meaningless even if it were successful: “How foolish is the cruelty that purposed to refuse our hands their bodies, as if it were possible to snatch away their veneration from our minds, or that if not being interred on the earth, it were not possible, in any other way, for them to enter the celestial kingdom?”104 Appearance is not reality. The persecutors intended to insult the Christians’ bodies but unwittingly contributed instead to the martyrs’ final triumph: being thrown into the sea ensured that “not any place remained on earth where they had not scoffed at the enemy.”105 The persecutors’ affront to piety is rebuffed not only by the victims themselves but also by nature: when the martyrs were cast into the ocean, the water “straight away glowed all over as with celestial flames” and the sea began rolling, plunging, churning, and surging.106 The water did not destroy the bodies—as violent oceans normally do—but instead preserved them, returning them to land where the Christian community joyfully retrieved them. The ocean refused the task it was given; it was unwilling to participate in the desecration of the martyrs’ bodies, “lest because of its own carelessness, the sacrilege committed by another might endure.”107 The sea, the author explains, “could not hold fast to the most holy limbs”; it refused to be used by God’s enemies.108 In this text nature is anthropomorphized: the ocean chooses sides, gathers strength, and works systematically to collect the bodies that have been condemned to its depths. The water cannot abide the injustice, and so it returns the martyrs to land so they may be buried. As with the story of Marculus, the Passion of Maximian and Isaac challenges audiences’ expectations of the persecutors’ power by narrating the refusal of their chosen weapons to cooperate in the dissolution of holy bodies; nature has no part in their crimes.
The story of Biblis in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons recounts a different kind of story from those of Marculus and Maximian and Isaac, but its challenge to audience expectation is similar: the weapons chosen by persecutors produce results that are not just unexpected but antithetical to their intentions. In the Letter, Biblis denies Christ but she is nevertheless put on the rack to coerce testimony against the other Christians (1.25). The narrative depicts the Roman quaestio, which according to Ulpian entailed applying “bodily torture and pain for eliciting truth.”109 In other words, according to judicial theory, torture during interrogation would guarantee the truth of Biblis’s confession. In this case, however, it does not obtain the anticipated results. Rather than implicating her fellow Christians, Biblis recants her own apostasy. The torture brings true confession, but not the kind her pagan persecutors expect: she indicts only herself. Biblis’s physical torture was a spiritual remedy, as the text makes clear: “being stretched on the rack, she came to her senses and she awoke as if being called from a deep sleep, being reminded by the temporary punishment of the eternal chastisement in Gehenna” (1.26).110 The pagans’ plan backfires even further when Biblis goes on to defend Christians against accusations of infanticide and cannibalism (1.26). The text characterizes this reversal of expectation—torture moves Biblis from apostasy to faithfulness—as the defeat of the persecutor’s tools: “The tyrant’s instruments of punishment were rendered idle by Christ through the endurance of the saints” (1.27). Biblis was tortured, but the torture was ineffectual. Ultimately, the rack was conquered and thus unable to accomplish its task.
In Biblis’s case the rack produced a confession of faith rather than an indictment. Its work benefited Christ, not the persecutors. The surprise of the narrative requires that the audience understand the aims of judicial torture and the tools used to accomplish its goals. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, too, relies on the audience’s understanding of particular judicial actions, in this case death by fire. The persecutors’ failure to burn Polycarp alive is all the more surprising because the plot itself seeds expectation for that mode of execution. The text, for instance, attributes the sentence to the “multitude of heathen and Jews living in Smyrna” whose first choice—to the lions!—is rejected by the Asiarch because the games were no longer in session (12.2). The “uncontrollable wrath” of the crowd, though, cannot be deterred. They quickly regroup and cry out “with one mind” that Polycarp should be burned alive (12.3). The narrative then details the communal effort to build a fire for Polycarp’s execution: immediately—“quicker than it takes to tell”—those who pronounce the death sentence begin to collect logs and brush from all over town to build the pyre (13.1–2). After Polycarp mounts the pyre and prays, the men in charge light the firewood and a great flame blazes. And so, for those immersed in the time-flow of the narrative, it seems that Polycarp’s prophecy—“It is necessary for me to be burned alive” (5.2, 12.3)—is being fulfilled. Surprisingly, however, the persecutors “realized that his body was not able to be destroyed by the fire” (16.1), so Polycarp is stabbed (16.1). The wound produces so much blood that it quenches the flames (16.1).111 The persecutors, it is true, achieve their ultimate objective—Polycarp dies—but the instrument by which they planned to accomplish that goal is uncooperative and, ultimately, extinguished.
