Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts 9780520966642

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Classical Literature Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from Joan Palevsky.

Divine Deliverance

Divine Deliverance Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts

L. Stephanie Cobb

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2017 by L. Stephanie Cobb

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cobb, L. Stephanie, author. Title: Divine deliverance : pain and painlessness in early Christian martyr texts / L. Stephanie Cobb. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2016020695 (print) | lccn 2016024626 (ebook) | isbn 9780520293359 (book/cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520966642 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Martyrologies—History and criticism. | Christian martyrs in literature. | Pain in literature. Classification: lcc br1609 .c63 2016 (print) | lcc br1609 (ebook) | ddc 272—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020695

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contents

Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations

ix xiii xv

Introduction

1

1. Bodies in Pain: Ancient and Modern Horizons of Expectation

15

2. Text and Audience: Activating and Obstructing Expectations

31

3. Divine Analgesia: Painlessness in a Pain-Filled World

63

4. Whose Pain? Pain as a Locus of Meaning in Christian Martyr Texts

93

5. Narratives and Counternarratives: Discourse and Early Christian Martyr Texts Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

122 149 159 211 233

preface

Without realizing it, I planted the seeds for Divine Deliverance in the introduction to my first book, Dying to Be Men, when I hinted at the relationship between gendered language and the textual depiction of the martyrs as oblivious to the pain inflicted by torture.1 After that book was published, readers asked me regularly about this passing comment, which pressed me to think about the issue more carefully. How widespread are the assertions that mutilated and tortured bodies are neither harmed nor in pain? What is an audience—ancient or modern—to make of such incredible claims? Intrigued, I returned to the texts with which I was most familiar: the secondand third-century Christian martyr narratives. This literature constructs the identities and reflects the desires and fundamental beliefs of nascent Christianities, and so it offers glimpses into early Christian interests and concerns. But rather than limiting my inquiry to these texts—which were the primary focus of Dying to Be Men—I collected data from a wider variety of martyr texts. I examined both Jewish and Christian texts (of varying stripes) from across the Empire, written in both Greek and Latin, and that spanned over five centuries. I observed that while these texts describe torture, often in great detail, they don’t describe the pain that would presumably result. In fact, the narratives reject the association of martyrdom with pain, employ several narrative tools to depict torture as not painful, and use the language of analgesia—painlessness. I began to explore reasons for these surprising claims beyond their implicit claims to masculinity; in particular, I was interested in the relationship between insensitivity to pain and certain trends in Stoic thought. When I shared my observations with colleagues, one of them asked a provocative question: Can the texts actually do what they seem to want to do? ix

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Divine Deliverance is the result of my struggle with that question. In this book I work through the evidence that the texts try to depict martyrdom as painless, and I show how they (usually) manage to do so. I also wrestle with another colleague’s astute question: Don’t the texts undermine their own arguments when they so carefully catalogue the torture applied to Christian bodies? Can a text simultaneously detail dissolution and assert impassibility—the inability to experience pain? And if pain is not a locus of meaning for the ideology of martyrdom in these texts, why do they describe torture so carefully? In the process of developing this book, I have come to believe that when we approach martyr texts as primarily historical accounts of past events, we exacerbate the tension between cataloguing torture and rejecting pain. When we imagine the martyrs described in these texts as having real bodies that feel in the same ways our bodies feel, the narrative descriptions and unlikely claims don’t fit what we know about bodies. But, I argue, these texts are not—or are not primarily— historical accounts. They are theological constructions dedicated to showing that bodies which should be in pain are in fact not in pain because God has intervened to protect them. The martyr texts therefore may be usefully read as miracle stories. The focus on the merciful and miraculous acts of God in torture and death shifts the horizon of expectation, allowing the audience to make sense of the counterintuitive claims to Christian insensitivity to pain. Just as the raising of Lazarus is unproblematic for New Testament scholars because they read it through the lens of miracle rather than historical plausibility, so our reading of the martyrs’ impassibility is facilitated by a shift in generic expectations. My colleague’s query about the martyr texts’ ability to do what they seem to want to do raises still another question: Who is reading? Meaning is always made between a text and a reader/hearer and thus a text can mean differently. Because texts are by nature fluid, they remain open to readers’ interpretations even when those interpretations transgress what appear to be the texts’ interests. Some scholars read martyr texts as valorizing pain; others see them as sadistic or masochistic in their depictions of pain, and still others argue that characterizing martyr texts as sadistic or masochistic does not help us understand the ancient audience’s concerns. My interests in this book lie in observing the textual rhythms and movements that promote a particular ideology of martyrdom at a particular time and place. And in this I see the texts as clear and consistent: they insist on the painlessness of martyrdom and thus show that pain is merely an illusion. What at first glance appear to be counterintuitive and even chimerical claims are, on closer inspection, aligned with a number of preexisting discourses. For one, the martyrs’ experiences may reflect certain philosophical and eschatological discourses. For another, the discourse of painlessness is also a powerful tool by which Christian authors and communities can reject and reframe an identity—as a group susceptible to Roman

Preface

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judicial pain—constructed for them. At least that is what they set out to do. But as I also show in this book, authors and texts are not always successful in making their points. Readers, for any number of reasons, may reject a text’s claims. And thus, privileging one reception of a text (much less one intention) over another is unnecessary. It is, I think, more useful to notice the places where audiences resist the text’s claims and to examine why.

acknowled gments

Writing acknowledgments for a book is, for me, a deeply humbling task. This is the case because it is at this moment in the process—as my manuscript is on the verge of becoming a book—that I realize how small a part I have played in bringing the work to fruition. The words that follow are of course mine, but the thoughts they reflect are the products of myriad conversations over the last decade with friends and colleagues from vastly different disciplines who approach texts and ideas from wildly different angles. I am lucky to be the beneficiary of all their wisdom. In the most literal of ways this book would not exist if it weren’t for Julie Byrne, Jo Ann Carson, Andrew Jacobs, Katie Lofton, and Dale Martin. To Jo Ann, a longtime family friend and a model of women in academia, I hope this book is a satisfactory answer to your questions about my claims concerning painless martyrdom in Dying to Be Men. Katie and Julie, thank you for your eternal confidence in me and in my work. Without your push to get this project off the ground, I might still be mired in the fear of putting words to the page. Dale and Andrew, each of you at various times over the last few years has offered feedback that pushed this project from a short journal article into a book. I hope I have begun to answer the insightful and complex questions you asked. I am fortunate to have brilliant friends—old and new—who have supported this project and myself: Julia Kasdorf, whom I met by chance on a friend’s porch, has been an inspirational dialogue partner about martyr narratives and their social functions; Diane Lipsett, whose enviable intelligence helped nuance my argument in untold numbers of places; Jane Geaney, who urged me to find a happy story in a book about pain and torture, and who continuously reminds me that Romans were not the only people inhabiting the ancient world; Amy Howard, who pushed xiii

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Acknowledgments

me to let go and put the manuscript out into the world; Lynn Neal, who motivates me to work but who also drinks margaritas with me when I just can’t write; Mark Masterson, whose candid thoughts on an early draft sent me back to the drawing board—and the project is better for it; Mari Lee Mifsud, who constantly reminds me that rhetorical theory is everywhere in the ancient world. As always, I am eternally thankful for my family, who provides regular—and much needed— respite from martyrs and pain. I have been the grateful recipient of funding, which allowed me to complete this project more quickly than I would otherwise have been able to do. I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities both for the opportunity to join a Summer Travel Seminar in 2010 to Tunisia, where so many of these texts first came alive to me, and for summer funding in 2014. The University of Richmond, School of Arts and Sciences granted me a perfectly timed research leave in the spring of 2014, during which I was able to draft most of this book. The university has also generously granted me Summer Research Funding for several consecutive years. I extend my thanks to Eric Schmidt of the University of California Press for his interest in the book and especially for his willingness to venture into the world of Christian martyrdom. Maeve Cornell-Taylor has been wonderful to work with, providing quick answers to any questions that arise. I am grateful to Rachel Berchten, the production editor at the Press, for keeping the project on schedule. I am especially thankful for Jeff Wyneken’s good cheer and expert eye in copyediting the manuscript. I wish to extend my thanks, too, to the readers of the manuscript for their comments and confidences regarding this project. I am particularly indebted to Patrick H. Alexander. I can think of no individual who has been more constant over the course of this project and who has given exactly the kind of support required: pushing me when I wasn’t up to writing; reminding me that relaxing is okay and even necessary; going on adventures together across the world; sharing my fascination with the ancient Roman world and with Christian texts, in particular. It is not often, I suspect, that someone is prouder and more excited to see a project completed than the author. But I have no doubts that, in this case, Patrick is. And for that, I am forever grateful. I have dedicated this book to Bart D. Ehrman, my doctoral advisor and my friend. He has been a constant champion of my work and early on urged me to pursue this book. In addition to the academic training I received from him, he continuously reminds me that even in the midst of academic work there is time in life for baseball and a nice single malt scotch. For all of these things and more, I am thankful.

abbreviations

ANF Apuleius, Flor. Aquinas, ST Aristophenes, Thesm. Aristotle, De an. Aristotle, Nic. Aristotle, Probl. Aristotle, Rhet. Augustine, An. orig. Augustine, Conf. Augustine, Serm. Aulus Gellius, Noct. att. Basil, Hom. Chrysostom, Hom. Cicero, Brut. Cicero, De Or. Cicero, Fin. Cicero, Mor. Cicero, Tusc. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. Columella, Rust. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dem. Epictetus, Disc. Epictetus, Ench.

Ante-Nicene Fathers Florida Summa Theologica Thesmophoriazusae Soul Nicomachean Ethics Problems Rhetoric The Soul and Its Origins Confessions Sermons Attic Nights Homilies Homilies Brutus De Oratore De Finibus Moralia Tusculan Disputations Stromateis De re rustica Demosthenes Discourses The Encheiridion xv

xvi

Abbreviations

Eusebius, H.E. Eusebius, Mart. Pal. 4 Macc Galen, Method. med. Homer, Il. Ignatius, Rom. Irenaeus, Haer. Justin Martyr, 2 Apol. Justinian, Dig. LCL Marcus Aurelius, Med. Mart. Apoll. Mart. Carp. Mart. Con. Mart. Fruct. Mart. Mont. Mart. Pion. Mart. Pol. Menander, Dysk. Minucius Felix, Oct. Origen, Comm. Matt. Pass. Perp. PG. Philo, Abr. PL. Plato, Gorg. Plato, Phileb. Plato, Theaet. Plato, Tim. Pliny the Elder, NH. Pliny the Younger, Ep. Plutarch, Mor. Prudentius, Peri. Quintilian, Decl. Scill. Seneca, Const. Seneca, Ep. Seneca, Phaedr. Sextus Empiricus, Pyr. SVF

Ecclesiastical History Martyrs of Palestine 4 Maccabees Method of Medicine Illiad To the Romans Against Heresies Second Apology Digest Loeb Classical Library Meditations Martyrdom of Apollonius Martyrdom of Carpus Martyrdom of Conon Martyrdom of Bishop Fructuosus and His Deacons, Augurius and Eulogius Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius Martyrdom of Pionius Martyrdom of Polycarp Dyskolos Octavius Commentary on Matthew Passion of Perpetua Patrologia Graeca On Abraham Patrologia Latina Gorgias Philebus Theaetetus Timaeus Natural History Letters Moralia Peristephanon Declamations Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs De Constantia Epistles Phaedra Outlines of Pyrrhonism Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta

Abbreviations

Tacitus, Ann. Tertullian, An. Tertullian, Apol. Tertullian, Res. Tertullian, Spect. Xenophon, An.

Annals De Anima Apology De resurrectione carnis De spectaculis Anabasis

xvii

Introduction Having just walked through the rest of the gallery and past paintings of the saints, it is thrilling to see them come to life so physically, so loudly and so subversively. —celia graham-dixon (yale books blog 1)

In July 2013 I visited the National Gallery in London to view some of the masterpieces of religious art. As it turns out, the visit was serendipitous because the museum was hosting a special exhibit on saints featuring the work of Michael Landy. Landy, Rootstein Hopkins Associate Artist in residence at the National Gallery, created a number of 3-D mechanical pieces of art that reflected his interpretations of the very paintings I had gone to the gallery to see.2 The sculptures were larger than life, designed for audience interaction—indeed, one review describes the exhibit as inviting viewers to “to torment, mutilate, and martyr fiberglass effigies of church legends”—and simultaneously mesmerizing and disturbing.3 St. Appolonia held a pair of pliers and continuously tore out her own teeth, a mechanical action that would eventually destroy her face altogether. St. Thomas poked his finger at Jesus’ wounded side as if it were a punching bag. St. Jerome served penance by beating himself with a rock when someone stepped on a foot pedal. Visitors could play the part of the persecutor by spinning St. Catherine’s wheel. The experiences I had that day in those two spaces—the special exhibit and the permanent exhibit—were strikingly different. As I stood in the gallery, observing Landy’s St. Francis hitting himself over the head with a crucifix when someone inserted donations, I was struck by the vast differences in experience and interpretation people have of martyr stories. I have worked with these texts for so long that perhaps I have become inured to the violence. Or maybe my time with these texts has brought me to see the violence in a new and different light. Landy “likes the saints because they are self-destructive.”4 In studying the martyr texts, he found “anarchists with pronounced self-destructive streaks.”5 Perhaps Landy’s interpretation of the martyrs stems from their willingness to submit to Roman authority. 1

2

Introduction

With few exceptions Christian martyrs do not attempt to avoid arrest, torture, and death. From this perspective we could see the martyrs’ actions as self-destructive. This is certainly a possible and, I would argue, even valuable reading of these texts for the modern world.6 In this book, however, I am more interested in thinking about the ways these texts might have functioned in early Christian communities. Thus in my readings these are not stories of people who destroy themselves—the martyr stories do not star masochistic Christians—but of people who are divinely delivered from pain, whose martyrdom preserves their bodies rather than destroys them. Landy’s exhibit was jarring to me because I saw in it what I fail to see in the martyr texts themselves: self-violence and bodily dissolution. While Landy’s saints function similarly to the martyr texts—both aim to make the martyrs’ physical and spiritual experiences meaningful to an audience—their messages are, I suggest, diametrically opposed. Where Landy’s martyrs inflict violence on themselves and in the process destroy their bodies, the martyr texts focus on the inability of outside forces to bring harm to and cause the dissolution of the Christian body. In this book I examine a particular set of Christian bodies—martyred bodies as described primarily though not exclusively in second- and third-century martyr narratives—that endure torture but do not experience pain. Martyr accounts do not simply depict the history of persecution. Rather, as most scholars of early Christianity recognize, they construct the identities of nascent Christianities. The accounts thus challenge prevailing cultural norms and articulate a radically new understanding of the body. In all of this I join other scholars of early Christianity. I diverge from previous scholarly work, however, by positing that with very rare exceptions the earliest Christian martyr texts do not claim that the martyrs experienced pain as a result of bodily torture. The ideologies of martyrdom developed in these texts, furthermore, are unconcerned with pain. To support this claim, I analyze the various narrative tools by which authors distance their heroes’ and heroines’ bodies from pain. I also contextualize the depictions of impassibility— the inability to feel pain—and impassivity—the lack of response to torture—within contemporary philosophical, religious, and judicial discourses. When viewed within these contexts, the martyrs’ experiences are not only less surprising than they may at first appear, but also more subversive. Divine Deliverance seeks to offer an alternative interpretation of early Christian martyr texts that parts from modern fascinations with gore and pain. Masochism may well be a part of martyrdom, but if it is, perhaps it reflects our own tendencies, not those of the martyrs. Because pain is not wholly absent from the martyr texts, this book also analyzes its presence: which narrative characters experience pain? in what circumstances, and why? It explores the ways susceptibility to pain and injury differentiates Christian and non-Christian characters. I argue that the narrative depictions of pain and painlessness serve Christian needs far beyond the development of ideologies of martyrdom. By taking account of both sides of the discourse—pain and its

Introduction

3

absence—we see more clearly the ways martyr texts contribute to central Christian doctrines such as Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology. This book is primarily concerned with the martyr texts’ assertions about pain, which may stand at odds with modern readers’ expectations. But to appreciate these narrative claims fully, we must also address several ancillary issues. The ways modern readers approach these texts, for instance, differ from ancient audiences’ experiences. We tend to read the texts silently, alone, and with particular genre expectations; ancient audiences most likely experienced these texts orally/aurally, communally, and almost certainly with different genre expectations. Most scholars are not threatened by persecution as they read these texts; many ancient audiences feared persecution, rightly or not. In addition, interpretive trends have shifted significantly over time—for instance, in the Middle Ages and again after the Enlightenment—and furthermore our relationship to and understanding of pain is markedly different from that of an ancient audience. All of these differences matter because meaning does not inhere in the text itself but is instead created in the interaction between text and hearer. In this book I do not argue that interpretations of martyr texts that center on pain are misreadings, but they are readings produced within different cultural and historical circumstances than likely would have obtained in the first centuries of Christian history. When we move away from interpretations that privilege pain, we can see the texts’ emotional appeals more clearly. And when we resist interpretations built upon historical bodies—or even verisimilitudinous ones—we can perceive a broader set of ideological interests. AU D I E N C E A N D R E C E P T IO N

The vast majority of texts in early Christianity—indeed, in antiquity—were written with hearers, not readers, in mind. Consequently, the reader-response approaches that emerged in the 1960s have distinct limitations for understanding ancient textual practices. While these approaches rightfully reminded us that readers interpret text—texts, that is, do not have meaning apart from readers— they do not take full account of the oral/aural experience of ancient audiences. Given what we know about the sociological makeup of the early church and the literacy rates in antiquity, however, we simply cannot posit a community of readers.7 Scholars of antiquity who take up reader-response approaches, then, typically nod to the fact that in the ancient world “readers” are really “hearers” by substituting the word “audience” or the combination “reader/hearer” for the less accurate “reader.” But by and large, scholarly interpretations remain focused on texts, on manuscripts, on interpretive processes deeply rooted in written cultures. Even when the oral/aural culture is acknowledged, it may not influence interpretation.8

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Introduction

Focusing on reading rather than hearing audiences, however, risks distorting the exegetical process. A reader-centered focus, for example, may privilege meaning while underestimating the experiential effects of texts. In this case “response” is understood largely in cognitive rather than affective terms: responses are “not feeling shivers along the spine, weeping in sympathy, or being transported with awe, but having one’s expectations proved false, struggling with an irresolvable ambiguity, or questioning the assumptions upon which one had relied,” as Jonathan Culler notes.9 But in the ancient world, rhetoric is designed to move hearers and to prompt action.10 “Right listening,” Plutarch claims, “is deemed the beginning of right living” (Mor. 48D).11 We do well, therefore, to bring to the forefront of our interpretive practices a sensitivity to the ways that texts are not merely vehicles for constructing meaning but are events that invite audiences to participate in narrative action, in emotional appeals, and sometimes in social and political causes.12 Reading with an eye to orality reveals that even in their written form early Christian texts employ techniques of oral delivery, and this is certainly true for martyr texts: these narratives directly address their audiences; they appeal to the emotions; they explore alternative positions by means of question and answer; they imagine various characters’ positions.13 We must acknowledge, though, that a listener-centered focus is complicated because early Christian audiences are lost to us. For the earliest generations of hearers of martyr texts we can only imagine— more or less fictionally—what their experiences of the recitation of stories of martyrs might have been. For the earliest period, Christian hearers are beyond our empirical reach. Surely their experiences were varied, depending on time, place, and prior knowledge. We do know a great deal about Christian audiences of a slightly later period. Augustine’s sermons, for example, offer evidence of the ways homilies were given and received in the fifth century. These sermons indicate that Augustine expected his congregation to experience a range of emotions when listening to martyr accounts. Discussing the famous North African bishop and martyr, Cyprian, Augustine reminds his audience that “we were listening with our ears, attending to it with our minds; we could see him contending, in a way we were afraid for him in his peril, but we trusted God would help him.”14 Augustine further describes that as he is “watching” and is “delighted by” Cyprian, it is as if he “can embrace,” “see,” and “rejoice” in the saint and his victory.15 Here Augustine maps the emotional contours of the aural experience; he guides his congregation through the emotions of fear, anxiety, and hope as they hear Cyprian witness to his faith. When Augustine and his congregation are afraid for Cyprian and hope for God to intervene, they are imagining themselves as eyewitnesses to the martyrdom. The pathos of the text—its appeal to emotions—brings past events into the Christian present collapsing chronological and geographical distances.16 The performance of martyr accounts makes the martyr saint fully present in the fifth-century church.17

Introduction

5

But for the second- and early third-century church we must make some reasoned guesses, based on later practices, the architecture of house churches, clues in the texts themselves, and by drawing some informed parallels between Christian hearers in communal settings and other hearers in communal settings—such as the theater or the courtroom. Our interpretation must remain somewhat speculative; the discipline of foregrounding the listening subjects and investigating the range of their potential responses, however, balances out the uncertainty of interpretation. If we take seriously that the earliest encounters with martyr texts were decidedly not with the printed page but instead oral/aural, then we must be willing to wade into waters of some uncertainty since the terra firma on which interpretation so often relies is built upon a model that we know was not employed, namely, readers reading texts. To grasp the model that was employed, we must contemplate the real-time experience of the Christian audience as they gathered together to hear Christian texts. We must be attentive to the affective qualities of narratives, particularly in their sequential development, as Stephen Moore observes: That we occupy a different world from that of first-century Christianity is a truism. But the orality-literacy factor persuades us that this is not the whole truth: we occupy not just a different world, but a different galaxy as well—“the Gutenberg galaxy”. . . . Since Gutenberg we have exchanged a primal sea for dry land, as it were, and now our water-breathing is confined by mime. Thus contextualized, the consecutive mode of exegesis, which seeks to immerse itself in the time-flow of the text, offers at least some corrective to our print-shaped, sight-dominant conception of biblical texts—that is, as quiescent, immobile objects to be dismantled or quantified.18

Augustine’s sermon on Cyprian and Moore’s exegetical program work in tandem to help us imagine the experiential qualities of early Christian martyr texts. Before we can understand how the narrative sequences and plot structures of the martyr accounts affected the listening audience, we must first imagine who this ancient audience was. The names and personal experiences of these Christians are lost to us, but they heard, struggled with, and found inspiration in the stories of faithful Christians who witnessed unto death. What was their emotional experience in listening to the trials, to the unjust charges leveled against their compatriots, to the graphic tortures depicted so carefully that they became images burning in their minds? How might the collective experience of recitation and hearing affect their experience? How might a first-time hearer be swept along with more experienced Christians in the ups and downs of these stories? What experiences did these hearers bring with them to the community gatherings that would inform their interpretations of martyr texts? Imagining these experiences may point us to ways early Christians used these texts; they can guide historical and literary interpretations, even if they do not delineate all possible meanings communities might find in these texts. The

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Introduction

cultural knowledge ancient Christians likely brought to their listening experiences informs, as we will see, the range of meanings available in these texts.19 Although the questions above may not have empirical answers, they are nonetheless worth contemplating as we study the martyr texts. Such questions will inevitably add texture and nuance to interpretations of these texts since reading these texts qua texts and reading them in our own modern setting represent different experiences than would obtain in antiquity. The Ancient Audience and the Reception of Martyr Texts In most cases the earliest Christian audiences would have been together when they heard literary accounts of martyrdom, likely in a house church—a private home in which a group of Christians would worship. Most of our hearers were likely standing rather than sitting, and standing rather close to one another, according to Ramsay MacMullen’s work on the material remains of the early church.20 There would be, in other words, a clear sense of being a part of a collective. These hearers were not alone; they were not solitary receivers of stories, but rather they were among like-minded community members where they could have been influenced by each others’ physical movements, tears, laughs, gasps, retorts, and applause. The transference of emotion—emotional contagion—is triggered through facial, vocal, and postural feedback and is aided by an interest in the welfare of those around us.21 People are more likely, that is, to share the emotional experiences of those whom they like.22 The communal aspect of Christian worship sets the stage not merely for shared auditory experiences but also for shared emotional experiences. Emotional contagion can lead to what Durkheim called “collective effervescence,” which can electrify a crowd.23 This collective effervescence is, according to Randall Collins, “the rhythmic entrainment of all participants into a mood that feels stronger than any of them individually, and carries them along as if under a force from outside.”24 Those listening to martyr texts may have experienced emotional contagion at several levels: the martyrs’ own emotions—their fear, their confidence, their resolve— may have transferred to the audience; the fear or indignation the texts attribute to the narrative eyewitnesses of the martyrdom might transfer to the audience; and the emotions of fellow audience members could spread from hearer to hearer. Early Christian listeners heard speakers. By stressing this, I mean to draw attention to the fact that speakers inflect their speech, tell stories, engage and entertain audiences.25 Ancient rhetoricians taught that the speaker must keep his audience on track by modulating his voice, by pausing effectively, by dramatic intonation, and even by facial expressions and physical gestures. According to the firstcentury BCE Greek rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus, texts offer implicit speech cues to the orator: do not the words “themselves cry aloud and teach us how they should be spoken, almost uttering aloud, ‘Here the tone should be refined, here you should speak eagerly, here in a measured way; here you should

Introduction

7

break off the continuity, here join together the sequence; here show sympathy, there be disdainful; be frightened of this, ridicule this, and exaggerate that?’ ” (Dem. 54). Appropriate tone, while important, is not enough, however. Dionysius teaches that the speaker must have the same facial expressions as “those who are truly experiencing it employ” (54). Likewise, the Roman rhetoricians Cicero and Quintilian maintain that the orator who wishes to engage the emotions of his audience must exhibit those same emotions if he is to be received as credible.26 If Christian delivery of martyr texts followed these principles, not only would the dialogue be verbally expressive—quite unlike the monotone recitation of Scripture in many churches today—but it would also be physically expressive, embodying outrage, jest, pun, accusation, and confession. Discussing the power of the speaker over his audience, Cicero writes, “When the one speaking rises the assembly will give a sign for silence, then repeated assent, abundant admiration; laughter when he wills it or, when he wills it, tears” (Brut. 84.290).27 As Longinus observes, a good speaker directs his hearers’ emotions and thus can “run away with his audience” (On the Sublime, 16.2), stirring them, as Harrison notes, “to compassionate, empathetic identification with the emotion he conveyed, so that they shared it, were moved by it, and were irresistibly overcome by it.”28 We must not undervalue the power of rhetoric—tools and techniques Christians shared with the larger literary culture—in martyr accounts because it points to the social function of narratives. Rather, our interpretations should be informed by the study of the rhetorical tools—and their effects—utilized by authors of martyr texts. Imagining the speaker’s tone when reading different portions of the martyr accounts, for instance, affects meaning: would a given passage have been read with pity? with sarcasm? in condemnation? Such variations in tone lead audiences to understand narrative discourse in particular ways. Hearing is second only to sight as the most important sense in ancient philosophical discussions of sense perception.29 The mechanism by which hearing works is analogous to sight: hearing impresses a memory on the mind, which allows images to be recalled. Cicero explains the importance of visualizing a memory that has been imprinted by hearing: since sight is the strongest of the senses, things that are heard are best remembered “if they are also transmitted to our minds by means of sight, with the result that things unseen and invisible are designated by a sort of shape and image and form so that we grasp things, as it were, by looking closely that we can barely embrace by means of thinking” (De Or. 2.87.357–58; LCL). Sense perception, moreover, was understood to form (but also reform or deform) the mind; so the things one heard or saw, or thought one heard and saw, were powerful for good or for ill.30 Vision, for instance, could “connect the viewer so intimately to its object that the adhesion could damage the soul beyond repair.”31 Thus Christian authors navigated vision and memory carefully to instruct and control not merely what, but also how Christians saw.32

8

Introduction

Relatedly, ekphraseis, detailed verbal descriptions of events or objects, “enabled the hearer to ‘see’ what was being described and to feel as if they were in its presence.”33 Ekphrasis is “descriptive language bringing that which is being explained visible before the sight,” according to the first-century CE rhetorician Aelius Theon.34 Eusebius, relying on the power of the descriptions of martyrdom, exhorts his audience to make the martyrs’ “wondrous excellence a lasting vision before [their] eyes” (Mart. Pal. 2).35 Ancient audiences, as Aelius Theon and Eusebius indicate, were expected to have the ability to visualize the events they heard about, and such a skill, as Elizabeth Castelli argues, signaled “good listening skills and proper attentiveness.”36 This rhetorical technique promotes intimacy and immediacy by bridging the distance between event and hearer.37 Rich descriptions of events narrated by martyr texts—and visualized in the audience’s minds—therefore may have prompted Christians to feel as if they had witnessed the death of the martyr. This would explain Augustine’s exclamations: “I love the martyrs; I go and watch the martyrs; when the passions of the martyrs are read, I am a spectator, watching them” (Serm. 301A).38 Ekphraseis, furthermore, help an audience not only to visualize an event but also to hear it more fully; they offer, in Diane Fruchtman’s words, “a soundtrack to the scenes playing out before the reader’s eyes,” such that the martyrs’ actions are experienced “in real time.”39 Through ekphraseis hearers are transported through time and space; they are given the opportunity to witness for themselves events of the past. Hearing, then, is not divorced from seeing, but the seeing accomplished is of the mind’s eye; it sketches in color and with movement what the speaker relates in words. It brings past events to bear on the present. Hearing may also draw on the sense of touch. In Gregory of Nyssa’s sermon on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, the fourth-century bishop engages his audience through somatic empathy: the congregation should be able to imagine how the martyrs felt as they were exposed to the cold since they had themselves experienced bitter coldness. Gregory writes: “It was icy cold that day. It is absolutely unnecessary that I explain to you what kind of cold precisely. You can guess it from today: it was the kind of cold that even permeates the walls. With its intensity you are all familiar—both those from outside the region and the natives—so you don’t need to learn it from my sermon.”40 Audiences were expected to see and feel the events that were orally narrated, to imagine being a witness, to imagine being a martyr. Those Christians standing in the house church listening to the martyr texts, moreover, were experienced listeners. Inhabitants of the Empire could learn the art of listening from attending—or even passing by—courtrooms. Far from being tucked away in quiet and private quarters, Roman trials were often public: the interactions of judges, advocates, litigants, and audience members were on public display as one walked through the streets of Rome.41 Some men learned the art of listening in school. Plutarch’s essay “On Listening”—written for Nicander when he assumed the toga virilis and prepared to study philosophy—argues that an

