The advantage of a revolutionary situation consists precisely in the fact that even a small group can become a great force in a brief space of time, provided that it gives a correct prognosis and raises the correct slogans in time.
—LEON TROTSKY, THE SPANISH REVOLUTION (1931–1939)
Martyrs’ bodies, particularly descriptions of their somatic experiences, are discursive tools employed in social, political, and theological contests. While some interpretations privilege the historicity or historical verisimilitude of these bodies, my interest is in the rhetorical construction of them. I am not arguing, that is, that torture and execution really do not cause pain; neither am I positing physiological explanations for the claims to analgesia. The martyrs’ corporality signifies much more than human flesh, and thus these bodies are not neutral sites for which a Rankean history—“to show what actually happened”—can be written.1 Instead of asking what really happened, I ask, “What do these bodies mean?” I argue that the textual body is a highly contested locus of both force and discourse.2
In the martyr texts the body as a site of force is obvious: it is seen in the action taken against Christians in an effort to persuade them to apostatize or to punish them for obstinacy. While force is often a tool of the ruling class, marginalized groups also have access to it, “if only that of their own bodies.”3 Individuals can, that is, use their bodies as sites of personal resistance and contestation. But while force may help the ruling class avert revolt, it does not ensure social stability and so it must be supplemented by the “ideological persuasion” of discourse.4
The body as a site of discourse is equally important for the meaning making of Christian martyr texts. Discourses legitimate and perpetuate the power of the ruling class, but other social groups may script counternarratives that undermine the dominant discourse. Counter-discourses aim both at deconstructing existing patterns as well as at constructing new ones.5 Marginalized groups then can utilize discourse to gain power: their counternarratives can delegitimate the status quo and thereby challenge the very discourses used to subordinate them.6 The success of a counternarrative depends on several factors: how widely the discourse is propagated, its persuasiveness, and its popularity. When all three factors are met, a discourse is both rationally and morally appealing; it strengthens feelings of attachment among group members and fosters feelings of estrangement from nongroup members.7 The success of early Christian discourse, as Todd Klutz has argued, ultimately lies not in its historical accuracy but in its rhetorical persuasiveness.8 Textual bodies, like those of the martyrs, can be claimed and deployed by societies to affirm or resist hegemonic power, to strengthen or challenge the status quo.9 Thus even if we were to concede the historical reliability of the martyr texts—that is, they record “what really happened”—the discursive function of the textual body is not constrained by the martyr’s political, religious, or social intentions.
The textual bodies of martyrological discourses are blank slates on which authors inscribe meaning, and as such they become a “map of memory” through which historians can trace ideologies.10 But if “the body never lies”—as Martha Graham suggests—Brent Shaw rightly queries, “what truth does it speak?”11 The “truth” the martyr texts tell in most cases is of a Christian body invulnerable to pain. This textual body may strike modern readers as counterintuitive, but viewed from the perspective of an ancient audience—an audience facing the possibility, even if not the probability, of arrest, torture, and death—the narrative devaluing of pain is shrewd.12 The promise that God protects Christians from the inventive and excruciating tortures of the Romans fosters faithfulness and resolve. For a listening audience that is in all probability familiar with public torture and execution—for individuals who have watched criminals being mauled by animals or forced to participate in arena games—the reality of pain in the Roman judicial system is all too real. The martyr texts alleviate the fears of these Christians by asserting that the bodies of the faithful receive divinely administered analgesics and that what appears to be torture is really a remedy. In these texts God is not only in power but is demonstrably victorious; God’s victory is evident when Christian deaths take place apart “from the agonies of dying.”13
While this depiction of the invulnerable Christian body offers comfort to ancient Christians, its social function is more complex. In this chapter I argue that assertions of the martyrs’ impassibility draw on and contribute to preexisting cultural discourses in the ancient world, both Christian and non-Christian. The assertions of painlessness in torture, that is, are not alien to ancient narrative scripts but instead resonate with available cultural discourses. Listeners who had access to any of these cultural conversations, therefore, could make sense of the martyr texts’ claims. Eschatological expectations, for instance, are apparent in a number of martyr texts, and teachings about the end times affect the ways Christian bodies are imagined: they may suggest that Christians—or at least martyrs—can lay claim proleptically to the promises of glorified bodies that reside in a perfected world. Christian claims to analgesia may also reflect interactions with the broader discourse of Stoic philosophy.14 However, Christians are not the only ones engaged in conversation about martyrs’ bodies, and they are not the only ones who have something at stake in the way these stories are told. Pagans, too, contribute to the discourse of pain and martyrdom—to their own social and political ends. Thus discourses about martyrs reflect various groups’ attempts to spin events in particular ways and to particular ends. These texts simultaneously point to ways the martyr is deployed in intra-Christian discourses and in interreligious rivalries.
As we have seen, martyr texts look backward by rescripting history: they assert that what appeared to happen did not actually happen, that torture is not painful but a remedy. We have not yet examined the ways they also look forward by staking claim to a “mythic future.”15 Gail Streete has posited that martyrdom “can only function as a valid discourse in a society that sees itself in apocalyptic terms, living on the borders between life and death, engaged in a struggle between good and evil.”16 Just as the retelling of past events serves present needs, so also the future, as Bruce Lincoln reminds us, “enters discourse in the present always and only for reasons of the present.”17 Indeed, the future world promised by the martyr texts is not simply a distant utopia unrelated to the current situation; the hoped-for future impinges on the present, and martyr acts narrate its realization.18 The martyr texts, then, promise that the rewards for faithfulness are attained—at least in part—in the present world. Such a claim has important ramifications for understanding the social function of the martyred body immune to pain.
The “mythic future” that the authors of the martyr texts imagine is not wholly their invention. It is the scripturally and theologically predicated eschatological promise of the messianic age. Scholars often note the eschatological themes and apocalyptic resonances found in martyr narratives.19 The Passion of Perpetua, for instance, has received extensive attention in terms of its dependence on apocalyptic literature: scholars have posited parallels between the Passion and 1 Enoch, the Apocalypse of Peter, Shepherd of Hermas, and Revelation.20 Even when literary dependence on specific apocalypses cannot be ascertained, eschatological themes are nonetheless prevalent in martyr literature. Cosmic dualism, which pits God against Satan, is ubiquitous in martyr texts. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for instance, the strategies devised for torturing Christians are those of the devil (3.1), and it is the “evil one,” the “enemy of the race of the just,” who—working through Nicetes—prevented the Christians from obtaining Polycarp’s remains (17.1). Likewise, in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, the Adversary initiated the persecution against the Christians: he “darted in with full power” and went “to great lengths familiarizing and training his own against the slaves of God” (1.5). When his first attempts failed, the “devil contrived other devices” in a more strenuous effort to lead Christians to apostasy (1.27). Dualism is plainly on show when the author states that whereas the jailers are “completely filled with the Devil,” the Christians “regained strength and were vitalized through the Lord” (1.27, 1.28). Here, as in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Satan is the force behind the persecution as he animates and empowers his servants to fight on his behalf.
Cosmic dualism resolves in the promise of ultimate vindication. Just as eschatological expectations are built on the assumption that God will defeat Satan in a cosmic battle, so many martyr texts portray the defeat of Satan through martyrdom. The martyr texts thus preview the final victory that is soon to come. The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, for instance, narrates Christ’s victory over the Adversary in the body of Sanctus (1.23). Likewise, in Perpetua’s fourth vision, she defeats the Egyptian, signaling her “fight against the Devil” and assuring her of victory (Pass. Perp. 10.14). Fructuosus and his fellow martyrs “trampled upon the devil’s head” through their martyrdoms (Mart. Fruct. 7.2). The author of the Martyrdom of Marian and James writes that “the rage of the dangerous Devil” threatened to weaken the faithful (2.2). Although the magistrates—“priests of the Devil”—applied myriad tortures to the Christian bodies, they could not avoid “the Lord’s victory” (5.1, 5.10). Through the bodies of the martyrs, God defeats the forces of evil.21 Such is clearly the point made by the author of the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius: “we receive the reward of our crowns because the battle has already occurred” (4.6). Just as miracle stories in the Gospels represent a microcosm of the coming cosmic battle, so the contest between Christ and Satan taking place within the bodies of the martyrs brings the eschatological combat into the present moment.22 Christians are victorious here and now, the texts claim. Their victory is not to be accomplished through some unspecified future battle; they are crowned with crowns of immortality when they fight for and with Christ.