The ineffectual fire is especially surprising because the text leads the audience to believe that Polycarp will be burned alive. The idea is introduced in chapter 5 when Polycarp receives a vision of “his pillow being burned up by fire.” He interprets this vision as a revelation of the manner of his death: “It is necessary for me to be burned alive” (5.2). The narrator recalls this incident, thus reconfirming the audience’s expectation, when he interprets the sudden and dramatic turn of events at the trial—the crowd’s unprovoked call for the bishop’s death—as prophecy fulfillment: “For it was necessary that the vision that was made manifest about his pillow be fulfilled, when seeing it burning while he was praying, he turned and said prophetically to the faithful who were with him: ‘It is necessary for me to be burned alive’” (12.3). The narrative foreshadows Polycarp’s death by fire, thus misleading the reader. Perhaps this narrative modification constitutes another “gotcha!” moment: the text has guided the audience to anticipate a particular event only to radically disconfirm their expectation. Technically, of course, the prophecy is fulfilled: Polycarp is burned alive. But surely the audience is to interpret the narrative as foreshadowing the means by which Polycarp attains martyrdom rather than an incidental occurrence on the way to his death. This disjunction—the narrative confounds the expectation it had previously established—invites the reader to investigate further. The tension between expectation and reality affords the listening audience the opportunity to observe God in action: the God to whom Polycarp prays and for whom he dies is not absent. God intervenes at the climax of the story, protecting Polycarp’s body—just as he had done previously for the Jewish youths in Daniel—from this particularly painful death.112 Unlike the Jewish youths, Polycarp does eventually die at the hands of his persecutors. But the fact of Polycarp’s death—the sine qua non of martyr texts—is less important than the interpretive opportunities made available when the narrative denies that the fire can harm him. This “gotcha!” moment opens space for listeners to reevaluate their assumptions about the persecutors’ power and to affirm divine deliverance.
While some martyr texts highlight situations in which the instruments of torture failed to work as expected, another group of texts focus more particularly on the incompetence of the persecutors themselves by narrating their inability to control the animals that were chosen to kill the Christians. In the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, pagan ineptitude is apparent when “not one of the animals touched” Blandina after she was exposed to them (1.42). On the one hand, the audience would likely see God’s activity in Blandina’s experience: even though she was “put out as food for the animals that were thrown in at her,” the animals did not approach her (1.41). On the other hand, interpreting the episode as miraculous does not exhaust—or restrict—its hermeneutical potential. The Letter is an explicitly dualistic text that sets the adversary in conflict with God’s people. Thus a story that depicts God’s victory simultaneously portrays the adversary’s failure. In this case focusing on Blandina leads the audience to acknowledge God’s presence in the arena. But if the visual field is enlarged, we realize that Blandina and the animals are not the only characters involved in this scene. Someone has hanged Blandina up as bait, and someone has let loose the wild animals. The narrative requires the presence of an animal trainer. Since most wild animals do not naturally attack humans as prey, the animals used in the arena for the purposes of damnati ad bestias were, as Donald Kyle notes, “provoked . . . with fire and whips.”113 Thus in the Letter Blandina’s safety demonstrates the trainer’s incompetence: he cannot incite the animals to attack. In this episode the pagan plan failed; their expectations—and perhaps also those of the audience—for ordinary arena action are dashed, and assumptions of pagan power must be reconsidered.