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audience member is a “partner in the speech and a co-worker with the one speaking” (Mor. 45E). But one need not have the leisure to attend court or the status to participate in schools in order to imbibe social expectations for listening. A wide variety of public events—“recitations of poetry and prose works, dramatic performances in theaters and at festivals, declamations in high rhetorical style, streetcorner philosophical diatribes”—all “brought the fruits of literacy before the general population, educating the public in its uses and popularizing its conventions.”42 Thus Christian hearers learned to be hearers because part of the common culture was to learn to listen to and interact with speech. Christians heard martyr stories within the context of Christian worship and thus their theological meaning must not be underestimated: these stories verified, commented on, and provided further testimony of Christian beliefs.43 Discussing the passio of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, Raymond van Dam goes as far as to see the passio as “a translation of the Bible.”44 Not only did martyr texts need to be rhetorically effective; they also had to be religiously instructive.45 In reading martyr texts, therefore, we must keep in mind the liturgical contexts in which they functioned for earliest Christianity; they were not received as documentary texts that merely catalogued atrocities against innocent Christians. They were religious texts that articulated the continued presence of God among the faithful; through ekphrasis, they brought the miraculous deeds of God into the present.46 Indeed, Augustine suggests that some Christians claimed the Passion of Perpetua as authoritative scripture.47 The Passion itself makes a clear bid for the scriptural authority of the martyr account and other contemporary examples of the “power of the one Spirit” (1.2–5). In addition to learning about various rhetorical conventions, ancient hearers learned how to respond appropriately to speakers. A variety of ancient sources reflect on the participation of the audience in the performance of speech: Plutarch remarks that it is the “overbearing and coarse listener” who is “not softened or moved by anything that is said” (Mor. 44A). Such a listener “neither moves his brow nor speaks to betray that he is happy to listen, but by silence and an affected arrogance and attitude, hunts for a reputation for seriousness and depth; as though praise were money, he thinks that he is taking away from himself everything he gives to another” (44B).48 Thus we do better to think of early Christian hearers not as a silent audience at a modern Broadway play—where interjections would quickly result in ejection—but rather as conversation partners in the telling of a story. They interacted with the speaker through their facial expressions, applause, and even verbally.49 Indeed, patristic authors regularly comment on their congregations’ audible and physical responses to what they hear: Christian hearers react by beating their breasts, groaning, weeping, laughing, and applauding. Silence was a marker less of respect than of a failure to understand.50 John Chrysostom’s homilies force the congregation to consider various points of view, to see events from

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different characters’ perspectives, to agree or disagree, “in short, to converse.”51 Good listeners, Plutarch teaches, understand that a speaker’s words are a seed that is developed and expanded “by their own efforts” (Mor. 48C). Listening in the ancient world, then, was not a passive activity whereby information was transferred from speaker to audience but rather an active pursuit by which an audience participated in the making of meaning. Hearing triggers memories related to events narrated. As residents of the Roman Empire, early Christians were not isolated from the larger culture. They did not hide in catacombs, protected from the desires, entertainments, interests, and art around them. One way this observation affects the way we think about listeners experiencing martyr texts, though surely not the only way, is the ubiquity of the amphitheatrical games. When modern readers study the text of the Passion of Perpetua, for instance, they may envision an amphitheater, and maybe even the one at Carthage, but surely they do not—they cannot—imagine it in its sensational entirety. The amphitheater in Carthage as it stands now is not large, but its current state is misleading: in the early third century, when Perpetua and Felicitas are said to have been executed there, it was one of the largest amphitheaters in the Empire and would have seated at least thirty thousand people.52 Standing in the Carthage arena, it is easy to imagine the voices in the front rows calling out, the ground itself shaking from feet stamping on stone, from the clapping and jeering of the crowds. Because the seating was built at a sharp incline, the acoustics were good; spectators even in seats high up would have heard the action on the sand. Modern visitors can walk through the excavated areas, including what archaeologists have identified as the spoliarium, the room off the arena where the dead and not-yet-dead were taken, finished off as necessary, and stripped. Visitors can stand in these places and ponder the atrocities that occurred, but they likely cannot truly imagine the carnage. Divorced as we are from the violent reality of the ancient Roman games, we have trouble applying our intellectual knowledge to the experience of hearing martyr texts. Since most modern readers lack experiences of violence like that of the arena, we must listen all the more carefully to our ancient sources if we are to appreciate the martyr texts’ potential effects on Christian listeners. A gladiator’s experience— imaginary though it may be—of the sights, sounds, and emotions pulsing through the amphitheater, for example, become palpable through Quintilian’s description: “The whole place hummed with all the machinery of death: one sharpened a sword, another heated iron plates in the fire; here rods were brought out, there whips. The trumpets began to sound their fatal blare, the stretchers of doom were brought in, and my funeral procession got underway before my death. Everywhere were wounds, groans, gore; the totality of my peril lay before my eyes.”53 Early Christians listening to martyr texts would inevitably have pulled from their own

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experiences of amphitheaters to make sense of the narrative worlds and to form participatory responses to literary action.54 Our reading is dulled because we have no access to the ways our senses—sound, smell, sight—would have informed our understandings of the martyr stories. When I, at least, read about Germanicus dragging a beast on top of himself, or Polycarp being burned and then stabbed, or Perpetua being tossed by a bull, or Saturus being bitten by a leopard, my visual imagery is sanitized. My martyrs die without blood, without gore, without screaming or writhing; absent are the mangled body parts strewn across the arena sands. But ancient hearers brought all of this to their auditory experience. On their way to the market or to their jobs or even to the house church, they passed homes with intricate mosaics depicting prisoners or gladiators fighting beasts and dripping in blood. They passed graffiti honoring particular gladiators or announcing impending games. They not only passed by but attended amphitheatrical games—as Tertullian and Augustine are so exercised about—where all of their senses were engaged, and this varied sensory memory must inevitably have played an enormous role in the communal reception and interpretation of the stories of the martyrs.55 These experiences informed and enlivened the ekphraseis of the martyr texts such that the events of the past clearly—and palpably—are brought into the present. The ancient audiences who listened to the martyr stories, therefore, are decidedly not us. They brought to their listening a cache of cultural experiences that we do not have access to but that undoubtedly affected the ways they heard, responded to, and imagined the martyr stories.56 As a group they were involved audibly and physically; they had something at stake in the texts they heard, interacting with and making meaning of them. When scholars, alone in their studies, read their critical editions, they in effect hit the mute button, surely dulling the dynamism of these stories in the early church and their emotional potential. DIVINE DELIVERANCE

When we approach the early martyr texts apart from the constraints of history or historical verisimilitude, it is easier to accept their claims to painless torture. The texts are more fruitfully read as “texts”—not “documents”—that construct reality but do not necessarily reflect actual or even plausible historical events.57 We should then focus on the rhetorical nature of the texts’ counterintuitive claims and concern ourselves less with their historical accuracy in depicting the corporeal experience of torture.58 From this perspective the martyr texts present a body that is, as Caroline Walker Bynum puts it, “not a raw biological fact but a cultural construct.”59 As such these martyred bodies reveal ways early Christians constructed themselves vis-à-vis the world and their God. This way of reading imbues the martyred body with much greater meaning and possibility. If we read the death scenes

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in Christian martyr texts not as reflections of a historical reality but as hopes for an eschatological reality, as accounts not of trials and tortures but of God’s miraculous interactions in the world, perhaps we may find in these texts bodies that speak a truth quite different from what we expect. The truth these bodies speak is significantly less masochistic than tradition has often assigned to them: they testify to the freedom from pain attained by divine deliverance.60 They offer a story that is very different from Landy’s exhibit, and one that is much more hopeful. If we are to begin understanding the wealth of social and cultural influences on ancient hearers’ interpretations of martyr texts, we must bring to the forefront not only ancient horizons of expectation but also—equally—modern ones. Chapter 1 examines the cultural and social experiences of modern audiences that inevitably shape their understandings of martyr texts. These modern experiences must be recognized as foreign to the ancient world. Even when categories or experiences are shared, the meaning attached to them may differ; this is, I suggest, the case for the categories “pain” and “suffering.” Thus we must not only understand the different ways modern and ancient audiences receive the texts and the different cultural information available to each group, but also recognize that the two audiences have different understandings of the experience and significance of pain and suffering. The following two chapters survey various narrative techniques early Christian martyr texts employ to distance the Christian body from the pain of martyrdom. Chapter 2 focuses on the relationship between the text and the listening audience in making meaning. It explores the ways martyr texts engage the audience’s interest and empathy to inscribe alternative meanings onto the body of the martyr. The texts carefully describe the physical assaults on the martyrs’ bodies, thereby activating the audience’s expectations for pain; but they immediately thwart that expectation by insisting the Christian martyrs were insensitive to pain. In addition, the texts challenge audience expectations for pain in torture by including stories in which the tools of torture refuse to participate in the persecution of Christians, or stories in which the persecutors themselves are unable to obtain their desired goals. Martyr texts also upend audience expectations by cursorily reporting the execution of the martyr or by obscuring the audience’s sightlines at the moment of death. In both of these cases death is seemingly less important than we might assume for a martyr text, a challenge to expectation that listeners must navigate and interpret. This chapter, therefore, examines narrative techniques that engage listeners and then direct them toward particular—perhaps surprising— (re-)interpretations of events. Chapter 3 surveys narrative techniques for rejecting pain as a locus of meaning in martyrdom. A number of texts explicitly deny the experience of pain altogether by employing the language of analgesia or anesthesia in their descriptions of the martyrs’ experiences of torture. Other texts employ typical terms for pain (e.g., doleo or algeō) but negate them. These characterizations are found in both Greek and Latin

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texts across the Roman Empire: from Pergamum to Lyons and Vienne to Carma, to Cirta, Carthage, Pannonia, and beyond. Such assertions are found in martyr texts that appear to date from the mid-second century into the fifth century and beyond.61 This language offers little opportunity to negotiate the startling and counterintuitive assertion that Christian bodies do not feel the pain of torture. Some narratives differentiate the experiences of the martyrs’ bodies from those of their spirits. Although in these cases the terms “analgesia” and “anesthesia” may not be employed explicitly, the narratives nonetheless distance the martyr from the experience of torture by positing a dualism between body and spirit or mind: Christians do not experience— or at least are not moved by—pain because their souls prevail over their bodies. Often texts claim the presence of the divine with, and in, the martyr during torture. The Christian’s impassibility—or at least ability to withstand torture—is attributed to the presence and support of the divine. Finally, many texts thwart the audience’s visual imagination by preparing listeners to envision a grotesque murder but then unexpectedly describing instead a beautiful body unharmed by torture. In these stories torture does not harm Christians; rather, it heals them. Chapter 4 examines stories in which pain does function as a marker of meaning. In some texts martyrs experience bodily pain apart from persecution; severing worldly ties, for instance, may be painful, but the texts do not associate this pain with persecution for the faith. In other texts, confessing Christians are insensitive to the pain of torture, but apostates are not: in these cases the experience of pain is a marker of faithlessness. In still other texts injury is transferred from the martyr to the persecutor. Suffering, therefore, is directly related to torture, but it is surprisingly located: the persecutor rather than the martyr experiences the physical trauma. Chapter 5 contextualizes the claims about the martyrs’ experiences by investigating ways this discourse of painlessness builds on or resonates with existing discourses. Assertions of impassibility in martyrdom, for instance, may reflect interactions with the broader discourse of Stoic philosophy. Although Stoicism, properly speaking, did not claim that the wise man would be immune to pain, there is evidence that this is precisely how some people in the ancient world understood it. Additionally, the discourse of painlessness may reflect communal appropriation of certain eschatological expectations about resurrected bodies and future rewards. The martyrs, that is, may be enjoying, proleptically, the rewards promised in Revelation 21:4: “pain will be no more.” This chapter, furthermore, examines ways that Christian claims to impassibility subvert pagan constructions of Christianity. Thus, rather than understanding painlessness as a “discourse,” it is perhaps better understood as a counter-discourse. Pagans constructed Christians as suffering and in pain at their prosecutorial hands. Christian claims to impassibility then function as a counternarrative, as a challenge to the description of pagan judicial triumph. In sum, this chapter explores competing discourses by means of which Christians

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aimed to change the story—if not for Romans then for themselves—about Christian death, from one that emphasized criminality, irrationality, stubbornness, and subjection to one that aligned Christian faith with piety, self-control, and glorification. At the center of these discourses and counter-discourses of pain and painlessness is the Christian martyr. The Conclusion explores audiences’ encounters with martyr texts after fears of judicial violence have passed. Christian communities used the stories of the martyrs long after the period of active opposition to Christianity had ended. Thus we may trace a further relationship between text and audience in which, to appropriate Catharine Edwards’s words, “we are brought to search for meaning . . . in the suffering body of the reader.”62 The martyrs’ divine deliverance from pain may offer hope to later readers who, before widespread anesthetics, had little expectation for a pain-free existence. But divine deliverance—the miraculous intervention into physiological reactions—is also a stumbling block for many modern readers. The book concludes then with reflections drawn from recent considerations of narrative empathy, which offer insight into why readers may overlook or even reject the claims to impassibility made within these texts.

1

Bodies in Pain Ancient and Modern Horizons of Expectation They have knowledge of no flesh but mortal flesh, and the entirety of their argument amounts to supposing that what they have not experienced is not possible. —augustine, city of god 21.3

Far and wide he bloodies the fields, striking his head on rocks, he bounces; thorn bushes snatch away his hair, a hard stone lays waste to his handsome face, and his luckless beauty passes away from many a wound. The swift wheels roll over his dying limbs; and finally, a tree trunk, projecting with a point sharpened in the fire, holds him fast by a spike thrust through the middle of his groin. For a little while, with its master stuck, the chariot stands still, the horses are stopped by the wound—but then they burst both the delay and their master. After that, half dead, the shrubs cut him, rough bramble-bushes with sharp thorns and every stem carries off a part of his body. The slaves, funereal bands, wander around the fields, through the places where Hippolytus, torn in pieces, marks an extended path with a blood-stained sign, and sorrowful dogs hunt for their master’s limbs. Not yet has the mourners’ diligent work succeeded in completing the body. (Phaedr. 1093–1114)

Thus Seneca, sometime around the middle of the first century CE, relates the death of Hippolytus. His graphic description of death is disturbing: the audience’s visual imagination is engaged so that they see Hippolytus’s body being destroyed bit by bit; they follow after the slaves who trace the bloody path of destruction, retrieving a limb or a piece of flesh, and they imagine a body laid out but falling well short of wholeness. The story is also unsettling because absent from its long and detailed description of dismemberment is any hint of the physical sensations Hippolytus may have felt as his body was disassembled and strewn about. The audience’s expectation for indicators of pain is heightened by Seneca’s thick description— head bouncing on rocks, scalping, a body impaled—but this expectation is not satisfied: Hippolytus’s experience of pain remains unexamined. Interestingly,

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Bodies in Pain

markers of pain may be found in those who labor to put Hippolytus back together again: the mourning funereal band and the sad dogs. Seneca is not the only pagan, post-Augustan author to dwell on bodily dissolution without accompanying descriptions of pain. His younger contemporary Lucan shows similar interests in depicting painless dismemberment. In his Civil War, Lucan tells of Catus’s deathblows, received simultaneously to his back and chest. His blood—itself anthropomorphized—stands still, “uncertain from which wound to flow” (3.589). But a moment later, “an abundance of blood” forces out both spears and Catus dies (3.590–91). Lucan’s writing is deft and graphic: the mind’s eye visualizes the force of blood that expels the spears. Pain, though, is absent. Lucan tells of another Greek warrior who grabs on to a Roman vessel, but his hand is immediately cut off. The newly single hand acts independently of its body, “holding on with tightened muscles” before it “grew stiff with death” (3.612– 13). The warrior is not deterred but instead leans across the water to claim his severed hand; in the process his left arm is amputated (3.617–18). The mortally wounded warrior does not retreat but uses what is left of his body as a human shield. His virtue and fortitude are on full display; his pain is not. In still another episode Lycidas is pierced by a grappling-iron; his comrades attempt to save him from falling into the water, but rather than saving him their actions tear him apart (3.638). Lucan describes how slowly death comes to the warrior’s different body parts, from his torso to his vitals to his lungs. In those places where the vital organs lie, though, his fate, Lucan reports, “was arrested” (3.642–46). Though dismemberment is painstakingly described in Bellum Civile, pain is not a locus of meaning for Lucan. Indeed, in Seneca’s and Lucan’s works, “the mental sufferings of the physically wounded are scarcely if ever mentioned,” as Glenn Most observes.1 “Fictional bodies are gashed,” Most continues, but their suffering is not of concern. Noticing the narrative silence regarding the pain of dismemberment in these non-Christian literary texts may help modern readers discern and explore narrative interests in the tortured bodies that are the focus of Christian martyr texts. This is the case because it is easier to notice seemingly counterintuitive relationships between the destruction of the body and the sensations felt by the body when the depictions are not found in the pages of religious writing; when there are limited expectations for the historicity—or even the historical verisimilitude—of the narrative; when the body being wounded is not that of a saint; and when theological or Christological overlays are not in play. Seneca and Lucan challenge us to be attentive to, and demand that we attend to, the meanings of narratives that remain silent about the pain associated with a body being destroyed. That Seneca and Lucan chose not to include a description of pain is noteworthy since it could have been otherwise. The first and second centuries CE saw the development—independent of Christianity—of a “particular representation of the human self as a body liable to pain and suffering,” as Judith Perkins has argued in

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The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era.2 Perkins surveys a wide range of literature from disparate geographical regions and cultural provenances to demonstrate the emergence of this new “suffering self.” She recalls Apuleius, for instance, who tells his Carthaginian audience about twisting an ankle “so violently at the wrestling school that I almost tore the joint from my leg.” The dislocated ankle led to a sweat and chill, which was followed by “an agonizing pain in the bowels which only subsided as its violence was on the point of killing me.”3 Offering another example of this emerging discourse of a suffering body, Perkins summarizes part of the plot of Achilles Tatius’s novel in this way: “Twice . . . bandits appeared to kill Leucippe gruesomely. The first time, Clitophon watched as she was disemboweled and her intestines roasted and eaten (3.15.1–5). In another episode the pirates apparently beheaded her and threw the separated parts overboard (5.7.4).”4 She demonstrates that a wide variety of Roman authors participated in a discourse that depicted the body in pain.5 If this is an age in which many authors are constructing identities that center on the body’s experience of pain, then the narrative absence of pain may itself be an important marker of the self. As we shall see, texts that reject pain engage with the larger cultural discourse even as they map an alternative to it. Before delving into how the texts themselves function, I examine in this chapter the various ways modern and ancient horizons of expectation for martyr narratives may vary and how these differences can influence interpretation. To imagine how early Christians might have experienced these texts, we must strip away centuries of theological and historical interpretation and recognize that these views would have been foreign to the earliest audiences. We cannot of course reconstruct the precise experiences of early Christian hearers. But the process of peeling away layers of later traditions helps us see that much of what seems obvious and commonsensical now was not necessarily so in the first centuries of Christian history. Seneca and Lucan demonstrate that narratives of dismemberment are not necessarily narratives about pain. So also the evidence suggests that for many early Christians the triumph of the martyrs was precisely in their impassibility, not in their experience of pain. However, the shifts in interpretation that occurred in the medieval and early modern periods may continue to exert influence over our understandings of martyr texts. In medieval culture, for instance, the experience of pain came to be seen as a way to draw nearer to Christ whose painful death brought salvation. At the same time, medieval jurists associated painlessness in the face of torture with magic. Not surprisingly, then, the medieval martyr narratives treat pain differently than do earlier texts. Another important contributor to shifting horizons of expectation has been the work of the Bollandists, an association of historians founded in the seventeenth century with the goal of distinguishing historical from hagiographical writings. If we accept the Bollandists’ claims for the “historical” martyr accounts, our horizon of expectation necessarily shifts and the

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tortured bodies that do not feel pain become nonsensical. This chapter traces some of the contours of these different horizons of expectation in order to destabilize modern expectations for pain in martyr texts, thereby making space for alternative ideologies of martyrdom to (re-)emerge. HO R I Z O N S O F E X P E C TAT IO N : PA I N A N D SU F F E R I N G

As literary products, texts do not reflect real bodies but rather they construct textual bodies.6 In martyr texts these bodies serve as canvases on which authors inscribe, among other things, faith,7 masculinity and/or femininity,8 resistance to hegemony,9 and pain and suffering.10 Over the last several decades scholarship has coalesced around an interpretation of martyr texts that privileges the body in pain as a locus of meaning for early Christianity. Representative of this view is Perkins’s The Suffering Self, in which she claims that “bodily suffering . . . provided Christians with their community identity.”11 Similarly, Joyce Salisbury writes: “All the accounts of the martyrs tell of their steadfast witness to the faith in the face of drawn-out painful deaths. It is these accounts that have made readers gasp with sympathy and artists portray the terrible sufferings of the martyrs. . . . Their resilience would not have seemed so miraculous if their ordeals had not been so excruciating.”12 Likewise, Susanna Elm argues that martyr texts “are highly constructed narratives that describe in vivid detail bodies in excruciating pain and the eventual torturous death of the sufferer.”13 In all of these interpretations pain—as a result of bodily torture—is understood to be central to the meaning making of martyrdom. The idea that the meaning of these texts is located in the martyrs’ endurance of excruciating pain may persist because modern readers tend to supply pain when we witness physical injury. David Morris tells the story of an American vaudeville actor in the 1920s, Edward H. Gibson, who billed himself as “The Human Pincushion” and capitalized on his inability to feel pain by allowing straight pins to be stuck into his body and face. Eventually he escalated his act by staging his crucifixion. He was forced to stop the show, however—after only one of four spikes was driven into his body—because a woman in the audience fainted. Viewers, Morris argues, put themselves in Gibson’s position and imagine the physical sensations they would feel, especially pain, because they cannot imagine a truly impassible existence.14 He recognizes a similar dissonance between artistic depictions of martyrdom—which often portray martyrs at the moment of their deaths as happy or at least peaceful—and observers’ responses to the paintings, which often focus on pain. For instance, Morris argues that when we view the fourteenth-century altarpiece by Antonio Pollaiuolo depicting St. Sebastian suspended in the air while being shot with arrows, “we automatically understand [Sebastian’s] experience as painful because we have no other way of thinking about what it means to be shot

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full of arrows.”15 Yet this particular painting—as is typical of artistic representations of martyrdom—includes no overt markers for pain.16 Morris’s observation provides helpful avenues for thinking about modern reactions to the narrative constructions of martyrdom in early Christian literature. When confronted with the thick descriptions of the destruction of a martyr’s body, readers imagine the physical sensations such torture would cause and then they make this pain meaningful by associating it with faithfulness and eternal reward. This type of interpretation privileges one moment in martyr texts; however, as the following chapter demonstrates, it neglects another. It represents one understanding of events, but it undervalues important narrative impulses. Beyond the influence of the reader’s own physical experiences of injury and pain, the centrality of pain in interpretations of martyrdom may be a by-product of a long line of scholarly work that has sought to differentiate fantasy from history, hagiography from fact. The Bollandists—a scholarly society named after their seventeenth-century founder, John Bollandus—embarked on the laborious project of collecting and collating accounts of saints’ lives. In this work they sought to eliminate the most fantastic miracles and thereby to restore texts “to their original integrity.”17 The focus was largely on retrieving historically accurate accounts from pious embellishment by developing methodologies for an “ecclesiastical science.”18 Far from wholly dismissing hagiographical materials, the Bollandists accepted as authentic many accounts of miracles while simultaneously seeking to separate the wheat from the chaff by rejecting the “insulse fabulosa.”19 Other scholars, particularly by the late nineteenth century, demonstrate less leniency for the miraculous in their collections of “authentic” martyr texts.20 E.C.E. Owen’s 1933 collection of martyr texts is representative of this perspective: he instructs readers that to appreciate these early Christian texts they must overcome certain prejudices, chief among them “the impression that the records of martyrdom are full of absurd miracles.”21 Similarly, J. B. Lightfoot argues forcefully for the historical reliability of the Martyrdom of Polycarp with the exception of 16.1, in which a dove flies out from Polycarp’s side when he is stabbed. This incident—beyond even Lightfoot’s ability to save—is chalked up as an interpolation by that “spurious” “miraclemonger” Pionius.22 Concerns about distinguishing hagiography from historiography have largely passed from the scholarly scene, being replaced by literary and sociohistorical readings that focus on the ways texts function within communities.23 But the most accessible collection of martyr texts—Acts of the Christian Martyrs—is based on Herbert Musurillo’s assessment of the texts’ historical reliability.24 This collection of martyr texts is, furthermore, narrowly conceived: including only twenty-eight texts, Acts of the Christian Martyrs has perhaps wielded too much influence over literary analyses of martyr literature. Those of us who use Musurillo’s volume are heirs to his assessments of the texts’ historicity, which may affect our readings of

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them. Interpretations centered on pain, for example, may stem from assumptions about the texts’ historical verisimilitude. That is, while modern analyses of martyr texts that correlate the destruction of the body with the experience of pain may not be driven by interests in historical authenticity, they nevertheless are built upon the texts’ historical verisimilitude: the narrative body reacts to torture in ways that mirror the experiences of real bodies. I argue that it is not self-evident that the martyr texts aim for historical verisimilitude; they may be read instead as asserting God’s miraculous intervention at the moment of torture. Looked at this way, what one expects to be painful is miraculously not. Take, for example, the assertion made by the author of the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius: “The Lord, fully understanding his servant’s faith through the punishments of the prison, would not allow the martyr’s tested body to be touched by the slightest laceration of any torment” (20.6).25 Or similarly, the torture applied to Sanctus’s body—described in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons—did not cause the martyr pain but rather, “Christ enduring in him achieved great glory” (1.23). We will have occasion to examine these accounts more fully in coming chapters, but here they serve to highlight the narrative claims to divine intervention during torture. Rather than narrating excruciating pain, these authors—like Seneca and Lucan—depict the dissolution of the body apart from descriptions of pain. The martyrs’ bodies are not then historical or historically verisimilitudinous; they are textual bodies that serve writers’ rhetorical and theological aims. While one legacy of the Bollandists’ work is the historicizing of narrative bodies by rejecting miracle as foreign to authentic martyr accounts, interest in humanizing and naturalizing the martyrs’ experiences may be traced even earlier than the Bollandists. The ideology linking martyrdom with pain is prevalent in late medieval views of pain as “morally beneficial.”26 This ideology, however, marks a sharp shift from the notion of the impassible martyr, a prominent motif from the earliest Christian martyr texts well into late antiquity. Distinctions between bodily injury and the experience of pain are present in texts that predate the earliest Christian martyr texts, and such differentiations continue to be a regular part of the Christian martyr traditions well into late antiquity. Not every text makes this distinction, but the impassibility of the martyr is a firmly entrenched element of Jewish and Christian martyr stories. The Hellenistic Jewish text of 4 Maccabees, an important precursor to Christian martyr texts, exemplifies the disassociation between martyrdom and pain. This Jewish Stoic author explains that devout reason masters the passions—namely, anger, fear, and pain (ponou)— that stand in the way of manliness (4 Macc 1:4). In his list of the things reason conquers, the author replaces the typical Stoic term “grief ” (lupē) with “pain” (ponos). The story of Eleazar is told as proof that reason “conquers even external pain” (tōn exōthen algēdonōn epikratei; 4 Macc 6:34). And the author asserts that

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the seven young boys were “contemptuous of the passions” and “complete masters of pain” (autokratores tōn algēdonōn; 4 Macc 8:28).27 4 Maccabees distances the faithful witness from the somatic experience of persecution by means of reason, which is reached through pious adherence to the Jewish law. Late ancient homilists also insisted that martyrs did not feel the pain of torture. For instance, in the fourth century John Chrysostom imagines the Maccabean martyrs themselves telling his congregants, “The tortures aren’t burdensome for even a brief flash of time for those whose gaze is fixed on future things and whose eyes are glued to the President of the games.”28 He makes a similar point in his homily on Julian the Martyr when he explains to his audience that “the things that are naturally burdensome and unbearable become light and easily borne with the hope of future blessings.”29 In both cases Chrysostom argues that the martyrs’ ability to keep future rewards in mind brought impassivity during torture. By the thirteenth century we can trace a shift away from impassibility. This change is due in part to a new Christological interest in Jesus’ humanity, which focuses on his experience of pain during the crucifixion.30 Emphasis on Jesus’ pain at death, Esther Cohen argues, manifests especially in imitative suffering, what she labels “philopassianism.”31 No longer was piety defined by silent endurance of pain; instead, “the public exhibition of suffering became a new virtue. Unless the pain and the wounds were there for all to see, the impact and efficacy of the living saint was lost.”32 In contradistinction to the early martyr texts, late medieval accounts “came down squarely on the side of the martyrs’ suffering and endurance.”33 James of Voragine’s thirteenth-century compilation of and commentary on saints’ lives, The Golden Legend, exemplifies the transition from early Christian assertions of martyrs’ impassibility to medieval claims of pain in death. Even so, the accounts of martyrdom he collects detail the destruction of the body while simultaneously asserting Christian insensitivity to pain. In one case the virgin martyr Dorothy was placed in hot oil, but being protected by her “spouse Jesu Christ,” she “felt none disease ne harm, but a precious ointment of balm.”34 Jesus appeared in a vision to an imprisoned Saint Barbara saying, “Barbara . . . doubt not the judge, for I shall be with thee, and I shall deliver thee from all thy pains that any shall make thee suffer.”35 Several scholars have noted the absence of suffering in these stories.36 Sherry L. Reames attributes this narrative of non-pain to the book’s emphasis on “the divine mercy which upholds the martyrs during their ordeal, reintegrates their broken bodies after death, and is extended to all the faithful at their tombs.”37 This divine mercy is given as proof, Reames argues, that “God is on the saint’s side.”38 Both of the accounts mentioned above credit Jesus with administering analgesia to the faithful martyrs. While James embedded stories that privilege impassibility, his commentary illustrates a transition to the medieval interest in pain. The Golden Legend, Esther Cohen argues, makes earlier martyr texts more usable for medieval Christians by

