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On the Frequency of Voluntary Martyrdom in the Patristic Era

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The Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol. 70, Pt 2, October 2019 ON THE FREQUENCY OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM IN THE PATRISTIC ERA ALAN VINCELETTE Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/70/2/652/5556433 by guest on 28 September 2021 St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo, CA [email protected] Abstract Contemporary scholarship on early Christian martyrdom has tended to ac- cept the position of G. E. M. de Ste. Croix that voluntary martyrdom, or handing oneself over to the authorities prior to being sought out or arrested, was quite common. This view falls apart, however, if we avoid an overly broad definition of voluntary martyrdom, a problem common to Ste. Croix and contemporaries such as Arthur Droge, Paul Middleton, and Candida Moss, who count various political protestors, public edifiers, and comforters and aiders as voluntary martyrs. In fact, if we carefully examine the accounts of martyrdom that took place in the first four centuries, vol- untary martyrdom, though not unknown, makes up a small percentage of the whole, around 12 per cent instead of the 50 per cent described by Ste. Croix and others. VOLUNTARY martyrdom refers to acts wherein martyrs aid and abet their own execution by willingly turning themselves in to authorities and confessing their faith. Recent scholarship on early Christian martyrdom has brought out just how common and accepted voluntary martyrdom was in the early church. Through the work of scholars such as G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Arthur Droge, Paul Middleton, and Candida Moss, we now see that far from being restricted to heretical sects such as the Montanists and Donatists, voluntary martyrdom was prevalent in ‘orthodox’ Christian circles and indeed much celebrated.1 1 Even prior to Ste. Croix scholars had noted the occurrence of voluntary martyrdom among orthodox Christians. See, for instance, Maurice Hassatt, ‘Martyr’, in Charles Herbermann (ed.), The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), p. 737. Certainly this viewpoint goes back at least to Edward Gibbon, who observed how the Christians ‘sometimes supplied by their voluntary declaration the want of an accuser’, and ‘rushing in crowds round the tribunal of the magistrates, called upon them to pronounce and to inflict the sentence of the law’. See Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 (London: W. W. Gibbings, 1890), p. 406. See also # The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected] doi:10.1093/jts/flz108 Advance Access publication 29 August 2019 VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 653 The foundational work here was done by G. E. M de Ste. Croix, who argued that not only was voluntary martyrdom com- mon among early orthodox Christians but that it was a key factor in why they were persecuted by the Romans.2 Ste. Croix took issue with scholars such as Henry Chadwick and Edmund Le Blant, who claimed that, apart from members of heretical sects, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/70/2/652/5556433 by guest on 28 September 2021 the early Christians did not accord voluntary martyrs the status of saints, and in fact their acts were frowned upon.3 Ste. Croix wrote: Contrary to what is usually said, voluntary martyrdom was by no means confined mainly to heretical or schismatic sects such as the Montanists and Donatists, but was a good deal more common among the orthodox than is generally admitted ...Wedohear of an astonishingly large num- ber of volunteers, most of whom, whatever the bishops might say, were given full honour as martyrs, the general body of the faithful apparently regarding them with great respect.4 For supporting evidence, Ste. Croix undertook a comprehensive study of the martyrdoms described in Eusebius’s Martyres Palestinae (c.315) and concluded that approximately twice as many or 66 per cent were voluntary martyrs or had attracted the attention of authorities by the boldness of their actions, as had been sought out by authorities.5 Prior to this Ste. Croix had pp. 404–7, 429 where Gibbon gives some of the same examples later found in Ste. Croix. 2 G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, ‘Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?’, Past and Present 26 (1963), pp. 6–38, reprinted in G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 105–52. See also his even earlier ‘Aspects of the “Great” Persecution’, Harvard Theological Review 47 (1954), pp. 75–113, also reprinted in Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, pp. 35–78. 3 Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, p. 156. Ste. Croix has in mind the views expressed in Henry Chadwick’s translation of Origen, Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 501, n. 3, and in Edmond Le Blant, ‘Polyeucte et le zele temeraire’, Memoires de l’Institut nationale de France, Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 28 (1876), pp. 335–52. 