The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas also narrates plans for animal attacks gone awry. Saturninus and Revocatus were to be killed by a leopard, but the planned execution was foiled when a bear attacked the Christians while they were still in the stocks (19.4). That the narrative explicitly reports both the plan for execution and its failure is significant. The text, that is, could have simply reported that a bear killed Saturninus and Revocatus, omitting all reference to the leopard. But instead it describes a haphazard situation that resulted in a botched plan. The debacle that reveals the pagans’ inability to control their animals—and thus to present the spectacle as planned—continues as the narrative describes the death of another martyr. Saturus was supposed to be attacked by a boar, but the animal gored the gladiator instead. Plan B involved Saturus being placed in the stocks where he was supposed to be attacked by a bear, but—ironically, given his fellow Christians’ experience—this bear refused to come out of the cage to attack him (19.5–6). Saturus escapes this scene unscathed. The carefully planned spectacle of death devolves into a comedy of errors: Saturninus and Revocatus are unexpectedly attacked by a bear while they are in the stocks awaiting death by leopard, while Saturus should be gored by a boar or attacked by a bear while in the stocks, but his bear will not budge. Audience perceptions of pagan power, and basic competence, are challenged by these stories that depict and even ridicule the persecutors as buffoons. The enemy is revealed as a fool worthy of Christian laughter, not as a threat deserving Christian fear.
Martyr stories often describe surprising responses to torture, which may also function as proof of the martyrs’ insensitivity. In the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, Carpus “smiled” after being nailed to a stake (A38); Papylus was nailed to a stake but his “face appeared joyful and he laughed” (B4.3). Conon, having had spikes driven into his heels, was forced to run in front of a chariot while being whipped by two men; rather than crying out in pain, he sang a psalm of thanksgiving (Mart. Con. 6.2). Marculus also was moved to praise God rather than to cry out during torture. The juxtaposition of thick description of physical assault—“executioners vented their rage”; they wore out the martyr “with the punishment of their cudgels”; they “tore him apart with their repetitive torture”; they “inflicted blows to his back” so that his chest was beaten against a column—with Marculus’s calm demeanor—“the voice of the illustrious one brought forth nothing but praise for God”—borders on the absurd.114 But the audience is not to respond to the incongruity with incredulity; rather, the resolution of incongruity, based in every case on the distinction between appearances and reality, offers audiences an opportunity to laugh at impotence of pagan action. The physical assaults on Carpus, Papylus, Conon, and Marculus lead only to thanksgiving.
Two additional narrative techniques—both involving the way the narrators describe the deaths of their heroes and heroines—challenge audiences’ assumptions about martyrdom and pain. First, in a large number of early texts the death of the martyr is announced in passing, as if it pales in significance to other parts of the narrative. Second, in a few instances the audiences’ visual imagination—so carefully established by the texts—is momentarily obstructed only to be replaced by an unexpected new vision. On the basis of the thick description of torture, listeners initially envision a grotesque murder but are then guided to imagine something beautiful instead. These rhetorical techniques might be overlooked as metaphorical flourishes or dismissed merely as elements of genre, but cursory or obscured death scenes do not exist in isolation. Read in light of the other narrative techniques for renegotiating meaning, these story elements carry significant hermeneutical weight. In these death scenes visual images are not merely sanitized but arrayed in splendor and beauty; they testify to the miraculous. These narrative techniques complement the texts’ interests in renegotiating audience interpretation by repainting the scene of torture for the listeners.