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providing commentaries that downplayed impassibility.39 For James, then, the ideology of martyrdom centered on sensibility rather than insensibility. Two developments in the Middle Ages contributed to this shift: first was the rise of self-inflicted pain in imitation of Christ. As Cohen observes, “one could not admire and practice the cult of nonsufferers in the thirteenth century when living saints were practicing self-infliction of pain and meditation to imitate Christ’s Passion.”40 In light of this type of religious devotion, the continued reverence of the church’s saints required a renegotiation of the martyrs’ physical experiences: impassible martyrs are poor models of a piety built upon pain. The second important medieval shift relates to the social and religious meanings attached to the experience of pain in the context of judicial violence. Jurists of the period claimed that impassibility during the application of judicial violence was the result of “evil magic.” The association of impassibility and magic made the traditional stories of the martyrs’ experiences “neither credible nor productive.”41 In this way religious devotional practice and judicial violence together forced the church to reimagine the martyrs’ experiences. As a result the narrative bodies of the martyrs were rescripted in the late medieval world to serve new communal needs, now focusing squarely on the salvific effect of pain. Medieval theologians similarly realign the relationship between pain and martyrdom. These authors show little interest in impassibility since they see pain-free existence as an attribute of prelapsarian life on the one hand, and of resurrected bodies on the other, but not of the fallen human condition. According to these theologians, therefore, the martyrs must have felt pain, though they used reason and fortitude to triumph over it. Aquinas, for example, argues for the martyrs’ impassivity, not impassibility: they felt pain but were undisturbed by it.42 He asserts that “the delight of the contemplation of divine things dulls the sense of pain; hence the martyrs in their passions bore up more bravely by thinking of the divine love.”43 Aquinas sees this “dullness” as due entirely to God’s grace since “the sensible pain of the body makes one insensible to the spiritual delight of virtue, without the copious assistance of God’s grace, which has more strength to raise the soul to the Divine things in which it delights, than bodily pains have to afflict it.”44 For Aquinas, the Christian who has the virtue of fortitude may successfully endure pain that would be unbearable to others; this endurance comes from God, however, and not from their own abilities. Medieval Christianity’s changing interests in Christology, martyrdom, and pain culminate in the late medieval period: pain in imitation of Christ eclipses miraculous anesthesia. Modern horizons of expectation for pain in martyrdom are heirs of this long and influential line of historical, theological, and juridical interests. While the correlation between injury and pain may make sense to modern readers, this interpretation stands in sharp contrast to earlier understandings of the martyrs’ experiences, which as we have seen privilege the body immune to pain.45 Whereas many

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scholars interpret the martyr texts as valorizing pain, Ariel Glucklich has posited an argument about sacred pain that focuses squarely on the narrative interest in impassibility. Appealing to modern medical theories, Glucklich argues that the martyrs experienced a rush of endorphins that caused an anesthetic effect. From this perspective martyrdom triggers “an anesthetizing adrenal rush.”46 Glucklich also discusses sacred pain in terms of medical research that suggests that individuals who experience physical trauma in situations they deem meaningful—war, for instance—tend to report feeling less (or no) pain at the time of their injuries.47 Accordingly, we might posit a worldview in these texts that places a high value on pain: martyrs, who presumably see their torture as meaningful, benefit from the anesthesia brought by attributing meaning to injury.48 Judith Perkins makes precisely this claim when she writes that the martyrs understood pain to be “requisite of the initiation experience,” and thus their “thought-world, comprehended and made meaningful the pain, and, therefore, made it bearable.”49 While approaching painlessness in martyr texts through medical findings or ritual theory is interesting—and perhaps even compelling from certain standpoints—such an approach does not satisfy my literary interests for two reasons. First, generally speaking, even if the martyrs are historical persons and the texts accurately convey historical events, we do not have direct access to the bodily experiences that are described. We do not, in other words, have first-person accounts of what it feels like to be martyred; we only have access to stories written about the martyrs from the point of view of, in the most generous of readings, observers.50 Most scholars, however, do not believe these texts derive from eyewitnesses. We are in that case dealing with literary constructions of martyrdom composed by individuals who were writing at some distance in time and space from the actual events. Because of this, interpretations based on medical models are less useful. Second, when we turn to the depictions of the deaths of early Christians, we find that the narratives do not reflect on the meaningfulness of pain, but rather they describe the martyrs’ deaths without betraying any interest in pain whatsoever. The early martyr texts do not suggest that the martyrs felt pain and considered it redeeming; they construct a death without pain. Rather than constructing an identity that privileges pain, these texts subvert both the persecutors’ and the audience’s expectations of the relationship of bodies, torture, and pain. To appreciate fully the subversive claims inherent in these texts, we must separate categories that are typically collapsed in discourses about martyrdom: torture and suffering, injury and pain. It is true that the martyr accounts portray the body being beaten, scraped, clawed, burned, and otherwise attacked. However, they simultaneously deny that the tortured body suffers; they reject that this injured Christian feels pain. The conflation of these categories can obscure our appreciation of the texts’ subversive messages about Christian bodies at the hands of Roman authorities.

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What Is Pain? Exploring the ways pain functions in stories of Christian martyrs necessitates a definition: What is pain? But perhaps the question seems obtuse, its answer obvious. Pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage,” according to the International Association for the Study of Pain.51 This functional definition will resonate with many modern readers, but it fails to define what pain is exactly. Indeed, that question has occupied philosophers and scientists from antiquity until now, and satisfactory answers that account for the spectrum of types of pain and different cultural and personal experiences of pain remain largely elusive. Although a history of pain is beyond the scope of my study, it will be helpful to identify some key moments in the discourse about pain in order to isolate a particular nineteenth- and early twentieth-century model that may—along with the cultural shifts I have already described—inform modern assumptions about pain. Since the late nineteenth century, the medical profession has articulated the theory that pain is the result of signals sent through nerves from a site of injury to the brain.52 Ronald Melzack and Patrick D. Wall, two of the most important researchers on pain in recent years, observe, “The link between pain and injury seems so obvious that it is widely believed that pain is always the result of physical damage and that the intensity of pain we feel is proportional to the severity of the injury.”53 It is perhaps because we are heirs of this understanding of pain that we read a text about the torture of a body as one that necessarily includes pain as a locus of meaning. Since we believe, for instance, that being burned at the stake hurts—because we understand there are nerve signals that travel through the body to the brain—we interpret the story of Polycarp being burned alive as, at least in part, a story about the pain endured by the saint. But this seemingly commonsense link between injury and pain is not necessarily the case from a biological, cultural, or literary perspective. Contemporary studies of pain demonstrate that models positing pain-as-injury oversimplify lived experiences. Take, for instance, an experience unique to amputees, phantom limb pain. In these cases physical trauma to the body results in a complex experience: it is not the site of amputation that hurts, but some portion or activity of the absent limb itself.54 Thus pain is not merely the result of electrical impulses that travel from a site of injury to the brain. Allan I. Basbaum, whose research focuses on the neurological basis of pain, writes about another diagnosis that complicates understandings of pain: pain asymbolia, a syndrome “in which patients with cortical damage report, with absolutely no emotion, that intense stimuli are excruciatingly painful.”55 Patients with this syndrome observe that a stimulus hurts, but they have no emotional investment in the experience; they do not appear to be in pain. Basbaum observes, “seconds after reporting how unbearable the pain is, they quietly go back to reading a newspaper or doing some

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other activity with not the slightest signs of distress.”56 What, in this situation, is pain? Who is the arbiter of the experience? This issue becomes even more complicated when we move from direct observation, like Basbaum’s study, to highly mediated texts with complicated transmission histories. And it becomes yet more complicated when we move from the report of painful stimuli—without emotional reaction to it—to a story of no pain at all. To further understand the roots of modern understandings of pain, we might consider the report Col. Henry K. Beecher published in 1946, in which he observes, “There is a common belief that wounds are inevitably associated with pain and, further, that the more extensive the wound, the worse the pain.”57 Beecher’s experience with wounded soldiers suggests this belief is incorrect: he estimates that the expected relationship between injury and pain obtains in only about 25 percent of cases. Beecher questioned 215 men, all of whom had severe wounds, who were “clear mentally” and who were not in shock at the time they were interviewed: 32.1 percent of the men reported they had no pain; 25.6 percent had “slight pain”; 18.6 percent had “moderate pain”; and 23.7 percent had “bad pain.”58 In these cases the expectation that injury will lead to pain is disconfirmed. Injury, it seems, does not always trigger the experience of pain. Another aspect of the complexity of lived pain is the commonly made distinction between emotional pain—which may not correlate to an identifiable site of physical injury—and physical pain. “Grief,” for instance, is emotional, while “pain” is physical.59 Morris labels this division the “Myth of Two Pains” and argues that physical pain is not categorically different from emotional or psychological pain.60 That physical and emotional pain cannot be clearly differentiated is reflected in the definition of pain articulated by the International Association for the Study of Pain: it is a “sensory and emotional experience.” Neurological studies, furthermore, have suggested that the same areas of the brain are engaged both in the experience of physical pain and in situations of social or romantic rejection. This suggests that the brain processes the events similarly.61 Likewise, feelings of empathy for another person in pain trigger neurological responses similar to the experience of pain itself.62 Depression, moreover, can manifest as physical pain, including joint pain, back pain, and limb pain—in addition to a number of other physical problems.63 Thus contemporary science disrupts the clear-cut distinctions that are commonly made between physical and mental pain.64 My aim in discussing the limitations of commonly held modern beliefs about pain is not to posit that the martyrs felt no discomfort when they were flogged, burned, or stretched on the rack. This book makes no argument about historical bodies and their experiences of torture. Rather I wish to problematize the assumption that narratives about bodily torture are necessarily narratives about pain. On the one hand, this assumption is grounded in the historicity of the texts (or at least in beliefs about their historical verisimilitude), rather than in narrative, rhetoric,

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or theology; and on the other hand, it oversimplifies the complex lived realities of pain. Perhaps more pertinent for this book is the observation that pain-as-injury has not always been the most obvious understanding of pain. Many modern discussions of pain-as-injury fail to recognize the varying personal or cultural meanings associated with pain. David Morris sees the articulation of this scientific model—nerve pathways moving from the site of injury—as a watershed moment in the movement away from assigning meaning to pain. Anatomical and physiological breakthroughs in the nineteenth century, he argues, “created the scientific basis for believing that pain was owing simply to the stimulation of specific nerve pathways.”65 Rather than signifying meaning, pain became a symptom of injury. Examples abound of culturally determined experiences of pain, instances in which an act is performed that—in the injury-pain model—should cause physical pain but, within a specific cultural context, is not reported as painful. The hookhanging ritual once practiced in parts of India is a frequently cited example.66 After participating in various rites of ritual cleansing, a chosen man was declared temporarily divine. The village carpenter inserted two steel hooks into this man’s back, from which he was suspended above a cart. From this elevated position the man blessed both children and crops. One anthropologist reported that the man displayed “no trace of pain” but instead appeared to be in a “state of exaltation.”67 In other instances it is the experience of pain—not its absence—that signifies the spiritual realm. Pain, for instance, may be interpreted as divine punishment, as when Eliphaz argues that Job’s pain has divine origins: “For He inflicts pain, and he gives relief; he wounds, and his hands heal” (Job 5:18). Similarly, Genesis 3:16 attributes pain in childbirth to divine punishment: God says to the woman, “I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.” Within the narrative world created by this text, pain is not merely the consequence of contracting uterine muscles—as the modern scientific model would argue—but is a divinely ordained punishment that serves as a reminder of faithlessness and transgression. Pain is not biological but cosmic.68 Modern readers might dismiss arguments for the divine origin of pain as explanatory strategies for phenomena people did not otherwise understand. But interpreting labor pain as divine punishment was common even into the nineteenth century in arguments against using anesthesia in childbirth.69 Indeed, the growing popularity of anesthesia in a number of medical applications raised concerns about science undermining divine will. At the twelfth meeting of the American Dental Association held in 1872, for instance, a Dr. Atkinson rejected the use of anesthesia during dental procedures on theological grounds: “I wish there were no such thing as anaesthesia; I am against these satanic agencies which prevent men from going through what God intended them to go through.”70 At times, therefore, individuals interpret pain as signifying divine action rather than merely nerve stimulation.

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Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers also indicate that pain is not “simply and entirely a medical problem,” and ancient texts attest to a wide range of explanations for pain and painlessness, not all of which are associated with bodily injury.71 Aristotle discusses pain not as a physical sense—like taste, smell, and sight—but as an emotion, like joy. It is a “passion.”72 For Aristotle, in other words, pain is not a physical sensation that results from bodily injury; it is instead a mental or emotional response to an event.73 And Seneca, as Catharine Edwards explains, uses pain as “an analogy for mental weakness”; the brave man can defeat pain through reason.74 In this case pain is not simply the result of nerve stimulation but must instead be a “movement”—in Stoic terms—that can be avoided by the will. In a passage with which the authors of the Christian martyr texts could certainly have agreed, Seneca urges his reader to think of the man who did not stop smiling, even when the smile itself so enraged his torturers that they applied to him every instrument of their barbarity. If pain [dolor] can be vanquished by a smile, will it not be defeated by reason? You may mention now whatever you wish—colds, continuous hard coughing that bring up parts of our innards, fever that dries up our entrails, thirst, limbs so bent that the joints stick out in opposite directions; worse than these are the raging flame, the rack, the metal plates, the instrument that recreates wounds while the wounds themselves are still swollen and drives the impression deeper. Nevertheless, there have been some who have not groaned through these things. . . . Are you willing, after this, to laugh at pain [dolorem]? (Ep. 78.18–19)

As with his description of Hippolytus with which this chapter began, so also here Seneca employs thick description—“parts of our innards”—to activate the audience’s expectation of pain. The images of physical trauma, and the descriptions of the instruments that bring trauma, heighten the audience’s anticipation of a narrative focusing on excruciating pain. Seneca, again, rejects the audience’s expectations, insisting that pain can be defeated by reason. If wisdom brings anesthesia, lack of reason accounts for pain. Far from having a universal meaning, therefore, discourses of pain are culturally situated. What Is Suffering? Although scholars who write about pain and suffering in martyr texts do not typically define these terms, the pairing appears to reflect a Cartesian dualism in which “pain” is a corporeal experience while “suffering” is largely emotional or psychological. But this differentiation is at odds with many ancient medical and philosophical positions. The separation of physical from emotional pain seems to make sense today, Thomas Dormandy suggests, because we have had success in treating the acute pain of surgery and lagged in treating mental illness. But, he argues, this dualism would have made no sense in antiquity.75 Medical theories based on the

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humors, for instance, tend to equate the two types of pain. Lisa Wayne Smith, discussing early modern humoral theory, writes, “As revealed by pain vocabulary, men and women understood the workings of their humoral bodies similarly; emotions were indivisible from corporeal sensations, with patients’ fear framing their physical experiences.”76 The distinction is equally problematic for earlier periods. Although Plato may have posited a mind/body dichotomy, as Abraham P. Bos has shown, it was not widely accepted.77 Many early Christian writings in fact reflect the belief that the soul is a corporeal entity that participates in the experience of pain.78 Tertullian, for example, imagines the soul to be susceptible to punishment and suffering in hell (An. 7.4). And Augustine argues that “pain is the soul’s, not the body’s, even when the cause of its pain proceeds from the body, when its pain is in a place where the body is injured” (City of God 21.3). Christian arguments about the corporeality of the soul destabilize the distinction between physical and emotional suffering. Interpreters’ tendencies to differentiate physical and emotional experiences may be seen in their translations of key terms in the Christian martyr texts: algeō/ paschō and doleo/patior. The first term of each set is typically—though not always— translated “pain.” Of greater interest are the second terms in each pairing: paschō and patior. Both of these are weighty terms in Christian discourse, and the typical English translation, “to suffer,” carries connotations that do not fully represent the Greek and Latin semantic ranges.79 In current English usage, “suffering” usually implies a negative physical or emotional experience akin to “pain,” though perhaps of the emotional variety. The examples in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, however, indicate that patior was not typically used as synonym of dolor; that is, it does not regularly refer to sense perception. Rather, the semantic range of patior, like paschō, encompasses meanings from “endure” and “undergo” to “afflicted,” “allow,” or “submit to.” Both terms are antonyms of verbs of free action. These words, therefore, are closer to the modern English verb “to endure” than they are to the ways we tend to employ the term “to suffer” in everyday speech. Although both patior and paschō are often translated “to suffer,” then, they do not refer to physical sensations but instead to one’s stance vis-à-vis a particular event: they describe the strategy of one who is being acted upon in some (typically negative) manner.80 While the translation is not as smooth as the traditional rendering, in what follows I prefer translating paschō and patior along the lines of “having gone through the events” or “having endured what was happening” as a way of bringing to the forefront the differences between these terms and the terms employed in situations where physical pain is clearly in focus (in which case the terms of choice are most often algeō and doleo). The arguments in this book attend to a constellation of markers of pain. The authors of the martyr texts make their arguments about martyred bodies in part by employing—or avoiding—particular terminology. But the texts also convey pain

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and painlessness through their narrative descriptions of the martyrs’ bodies, feelings, and actions; on occasion the martyrs’ experiences are contrasted with nonChristians’ experiences, which also engage in the discourse of pain and painlessness. The authors of these texts, in other words, utilize a variety of narrative techniques to distance the martyr’s body from the physical sensation of torture. Pain and Imitatio Christi Modern readers and ancient audiences come to martyr texts with different horizons of expectation around genre, pain, and suffering; yet another difference may be the ways martyrs imitate Christ. When scholars focus on pain in martyr texts, they often do so on the basis of Christological assumptions: pain is a locus of meaning in the texts because the martyrs imitate Jesus who endured pain. Susanna Elm, for instance, writes, “Jesus’ extremely painful death and subsequent resurrection provided a divinely inspired model of enduring and thereby alleviating pain.”81 Karen King suggests, “The martyrs’ deaths are often represented as imitations of the suffering and death of Christ.”82 And Judith Perkins asks why Christians “picked the suffering in their founder’s life to emulate.”83 But on the one hand, explicit imitation of Jesus’ pain is less prevalent in the early martyr texts than we may assume. And on the other hand, some texts go so far as to differentiate the unique death of Jesus—and its salvific effects—from the deaths of the martyrs. Privileging pain as the central element of imitation leads us not only to undervalue the narrative motif of impassibility, but also to overlook ways the martyrs might imitate aspects of Jesus’ life apart from his painful death. I agree then that the martyr texts employ motifs of imitatio Christi, but I understand the content of the imitation differently. It is certainly the case that some early martyr texts invoke imitatio Christi. In the second-century Martyrdom of Polycarp, for instance, the author holds up Polycarp as one who imitated the Lord (1.2). This text, however, never uses pain language: neither Jesus nor the martyrs are said to have been in pain. Polycarp’s imitation, therefore, is not in his endurance of pain but—the author makes clear—in his “waiting to be handed over” (1.2). The Martyrdom of Polycarp, furthermore, differentiates Christians’ deaths from Jesus’ by reserving the term paschō for Jesus alone: Jesus “endures” (paschō) for the salvation of the world (17.2). But paschō is negated when used of Polycarp: “as if enduring nothing” (hōs ouden peponthōs; 8.3). The martyr may be physically injured, but he does not “endure” as Jesus did.84 The Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius also invokes imitatio imagery. The author of this third-century text explains that a sudden rainstorm appeared at the moment of Flavian’s death so that “water might unite with blood in imitation [exemplo] of the Lord’s passion” (22.3). In this case the author shows that aspects of Flavian’s death parallel Jesus’ and adduces them as proof of the martyr’s worth in the eyes of God. But as we shall see in later chapters, this text is unwavering in

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its claim that Flavian’s imitatio does not include pain. These examples illustrate that one could imitate Jesus through obedient waiting or through divinely ordained parallels, but they do not necessitate, or even imply, sharing the experience of pain. Imitatio Christi, therefore, may be present as a narrative interest apart from the discourse of pain. That Jesus experienced pain during his death, it is also worth noting, is not clear in the canonical Gospels.85 Although Jesus’ pain has become central to both Christology and soteriology, the evangelists do not explicitly stipulate pain as Jesus’ experience in crucifixion. Then again, neither do the canonical passion narratives explicitly deny Jesus’ pain.86 They simply do not make it a key locus of meaning. We might assume the crucifixion would be painful, but some of the early church fathers deny exactly this. Hilary of Poitiers, for instance, rejects the idea that Jesus’ death was painful.87 The nature of Jesus’ body prevented him from feeling physical pain. Hilary writes, “When he absorbed a blow, or when a wound pierced him, or when ropes bound him, or when he was raised up and suspended, he felt the force [inpetum] of the passion, but not the pain [dolorem] of it.”88 Other authors argued the opposite side of the issue—that Jesus did feel pain (we would certainly expect such a position in any anti-docetic writings89). But we must not assume that the early martyr stories draw on traditions of Jesus’ pain. An ancient hearer may well have drawn connections between Jesus’ experience—even one of pain—and the experience of a martyr whose story was being recited, but as we shall see in more detail later, an interpretation based on the imitation of pain becomes harder to sustain when we carefully observe the texts’ rhetorical techniques for rejecting pain. While pain is certainly a complex phenomenon, both biological and cultural models demonstrate that it is not always understood as a necessary corollary to injury. When, in the following chapters, the narrative perspective on pain takes center stage, this observation becomes even clearer. Early Christian martyr texts employ a wide variety of techniques by which they signal the immunity or insensitivity of the Christian body to the painful effects of torture. Audiences both modern and ancient may assume that the experiences depicted in the narratives are painful, but this interpretive move runs counter to the narrative goals themselves. Furthermore, we must suspend precisely this impulse—to supply the experience of pain—if we are to appreciate the nuances of the narrative construction of a pain-free death, of a death detached “from the agonies of dying.”90

2

Text and Audience Activating and Obstructing Expectations The plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale will thrill with horror and melt with pity at what takes place. —aristotle, poetics 14

The authors of the early Christian martyr texts were not mere reporters of events but, rather, consummate storytellers whose tales remain—almost 1,900 years later—among the most moving and inspiring of Christian narratives. The longevity of these texts may be attributed to the ways they provoke in their audiences varied, sometimes contradictory, responses: compassion, horror, admiration, anxiety. Martyr accounts encourage these empathetic responses to the drama by engaging audiences emotionally and by describing seemingly historical events.1 Indeed, these two aspects of the texts function together to make martyr stories powerful: we only empathize with events that seem realistic. While the narrative spectacle of torture may imagine the experiences of the original spectators, it is constructed to inform and affect an altogether different audience.2 Listeners are drawn into the dramatic action by means of engrossing— if predictable—plots and effective literary strategies, such as historical verisimilitude, first-person narrative, and the collapsing of distinctions between hearing audiences and narrative actors. As Christians hear accounts of interrogation, steadfastness, torture, and execution, they are transformed from the role of listener to that of witness and perhaps even, at times, to that of martyr. The effects of these narrative techniques on the audience often go unnoticed by scholars, perhaps because the accounts tend to be read as realistic. The literary devices succeed, that is, precisely because they are not seen as such. For this reason modern readers have undervalued the narratives as tools for eliciting emotional responses. This chapter examines multiple ways the martyr texts engage their audiences and direct their emotional responses; how they make the drama of persecution 31

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and torture immediate and personal by inviting the audience to witness the action. It investigates the techniques through which the texts engage and (re-)direct their audience’s interpretations of events, draw hearers into the narrative world, and convince them of counterintuitive truths about the corporeal experience of martyrdom. M A RT Y R T E X T S A N D AU D I E N C E E N G AG E M E N T

Prose narratives, if they are effective, draw their audiences into a story; we keep reading when we care about the characters or events in the narrative. But we need not share specific qualities with narrative characters to empathize with them. Indeed, narratives can be successful even if we only vaguely identify with characters or plot elements.3 It is not necessary then for early Christian audiences to share specific historical or personal markers with martyrs in order to be drawn into—and thus emotionally affected by—the narrative action of the texts. Christian hearers might empathize with characters from different locales and with those of a different sex or social class. Christian faithfulness in these texts is not represented only within elite male bodies. Early martyr texts supply characters from a wide variety of backgrounds—elites, slaves, women, men, young, and old—that reflect the diverse makeup of the early church itself. Prose narratives disarm audiences, encouraging them to engage more fully in the story world than might be expected in the real world.4 Audiences who willingly immerse themselves in a narrative leave behind some of their skepticism and are open to experiencing the emotions elicited by the text. Not all narratives are successful at building empathy, and not all people will respond to narratives in the same way.5 Indeed, empathy may be hindered by a number of situations ranging from inattention to personal crisis.6 We must limit our discussion of the ways a text elicits empathy, therefore, to observing places where a text may invite emotional engagement, where narratives open space for response or identification. We cannot assume that a text succeeds in producing any particular response in any specific individual. Some texts aim to engage emotionally a broad audience with varying group allegiances, while other texts may target a narrow subset of a population to draw them into the larger culture, on the one hand, or to establish firmer boundaries between groups, on the other.7 Martyr texts represent the latter type of narrative: they support a minority group by emphasizing differences with the world at large. Of particular importance for the present study, therefore, is not only that narratives induce emotional responses but also the kinds of emotions texts elicit, for whom, and to what end. Imagining martyr texts from the perspective of the listening audience—which may include some individuals who are new to the dramatic movements of the texts and some whose familiarity with the stories allows them to

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navigate deftly the twists and turns of plot—allows us to map the texts’ rhetorical techniques for eliciting emotion and to evaluate their potential effects on the group. For ancient orators the effect of texts on the emotional lives of their audiences was a primary concern. Along with logos (“argument”), and ethos (“character”), pathos (“affect” or “emotion”) was crucial to effective oration.8 Focusing on the affective qualities of martyr texts keeps the listening audience at the forefront of our inquiry and requires us to consider the way narratives carefully structure their plot sequences to maximize certain emotional experiences.9 Authors can utilize textual violence, for instance, to prompt certain emotional responses, which they can then undermine, reframe, or redefine. Even though affective experiences are neither guaranteed nor universal, focusing on places where texts open space for emotional engagement and response will enrich our understanding of the ideologies constructed by and in early Christian martyr texts. Genre The first opportunity an audience has to engage with a narrative world is through a text’s genre.10 Genres establish the range of interpretive possibilities of and affective responses to a text. Scholars often distinguish between two genres of martyr narratives, acta and passiones.11 Some scholars differentiate these on the basis of content and narrative focus. Maureen Tilley, for instance, explains that while acta “focus on the interrogation of the martyrs in judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings,” passiones are concerned with “descriptions of the tortures endured by the martyrs.”12 Other scholars, however, differentiate the narrative types principally in terms of the origins—and implied historicity—of their information. Timothy D. Barnes, for example, asserts that acta are “largely in the form of a record of judicial proceedings.”13 Johannes Quasten, furthermore, argues that the documentary status of acta make them “immediate and absolutely reliable sources of history.”14 Passiones, on the other hand, are “literary accounts of the deaths of martyrs composed by Christians for other Christians.” The categories passiones and acta represent scholarly conversations about mediated versus (mostly) unmediated information, text versus document, literature versus history.15 Scholars primarily interested in the affective qualities and social function of martyr texts—rather than in their historical reliability or documentary status— may find the traditional genre categorizations less helpful because they obscure the ways an ancient audience would have received the texts. The categories “acta” and “passiones” not only mark positions within contemporary scholarly debates; they also homogenize the texts.16 Ancient readers would have interpreted these narratives not as documentary versus literary texts but through the lens of recognized contemporary genres such as commentarius, epistle, apology, and biography (e.g., exitus illustrium virorum), though most martyr texts also include various

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subgenres such as reports of dreams and visions or apocalyptic elements.17 The martyr texts are not “pure” forms of literature: rather, generic lines are blurred, in all likelihood because the texts were designed to serve a variety of communal needs. Although assigning texts to the categories of acta and passiones may draw scholars’ attention to certain aspects of the texts’ authority or narrative focus, it may also distort our understanding of the ways these texts functioned in communities.18 We gain more from our investigation of genre if we push beyond this modern dichotomy to ask why an author might choose one ancient form over another; that is, we should ask not only what genre to assign but also why that form may have been employed. Investigating what an author has to gain by choosing to package his story one way rather than another offers clues to the text’s reception and affective range. In what follows, I examine elements of two literary forms that are prevalent in our early martyr texts—commentarius and epistle—to highlight the ways these genres encourage emotional engagement with dramatized events. Commentarius. Many of the earliest martyr texts—those described by scholars as acta—fit into the ancient genre known as commentarii. These narratives tend to be streamlined stories that focus principally on the interrogation of Christians by a pagan ruler. The commentarius—or hypomnēma, as it was known in Greek—was used for both public and private records.19 Content notwithstanding, ancient authors used commentarii as aide-mémoire, as Columella explains: “whereas it commonly happens that the memory of things we have learned fails us, it must be restored often from notes [commentariis].”20 Individuals and small groups (such as families) used commentarii; their semiprivate nature indicates they may have engaged audiences in ways similar to letters.21 The genre might invite listeners to imagine themselves as having access to “behind-the-scenes” information, as Andrew Riggsby suggests.22 Ancient audiences would likely assume that martyr texts employing the commentarii form contained information copied from official archives, and preserved the ipsissima verba of the martyrs.23 Court records, as Gary Bisbee has shown, included four sections: introductory formulae (e.g., name of the judge, date and location of the trial, list of the accused), the body of the trial (including a transcript of the interrogation), the judgment, and concluding matters.24 Although early martyr accounts are not identical to extant court records in the form of commentarii, there is enough overlap to suggest that the martyr texts are modeled on this genre. Scholars’ assessments of the historical reliability of martyr accounts in this form are diverse. As we have seen, some scholars argue that these are copies of official court records and thus preserve documentary evidence for trials of Christians. “Christians,” Barnes avers, “must have had the opportunity to make copies of official transcripts of the trials of Christians, so there is [not] (and never was) any good reason to deny on a priori grounds that shorthand notes taken in court and