Accompanying the themes of dualism and vindication is the expectation of inevitable judgment. On the one hand, Christians avoid apostasy in anticipation of the judgment to come, as Carpus indicates: “We were born of the same mother, Eve, and we have the same flesh, but having in view the true court, let us bear all things” (Mart. Carp. A40). The Latin recension of this martyrdom makes the judgment clearer: “Being mindful of God’s true judgment, we choose to endure this and to disregard the orders of perishable judges rather than to meet that true and eternal judgment, where there will be no mercy” (B4.4). That unmerciful sentence includes an eternal fire “unextinguishable,” which will be wholly destructive: it will “burn up the sea, the mountains, and the forests” (B4.5). This text juxtaposes the short-lived fire of persecution with the eternal raging fire of judgment, which cannot be avoided. Likewise, the Martyrdom of Polycarp contrasts “one hour” to “eternal punishment” when it describes the choice made by the martyrs: they preferred the temporal fire because “they held before their eyes escape from that which is eternal and never put out” (2.3). The fear of judgment then is said to drive Christian behavior and motivate faithfulness in torture.
On the other hand, many martyr texts anticipate a judgment that will punish the unjust actions of the persecutors. The Martyrdom of Marian and James asserts that “the vengeance of the blood of the just is coming” by means of “various worldly plagues, for instance pestilence, captivity, famine, earthquakes, and the torture of poisonous biting flies” (12.7).23 The horsemen of the Apocalypse, images of impending judgment, also make an appearance in this text: to both the martyrs and the Christian witnesses—though not, the text insists, to the pagan persecutors—“there appeared above horses of a brilliant snowy-white color, which bore youths clothed in white” (12.5).24 The presence of the horsemen was confirmed by those who heard the “the snorting and the sound of the horses” (12.6). In the Passion of Perpetua the imprisoned Carthaginian Christians respond to pagan taunts with a somber prophecy, warning the spectators of God’s judgment and anticipating their own enjoyment at the reversal of fortunes: in the end they will experience joy when their tormentors are suffering. Saturus, speaking for the rest of the Christians, asks the mob to look at the prisoners’ faces carefully so as to recognize them “on the day” (Pass. Perp. 17.1). Promises of eschatological judgment serve communal needs for retribution that may currently lie beyond reach; they assure listeners that the atrocities committed against innocent Christians will be repaid.
Even more pertinent than the eschatological themes of martyr texts, however, are the ways that hopes for the future, and its anticipation of the resurrection, shed light on the martyr texts’ depictions of the Christian body.25 Saturus’s directive to the spectating audience—“make note of our faces”—suggests an expectation of material continuity after death (Pass. Perp. 17.2). If the persecutors are to recognize those whom they have harmed, then the martyrs must retain identifiable bodies. Indeed, scholars have shown that it is precisely in this period—the second and third centuries CE—that Christian discourse about the resurrection shifts to emphasize the materiality of the raised body.26 Justin, for instance, asserts that the resurrection affects both body and spirit: “He has called the flesh to the resurrection and promises to give it everlasting life” (On Resurrection 8). Indeed, for Justin the physical resurrection is the good news of Christianity that differentiates it from pagan philosophies: while Plato and Pythagoras taught the immortality of the soul, Jesus brings “the good news of a new and strange hope . . . to turn that which is not immortal to immortality” (On Resurrection 10).27 In their treatises on resurrection, Christians construct a counternarrative to pagan arguments about the absurdity—indeed, the repugnancy—of the doctrine. That is, Christians are not merely proposing a belief but defending it against their detractors. Celsus’s, Porphry’s, and Julian’s acid critiques of Christian views of the resurrection remind us of the cacophony of voices contributing to the discourse on the fate of the body after death.28
Not all Christians argued for material continuity after death, however. Rival Christian views concerning the resurrection may be preserved in the Passion of Perpetua.29 On the one hand are narratives that assume material continuity.30 In addition to Saturus’s statement about the martyrs’ faces, this perspective is also reflected in Perpetua’s third vision, in which her prayers for her deceased brother Dinocrates have been answered. No longer dirty and pale, unable to reach water to quench his thirst, the boy is now happy and healthy, drinking from a bottomless golden cup. Importantly, his body has been healed: where there was once a wound, there is now only a scar. Thomas Heffernan interprets the scar as “the experiential evidence of the healing.”31 The narrative is concerned not only with Dinocrates’s soul but also with his body: he drinks freely—surely a profound promise in arid North Africa—and his body is healed.32 This vision of paradise does not devalue bodily needs and physical injuries: God cares for both.
On the other hand, Saturus’s vision may privilege a noncorporeal afterlife. Saturus relates that having left the body (exivimus de carne; 11.2), the martyrs were carried by angels to a garden with blooming bushes. As they entered the house of the Lord, they saw an old man with white hair and a youthful face. The martyrs and angels attending the Lord sang, as in a single voice, the Trisagion. Perpetua claims to be happier at that moment than she was “in the flesh” (in carne; 12.7). So nourished by the sights and sounds of paradise, Saturus reports that they were “satiated” by it. Both Saturus’s and Perpetua’s statements in this vision are built on a dualism between spirit and flesh. Jan Bremmer, however, argues that this vision describes a bodily resurrection: since Saturus walks through the garden in his body, “leaving the body” must be understood as a euphemism for death.33 But Eliezer Gonzalez argues that this vision imagines a resurrection of the spirit and not of the flesh.34 Similarly, Heffernan suggests that the language of embodiment is allegorical: the vision “depicts the souls as if they were bodies: they walk, talk, and act as if they were embodied.”35 That the vision likely imagines a noncorporeal resurrection is also suggested in the narrative’s repeated insistence that the martyrs had left the flesh (caro) behind.36 The Passion therefore appears to preserve discordant views of the resurrected body. At least in the final form of the text, these inconsonant perspectives sit side by side without comment.37
Even those Christians who agreed that the body would be raised did not necessarily agree on the physical characteristics of the resurrected body. Third Corinthians, for instance, appears to imply that resurrected bodies bear the marks of persecution (35).38 Similarly, the Martyrdom of Fructuosus describes the martyrs ascending to heaven still attached to their stakes (5.1). But more commonly authors imagine that the resurrected flesh is healed. Justin, for instance, argues that “the flesh shall rise perfect and entire” (On Resurrection, 4).39 Just as Jesus healed the infirmities of those whom he encountered during his ministry, Justin avers, how much more will the resurrected flesh be healed and perfected? Justin’s writings reflect a double-pronged concern for material continuity and its incorruptibility, a concern that pervades patristic writings on resurrection: what is raised must be the same body but it is transformed into something greater and more perfect. A similar concern for the perfection of the resurrected body can be seen in Theophilus’s Ad Autolycum. The body, Theophilus asserts, is like a broken clay vessel that is “restored and made new and perfect”; at the resurrection the body will be “without blemish and just and immortal” (26).40 Similarly, Irenaeus asserts that the body that is raised is “in a healthy condition” (Haer. 5.12.5).41 The claim is perhaps most clearly and succinctly stated by Tertullian: “To nature, not to injury, are we restored” (Res. 57).
