Sometime during the latter half of the ninth century, the monk Euodios wrote a lengthy account entitled The Forty-Two Martyrs of Amorion.1 Though the tale is considered to be legendary, Euodios describes the capture and seven-year ordeal of forty-two Byzantine military commanders and civic leaders seized by the Arabs during the siege and destruction of the Byzantine city Amorion in 838. Amorion was perhaps the largest city in Asia Minor at that time and served as the capital of the Anatolikon region of the Byzantine Empire. The capture and destruction of Amorion was led by the Abbasid caliph al-Muʿtasim; of the nearly seventy thousand soldiers, inhabitants, and refugees crowding the city, more than half were slaughtered. Euodios’s martyrdom story is of interest not because of its historical value, which is small, but because of the ideological and theological motifs used to tell the story. The majority of the martyrdom account comprises the lengthy captivity of the forty-two martyrs and numerous discussions between the martyrs and individuals sent by their Arab captors to persuade them to convert to Islam. The martyrs remain firm in their Christian faith only to be eventually murdered by Ethiopian executioners along the bank of the Tigris.2
Replete with traditional hagiographic motifs, Euodios’s martyrdom account ends in a sermonic, adulatory fashion. I quote his closing words at length since they contain the main themes of this essay:
O pure and perfect sacrifice, O self-immolated sacrifices and victims pleasing to God, a rational offering, a most fragrant whole-burnt offering and a sacrifice of praise, to Christ a glory truly worthy of its name. Through you, barbarian arrogance was cast down and a throng of unbelievers was clearly overcome by a few soldiers of Christ who were given boldness of speech. Even though only a few God-pleasing individuals, you were easily capable of defeating [the barbarians] and winning that victory which is greater than the victory of generals over physical bodies. They made every effort to turn you away, but they were not strong enough. The heavenly city takes pride in you. Men in authority and of high rank pride themselves in you and use the power of your prayers in times of war. Those who are believers find you as allies. You share in communion with our sufferings. As ones who are acquainted with our wretched and slippery life and with its tumultuous and harsh reality, may you be mediators on behalf of us for the salvation we seek from Christ himself our Lord.3
Clouded in praise and admiration, Euodios affirms three significant aspects of martyrdom that have a long tradition in the Greek East: patient endurance as a means of strengthening the faithful, the benefits accrued through suffering even to the point of assisting others toward the goal of salvation, and the gift of parrēsia (speaking out boldly in the face of danger or in the presence of God). As I hope this study will show, these three interconnected notions are key aspects in the Greek East’s understanding of the suffering of martyrdom.
Theodore the Studite, active one generation before Euodios, lived and wrote during a period of ecclesiastical and imperial struggles that pitted this famous middle Byzantine monastic reformer and Orthodox spokesman against the religious and civic leaders of his day. Embroiled as he was in the Iconoclast, Moechian, and Josephite controversies, Theodore wrote hundreds of letters and produced several treatises in which he articulated his views. At the beginning of the second phase of iconoclasm in 815, Theodore wrote to John, bishop of Sardis, encouraging him: “Bring your holy struggles to the fore, oh crown of fathers, and embrace whatever else will come as well: for people in the church of Christ still live in a time of martyrdom. May you not be diverted from your beautiful confession.” Though Bishop John had not paid the ultimate sacrifice, he nonetheless had been abused at the hands of the Iconoclasts. Noting this, Theodore continues, “You were not placed on the cross, because these are not the times. Yet you are a cross-bearer, since you were taken away and abused and ridiculed by the evil-doers.”4
Renewed iconoclasm, the adulterous scandal known as the Moechian controversy, and the lingering issue of support for the patriarch Joseph led to very few martyrdoms. This, however, did not deter Theodore from using the rhetoric of martyrdom to offer encouragement to those who were suffering at the hands of his opponents and to provide an interpretive framework for their suffering. The patrician Irene was a supporter of icons during the reign of the emperor Leo V (813–20). Theodore wrote eight letters to her, which suggested she was a prominent supporter who associated with the persecuted, helped them, and placed herself in danger. Accordingly, Theodore called Irene “a senator’s wife walking among martyrs” and a new martyr.5 To the monk Arkadios, who had been assigned to work as a weaver in the imperial palace for his iconophile views, Theodore wrote: “[Your sufferings] are the things of saints. But then it is also true that they [the Iconoclasts], though not wanting to, exhibit you to the world as a true servant of the emperor of the universe, a proof of the testimony of God, a refutation of impiety.”6
The current political and ecclesiastical crises afforded Theodore the opportunity to strengthen his rank-and-file supporters by equating their current state of suffering to that of martyrdom. Theodore links the contemporary struggles confronting his followers with the paradigmatic struggles of the martyrs of the early church. For Theodore, the suffering of his fellow monks is a sign of victory in the struggle over evil. Suffering for the sake of truth encourages those who are on the margin looking in while affirming the truth for which one suffers. In his letter to Irene the patrician, Theodore encourages her in her struggles against iconoclasm and the sufferings she has endured, “so that you might strengthen and save many others by your own example.”7 Here we see two key elements of Theodore’s views of martyrdom. First, Irene’s perseverance strengthens the faithful in their own struggles, perhaps spiritual in general, or more specifically related to iconoclasm. Second, and equally important for Theodore, is that the suffering she endures confirms the truth of her (and Theodore’s) convictions. Her acceptance of suffering is proof of the validity of her iconophile beliefs.