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later written up for official archives could form the basis of those accounts of the trials of martyrs which observe protocol style.”25 Barnes admits, though, that Christians sometimes mimicked the style of court records to meet their hagiographical interests.26 By contrast, other scholars read commentarius-style texts as utilizing the form of trial transcript for strategic literary purposes.27 Martyr acts are not historically reliable records of trial procedures, Fergus Millar argues, but they do intentionally evoke court records and trial protocol.28 Regardless of these texts’ origins, their audiences likely received the stories as trial transcripts. Whether or not these texts preserve the ipsissima verba of the martyrs, therefore—or even an approximation of them—is a question motivated by scholarly interests in historicity and reliability. Even if we could definitively resolve the issue of historicity, it is not the only question about the commentarius form that we might usefully ask. What does an author gain by presenting a martyr story as if it is derived from court records? This question shifts our focus away from origins to audience reception because a text’s genre informs its interpretation. Authors choose one genre over another either because the subject matter demands a certain form or because a specific form elicits a desired response from the audience. Indeed, ancient rhetorical theory taught precisely this, as Nikolaus attests: “it is necessary to adapt the form of the narrative to the suggested subject.”29 Similarly, Theon instructs writers that “the narrative must be completely assimilated to the things given below [in the text] . . . and that the expression not be at variance with their nature.”30 Early Christian authors may have selected the commentarius form because it was subject-appropriate for a martyr text: judicial interrogation of Christians is presented as such. Since other authors chose different genres by which to narrate the arrest and execution of Christians, however, the commentarius may have more going for it than merely fitting the occasion. In addition to being appropriate for delivering the martyrs’ testimonies, the commentarius engages hearers in the narrative action by presenting a full and detailed picture of a martyr’s trial experience. As the narrative begins, authors provide important details about setting that help an audience to visualize the scene. Lists of consuls, procurators, emperors, and other historical persons mark specific geographical and chronological destinations; these details allow hearers to imagine the specific scene—the who, what, when, and where of the drama. Names, dates, and cities, therefore, are not merely objective data for encyclopedia-type entries; they indicate to audiences whose court and what world they are entering.31 The narratives are not set “once upon a time, in a land far, far away,” but in Pergamum or Rome or Carthage under the rule of particular individuals at specific moments in time—times and spaces that inform the picture sketched by the mind’s eye. Whether or not the events narrated in the martyr accounts are historically reliable, the texts prime their audiences to accept them as such by supplying basic

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historical data.32 Unless hearers consciously apply a hermeneutic of suspicion, they will accept the historiographical information given in the text.33 Historical data are included in martyr texts of all forms but take on a central role in the commentarius: this is typically the first information given to the audience and so it serves as an entrée into the narrative world. Hearers can imagine both the place of dramatic action as well as the primary players. The “why” of the event—namely, specific charges leveled against Christians that initiate a trial and then lead to torture and death—is typically absent from the stories. Perhaps the charges were unknown to Christians, but the omission may reflect the texts’ ideological needs and rhetorical interests, as Elizabeth Castelli has argued.34 On the one hand, governors had considerable latitude in governing and peacekeeping measures, so charges of specific crimes may not have been required; on the other hand, Christians had good reason to shift attention from judicial procedure to cosmic conflict.35 Martyr texts make meaning, therefore, by giving—but also by withholding—information. To take one example, the earliest Latin martyr text, the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, begins like many other martyr accounts with a historiographical notice. The text orients the reader to the names of the consuls (Praesens and Claudian), the day the court proceedings commence (July 17), the location of the trial (Carthage; specifically, in the governor’s chambers), and the names of the Christians being arraigned (Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Donata, Secunda, and Vestia).36 These concrete markers progress from general to increasingly specific information; they provide the audience with the historical verisimilitude that is required for emotional engagement.37 In his praise of Herodotus’s work, Longinus notes how careful descriptions can transport listeners to faraway places, engaging them in past action: “Do you see, comrade, how he takes you through the regions, turning hearing into sight?” (On the Sublime, 26). The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs transports its listeners by providing a map whose focus becomes increasingly detailed as hearers travel toward the location of the trial. The audience does not have to imagine Carthage in its vast totality but instead they are guided carefully to the specific location of the interrogation: the governor’s chambers. It is only when they arrive there—creating an image of that particular locale in the mind’s eye—that they see the arrested Christians and learn their names. Listeners who willingly engage with the story allow themselves to be transported by it to another world: they find themselves in the governor’s chambers as the trial begins.38 At this point the narrator’s voice recedes into the background, which helps the audience experience the immediacy of the courtroom drama. No longer sitting in the house church listening to the recitation of a text about a past event, the Christians sit among those attending the trial, witnessing both the accusations and the defense. They are not, however, disinterested observers of events; their sympathies are firmly allied with the Christians who have been arrested.39 As

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audiences align themselves with the innocent Christians on trial, they participate in some of the most important work of the narrative. Martyr texts are intracommunal literature and as such their audiences do not choose sides: engaged hearers can only reasonably side with accused Christians, not with persecutors or torturers.40 Aligning themselves with the plight of the protagonists is a crucial step in developing empathy and differentiating social groups, as Lucy Grig observes: “the intention of the text is to allow for no impartial observers: impartiality is not a narrative option. The action of the text and the martyr’s death necessarily involve and polarize.”41 Martyr texts are therefore both social and binary. They build community by envisioning the world in dualistic terms: Christians are good and their goodness is manifest by God’s favor; pagans and other persecutors are bad. The text relates the interrogation in the first-person, which further engages the listening audience as a part of the viewing audience. Longinus argues this point when he teaches that all passages using direct address “set the hearer in the place of action” (On the Sublime, 26). Direct address not only transports the audience; it also makes them “at the same time more affected, more attentive, and full of active participation, being awakened by the appeals to himself ” (26). For our ancient Christian audience, differences in time and space collapse as they find themselves in the governor’s chambers within earshot of the accusations leveled by Roman officials, their attempts to persuade the martyrs to apostasy, and the Christians’ steadfast resistance.42 This emotional connection guides audiences’ interpretation of the interrogation: “If you return to your senses,” the proconsul promises, “you are able to earn the pardon of our lord the emperor” (Scill. 1). Speratus, refusing to acquiesce to the proconsul’s demands and emphasizing the innocence of Christians, responds: “At no time have we done wrong; we have never resigned ourselves to the work of injustice. We have never been slanderous; but we have accepted bad things, we have given thanks, for we regard our own emperor in honor” (2). Cittinus, Donata, Vestia, and Secunda likewise affirm their innocence and their allegiance to the Christian faith (8–9). The interrogation scenes are not merely discursive exchanges that took place in some distant time and place; they are affective oratory with the potential to engage audiences across time.43 The trial protocol invites the audience to enter into the narrative, to participate fully by becoming eyewitnesses themselves to the trial and the resulting Christian testimonies. The communal aspect of these texts invites imaginative overlap between hearers and martyrs, as Grig has demonstrated: “The Christian is encouraged through heightened drama to visualise the martyr, then to identify with, and finally to imitate him/her.”44 But listeners likely do not identify with specific aspects of the characters because in the commentarius style of martyr text we are given little if any information about the saints.45 Rather than the specific characteristics of fictional characters inviting identification, therefore, these texts emphasize Christian motivations for action.46 The focus changes from a particular individual, who embodies

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a specific principle, to the principle itself, which may be embodied by anyone. This shift from individual to ideal informs our interpretation of the texts since it highlights the texts’ communal nature. Martyr texts tell their stories through examples of specific individuals, but the point they make is social and moral, as Elliott observes: “Passion literature is a celebration of community, and the values depicted are those of an entire society. Although the accounts describe acts of great personal courage, the purpose is not the glorification of the individual per se but the affirmation of the ideals for which the saint has given his or her life.”47 In his analysis of group dynamics in the martyr acts, Charles Altman reaches similar conclusions: trial dialogues “identify the values of the [text] not with the individuals portrayed, but with the groups and religions they represent.”48 The texts principally champion an ideal—Christian faith—and martyrs serve as examples of individuals who successfully embody that ideal. In addition to illustrating communal behaviors and virtues, the commentarius form of martyr text depicts competing communal principles: pagans value sacrifice to the gods and worship of the emperor, while Christians value confession of faith and steadfastness even to death.49 The conflict is not so much between individuals as between groups and ideals. Although the martyrs—as unique individuals—are typically seen as the primary focus of these texts, the narratives are more focused on the Christians’ motivations. The martyrs embody fidelity to Christianity, and it is this faithfulness with which an audience is to identify.50 Martyr texts therefore demonstrate the discontinuity between two opposing groups. In this, martyr texts are as much social as they are binary: they build community by envisioning the world in dualistic terms. Christians stand firm against persecutors; faithfulness and steadfastness in confession trump lawlessness and persuasion.51 But it is not only the martyr who stands against pagan lawlessness. Listening audiences, having been transported into the narrative world through historical verisimilitude and through the presentation of the trial scenes in first-person narration, attend the trial and they too embody the dualism of the texts by aligning themselves with the Christians and against the persecutors. By subordinating the individual martyr to the group ideal, martyr texts elicit the audience’s engagement, emotion, and empathy. The Greek recension of the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, another example of the commentarius form, provides further opportunity to investigate the ways texts collapse distinctions between audiences and martyrs. Like the Scillitan Martyrs, the Martyrdom of Carpus opens with a historiographical notice: the events take place in Pergamum, while the proconsul was in residence (1). Carpus and Papylus—in this recension, not Agathonike—are brought before the proconsul, as “witnesses [martyres] of Christ” (1). Again, as in the Scillitan Martyrs, the audience who hears this text assumes the position of eyewitness as the trial begins, because they hear first-person testimony. The proconsul asks the Chris-

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tians biographical questions, their answers to which are rarely straightforward but instead betray a hint of Christian insider humor. When Papylus is asked if he has children, for instance, he answers in the affirmative—he claims to have children in “every district and city”—but the crowd points out the lie (pseudē): they are spiritual children (30). The proconsul orders the men to sacrifice, but they stand firm in their refusal to betray their faith. Before long the proconsul loses patience and orders that the men be hanged and scraped. The audience attends this spectacle too, visualizing the bodies being tortured, but the torture does not achieve the persecutor’s goal: neither man recants his faith. Finally the proconsul orders the Christians to be burned alive. As the audience watches the bravery of these martyrs, they join the spectators described in the narrative itself, who are also observing the steadfastness of these martyrs. Among them is a woman named Agathonike.52 The audience as yet knows nothing about Agathonike. She does not enter the narrative action until after the interrogation, torture, and deaths of Carpus and Papylus are narrated. The text depicts her as an emotionally engaged spectator: “Agathonike, who was standing there and who saw the glory of the Lord, as Carpus said he had seen it, and realizing it to be a call from heaven, immediately lifted up her voice: ‘This is a meal that was prepared for me, it is necessary for me, partaking, to eat of the glorious meal’ ” (42). The crowd, urging Agathonike to rethink her position, resorts to emotional blackmail by imploring her to pity her child. Agathonike, however, like the martyrs whom she observed and whose actions inspired her, is firm in her resolve: “And stripping, she stretched herself out on the stake” (44). After watching Carpus and Papylus die for their faith, Agathonike does likewise. This story is particularly interesting because of the fluidity of its boundaries between spectator and martyr. The listening audience—having been transported to Pergamum—stands alongside Agathonike. Together they watch Carpus and Papylus testify steadfastly to their faith. But immediately after the men’s deaths the narrative lens pans out, adding more depth of field to the listening audience’s imaginative gaze. Agathonike no longer stands with the audience. Instead, she becomes the object of their gaze: her role shifts from spectator (one who watches Carpus and Papylus) to actor (one who is watched). This change in position invites the audience to imagine doing the same. The text’s challenge is clear: the spectacle of martyrdom should affect observers so deeply that they can no longer distinguish between their role as audience member and martyr. Agathonike’s actions exemplify the text’s construction of an appropriate response to martyrdom: conversion, confession, and death. Tertullian’s famous taunt—“the blood of the martyrs is seed”—is apt here: Carpus and Papylus lay the groundwork for Agathonike’s, and the listening audience’s, heroic imitatio.53 The text’s silence concerning Agathonike’s personal background adds to the utility of

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her character because audiences can readily see themselves in her. Perhaps she is already a Christian and the sight of Carpus’s and Papylus’s faithfulness motivates her to confess publically; or perhaps the spectacle of martyrdom and the vision she receives mark a moment of conversion, followed immediately by martyrdom. Her unwritten biography creates space for hearers to enter the narrative world, to make their own confessions, and to imagine making the same sacrifice. The listening audience is invited to move from spectator to martyr, from one type of witness to another (martus). Agathonike’s unelaborated history is functionally similar to another narrative technique: the tendency in many texts for the martyr to eschew individual identity in favor of a generic, collective Christian identity.54 When texts record a Christian confessing “Christianus sum,” they privilege the community over the individual. In the Martyrdom of Carpus, for example, the martyr’s individuality is rejected when he claims the collective name “Christian.” Carpus rejects his earthly name— a name that differentiates him from other individuals—in favor of a claim to a social group. His “first” and “preferred” name, “Christian,” is one that any person of faith may also claim (3). This text suggests that the lesson imparted by the narrative action is not constrained by its specifics—the trial of Carpus in Pergamum— but rather it has cosmic consequences. “Christianus” is, for the listening audience, everyone’s name: it differentiates social and religious groups, not individuals.55 Commentarius-style martyr texts are presented as trial records. As such, they open with specific historical data that ground the events in time and place, and they embed courtroom testimony—presented as the ipsissima verba of the martyrs—to authenticate the account. More important than the historical reliability of this form is its effect on ancient audiences. An author might choose to utilize this form because of its ability to transport willing audiences to the courtroom where they witness the events and even imagine themselves among the martyrs. The narratives appear as straightforward trial transcripts, but the ideological work of these texts should not be underestimated. Regardless of the origins of their information, they are literary products that draw audiences into the narrative action, inviting them to identify with the martyrs’ actions and motivations and thereby to stand on the side of Christianity and God. Thus even as the narratives transport audiences to specific locales, they push the boundaries of time and space by describing the cosmic scale of the conflict. Christians stand with God against their pagan persecutors and Satan. These narrative effects, so easily overlooked, are critical to other work the texts will do to engage and then redefine a narrative of pain vis-à-vis the Christian body. Epistle. While some authors of Christian martyr texts presented their stories as commentarii, others preferred to utilize the letter format. Indeed, the earliest Christian martyr text, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, is a letter.56 Giuseppe Lazzati

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went so far as to argue that the epistle was the original form of literature about the martyrs.57 As Barnes notes, however, we cannot account for the variety of genres in which ancient martyr accounts survive by positing an original epistolary form.58 What is most important to the current study is not the identification of an urgenre but rather an appreciation of the affective qualities of epistles. Much has been written on ancient epistolography since Adolf Deissmann, a pioneer in studies of Christian epistolography, argued for a distinction between letters—“real letters”—and epistles—“non-real letters.”59 Letters, Deissmann argued, are not literature; they merely communicate information from one party to another. Epistles, on the other hand, are literary products with interests that extend beyond the mere transmission of information. M. Luther Stirewalt attempted to nuance Deissmann’s binary categories by focusing on the epistle’s setting, which in Jennifer Ebbeler’s words merely “replaced a binary with a spectrum but without fundamentally altering the terms of the discussion.”60 Since all letters adhere to literary conventions, they are all—despite Deissmann’s differentiation— literary products.61 As with the commentarii, we must not be lulled into accepting epistles as simple vehicles for the transmission of objective reports of events. Martyr acts do of course purport to communicate events that led to a Christian’s death. But they do much more: they may construct group identities; they may promote gender ideals; they may subvert social norms. Thus, while modern readers may equate letters with content communication, the ancient genre served a much wider set of needs. Our understanding of the Christian martyr texts is richer when we ask what an author gains from the genre rather than simply identifying the genre. Indeed, Ruth Morello and A. D. Morrison caution against undervaluing “the rhetorical, literary, and intellectual advantages for a writer of choosing the epistolary form.”62 Letters, for instance, create an intimacy between author and audience.63 The ancient epistolographer was responsible for welcoming us “into an intimate space where we’ll nest snug and safe,” as John Henderson points out.64 Morello and Morrison identify intimacy as one of the appeals of the genre.65 Not all epistolary martyr texts appear as full letters. Some, like the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, may begin with an epistolary address but not include other formal elements of the genre.66 While the epistolary presentation in cases such as this may merely be a conceit that serves an author’s purposes, this does not diminish its effect on the audience. Recent studies in epistolography tend toward broader—rather than narrower—definitions of epistle, arguing that “epistolary colour” is enough to warrant an investigation into the ways a text may capitalize on a reader’s expectations of the genre.67 A Christian author, therefore, might be drawn to the epistolary genre precisely because of its affective nature: epistles invite audiences into the narrative, and skilled epistolographers can exploit these psychological aspects of the genre to good effect. The epistle was a particularly

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effective form by which authors communicated teachings about torture, pain, and the Christian body because the genre creates intimacy between the author and his audience and because it draws the audience into the narrative world.68 The Martyrdom of Polycarp is an example of an epistolary martyr text; it appears to be a letter from the church at Smyrna to the church at Philomelium.69 The epistolary convention of direct address draws audiences into the narrative world described. “We,” the account begins, “are writing to you” (1.1). “We,” the Smyrnaeans, write to “you,” the church at Philomelium. But the epistle is also addressed “to all those of the holy and catholic church dwelling in every place,” which invites future readers to join the church at Philomelium in hearing and testifying to the events narrated.70 The pronoun used in the address—“you”—allows any audience to imagine itself as the recipient of the correspondence, and they are thereby invited into Polycarp’s story. The author assumes the first-person plural voice, which is similarly ambiguous. On the one hand, behind “we” is likely an “I”: there is presumably an author of this text. Indeed, we are told the author’s—or at least the scribe’s—name: Evaristus (20.2). But “we” in almost every case is referring to an authoritative collectivity: it represents the members of the Smyrnaean church who supposedly witnessed the events that are narrated.71 In 2.2, for instance, the church testifies to the endurance of unnamed martyrs who were tortured, “showing to all of us” that they were not in the flesh. In 9.1 a voice exhorts Polycarp as he stands in the arena, “Be strong, and be a man.” The text authenticates this claim by providing reliable witnesses: “While no one saw the one who spoke, the ones of us who were there heard the voice.” And in 17.1 the “evil one . . . prevented us” from collecting Polycarp’s remains. The first-person plural grounds the testimony in truth by attributing it to members of the Smyrnaean church. The first-person narrative, on the one hand, functions to authenticate the report of the eyewitnesses, as Bart D. Ehrman argues. The “we” of this text, Ehrman asserts, is limited to those who were physically present at the events narrated. The voice that spoke to Polycarp in the arena, for instance, “was not heard by anyone else; it was a miraculous exhortation available only to the Christians with privileged access to the heavenly realm.”72 And regarding the miracles that saved Polycarp from the pyre, Ehrman writes, “Not everyone noticed this, though, but only the eyewitness who can guarantee the truth of the report since he and the other Christians were there, were really there.”73 In these cases first-person narration shores up the reliability of the narrative by attributing it to specific, trustworthy Christian witnesses. Reading with an eye to the way first-person elicits a response from the reader, on the other hand, suggests there may be meaningful slippage in the first-person narration. In other words, the “we” of this text may not be strictly limited to, though it surely includes, that historically located voice that testifies to the miracu-

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lous. Often in the narrative all Christians—those contemporaries of the author as well as those who come to the text in later times—are incorporated into the firstperson plural pronoun. The audience hearing this letter read aloud becomes the guarantor of the events, of the miracles, and therefore of the truths inscribed on the bodies that are constructed within. “Those who call the Christians ‘martyrs,’ ” as Carlin Barton observes, “are the martyrs of the martyrs”: they are those who testify on behalf of the ones who testified.74 The text conflates the eyewitnesses who testify to Polycarp’s martyrdom and the later listening audience. Those in the past merge with present and even future listeners; all are witnesses. Not surprisingly, the text blurs distinctions between the original eyewitnesses and the subsequent audience when it draws our attention to theological implications of martyrdom. In the opening chapter of the letter, for example, the narrator explains: “For he waited in order to be handed over—just as the Lord did—so that we might also become imitators of him, not only looking out for ourselves, but also for our neighbors” (1.2). The “we” who are exhorted to become imitators of Polycarp (and thus of Jesus) is not restricted to those in Smyrna who saw Polycarp die or even to the recipients of the letter in Philomelium; it includes all subsequent hearers of the text. All Christians are to imitate Polycarp and Jesus by caring about other believers. Later in the narrative the Jews prohibit the Christians from collecting Polycarp’s remains because the Christians might “let go the one who was crucified and begin to worship” Polycarp (17.2). The author counters this possibility with a theological assertion that is surely meant to reflect truth not merely for Smyrnaean Christians but for those in all times and places: They do not know that we would neither be able to forsake Christ who suffered without blame on behalf of sinners for the salvation of all those being saved in the world, nor to worship any other. For this one we worship being the Son of God, but we love the martyrs as disciples and imitators of the Lord who are worthy because of their persistent affection for their own king and teacher, with whom may it be for us to be both companions and fellow disciples. (17.2–3)

In this case the first-person plural must surely testify to slippage from the purported community of origin—Smyrna—to Christians in general. This section, imagined as exhortation to Christian congregations across the Empire, reads like catechesis: it details what all Christians believe; it carefully limits the power of and honor due to martyrs; it offers directives for the Christian life. The genre of epistle therefore affords an opportunity for bringing later audiences into the narrative, not only by collapsing distinctions between the implied audience—the church at Smyrna—and an actual audience, but also by collapsing distinctions between author and audience, between those who testify to events and those who receive them. In fact the text lays the groundwork for members of the church at Philomelium—and subsequent recipients—to become witnesses

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themselves to Polycarp’s martyrdom: they are to “send the letter to more distant brothers” (20.1). Recipients become senders; hearers become witnesses. Divisions between past and present are easily elided in a genre like epistle because theological statements draw later audiences into the narrative, thereby collapsing historical differentiations. Although the Martyrdom of Polycarp is primarily an epistle, it also incorporates elements of commentarius, the court record. The central chapters of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, 5–14, transport the audience to Smyrna, where they follow Polycarp as he hides from the authorities; they watch as he is arrested; they observe his steadfast refusal to swear by the emperor’s genius; and they witness him being burned and his eventual death.75 The audience is drawn into the events because the text presents a great deal of the narrative in Polycarp’s own words. The audience, for instance, hears Polycarp and the proconsul argue. “Are you Polycarp?” the proconsul asks. “Have regard for your age,” he implores (9.2). Then he orders the bishop to say, “Away with the atheists.” Polycarp obeys but with a twist of Christian humor: he looks up to heaven, shakes his fists, and says the very words he was commanded to utter, but with a diametrically opposed intent: “Away with the atheists!” (9.2). The dialogue invites the audience into the courtroom; they see and hear the two men vying with each other, one a Roman proconsul in his prime, the other an elderly but revered Christian bishop; one with the power of life and death, the other with the power to choose for himself death over life (or, he might argue, eternal life over eternal torture). The audience is drawn even further into the scene as the tension mounts: “Swear and I will acquit you.” “For eighty-six years I have been his slave and he has not wronged me. How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?” (9.3). The audience is not impartial or unknowing: the story told is of a patently innocent person. Indeed, the emotion evoked by martyr texts “depends upon the complete and recognizable innocence” of the martyr, as Elizabeth Castelli has observed.76 Emotionally engaged in the time-flow of Polycarp’s trial, the audience may find themselves identifying and participating—cheering, laughing, gasping, crying—with the Smyrnaean Christians, a collapsing of identification that brings with it a reward: they become ones who can testify to the events because they are now witnesses to them. The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, which is preserved by Eusebius, also follows the form of ancient letters. It begins by identifying the authors—the “slaves of Christ” in Gaul—and the addressees, “our brothers in Asia and Phrygia” (1.3). The specificity of the text soon fades, however, as the audience is taken into a narrative world in which the opponent is not identified principally with a specific person but a cosmic being: “The adversary darted in with great might, inaugurating his final coming which is about to happen” (1.5). Any hearer sympathetic to a worldview built on cosmic dualism may identify with the narrative world— including its descriptions of ostracism and of neighbors turning on neighbors— created in the opening scenes of this epistle.

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As in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the pronouns in the text may refer to different groups, depending on where the audience stands vis-à-vis the events narrated. “We” could refer to the Christians in Gaul, or a listening audience may claim the pronoun for themselves. This text, furthermore, presents a number of characters and groups—not only a variety of individual martyrs but also larger distinctions among Christian groups, as well as pagans—that challenge the audience’s identity constructions. We will examine these options in subsequent chapters, but I offer one example here. After detailing the social rejection experienced by the Christians in Gaul, the author describes a man named Vettius Epagathus. He had not been arrested when others were, but he was at the trial and “could not bear the irrational judgment that was passed” (1.9). Vettius Epagathus interrupted the proceedings to defend the Christians against charges of atheism or impiety (1.10). When asked if he was a Christian, he affirmed his faith and was promptly executed (1.10). This short story tests the audience’s identification: will they be like Vettius Epagathus, who even though not initially arrested stands up for his fellow believers, one who bears witness even at the cost of his life? Recognizing the martyr texts’ various generic forms is important for contextualizing individual texts’ social or historical settings, but similarities in ways commentarius and epistle function are crucial to our understanding the communal work they accomplish within the early Christian church. The authors of these accounts communicated the story of a martyr’s death by means of particular genres—from among a number of options—and the choices they made have consequences for the story’s reception.77 Court records and letters evoke an immediacy that collapses distinctions of time and space: author, audience, martyr, and eyewitness blur together.78 Focusing our attention on the reception of the texts, on the audience not only as hearers but also as collaborators in the construction of meaning, makes genre choice an important aspect of study. Averil Cameron discusses the relative unpopularity of the genre of history among early Christians. Indeed, the genre is “conspicuously absent from the fourth-century list of Christianized literary forms.”79 Although Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History was popular and spurred imitators, it did not in the end “inspire the development of a new and perhaps more pragmatic Christian history.”80 Cameron surmises that history was “too recalcitrant” a genre for Christians. The vita, on the other hand, was a “more congenial and flexible genre” because it allowed Christians to “express the intimacy of family and personal feelings.”81 Cameron points to authorial interest in intimacy and immediacy in Lives, aspects I have argued are equally central to commentarius and epistle, the generic forms of the earliest martyr texts.82 All of these texts, to borrow Cameron’s words, “spoke to the individual and to the heart.”83 When Christians told stories about their heroes—whether martyrs or saints—they told them in such a way as to activate emotions in their audiences, to effect particular behaviors, and to obtain specific outcomes.

