The Pentecostal sermon attributed to Peter in Acts announces Joel’s prophecy fulfilled:

The gift thus overrides sex, rank, and social status; it is often overlooked that the company on whom the Spirit falls in Acts 2 includes, beside the restored Twelve, ‘women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers’, and Acts in this respect agrees with Paul that in Christ ‘there is no Jew nor Greek, there is no slave nor free man, there is no male and female; you are all one person in Christ Jesus.’

The Christian interpretation of fatal persecution was a complex one with distinct ecclesial themes merging with Jewish elements from apocalyptic and biblical literature, as well as Hellenistic motifs such as the constancy of the Socratic martyr. The New Testament understanding of the term ‘martyr’ is predominantly that of legal witness, although some specific senses of blood-witness are emerging already in the first century and have become common by the second. Varying reactions can be traced in the literature of different parts of the Church: for example, in Rome, Alexandria, Asia, Africa, or Palestine. This paper looks primarily at the Egyptian interpretation as a microcosm of the general development of the role of martyrs, and does so by reference to the writings of the theologians whose works cover the main phases of that process. It highlights the distinction that existed between the sophisticated literary interpretation of martyrdom, and the forms of popular devotion that flourished among the non-literate peasantry. The tension between the two approaches, witnessed in both Origen and Athanasius, is demonstrably resolved by the time of Cyril, who represents the harmonious synthesis of both traditions in the new conditions of Christian political ascendancy in fifth-century Byzantine Egypt. The peculiar circumstances of the Egyptian Church, in particular the unusually radical separation that existed there between town and country (and the class and cultural divisions reflected in that), as well as the specific challenge posed to Christianity by the enduring vitality of the old Egyptian religions in the countryside, both left their marks on the specific form of martyr devotion in Christian Egypt, but the most noteworthy aspect is arguably the subtext of the theological encomia of martyrdom that seems to have the definite concern of subjugating the popular devotion to martyrs, confessors, and ascetics to the interests of the Church hierarchies.

Martyrs were the heroes of the Early Church. For a long period after the reign of Constantine until Benedictine monasticism took over their mantle, their lives and exploits provided a focus for the idealism of Christians in Western Europe. They represented the victory of human steadfastness and loyalty in defence of the faith triumphing over irreligious tyranny and the powers of evil. In the East, however, where Constantine had emphasized as early as 324 his complete rejection of the persecutions of his pagan predecessors, it was not long before memories of the past were transformed to meet other pressing needs of the day. Threatened first by Germanic and Slav invaders and then by the armies of Islam, Byzantine cities sought the protection of martyrs and the heavenly hierarchy that led from them through the Archangel Michael to the Virgin herself. In Nobatia, the northernmost of the three Nubian kingdoms that straddled the Nile valley between Aswan and a point south of Khartoum, the military martyrs, George, Mercurius, Theodore, and Demetrius seconded the endeavours of Michael and the Virgin to preserve the kingdoms and their Christian religion.

In recent years there has been a definite growth of interest in the royal saints of the early medieval period. Specifically from France, academics such as Robert Folz, and from Britain, historians such as David Rollason and Susan Ridyard, have turned their erudition and their pens to elucidate this topic. The scope of this paper will be to examine one of the saints who has been of interest to these authors: St Oswald of Northumbria. That Oswald was considered a saint from early after his death is not in any doubt: Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica makes this quite clear. Rather, this paper turns its attention to the nature of that sanctity in order to decide whether or not Bede actually perceived Oswald as a martyr. To look at this question this study will firsdy compare Oswald with other Anglo-Saxon martyr-kings. Secondly, it will observe what comments Bede actually makes concerning Oswald’s sanctity. And, finally, it will see how he is categorized and discussed in other contemporary and near-contemporary texts.

For the author of the longer prologue to Lex Salica, writing in 763–4 in the reign of Pippin I, the first king of the Carolingian dynasty, the Franks’ devotion to the martyrs was the secret of their success. It proved the strength of their Christian faith; it was at once the manifestation and the explanation of special divine favour. Vivit qui Francos diligit Christus….

