martyrdom

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From the Greek word meaning ‘witness’, the term was originally used within Christianity for the Apostles — that is, those who had witnessed Christ's life and resurrection. As Christians came to be persecuted in the pre-Constantinian period, it was used first for those who underwent hardship for the faith, and then only for those who died for the faith.

The suffering body plays an important role in the martyrdom accounts of the early Church. In that act of suffering torture and enduring death, the martyr defeated the enemy (identified with the devil) and imitated the suffering and endurance of Christ on the Cross. The idea of patience (‘patientia’) was important, for, in the practice of patience, a person became the master of their body and could battle their persecutors. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, martyred in 258, preached on this in his sermon ‘On the Good of Endurance’, three years before his own martyrdom. Thus developed the notion of active resistance through the ‘patience’ of the body, and martyrdom narratives stressed both the physicality of the Christian's suffering, and the dignity of the Christian's bodily gestures. In the account of Polycarp's death, his age and stamina, his composure despite a scraped shin, his upright stance in the flames (with no need of being tied to the stake) are all emphasized by the narrator.

Martyrs were portrayed as overcoming worldly concerns in their endurance, as seen, for example, in female martyrs who were represented as being as strong as men in their endurance, to the extent that they could overcome worldly notions of gender. Blandina, one of the third-century martyrs of Lyons, was both a woman and a slave and yet bore her tortures like a ‘noble athlete’. Perpetua, who wrote part of her martyrdom account herself before she died at Carthage in 203, wrote of a vision she had just before her death in which she had to fight an Egyptian: when she stripped for combat she discovered she had become a man; she defeated the Egyptian easily and trampled on the head of a serpent. Both she and Felicitas, who died with her, were mothers: Perpetua weaned her baby while in prison, and Felicitas gave birth almost on the eve of her death. Their martyrdom account speaks frankly of the physical aspects of their being mothers and martyrs, Perpetua commenting on the absence of pain in her breasts when she stopped nursing her child, and a comparison being made between the blood of Felicitas giving birth and the blood of martyrdom.

The bodies of martyrs quickly became sacred, and their relics were sought. As early as the mid second century, Christians were trying to reclaim the martyr's body after death — as in the case of Polycarp (who died in 155 or 156 ad), but in that case they were frustrated by the Nicetes and the Jews and had to be content with the ashes of the cremated Polycarp. A martyr's relics were collected and kept at the tomb, and, from the end of the second century, the anniversary of a martyr's death was kept as a feast, often with a liturgical celebration at the tomb. Later, in the post-Constantinian era, churches and cathedrals were often built on the sites of these tombs and the martyr's relics — which were thought to have great holy power — were kept under the altar. This practice continued in the Roman Catholic church up until 1969, for until then relics of martyrs had to be contained in every consecrated altar. Martyrs' days are still kept in the Roman Catholic and Anglican liturgical calendars, when the priests' stoles and chasubles are red to signify the martyrs' blood shed for the faith.

In the Reformation period, The Bloody Theatre, or The Martyrs' Mirror (a set of documents about Anabaptist martyrs collected in the seventeenth century by the Dutchman, Thieleman Van Braght), and the Protestant John Fox's Book of Martyrs, stressed, like early Christian martyrdom accounts, the endurance and heroism of those who were persecuted and died for their faith. Amongst twentieth-century Christian martyrs might be included Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and Martin Luther King.

In Judaism martyrdom is seen as obligatory — the path to be taken rather than breaking the laws of idolatry, unchastity, or murder. The history of Jewish martyrs goes back to the Hellenistic period (as evidenced in the Books of Maccabees). It has included those such as the scholar Akiva, who died in revolts against the Romans in the second century ce; those who died in periods of persecution and in pogroms in Europe in the medieval and modern periods — such as the Jewish scholar and physician, Ibn Daud, who died in Toledo in the late twelfth century; and continued into the twentieth century with the millions who died in the Holocaust, from 1933 to 1945.

The Arabic term for witness is ‘Shahid’, and has come to mean ‘martyr’. In Islamic tradition, one who dies in battle against the infidels is promised great rewards in paradise. Being already pure, these martyrs' bodies are not washed before burial and may be buried in their blood-stained battle clothes. Shi‘a Islam places a particular emphasis on martyrdom. The death of the prophet al-Husain in the Karbala tragedy in the seventh century, an event which became a founding event for Shi‘a Islam, made al-Husain the chief of martyrs. Followers who engage ritually in an imitation of his sufferings perform severe self-flagellation and, sometimes, the re-enactment of his life and death.

Sikhs who have been martyred for their faith — ‘sahid’ in Hindi — have included, recently, those who died at the hands of the British in the twentieth century, and earlier, those who chose torture rather than accept Islam — some of whom suffered particularly gruesome deaths, including being sawn in half, being boiled to death, being roasted alive in an oil-soaked cloth, death on a wheel, and scalping.

— Jane Shaw

Bibliography

• Shaw, B. D. (1996). Body/power/identity: passions of the martyrs. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 4(3), 269-312

n

Definition: perpetuated suffering
Antonyms: apostasy, contentment, happiness, satisfaction

IN BRIEF: Submission to death or persecution for the sake of faith or principle.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom. — Voltaire (1694-1778)

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Quotes:

"I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows." - Gabriel Peri

"Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief." - Arthur Schnitzler

"No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true." - Oscar Wilde

"What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson

"I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way." - John Mason Brown

"The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower." - Florence Nightingale

See more famous quotes about Martyrdom

For a list of words related to martyrdom, see:

• Attitudes and Behavior - martyrdom: willingness to die rather than renounce one's beliefs or principles
• Syndromes, Disorders, and Conditions - martyrdom: tendency to take blame or burdens upon oneself, esp. to elicit sympathy or guilt in others; self-victimization
• Murder and Suicide - martyrdom: self-sacrifice for the sake of some principle or cause
• Religious States and Experiences - martyrdom: self-sacrifice to point of death in service of others or for maintenance of one’s faith

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See words rhyming with "martyrdom."

Dansk (Danish)
n. - martyrium, martyrdød

Nederlands (Dutch)
martelgang, martelaarschap

Français (French)
n. - martyre

Deutsch (German)
n. - Martyrium

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μαρτύριο, μαρτυρικός θάνατος

Italiano (Italian)
martirio

Português (Portuguese)
n. - martírio (m)

Русский (Russian)
мученичество

Español (Spanish)
n. - martirio

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - martyrskap

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
殉教, 殉节, 殉难

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 殉教, 殉節, 殉難

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 순교, 고난

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 殉教, 殉死, 苦痛, 苦難

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) إستشهاد‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮מות קדושים, סבל רב‬

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