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Intimacy and immediacy are useful to the communal work accomplished by martyr texts because, as scholars regularly point out, martyrs are only martyrs if they have an audience. The term “martyr” originates in legal spheres and refers to one who testifies, which is an activity that is necessarily communal. As Elliott notes, martys “in its literal sense is meaningless in solitude.”84 Similarly, Tessa Rajak notes that verisimilitude is essential to martyr texts because martyrdom “demands a public, a response, and a record. In the Christian tradition, the terminology itself is a clue, for the deaths of the martyrs bear witness (martureisthai) to their faith, in front of an assumed audience immeasurably greater than the immediate one at the scene.”85 Martyr stories demand an audience in order to confirm the witness given. Whatever their genre, these texts foster emotions that transport audiences into the narrative action and offer opportunities for them to identify with the actors, all of which confirms anew the witness, the martyrdom. T H E E X P E C TAT IO N O F PA I N A N D I T S R E J E C T IO N

In addition to confirming the authenticity and efficacy of the witness, drawing audiences into the storyline allows the text to manipulate the audience’s sympathy for the martyr’s experience during torture. Textual bodies are adaptable and may embody a variety of truths.86 The textual bodies of the martyrs are not limited by our experiences and expectations of injury and pain; the truths they speak, therefore, are surprising: gruesome depictions of bodily torture are juxtaposed with assertions of impassivity and impassibility. When we think about this counterintuitive narrative assertion in terms of its effect on the audience, we see that the texts use thick descriptions of torture to shift their audience’s interpretations of events. Martyr narratives replace the audience’s preliminary expectation—that of pain—with a new reading that asserts painlessness. The narrative descriptions of torture lead audiences past superficial observations to deeper, spiritual insights. Ellen M. Ross makes a similar argument regarding the function of pain in medieval sermons: although these sermons focus on the wounded Christ, they are not a glorification of pain per se but a demonstration of divine mercy that spurs readers to particular acts of compassion, in imitation of Christ. The textual (and visual) imagery functions as a “ ‘rhetoric of appeal and response’ by which viewers and readers were encouraged affectively to experience the full meaning of God’s love definitively demonstrated through the Passion of Jesus.”87 “Flooding the viewers’ senses” with portrayals of pain effected a sense of urgency for action; the very physicality of Jesus’ wounds, as depicted in medieval homilies and art, brought the reader into proximity with him and invited the reader to engage in a relationship with him.88 Ross’s conclusions regarding the medieval “gospel of gore” are, mutatis mutandis, applicable also to martyr texts: graphic descriptions of torture are not necessarily glorifications of—or even teachings about—pain. In medieval homi-

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lies, descriptions of Jesus’ bodily experiences function as invitations to intimacy with the divine; in martyr texts the “gospel of gore” highlights the miraculous work of God in the Christian body during what appears to be—but is not— excruciating torture. Capitalizing on Audience Expectation The Christian audience that has been emotionally engaged with the narrative events by any of the means discussed above becomes even more so as it witnesses— through hearing but also through visual imaginations—the horrific tortures applied to Christian bodies. Sometimes the physical effects of torture are explicitly described and thus easily connected to audiences’ memories of seeing the application of similar types of corporal punishment. At other times it is the listener’s imagination— still aided of course by cultural knowledge—that fills in the literary gaps.89 In both cases texts rely on the audience’s cultural familiarity with the Roman penal system and its effects on the criminalized body.90 The descriptions of bodily torture lead the audience to draw conclusions—or perhaps more accurately, allow them to follow their own assumptions—about the pain experienced by the martyrs. We may imagine the audience recalling the screams of victims in the amphitheater, accompanied by its other gruesome sights, smells, and sounds, all of which fill in detail that the texts have no need to supply explicitly. The texts thereby activate ancient audiences’ expectations of bodily pain resulting from torture. The Martyrdom of Polycarp illustrates the activation of the audience’s expectation that the martyred body experiences excruciating pain. Following the epistolary introduction, the text moves directly to its most graphic description of bodily dissolution. The hearer is asked to “marvel” (thaumaseien) at the endurance of a group of unnamed martyrs who had been “torn to shreds by scourging until the very structure of their flesh was visible, down to the inner veins and arteries” (2.2). The description itself builds a visual picture in the mind’s eye: whips lash these Christians, cutting through flesh and muscle, carving their bodies so deeply and so thoroughly that the biological mechanisms that carry life—veins and arteries— may be observed. The text allows the audience to peer into open bodies—sparking memories, perhaps, of broken bodies previously seen—bodies that are now on display for their visual consumption and that demand their admiration. The Martyrdom of Justin also efficiently paints a picture of the bodily effects of torture. At the command of the magistrate the Christians “were whipped until their flesh was torn to shreds and the ground grew red with the blood” (C.5). An audience can easily imagine shredded flesh, but the mental image is further defined by the visual movement encouraged by the description: the mind’s eye begins with the torn body but then it pans down to the arena sands stained red with blood. Listeners cannot turn their heads away from the action; they cannot imagine instead a more sanitized scene. The description is detailed enough that

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the image comes together quickly and is unavoidable: the sand on which the martyrs stand is saturated by the blood flowing freely from their torn bodies.91 The image of the bloody sand resulting from mutilated flesh engages the audience’s expectations for the experience of pain. In the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons Blandina is tortured “from dawn to dusk” until the persecutors themselves are worn out. Her “entire body was broken and torn,” and those who beat her testify that “even one kind of torture was sufficient to release her soul,” let alone the multiplicity of tortures they applied (1.18). The audience is not told what types of torture (basanizontas) were employed. Perhaps they imagine tortures they have witnessed. Or perhaps they imagine instead the utter exhaustion—both physical and emotional—of torture applied for a full day. In either case audiences import their cultural knowledge to make meaning of the text. Thus the narrative does not need to specify forms of torture since those details will be supplied by the audience’s imaginations. The question raised by this text is not one of technique—“in what way was Blandina tortured?”—but rather one that evokes empathy: “how must she have felt if even her torturers were worn out?” The same text describes the torture applied to Sanctus, and it invites a more visceral response. Sanctus refused to answer questions about himself—his name, his race, the city he was from, whether he was a slave or a freedman—declaring only his identity as a Christian (1.20). His refusal “aroused the great obstinacy of the governor and the torturers against him,” and they devised a particularly horrific plan: they pressed “red-hot copper plates . . . against the most delicate features of his body” (1.21). As with the description of Blandina’s torture, so also here, the text relies on the power of vagueness: an empathetic listener automatically imagines what parts of the body might be chosen and what red-hot copper plates must do to them. The imprecision of the text functions to engage the audience’s imaginations and they fill in the blanks. Whatever the specific torments were, they left Sanctus alive, but barely: he was “all one wound [trauma] and bruise, being contracted and degraded out of any human form” (1.23). The body the audience imagined before it was marred by red-hot copper plates is now unidentifiable. But can the mind’s eye recognize the unrecognizable? The narrative, it seems, presents the hearer with an impossible task: we cannot visualize someone we know and simultaneously not recognize him. The mental exercise nevertheless works toward the narrative’s goals. The description of Sanctus’s body as “one wound and bruise” invites the hearer to search the imagined body—from top to bottom—to try to find a spot, any spot, where flesh is unharmed; but the narrative simultaneously asserts the futility of the endeavor. It is, however, through this unresolvable conflict that hearers confront the reality of the text’s claim: in the process of searching their mental image of Sanctus’s body, hearers must transform recognizable flesh into “one wound and bruise.” It is therefore the work of the listener to convert

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Sanctus’s body into the unrecognizable. The ancient Christian listener likely can imagine bodies beaten and tortured to such an extent that their identities are no longer recoverable. And so perhaps it is those bodies—bodies encountered in the amphitheater—that stand in for Sanctus, thereby infusing this narrative with pain. As a final example of the ways texts open spaces for audiences to imagine the pain of torture informed by their own particular experiences of Roman violence, I turn to the Martyrdom of Marian and James. Marian and James were “attacked with numerous harsh tortures” in the hopes—the narrator reports—that “faith could be fractured by the rending of limbs” (5.1). The tortures devised are described as “novel” (noua). Marian, for instance, “was suspended on the rack until he was wounded” (5.5), and “being suspended, the ties that bore his weight were bound not about his hands but the uppermost part of his thumbs, so that these, undoubtedly because of their slightness and weakness, might labor more in supporting the rest of his limbs. In addition, moreover, unequal weights were fastened to his legs, so that his whole body—being torn apart from each side by the unequal punishment and weakened by the perforation of his bowels—was suspended by his muscles” (5.6–7). The detailed description of the unequal distribution of the weights, maximizing the pain of dismemberment, invites the audience to see and to imagine the martyr’s torment. Stories like these, I suspect, foster the view that martyr texts are narratives depicting the endurance of excruciating pain. The descriptions are detailed and graphic, seeming to revel in the discomfort of both the martyr and the listening audience. When we read a story about someone being beaten, burned, or hanged, we imagine—as Morris suggests—what it would feel like if it happened to us. We have no way of understanding the narrated event otherwise. As we have seen, the detailed depictions of the torture of Christians and the painstaking descriptions of the dissolution of the Christian body heighten expectations for a narrative about excruciating pain. If the stories ended here, there would be no relief from these associations. The stories would end in defeat: Rome’s power—according to the dominant discourse of the day—would triumph over Christian obstinacy.92 The Roman penal system was interested not merely in inflicting pain but “also the total humiliation of the victim.”93 Christian martyrs endured excruciating torture for God—but a theologically sensitive ancient Christian might rightly ask, where was God? Stories that engage expectations of excruciating pain demand an answer to the question of theodicy. But these stories emphatically do not end here; they do not affirm listeners’ expectations about the tortured Christian body. What has been overlooked or undervalued in scholarly assessments of martyr literature is the text’s rejection of the audience’s associations of torture and pain. This rejection destabilizes the audience’s assumptions and opens up a path to a new, countercultural, theologically informed interpretation.

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Renegotiating Meaning Torture scenes are crucial to the narrative climax of these stories, but in perhaps surprising ways: these episodes revolve around a “gotcha!” moment; or if you prefer texts that taunt you less, an “aha!” moment.94 By paying careful attention to narrative movements—Moore’s “consecutive mode of exegesis” that attends to the “time-flow of the text”—we see that the texts’ own machinations radically undermine what they have previously led the audience to believe: the body that should be in pain is not. This revelation invites listeners to reevaluate their previous interpretations, revising their understandings of events in light of the new information they have received. “The basic rules of meaning,” to borrow Winkler’s words, “are changed near the end of the game.”95 It is not until hearers reach the point of unambiguous disjunction—the dissolution of the body does not hurt—that they are confronted with a problem of interpretation. That is, an audience can make sense of the narratives as texts about pain only up to the point at which the texts explicitly reject that interpretation. Winkler’s observation about the narrative conundrum presented in The Golden Ass is, mutatis mutandis, applicable to martyr texts: “the problem did not exist until the answer was given.”96 The radical shift in meaning requires the audience to return to the scene and reassess it with new eyes and more complete information. In these texts torture scenes, as we shall see, are inevitably followed by assertions of impassibility or impassivity, which shifts the locus of meaning away from the audience’s initial expectations (viz., for pain) to a radically new way of viewing the events.97 The anonymous martyrs in Smyrna whose veins and arteries have been exposed for our viewing, for example, do not demonstrate signs of discomfort. Rather, the text directs its listeners to admire the martyrs’ disposition: “who would not marvel at their nobility and show of endurance and love of the master?” (Mart. Pol. 2.2). Even when their flesh was torn by whips, these martyrs were so noble that “they neither grumbled nor groaned” (2.2). Indeed, the martyrs “thought little of the tortures of this world,” a feat surely aided by the fact that the “fire of their savage torturers was cold to them” (2.3). Hearers who continue to imagine the excruciating pain of being whipped and then burned alive either have not yet read to the “gotcha!” moment or have rejected the text’s assertion.98 The narrator insists that the fire was cold; it did not burn. Although the text has raised the audience’s expectation for pain by its thick description of bodily assault, it immediately disconfirms that expectation, substituting a body immune to torture. Justin, Chariton, Charito, and the other martyrs with them, whose blood stained the arena sands, did not groan in pain; they did not react at all to the events. The narrator simply states that the magistrate saw “that the martyrs would by no means give way” (5). In this case the rejection of pain as a narrative locus is more tempered than in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, but it is worth noting,

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nonetheless, that there is no language of pain in this text. The moment of interpretive revision then may work slightly differently here than in the Martyrdom of Polycarp—indeed, we should not expect identical textual interpretations across the Empire and across a century or more—but the rejection of the audience’s expectation nevertheless appears: what would be an understandable, even involuntary, response to pain (i.e., groaning) is absent in the martyrs’ responses, a fact that is underscored by the magistrate’s observation and frustration. Revisionary interpretation is again abundantly clear when we turn to the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons. Blandina’s persecutors—who worked from dawn to dusk—were left not merely weary and exhausted but “vanquished” (nenikēntai). The narrator explains that her persecutors were “amazed that she was still breathing, for her whole body was broken and laid open” (1.18). Listeners might take this statement at face value. After all, these men were there; they inflicted the beatings; their report must be accurate. But this narrative is built on the discontinuity between two opposing groups, so the listener should be suspicious of the persecutors’ report. In this the attentive listener is affirmed: the narrator rejects the observation that Blandina was broken and laid open. Rather, the text offers a diametrically opposed interpretation of the effects of torture on this Christian body: “this blessed one, like a noble athlete, was made young again [aneneazen] by her confession, which brought to her recovery [analēpsis], rest [anapausis], and insensitivity [analgēsia]” (1.18). Blandina is far from broken by torture; through it she experiences analgesia. If the audience comprehends and accepts the information gleaned from the story of Blandina, which functions as a paradigm shift for understanding the effects of torture on the Christian body, they will not be caught in the text’s subsequent “gotcha!” moment. Although Sanctus’s torture—red-hot copper plates—is on the surface horrific, the listener who has learned from Blandina’s story will anticipate the text’s subversive move. Indeed, although the plates burned, the martyr was “bedewed and strengthened by the heavenly fountain of the water of life that issues forth from the body of Christ” (1.22). Hot copper plates bring not pain but coolness and strength. Marian, who was hanged with weights placed unequally to maximize the pain of torture, is yet another example of the rewritten script involving torture and pain. The narrator taunts the persecutors for not recognizing their own impotence, taunts that equally indict audience members who imagine a Christian body in pain: Wicked heathen! You could accomplish nothing against God’s temple, the coheir with Christ. You may have suspended his limbs, shattered his sides, torn apart his bowels, but our Marian, with his faith in God, grew great in body as well as mind. . . . What now, heathen? Do you believe Christians—for whom awaits the joy of eternal light—feel the punishments of prison or dread the darkness of the world? For the soul that has mentally embraced heaven with faithful hope in the favor to come no longer attends to its punishment. (5.8–6.2)

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The movement of the narrative is important to the communal work it is accomplishing: this text purports to record the observations of a companion of Marian and James. He was there—it claims to be eyewitness testimony—and his authority guides the listener through the emotional terrain of torture and death. But the “gotcha!” moment in this narrative, as indeed in many martyr texts, is startling because the audience realizes that assigning pain to the Christian body at the hands of pagan persecutors is to stand in ignorance of reality; more importantly, it is to side with the enemy. Christians who believe Marian is in pain are themselves subject to the narrator’s contempt. “Do you believe Christians feel the punishments?” If so, you have not learned an important lesson the text seeks to impart. The Martyrdom of Marian and James demonstrates a desire to counter perceptions of the physical vulnerability of Christians. In a number of episodes the author juxtaposes the audience’s expectations—or the torturer’s desires—with the reality of a Christian body immune to external assaults. The author, for instance, insists that the two bishops Agapius and Secundinus did not go from punishment to punishment (poena ad poenam) as the Gentiles think, but from glory to glory (sed a gloria potius ad gloriam; 3.2). I N E F F E C T I V E T O O L S O F T O RT U R E

Though martyr texts do not shy away from detailed descriptions of the dissolution of the body, these descriptions serve in surprising and varied ways to distance the Christian body from the experience of torture, and an attentive listener should find it progressively more difficult to sustain the belief that martyrdom is painful. Further support for the texts’ claims are also found in various, perhaps more subtle, narrative elements: persecutors’ tools and best-laid plans, for instance, are defeated. A number of martyr texts disrupt narrative expectations by including plot twists that depict uncooperative weapons or ineffective applications of torture. These stories destabilize audience expectations by narrating surprising outcomes of torture. In some cases the forces of nature that typically destroy bodies choose not to do so. In other cases standard tools of judicial torture produce quite unexpected results. In every situation the persecutors’ aims are foiled. But the stories do more than merely report thwarted plans. They also upend assumptions about authority and power: the forces of nature are marshaled as evidence of the opposition between persecutors and God, or the persecutors are depicted as dimwits unable to bring to fruition the most straightforward execution plans. On the one hand, audiences listening to these texts are assured of God’s presence with and protection of the martyr; on the other, audiences can ridicule the persecutors whose impotence to cause injury and pain is on full display. The Martyrdom of Marculus, for example, describes the “weapon” of death— mountains—as unwilling to participate in his persecution. According to the narra-

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tive, ten bishops including Marculus met with imperial representatives in Numidia in 347 CE. They were stripped, bound to a column, and whipped. The other bishops fade from narrative sight—they are eventually released—as the passio focuses on Marculus. When the persecutors realized that they could not defeat the bishop through torture, “the enemy destined [Marculus] for the harshest sentence, or so it looked to them.”99 The text foreshadows the failure of the plan when it insists that the horribleness of the torture is semblance rather than reality. Marculus’s persecutors devised an execution that would not merely kill him but would make his body unrecoverable by tearing it limb to limb: he would be thrown off a cliff. Without a body to bury, the persecutors thought, the bishop could not be venerated. Their desire to obliterate the body, however, was thwarted by the very instrument they chose for its destruction: the mountains—more pious than the persecutors— “feared to injure” him.100 As Marculus’s body plummeted downward, the divine hand interceded and slowed its descent: “moderation of his speed was controlled from heaven so that, immune to all roughness, his limbs might be deposited upon the harshness of the hard rocks just like upon the softest cushion or the most welcoming valley.”101 His soul rose to heaven while his “intact body” was “encircled by soothing breezes” and “supported by softly attending winds.”102 The hard stones “spared his holy limbs” so that his body could be found and properly buried.103 Mountains, breezes, and winds refused to cooperate with the persecutors, conspiring instead to preserve the bishop’s body. The account of Marculus’s torture and death is filled with unexpected twists that invite the audience to reevaluate their starting assumptions. This body, though frail, is not vulnerable—in life or in death—to the persecutors’ designs. Nature refuses to participate in the wicked plot, allying instead with God to protect the martyr’s body from violent disintegration. The Passion of Maximian and Isaac also depicts the forces of nature foiling an attempt to desecrate martyrs’ bodies. In this case the persecutors sought to deny proper burial to the martyrs by weighing down the bodies with barrels of sand and casting them into the sea. The narrator mocks the plan as meaningless even if it were successful: “How foolish is the cruelty that purposed to refuse our hands their bodies, as if it were possible to snatch away their veneration from our minds, or that if not being interred on the earth, it were not possible, in any other way, for them to enter the celestial kingdom?”104 Appearance is not reality. The persecutors intended to insult the Christians’ bodies but unwittingly contributed instead to the martyrs’ final triumph: being thrown into the sea ensured that “not any place remained on earth where they had not scoffed at the enemy.”105 The persecutors’ affront to piety is rebuffed not only by the victims themselves but also by nature: when the martyrs were cast into the ocean, the water “straight away glowed all over as with celestial flames” and the sea began rolling, plunging, churning, and surging.106 The water did not destroy the bodies—as violent oceans normally do—but instead preserved them, returning them to land where the Christian community

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joyfully retrieved them. The ocean refused the task it was given; it was unwilling to participate in the desecration of the martyrs’ bodies, “lest because of its own carelessness, the sacrilege committed by another might endure.”107 The sea, the author explains, “could not hold fast to the most holy limbs”; it refused to be used by God’s enemies.108 In this text nature is anthropomorphized: the ocean chooses sides, gathers strength, and works systematically to collect the bodies that have been condemned to its depths. The water cannot abide the injustice, and so it returns the martyrs to land so they may be buried. As with the story of Marculus, the Passion of Maximian and Isaac challenges audiences’ expectations of the persecutors’ power by narrating the refusal of their chosen weapons to cooperate in the dissolution of holy bodies; nature has no part in their crimes. The story of Biblis in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons recounts a different kind of story from those of Marculus and Maximian and Isaac, but its challenge to audience expectation is similar: the weapons chosen by persecutors produce results that are not just unexpected but antithetical to their intentions. In the Letter, Biblis denies Christ but she is nevertheless put on the rack to coerce testimony against the other Christians (1.25). The narrative depicts the Roman quaestio, which according to Ulpian entailed applying “bodily torture and pain for eliciting truth.”109 In other words, according to judicial theory, torture during interrogation would guarantee the truth of Biblis’s confession. In this case, however, it does not obtain the anticipated results. Rather than implicating her fellow Christians, Biblis recants her own apostasy. The torture brings true confession, but not the kind her pagan persecutors expect: she indicts only herself. Biblis’s physical torture was a spiritual remedy, as the text makes clear: “being stretched on the rack, she came to her senses and she awoke as if being called from a deep sleep, being reminded by the temporary punishment of the eternal chastisement in Gehenna” (1.26).110 The pagans’ plan backfires even further when Biblis goes on to defend Christians against accusations of infanticide and cannibalism (1.26). The text characterizes this reversal of expectation—torture moves Biblis from apostasy to faithfulness—as the defeat of the persecutor’s tools: “The tyrant’s instruments of punishment were rendered idle by Christ through the endurance of the saints” (1.27). Biblis was tortured, but the torture was ineffectual. Ultimately, the rack was conquered and thus unable to accomplish its task. In Biblis’s case the rack produced a confession of faith rather than an indictment. Its work benefited Christ, not the persecutors. The surprise of the narrative requires that the audience understand the aims of judicial torture and the tools used to accomplish its goals. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, too, relies on the audience’s understanding of particular judicial actions, in this case death by fire. The persecutors’ failure to burn Polycarp alive is all the more surprising because the plot itself seeds expectation for that mode of execution. The text, for instance, attributes the sentence to the “multitude of heathen and Jews living in Smyrna” whose first

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choice—to the lions!—is rejected by the Asiarch because the games were no longer in session (12.2). The “uncontrollable wrath” of the crowd, though, cannot be deterred. They quickly regroup and cry out “with one mind” that Polycarp should be burned alive (12.3). The narrative then details the communal effort to build a fire for Polycarp’s execution: immediately—“quicker than it takes to tell”—those who pronounce the death sentence begin to collect logs and brush from all over town to build the pyre (13.1–2). After Polycarp mounts the pyre and prays, the men in charge light the firewood and a great flame blazes. And so, for those immersed in the timeflow of the narrative, it seems that Polycarp’s prophecy—“It is necessary for me to be burned alive” (5.2, 12.3)—is being fulfilled. Surprisingly, however, the persecutors “realized that his body was not able to be destroyed by the fire” (16.1), so Polycarp is stabbed (16.1). The wound produces so much blood that it quenches the flames (16.1).111 The persecutors, it is true, achieve their ultimate objective—Polycarp dies— but the instrument by which they planned to accomplish that goal is uncooperative and, ultimately, extinguished. The ineffectual fire is especially surprising because the text leads the audience to believe that Polycarp will be burned alive. The idea is introduced in chapter 5 when Polycarp receives a vision of “his pillow being burned up by fire.” He interprets this vision as a revelation of the manner of his death: “It is necessary for me to be burned alive” (5.2). The narrator recalls this incident, thus reconfirming the audience’s expectation, when he interprets the sudden and dramatic turn of events at the trial—the crowd’s unprovoked call for the bishop’s death—as prophecy fulfillment: “For it was necessary that the vision that was made manifest about his pillow be fulfilled, when seeing it burning while he was praying, he turned and said prophetically to the faithful who were with him: ‘It is necessary for me to be burned alive’ ” (12.3). The narrative foreshadows Polycarp’s death by fire, thus misleading the reader. Perhaps this narrative modification constitutes another “gotcha!” moment: the text has guided the audience to anticipate a particular event only to radically disconfirm their expectation. Technically, of course, the prophecy is fulfilled: Polycarp is burned alive. But surely the audience is to interpret the narrative as foreshadowing the means by which Polycarp attains martyrdom rather than an incidental occurrence on the way to his death. This disjunction—the narrative confounds the expectation it had previously established—invites the reader to investigate further. The tension between expectation and reality affords the listening audience the opportunity to observe God in action: the God to whom Polycarp prays and for whom he dies is not absent. God intervenes at the climax of the story, protecting Polycarp’s body—just as he had done previously for the Jewish youths in Daniel—from this particularly painful death.112 Unlike the Jewish youths, Polycarp does eventually die at the hands of his persecutors. But the fact of Polycarp’s death—the sine qua non of martyr texts—is less important than the interpretive opportunities made available when the narrative denies that the fire can

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harm him. This “gotcha!” moment opens space for listeners to reevaluate their assumptions about the persecutors’ power and to affirm divine deliverance. While some martyr texts highlight situations in which the instruments of torture failed to work as expected, another group of texts focus more particularly on the incompetence of the persecutors themselves by narrating their inability to control the animals that were chosen to kill the Christians. In the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, pagan ineptitude is apparent when “not one of the animals touched” Blandina after she was exposed to them (1.42). On the one hand, the audience would likely see God’s activity in Blandina’s experience: even though she was “put out as food for the animals that were thrown in at her,” the animals did not approach her (1.41). On the other hand, interpreting the episode as miraculous does not exhaust—or restrict—its hermeneutical potential. The Letter is an explicitly dualistic text that sets the adversary in conflict with God’s people. Thus a story that depicts God’s victory simultaneously portrays the adversary’s failure. In this case focusing on Blandina leads the audience to acknowledge God’s presence in the arena. But if the visual field is enlarged, we realize that Blandina and the animals are not the only characters involved in this scene. Someone has hanged Blandina up as bait, and someone has let loose the wild animals. The narrative requires the presence of an animal trainer. Since most wild animals do not naturally attack humans as prey, the animals used in the arena for the purposes of damnati ad bestias were, as Donald Kyle notes, “provoked . . . with fire and whips.”113 Thus in the Letter Blandina’s safety demonstrates the trainer’s incompetence: he cannot incite the animals to attack. In this episode the pagan plan failed; their expectations—and perhaps also those of the audience—for ordinary arena action are dashed, and assumptions of pagan power must be reconsidered. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas also narrates plans for animal attacks gone awry. Saturninus and Revocatus were to be killed by a leopard, but the planned execution was foiled when a bear attacked the Christians while they were still in the stocks (19.4). That the narrative explicitly reports both the plan for execution and its failure is significant. The text, that is, could have simply reported that a bear killed Saturninus and Revocatus, omitting all reference to the leopard. But instead it describes a haphazard situation that resulted in a botched plan. The debacle that reveals the pagans’ inability to control their animals—and thus to present the spectacle as planned—continues as the narrative describes the death of another martyr. Saturus was supposed to be attacked by a boar, but the animal gored the gladiator instead. Plan B involved Saturus being placed in the stocks where he was supposed to be attacked by a bear, but—ironically, given his fellow Christians’ experience— this bear refused to come out of the cage to attack him (19.5–6). Saturus escapes this scene unscathed. The carefully planned spectacle of death devolves into a comedy of errors: Saturninus and Revocatus are unexpectedly attacked by a bear while they are in the stocks awaiting death by leopard, while Saturus should be

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gored by a boar or attacked by a bear while in the stocks, but his bear will not budge. Audience perceptions of pagan power, and basic competence, are challenged by these stories that depict and even ridicule the persecutors as buffoons. The enemy is revealed as a fool worthy of Christian laughter, not as a threat deserving Christian fear. Martyr stories often describe surprising responses to torture, which may also function as proof of the martyrs’ insensitivity. In the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, Carpus “smiled” after being nailed to a stake (A38); Papylus was nailed to a stake but his “face appeared joyful and he laughed” (B4.3). Conon, having had spikes driven into his heels, was forced to run in front of a chariot while being whipped by two men; rather than crying out in pain, he sang a psalm of thanksgiving (Mart. Con. 6.2). Marculus also was moved to praise God rather than to cry out during torture. The juxtaposition of thick description of physical assault— “executioners vented their rage”; they wore out the martyr “with the punishment of their cudgels”; they “tore him apart with their repetitive torture”; they “inflicted blows to his back” so that his chest was beaten against a column—with Marculus’s calm demeanor—“the voice of the illustrious one brought forth nothing but praise for God”—borders on the absurd.114 But the audience is not to respond to the incongruity with incredulity; rather, the resolution of incongruity, based in every case on the distinction between appearances and reality, offers audiences an opportunity to laugh at impotence of pagan action. The physical assaults on Carpus, Papylus, Conon, and Marculus lead only to thanksgiving. T E R SE R E P O RT S A N D O B S T RU C T E D V I EWS

Two additional narrative techniques—both involving the way the narrators describe the deaths of their heroes and heroines—challenge audiences’ assumptions about martyrdom and pain. First, in a large number of early texts the death of the martyr is announced in passing, as if it pales in significance to other parts of the narrative. Second, in a few instances the audiences’ visual imagination—so carefully established by the texts—is momentarily obstructed only to be replaced by an unexpected new vision. On the basis of the thick description of torture, listeners initially envision a grotesque murder but are then guided to imagine something beautiful instead. These rhetorical techniques might be overlooked as metaphorical flourishes or dismissed merely as elements of genre, but cursory or obscured death scenes do not exist in isolation. Read in light of the other narrative techniques for renegotiating meaning, these story elements carry significant hermeneutical weight. In these death scenes visual images are not merely sanitized but arrayed in splendor and beauty; they testify to the miraculous. These narrative techniques complement the texts’ interests in renegotiating audience interpretation by repainting the scene of torture for the listeners.