Kings and princes who were classed as ‘innocent martyrs’ or ‘passion-sufferers’ because they were thought to have been murdered in Christlike circumstances were known in many parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. This paper is about six Anglo-Saxon saints of this type, who are also distinguished by their youth. All of them were thought to have been boys or teenage males when they were martyred. To date, work on these saints has concentrated on questions concerning the origins of their cults, and their relationship to the institution of kingship. The purpose of this paper, however, is to draw attention to the ways in which certain religious communities redefined their sanctity in the late tenth and eleventh century, and to make some tentative suggestions about the possible uses to which these cults were put in this milieu.

The First Crusade was an important episode in the history of martyrdom. While some of the crusaders were martyrs in the old style, giving up their lives rather than renounce Christ, the expedition established in the consciousness of Western Europeans the idea of a new route to the status of martyr, which could be earned by those who fell in battle against the unbeliever, righting for Christ and for his people. From this time onwards crusading preachers regularly offered the stole of martyrdom to those who served in Palestine, Spain, and elsewhere, in the war against the Muslims. It is not surprising that recent historians, in particular Jonathan Riley-Smith, John Cowdrey, and Jean Flori, have given close attention to the establishment of this new model of martyr in the closing years of the eleventh century. It may seem that there is little more to add on the subject, but the development is so significant in the context of our present conference that it may be worth while to return to this well-trodden battlefield. What I want to do in this paper is to examine the foundation of this new style of martyrdom in the thinking of earlier centuries, and then to look once more at its impact upon the early stages of the Crusade itself.

The first canonized Russian saints were the princes Boris and Gleb (d. 1015), and the early accounts of their martyrdom, dating to the late eleventh or early twelfth century, are among the most important works of early Russian hagiography. It is the aim of this paper to locate these texts in the history of European martyrology, and to identify where they exhibit originality.

THE cult of St Eiluned is much more fully documented than the Saint herself, being described in two sources, of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. These must therefore be the starting-point for an investigation both into the Saint’s historicity, which is at best dubious, and into the significance of the cult, which throws light on religious practices over a very lengthy period. Aspects of these practices, and comparisons with other cults elsewhere, may well point to an early origin for this one.

Between 1170 and 1220 the cult of Thomas Becket had spread widely within Christendom, bearing with it the primary message that the Archbishop was a martyr who had died for the liberties of the Church, and in opposition to royal oppression. But no well-documented medieval cult, and certainly no major cult, is adequately characterized in such as simple and straightforward way. If ‘the causa beati Thome became the symbol of the rights of the church throughout the thirteenth century’ and beyond, this did not prevent it embracing other ideas and aspirations, some of them in apparent tension with each other, from the 1170s onwards. Over much of Europe the image of the Martyr’s fortitude confronting the King’s tyranny, already to some extent pre-sold in the propaganda of the exile years 1164 to 1170, required no qualification. In England, as Beryl Smalley has pointed out, ‘Writers had the more difficult task of combining loyalty to their king with defence of ecclesiastical freedom’, especially after Henry II had achieved a rapprochement with the Church. One way of handling this problem was to universalize the cult, by emphasizing that it ultimately transcended issues of royal-clerical relations, however important. Becket was portrayed as the martyr of the age, whose death had benefited the whole of Christendom. Such beliefs, made more plausible by the extraordinary miracle-working achievements of the tomb at Canterbury, led at their extreme to the systematic comparison of Becket’s death with that of Christ.

The Emperor Frederick II was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX on Palm Sunday (20 March) 1239. Over the next six years a number of peace negotiations and offers took place, all of which ultimately failed, despite a belief at the imperial court in the spring of 1244 that success had been achieved. Finally, at the Council of Lyons, on 17 July 1245, Frederick was declared deposed and ‘deprived of all honour and dignity’ by Pope Innocent IV, and his subjects’ oaths of fealty made null and void.