Another important rhetorical element in Theodore’s view of martyrdom is the notion of parrēsia, boldness of speech. For Theodore, parrēsia most often means the ability and courage to speak out against the abuses and ills of the day. As Peter Hatlie has observed, “Parrēsia represented a bid to keep the message of Theodore and his supporters alive and well.”8 Parrēsia, boldness of speech as a form of protest, was not disconnected from martyrdom. Theodore urges his supporters to demonstrate their association with the martyrs through an expression of parrēsia.9 For Theodore, the ancient martyrs shared a witness, their martyrdom, and the ability to speak out with parrēsia. In his many letters to his supporters who are currently suffering at the hands of the authorities, Theodore uses the martyrs of old as models of those who spoke out in the face of wrongs, exhibiting their parrēsia even though it brought them the ultimate cost of death.
Theodore’s frequent use of the model and image of martyrdom coupled with the fact that martyrdom was taking place during his lifetime does not lead, however, to the adoption of the idea that the suffering of the martyr has some kind of redemptive effect upon the Christian faithful. Certainly, for Theodore, martyrdom provided a means of salvation for the one undergoing martyrdom, but the thought that the blood being shed by a martyr has salvific force for the life of the church does not figure into Theodore’s understanding of martyrdom. The redemptive quality of martyrdom beyond the individual martyr was, however, part of the apologetic for martyrdom in the early church. Origen, in his Exhortation to Martyrdom, one of the most compelling texts of the first three centuries of the Christian faith, hints at the possible efficacious effects of the blood of the martyrs:
Consider, as well, whether baptism by martyrdom, just as the Savior’s [baptism] brought cleansing to the world, may not also serve to cleanse many. For just as those who served the altar according to the Law of Moses thought they were ministering forgiveness of sins to the people by the blood of goats and bulls, so also the souls of those who have been beheaded for their witness to Jesus do not serve the heavenly altar in vain but minister forgiveness of sins to those who pray.10
Here Origen suggests that martyrs who now “serve the heavenly altar” are capable of offering forgiveness of sins to those who seek such redemption through prayer. Yet can the blood of the martyr atone for the sins of Christians? Origen seems to reply in the affirmative by comparing the blood that was shed by the martyrs to the blood spilled in the murder of Abel: their blood cries to God from the ground (cf. Gen. 4:10). More specifically, Origen argues, “And perhaps just as we have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus, . . . so some will be redeemed by the precious blood of the martyrs, since they too have been exalted beyond the exaltations of those who were righteous but did not become martyrs.”11 It is not entirely clear whom Origen has in mind when speaking of the “righteous,” but he does seem to suggest that the blood of the martyrs is redemptive as Christ’s is.
Origen sees martyrdom as a means of strengthening the faithful and the gift of parrēsia. Martyrdom produces “confidence” (parrēsian) toward God, the ability to be boldly present before God.12 Origen does not specifically link this parrēsia with a martyr’s ability to intercede with God on behalf of others; yet it is clear that the martyr’s courage and faith result in a state of parrēsia. Likewise, Origen encourages his fellow Christians Ambrose and Protoctetus, to whom his treatise is addressed, to undergo their upcoming suffering “for those who will be built up by our martyrdom.”13 For Origen, the endurance of the martyrs, their confession of faith, and their steadfastness in the face of suffering and pain provide motivation for current and future Christians.