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Stories of brave Christians who forfeited their lives in faithfulness to their God might be expected to focus on the moment of death. After all, if dying for one’s faith is the sine qua non of the martyr text, then surely that death is important to recount. So it seems counterintuitive that these narratives often end with a cursory death notice. This is especially true in early texts like the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, which reports the deaths of the Christians in a concise seven words: “And at once they were beheaded for the name of Christ” (Et statim decollati sunt pro nomine Christi; 17). Recension B of the Martyrdom of Justin offers a similarly unadorned announcement of death: “And the holy martyrs, glorifying God, went out to their usual place. Their heads being cut off, they perfected [eteleiōsan] their testimony through their confession of our Savior” (6.1).115 Recension C of the Martyrdom of Justin follows its predecessor in terseness, but its abrupt shift in addressee is intriguing. After relating the death sentence in third-person, the text addresses the now dead martyrs directly: “Accordingly, the soldiers, taking you, triumphant martyrs, and coming to the place of perfection [teleiōseōs], they cut off your heads” (C6.1). Perhaps the author wrote this recension for use in a martyrium—a shrine dedicated to the martyrs. If so, then the direct address would be liturgically meaningful. But the shift may also make space for audiences to enter the narrative as witnesses to the deaths of the faithful Christians; listeners might imagine themselves present at the trial and execution and thus they become eyewitnesses to the author’s address to those who are dying for their faith. Regardless of its setting, in this version of the story the execution itself is overshadowed by the language of triumph and perfection; death, accomplished by beheading, is the means by which the martyrs achieve victory. In these texts the moment of death is anticlimactic; the textual emphasis lies elsewhere, either in the interrogation scenes or in the scenes of torture. That is, the locus of meaning lies not in death but in the completion or perfection of an act of confession and faithfulness that has preceded it. Other martyr texts are even more opaque in their death notices, often skirting the matter altogether. According to the Acts of Cyprian, Cyprian was condemned to be beheaded. Rather than describing the execution, the text merely notes that the order was carried out: “And in this way, Cyprian endured” (et ita Cyprianus passus; 5.6). Although the author has previously indicated the manner in which Cyprian died, the death itself is not narrated. The audience is not asked to imagine the sword striking his neck; neither is it required to see Cyprian’s head, detached from his laid-out body. Instead, the audience’s gaze moves from seeing Cyprian blindfolded to observing the pagans’ curiosity about his corpse to watching the funeral procession conducted “with prayers in great triumph” (5.6). Similarly, the Acts of Maximilian states that the Christian deserved to die “by the sword” (3.1) and then merely reports that the order was carried out: “And in this way he soon endured” (et ita mox passus est; 3.3). In this case, too, the text obscures the death itself by not providing details that facilitate a visual image. Strikingly, these narra-

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tives do not employ typical language for dying—morior or pereo—but instead, language of endurance, patior. Death itself appears not to be the locus of meaning in these narratives. Instead, their focus is on submission and endurance. Because the execution scenes lack detail and death terminology is not invoked, the texts obscure death both narratively and philologically. The Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, and Chione also utilizes theologically laden terms rather than “dying” or “death.” Agape and Chione were condemned to be burned alive. Immediately following the announcement of the death sentence, the narrative reports its accomplishment: “And then the most holy ones were perfected by the fire” (teleiōthēnai; 5.1). Recalling biblical language of refining or perfecting through fire, this text focuses on the spiritual benefits of martyrdom rather than on death per se.116 Although the text is slightly more graphic in describing Irene’s death, it again employs the language of “perfection”: Irene “threw herself onto the fire and was thus perfected” (eteleiōthē; 7.2). In both examples the women die; yet to translate teleioō as “died” would disregard the passive form of the verbs.117 More importantly, it would shift the text’s emphasis: the textual focus is not on the fact that they died but on the perfection that their deaths effected. Recension A of the Martyrdom of Justin takes the substitution of theological language for the language of death a step further. This recension includes the order for execution, but unlike recensions B and C it does not narrate its enactment. Instead, the account ends abruptly: “So the holy martyrs, glorifying God, going out to the usual place, perfected [eteleiōsan] their testimony by confessing our Savior, to whom be glory and power with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and for ever and ever. Amen” (6.1). Obviously their testimony was perfected through their deaths, since this is an account of martyrdom; what is striking, again, is the absence of an account of their deaths and the substitution of language of perfection or completion in lieu of a description of martyrdom. In all of these cases tersely reported deaths reinscribe meaning, reframe perception, and move the martyr’s corporeal experience from center to periphery. The narratives’ resistance to focusing on the moment of death also shifts the audience’s perspective to a particular ideology of martyrdom: rather than presenting martyrdom as the endurance of excruciating pain unto death—which puts the focus on pain and death— these texts privilege martyrdom as the perfection of faith. A related technique for shifting the locus of meaning, along with the narrative gaze, at the moment of death is the use of language that highlights the martyrs’ volition and activity—rather than passivity—in death. As with the examples above, the details of execution are not related to the listening audience; but in these cases the texts employ language that marks the martyrs’ work in accomplishing their goals. The Greek recension of the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, for example, relates Papylus’s death cursorily but emphasizes his active role: “offering prayers in silence, he handed over his spirit [paredōken tēn psuchēn]” (37). Similarly,

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Carpus “gave up his spirit [apedōken tēn psuchēn]” (41). The Latin recension of this text likewise emphasizes the activity of the martyrs, utilizing the verb reddo to describe the deaths of Pamphilus (4.6) and Carpus (5.1), and trado of Agathonike (6.5). The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons asserts that Ponticus “gave up his spirit [apedōke to pneuma]” (1.54). Conon prayed, “sealed himself ” (sphragisas heauton), and “gave up his spirit [apedōken to pneuma]” (Mart. Con. 6.5).118 Flavian’s active role in his death is described slightly differently: kneeling down, “he completed his enduring with a prayer” (passionem suam cum oratione finiuit; Mart. Mont. 23.6). The active verbs in these narratives are important: the emphasis is not on the martyrs being killed but rather on the manner in which they accomplish their testimony. By focusing on the activity of the martyrs in their deaths, the texts reject interpretations of victimization; power shifts from the persecutor to the martyr. In addition, these depictions of martyrdom redirect the listener’s gaze from the gore of execution to actions that achieve victory and perfection. Some texts direct audience attention away from the physical trauma of persecution by obscuring the visual imagination at the moment of death. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for instance, images of majesty and wonder are superimposed on the martyr’s body and substitute for images of burning flesh: when Polycarp stood on the pyre, onlookers were unable to see his body because “the fire made the likeness of a vaulted room, like the sail of a ship being filled with the wind, completely surrounding the body of the martyr like a wall” (15.2). The destruction of his body was undetectable not only by sight but also by smell: his burning body did not give off the putrid stench of charred flesh but smelled like “bread baking,” or “incense,” or “some costly spices” (15.2).119 In this scene Polycarp’s body is both exposed to and hidden from us. In Grig’s apposite characterization, “the voyeuristic gaze of the audience is both provoked and denied.”120 The reader is invited to observe the spectacle of a body that is miraculously protected from both the ravages of inhumane torture and our gaze. The text disallows the visualization of a body being consumed by flames; it rejects an imagined olfactory experience of the stench of burning human flesh.121 Pain and death are not the focus. Instead, audience members see and smell God at work, protecting the Christian body from pagan assault. As Susan Ashbrook Harvey has argued: “The experience these Christian witnesses claimed was one in which their senses redefined the event. The fire they saw enshrined rather than destroyed their bishop. The air they breathed billowed with the aroma of baking bread—the comforting promise of daily sustenance, and for Christians the center of (sacrificial) fellowship in the name of Christ.”122 Harvey observes that visual cues frame this scene but olfactory ones interpret its meaning: Polycarp’s body is a sensory reminder of Jesus’ sacrifice as remembered in Eucharist.123 She rightly notes that this scene transforms trauma into victory for the Christian community; by recalling the scent of sacrifice, the letter insists that Polycarp’s “death was neither meaningless nor a defeat. Rather it had been a pure and

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holy sacrifice acceptable to God.”124 The miracle confirms that Polycarp’s prayer has been fulfilled: God has accepted the sacrifice (14.2). That Polycarp’s body was not destroyed by this fire may not have been as surprising to an ancient reader— conversant with cultural expectations for sacrifice—as it is to a modern reader: burning incense, to which Polycarp’s burning body is compared, was understood to transform it rather than destroy it.125 What had been an ordinary object—resin, or in this case flesh—is transformed into something extraordinary, perceptible both by sight and smell. Polycarp’s body is altered by this purifying fire; its transformation is so complete that it cannot be consumed. The text leads audiences to focus not on destruction or decay but on miraculous preservation and divinely aided transformation. The account of the death of the “most noble Germanicus” in the Martyrdom of Polycarp also obscures the reader’s view of the disfigured martyr. The text explains that Germanicus “pulled the beast” upon himself (3.1). While it may be tempting to read this text as a graphic depiction of death, the text itself does little to aid our visual imagination. Listeners may imagine the scene, aided perhaps by personal experiences of the amphitheater, but their visual imaginations are not encouraged by the text, which supplies no details of bodily dissolution. Even the type of beast Germanicus employs to accomplish his death remains a mystery, so the text does not develop a specific mental image that privileges goring over biting or clawing. Instead, it omits all details including in fact the martyr’s body: Germanicus pulled the beast upon himself, but we are given no description of the gory results. At his death the narrative emphasis is instead on the martyr’s rationale for martyrdom: he wished “to be released quickly from their unrighteous and unlawful life” (3.1). This episode resists an interpretation that focuses on the valorization of suffering and death. Instead, it focuses audience attention on the active role the martyr plays in seeking communion with the divine and on rejection of the ungodly powers of this world. Why, we might ask, does a text detail the excruciating torture of the Christian if it is merely—within a sentence or two—going to discount the real effects of that torture? I suggest this occurs because the audience brings to the listening experience expectations of bodily pain through their empathy with the martyr, which is informed by their knowledge of the effects of judicial torture on bodies. The texts acknowledge the truth of the audiences’ experiences: in almost every situation torture is excruciatingly painful. But not all circumstances are the same, not all bodies are equal, and therefore not all victims are vulnerable to Roman power. The texts meet the listeners in the mundane world—where physical tortures reliably result in excruciating pain—because, on the one hand, the listener is already there. But on the other hand, this starting point also fosters audience identification and empathy with the martyr so that they appreciate—in an equally real way—the revised interpretation that transports them into the presence of the miraculous, into the presence of God.126 The text therefore does not fight the audience’s initial

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instincts to assign pain to physical injury; in fact it engages and manipulates those instincts to its own theological ends. The narrative arc is hard to miss when the stories are evaluated for the ways they activate and then resist—even outright reject—the audiences’ expectations. Each of the texts examined above graphically details torture and then offers a radically new perspective on events. They use distinct mechanisms by which to distance the Christian body from or make it immune to pain, which I will explore more fully in the following chapter. All of the texts, however, imagine torture and pain to be instruments by which the state attempts to dehumanize its victims; they are a means of exerting power.127 But these texts do not merely subvert the terms in play such that death is really life or by making the claim that pain is meaningful. In these texts pain is simply not a locus of meaning and hearers who accept this renegotiation of meaning must replay the narrative, self-consciously viewing the events through a different ideological lens. The discourses of pain in the martyr texts are more complex than they may at first seem because the texts do not give away their punch lines early on: they do not begin with the bald assertion that Christian bodies are immune to pagan assault. Indeed, listeners have no sense of the hermeneutical problem until they are confronted with the discordant elements of graphic descriptions of physical torture, on the one hand, and assertions of the ineffectiveness of torture, on the other. First, martyr texts bring immediacy to the events narrated and draw the hearer into those events through genre choices, narrator voice, and character identification. After audiences are emotionally engaged in the action, the texts activate hearers’ expectations about the martyrs’ physical experiences—specifically the relationship of torture to pain—by painting a detailed picture of horrific assaults to the body. The narrative climax, however, undermines rather than confirms these assumptions about martyrs’ bodies experiencing pain. The texts reframe events by differentiating appearance from reality. Listeners who accept the texts’ renegotiation of meaning return to the narrated scene, viewing the events through this different ideological lens. Once the text reaches this new vantage point, the audience sees that there is no pain produced by this torture because there is no power standing behind the torture.

3

Divine Analgesia Painlessness in a Pain-Filled World The soldier of God is not abandoned in his pain nor brought to an end by death. —minucius felix, octavius 37.3

That early Christian martyr texts insist on painlessness during torture is remarkable in itself, but this assertion is all the more surprising in light of the fact that they were written at a time when other authors were highlighting the body as a site of sickness and pain. In the early Christian world the experience of pain was ubiquitous and there were limited ways of managing it. Modern breakthroughs in safe, reliable, and effective pain management have constructed certain relationships between the body and pain that are antithetical to ancient experience, and it is worth bringing to the forefront of our reading the fact that the martyr stories were written and received at a time when there were no reliably effective and safe anesthetics.1 Perhaps one of the only universal expectations in the ancient world was the unavoidable experience of pain, as Susanna Elm has compellingly argued: “Prior to the nineteenth century, pain was such an unalterable condition of humanity that it had the force of a natural, indeed, divine law. . . . Phrased differently, prior to the early nineteenth century and the widespread introduction of effective means to achieve complete and lasting insensitivity to pain, namely chloroform, ether, and morphine, lasting alleviation of most forms of pain had not been possible.”2 Even apart from common painful health issues—for example, malnutrition, malaria, and childbirth—everyday life carries with it stress, anxiety, and pain.3 When we think of how often we reach for aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or other sensory-numbing products, both legal and illegal, we begin to grasp how the world might feel if we did not have such easy access to these analgesics. Indeed, David Morris suggests that “Americans today probably belong to the first generation on earth that looks at a pain-free life as something like a constitutional 63

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right.”4 It was, after all, only in 1846—when ether was first introduced—that surgery could be performed without excruciating pain.5 And it was not until 1899 that aspirin was made available to patients suffering from daily-life pain and inflammation (and then only via physicians: it was not available over the counter until 1915).6 Some pain relievers were known and used in the ancient world, of course. A number of ancient medical writers refer to opium and mandrake, for example. Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, and Celsus all discuss various ways that pain can be alleviated.7 But the ancient/medieval world and the modern world are very different in terms of the effectiveness, safety, availability, and widespread use of pain relievers to achieve, or even to imagine, a pain-free existence.8 The pervasiveness of pain in ancient life is not unrelated to the cultural revolution Judith Perkins traces that “represented the human self as a body in pain, a sufferer.”9 Perkins’s examples include Stoic authors—Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius—medical writers, especially Galen, and Christian texts to demonstrate that in this historical moment, corporeal vulnerability became central to discourses about the body. Whereas the previous chapter examined ways the martyr texts prime the audience to accept a counterintuitive narrative about the tortured body, this chapter focuses more directly on the various ways martyr texts reject pain as a locus of meaning for martyrdom. Explicit claims to impassibility during persecution will engage our attention in the first section of this chapter. In these cases either the martyr or the narrator unequivocally rejects pain as an experience of Christians during torture and death. The second section examines texts that obscure pain by constructing a mind/body dualism. In these stories sensations of the body are either nonexistent or of no concern to the Christian whose spirit is in heaven. The third section of the chapter explores narratives that describe Jesus or God as present with the martyr, giving comfort to him or her. In these texts the divine being takes center stage—overshadowing the martyr—as the active character in the drama, whose presence and support makes the Christian’s witness possible. These three narrative techniques—claims to analgesia/anesthesia, dualism, and divine presence—for asserting the insensitivity of the Christian body to pagan persecution are often found together and suggest that these narratives envision God as a central actor in the drama. The fourth section of the chapter turns to more subtle techniques of storytelling that build on and contribute to claims of painlessness. Specifically, it examines stories of the miraculous resistance of Christian bodies to the effects of torture. In addition, it surveys the martyrs’ surprising responses to torture—including on occasion humorous interludes. When read through the lens of explicit claims to painlessness, these stories may be seen to complement the narrative interests in reframing the reader’s interpretation of events from a model focusing on the experience of pain to a model focusing on the absence of pain through divine analgesia.

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A NA L G E SIA I N T O RT U R E

To reject explicitly the idea that the martyrs experience pain in torture, some martyr texts utilize the language of analgesia (analgēsia) or anesthesia (anaisthēsia) while others negate typical terms for pain (e.g., doleo or algeō). In the Latin version of the Martyrdom of Carpus, Pamfilus, and Agathonike, for instance, Pamfilus endures three pairs of torturers but, the narrator observes, “did not give up a cry of pain” (vocem non dedisset doloris; 3.5).10 In response to the proconsul’s pleas to recant his faith, Pamfilus himself asserts his insensitivity to the effects of torture: “These torments are nothing. Indeed, I feel no pain” (Haec vexationes nullae sunt. Ego autem nullum sentio dolorem; 3.6).11 In this example the common Latin word for pain, dolor, is negated twice, by narrator and martyr, in rapid succession: Pamfilus did not cry out in pain because he felt no pain. While the first example could be interpreted as demonstrating the martyr’s self-control in the face of torture—it was painful but he did not react to the pain—the second example clarifies the text’s interests: Pamfilus was immune to physical sensations. As we shall see later in this chapter, the double testimony to Pamfilus’s impassibility complements other narrative techniques by which this text constructs an ideology of martyrdom without pain. In a long and complex poem about the martyr Romanus, Prudentius makes a number of claims about Christian fortitude, divine protection, and pagan impotence. He begins by addressing Romanus directly, begging him to supply the strength and words to convey the martyr’s own fortitude.12 “Patron, set in motion the tongue within my speechless mouth,” Prudentius pleads to the martyr whose witness proved that “the voice cannot be extinguished, not even if its passageway, having been cut out, trembles” (Peri. 10.1–10). The full import of Prudentius’s introductory exhortation is revealed to the reader only later: immediately before his death, Romanus’s tongue was cut out, but miraculously, his ability to witness to his faith was not affected (10.891). Before his tongue was removed, Romanus endured extensive torture: he was hanged up and his sides were gashed—Prudentius describes them as “plough wounds”—until white showed through where his bones were exposed (10.455). The persecutors were “laboring” and “panting” from the exertion, but Romanus was “at rest” (10.456–57). The Christian educates his persecutor—and Prudentius’s audience—on the disparity between appearance and reality: “If you seek, prefect, to know the truth, all this, all the mangling, is not painful [non dolet]” (10.459–60). The “truth” Romanus offers is the seemingly implausible claim that for Christians the rending of the physical body is painless. Later the prefect may acknowledge the martyr’s claim when he asks why Romanus’s “whole body has grown insensible” (obcalluit; 10.582). In one of Romanus’s lengthy apologies for the faith, he addresses his exhortation to pagan crowds who gather to watch Christians die. It is their superstition

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and misunderstanding of reality that pains (dolet) Romanus (10.461). The claws used to tear the flesh, he goes on to argue, are nothing compared to the “awful attack” of disease on the lungs; the brands do not burn as hot as the fever; the rack is no different from gout or arthritis; the executioner is like the physician (10.482– 98). Thus on the one hand, Prudentius’s poem describes a martyr who asserts unequivocally that torture is not painful (non dolet). And on the other hand, it assures audience members that they already experience pain that exceeds that of torture. Romanus serves as evidence of a pain-free existence in a pain-filled world. Christian insensitivity to pain is a repeated motif in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, being explicitly invoked on three occasions and implied in several others. The previous chapter examined Blandina’s response to the torture that lasted from dawn until dusk, but the unequivocal language of insensitivity to pain deserves attention here. Blandina “was made young again by her confession, which brought to her recovery, rest, and insensitivity [analgēsia]” (1.18). Despite their desire to inflict pain, the torturers instead administered analgesics. A further round of torture for Blandina is recounted later in the letter, and its effects are similar: “after the whips, the animals, and the frying pan, finally, having been tossed into a net she was exposed to a bull, and being tossed a long time by the animal, she no longer felt [mēde aisthēsin] what was happening” (1.56). In this scene the text may be implying that Blandina was physically insensitive to torture. In some martyr texts, however, the Christian enters into a trancelike state, during which she does not know what is happening to or around her. Both interpretive options lead audiences to similar conclusions: Blandina was not aware of the pain of being tossed by the bull. The text’s insistence elsewhere on physical insensitivity, though, suggests that here too we are to understand that Blandina was corporeally unaffected by the torture.13 Sanctus’s experience of being burned with red-hot copper plates is also worth revisiting to examine its claims to painlessness. Throughout this horrific torture the martyr was “bedewed and strengthened by the heavenly fountain of the water of life that issues forth from the body of Christ” (1.22). The narrator explains the importance of Sanctus’s experience both for his contemporaries who were awaiting torture and for subsequent Christian audiences: he served as a “model for all the others that there is nothing fearful where the Father’s love is, nothing painful [mēde algeinon] where Christ’s glory is” (1.23). The author’s negation of algeō underscores that Sanctus—like Blandina—experienced impassibility during torture. According to the Martyrdom of Pionius, the presbyter Pionius and several other Christians were arrested on the anniversary of Polycarp’s death. Pionius was chained, jailed, choked, carried upside down into a temple, clubbed on the head, hanged up, tortured by his fingernails, and finally condemned to be burned alive. As he approached the pyre, Pionius—like Polycarp before him—removed his own clothes, and “perceiving the holiness and nobility of his body, he was filled with

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much joy” (21.2).14 Closing his eyes, he prayed “secretly.” Afterward he opened his eyes and said with a “cheerful countenance,” “Lord, receive my soul” (21.8–9). The author describes Pionius’s death in this way: “As though belching, gently [hēsuchōs] and painlessly [aponōs] he breathed out and offered his spirit in trust to the Father, who has promised to preserve all blood and every spirit that has been unjustly condemned” (21.9). Modern readers may find this image distasteful, but it adequately illustrates the ease with which death comes, and the relief it brings, to the Christian: being burned alive is as painless as a burp. The final observation—that God preserves or protects (phulaxai) the blood and spirit of the faithful—may explain Pionius’s painless death: the martyr’s impassibility is simultaneously proof of the martyr’s faithfulness and of God’s loving commitment to the innocent. The Martyrdom of Irenaeus, like many other martyr texts, includes a trial scene in which the persecutor asks the Christian to save himself by sacrificing to the emperor or the gods. After subjecting Irenaeus to unspecified but “intense” tortures, the prefect, Probus, implores the bishop: “Save yourself from death. Let the tortures you have sustained thus far suffice” (4.4). The martyr, however, challenges Probus’s perception of the events: what the prefect assumed he had done—brought pain to the Christian by means of torture—is rejected by Irenaeus as fantasy. “I directly spare myself from death through the torments which you imagine [putas] you apply to me, but which I do not feel [ego non sentio], because I receive eternal life from God” (4.4). This exchange challenges the listening audience as much as it does the prefect: anyone who equates torture with pain is aligned with the persecutors who do not—who cannot—grasp reality because they stand apart from faith. From the Christian perspective, pagan persecutors are obtuse; they “imagine” that they apply painful tortures, but Christians do not feel them. Perhaps the most poignant example of the explicit claims to painlessness in martyr texts is found in the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius. Toward the end of the narrative Flavian recounts a vision he received of the bishop-cum-martyr Cyprian. Flavian asks Cyprian if enduring the “attack was painful [doleret].” “Obviously,” Flavian explains, “as a future martyr I deliberated about enduring the event” (21.3). Whether or not martyrdom hurts is clearly a pressing matter for Flavian—and perhaps also for the listening audience—as he awaits his death. His fear, again perhaps also felt by Christian listeners, is grounded in the assumption that torture causes pain. But Cyprian offers a comforting response that shatters the causal relationship between torture and pain: “The body does not feel this [nequaquam corpus hoc sentit] at all when the mind is entirely devoted to God” (21.4).15 Flavian’s vision of Cyprian contains a number of narrative techniques for distancing the Christian body from the experience of pain, but of particular interest here is Cyprian’s direct refutation of Flavian’s question: Is the deathblow painful? No, “the body does not feel” it. This text, furthermore, sheds light on its motivation for denying the pain of martyrdom. After recounting Cyprian’s consoling words to Flavian, the narrator

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turns to exhort the audience directly: “O words, with which martyr was encouraging martyr! He denied that enduring the attack was painful [dolorem] in order that the one who was about to die, might be quickened with resolve since he would not dread the slightest sense of pain in the attack” (quod nec paruum sensum doloris in passionis ictu timeret; 21.5). Flavian’s vision is instructive for subsequent Christians: although spectators—in this case even Christians—may think torture is painful, the reality is that martyrs feel not the “slightest sense of pain.” This anesthesia, moreover, is proof of faith: the Christian who does not experience pain is obviously “entirely devoted to God.” These examples illustrate ways that a number of early martyr stories assert explicitly that the martyrs felt no pain. The language used allows the audience no escape from the startling and counterintuitive conclusion that Christian bodies are insensitive to the pain of torture. Often the texts differentiate the perception that torture hurts from the reality that the Christian body is impassible. The differentiation of perception and reality constructs social groups: pagans believe they are harming Christians, but Christians (should) know this is impossible. A B SE N T F R OM T H E F L E SH

Related to the explicit rejection of the experience of pain is the technique of differentiating the experiences of the martyrs’ spirits/souls from their bodies. When employing this strategy, authors may not utilize the terms “analgesia” and “anesthesia” explicitly, but the narratives nonetheless distance the martyr from the physical effects of torture by positing a dualism between body and spirit/soul. In Prudentius’s account of Eulalia’s martyrdom, for example, the martyr asserts that her body—made of clay—is easily destroyed in its frailty but “the tormenting pain [dolore] will not penetrate the inner spirit” (Peri. 3.94–95). Eulalia’s spirit will certainly not feel pain; whether or not her body does is less clear. The text, that is, does not make an explicit claim about the corporeal experience of martyrdom. But either way, the experience of the spirit is different from that of the body, and the latter is cast as insignificant. The truth of Eulalia’s statement is illustrated by the torture scene: as her body was being scraped with claws, “the awful pain was absent from the spirit” (3.143). Vincent’s experience, according to Prudentius, is similar. In his defense before Datianus, Vincent differentiates the body—“a clay vessel” that will break—from that which “remains unmoved on the inside” (Peri. 5.164–67). The spirit cannot be injured (violare); it is “independent, at rest, unharmed, free from harsh pain [dolorum]” (5.159–60). It is this body/spirit distinction that informs the audience’s interpretation of Vincent’s experience on the pyre. As Vincent ascended the pyre, the persecutors threw salt onto the flames to cause the fire to spark randomly, and they placed a piece of fat over him so it would drip slowly onto his body. But

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through all of this, Vincent “remained unmoved as if unaware of pain” (inmotus manet tamquam dolorum nescius; 5.233–34). In this account the spirit/body dualism must be pieced together by the observant listener who interprets Vincent’s insensitivity to the fire through the lens of his earlier assertions about the spirit’s nature as “uninjured” and “free from pain.” Perpetua’s experience presents an interesting case of body/spirit dualism. After Perpetua and Felicitas had been imprisoned for some time, they were brought into the Carthage arena to face a “wild heifer” (Pass. Perp. 20.1). The heifer tossed Perpetua, who landed on her back. Sitting up, she straightened her hair and pulled down her tunic, because she was “more mindful of modesty than of pain” (pudoris potius memor quam doloris; 20.4). Is the editor here conceding the experience of pain? Perhaps the text is suggesting that although Perpetua was primarily concerned about her modesty, she nevertheless felt pain. But the editor quickly complicates the issue. Indeed, it is clear that Perpetua was not simply more mindful of modesty; she was only mindful of that. After the women were called back through the Gate of Life, Perpetua was awakened from a kind of sleep (being so completely in the spirit and in ecstasy), and she began to look around. To the astonishment of all she said: “When are we to be exposed to that heifer or whatever it is?” When she heard that it had already happened, she did not at first believe it until she examined certain marks of persecution on her body and clothes. (20.8–9)16

Perpetua did not feel pain because she was “in the spirit and in ecstasy.”17 Her insensitivity to the violence was due to a trancelike state. It was only when she saw the bodily marks that she was convinced that trauma had occurred; she could see, but not feel, the results of events that we think of as painful. Notably, this is the only time in this text that the editor uses dolor to describe the martyrs’ experiences during torture.18 Its use here, then, is intriguing. The editor may employ dolor here to create a rhyme (pudoris . . . doloris), as Craig Williams suggests.19 Since the term is not otherwise important for this editor, Williams is likely right that it reflects literary and not ideological interests. Spirit/body dualism is also prominent in the Martyrdom of Polycarp. In chapter 2, I examined this text’s depiction of a group of martyrs who were tortured so violently that their veins and arteries were exposed. Here I wish to focus on one specific aspect of the text’s explanation for the martyrs’ endurance: these Christians demonstrated that “in the hour that they were being tortured,” they “had traveled away from the flesh” (2.2). This statement distances the soon-to-be martyrs from the experience of pain; they do not—indeed, cannot—suffer because they are not present in the flesh. The term employed here, apodēmeō, implies travel away from home, sojourning, or traveling abroad. The martyrs’ bodies are portrayed as abandoned abodes; their souls now reside elsewhere, as is clear when the author claims

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that the martyrs were “no longer humans but already angels” (2.3). As we will see, the text holds in tension the thick description of tortured bodies with the insistence that the Christians could not have felt pain because they had abandoned their corporeal dwellings. These Christians had relinquished their bodies even before their deaths; they could not, therefore, feel physical pain. The author of the Martyrdom of Marian and James explains that Christians do not “feel the punishments of prison” or “dread the darkness of the world” because “the soul that has mentally embraced [mente conplexus] heaven with faithful hope in the favor to come no longer attends to its punishment [non interest poenis]” (6.2). The soul that single-mindedly contemplates the rewards promised to faithful Christians, this text claims, is disinterested in, or even absent from, the punishment meted out in prison. No place is “squalid,” “no circumstance is experienced as disagreeable” for those who place their trust in God (6.3). When the mind is in heaven, Christians are unaffected by torture. Similarly, the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius relies on mind/body dualism to distance Christian souls from the vulnerability of the body. Cyprian assures the soon-to-be martyr Flavian that “the body [corpus] does not feel this at all when the mind [mens] is entirely devoted to God” (21.4). Whereas some martyr texts’ use of dualism leaves open the question of the body’s experience—shifting the focus to the spirit—Cyprian links the mind and the body: when the Christian mind contemplates God, the body is insensitive to physical assault. The recently discovered Acts of Gallonius employs dualism differently from the previous examples.20 Gallonius responds to the proconsul’s threats of torture by asserting, “Over my flesh [carne] you have power but none at all over my soul [anima]” (46). The proconsul meets the verbal challenge with a torrent of torture, but the Christian’s assertion is affirmed: “The spirit does not feel [non sentit], the flesh endures [patitur], the soul is saved” (50). The spirit, the element of the human that matters most for this author, does not feel anything; it is not vulnerable to harm from pagan persecutors. The statement about the body—it “endures”—is vague: does it feel pain, but withstand it? Or does the body endure persecution without accompanying pain? The text does not resolve the hermeneutical problem. But in either case the opposition of spirit and body shifts the focus away from an earthly to a spiritual plane. The Christian is not merely a body vulnerable to corporal punishment; it comprises an impassible spirit and a soul that enjoys salvation. The division of body/spirit in narratives of martyrdom is also found in various Donatist texts. The story of the Donatist bishop Marculus, for instance, posits a dualism of body/spirit that explains his analgesic state during torture. According to the narrative, Marculus and his companions were stripped, bound to a column, and whipped. This ordeal was for Marculus a “contest with pain” (certamen doloris).21 But the spectacle of torture provided an opportunity “to exhibit the strength of God” because a Christian “cannot feel the pain of the body when the