Christian interest in the materiality of resurrection and the perfection of the body is not unrelated to the context of persecution. Early Christian discussions of the nature of the resurrected flesh suggest that the body imagined in these treatises “was quintessentially the mutilated cadaver of the martyr.”42 The most important contributors to the doctrine of resurrection in this early period were writing in the context of persecution, and thus their depictions of the resurrected body “originate in the facts of martyrdom,” as Caroline Walker Bynum has argued.43 That these doctrines developed under fear of persecution suggests that for these Christians the ultimate threat was not death but bodily dissolution.44 The promise of resurrection, therefore, provides compensation for martyrdom.45
According to Bynum, this type of compensation theory is found in patristic writings on resurrection, but not in the earliest martyr texts themselves.46 The future reward of resurrected bodies as compensation for martyrdom, however, may be more prevalent than Bynum suggests.47 In the Martyrdom of Pionius, for example, the martyr explains why he is rushing to the amphitheater: “I am eager for this reason: so that I may be raised quickly, making visible the resurrection of the dead” (21.4). So also the connection between martyrdom and the promise of resurrection may be found in the Martyrdom of Fructuosus. As the martyrs faced their deaths, they were “happy to experience the fruit of the holy Scriptures according to the promises” (4.2). For good measure the raised martyrs also appeared to the persecutor to “rebuke and taunt” him and to prove that they were in glory (7.1). That the martyrs’ expectations for resurrection were met is made clear by a vision received by two Christians. They saw “the saintly bishop Fructuosus together with his deacons rising, crowned, up to heaven” (5.1). They were “cheerful about the resurrection” (4.3). Similarly, the author of the Martyrdom of Marian and James juxtaposes martyrdom with the promise of resurrection when he asserts that God “strengthens those who place their trust in his name,” but he also “restores [them] to life” by means of the “blood ransom” (13.4). That the blood ransom refers to the martyrs’ deaths—rather than the benefit received from Jesus’ death—is made clear a few sentences later: the author states that the “loan we believe to be repaid by our own blood is granted by the omnipotent God” (13.5). The Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius goes further by wholly conflating death and resurrection: the day of Flavian’s death “was endured not like a day of martyrdom but like one of resurrection” (17.4). Claims to resurrection, therefore, are abundant in the martyr texts.
Even when explicit claims to resurrection are lacking, the descriptions of the martyrs suggest the texts are contributing to this discourse. Often the martyr’s body is described as being transformed into a glorified, resurrected form. Successus, for instance, appeared to the imprisoned Flavian with face and garments “equally brilliant beyond measure” (Mart. Mont. 21.8). Flavian had difficulty recognizing Successus because he “transfixed the bodily eyes with an angelic splendor” (21.8). Here Successus reveals himself to Flavian in a transformed, glorified body. Similarly, the description of Pionius’s corpse is likely a glimpse of the perfected, unblemished, resurrected body: his body was not deformed by the pyre but instead it became younger and stronger. As if fulfilling the Lukan eschatological prophecy, not a single hair on Pionius’s head was lost (22.3).48 Martyr texts therefore reflect early Christian thinking about resurrection, but do they also reveal some slippage between the “then” and the “now”? Are resurrected bodies necessarily “other”—necessarily subsequent—to martyred bodies, decisively separated by the chasm of physical death? Or might martyrs receive the eschatological promises of glorified and perfected bodies before death?
There are occasions when narrative interests in the corporeal experiences of martyrdom indicate an elision between martyred and resurrected bodies here and now, not just in the promise of future rewards. Consider, for instance, Perpetua’s first vision in which she tramples on the head of the dragon as she ascends the ladder to heaven (Pass. Perp. 4.4). In addition to being a reference to Genesis 3:15, this episode may also allude to the dragon of Revelation 12–13, which is defeated in Revelation 20. In this reading Perpetua imagines her martyrdom as a victory over Satan. After successfully scaling the ladder, she finds herself in an Edenic garden joined by thousands of people dressed in white robes. She watches an old shepherd—clearly an image of the divine—who is milking sheep. He gives her a mouthful of the milk, which she receives in cupped hands before consuming it. Scholarly interest in the milk has tended to focus on the difficult lexical pairing of caseus and mulgeo: how is cheese milked?49 On occasion scholars use this scene to establish the heterodox perspective of the text.50 But the translation of this paradisiacal substance—whatever it is—into the earthly realm has consequences for our understanding of Perpetua’s martyred and resurrected body: Perpetua awakens from her vision “still eating some unknown sweet” (4.10).51 The sustenance she is given in heaven remains with her when she returns to her earthly existence. I suggest we consider this episode as reflecting a realized eschatology: for the martyrs the benefits of future reward are translated into earthly life.
In considering the possibility of martyrs receiving the benefits of glorified, resurrected bodies, Tertullian’s claim about the resurrected flesh is provocative: after the resurrection, he asserts, the flesh will be “impassible, inasmuch as it has been liberated by the Lord so that it is no longer possible for it to suffer” (Res. 57.13). When the martyr texts claim that martyrs feel no pain, and when they describe martyrs’ bodies as unmarked by torture and execution, might we see glimpses of the resurrected flesh? This proposition could be comforting to Christian communities experiencing or fearing persecution. For as Bynum suggests, “if flesh could put on, even in this life, a foretaste of incorruption, martyrdom might be bearable.”52 The fear of torture might be allayed by the hope that “a sort of anesthesia of glory might spill over from the promised resurrection into the ravaged flesh of the arena, making its experience bearable.”53 As we have seen, the martyr texts contrast momentary persecution to eternal punishment. The martyr texts take the opportunity to invert the conventional narrative: where pain in execution is expected—foreshadowing eternal torture—anesthesia is presented—foreshadowing eternal reward.54 The impassible flesh is the reward of faithfulness, the marker of victory, the donning of the resurrected body even before death.
The promises contained in Revelation 21:4 may be instructive here. After Satan is defeated, the New Jerusalem is revealed as a place in which “death will be no more; mourning and crying and distress [ponos] will be no more.” While Greek manuscripts read ponos, Latin translations of John’s Apocalypse opt for dolor.55 Augustine, too, preserves dolor as the reading for this passage.56 Thus at least for some Christians hearing this text, the promises of the New Jerusalem might include painlessness. Satan has been defeated in the bodies of the martyrs; and through the martyrs’ impassibility the kingdom of God has been realized.57 The narrative description of the martyrs as experiencing torture without the anticipated pain may then be understood as the realization of the vindication promised to those who remain faithful to God.58 If in treatises on resurrection the raised body was less “the triumph of martyrs over pain and humiliation” and more about “the triumph of martyrs’ bodies over fragmentation, scattering, and the loss of a final resting place,” for the early Christian martyr texts the former is at least as important as the latter.59 The texts I examine in this book locate the martyrs’ deaths as the moment of victory, and it is a moment that is not marked by pain. Concerns about fragmentation are present as well, of course. Bodies that are unharmed by fire or that are healed by torture display the immunity of the Christian body to rot and putrefaction; martyr texts preserve the bodies of the faithful in the eternal perfection of the glorified body.
If vindication takes place in the body of the martyr, judgment is also intricately connected to the doctrine of the resurrection.60 Tertullian, for instance, asserts that judgment requires a bodily resurrection so individuals may be punished for sins committed in the body.61 In De Testimonio Animae he explains to the soul that it will be reunited with its “original substance by returning to the material and memory” of the person it was, because “it is not possible to feel either evil or good apart from passible flesh; there is no reckoning of judgment without the presence of the one who deserves to endure the judgment” (4.1). Similarly, in his Apology, Tertullian explains:
It is our argument that it is altogether more deserving of belief that a man will come back as a man. . . . In fact, since the reason for restoration is establishing judgment, it must necessarily be the same one who was who will be produced, so as to bear judgment from God for his merits, for the good or the opposite. Accordingly their bodies will also be present, because the soul alone cannot endure anything apart from solid matter, that is the flesh; and because, whatever souls owe to God to endure, they did not earn it apart from the flesh, in which they were impelled to all things. (48.3–4)
The soul, Tertullian insists, is not alone in deserving reward or punishment; the body and the soul act together in earthly existence and so must be judged together. As we have seen, martyr narratives’ interest in retribution is widespread, extending from the earliest Christian martyr texts to Lactantius’s lengthy descriptions of persecutors’ deaths. The insistence within martyr texts on divine protection and consequent impassibility, moreover, hints that something more is at stake in the discourse of judgment. These texts promise that the assaults pagans were unable to make against Christian bodies will be successfully enacted upon their own bodies. In the coming judgment, which entails bodily resurrection, pagans will answer for their persecution of Christians, and they will pay with bodily pain. There will be no divine protection that brings anesthesia or soothes and comforts the broken body; the torture applied will be corporeally experienced in its fullness.