When the imperial reign of Constantine was firmly established over the Greco-Roman world by 324, the period of persecution was brought to an end. The church now had its core of martyrs, from which it would draw strength for centuries to come. Eusebius is one of our earliest Constantinian and post-Constantinian examples of a Christian leader co-opting the suffering, endurance, courage, and faithfulness of the martyrs for the spiritual strengthening of the Christian faithful. For several more generations after Eusebius, some of the great fathers of the so-called golden age of patristics would follow suit and, to use a modern idiom, “preach the martyrs.” John Chrysostom delivered at least twenty sermons that dealt directly with a particular martyr or the martyrs in general. All three Cappadocian Fathers preached homilies on individual martyrs.14 Hesychius, a priest in Jerusalem during the fifth century, delivered several sermons on local martyrs. Most of these sermons just mentioned were delivered within the context of a panegyris, the annual assembly at a martyr’s shrine, a commemoration that included the delivery of a sermon. Basil of Caesarea is our earliest witness to this genre of the martyr homily. Basil is more than one generation removed from the actual events of the martyrdoms about which he preaches. Yet his sermons, along with those of his contemporary bishops and the homilists who followed, contributed to the well-documented phenomenon of the cult of the martyrs during the fourth and fifth centuries. The development of the cult of the martyrs and its explosive growth need not detain us here. Yet the ideology of martyrdom and particularly the role of suffering in martyrdom receive their definitive form in the homilies delivered within this formative stage of the cult of the martyrs. The impact of these homilies is reflected in the manuscript tradition: by the ninth century many of these sermons had been gathered into sermon collections and were being distributed in this way. In what follows, I examine the martyr homilies of the fourth and fifth centuries, considering more closely the three aspects of the suffering of martyrdom already identified in my perhaps too long introduction. The suffering of the martyrs (1) offers encouragement to those who suffer, (2) provides a salvific element to the martyr and the Christian believer, and (3) earns the martyr parrēsia before God and on behalf of others.
Suffering as Encouragement
Early in the year 373, at a martyrium outside the city of Caesarea, Basil delivered a sermon at the feast of the martyr Gordios, a citizen of Caesarea who had been martyred during the reign of Licinius.15 Noticing the large crowd, Basil opens his sermon with a simile by equating the crowd with a swarm of bees buzzing around the hive of the tomb of the martyrs. In good exhortative fashion, early in the homily Basil encourages his audience to “rejoice at the very remembrance of the exploits of the just, urged on,” as he continues, “by what they hear to energetic imitation of good persons.”16 Remembrance of the martyrs is a key element in the cult of the saints. For Basil, remembrance of Gordios’s exploits—whether his faithfulness, his agonistic struggles, his suffering, or his death—is sufficient for profiting the Christian.17 Basil justifies his emphasis on the memory of the martyr’s deeds by quoting the Psalms: “The just man will always be remembered” (111:6 LXX).18
Memory is a powerful tool. In his homily on Gordios, Basil relates few details about the martyr’s life and even fewer about the nature of the martyr’s execution. Yet the veracity of his words must ring true since there are, we are told, some in Basil’s audience who remember the events. We can assume, though, that for the vast majority of those present there was very little firsthand knowledge or experience of Gordios’s martyrdom or martyrdom in general. Basil himself was born in 330, well after the close of persecution. He may, however, have been acquainted with the handful of martyrdoms under the emperor Julian. Nevertheless, what was it that Basil wanted his audience to remember about the martyrs? What was important for Basil?
If memory is a powerful tool, selective memory is perhaps even more powerful. In book 8 of his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius records a firsthand account of persecution in Palestine and its environs from 303 onward. In the opening sections Eusebius is quite explicit about the moral and didactic purposes of retelling the plight of those martyred Christians of Palestine: “We decided to make no mention of those who have been tempted by the persecution or have made utter shipwreck of their salvation (1 Tim. 1:19) and by their own decision were plunged in the depths of the sea; we shall add to the general history only those things which may be profitable, first to ourselves, and then to those who come after us.”19 In other words, Eusebius has chosen to relate only the examples of Christians who withstood to the end—to their deaths—the sufferings undergone for their Christian faith in order to build up the faithful.