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spirit embraces Christ and hope already occupies the kingdom” (nec dolorem corporis posse sentire quorum Spiritus complectitur Christum, et spes jam possidet regnum).22 As in the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius, so also in this text the Christian spirit that wholly embraces God attains impassibility for the body. Dualism is even more conspicuous in the Passion of Maximian and Isaac. This text asserts that Maximian acted “as if his own body was not his own [alienus sui corporis].”23 Like the martyrs in Smyrna who “traveled away from” their bodies, Maximian abandons his body and thereby defeats his persecutors. The Abitinian martyr Dativus stands as yet another example of the differentiation of body and spirit in Donatist martyr texts. Dativus’s “chest was severed, his skin cut, and his viscera torn apart.”24 But through all of this the martyr remained unmoved. The author asserts that “the mind of the martyr is unmoved and even if his limbs were broken, his viscera torn apart, and his sides destroyed, nevertheless, the soul of the martyr endures unhurt and unchanged [animus tamen martyris integer inconcussusque perdurat].”25 The text further underscores the distinction between mind/ spirit and body when it narrates another round of Dativus’s torture, during which the Christian’s “mind and spirit rested on the Lord”; the martyr “did not consider the pain in his body” (nihil dolorem corporis aestimabat).26 As opposed to texts that claim Christian martyrs experience analgesia, the Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs distances the Christian body from the experience of pain by asserting the impassibility of the spirit and its indifference to corporeal experiences. The Passion of Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda contains a different type of argument about the relationship of spirit and body. During his interrogation, Anulinus, the proconsul, urged Donatilla to sacrifice lest she be tortured. In response Donatilla claimed that his “tortures will be great for my soul” (3). Rather than claiming that the spirit is disinterested in or unaffected by the experience of the body, this text makes the opposite claim: the body’s experience benefits the soul.27 Although this episode makes no explicit claims about pain, an observant hearer may interpret Donatilla’s statement in light of the assertions of Maxima, one of her fellow martyrs: when the proconsul issued the order for the women to be lashed, Maxima asserted, “The lashes are not powerful on the flesh that is beaten when the spirit has been saved and when the soul has been redeemed and strengthened” (5). The Christian, Maxima claims, whose salvation is assured is not bothered by torture. What appears to non-Christians as torture, this text argues, is instead the strengthening and redeeming of the soul. Narratives that emphasize a body/spirit dualism may appear to devalue corporeal existence: the experience of the flesh is of little consequence since the soul is in heaven. But the texts’ focus on the body suggests the opposite: the body is a crucial site for the construction of martyrdom. Even texts that utilize dualism do not disregard the body. Rather, these martyr narratives describe the martyr’s victory over the physical assaults perpetrated by their persecutors. The body, as Shaw

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notes, remains “the critical site of power discourses that flow through it and are inscribed upon it.”28 In stories that posit a spirit/body dualism, the two are typically not antithetical but mutually supportive. The spirit that embraces the rewards of heaven conveys an important somatic benefit to the Christian: it attains impassibility for an otherwise vulnerable body. D I V I N E C OM PA N IO N SH I P

Another way authors account for Christian impassibility is by positing the presence—and activity—of the divine. Augustine, for instance, makes this argument often. The patience Vincent exhibits, Augustine explains, can only be understood as “a gift of God”; it “must all be ascribed not to humans, but to the glory of God” (Serm. 274).29 In Serm. 275 Augustine returns to this point: Vincent was enabled to fight against all “the snares of the ancient enemy” and “against the pains of the mortal flesh” because he received “the assistance of the Lord.”30 In yet another sermon on St. Vincent, Augustine makes the same case: “let it be recognized, consequently, that divinity was at work” (Serm. 276).31 Perishable flesh cannot, unaided, stand up to pagan torments and human weakness: “when, I mean, can perishable dust persevere against such savage tortures, unless the Lord were residing in it?”32 It is this final point—the Lord is in the martyr—that Augustine emphasizes. The martyr himself is nothing more than a vehicle through which the Lord’s power and compassion are manifest: If, in this event, one attended to human endurance, it begins to be incredible; if one acknowledges divine power, it ceases even to be surprising. Such barbarity was being waged against the martyr’s body, while such tranquility was being exhibited by his voice; such rough punishments raged against his limbs, and such composure issued forth in his words, that when we imagined, marvelously, that Vincent was enduring [patiente], it was another, not the one speaking, who was being tortured [torqueri].33

In his teachings on Vincent, Augustine shifts the focus from the martyr’s will to the divine aid as that which enabled Vincent to endure torture; indeed, Augustine implies that the Lord suffers the torture in Vincent’s stead. He makes a similar claim about the benefits of divine communion with the martyrs when he teaches that the martyrs “contended against sin all the way to bloodshed, because he himself was in them, through whom they conquered [quia ipse in illis fuit, per quem vicerunt]” (Serm. 335J.1). Augustine reminds his congregation that the martyrs’ strength comes from within: Jesus was in them, strengthening them for victory. But he does more still. In these sermons Augustine argues that the work of martyrdom—the endurance of torture—is accomplished not by the martyrs but by Christ. Modern interpretations of martyrdom tend to center on the martyrs themselves: the narrative action and locus of meaning revolves around the Christian

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hero. But such a reading may compromise our ability to see a different character as central to the story: Jesus/God. Gillian Clark rightly reminds us that martyr texts “commemorate the suffering which the martyr had, with God’s help, endured.”34 This narrative point is relevant especially to the Christian community, as Isabelle Kinnard notes: “It is as though Christ is quite nearby. He is still present in these sufferings, and a martyr’s death serves as a distress call to invoke Christ on behalf not only of the individual, but of the entire persecuted community.”35 Christ is among them; they do not face opposition alone. This important theological point dispels possible concerns about God’s absence. Minucius Felix gives voice to this objection: either God “is not willing or not able to bring them aid” (Oct. 12). As if in direct answer to this problem, martyr texts insist not only on the presence of the divine with the martyr, but further, that this presence brings insensitivity to pain. In many martyr texts the divine being is present with Christians, encouraging them, strengthening them, and often enduring torture in and for them. When Pamfilus asserts that the torments of his persecutors “are nothing,” for example, he does not merely assert the fact of impassibility but explains the reason for it: “I feel no pain because I have someone who strengthens me; one whom you are not able to see endures in me” (ego autem nullum sentio dolorem quia est qui me confortat; patitur in me, quem tu videre non poteris; Mart. Carp. B3.6).36 In this text the causeand-effect relationship is explicit: Pamfilus experiences analgesia because some— unspecified—divine being is within him.37 The divine presence in Pamfilus does more than merely strengthen the martyr, however. In this text the experience of torture shifts from the martyr to the divine being, who endures on his behalf. Pamfilus feels no pain because the divine endures in him. A similar claim for a divine spirit enduring in—and on behalf of—the martyr is made in both the Latin and Greek versions of the Passion of Perpetua.38 Felicitas, imprisoned when she was eight months’ pregnant, was saddened to think that she might not die with the other Christians (it was illegal, the editor notes, to execute a pregnant woman; 15.2). Her fellow Christians began praying for her, and immediately the labor pains (dolores) came. The editor explains to the reader that such an early labor is painful (doleret), and as Felicitas struggles with her pain, the prison guard asks what she will do when she is tossed to the beasts, if she is in such pain (doles) now? (15.5).39 Interestingly, when Felicitas responds to the guard, she replaces the word for pain, dolor, with patior, thereby shifting the locus of meaning from pain to endurance: “I alone endure [patior] this; but then another will be in me who will endure [patietur] for me, because I also will be enduring [passura] for him” (15.6). When referring to Felicitas’s martyrdom, the narrative privileges the notion of endurance (patior) over pain (dolor) and asserts the communion of the divine with the martyr.40 Likewise, when the Greek author narrates Felicitas’s labor, he notes that growing weary she felt pain (ēlgei; 15.5). The guard who taunts Felicitas as she is in

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labor also uses the term algeō but—just as in the Latin text—the Greek author changes the terms when Felicitas responds. Her answer does not connect pain with martyrdom. Rather, she uses paschō: Felicitas “endures” labor alone, but in martyrdom “there will be another” who will be in her, who will endure for her, and for whom she will be enduring (15.6).41 In both the Latin and the Greek versions, therefore, the rejection of “pain”—demonstrated by the texts’ shift to language of “endurance”—highlights the beneficial effect of the divine presence with the martyr. Felicitas rejects pain as a locus of meaning in her impending martyrdom because she anticipates divine presence in her, and divine cosuffering. While many martyr texts claim that an unspecified aspect of the divine is present with the martyr, the Martyrdom of Conon explicitly states God is present with the martyr. According to this text, the prefect who condemned Conon to death first threatened the Christian with a slew of increasingly horrific tortures: “I will destroy you by making you bait for a harsh lion; or I will give you over as food to beasts of the deep; or I will have you put to death by hanging on a cross; or I will throw you into a kettle that has been heated over a fierce fire, and it will melt away your flesh, unless you offer sacrifice to the unconquerable and eternal gods” (5.5).42 Unsurprisingly, Conon is not distressed by these threats but instead offers a reply that wholly undermines the power of the prefect: “The tortures that you proclaim to me are not able to injure me [ou dunantai me adikēsai]” (5.8). This is the case, Conon explains, because he has “God who strengthens” him. Divine presence brings immunity to the tortured Christian. Other martyr texts specify the presence of Jesus in or with the martyrs during torture. The benefits Christians receive from Jesus are highlighted in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons when the author explains that a group of Christians was persecuted so severely “that it did not seem possible to live, even if they obtained every kind of treatment” (1.28). The situation was dire; survival was improbable. Miraculously, however, even “left without human care, . . . having regained strength through the Lord, and having been strengthened in body and soul, they urged on and exhorted the rest” (1.28). Jesus’ act of healing is emphasized by the author’s insistence that the martyrs received no human attention; their surprising strength is only attributable to divine action. This miraculous healing, furthermore, brought encouragement to other imprisoned Christians, possibly by suggesting they would receive the same help from Jesus during their contests. Although the narrative interest in this case is not explicitly on pain, it does focus on the beneficial presence of Jesus with martyrs during persecution: Jesus provides a lifeline to martyrs who were assumed to be beyond medical help. In other places the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons shows significant interest in the theme of analgesia in martyrdom, especially as a result of the presence of Christ in and with the martyrs. We have previously examined Sanctus’s

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bout of torture during which he was “bedewed and strengthened by the heavenly fountain of the water of life that issues forth from the body of Christ” (1.22). Here it is worth noting the presence of Christ with Sanctus at this moment: Sanctus received strength from Jesus’ healing presence, manifest in the water of life. Particularly illuminating of the text’s interest is the connection made between the perception of Sanctus’s body—“all one wound and bruise, having been contracted and having lost any external human form”—and the reality that Christ was “enduring” (paschōn) in Sanctus (1.23). Christ’s endurance effected “great glory, hindering the work of the Adversary, and showing as a model to all that there is nothing fearful where the Father’s love is, nothing painful [mēde algeinon] where Christ’s glory is” (1.23). The story of Sanctus demonstrates two complementary themes in this letter: first, Jesus is present with the martyrs, offering strength and relief (1.22); second, Jesus endures for the martyrs, in their stead (1.23). The Letter suggests an economy of exchange whereby Jesus takes on the physical experiences of persecution in place of the martyrs. This text controverts readings that suggest Christians valorized the experience of pain in imitation of Jesus’ passion. Rather, in the Letter the martyrs feel nothing because Jesus endures for them. The author of the Letter typically describes the martyrs’ experiences with the term hypomenō. Thus the narration of Sanctus’s experience differentiates the Christian’s act of abiding or submitting (hypomenō) from Jesus’ act of undergoing or enduring (paschō).43 Although subtle, given the explicit claims in this text of Jesus’ presence with the martyrs and the martyrs’ painlessness, the distinction is an important one. A similar claim is made in 1.27–28 where Christ is seen as the one who “left unemployed” (katargēthentōn) the tyrant’s “instruments of correction” through the submission (hypomonēs) of the martyrs. Christ achieves victory by means of the martyrs, but his victory is not related to their pain. Rather, Christ is victorious because Christians are willing to submit to an experience that is ultimately transferred to Christ himself. The victory is Christ’s—not the Christians’— but through it the martyrs receive the crown of immortality. Just as Christ endured in Sanctus, so also he dwells in other martyrs. The faithful Christians who were imprisoned are described as beautiful and joyful; even their chains adorned their bodies like “comely ornaments” (1.35). But the beauty of these Christians is not merely that of outward physical appearance: they even smelled different; their bodies exuded “at the same time the sweet odor . . . of Christ so that some imagined they had anointed themselves with worldly perfume” (1.35). In this text Christ’s presence with and in the martyrs is manifest in myriad ways, all of which relate Jesus’ presence to the martyrs’ ability to submit successfully to persecution. In one of the best-known episodes of the Letter, Blandina benefits from the presence of Jesus. After experiencing a great deal of torture, she was hanged on a post to be exposed to the wild animals. The author describes her in this way:

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The author goes on to explain that Blandina “was clothed in Christ, the great and unconquerable athlete,” and through her contest she “was crowned with the crown of immortality” (1.42). Of particular interest to the current discussion is the relationship in this scene between Jesus and Blandina. On the one hand, some scholars argue that Jesus displaces Blandina. From this perspective the other martyrs no longer see Blandina hanging, but instead they see Jesus. Candida Moss, for instance, argues that “Blandina herself disappears, and in her place and in her physical form only Christ is apparent. The transformative quality of her imitation of the crucifixion is so strong that she vanishes; her identity is transformed into and subsumed by that of Christ.”44 Most English translations of the Letter reflect similar reading emphases, as Elizabeth Goodine and Matthew Mitchell demonstrate: the subject of hina peisē is understood to be Jesus (i.e., “that he might persuade”).45 Other scholars, on the other hand, argue that the visual (and grammatical and syntactical) focus remains squarely on Blandina, not Jesus. While the subject of the verb “to persuade” is ambiguous—referring either to Blandina or Jesus— Goodine and Mitchell argue that “grammatically and syntactically the best translation of this clause is to render Blandina, not Christ, as subject” (i.e., “that she [Blandina] might persuade”).46 In support of this claim they note that throughout this passage Blandina is the subject of the majority of the verbs. The two sentences that make up the passage center on Blandina, and she is the active agent: “it is she who prays, she who encourages, she who acts and stands in the stead of Christ.”47 From a grammatical and syntactical point of view, then, Blandina is best understood as the subject of the verb. Blandina is also the center of the passage from a narrative perspective. Translations that obscure Blandina’s presence and agency in this scene, Goodine and Mitchell argue, “make of her a nonentity at the most critical point of the passage, that is, at the very point where Christ shares koinōnia with a human being and that human being thereby persuades others to faith.”48 Relatedly, the usual translation (“he might persuade”) compromises the parallels this text draws between the experiences of Sanctus and Blandina, and between the effects of their endurance on their fellow Christians. Retaining Blandina’s centrality in the scene preserves the parallels: whereas Sanctus’s endurance “teaches” about God’s love (1.23), Blandina’s endurance “persuades” others that they will enjoy eternal fellowship with God (1.41). Both have agency in communicating theological truths to their fellow Christians. Thus, as Blandina hangs, her image does not dissolve into Jesus’;

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rather, in Streete’s words, her “body is the effective rhetoric.”49 Although iconography plays an important role in recalling the object of faith for whom Christians are willing to die, this scene secures Blandina at the center of the visual imagination. Throughout this text Jesus works in and among—but does not replace—the martyrs: as Sanctus benefited from Jesus’ presence with him, so also does Blandina. This scene’s interest in Blandina’s communion with Christ, furthermore, prepares the audience for the martyr’s last appearance in the Letter. After being scourged, thrown to animals, and placed in a frying pan, Blandina was tossed by a bull; but “she no longer felt [mēde aisthēsin] what was happening” (1.56). We have already noted Blandina’s impassibility, but the passage continues, explaining why Blandina did not feel the effects of torture: it was “because of the hope and firm hold on the things she had faith in and because of her communion [homilian] with Christ” (1.56). Communion with Christ brings insensitivity to Blandina just as it did for Sanctus. In both cases Jesus alleviated their pain and enabled them to submit to persecution; and in both cases the martyrs’ endurance was instructive to others. Jesus is also envisioned as a key player in the narrative action of the Martyrdom of Polycarp. As the author explains at the beginning of his letter, “almost everything that took place before happened in order for the Lord to show us once again a testimony according to the gospel” (1.1). Jesus, however, does not work from the wings; he stars center stage, interacting with—even defending, helping, or suffering for—the martyrs.50 In an episode we have examined previously, the author describes the torture of a group of Christians. It is the text’s explanation for the heroic abilities of the martyrs that is our concern here. The author writes, “some, being torn to shreds by scourging until the very structure of their flesh was visible, down to the inner veins and arteries, stood firm [hypemeinan]” (2.2). If the audience focuses on the pain such violence might cause, they stand with the nonbelievers observing the torture, who “weep with pity” (2.2).51 But careful listeners are relieved of the burden of imagining this pain and feeling this pity: immediately after the physical trauma has been described, the author focuses our attention on the Christians’ ability to withstand this torture without uttering a grumble or groan. The martyrs’ surprising lack of response to torture is attributed to two complementary experiences: first, “Christ’s martyrs had traveled away from the flesh,” and second, “the Lord was standing near [parestōs], speaking with them” (2.2).52 As Jesus was “standing near,” the martyrs were “fixing their attention on Christ’s chariti”—his grace, favor, or possibly even his beauty (2.3).53 As they turned their attention to Christ, who was present before them, they thought little of worldly tortures, through one hour buying for themselves eternal life. . . . And with the eyes of their hearts they looked up at the good things reserved for the ones who endure, which no ear has heard nor eye seen, nor has it entered into the heart of a human. But these things were revealed by the Lord for they were no longer humans but already were angels. (2.3)54

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There are several points worthy of note here. First, the text connects the martyrs’ gazing at Christ to their disinterest in worldly torture. Jesus’ presence with the martyrs allows them to care little about torture and to focus instead on eternal life. Second, Jesus reveals “good things” to the martyrs, things that no human has ever seen. The statement that “no ear has heard nor eye seen, nor has it entered into the heart of a human” prepares the reader for the startling conclusion: this can only happen because the martyrs are not in fact humans but “already angels.”55 It is Christ’s presence with and among the Christians that allows them to stand firm and thus to earn the rewards reserved for those who do.56 The Martyrdom of Polycarp casts Jesus as an active character in the drama, one whose presence with the martyrs allows them to endure torture without experiencing pain; he facilitates their transition from physical to spiritual abodes. In the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius the martyrs assert: “the greater the temptation, the greater is the one who conquers it within us. Indeed, it is not a battle, because it is protection under the Lord’s victory” (4.4). According to this text, it is Jesus who conquers temptation for the martyrs who, it seems, are free to enjoy the postwar victory. The author goes on to clarify that Christians do not participate in the battle itself; Christ has already won the battle. Torture is easy or tolerable (leue) for God’s people; indeed, “death is nothing when its sting is crushed and its struggle completely conquered through the triumph of the trophy of the cross” (4.5). Jesus’ prior victory shifts narrative attention away from the martyrdom itself. Although modern readers are accustomed to imagining the martyrs’ resistance to pagan persuasion as effecting their defeat of Satan and death, here the martyrs are not soldiers on active duty engaged in battle with the adversary but, rather, beneficiaries of a previously won battle. Through his death on the cross Jesus is imagined to have once and for all defeated death, and thus Christians receive the crown without fighting the battle, as the author makes clear: “For this reason we receive the reward of our crowns because the battle has already occurred; the palm is not handed over until the contest is completed” (4.6). Jesus has already waged battle and won; Christians share in this victory through Jesus’ presence with them because he defeats temptation and crushes the sting of death. As we have seen, in this same text Flavian asks Cyprian if the deathblow is painful (dolor). I return to this scene to focus attention on the language Cyprian employs in his answer: “it is another flesh that endures when the spirit is in heaven” (Mart. Mont. 21.3). The attentive listener notices the shift in language that rejects the very terms of Flavian’s question and rejects pain as a locus of meaning: Flavian uses the term dolor in his question, but Cyprian answers in the language of endurance (patior). Moreover, if the other flesh to which Cyprian refers is Flavian’s— imagined as a changed flesh because the spirit has been liberated—then the text must be suggesting that although the Christian body can endure torture, it cannot feel pain because the spirit’s presence in heaven has changed the body on earth.

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But it is not at all clear that this other flesh should be understood as Flavian’s. The text may be claiming that Jesus offers himself in place of the Christian. In this reading, the other flesh that suffers on behalf of the spirit that dwells in heaven is none other than Jesus’. In light of other episodes in this text, this reading—that Jesus endures for the martyr—becomes more certain. Jesus’ presence in and with the martyrs is very clear in the part of the text that deals with another of the imprisoned martyrs, Victor. This Christian received a vision of Jesus—in the form of a child—who revealed that the martyrs had yet to toil a little more. Having warned Victor that he had more to endure, the child Jesus offered consolation and a promise: “But be assured that I am with you” (7.4).57 Later in the narrative, Flavian’s insistence that he was a deacon drew the anger of the spectators, who called for him to be tortured anew. Flavian along with his fellow Christians had already been condemned to be burned alive (but the Lord’s dew extinguished the flames), starved, and imprisoned for many months. Finally his fellow Christians—from whom he was separated—died. Flavian though was spared any further torment, because “the Lord, who already understood his servant’s faith in the punishments of prison, did not allow the martyr’s already tested body to be touched by even the lightest laceration of torture” (20.6). In this case Jesus is described as stepping in on behalf of the martyr, directly shielding the Christian body from any further harm. The nearness of the martyr to the divine is made abundantly clear at the end of the story: “it was not difficult to have knowledge of the spirit when heaven and Christ were near” (23.5). Flavian shared fellowship with the divine and thereby received not only physical protection from harm but the fulfillment of Cyprian’s promise: “another flesh endures when the spirit is in heaven.” Jesus’ protection is also a theme in the Martyrdom of Marculus. As the author builds up to a description of the torture of the martyr, he sets audience expectation for Jesus’ presence and aid during the torture. “Now who could give an account of the constancy of the glorious Marculus? Who, by virtue of eloquence, might be able to set forth either the unheard of madness of the persecutors or the wonderful defense of Christ the Lord displayed in his martyr?”58 Here the author makes clear that Marculus’s perseverance is attributable to the presence of the Lord within him. At times Marculus even fades from sight altogether as Jesus fights with the “Antichrist.” Eventually, the Antichrist changes his tack when “it was not possible to hold out against a soul invigorated by divine constancy,” and so he turned to inflict “a contest of pain on the frailty of the body.”59 Marculus met this challenge by fastening on to himself fetters that prevented him from avoiding the coming blows. But in the midst of the beatings, “Christ, clothed in the limbs of the martyr, disclosed a miracle: not only did he not allow pain to draw near [non solum dolorem adire non sineret], but he even wiped away from his body all marks of violence and all signs of torture.”60 Pain is obliterated for the faithful Christian; wounds are healed. The Christian body, enveloped by Christ, is not fragile, breakable, or passible.

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The Martyrdom of Bishop Fructuosus and His Deacons, Augurius and Eulogius is unique among the martyr texts discussed here because it describes the presence of the Trinity among the martyrs. The text describes the Christians as being “like Ananias, Azarias, and Misael” (4.2). The comparison of the martyrs to the Jewish youths in Daniel prompts the author to discuss the presence of the divine in both stories: “the divine trinity was also perfected in them.”61 Like the Jewish youths, the Christian martyrs enter the fire and there experience a miracle: “the Father was not absent, and the Son gave aid, and the Spirit walked about in the midst of the fire” (4.2). These martyrs were comforted by the company of all three persons of the Trinity. In fellowship with the divine, the martyrs prayed until they died. In this text God is not a spectator in the heavens, or even directing events from a transcendent throne. Rather, God, Jesus, and the Spirit join the faithful Christians in the pyre; each of the persons of the Trinity sustains the martyrs in the final moments of their earthly lives. Although we may expect martyr stories to praise the endurance of faithful Christians, such an interpretation undervalues the theological claims made by— and concerns about theodicy reflected in—these texts. Rather than focusing primarily on human fortitude, martyr stories teach Christians that during persecution and torture the martyrs are not alone.62 Jesus is with Christians, dwelling in them and enduring for them. Later homilies on the martyrs—including, as we have seen, Augustine’s homilies on Vincent and Perpetua and Felicitas—focus on this point. In fact Augustine exclaims: “Whoever imagines that Saint Vincent was able to master this by his own strength is wrong beyond measure.”63 And he argues that Perpetua and Felicitas were victorious because “he who lived in them conquered in them.”64 Augustine’s point appears to be directly in line with the kinds of claims we have seen in the martyr texts: Jesus is with the martyrs, in the martyrs, healing them, strengthening them, and perhaps enduring for them. The martyrs’ communion with Jesus also brings divine deliverance from pain, although the mechanisms by which this works may be imagined differently: at times the experience of analgesia is accomplished by divine protection of the body from torture; at other times, by the transference of the experience of torture from the martyr to Jesus. In all of these cases pain is anticipated but unrealized. Pain, in other words, is a necessary part of the discourse of martyrdom but in an unexpected way: the anticipation of pain highlights divine mercy.65 U N E X P E C T E D OU T C OM E S O F T O RT U R E

The narrative tools we have examined thus far reframe, redefine, and replace the image of bloody defeat with one of miraculous communion with the divine and its concomitant anesthesia. Accompanying these claims to impassivity are complementary narrative tools—claims to body/spirit dualism and divine companionship—that further facilitate the listener’s revised interpretation of the invulnerability of the

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Christian body to pagan torture. Martyr texts also destabilize audiences’ expectations for pain when the stories claim torture does not harm but instead heals. In place of broken, torn, and bloodied bodies, the narratives supply listeners with pictures of wholeness, youth, beauty, and perfection. Pagan attempts at torturing the Christian body are laughable: torture brings not pain and injury but refreshment and healing. Such assertions undermine audiences’ assumptions about persecutors’ power over Christian bodies, and in many cases they also challenge assumptions about the martyrs’ bodily pain. These narrative techniques work alongside more explicit claims about pain or painlessness, further engaging audience expectation regarding persecuted Christian bodies and then redirecting listeners toward a new paradigm. The Martyrdom of Marculus, for example, asserts that torture applied to the martyr’s body brings healing rather than harm. Unbeknownst to his persecutors— who tag the bishop as an easy target—Marculus was not alone. As we saw above, Christ was in the martyr protecting him from feeling pain and erasing from his body “all marks of violence and all signs of torture.”66 Although ordinarily torture allows “the full weight of the state’s authority . . . to be inscribed on the flesh of the criminal,” as Castelli observes, Marculus’s body is unmarkable: the outward signs of torture are miraculously expunged.67 His flesh is imagined as a palimpsest in the making: the Christian’s body is momentarily marked but this unholy composition is effaced in preparation for a divine script. Secular authority may temporarily mar his body, but Christ’s superior authority restores it, proving that “in this contest, the enemy was conquered and subjugated.”68 In this text, for both the persecutor and the audience, perceptions are not reality. The bishop appeared to be frail, but he could not be defeated by torture because Christ was in him. Marculus’s story teaches that persecution brings not injury but health. Unexpected outcomes of torture are a leitmotif of the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons. Instead of being broken by her persecutors, Blandina’s experience brings “recovery and rest” (analēpsis kai anapausis; 1.19). Persecution does not break her body but instead repairs it.69 Sanctus experiences a similar phenomenon. Having endured such violent torture that his body was “all one wound and bruise,” Sanctus was eventually left alone (1.23). After several days his persecutors began to torture him again, believing “that now that his body had become swollen, another application of the torture would overcome him, since he could not bear up under the touch of a hand” (1.24). The persecutors used to their advantage the probability that Sanctus would die during a second round of torture: it would terrify the other Christians and thus serve as a warning to them. Listeners may find the persecutors’ assessment of Sanctus’s life span convincing given the trauma he is reported to have sustained. But to the amazement of all, Sanctus’s “body straightened out and was restored to health by the subsequent tortures; he regained his former shape and the use of his limbs, so that, by the grace of Christ, the second

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torture was not a punishment but a healing” (mē kolasin all’ iasin; 1.24). The engaged listener finds relief in the revelation that subsequent attempts at harming his body were so deeply ineffectual that they, ironically, cured him. The Letter uses these stories to illustrate that “the tyrant’s instruments of correction were left unemployed” (1.27). As with Biblis’s confession on the rack, the persecutors’ actions produce results that are in direct opposition to their intentions. These stories reinterpret events: torture that should bring pain, apostasy, and death brings instead renewed faith, rest, and health. In the Passion of Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda the proconsul Anulinus orders the women to be flogged, but it does not harm them the way he anticipates. So he orders the women to be placed on beds of sharp shells. Maxima and Donatilla offer a defiant explanation for their endurance of torture: “We have a great physician who heals the wounds you inflict on us and strengthens our souls. You are assuredly diminished in the punishment, and we are amplified in glory. You are diminished in the verdict, and we are made better through our trust in God” (5). The martyrs are cured and strengthened by divine action. Likewise the persecutors’ goals could not be realized through their torture of the Abitinian martyr Saturninus. In this story Anulinus, the proconsul, grows exasperated with the Christian who repeatedly confesses his faith but refuses to answer questions relating to the Christian assembly and his possession of sacred texts. In an especially poignant scene depicting the Roman quaestio, Saturninus is tortured by the same implements previously used on his father: “The exhausted torturers attacked the sides of the man with wounds like his father’s and they blended the father’s blood which had dampened the claws with the kindred blood of the son. Through the furrows of the gaping wounds you saw the father’s blood flowing from the sides of the son and the blood of the son mingled with the father’s flowing out from the moistened claws.”70 The narrator’s detailed and painstaking description paints the visual image for the audience. As the account is read, the listener pictures the bodies of both father and son, their matching wounds, and their intermingling and dripping blood. The persecutors designed this torment to maximize both physical and emotional pain. But something unexpected happened: “the youth, revived [recreatus] by the mixture of the two bloods, felt it a cure rather than torment” (medelam potius quam tormenta sentiebat).71 The desires of the persecutors were thwarted when their vicious actions effected healing. The failure of torture to harm the youth is emphasized by the author’s use of recreo, which connotes restoration or renewal from a previous state: the youth, it seems, was recreated by the torture. As was the case for earlier Christian martyrs, torture brings Saturninus miraculous recovery, not bodily torment. The physical effects of torture are similarly challenged in the Martyrdom of Pionius. As I described earlier, after enduring various torments during his imprisonment, Pionius was finally burned alive. Unlike Polycarp, whose death could not be