Stories of brave Christians who forfeited their lives in faithfulness to their God might be expected to focus on the moment of death. After all, if dying for one’s faith is the sine qua non of the martyr text, then surely that death is important to recount. So it seems counterintuitive that these narratives often end with a cursory death notice. This is especially true in early texts like the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, which reports the deaths of the Christians in a concise seven words: “And at once they were beheaded for the name of Christ” (Et statim decollati sunt pro nomine Christi; 17). Recension B of the Martyrdom of Justin offers a similarly unadorned announcement of death: “And the holy martyrs, glorifying God, went out to their usual place. Their heads being cut off, they perfected [eteleiōsan] their testimony through their confession of our Savior” (6.1).115 Recension C of the Martyrdom of Justin follows its predecessor in terseness, but its abrupt shift in addressee is intriguing. After relating the death sentence in third-person, the text addresses the now dead martyrs directly: “Accordingly, the soldiers, taking you, triumphant martyrs, and coming to the place of perfection [teleiōseōs], they cut off your heads” (C6.1). Perhaps the author wrote this recension for use in a martyrium—a shrine dedicated to the martyrs. If so, then the direct address would be liturgically meaningful. But the shift may also make space for audiences to enter the narrative as witnesses to the deaths of the faithful Christians; listeners might imagine themselves present at the trial and execution and thus they become eyewitnesses to the author’s address to those who are dying for their faith. Regardless of its setting, in this version of the story the execution itself is overshadowed by the language of triumph and perfection; death, accomplished by beheading, is the means by which the martyrs achieve victory. In these texts the moment of death is anticlimactic; the textual emphasis lies elsewhere, either in the interrogation scenes or in the scenes of torture. That is, the locus of meaning lies not in death but in the completion or perfection of an act of confession and faithfulness that has preceded it.
Other martyr texts are even more opaque in their death notices, often skirting the matter altogether. According to the Acts of Cyprian, Cyprian was condemned to be beheaded. Rather than describing the execution, the text merely notes that the order was carried out: “And in this way, Cyprian endured” (et ita Cyprianus passus; 5.6). Although the author has previously indicated the manner in which Cyprian died, the death itself is not narrated. The audience is not asked to imagine the sword striking his neck; neither is it required to see Cyprian’s head, detached from his laid-out body. Instead, the audience’s gaze moves from seeing Cyprian blindfolded to observing the pagans’ curiosity about his corpse to watching the funeral procession conducted “with prayers in great triumph” (5.6). Similarly, the Acts of Maximilian states that the Christian deserved to die “by the sword” (3.1) and then merely reports that the order was carried out: “And in this way he soon endured” (et ita mox passus est; 3.3). In this case, too, the text obscures the death itself by not providing details that facilitate a visual image. Strikingly, these narratives do not employ typical language for dying—morior or pereo—but instead, language of endurance, patior. Death itself appears not to be the locus of meaning in these narratives. Instead, their focus is on submission and endurance. Because the execution scenes lack detail and death terminology is not invoked, the texts obscure death both narratively and philologically.
The Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, and Chione also utilizes theologically laden terms rather than “dying” or “death.” Agape and Chione were condemned to be burned alive. Immediately following the announcement of the death sentence, the narrative reports its accomplishment: “And then the most holy ones were perfected by the fire” (teleiōthēnai; 5.1). Recalling biblical language of refining or perfecting through fire, this text focuses on the spiritual benefits of martyrdom rather than on death per se.116 Although the text is slightly more graphic in describing Irene’s death, it again employs the language of “perfection”: Irene “threw herself onto the fire and was thus perfected” (eteleiōthē; 7.2). In both examples the women die; yet to translate teleioō as “died” would disregard the passive form of the verbs.117 More importantly, it would shift the text’s emphasis: the textual focus is not on the fact that they died but on the perfection that their deaths effected.
Recension A of the Martyrdom of Justin takes the substitution of theological language for the language of death a step further. This recension includes the order for execution, but unlike recensions B and C it does not narrate its enactment. Instead, the account ends abruptly: “So the holy martyrs, glorifying God, going out to the usual place, perfected [eteleiōsan] their testimony by confessing our Savior, to whom be glory and power with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and for ever and ever. Amen” (6.1). Obviously their testimony was perfected through their deaths, since this is an account of martyrdom; what is striking, again, is the absence of an account of their deaths and the substitution of language of perfection or completion in lieu of a description of martyrdom. In all of these cases tersely reported deaths reinscribe meaning, reframe perception, and move the martyr’s corporeal experience from center to periphery. The narratives’ resistance to focusing on the moment of death also shifts the audience’s perspective to a particular ideology of martyrdom: rather than presenting martyrdom as the endurance of excruciating pain unto death—which puts the focus on pain and death—these texts privilege martyrdom as the perfection of faith.