Martyr texts build upon a number of themes from preexisting eschatological discourses to bolster their claims about God’s interest in and protection of the bodies of the faithful. In addition, developing views about the glorified body—its perfection and impassibility—complement martyrological interests. Eschatological discourses are not solely focused on reward for faithfulness, however. They are also concerned with retribution, with assuring God’s people that their oppressors will be held accountable for their actions. Evil will not win in the end. This theme is prominent in martyr texts. Some texts depict immediate justice for the torture of Christians, while other texts promise redress as a part of the coming judgment. In imagining reparations, the experience of the martyrs—who are not really tortured and not really harmed—is compared to the torment that awaits the persecutors. Without divine aid, God’s opponents will bear the full brunt of torture; their bodies will feel every application of fire, rack, and sword. Martyrological discourse is not produced in a vacuum but instead reflects deep engagement with Jewish and Christian eschatological expectations and with developing doctrines of the resurrection.
In addition to Jewish and Christian eschatological discourses, martyr texts draw on the broader cultural discourse of Stoicism, which in the second and third centuries CE made widely available the notion of a body that could be unaffected by pain. Stoicism was one of the dominant ideological systems in the Roman world. It was so common, as Shaw argues, that “it became the silent medium of thought in which [ancients] habitually worked.”62 Stoic discourse so pervaded the air of the Roman Empire that it was a “shopping centre” philosophy.63 Scholars have identified wide-ranging Stoic influences on Christian beliefs.64 Thus many Christians’ views were informed by Stoic categories and ideals even if they were not themselves formal devotees of the philosophy.65 In what follows, I argue that assertions of Christian indifference—and even insensitivity—to pain correspond with certain understandings of Stoic teachings on pain.
The resonances between Stoic principles and martyr texts, both Jewish and Christian, have been well rehearsed by scholars.66 As Nicola Denzey notes, “the death of the Christian martyr mirrors or refracts the death of the Stoic philosopher, reduplicating its image.”67 Indeed, the death narratives popular among Stoics during the reigns of Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian, which Pliny labeled “exitus illustrium virorum,” were precursors to—and likely models for—Jewish and Christian martyr texts.68 Pliny mentions such a collection of death narratives when he notes that Gaius Fannius died before finishing his accounts of “the deaths of those who were killed or exiled by Nero” (Ep. 5.5.3). He also mentions his intentions to attend a reading by Titinius Capito, who was “writing about the deaths of famous men” during the reign of Domitian (Ep. 8.12.4). These death traditions are largely Stoic-influenced anti-imperial texts that depict the death of philosophers at the hands of the emperors.69 One of the most famous of the “stoically stylized” noble deaths—that of Seneca—is related by Tacitus, who draws on traditions about Socrates’s death to oppose imperial actions.70 Tacitus, for instance, clearly connects Socrates’s death to Seneca’s suicide when he describes the Stoic philosopher maintaining self-control throughout the situation, consoling his family and friends and offering a sacrifice to the gods before drinking the hemlock (Ann. 15.62–64). Plutarch’s account of Cato’s death also fits within the Socratically informed Stoic death narrative: Cato participates in a philosophical discourse with his companions before his death, in particular regarding Stoic teachings on freedom; he consoles his friends; he reads Plato’s Phaedo—twice—and then embarks on the ultimate display of personal freedom: self-death (Cato minor 68–70).71 The resonances between the Stoic noble deaths and martyr texts are marked: both emphasize self-control, free will, and resistance to the allure of actions that may save one’s life but compromise one’s virtue and conscience.72
Christianity may also share with Stoicism a bent toward antiauthoritarianism.73 On the one hand, Shaw admonishes against assigning this as central to Stoic thought though he acknowledges individual Stoic philosophers’ opposition to emperors. Tension between senators and emperors was widespread and thus the Stoicism of, for example, Thrasea Paetus may be incidental to his conflict with Nero.74 On the other hand, Catharine Edwards argues that the relationship of senatorial opposition to Stoicism is important because “at the very least their philosophical views give them a place from which to speak, help them confront the dangers they run in articulating unwelcome truths to tyrannous rulers.”75 Thus even if the tenets of Stoicism do not necessitate an antiauthoritarian stance, the noble deaths illustrated for Christians the utility of Stoicism for resisting oppressive power.76 They provided a model for Jewish and Christian authors to follow in scripting their own “unwelcome truths to tyrannous rulers.”77
Stoicism’s influence on martyr literature is not limited to its stories of death at the hands of tyrants. It may also serve as a philosophical grounding for the narrative claims to martyrs’ disinterest in—even impassibility during—torture. Judith Perkins argues that in the second century CE there were two contrasting cultural representations of the body: first is what she calls the “traditional Hellenic subject,” those who pass through suffering but are “unmarked by the experience” (in particular, the Stoic wise man); and second, the Christian martyrs who find power and redemption in suffering.78 Thus on the one hand, martyr texts “offered their readers and listeners a self-understanding of themselves as sufferers, empowered by the experience of suffering.”79 On the other hand, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus “had rejected the body’s claims and had instructed his students to master and ignore them.”80 For the Stoic sage, “pain and suffering mattered little to the self’s real essence.”81 The Stoic body as constructed by Epictetus is one that, as Perkins notes, “passes through suffering but is unmarked by the experience”; it is “exempt from the experience of pain and suffering.”82 This construction of the body, moreover, “was circulating in the ideological environment of the period.”83 Thus in the second and third centuries CE one available discourse in the Roman world was of a body that was unaffected by pain. In light of claims for Christian indifference—and even insensitivity—to pain, I argue that the martyr texts are closely aligned with, rather than opposed to, Stoic teachings on pain.
Stoic assessments of pain are related to the philosophy’s concern with living in accordance with nature. Arrian begins his account of Epictetus’s teachings with a discussion of the “most excellent” faculty, that of reason (Disc. 1.1.4, 1.1.7). Refining this gift of the gods, Epictetus teaches, should be one’s sole focus in life. The sage will not worry about things he cannot change; rather, we must “make the best of what is up to us” and accept what is not (1.1.17). Whether I am executed, for example, is not up to me. But I can control whether I groan while being executed. Being fettered is not up to me. But wailing when I am fettered is (1.1.22). These distinctions, moreover, should occupy the philosopher’s daily life, and mastering them will make him “noble” (1.1.25, 1.2.32).84 Epictetus illustrates this ideal by recalling a conversation between the senator Helvidius Priscus and Vespasian. Vespasian threatened to have the senator executed if he spoke out in the Senate. Helvidius Priscus’s response would not be surprising in the mouth of a Christian martyr: “It is yours to kill, mine to die without trembling” (1.2.21).