4 Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, p. 130. See also pp. 155–6, 198–200. 5 Ibid., pp. 65–6. Ste. Croix distinguishes here between those who actively brought arrest and death upon themselves (or what he will later call voluntary martyrdom proper) and those who, without going so far as to demand martyrdom, attracted undue attention to themselves (or what he will later call quasi-voluntary martyrdom). The former group constituted 28% (13/47) and the latter 38% (18/47) of the total number of demarcated martyrdoms in Eusebius’s Martyres Palestinae according to Ste. Croix. In addition, Ste. Croix notes the existence of 44 other martyrs for whom there is not enough 654 ALAN VINCELETTE undertaken a broader study on voluntary martyrdom in the early church, wherein he identified twenty-eight additional ‘voluntary’ martyrs or groups of martyrs described in various Acta martyrum or other patristic writings, but this work was not published in his lifetime, even if some of its material made its way into his 1954 and 1963 essays.6 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/70/2/652/5556433 by guest on 28 September 2021 Contemporary scholarship has tended to follow Ste. Croix on this point. Moss, for instance, argues that second-century accounts treat voluntary martyrdom no differently from non-voluntary mar- tyrdom, pointing out that ‘There are many historical moments in which “eager martyrs” have been praised and valorized—not only because the actions of one’s own martyrs are always good—but be- cause volunteering has sometimes been idealized.’7 Droge, even more radically, argues that for the early Christians ‘life was at best unimportant and at worst evil’ and death ‘a release, anxiously awaited and sometimes eagerly sought out’.8 On account of this, claims Droge, ‘From the second century on, voluntary martyrdom was practiced and idealized by both “orthodox” and “heretic” alike, in the East as well as in the West’, and so, as opposed to waiting to be sought out, ‘the majority of Christian martyrs chose death by the second and third means [of deliberately volunteering or actually taking their own lives]’.9 Finally, Middleton adds that the earliest? Christian martyrdom accounts celebrated voluntary martyrdom as a ‘valid mainstream Christian practice, which faced only isolated challenge in the first three centuries’.10 information to decide if they were voluntary martyrs or not. See also Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, pp. 130–2, 176–9. 6 ‘Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church’, which was first published in Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, pp. 153–200, esp. pp. 165–83. 7 Candida Moss, ‘The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern’, Church History 81 (2012), pp. 531–51, at 547–8. This essay is an ex- pansion of the account given in Candida Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 145–58. 8 Arthur Droge, ‘The Crown of Immortality: Toward a Redescription of Christian Martyrdom’, in John Collins and Michael Fishbane (eds.), Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995), pp. 155–70, at 158. This essay has been partially reprinted in Arthur Droge and James Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992), pp. 129–66. 9 Droge, ‘The Crown of Immortality’, pp. 152 and 156. Droge, however, seems to consider anyone who is arrested and sentenced to death but goes to death willingly or eagerly as a voluntary martyr. 10 Paul Middleton, ‘Early Christian Voluntary Martyrdom: A Statement for the Defence’, JTS, NS 64 (2013), pp. 556–73, at 556. This essay has been reprinted in part in Paul Middleton, ‘Radical Martyrdom in Early VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 655 P. Lorraine Buck has done a good job responding to Ste. Croix in regard to the evidence culled from Eusebius’s Martyres Palestinae and presented in his 1954 and 1963 essays, as well as to the work of Droge.11 The present essay, by contrast and comple- ment, examines the evidence for voluntary martyrdom presented in Ste. Croix’s posthumous article ‘Voluntary Martyrdom in the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/70/2/652/5556433 by guest on 28 September 2021 Early Church’ as well as in the works of Middleton and Moss. It concludes that due to an overly broad definition of voluntary mar- tyrdom, as well as some oversights in handling the martyrdom lit- erature, voluntary martyrdom was not very common among early ‘orthodox’ Christians, constituting only around 12 per cent of the martyrdoms. In his posthumous article, Ste. Croix collects an impressive array of Christians who undertook ‘voluntary martyrdoms’, con- taining no fewer than 40 names, not even including the 31 Palestine martyrs.12 Excluding the Decian and post-Decian mar- tyrs found in Eusebius (who will be dealt with later), he lists the following as voluntary martyrs or near-martyrs (i.e.
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