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Albany, NY – In today's Academic Minute, Dr. Barbara Gold of Hamilton College reveals how Christians of the late Roman Empire created the modern concept of what it means to be a martyr.
Barbara Gold is the Edward North Professor of Classics at Hamilton College where her research interests include Greek and Roman literature, women in antiquity, and late antique/early Christian literature. Gold is the first woman to edit The American Journal of Philology and has written and edited numerous works, including the forthcoming, Perpetua: a Martyr's Tale, due out in 2012 from Oxford University Press.
Dr. Barbara Gold - What Makes a Martyr?
When you think of a martyr, what image comes to mind? People who blow themselves up on behalf of a cause or because they are seeking entrance to an eternal paradise? While today that might be true, a martyr in the Roman empire was quite a different story. The age of martyrs in ancient Rome lasted until the 4th century, when Constantine made Christianity a legitimate religion and soon the dominant religion in the empire.
At first, the Greek word "martyr" meant simply "a witness," and it was applied to those who gave testimony to their faith and to the glory of God. As the enthusiasm for martyrdom increased in the face of persecutions by the 3rd-4th- century emperors, a martyr came to be less a witness than someone who was willing, even eager to die for his or her faith, often in the face of brutal torments inflicted by Roman governors across the empire, particularly in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and Roman North Africa (modern Tunisia). These Roman martyrs did not die by their own hand but were willing accomplices in their own deaths, stubbornly insisting on adhering to their Christian identity and beliefs, rejecting the Roman calls to sacrifice to the gods for the emperor's welfare, and eagerly meeting gruesome deaths in various amphitheaters throughout the ancient world.
The Christian church tried to dampen the ardor of these "voluntary martyrs" who wished to give up their lives in as public a way as possible, and it was eventually successful. But as has become clear, this militant way of death has persisted in Islam, a religion for which many men and women have committed suicide to witness to their faith and to attain eternal glory.