While Epictetus taught that a person could fully control his reactions, other Stoics allowed for involuntary reactions to external stimuli.85 Chrysippus, for example, taught that the wise man feels pain (SVF 3.574).86 Likewise, Seneca asserts, “We do not deny that it is a disagreeable thing to be beaten and hit, to be deprived of some limb, but we deny that all these things are injuries. We do not deprive them of the sensation of pain, but of the name ‘injury,’ which is not possible if virtue is preserved” (Const. 16.2). Thus for Seneca the wise man feels “bodily pain” (dolor corporis; 10.4). He writes, “I do not deny that the wise man feels these things; for we do not assert for him the hardness of stone or iron” (10.4). Elsewhere he makes similar claims: “I do not withdraw the wise man from the category of human, nor do I remove pain from him as if he were a rock without sensations” (Ep. 71.27). The Stoic aim was not to reach a state of impassibility but instead to prevent one’s actions from being affected by pain; in Seneca’s words, “it is not pain that we praise, but him whom pain has not coerced” (Ep. 82.11).87
Stoicism, properly speaking then, does not teach that the wise man is immune to pain. Thus classicists and philosophers rightly note that when Stoics discuss bodily indifference to affliction, they typically employ the term lupē—grief—rather than algos—pain. When Epictetus asks, for instance, “Am I not free from pain?” (alupos; 3.22.48, LCL), and when he promises that those who follow him will “feel no pain” (lupēthēsesthe; 2.13.11, LCL), he apparently does not mean to imply that the sage is immune to all physical sensations, but rather that he is free from grief or distress.88 John Rist states the issue firmly: “one thing that the term ἀπάθεια, which denotes the aim of the Stoic sage, does not mean, is insensibility.”89 This corrective is important, but the distinction between apathēs—mastery of the passions—and anaisthēsia—insensitivity—is nevertheless easily blurred, even in antiquity. For instance, the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius stated that a person could only be harmed if he considered what happened to him to be harmful (Med. 7.14). His maxim “remove the assumption ‘I am harmed’ and the harm is removed,” might be easily applied to the context of persecution and, thus, be understood to suggest that a person could gain immunity to physical injury (Med 4.7). Although Rist asserts that “only a fool would maintain that any human being could be totally insensible to pleasures and pains,” there is compelling evidence that certain Stoics claimed—or were understood to have claimed—precisely that. Indeed, Rist acknowledges that Stoics were misunderstood or mischaracterized on this point: “The Stoics never proposed insensibility, or anything like it, as an ideal, but they were thought to have proposed it even in antiquity.”90 Seneca, for example, exhibits concern about misinterpretations of Stoic teachings on pain: “You must not think that our virtue ranges beyond nature; the wise man will tremble, will feel pain [dolebit], will turn pale, for all these are sensations of the body” (Ep. 71.29). Dispelling this kind of confusion may also undergird Seneca’s statement about torture:
“What then?” is the query; “if the sword is directed toward the brave man’s neck, if he is pierced in this place and in that repeatedly, if he sees his internal organs in his lap, if he is attacked anew after a respite so that he feels greater torment, and if the blood flows again out of the gut where it had recently dried up, is he not afraid? Do you say that he has not felt pain [dolere]? Certainly he felt pain [dolet]; for no human virtue can strip off physical sensations. But he is not fearful; unconquered he observes his pain [dolores] from on high.” (Ep. 85.29)
The issue is even clearer when Calvenus Taurus claims that some Stoics equated freedom from the passions (apatheia) with insensitivity (analgēsia).91 Pliny the Younger tells the story of the suicide of Arria and the encouragement she gave to her husband, Caecina Paetus, to steel him for his own suicide: “Paetus, it does not hurt” (non dolet; Ep. 3.16). And Cicero recalls the rejection of Stoicism by Dionysius because he misunderstood Zeno’s teachings on pain: “We think it was shameful of Dionysius of Heraclea to withdraw from the Stoics because of eye pain [dolorem]. As if he had learned from Zeno that feeling pain [doleret] was not painful [dolere]! What he had heard, though he did not learn, was that it was not an evil, because not dishonorable, and that it was manly to endure it” (Fin. 5.31.94).92 Our ancient sources attest, therefore, that Stoic teachings on pain were occasionally misunderstood or mischaracterized. Certain Stoic authors, such as Seneca, devoted much time and energy to heading off such misperceptions.93
There is another Stoic text that illustrates this alternative understanding of pain.94 In 4 Maccabees, an important precursor to the Christian martyr texts, the Jewish Stoic author explains that “devout reason” masters the passions that stand in the way of manliness, namely anger, fear, and pain (ponos; 1:4). In his list of the passions reason conquers, this author replaces the typical Stoic term “grief” (lupē) with “pain” (ponos). Here ponos must connote physical pain because the ensuing stories focus explicitly on the mastery of algos. The story of Eleazar, for instance, proves that reason “masters external pain” (kai tōn exōthen algēdonōn epikratei; 6:34).95 The author moreover asserts that the seven young boys were “contemptuous of the passions” and “complete masters of pain” (autokratores tōn algēdonōn; 8:28). Thus this author teaches exactly what Dionysius (mis)understood Zeno to have taught him: virtue can lead one to a state of impassibility.96 As David Seeley observes, “the author names several feelings in 1.3–4, but the way in which he shows the conflict being played out indicates that, for him, emotion gains expression via bodily pain and weakness.”97 In 4 Maccabees, then, we find yet another example of a Stoic author asserting the triumph of self-control over pain. Since 4 Maccabees was known and used by many Christian authors, it would not be surprising that they too might portray insensitivity to pain as evidence of Christian rationality and freedom from the passions.98
The early Christian martyr texts differ from one another in many respects. They converge, though, in depicting Christians being tortured but—with the exception of Perpetua and the sword—not being in pain. Within the discrete narrative worlds of these texts, if not in reality, martyrdom does not hurt. Thus the martyr is, after all, akin to the Stoic sage who “passes through suffering but is unmarked by the experience,” and who is “exempt from the experience of pain and suffering.”99 Rather than finding pain empowering, early Christian martyr texts reject the experience of pain as a locus of meaning altogether.
In addition to providing a model for nobility in death and a philosophical argument for impassibility, Stoicism may also make virtue language, particularly the discourses of masculinity, available to Christianity. The Stoic self-control exhibited by the martyrs during torture is a powerful illustration of Christian masculinity. The martyrs did not become angry or fearful during their ordeals. Rather, they endured torture willingly, remaining loyal to their faith commitments, and thereby exhibiting ideal masculine virtues.100 The Stoic author of 4 Maccabees, for instance, assumes the correlation of endurance with masculinity.101 A brief review of pagan literature, moreover, reveals that endurance was often associated with masculinity and must have been understood—at least in certain circumstances—as active (i.e., manly) rather than passive (womanly). Aristotle, for example, lists hypomonē among the masculine virtues.102 Endurance was also an important virtue in Stoic ethics.103 Indeed, Epictetus taught that two vices were more appalling than all others, namely lack of endurance and lack of self-control.104 He also taught that the free and noble man would endure being beaten to death.105 As we have already seen, when Cicero wrote about Dionysius’s misunderstanding of Stoic teachings on pain, he states that it is “manly” to endure it.106 Zeno coupled lack of endurance with cowardice.107 And Seneca associates endurance of torture with bravery, honor, and courage.108 Within the context of Stoic philosophy, then, the martyrs’ endurance of torture should be understood as a subset of manliness. Endurance of torture and insensitivity to pain may work together in these texts to cast the Christian martyr in the likeness of the virtuous Stoic wise man.109
Masculinity, though, may too narrowly define the benefits of Christian appropriation of Stoic ideals and the social function of the discourses with which the martyr texts were engaging. Indeed, drawing on Stoic ideas provided Christians with respectability, “a precious social commodity,” as Denzey demonstrates.110 Aligning Christian discourse with Stoicism provided Christians with a particular claim to social status. As we have seen, Christians told stories about the deaths of their heroes in ways similar to the stories told by Stoics—the exitus illustrium virorum—and in both cases the accounts “marked their performers not just as brave or honorable”; they also functioned to raise “the social status of performers as participants in a higher, more rarefied discourse.”111 Christians, then, had a choice between breaking “further from mainstream society”—that is, being countercultural—or embarking “upon a public relations campaign in order to lessen the conceptual difference between themselves and others.”112 It is the latter option that the authors of Christian martyr texts appear to take: associating Christianity with Stoic ideals allowed Christians to make claims to rationality and to offer a narrative of respectability that, as we shall see, disrupted pagan characterizations of Christians.
Careful scripting of virtue in death was particularly important for both Stoics and Christians since both were known for their willingness to die for their beliefs.113 Like the highly lauded Stoic martyrs who chose death over submission to tyranny, the Christian martyrs’ rebellion “against the extravagant displays of a ‘demonic’ empire” demonstrated their virtue.114 Yet as Denzey and others have noted, this particular model of virtue was, itself, “Roman, traditional, and conservative. Christians chose voluntary death to rebel against empire because such a death was already the way by which a good citizen registered nobility of spirit against the tyranny of the state.”115 Thus the literary depiction of the martyrs “gaining status and respectability through voluntary death gave second-century Christians much-needed cultural capital.”116 What Denzey deftly points out is that Christian martyr texts represent a discursive project through which a marginalized group claimed coveted cultural ideals in an attempt to reframe or rescript a narrative and thereby “potentially garner the very social respectability that Christianity lacked.”117
Participating in discourses surrounding Stoic philosophy provided substantial benefits to Christian self-descriptions. Martyr texts describe Christian deaths in ways that resemble the noble deaths of pagan philosophers who willingly died in order to stay faithful to their beliefs, in order to avoid compromising their virtue. Christian resistance to tyranny—as the apologists point out—is one way that Christianity maps on to broader cultural ideals. At the same time, Stoicism offers Christians a well-trod path to claiming masculinity as a group characteristic, but even more important is the respectability that inheres in the conflation of Christianity and Stoicism. Perhaps most important for my present concerns is Stoicism’s claim—at least as (mis)understood by some in antiquity—that virtue can bring analgesia. The similarities between descriptions in Christian martyr texts and Stoic teachings on pain therefore suggest that the martyrs do not displace the “traditional Hellenic subject,” but instead become exemplars of it. Pain and suffering either do not exist for, or have no effect on, the Christian martyrs who have set their eyes on the immortal crown. By accepting the necessity of death and enduring torture without suffering, the martyr embodies the ideals—and lays claim to the cultural capital—of Stoicism.