Returning to Basil, the bishop of Caesarea most likely did not have the choice of preaching about Christians who failed the test. The church had already begun the process of selective memory for a particular purpose. For Basil, remembrance leads to imitation. Keeping company with noble persons will lead one to imitate the actions of these persons. The same is true for the faithful Christian who remembers the martyrs. In a sermon delivered also in 373 during the feast of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, commemorating their martyrium in Caesarea, Basil opens his homily with the following exhortation: “Bless the martyred sincerely, so that you become a martyr by choice, and end up being worthy of the same rewards as theirs, without persecution, without fire, without blows.”20 The message of the martyrs, their “encomium,” is nothing less than “the exhortation of the congregation to virtue” (hē pros aretēn paraklēsis tōn syneilegmenōn).21
One aspect of virtue for Basil, as indicated by the action of the Forty Martyrs, is confessing one’s Christian identity publicly. Full disclosure of the martyrs’ Christian identity is part of the story line, since the forty were Roman soldiers who stood out among their peers as Christians. The virtue of the forty is found not simply in the confession of their faith but also in their steadfastness in maintaining their faith during extreme torture. Their torture was to stand naked on the ice of a pond throughout the night until they expired. In a vivid, great description, Basil illustrates the forty’s suffering by describing what happens to a body exposed to extreme cold temperatures:
For when a body is exposed to frost it first becomes livid all over, once the blood has frozen. Next it becomes agitated and jumps, teeth chatter, nerves become taut, and the bulk of the body involuntarily becomes contracted. Piercing pain, and unspeakable suffering pervading the very marrow, produces an intolerable feeling for those who are freezing. After that it becomes mutilated, the extremities being burnt as if by fire. . . . Death occurs shortly after as a result of freezing.22
The culmination of the story of the Forty Martyrs comes when one of the forty can no longer endure the cold and runs to the baths, denying Christ. Just then, the executioner, seeing what has transpired and being touched by the display of Christian zeal, throws off his clothes and joins the other thirty-nine soldiers, thus completing the sacred number of forty. As he occupies his place among the dying and frozen, this new soldier for Christ exclaims, “I am a Christian,” offering the public confession of faith that manifests Christian virtue. Bringing to a close his homily, Basil reiterates the power of remembering these particular martyrs: “Becoming a spectacle for the world and for angels and human beings (1 Cor. 4:9), they raised the fallen, they strengthened the ambivalent, they doubled the desire of the pious.”23
If, for Basil, remembrance of the martyrs leads to virtue among Christians, he does not mean that all Christians are to somehow seek out opportunities for suffering for the faith. Rather, as one might expect, Basil, much like many of his contemporaries, sees the opportunity for Christians to imitate the martyrs in the ascetic movements of his day. The martyrdom of conscience is a well-known commonplace in Christian ascetical literature from the fourth century onward and need not detain us here.24
The suffering or patient endurance of the martyr that leads those who take notice to the practice of virtue is a theme found in the martyr homilies of John Chrysostom as well. Yet Chrysostom often identifies the ability of the martyrs to withstand the suffering inflicted upon them with that of the philosophers who are capable of enduring hardships based on the steadiness of their internal disposition. In his homily on the martyr Ignatius, the famous early second-century bishop of Antioch, Chrysostom concludes that God kept Ignatius from death until he reached Rome so that he might teach Rome to practice philosophy. “Truly,” says Chrysostom, “it is for this reason that God agreed that he [Ignatius] lose his life there: so that his death would be an instruction in piety for all who inhabit Rome.”25 In his homily on the martyr Barlaam, another Antiochene martyr, Chrysostom is quite emphatic about the exhortative role of the suffering and death of the martyrs:
Even if a person had achieved great things, they would consider that they had done nothing great, when [they compared] their virtue with [the martyrs’] wrestling matches. . . . For a martyrs’ death is an encouragement to believers, churches’ bold speech, Christianity’s confirmation, death’s dissolution, a proof of resurrection, ridicule of demons, the Devil’s condemnation, an instruction in philosophy, . . . mother of all blessings.26
The courage of the martyr in the midst of debilitating pain and suffering is lifted up, retold, and exalted by our fourth- and fifth-century Christian leaders as exemplary of Christian commitment, fortitude, virtue, and piety. Chrysostom could not be more explicit about this when he states, “If [the martyrs] remain steadfast in their tortures and groan over what they suffer, but do not betray their piety, no one holds them responsible for their groans; instead we accept and admire them all the more, for the reason that even though they were in pain they endured it and did not recant.”27 For Chrysostom, a great moralist, the martyr’s endurance of suffering is illustrative of the endurance a Christian must demonstrate in the face of the temptations of the worldly life.
Sacrificial Suffering
The suffering procured in martyrdom provided didactic material for Christian leaders of the fourth and later centuries. This moralistic use of the savage and brutal murder of Christians was not the only response Christians would offer. The Christian blood spilled through martyrdom was seen as blood that was capable of sanctifying the earth.28 Is it possible that the suffering and death of martyrs has a redemptive or salvific effect on the church? If so, in what manner?