A related technique for shifting the locus of meaning, along with the narrative gaze, at the moment of death is the use of language that highlights the martyrs’ volition and activity—rather than passivity—in death. As with the examples above, the details of execution are not related to the listening audience; but in these cases the texts employ language that marks the martyrs’ work in accomplishing their goals. The Greek recension of the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, for example, relates Papylus’s death cursorily but emphasizes his active role: “offering prayers in silence, he handed over his spirit [paredōken tēn psuchēn]” (37). Similarly, Carpus “gave up his spirit [apedōken tēn psuchēn]” (41). The Latin recension of this text likewise emphasizes the activity of the martyrs, utilizing the verb reddo to describe the deaths of Pamphilus (4.6) and Carpus (5.1), and trado of Agathonike (6.5). The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons asserts that Ponticus “gave up his spirit [apedōke to pneuma]” (1.54). Conon prayed, “sealed himself” (sphragisas heauton), and “gave up his spirit [apedōken to pneuma]” (Mart. Con. 6.5).118 Flavian’s active role in his death is described slightly differently: kneeling down, “he completed his enduring with a prayer” (passionem suam cum oratione finiuit; Mart. Mont. 23.6). The active verbs in these narratives are important: the emphasis is not on the martyrs being killed but rather on the manner in which they accomplish their testimony. By focusing on the activity of the martyrs in their deaths, the texts reject interpretations of victimization; power shifts from the persecutor to the martyr. In addition, these depictions of martyrdom redirect the listener’s gaze from the gore of execution to actions that achieve victory and perfection.
Some texts direct audience attention away from the physical trauma of persecution by obscuring the visual imagination at the moment of death. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for instance, images of majesty and wonder are superimposed on the martyr’s body and substitute for images of burning flesh: when Polycarp stood on the pyre, onlookers were unable to see his body because “the fire made the likeness of a vaulted room, like the sail of a ship being filled with the wind, completely surrounding the body of the martyr like a wall” (15.2). The destruction of his body was undetectable not only by sight but also by smell: his burning body did not give off the putrid stench of charred flesh but smelled like “bread baking,” or “incense,” or “some costly spices” (15.2).119 In this scene Polycarp’s body is both exposed to and hidden from us. In Grig’s apposite characterization, “the voyeuristic gaze of the audience is both provoked and denied.”120 The reader is invited to observe the spectacle of a body that is miraculously protected from both the ravages of inhumane torture and our gaze. The text disallows the visualization of a body being consumed by flames; it rejects an imagined olfactory experience of the stench of burning human flesh.121 Pain and death are not the focus. Instead, audience members see and smell God at work, protecting the Christian body from pagan assault. As Susan Ashbrook Harvey has argued: “The experience these Christian witnesses claimed was one in which their senses redefined the event. The fire they saw enshrined rather than destroyed their bishop. The air they breathed billowed with the aroma of baking bread—the comforting promise of daily sustenance, and for Christians the center of (sacrificial) fellowship in the name of Christ.”122 Harvey observes that visual cues frame this scene but olfactory ones interpret its meaning: Polycarp’s body is a sensory reminder of Jesus’ sacrifice as remembered in Eucharist.123 She rightly notes that this scene transforms trauma into victory for the Christian community; by recalling the scent of sacrifice, the letter insists that Polycarp’s “death was neither meaningless nor a defeat. Rather it had been a pure and holy sacrifice acceptable to God.”124 The miracle confirms that Polycarp’s prayer has been fulfilled: God has accepted the sacrifice (14.2). That Polycarp’s body was not destroyed by this fire may not have been as surprising to an ancient reader—conversant with cultural expectations for sacrifice—as it is to a modern reader: burning incense, to which Polycarp’s burning body is compared, was understood to transform it rather than destroy it.125 What had been an ordinary object—resin, or in this case flesh—is transformed into something extraordinary, perceptible both by sight and smell. Polycarp’s body is altered by this purifying fire; its transformation is so complete that it cannot be consumed. The text leads audiences to focus not on destruction or decay but on miraculous preservation and divinely aided transformation.