When Christians wrote the stories of the martyrs in ways that resonated with Stoic philosophy, virtues, and narratives, they were participating in a discourse of identity construction. These stories placed their heroes and heroines within categories widely recognized, and claimed for them prized virtues. This discursive project was crucial for early Christianity because if pagans knew anything about Christians it concerned their approach to death.118 Perkins argues that pagans knew about Christian suffering because of Christian self-presentation: “Christian suffering was the message encoded in nearly all of the Christian representation of the period.”119 I have argued, however, that suffering is not a narrative focus of martyr texts. While pagan authors such as Pliny, Tacitus, Galen, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus are concerned with Christian deaths, Christian suffering, importantly, is not central to the points they make. Rather, these authors focus on two issues: first, Christians deserve the punishment they receive; and second, Christians have an irrational desire for death. Pagan narrative depictions of Christianity are of course as much a construction of Christian identity—one side of a discourse—as Christian martyr texts are. Both pagans and Christians, that is, contributed to competing discourses that sought to characterize Christians and pagans in particular ways, but neither of these discourses focus on suffering as a Christian ideal.
Pliny’s testimony about Christians concerns judicial practice. Pliny identifies Christianity as a hetaeria, a “club,” which carried with it connotations of political disturbance (Ep. 10.34, 10.96). He also referred to Christianity as a “superstition” (10.96).120 The claim that Christianity was a superstitio marks it not only as untraditional but also, according to Stoic thinking, as unreasonable behavior; superstition entails excessive fear, a passion that should be rejected. For some Roman authors, moreover, it connoted false beliefs.121 Thus Pliny may be characterizing Christianity as politically threatening, irrational, and/or false. When discussing his program for prosecution, the governor of Bithynia asserts his belief that Christians who refuse to recant their faith should be punished, if for no other reason than their stubbornness: “For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their confession, resolute stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy [pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem] must be punished” (10.96). Pliny’s discussion of Christianity does not focus on pain and suffering in death but on his perceptions of Christianity’s relationship to the Empire. He casts Christian beliefs and attitudes as politically threatening to the well-being of Rome. At the same time, of course, this casts traditional Roman religious practice as “normal” and stabilizing. The characterization of one group, that is, informs the characterization of its narrative opposite.122
Tacitus describes in vivid detail the torture of the Christians arrested and killed by Nero after the fire in Rome. In an attempt to redirect blame for the conflagration, Nero rounded up the Christians living in Rome and “inflicted extraordinary punishment” (Ann. 15.44). The ruse was potentially effective because the Christians were “loathed for their disgraceful acts” (15.44). The “deadly superstition” and “evil” thing, Tacitus asserts, spread from Judea to Rome (15.44). Tacitus’s rhetoric is unrelentingly negative, describing Christians as a particularly abhorrent lot. They were convicted, we are told, “not so much because of the charge of arson but for hatred of the human race” (odio humani generis; 15.44). While Tacitus goes on to describe the horrific deaths of those convicted of arson—some were covered with animal skins and torn apart by dogs while others were fastened to crosses and burned as lamps to light up the night—his point is that Christian misanthropy deserves punishment. Indeed, as Christians were punished, they were a “laughing stock” (ludibria; 15.44). Ultimately, though, Nero’s excessive torture brought about public pity. Tacitus regrets the public’s emotional response because, he asserts, Christians were guilty and “merited this extreme punishment” (15.44). Their deaths were for the common good, but this point was in the end lost on the public because of the “barbarity of a single man” (15.44). Tacitus’s vitriol is aimed at Nero, but he does not spare Christians: Nero’s actions were excessive, but Christians were deserving. The historian’s concern centers on judicial process and its effect on the public, not on Christianity’s glorification of suffering. Both Pliny and Tacitus, as Dale Martin explains, cast Christianity in terms of “the particularly Roman fear of supersitito.”123 In their writings Christianity is scripted as a political and social threat to imperial life, and therefore punishment of Christians is not merely just but honorable.
Galen bestows the title “philosophy” on Christianity, though he appears not to think it is a particularly successful one. In De pulsuum differentiis, Galen compares Jews and Christians to physicians whose conclusions “were faulty and imprecise” because their approaches were not “based on careful investigation and sound reasoning” (3.3); instead, they “talk of undemonstrated laws” (2.4).124 Christians, according to Galen, do not provide evidence for their beliefs but merely “appeal to commonly held opinion”125 and “accept everything on faith.”126 Because Galen identifies Christianity as a philosophical school, he can criticize it on philosophical grounds, as Robert Wilken has noted.127 Galen is not, however, wholly critical of Christianity: he praises Christians’ contempt of death and self-control in continence, asceticism, and pursuit of justice.128 Galen then is not interested in Christian suffering but in the philosophical grounding of their beliefs. His writings preserve mixed assessments of the success of the Christian philosophy: on the one hand, it appeals too strongly to faith rather than evidence, but on the other hand, its quest for justice is to be lauded.129 Unlike Pliny and Tacitus, Galen’s discussion of Christianity is not primarily political; rather, he criticizes the group for their lack of scientific grounding, for ignoring evidence and rationality. Despite their flawed motivations, however, their actions are virtuous.
The testimonies of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus are especially intriguing because while both of these Stoic philosophers acknowledge that Christians sought death, they also assert that Christians sought it inappropriately. Marcus Aurelius may have Christians in mind several times in his Meditations: in 1.6 he credits Diognetus with teaching him “to be incredulous of miracle-workers and sorcerers who talk about spells and getting rid of demons”; in 3.16 he may be accusing Christians of atheism, lack of patriotism, and secretive actions; in 8.48 he may have Christian stubbornness—“unreasoning obstinacy”—in mind; and in 8.51 he is perhaps quoting Christians when he writes, “They kill us, they divide up our flesh, they drive us away with curses!” What follows, however, is not a discussion of human suffering but a discussion of Stoic mastery of the passions: “How does that keep your mind from remaining spotless, sound, self-controlled, just?”130 If the quote in 8.51 is intended to recall Christianity, the challenge that follows is a criticism of Christian action for not being sound, self-controlled, or just. That the emperor thinks Christians do not remain “self-controlled” in the face of death is clear in the only passage that explicitly invokes Christianity: Marcus Aurelius complains that Christians are obstinate and showy instead of rational. He writes, “What a soul that is which prepared, if now it must be released from the body, and ready either to die or be scattered or continue. But this preparedness must come from one’s own judgment not from mere obstinacy—as with the Christians—but with calculation and solemnity and, indeed also to persuade others, without fuss” (11.3).131 For the Stoic philosopher and emperor, that Christians seek death is not—indeed, cannot be—the problem. Stoic ideals not only allow for but valorize choosing death over compromising one’s virtue. It is the way Christians seek death, the motivation underlying their actions, that is unreasonable, according to Marcus Aurelius.132 The Meditations rejects Christianity as an example of Stoic mastery of the passions. Instead, it presents Christianity as the antithesis of Stoicism: obstinate, unconsidered, and ignoble.