To be sure, there is the notion that the death of the martyr is often equated with baptism. In his sermon on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, Basil makes this point quite explicit. When the executioner takes the place of the apostate Christian soldier, the executioner exclaims, “I am a Christian” even though he has not received a baptism of water. Rather, Basil extols the courage of the executioner: “He believed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; he was baptized into him, not by another, but by his own faith, not in water, but in his own blood.”29 In dramatic fashion, Chrysostom speaks of the martyrdom of Lucian, celebrated in Antioch the day after Epiphany: “Yesterday our Master was baptized with water, today his servant is baptized with blood.” Chrysostom does not stop here but continues to explain the impact of the blood of Lucian: “Indeed, don’t be astonished if I called his martyrdom a baptism. For in fact here too the Spirit flits around with abundant generosity, and obliteration of sin takes place and a certain wonderful and incredible purification of the soul. And just as those who are being baptized wash in water, so those being martyred wash in their own blood.”30
Lucian was already a Christian and was not in need of baptism. Yet, if we consider the possibility that the early Christian understanding of baptism still retained a strong component of the notion of the cleansing of sins, then the martyr receives a blessing in which other baptized Christians who are not martyrs cannot partake, that is, a second baptism and the opportunity for the cleansing of all sins on the threshold of death.
The blood of the martyrs therefore functions in a personal redemptive manner, providing a second regeneration and cleansing of sins. Some of our authors do not stop here in their understanding of the power of the martyrs’ deaths. Chrysostom relates, for example, how the martyr Barlaam was led to a pagan altar, his hand was outstretched over the altar, and a burning coal with incense was placed in his palm—in anticipation that he would turn his hand over and the incense would fall on the altar, thus allowing his captors to claim that he had sacrificed to the gods. Yet Barlaam remained strong and endured the pain as the coal burned through his hand. Commenting on this torture, Chrysostom states, “The same person becomes altar, victim, and priest.”31
The sacrifice of the martyr who is at once the one who offers, the offering, and the sacred spot upon which the offering is made—this is a sacrifice that brings redemption through the cleansing of the martyr’s sins. Chrysostom graphically expresses this in his homily on the female martyr Drosis. Speaking about her death by fire, Chrysostom relates,
For although her flesh melted away, and her bones were charred to a crisp, and her nerves were burnt away, and the lymphatic fluid in her body flowed out in every direction, her soul’s faith became firmer and more dazzling. And while the people who were watching these events thought that she had died, she was purified all the more. . . . The Christians understood very precisely that in liquefying she shed every stain.32
Basil expresses a similar idea by placing the following words in the mouth of the martyr Gordios as he undergoes his torture: “The more you increase my punishments, the more you procure for me greater recompense.”33 The belief that the suffering of a martyr offers a redemptive effect to the martyr is commonplace within the patristic literature I have examined.
Yet can we say more about the benefits of suffering? Does the suffering, pain, torture, and eventual death of the martyrs provide help for individuals other than the martyrs themselves? The answer depends, in part, on how one understands the sacrifice that accrues in martyrdom. The Greek patristic tradition is quite unanimous in affirming the intercessory role of the martyrs. This role is “earned” through the “witness” of the martyrs both in their public confession of faith and in the suffering they endure, unto death, for their love for God.34 One of the most striking examples of this comes from Basil’s homily on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, where Basil singles out a woman in the crowd gathered for the panegyris: “Here a pious woman is found praying for her children, begging for the return of her husband who is away, for his safety because he is sick. Let your [plural] petitions,” encourages Basil, “be with the martyrs.”35 The intercessory role of the martyr remains a key interpretive principle of martyrdom throughout the patristic period.
Curiously, though, one searches hard to find a reference to the suffering of martyrs as suffering endured for someone else. Earlier I reported Origen’s understanding of this. The martyrs suffer for Christ, for their own forgiveness of sins, and, as we shall see, for eternal life. Yet there is an absence of a notion that the martyr suffers for other Christians in some type of redemptive manner as Christ suffered on the cross. The closest reference I am able to find comes from the pen of the seventh-century monastic Isaac the Syrian:
On the day when you are pained in some way, either physically or mentally, for the sake of any man, be he good or evil, reckon yourself as a martyr on that day, and as one who suffers for Christ’s sake and is deemed worthy of confession. For remember that Christ died for sinners, not for the just. So how great a thing it is to grieve for wicked men and to benefit sinners even more than the righteous.36
In his voluminous commentaries on the Letters of Paul, John Chrysostom fails to take the opportunity to equate Paul’s suffering, to which the apostle frequently refers in his correspondence, with the suffering of the martyrs. In his commentary on Colossians 1:24, where Paul writes, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is still lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,” Chrysostom acknowledges that Paul suffers for others only through his suffering for Christ. Here, more than any other place, one might expect to find a reference to the martyrs and their suffering, but Chrysostom does not provide one. In fact, elsewhere Chrysostom is quite explicit about this: “The martyrs were not butchered for our sake and yet we rush together to honor them.”37 We are left, therefore, to understand the suffering of the martyrs as imparting redemption to the martyrs themselves, but not (perhaps with the exception of Origen) providing redemption for others.
