The Early Christian Martyrdom Narratives: Narrative Features, Intertextuality and the Authoritative Texts Behind

Marijana Vuković

The torments that Christian martyrs were put through in the initial centuries of Christianity, which consequently led many of them to death, were docu- mented in martyrdom narratives. These narratives loomed as a testimony of the mishap. As Maureen Tilley argues, “they were memorials to the courage of those who preferred death to apostasy.”1 They honored the martyrs’ faith, for which martyrs sacrificed their lives. Yet, although martyrdom narratives are among the first hagiographical writings that promote saintly characters within Chris- tianity (they come forth already from the second century ce), they present a genre time and again called “problematic.”2 Numerous ambiguous issues open to question related to these narratives caused disinclination of scholars to get to grips with them. To name some, martyrdom narratives are to the most part bereft of authorship. Imprecise dating and the questionable authenticity of some of the narratives further embroils the answer as to the body of this literature. It is indefinite as to when this literature evanesces and transforms into other forms. Additionally, scholars are nowadays hesitant about the inclusion of martyrdom narratives in hagiography.3 Ultimately, scholars do not employ the set term for the genre designation.

1 M. Tilley, “Scripture as an Element of Social Control: Two Martyr Stories of Christian North Africa,” The Harvard Theological Review 83, No. 4 (1990): 383–397. 2 See C.R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 3–18. See also D. Loades, “Introduction,” in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. D. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), xv. 3 Many scholars do not see martyrdom literature as part of hagiography and consequently many studies on hagiography do not include martyrdom narratives. In her article on martyr passions in the Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, Susan Harvey admits that a large number of scholars take the Life of Antony as a real turning point and the beginning of literary genre of hagiography proper: the saint’s vita. Robert Bartlett has recently reasserted that hagiography was born with the Life of St Antony and Life of St Martin. Yet, Timothy Barnes makes clear that he employs the term “hagiography” to designate the study of the evidence relating to saints and martyrs, while he exploits martyrdom narratives extensively in his study. The cutting-edge scholarship on Byzantine hagiography, The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography i, edited by Stephanos Efthymiadis, excludes early martyrdom narra-

As to the naming, “martyrdom narrative” is a coined novel phrase, which attempts at replacing interim ill-assorted terms for the genre. The phrase stands for what scholars ordinarily address as “the acts and the passions of the martyrs.” The proposed expression implies the ending of a text in a martyr’s death/ martyrdom, which is a conventional mannerism of both the acts and the passions of the martyrs. Additionally, it does not necessitate any further distinction between the two. Previously, scholars ventured on demarcating differentiation between the two groups. Delehaye puts forward that the acta contain mainly interrogation, while the passio narrates events from the arrest up to the death of a martyr.4 Hilhorst relies on several authors in highlighting that the acts/acta refer to the trial records on which at least some of the martyrs’ acts were based.5 Tilley

tives. Efthymiadis nevertheless includes “passions” as forms of hagiographical narrative in his second volume of the Ashgate Companion. Martin Hinterberger also refers to the “passions” as the subgenre of hagiography in the same publication. See S. Efthymiadis, “New Develop- ments in Hagiography: The Rediscovery of Byzantine Hagiography,” in Hagiography in Byzan- tium: Literature, Social History and Cult (Burlington, vt: Ashgate Variorum, 2011), i, 157–171, about the commencement of the hagiographical genre with The Life of Antony in the fourth century. See also idem, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography i (Burlington, vt: Ashgate Variorum, 2011), 9; idem, “Introduction,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography ii: Genres and Contexts, ed. S. Efthymiadis (Burling- ton, vt: Ashgate, 2014), 4; G.W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 39; C. Walsh, The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe (Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2007), 8–9; M. Van Uytfanghe, “L’hagiographie: un ‘genre’ chrétien ou antique tardif?”Analecta Bollandiana 111 (1993): 135–188; S.A. Harvey, “Martyr Pas- sions and Hagiography,” in TheOxfordHandbook ofEarlyChristianStudies, ed. S.A. Harvey and D.G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 608; T.D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiog- raphy and Roman History (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), ix; R. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 19–22; M. Hinterberger, “Byzantine Hagiography and its Lit- erary Genres. Some Critical Observations,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography ii: Genres and Contexts, ed. S. Efthymiadis (Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2014), 28. 4 H. Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires (Brussels: Société des Bollan- distes, 1966), 173. 5 See A. Hilhorst, “The Apocryphal Acts as Martyrdom Texts: The Case of the Acts of Andrew,” in The Apocryphal Acts of John, ed. J.N. Bremmer (Kampen: Pharos, 1995), 1–14. See also H. Leclercq, “Actes des martyrs,” in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie i, ed. F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907); Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires; G. Lanata, Gli atti dei martiri come documenti processuali (Milan, 1973); G.A. Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts of Martyrs and Commentarii (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988); Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome.