Jesus the Martyr

Extract

Men and women martyred for their faith form a coherent and distinctive group—from Socrates and Stephen, through Joan of Arc, Savonarola and Thomas More, down to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in our own day. Violent death came to each in such a way that we can classify them all with Jesus.

Particular circumstances may allow us to match their martyrdoms with his passion and crucifixion. At times betrayal by former friends or similar forms of treachery led to arrest and imprisonment. The trials which preceded the death penalty frequently centred on some fatal question. Did Thomas More wish to deprive Henry VIII of the title which Parliament had granted him? How would Jesus answer when the high priest asked him : ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ (Mark 14:61). Finally, many martyrs shared the same geography of death with Jesus—public execution. Some were, of course, butchered in their prison cells, or like Bonhoeffer led away to the sinister secrecy of a Nazi hanging. But Joan of Arc died in the Rouen market-place, Savonarola outside the old Palace in Florence, and Thomas More on Tower Hill.

Granted these and other similarities, we need, nevertheless, to be sensitive to much that gives Jesus’ passion and death its own particular profile. The differences go beyond the obvious and massive fact that no one even alleges that the other martyrs have reconciled the entire human race with God. We must not let other notable contrasts slip out of sight. Let me examine one of these.