The Rewards of Suffering
In a powerful homily on the martyr Julian, Chrysostom begins with a repetition of rhetorical questions centered on the theme that the earthly honors given to the martyrs, as seen in the current gathering of the faithful on the feast of Julian, pale in comparison to the rewards awaiting the martyrs who endure to the end. “If [Christ],” Chrysostom asks, “was crucified and shed his blood for those who hate him, what won’t he do for those who shed their blood as a result of their confession for him?”38 In gratitude for their suffering, Christ offers the martyrs blessings that come from heaven, and it is these blessings, according to Chrysostom, that the martyrs focus on to divert themselves from their pain and torture as they glue “their eyes to heaven and the blessings that come from there.”39 The “blessings that come from heaven” are three: a special grace to endure their suffering, boldness of speech before God, and eternal life.
Christian writers, beginning as early as the second century, have noticed the presence of a distinctive grace received by the martyrs that aids them in enduring the utter distresses of their torture. It is not necessary to question the authenticity of this grace or to explain it away with psychological theories of psychosis or masochism. For my purposes here, I am interested only in how Christian authors, when looking back at the suffering of the martyrs, understand this grace in the context of a suffering human being. Commenting on the Maccabean martyrs, Chrysostom observes that “their constitution is weak, but the grace that sustains them is powerful.”40 The martyr Gordios, upon entering the hippodrome, is described by Basil as having “a certain grace [that] became conspicuous to all as it shown around him from the inside.”41 The grace accompanying the martyrs is never specifically defined, though it is used by our authors to explain how a martyr is able to withstand the tortures and sufferings on their road to death.42
Coinciding with this special grace is a further charism, that of parrēsia, or boldness of speech. The term parrēsia has a long history in Hellenistic, early Christian, and patristic literature. In reference to martyrdom, it has two meanings. It can refer to the boldness of speech that martyrs exhibit in the declaration of their Christian identity. As seen in the word martyr itself, a martyr is a witness or a testimony to the Christian confession, to the person of Jesus Christ. Boldness of speech therefore refers to the confidence, courage, and determination of the martyr to confess one’s faith in the face of danger and then to maintain this confession. At times our authors understand this type of parrēsia as coming from God, and at other times as a result of the conviction of the martyr. The second kind of parrēsia is that of bold speech in the presence of God and is a result of the suffering and endurance of the martyrs. In this use, parrēsia refers to the communicative and intercessory capability of the martyr after death. That is, the martyr is capable of interceding, or mediating, on behalf of those who pray to the martyr, because of the gift of parrēsia—because of the gift of boldness of speech before the throne of God.
In his homily on the martyr Theodore the Recruit, Gregory of Nyssa is quite clear about the intercessory role of the soldier martyr: “To us he left the instructive memory of his contest, he who brings people together, who teaches the Church, who chases demons, . . . [who] looks out for our interests in the presence of God.”43 It is in the presence of God that the martyr exhibits parrēsia. According to Chrysostom, the martyr Drosis, after undergoing death by fire, is “dispatched to the emperor in heaven, entering the vaults of heaven with considerable boldness of speech.”44 Just as Christians are called to imitate the virtues of the martyrs by calling to remembrance their endurance and love for Christ, the reward for the faithful Christian can be similar to that of the martyr. If those of us who are alive are able to calm our passions—our anger, desire for money, the flesh, and vainglory—just as the martyrs demonstrated their virtue by enduring suffering, we can share in the same parrēsia that the martyrs have.45
Rodney Stark, in his provocative sociological study of martyrdom in early Christianity, argues that Christians endured martyrdom precisely because the reward gained sufficiently compensated for the suffering and inevitable death awaiting the publicly professing Christian.46 The reward gained through martyrdom is nothing short of immortality or life after death. Regardless of the accuracy of Stark’s claims, there is no doubt that as Greek patristic literature of the fourth and later centuries comments on the martyrs of the early church, the most significant and frequently mentioned reward for the suffering and death of the martyrs is life after death. Chrysostom, Basil, and the two Gregorys are all emphatic on this point. Martyrdom leads to eternal life.