The account of the death of the “most noble Germanicus” in the Martyrdom of Polycarp also obscures the reader’s view of the disfigured martyr. The text explains that Germanicus “pulled the beast” upon himself (3.1). While it may be tempting to read this text as a graphic depiction of death, the text itself does little to aid our visual imagination. Listeners may imagine the scene, aided perhaps by personal experiences of the amphitheater, but their visual imaginations are not encouraged by the text, which supplies no details of bodily dissolution. Even the type of beast Germanicus employs to accomplish his death remains a mystery, so the text does not develop a specific mental image that privileges goring over biting or clawing. Instead, it omits all details including in fact the martyr’s body: Germanicus pulled the beast upon himself, but we are given no description of the gory results. At his death the narrative emphasis is instead on the martyr’s rationale for martyrdom: he wished “to be released quickly from their unrighteous and unlawful life” (3.1). This episode resists an interpretation that focuses on the valorization of suffering and death. Instead, it focuses audience attention on the active role the martyr plays in seeking communion with the divine and on rejection of the ungodly powers of this world.
Why, we might ask, does a text detail the excruciating torture of the Christian if it is merely—within a sentence or two—going to discount the real effects of that torture? I suggest this occurs because the audience brings to the listening experience expectations of bodily pain through their empathy with the martyr, which is informed by their knowledge of the effects of judicial torture on bodies. The texts acknowledge the truth of the audiences’ experiences: in almost every situation torture is excruciatingly painful. But not all circumstances are the same, not all bodies are equal, and therefore not all victims are vulnerable to Roman power. The texts meet the listeners in the mundane world—where physical tortures reliably result in excruciating pain—because, on the one hand, the listener is already there. But on the other hand, this starting point also fosters audience identification and empathy with the martyr so that they appreciate—in an equally real way—the revised interpretation that transports them into the presence of the miraculous, into the presence of God.126 The text therefore does not fight the audience’s initial instincts to assign pain to physical injury; in fact it engages and manipulates those instincts to its own theological ends. The narrative arc is hard to miss when the stories are evaluated for the ways they activate and then resist—even outright reject—the audiences’ expectations.
Each of the texts examined above graphically details torture and then offers a radically new perspective on events. They use distinct mechanisms by which to distance the Christian body from or make it immune to pain, which I will explore more fully in the following chapter. All of the texts, however, imagine torture and pain to be instruments by which the state attempts to dehumanize its victims; they are a means of exerting power.127 But these texts do not merely subvert the terms in play such that death is really life or by making the claim that pain is meaningful. In these texts pain is simply not a locus of meaning and hearers who accept this renegotiation of meaning must replay the narrative, self-consciously viewing the events through a different ideological lens.
The discourses of pain in the martyr texts are more complex than they may at first seem because the texts do not give away their punch lines early on: they do not begin with the bald assertion that Christian bodies are immune to pagan assault. Indeed, listeners have no sense of the hermeneutical problem until they are confronted with the discordant elements of graphic descriptions of physical torture, on the one hand, and assertions of the ineffectiveness of torture, on the other. First, martyr texts bring immediacy to the events narrated and draw the hearer into those events through genre choices, narrator voice, and character identification. After audiences are emotionally engaged in the action, the texts activate hearers’ expectations about the martyrs’ physical experiences—specifically the relationship of torture to pain—by painting a detailed picture of horrific assaults to the body. The narrative climax, however, undermines rather than confirms these assumptions about martyrs’ bodies experiencing pain. The texts reframe events by differentiating appearance from reality. Listeners who accept the texts’ renegotiation of meaning return to the narrated scene, viewing the events through this different ideological lens. Once the text reaches this new vantage point, the audience sees that there is no pain produced by this torture because there is no power standing behind the torture.