Likewise, Epictetus criticizes the Christian manner of seeking death, and he too implicitly denies that Christians act in accordance with Stoic ideals. In discussing the goal of living without fear, Epictetus asks, “If, then, a man wishes neither to die nor to live at all costs but only as it is granted to him, when he comes before [the tyrant], what prevents him from coming before him without fear?” (Disc. 4.7.5). Epictetus goes on to attribute such an attitude to Christians but rejects them as examples of virtuous behavior because, he asserts, they act out of habit rather than reason (4.7.6). Christianity offers nothing more than custom to guide behavior; it does “not offer a truly philosophical approach to life and death because their actions are not based on sound reasoning.”133 Epictetus—like the other pagan authors—discusses Christianity in relation to death, but his interest is not in Christian suffering. His comments focus on Christianity’s inferior philosophical teachings and their inability to teach virtue.
The writings of Pliny, Tacitus, Galen, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus suggest that Christians were principally known for their stubbornness and irrationality, not for their attitudes toward suffering. Pagan characterizations of Christianity focus on its antisocial and anti-Roman nature and on its deficient philosophical teachings: Christianity is politically threatening and philosophically useless. These authors draw on discourses about religious piety, imperial allegiance, and philosophical ethics to construct Christianity in particular—that is, negative—ways. Perkins argues that pagan views of Christianity were informed by Christian self-representation, but a more complex discursive relationship between Christian self-presentation and pagan views may better account for the evidence.134 Presumably pagans would have little interest in or access to Christian martyr texts; similarly we need not posit the literary dependence of Christian authors on pagan texts. Rather, both pagans and Christians used existing discourses to claim cultural capital for themselves and to deny that capital to their opponents.135
Pagan authors, as we have seen, often cast Christians as stubborn members of a politically subversive club who were justly—and legally—tortured and executed by Romans. These accounts describe the victory of Roman power over obstinate, lawless individuals. But the martyr texts offer a competing narrative. While Christians could not deny that they were on occasion arrested, tortured, and killed, they could redirect attention in a bid to change the way this history was understood. Indeed, that the martyr texts’ accounts of history ultimately triumphed over pagan accounts is evident in scholarly descriptions of the history of persecution rather than the history of prosecution.136 Pagan sources presenting judicial procedures involving Christians describe prosecution, while Christian sources—which are notoriously silent about charges leveled against martyrs—portray persecution.137 Modern scholarly discussions of “persecution” therefore orient history in favor of Christian rhetorical biases. The history of “persecution” takes sides in the discursive competition between pagan and Christian narrative goals.
Ancient authors who discuss Christian torture and death at the hands of Roman authorities are involved equally in the construction of both Christianity and paganism, and it is important to recognize that this discursive competition is central to their narrative aims. If Christians were known for their approach to death, what better place could there be than the martyr texts for these authors to offer a defense of their heroes’ actions and their religion’s existence? Pagan discourse highlights Roman power, piety, rationality, and intellectualism while it simultaneously casts Christianity as opposing or lacking all of these virtues. The Christian discourse starred the impassible martyr and undermined pagan constructions of Christianity on two fronts: first, it problematized the judicial theory of violence; and second, it promised the imperviousness of the Christian body social. That is, while the pagan discourse centered on the lawful extermination of a political threat, the Christian counter-discourse demonstrated not only the falseness of the claim itself but also the impossibility of routing out Christianity from the Empire.
Christians participated in a propaganda campaign through their narrative descriptions of martyrdom. Christian martyr texts, as Jill Harries notes, were written to provoke hatred for the enemy as much as to urge sympathy for the protagonist.138 The goal of such accounts was not “dispassionate truth” but polemics regarding “the infliction of excessive pain” on innocent victims.139 While Christian interests in the narration of martyrdom are clear, pagans had just as much at stake in their own narratives of judicial action against Christians. In descriptions of trials, tortures, and executions, Roman authors inscribed imperial power and authority on to the broken bodies of Christian criminals. Both Christians and pagans, therefore, are involved in discursive practices that construct group identities. These texts should be understood as two sides of a coin, as discourse and counter-discourse, as narrative and counternarrative. One version is not necessarily more truthful than the other; rather, they are both rhetorical constructions of self and other that draw on and function in the service of particular social and cultural ideologies. The amphitheater and its spectacles, for instance, symbolized Roman power. The justice sought in the amphitheater demonstrated to spectators the threat of lawless barbarian lands: the arena walls were, according to J.C. Edmondson, a “social barrier.” Spectators “were ipso facto defined as part of the Roman social order, while those who performed down in the arena were socially dead, or, at best, déclassé.”140 Thus social and political order were created and maintained through amphitheatrical events. Descriptions of Christians in the arena—whether from pagan or Christian sources—invoke (perhaps subversively) this discourse of power. But Roman power was on display not only in the amphitheater but also in the trial processes themselves, especially through the application of torture. According to ancient judicial theory, pain in torture accomplished two related goals: first, the application of pain elicited confession and guaranteed its truth; and second, public torture served as a deterrent to others. Christian martyr texts, however, contravene both of these assumptions about judicial torture.
The application of pain was a standard part of interrogation procedures in the Roman legal system, particularly for lower classes.141 During the quaestio a person was subjected to “torture and bodily pain for the purpose of eliciting the truth.”142 As Peter Brown explains, torture was not an end but the means by which truth was revealed: “the dramatic dialogue between judge and culprit carried with it a sincerity that pain alone could guarantee.”143 According to this judicial logic, the body subjected to painful torture could do nothing but tell the truth and, moreover, “only torture guaranteed truth.”144 Thus confession elicited through torture was deemed true precisely because it was prompted by pain. Some scholars have applied this judicial theory to Christian martyr texts, positing that the martyrs’ endurance of torture and pain signaled the truth of their confession.145 Because the martyrs did not change their testimonies, because their confessions withstood the application of pain, their statements—according to the logic of the system—must be truthful.
Martyr texts are unusual, however, because in these narratives Christians are not tortured to elicit their confessions; indeed, their confessions are freely and repeatedly given. At least according to the literary accounts of Christian trials, the martyrs’ actions stymied the conventional aims of the quaestio because the Christians voluntarily and eagerly offered their truthful confession. In the martyr texts torture is applied to compel Christians to recant their voluntary confessions.146 Through judicial torture, pagans urged Christians to renounce their faith and align themselves instead with socially sanctioned beliefs by performing sacrificial acts.
The martyr texts complicate expectations of judicial torture even further by undermining altogether events that are integrally related in Roman jurisprudence: torture, confession, and the evaluation of truth.147 Christians confess before they are tortured—thus torture does not produce confession—and furthermore, torture does not generate pain. In the martyr texts Christian confession is produced neither by torture nor in pain. Christian testimony is given freely and narratively precedes torture. Perhaps the texts are implying that God—the only judge who matters—evaluates the martyr’s confession; if this is the case, then the authors are denying the power of the persecutor to judge Christian confession. The ineffectiveness of torture proves that God has judged the martyr’s confession to be truthful. When we do not recognize the ways martyr texts disrupt the causal connections among torture, pain, and truth, the impassibility of the martyr becomes problematic: if, that is, pain guarantees truth, what is the meaning of a confession of faith made apart from pain? Does the martyrs’ analgesia compromise the reliability of their statements? The martyr texts disallow this line of questioning because they have rejected the philosophical principle on which it relies. Claims to divine analgesia do not call into question the martyrs’ trustworthiness; rather, they offer proof of it.
The rescripting of judicial power in martyr narratives, therefore, may be politically subversive and socially empowering. Romans, however, saw pain as useful not only for compelling testimony but also as a public deterrent, as Pseudo-Quintilian explains: “all punishment pertains less to the crime than to the warning.”148 Since the application of torture was typically a public event, its potential as a deterrent was obvious.149 Thus public trials and torture promote the ideals of the ruling party by displaying the consequences of opposing points of view.150 The judicial employment of pain, therefore, aims not merely to punish specific Christians for their obstinacy or other flagitia—though it does this—but also to dissuade others from pursuing similar paths and to promote a particular ideology of empire.