Life after death is the most frequent justification offered for enduring the utter brutality, unbearable pain, and eventual death of martyrdom. In fact, Chrysostom suggests that the female martyrs Bernike, Prosdoke, and Domina would not have so readily ventured into their voluntary death had the gates of paradise not been available to them.47 Into the mouth of the martyr Gordios, Basil puts the following exhortation: “Since, then, one has to die in any case, let us bring life on ourselves by means of death.”48 In his homily on the Forty Martyrs, Basil is even more dramatic when he has the martyrs utter the following words of encouragement to one another: “Since it is of course necessary to die, let us die that we may live.”49 The promise of life eternal, a promise that undergirds the kerygma of the early church, is at the center of the martyr homilies of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Conclusion
This essay has been more of a descriptive enterprise than interpretive. The patristic literature I have examined is quite unanimous in its exaltation of the suffering of the martyrs. Yet it is an exaltation with a purpose. This intention does not exonerate this literature, nor those who produced it, from the charge of sensationalism; the stories told of the suffering of the martyrs are brutal, gory, and from our sanitized twenty-first-century Western culture often downright revolting. This is not to say that the world of the fourth century was any more violent than ours is today. Rather, as fourth-century Christians looked back on and pondered the atrocious suffering and death that many of their earlier fellow Christians endured for the faith, they not only celebrated the memory of these Christian heroes but also found ways to explain, understand, and profit from their sufferings.
First and foremost, the suffering of martyrdom provided didactic and moralistic examples of individuals who were able to remain faithful to their Christian calling in the face of great physical and emotional pain. Their suffering served as an example of Christian fortitude and love for God. Second, suffering has a redemptive quality. For martyrs, the spilling of their blood was equated with a second baptism and provided an opportunity for the cleansing of sins prior to death. Their suffering was not in vain, at least not for the martyrs. There is also some indication that some of our authors came close to viewing the suffering of the martyrs as having redemptive impact upon nonmartyred Christians. Finally, the martyr who suffers is rewarded with certain charisms or gifts. The boldness that the martyrs exhibit in proclaiming and maintaining their Christian identity is rewarded with a boldness or parrēsia in the presence of God. The parrēsia that the martyr acquires can be used by the martyr and can be tapped into by the faithful Christian as a means through which prayers can be offered and answered. The martyr, who has received a special grace during the course of the martyrdom, now stands before God, interceding on behalf of those who believe. Finally, it is the end that provides the greatest gift for the martyr: the gift of living in the eternal presence of God.
1. Several versions of the martyrdom account survive; see Vatroslav G. Vasilievskij and P. Nikitin, Skazanija o 42 amorijskich mucenikack (St. Petersburg, 1905). I have used the text written by the monk Euodios, which is dated as after 855/856 by S. Kotzampassi—in “To martyrio tōn saranta dyo martyrōn tou Amoriou: Hagiologika kai hymnologika keimena,” Epistēmonikē Epetēris tēs Philosophikēs Scholēs Aristotēleiou Panepistēmiou Thessaonikēs 2 (1992): 127—and dated in the second half of the ninth century to the first half of the tenth century by Alexander P. Kazhdan, “Hagiographical Notes,” Byzantion 56 (1986): 152.
2. Euodios wrongly places Samarra on the banks of the Euphrates (Euodios, Forty-Two Martyrs of Amorion, 36, in Vasilievskij and Nikitin, Skazanija, 75).
3. Euodios, Forty-Two Martyrs of Amorion, 43–44, in Vasilievskij and Nikitin, Skazanija, 77–78.
4. Theodore the Studite, Letters 157, quoted in Peter Hatlie, “The Politics of Salvation: Theodore of Stoudios on Martyrdom (Martyrion) and on Speaking Out (Parrhesia),” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 50 (1996): 275.
5. Theodore the Studite, Letters 156, in Hatlie, “Politics of Salvation,” 269.
6. Theodore the Studite, Letters 390, in Hatlie, “Politics of Salvation,” 271.
7. Theodore the Studite, Letters 156, in Hatlie, “Politics of Salvation,” 271.
8. Hatlie, “Politics of Salvation,” 275.
9. Ibid.
10. Origen, An Exhortation to Martyrdom 30, trans. Rowan A. Greer, Origen, CWS (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 62.