Probably one of the most emotive words in our ethical and religious languages, ‘martyrdom’ poses the historian with a complex array of powerful images and awesome actions. Its very naturalness, as a grounding moment through which religions and radical movements are substantiated and made public, raises serious problems of perspective, empathy, judgement: studying martyrdom brings us in touch with some of the most admirable and some of the most repugnant and saddening aspects in human behaviour. Religions, parties, and nations claim martyrs as unambiguous signs of virtue, truth, and moral justification, and thus render martyrdom seemingly obvious. Painful, yes, but admirable; chilling, but satisfying, since in it men and women turn into gods, become myth-makers, and lend legitimation to whoever may claim them. So martyrdom—its discussion, definition, the claim to its virtue and beauty—is always open to appropriation, to competition, to contestation.

Two themes which figure repeatedly in the history of the Western Church are the contrasting ones of tradition and renewal. To emphasize tradition, or continuity, is to stress the divine element in the continuous collective teaching and witness of the Church. To call periodically for renewal and reform is to acknowledge that any institution composed of people will, with time, lose its pristine vigour or deviate from its original purpose. At certain periods in church history the tension between these two themes has broken out into open conflict, as happened with such dramatic results in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformers seem to present one of the most extreme cases where the desire for renewal triumphed over the instinct to preserve continuity of witness. A fundamentally novel analysis of the process by which human souls were saved was formulated by Martin Luther in the course of debate, and soon adopted or reinvented by others. This analysis was then used as a touchstone against which to test and to attack the most prominent features of contemporary teaching, worship, and church polity. In so far as any appeal was made to Christian antiquity, it was to the scriptural texts and to the early Fathers; though even the latter could be selected and criticized if they deviated from the primary articles of faith. There was, then, no reason why any of the Reformers should have sought to justify their actions by reference to any forbears or ‘forerunners’ in the Middle Ages, whether real or spurious. On the contrary, Martin Luther’s instinctive response towards those condemned by the medieval Church as heretics was to echo the conventional and prejudiced hostility felt by the religious intelligentsia towards those outside their pale.

Kingsley Amis once had great fun imagining how the modern world might have turned out if Luther had successfully been bribed with the offer of a cardinalate. A much more likely miseen-scène is that suggested by Kierkegaard, who preferred to think how much better the world, or at least Danish Protestantism, would have been had Luther become a martyr. What makes the martyr’s crown a more plausible item of ecclesiastical headgear for Luther than a cardinal’s hat is that the idea of martyrdom was so important to him. Its importance was by no means restricted to the four years or so during which he daily expected to have to witness to the Gospel with his own blood: from his earliest lectures on the Psalms to his last lectures on Genesis, martyrdom and its implications for the Christian life were a central theme. In between Luther became not the first martyr of the Reformation, as he (no less than Kierkegaard) would have preferred, but its first martyrologist. In spite of this, Luther’s attitude to martyrdom has never, to my knowledge, been the subject of a full-scale study. In this paper I want to highlight some of the issues which would have to be explored further in any such study, and also to indicate the sense in which martyrdom became a problem for Luther.

The chief martyrology of the French Protestants or Huguenots, the Histoire des martyrs, was the work of a Walloon refugee in Geneva, Jean Crespin. The Histoire focuses on the martyrs of the French Reformation, but also describes the ordeals of those in Scodand, England, and Flanders, as well as of medieval precursors of Protestant ideas, such as Hus and Wyclif. Later versions of the text include the martyrs of the Early Church, whose faith the Huguenots claimed to be reviving and in whose sufferings they believed themselves to be sharing. The Histoire quickly became popular in the fledgeling Reformed churches of France, avidly read from the pulpit and in the home. The accounts of the courage of the martyrs no doubt reinforced the resolution of a group destined to remain a minority, and who became increasingly resigned to their fate. During the civil strife known as the French Wars of Religion, religious tensions were exacerbated by political and military conflict. However, the incident which provoked the outbreak of the wars in 1562 was the massacre of a Huguenot congregation at Vassy, in Champagne, and, indeed, the wars were to be particularly noted for their brutal sectarian violence.