In their assertions of Christian insensitivity to pain, however, the martyr texts undermine this judicial aim as well: Christian audiences, as we have seen, are taught that what appears to take place is not in fact what does takes place. Torture that is presumed to cause harm is in reality a healing salve. Descriptions of torture, as Perkins has noted, may communicate the exercise of power—“a mutilated body seems the consummate image to instantiate both the brutal possibilities inherent in power and the ‘fragility of human personhood’ and its vulnerability”—but the martyr texts reject the reality of their persecutors’ power.151 In response to this display of strength and its inherent threats to the martyr’s body, Christians insisted “on their bodies’ resilience through the doctrine of material resurrection.”152 As we have seen, beliefs in bodily resurrection developed in the second and third centuries, at least in part in response to threats of torture and execution. But material continuity is not the only way martyr texts challenge Rome’s power over the Christian body: they reject Rome’s ability to harm Christians in the first place. The Christian bodies of martyr texts do not represent “the fragility of human personhood and its vulnerability” but the opposite: they are bodies that cannot be harmed.
If through public torture and pain persecutors aimed to persuade Christians to apostatize and simultaneously to deter other Christians from similarly witnessing to their faith, in the narrative world of the martyr texts they fail miserably on both counts. Not only are the martyrs unaffected by torture and pain; the texts consistently argue that the torture and execution of Christians brings others to the faith. The Martyrdom of Apollonius asserts that “as many of the obedient ones as the unjust kill without trial, so much more will their numbers multiply through God” (24). Similarly, Tertullian famously claims that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”153 The general principle that martyrdom is a motivation for rather than a deterrent to other Christians is illustrated by Agathonike, who is spurred to confess after watching Carpus and Papylus die (Mart. Carp. A42). Similarly, in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons Vettius Epagathus—who had not been arrested with the other Christians—spoke out in response to the cruel treatment of the confessors and was executed (1.9–10). Christian discursive practices, therefore, combat both judicial aims of the quaestio: they challenge Rome’s ability to torture Christian bodies and inflict pain, and they present martyrdom as motivating—not deterring—other Christians.
By undermining the judicial theory of pain, martyr texts destabilize the entire system that supports social, political, and religious life in imperial Rome, since judicial torture is concerned with the activation of power. As Foucault has argued, public executions are not primarily about establishing justice but about asserting power: “in this liturgy of punishment, there must be an emphatic affirmation of power and of its intrinsic superiority. And this superiority is not simply that of right, but that of the physical strength of the sovereign beating down upon the body of his adversary and mastering it.”154 We misread the martyr texts, however, if we understand the contestation of power to be solely between the pagan ruler and the Christian martyr. The contest—the one that makes understandable the claims to anesthesia—is equally between God and Satan. The Christian body cannot be displayed as “marked, beaten, broken” because to do so would be to affirm the power of Satan. In the unharmed bodies of the martyrs, the power of Rome—animated by Satan—is forcefully rejected.155 And thus it is here that the subversive power of Christian counter-discourse is fully revealed: whereas the body of the condemned is a site for the inscription of dominant power—in Foucault’s terms, “the anchoring point for a manifestation of power”—the martyrs’ bodies testify in surprising ways.156 Their insensitivity reflects the victory of Christian theological interests over Roman ideological ones. In the condemned and tortured but impassible bodies of the martyrs, God’s victory and sovereignty are manifest.
Rival discourses constructing the Christian body on trial—its guilt and its fragility—may be traced through pagan and Christian sources. The pagan discourse of power and vulnerability focuses on the legal and justified application of pain to the Christian body in punishment of a crime and as a deterrent to other Christians.157 By shifting the discourse from prosecution to persecution, Christian authors invert the accusations. The Christian counternarrative focuses on the unjustified, cruel, and inhumane torture of innocent individuals. The most dramatic challenge to the pagan discourse, however, is the claim of Christian bodily immunity to judicial torture: Christian innocence is demonstrated by the martyrs’ divinely administered analgesia.
If public torture and pain aim at establishing power, then the martyrs’ insensitivity challenges Rome’s authority over them. But it does more than that. The individual body reflects social relationships, as Mary Douglas has argued: “the human body is never seen as a body without at the same time being treated as an image of society.”158 While the individual is not wholly eclipsed by the social body, it does symbolize—is a microcosm of—social concerns and social relationships. Thus the martyr’s body is not merely the locus of individual resistance, where a single person’s agency and autonomy are attacked and defended. It is also a representation of the Christian social body. The martyrs’ bodies at once represent their own strength and faithfulness as well as that of Christianity; their bodies illustrate God’s love for the community; they mark critical social boundaries.
Since the individual body is, as Willie Smyth argues, a “salient symbol for the social and political order”—or, in the case of Roman prosecution of Christians, for social and political disorder—the power displayed in Roman torture was not simply the power of a Roman official over an individual unruly Christian.159 Rather, it was representative of the destruction of the Christian social body, which was constructed by Romans as an unlawful, misanthropic movement.160 Moreover, while the martyr texts undoubtedly appropriate images of judicial torture from public trials and spectacles—creating verisimilitude even if the texts are themselves not historically reliable—the bodily torture they depict is equally symbolic of the ostracism and persecution Christians experienced and feared. Thus the martyr texts are not merely stories about the injuring and killing of Christians but also reports of the attempt—unsuccessful though it may be—of the unmaking of the Christian social body.161 The threat, that is, is greater than the sum of martyrs: the very existence of Christianity is at stake in narratives of persecution.
The dissolution of the Christian body politic is not accomplished primarily through execution of individuals but symbolically and discursively through the attempts to force the retraction of confessions of faith. The social body that is constructed discursively, that is, is also annihilated discursively. In Christian martyr texts the confession created a gulf between the martyr and society at large: community was not possible so long as “Christianus sum” hung in the air in opposition to “Romanus sum.”162 Rather than using the quaestio primarily to punish this confession, however, Romans are depicted in the texts as urging recantation. Roman trials attempted, as Lucy Grig has argued, “to force the accused to obliterate the crime,” and thereby to return Christians to “normal Roman society.”163 Reintegrating into society—bridging the chasm of confession—however, severs another relationship: that of the martyr to Christianity. Thus in seeking to break the Christian martyr’s body—to force apostasy—the system simultaneously seeks to break the Christian body social.
The failure of Rome to accomplish its goal is clear when the texts place the martyrs’ bodies before the audience’s gaze. Tortured bodies reveal much about a person’s social status: bodily scars left by whips and rods are “markings of a servile body, insignia of humiliation and submission.”164 While the apostle Paul turns this cultural expectation on its head—presenting “his abject body as evidence of his authority”—the martyr texts take a different tack.165 By erasing the marks of persecution from the bodies of the martyrs altogether, by wholly rejecting the persecutor’s power to harm Christian bodies, these texts reject the power of Rome. As it does not succeed in the one case, so it cannot succeed in the other: the persecutors are impotent to harm the martyrs’ bodies individually, and so their actions against Christianity writ large are doomed to fail. Since claims to individual impassibility also reflect claims about the invulnerability of the group, by shoring up the boundaries of the martyrs’ bodies—through the various narrative techniques of insensitivity—the texts claim impenetrability for Christianity as a whole. Just as Romans cannot really harm Perpetua or Pionius or Polycarp, neither can the Romans harm the church; God protects and fights in, with, and for both.
This chapter has offered snapshots of competing discourses by means of which Christianity aimed to change the story—if not for Romans then for themselves—about Christian death from one that emphasized criminality, irrationality, stubbornness, and subjection to one that aligned Christian faith with piety, self-control, and glorification. At the center of all these Christian counter-discourses is the impassible martyr, a figure that has strong resonances with both Christian and non-Christian discourses. The discursive project Christians engaged in was crucial for the community because through their counternarratives authors boosted the morale of their audiences. Roman judicial processes illustrate the social control exercised by the dominant power, but discourses and ideologies rarely exist in isolation from competing discourses.166 We find then that Christians rejected Roman claims to power over martyrs’ bodies. But the martyr texts go further by inscribing their own ideologies on the body, which also promote certain behaviors. That is, while Roman judicial intentions aim at deterring comparable action, Christian martyrological intentions aim at replicating it. By “appropriating and mutating existing” ideologies and discourses and “by using the justifications and legitimations of existing ideologies of power as leverage for their own views,” Christians fought against the dominant discourse that depicted Christianity as susceptible to Roman judicial torture and replaced it with an equally powerful discourse that illustrated Christian ideologies and scripted Christians’ behaviors.167