11. Origen, Martyrdom 50, trans. Greer, 79.
12. Origen, Martyrdom 28.
13. Origen, Martyrdom 41, trans. Greer, 72.
14. The Cappadocian Fathers contributed greatly to the development of the cult of the martyrs in fourth-century Cappadocia and Pontus; see Vasiliki Limberis, Architects of Piety: The Cappadocian Fathers and the Cult of the Martyrs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). See also James C. Skedros, “The Cappadocian Fathers on the Veneration of the Martyrs,” StPatr 37 (2001): 294–300.
15. Four martyr homilies of Basil’s have survived: Gordios, Julitta, The Forty Martyrs, and Mamas.
16. Basil, A Homily on the Martyr Gordios 1, trans. Johan Leemans, “Let Us Die That We May Live”: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria (c. A.D. 350−A.D. 450), ed. Johan Leemans et al. (London: Routledge, 2003), 58.
17. Basil, On Gordios 2, in “Let Us Die,” 59.
18. Basil, On Gordios 8, in “Let Us Die,” 67; cf. Ps. 111:6–7 LXX, Vulgate (112:6 English).
19. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 8.2.3, quoted in Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 157.
20. Basil, A Homily on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste 1, in “Let Us Die,” 68.
21. Basil, Forty Martyrs 2, in “Let Us Die,” 69. Just what Basil means by “virtue” (aretē) is not necessarily spelled out in this context.
22. Basil, Forty Martyrs 5, in “Let Us Die,” 72.
23. Basil, Forty Martyrs 8, in “Let Us Die,” 76.
24. This idea is found throughout the later Byzantine period as reflected in the following quote from Symeon the New Theologian: “If some should say: ‘Those men were martyrs. They suffered for Christ, and how is it possible for us to become their equals?’ We might say in reply to them: You yourselves, too, if indeed you want to, can suffer and be tormented for Christ’s sake, and be a martyr every day just like those men were. . . . And how might this be? If you, too, rank yourselves in battle against the vicious demons; if you take your stand by continually opposing sin and your own will. While these stood up against tyrants, we hold against demons and the destructive passions of the flesh which day and night and at every hour tyrannically attack our soul and force us to do things which do not belong to piety and which anger God,” Tenth Ethical Discourse, in Symeon the New Theologian, On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, trans. Alexander Golitzin, 3 vols. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995–97), 1:160.
25. John Chrysostom, On the Holy Martyr Ignatius 14, in John Chrysostom, The Cult of the Saints, trans. Wendy Mayer (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 113; cited below as Mayer.
26. Chrysostom, On Saint Drosis 4, in Mayer, 195; cf. Chrysostom, On Saint Barlaam 12, in Mayer, 188.
27. Chrysostom, On Saint Barlaam 7, in Mayer, 184–85.
28. Asterius of Amasea, A Homily on Stephen the First Martyr 2.2, in “Let Us Die,” 178.
29. Basil, Forty Martyrs 7, in “Let Us Die,” 74.
30. Chrysostom, On Saint Lucian 5, in Mayer, 68.
31. Chrysostom, On Saint Barlaam 8, in Mayer, 184.
32. Chrysostom, On Saint Drosis 9, in Mayer, 200–201.
33. Basil, On Gordios 5, in “Let Us Die,” 63.
34. “Moved by love, the martyrs shed their blood that they might not lose Christ,” declares Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses, trans. C. J. deCatanzaro, CWS (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 45.
35. Basil, Forty Martyrs 8, in “Let Us Die,” 75; see John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 4.15.
36. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 51, in Ascetical Discourses (Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984), 246.
37. Chrysostom, A Homily on Julian the Martyr 1, in “Let Us Die,” 129.
38. Ibid.
39. Chrysostom, Julian the Martyr 1, in “Let Us Die,” 131.
40. Chrysostom, Homily 1 on the Maccabees 3, in Mayer, 138–39.
41. Basil, On Gordios 4, in “Let Us Die,” 62.
42. “Endurance of hardship is a kind of perception or habit. The man who has it will never be afraid of pain, or toil or hardship, nor will he run from them. It was this marvelous grace that enabled the souls of the martyrs to rise superior to their torments,” Step 26, in John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, CWS (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 239.
43. Gregory of Nyssa, A Homily on Theodore the Recruit 69.3, in “Let Us Die,” 90.
44. Chrysostom, On Saint Drosis 10, in Mayer, 201.
45. Chrysostom, Homily 1 on the Maccabees 11, in Mayer, 145.
46. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 163–89.
47. Chrysostom, On Saints Bernike, Prosdoke, and Domina 1, in Mayer, 158.
48. Basil, On Gordios 8, in “Let Us Die,” 66.
49. Basil, Forty Martyrs 6, in “Let Us Die,” 73.