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accomplished on the pyre, Pionius did succumb to the flames and die. As the account is narrated, the audience may imagine what a burned body looks like; they might visualize charred flesh or a form that is no longer recognizably human. But this image in the mind’s eye is rejected when the listener discovers that although the fire killed Pionius it did not touch his body. The text substitutes the listener’s mental image of charred flesh with one of youth and beauty: “After the fire had been put out, those of us who were near by saw his body arranged like that of an athlete in his prime” (22.2). After being clubbed, hanged, dragged, and burned, Pionius’s body was not wounded, bleeding, or charred but youthful and athletic. The narrative focuses especially on the details of his head as proof of his bodily perfection: “His ears were not awry; his hair lay in order on the surface of his head; and his beard was blooming like the first growth of hair. His face shone again” (22.3–4).72 The listening audience can take emotional cues from the eyewitnesses who “were more established in their faith,” and even those who had faltered “returned scared” (22.4). The preservation and perfection of Pionius’s body in the fire is a reminder of God’s presence with the martyrs, and it recalls apostates to the faith. The text foreshadows this moment by reporting the crowd’s assessment of Pionius’s changed countenance when he emerges from prison, “how he was always pale-green, but now his complexion is glowing” (10.3). This observation prepares the audience for what is to come: prison and death do not lead to decay and dissolution but to youthful vigor and athletic strength. Stories such as these, which depict torture bringing healing not pain, are part and parcel of larger narrative claims to Christian invulnerability to persecutors’ acts. Listeners might assume that torture leads to bodily harm and physical pain, but the narratives undermine those assumptions by substituting claims to renewal, strength, and healing.73 Stories of the divine protection of the body may also reflect Christian interest in demonstrating God’s care for and presence in human life, functioning as an argument against the devaluation of corporeal existence. The author of the Martyrdom of Marculus, for instance, describes God’s protection of Marculus’s body—not merely his soul; God, the author asserts, “is devoted to the entirety of the martyr.”74 For many of the communities that produced martyr texts, God is not imagined as merely awaiting souls in heaven. God is active in the combat, engaging in the struggles of this world on behalf of—indeed, within—faithful Christians. God cares equally for the souls and the bodies of Christians, rewarding one and protecting the other. U N E X P E C T E D R E SP O N SE S T O T O RT U R E

The reality of the texts’ claims to impassivity/impassibility are equally observable in the martyrs’ reactions to torture: rather than responding to corporal punishment by screaming, crying, or groaning, Christian martyrs remain silent or

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in some cases crack jokes. These unexpected, often quite witty responses to physical assault are incongruous to the situation and thus require audiences to negotiate their meaning. They confirm the texts’ larger claims regarding the martyrs’ insensitivity to pain by disconfirming seemingly natural, instinctual responses to torture. Silence is a prominent theme in martyr texts: during torture the martyrs do not cry out or groan but are instead silent. These stories certainly highlight the martyrs’ fortitude, but the narratives may also challenge assumptions about the relationship of injury to pain because the martyrs do not respond—even involuntarily—to torture. When the martyrs are beaten, scraped, or clubbed, there are no narrative markers of pain. This is the case in several of the texts I have already examined: in the Martyrdom of Polycarp the martyrs were silent even as whipping exposed their veins and arteries (2.2); and the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike draws the audience’s attention to Papylus who though hanged up and scraped and subjected to three pairs of torturers, “did not give up a sound” (A35). The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons tells of the torture of Alexander, who “neither groaned nor grumbled at all but, rather, conversed with God in his heart” (1.51). Perpetua’s comrades “received the sword with silence” (Pass. Perp. 21.8). Pionius “kept quiet” when he was hit on the head with a club (Mart. Pion. 18.10), and “kept silent” when he was hanged up (20.1). Rather than remaining silent, some martyrs demonstrate their insensitivity to torture with a joke. Many of us likely read the martyr accounts as eulogies that reflect on the martyrs’ faithful endurance, submission to authority, and the disintegration of the Christian body in witness to God. But humorous episodes in the martyr texts may suggest a different approach: these texts may emotionally engage the listening audience in shared defiance to tyranny and persecution. But can a funny thing happen on the way to—or even in—the arena? Could Christians have found humor in martyr texts? And if so, to what ends? Martyrological humor is undoubtedly in play in the story of St. Laurence, who was purportedly a victim of the Valerian persecution. In Prudentius’s account in Peristephanon, the prefect accuses Laurence of laughing at him, mocking him, and making him the butt of jokes.75 Broadly speaking, Prudentius’s story about Laurence is built around humor that comes at the prefect’s expense. The repetition of this theme primes the audience for the story’s ultimate joke. The prefect, determined to burn Laurence alive, devises a method whereby death will come as slowly and as painfully as possible: rather than a raging pyre, the prefect orders the fire to be slowed. Laurence is placed on a spit above the heat. Such a fate does not provoke the saint’s anger or fear; instead, he cracks a joke. After being roasted for a while on one side, he quips, “It is cooked, devour it, try whether it is nicer raw or roasted” (2.406– 8).76 The incongruity that produces the humor is obvious. Laurence offers his persecutors a tasting menu: do they prefer Laurence well-done or Laurence tartare? The

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martyr’s one-liner—which, not incidentally, casts the persecutors as cannibals— offers listeners an emotional break from the drama depicted. On the one hand, the joke offers much-needed relief to the listening audience, who if they have followed the story carefully must be imagining how excruciating it is to be roasted alive on a spit. This gruesome task is interrupted with a joke that shifts the audience’s focus to the persecutors as they are charged with breaking taboo. On the other hand, Laurence’s ability to make light of his situation disrupts the power dynamics inherent in the scene: the pagan persecutors’ monstrous attempts are not to be feared but ridiculed. As James Thorson aptly puts it, “death personified with pie in its face has lost its power.”77 Laurence’s ability to joke at the moment of his death challenges the notion that the prefect has won the match with the Christian. His failure is manifest in his inability to achieve his aim of exacting excruciating pain. Gary Meltzer’s observation about Senecan wit is, mutatis mutandis, applicable to the martyr texts: it functions to reveal “the condition of both victimizer and victim beneath appearances which may be deceptive.”78 The dissolution of the Christian body may be a ghastly thing to picture in the mind’s eye, but the injection of gallows humor relieves the audience of the burden of that image, shifting their attention to the condition of the persecutors’ souls. As Christian bodies are burned and stretched, their outward appearances may no longer be recognizably human, but their faith demonstrates their true humanity. Laurence’s humor illustrates that the opposite is true for the persecutors: while their outward human appearance remains intact, their true inhumanity is revealed when they are characterized as cannibals.79 Thus the text invites its audience “to confront a more monstrous spectacle” than that of Laurence’s charred body: that of the persecutors’ “diseased soul[s].”80 In the martyrdom of Laurence, gallows humor accomplishes a constellation of things: it shifts the audience’s gaze from the anxiety-inducing physical condition of a Christian enduring a gruesome execution to the real—if concealed—spiritual condition of the persecutor; it injects levity into a difficult situation; and it functions in harmony with other narrative claims that for Christians torture and death are not what they appear to be. E. B. White famously observed that “humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.”81 A joke explained, in other words, is no longer funny. In this case, however, the upside of examining the martyrs’ jokes outweighs the downside. Investigating the presence of humor in such grim settings presses us to think about the various functions of humor. Why would anyone laugh at Laurence’s joke, told as it was in the midst of pain and execution and invoking the taboo of cannibalism? What is funny about being slowly roasted or eaten alive? Really, nothing. To find the torture of another human being humorous is the hallmark of a sociopath. But that conclusion may reflect a more objective stance than the martyr texts are aiming for. That is, generally speaking we should not find such gruesome and

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revolting events funny. To laugh at them is to betray a fundamental lack of empathy with the narrated events. But on the other hand, in these texts not laughing may mark a listener as ignorant of the story’s truths. This observation requires our attention. What is humor? How, and to what end, does it work? Although Laurence may be the most famous joking martyr, he’s not, I suggest, the only one who gives audiences something to chuckle about. Ultimately I am proposing that martyr texts are more playful than their subject matter suggests, and this playfulness is integrally related to the function of the texts within Christian communities. Although theories of humor abound, none has proven wholly satisfactory. Why we tell jokes and why we laugh at jokes (or don’t) turns out to be complicated business. The type of humor we encounter in Laurence’s martyrdom—gallows humor—is a particular subset of humor that reflects moments of crisis. It is humor “that smiles under its tears.”82 At its most basic level this kind of humor relies upon the recognition and subsequent resolution of a perceived incongruity: when two things—an idea, an event, a statement—are paired but seem to be at odds, the resolution of the discord may lead a person to laugh.83 At its core the incongruity of gallows humor lies in its insistence on inserting humor into a deadly serious situation.84 It asserts the “right to be humorous in spite of unpleasant facts.”85 It is subversive in its insistence that imminent death is not deadly serious. Gallows humor is intentional—not accidental—and is always in the service of larger social interests.86 There are, for instance, records of dark humor among Jews under Nazi rule, including jokes made in concentration camps.87 Although prisoners were given minimal rations, one man at Treblinka nevertheless cautions a fellow inmate about the dangers of gluttony: “Hey Moishe, don’t overeat! Think of us who will have to carry you.”88 The joke offered some levity—if only momentarily. When the world turns upside down, when we observe the horrors of human violence, normalcy and meaning are shaken. What truth do we cling to? What good can we find? Humor is a mechanism by which we can begin to steady our gaits again, to reorient ourselves to the world, and to try to reclaim some semblance of normalcy. For communities fearing persecution and death, dark humor may function in two important ways. On the one hand, it can bolster the esteem of a minority or persecuted group; it can be used by an individual or group to assert superiority over others by laughing at them. In this way humor is a deeply cathartic act. On the other hand, humor can also lessen the fears of death and bodily dissolution by placing the discourse under the persecuted group’s control.89 Dark humor, as Paul Lewis explains, “consoles by making us feel that what we are dealing with is not worth taking seriously as an object either of fear or meditation. It’s only a joke, humor assures us, supporting the thrust of comedy away from law and fact, from death and pain.”90 This type of humor engages in a battle over the discourse about death.91

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Humor then carries much hermeneutical weight. With martyr texts we are not dealing with a case of slipping on a banana peel. The dark humor in martyr texts can support an author’s theological claims about the superiority of Christian beliefs to pagan ones; it can undergird the claims to a reality that stands in contradistinction to appearances; it can forge bonds among Christian listeners as they laugh together with their martyrs at the ineffective—and thus senselessly barbaric—actions of their persecutors. What humor does not do, I think, is make light of martyrdom. As the editor of The Onion stated after the September 11 attacks, “I don’t think the act of laughter negates the act of crying. The two are not mutually exclusive.”92 To say that early Christians utilized humor in martyr narratives is not to say that these stories were not serious and meaningful. It is to say, instead, that one way some of these texts make the stories meaningful for Christian audiences is through humor. Mary Beard issues a salutary caution to historians searching for humor in the ancient world: “we must not assume that successful translation between the Roman world and our own is possible.”93 Humor does not necessarily transcend culture. What ancient Christians found funny may be lost on us. And what we find funny may not have been funny to them. But in some cases there are clear indications that a martyr’s quip was intended to be funny. Taking into account Beard’s caution, then, I start with a position of certainty: that Laurence’s statement was supposed to be funny is clear when the narrative asserts that it was said “in jest” (ludibundus). Humor, furthermore, is woven throughout this martyr account and is in fact a leitmotif of the Christian’s interactions with his persecutor.94 Prudentius’s account of the martyrdom of Romanus may also employ humor to alleviate the tension of the narrative. Romanus and his persecutor Asclepiades exchanged lengthy speeches in defense of their religions and points of view. When Asclepiades tired of Romanus’s diatribes, he devised a means of torture that, he thought, would silence the Christian. He ordered the martyr’s cheeks to be cut open so any utterance would exacerbate the pain. But this, Romanus observed, allowed more, not less, opportunity to praise God, since “I throw open many mouths to speak of Christ” (10.563). The martyr’s wit shines through when he describes a face with innumerable mouths: “Look! all the cuts are mouths pronouncing praise” (10.566–70). The image of multiple mouths on a single face is funny, rather than revolting, because the martyr has already explained to both the persecutor and the listening audience that Christians are insensitive to the pain of persecution: “If you seek, prefect, to learn the truth, all this tearing to pieces or whatever, is painless [non dolet]” (10.459). The audience that believes Romanus understands that the persecutor’s actions are futile. Listeners then can laugh with Romanus as he ridicules Asclepiades: the torture that was intended to silence him provided instead myriad opportunities for confession. Another example of martyrological humor may be found in the Donatist account of Maxima and Donatilla. After the women are lashed, placed on beds of crushed

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shells, and put on the rack, Anulinus, the proconsul, offers them “tatiba.” What tatiba is remains unclear, but Tilley’s suggestion—that it is a seasoned drink—is consonant with the subsequent dialogue.95 The women ridicule the proconsul’s offer: “You are a buffoon [fatuus]. Do we not have our august God most high as our seasoning?” (5).96 If the text intends this exchange to be humorous, the joke is built on the absurdity of mentioning seasonings in the midst of execution. The proconsul is ignorant of the irrelevance of tatiba—the mundane, earthly seasoning—in comparison with the reality—God’s seasoning—that awaits the martyrs. Humorous episodes and funny martyrs are not the exclusive domain of postConstantinian storytelling. If we are attuned to it, we may find hints of humor in earlier texts, which suggests that the subversive work of humor is not incompatible with fear of persecution and martyrdom. Instead, it may have been a tool used by authors to instruct their audiences in theological truths of the greatest magnitude. Moving back a century from Prudentius, we find Pionius exhibiting his wit in the face of torture. Filled with joy as he prepared for death, Pionius stretched himself out on the stake and allowed the soldier to drive in the nails (Mart. Pion. 21.2). Afterward the proconsul implored the Christian to recant his confession and promised that in exchange the nails would be removed. Pionius delivered a deadpan response: “I feel [ēisthomēn] that they are in” (21.3). The story may be received as humorous because of the unexpected brevity of Pionius’s reply and its incongruity in the situation: precisely where we might expect pleading for one’s life, markers of excruciating pain, or Christian sermonizing—a favorite pastime for Pionius— we get instead the unexpected observation about how well the persecutors have done their job. We have previously examined an episode in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas—animal attacks gone awry—that an audience might perceive as humorous. A subsequent episode, which recounts Saturus’s death, builds on and complements the earlier narrative humor. Whereas the persecutors have been utterly unsuccessful in staging the animal contests as they were planned, Saturus accurately predicts his death and it is then immediately accomplished. In 19.4, the editor tells us that Saturus anticipated being “destroyed by one bite of the leopard.” But instead he was matched with a boar and then a bear. Neither animal touched him, however. In 21.1–2, Saturus points out his prophetic prowess in a brief conversation with a soldier named Pudens: In short, he said, it is just as I foresaw and foretold: as yet I have not suffered under any of the beasts. But now you must believe with all your heart: I will go forth and be perfected [consummor] by one bite of a leopard.97 And immediately at the end of the games, a leopard was presented and after one bite he was so bathed in blood that as he returned the people cried out in witness to his second baptism: Well washed! Well washed! (21.1–2)

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This brief episode offers at least two options for an audience to find triumphant humor in martyrdom. First, Saturus (and God) succeeds when the pagans have repeatedly failed: the boar, then the bear, refused to do the job they were assigned. Saturus remained uninjured because, a Christian audience might assume, the prophecy must be fulfilled. At the last moment—as the games were ending—a leopard was finally let loose and immediately Saturus was bitten. The episode takes power away from pagan persecutors and gives it to Christians: they cannot be harmed, we are taught, apart from the will of God. Second, the crowd calls out to Saturus as he is drenched in blood, “Well washed!” This is a case of humorous double entendre. While the crowd intends this sarcastically—it was a common phrase of well-wishing at public baths—it reflects a truth more profound than they can imagine.98 Like Felicitas whose bloody childbirth prepared her for her “second baptism” (18.3), Saturus’s death brings him salvation. The editor does not allow his audience to miss the import of the crowd’s exclamation. The editor offers a pun on salvus. What would typically be a term of bodily health becomes, ironically in this situation, a term of true health, namely, eternal salvation: “For truly the one who bathes in this manner will be saved” (21.3).99 Humorous double entendre may also occur in the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike. As part of the proconsul’s interrogation, he asked if Papylus had any children (A.28). Papylus answers in the affirmative: “Yes, many, thanks to God” (A29). The proconsul interprets the Christian’s statement as referring to biological children, but the crowd intervenes in the narrative to point out the lie (pseudē; 31). Papylus’s risqué hyperbole is underscored by his assertion that he is not lying when he claims to have children in “every district and city” (A32). The humor lies in the disjunction between biological and spiritual children, language recognizable to—and thus only appreciated by—a Christian audience but not to the pagan persecutor. Polycarp may offer another example of early martyrological humor that aims to bolster Christian morale. During his trial he is simultaneously obedient and subversive when he complies with the letter—if not the spirit—of the proconsul’s command to exclaim, “Away with the atheists!” (Mart. Pol. 9.2). The double entendre provides an opportunity for the audience to find triumphalist humor in Polycarp’s accusatory words: the proconsul intends for the exclamation to function as Polycarp’s self-condemnation, but in Polycarp’s mouth it is instead a call for eschatological judgment against the pagans.100 The disjunction between the martyrs’ actions and anticipated behavior is not necessarily a marker for humor. But where humorous episodes occur, they may be particularly useful for locating the text’s challenge to expected responses to persecution—both on the part of the martyr and, importantly, of the Christian audience. Humorous elements in early Christian martyr texts therefore serve several

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complementary purposes. Humor is a cathartic act for the joke teller—whether we imagine that as the martyr or as the Christian community relating the story. According to Freud, humor is a sophisticated attack on the object of the joke. It is a form of aggressive behavior that is socially sanctioned: by means of humor “the ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality. . . . It insists that it cannot be compelled to suffer, that . . . traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.”101 Humor, thus understood, denies the reality of pain and suffering. At the moment of death the audiences’ eyes are firmly, and compulsorily, fixed on the destruction of the Christian body. As the body plummets downward along sharp crags, as flesh is slowly roasted, as heads are clubbed, nails driven into hands or feet—can the listener picturing these gruesome events find hope in the narrated events? Can the audience even continue to imagine the horrors applied to their faithful heroes? In those cases where torture does result in visual images of deformed, mangled, bleeding, and burning bodies, humorous interludes allow listeners to feel differently about those bodies. Humor offers levity to an emotionally taxing experience, thus moving the audience from seeing a story as deadly serious to seeing it as “comically groteseque.”102 Humor can function as a claim to power that shapes group responses and compels listeners to approach and understand particular experiences in new ways.103 In this way humor may help a person or group to view a difficult situation, such as martyrdom, from a different point of view, thereby alleviating some disconcerting aspects of it.104 In the case of the martyr texts, humor may allow an audience to include rather than exclude—to accept rather than reject—a gruesome body that would in other circumstances be abhorred. Humor may provoke affects that disrupt the audience’s “habits, norms and categories,” moving them “toward usually reviled objects rather than pushing them away.”105 The martyr’s humor therefore may complement other narrative techniques that distance the Christian body from the experience of pain. It offers incontrovertible proof—directly from the martyrs’ mouths!—of their corporeal indifference to torture. Only the listener who has already accepted the texts’ subversive claims about reality and perception, however, can laugh with the martyrs since bodies that are truly in excruciating pain are not funny. Thus the martyrs’ humor rests in the knowledge of reality shared between Christian martyr and Christian audience: that what should be painful is not. The employment of humor—in these precise moments—is crucial to bolstering the work done earlier in the narratives: not only does it provide emotional relief for the listening audience; it also provides an opportunity for the congregation to cheer on their martyrs and ridicule their oppressors. Humor in martyr texts allows audiences to utter “God bless his soul” but also “Attaboy!” and “You show him!” But humor is not only a coping mechanism; it is also a weapon deployed in the interests of social control. When it can be identified in ancient martyr texts, humor signals places where constructions of reality are being contested. In these situa-

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tions humor does not merely offer a chuckle, though it does that. It simultaneously constitutes “a battle for the control of discourse about death and disaster,” as Elliott Oring argues.106 Humor builds group cohesion in the face of opposition. Peter Farb, for instance, suggests that humor can “reinforce the picture a society holds of itself ”; it can demonstrate “antagonism toward other groups and promotion of solidarity within the group that laughs together”; and it can “lessen the fears and anxieties of the group against some outside force.”107 Humor brings people together by creating alliances against a common foe.108 Thus humorous episodes in martyr texts may delineate in- and out-groups: listeners “in the know” are given the opportunity to ridicule those ignorant of reality. In this way the persecutors who mistake perception for reality do not merely miss the joke; they become the butt of it. By employing humor, the martyr texts turn the tables on the communal consequences of the persecutors’ actions: torture that is intended to fracture the Christian community reinforces it instead. Gallows humor and other types of dark humor are crucial for persecuted communities because they give opportunity to speak the unspeakable, giving voice to a group that struggles for power.109 The deployment of humor is “an exercise of power.”110 In the period of persecution the fear of arrest and torture was high, even if the probability of it occurring was low.111 Through humor, martyr texts assert the right to control the discourse about the execution of Christians. The martyrs’ unexpected responses to torture reveal that what looks like a (deadly) serious situation is instead only a joke. In a battle for control over how the story of Christian torture and death is told, making light of pagan attempts at harming the Christian body is a powerful weapon. Humorous episodes in martyrological literature—whether in the unexpected joke about death or in the surprising response to torture—complement other narrative techniques that resist the fundamental claims to power implied by torture and physical dominance. The martyrs’ textually constructed bodies are unaffected by pagan violence, and they prove the case by laughing in the face of their adversaries (and their adversities). The martyr texts, further, invite audiences to ridicule the pagan opponents, to find more power than victimization in the martyrs’ death, and to share in the triumphant humor of the stories. But equally the power of humor speaks to other social functions. It sustains the Christian audience during periods of persecution. It binds the audience together against their inhuman enemy, teaching that pagans are ignorant, incompetent fools who deserve our ridicule, not our fear. The Christian martyr texts I have discussed thus far do not shy away from detailed descriptions of the dissolution of the body. These Christian ekphraseis, however, serve a surprising goal: they claim divine analgesia at the moment of death in order to reframe, redefine, and replace the image of bloody defeat with one of miraculous anesthesia. These texts invoke body/spirit dualism, divine

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companionship, terse descriptions of death, or visual obstructions of the martyred body to allow listeners to envision the Christian body as invulnerable to pagan torture. They challenge audience expectations of pain and painlessness, and they reinterpret the locus of meaning in martyrdom by rejecting pain as an experience of the righteous persecuted Christian. I turn now to another set of texts, those in which pain—not its absence—constitutes an important locus of meaning.

4

Whose Pain? Pain as a Locus of Meaning in Christian Martyr Texts The setting up of revolting cruelties, description of extraordinary punishments, enormous exaggeration of the duration and method of application of known punishments, such are the means employed by the hagiographers to make the intrepidness of the hero shine forth. —h. delehaye, les origines du culte des martyrs, 284

The previous chapters have argued that early Christian ideologies of martyrdom favor depictions of painlessness in the face of torture. The martyrs constructed by the texts I have examined so far benefit from divinely administered anesthesia. Even where language of analgesia or anesthesia is not explicitly employed, the texts betray no interest in locating pain in martyrdom as a marker of meaning. For the narratives I have examined, enduring excruciating pain does not make a martyr exemplary. Rather, in these texts pain is rejected altogether or dismissed as unimportant to the making of a martyr.1 It would be overly simplistic, however, to suggest that the discourse of pain exists only in the negative. Indeed, such cannot be the case since the narrative rejection of the experience of pain in martyrdom itself triggers the idea of pain for listening audiences. The assertion of Christian impassibility, therefore, is only one element in a complex and pervasive discourse, a discourse that is played out in the pages of martyr texts as well as in broader literary venues. On the one hand, claims to impassibility may serve as counternarratives that rescript prevailing cultural constructions of Christianity; I will examine this issue in chapter 5. On the other hand, even narratives that focus on the experience of pain can contribute to the particular ideology of martyrdom with which this book is concerned. This chapter explores the broader discourse of pain in martyr texts by examining occasions when the narratives do depict the experience of pain as a locus of meaning. As Chris L. de Wet eloquently observes regarding John Chrysostom’s 93

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discussions of pain and slavery, “pain has a narrative; pain both tells a story and is a story in itself.”2 In this chapter I examine the story pain tells in the martyr texts. In the first section I focus on three situations in which pain appears in martyr texts: pain experienced by Christians that is not associated with martyrdom; pain felt by Christian apostates; and pain or injury suffered by persecutors.3 These uses of pain illustrate the complexity of the discourse, but they also remind us of the individuality of martyr texts: each text has its own interests and issues, and we understand them better—individually and collectively—when we appreciate their differences as much as their similarities. For instance, the Passion of Perpetua focuses particularly on the experience of pain apart from martyrdom, while the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons instructs readers by depicting apostates in pain. The transference of pain or injury from martyr to persecutor is a more widespread narrative technique, signaling perhaps a concern for immediate judgment of the unjust treatment of righteous Christians. In the second section of the chapter I examine ideologies of martyrdom that privilege pain in death as a locus of meaning. Although this does not appear to be a prominent ideology, it is not wholly foreign to early Christian literature. We need not assume that all Christians at all times and in all places understood the meaning of martyrdom in identical ways. Indeed, it would be surprising if there were no alternative voices in the early church whose interpretations of the sustained assaults against the Christian body led to different evaluations of their meaning and importance. PA I N A S A L O C U S O F M E A N I N G A PA RT F R OM M A RT Y R D OM

Pain, as we have seen, was a useful category in the ancient world for communicating information other than simply the stimulation of neurological signals resulting in a feeling of discomfort. An author might invoke the experience of pain to describe an individual’s character or to explain divine judgment. Pain can be understood positively as purification or negatively as a character flaw. In the martyr texts the meaning of pain is not constant. At times pain may represent the human condition, from which martyrs seek separation as they move toward perfection via death. At other times pain signals a person’s or group’s relationship to God: martyrs, empowered and sometimes inhabited by God/Jesus, are divinely delivered from pain, while persecutors, often aligned with God’s cosmic opponent, Satan, may ironically experience the pain or injury they seek to inflict. Pain Experienced by Christians Not Associated with Torture and Death Early martyr texts rarely put their protagonists’ feelings on view. Narrative examination of the psyche is uncommon, though on occasion a text will attribute happi-

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ness or joy to the martyrs.4 For the most part, the martyrs’ emotional experiences lie beyond our grasp; the texts focus instead on their actions. Martyrs submit to arrest, confess, offer apologies for Christianity, endure torture, and die, but generally they do not grieve, fear, or worry. The Passion of Perpetua, however, is a notable exception: it regularly describes Perpetua’s and Felicitas’s psychological dispositions.5 In prison, for instance, Perpetua is “terrified” (expaui; 3.5) and “tormented with anxiety” for her child (macerabar sollicitudine; 3.6); separation from her child brings her hardship (labore) and anxiety (sollicitudine; 3.9). The repetition of sollicitus four times in the span of five sentences “heightens the drama” and increases the “emotional intensity” of the narrative, as Thomas Heffernan notes.6 This then is a text that regularly comments on the emotional experiences of its heroines. It is also in the Passion of Perpetua that we find the most extensive use of pain language. A sustained analysis of the discourse of pain in this narrative—and in related texts—reveals important communal assumptions about earthly versus spiritual existence. The editor of the Latin Passion often describes the martyrs’ experiences by using dolor, “pain.”7 Pain language is prominent in episodes describing interactions between Perpetua and her father, who continuously tries to persuade her to recant her faith. Perpetua, for example, feels pain (dolebam) for her father’s sake because he would not grieve over her martyrdom (5.6); she feels pain (doluit) when her father was beaten by the governor; and her father’s “miserable” and “unhappy” “old age” pains her (sic dolui pro senecta eius misera, 6.5; ego dolebam pro infelici senecta eius, 9.3). In each of these cases the imprisoned Perpetua feels pain on behalf of her suffering father. Given this text’s interest in the discourse of pain, which I examined in previous chapters, the transference in these cases is likely that of physical rather than emotional experiences. Such is clearly the case when Perpetua’s father is beaten with rods: we are given no reason to think that his experience was anything other than painful, and thus we should take at face value Perpetua’s claim to the experience of pain: “my father’s misfortune pained me, just as if I had been hit” (et doluit mihi casus patris mei quasi ego fuissem percussa; 6.5). The editor has elsewhere shown an interest in assigning to Perpetua feelings of anxiety or distress, but here he chooses to utilize the language of pain, dolor; it is an authorial choice that merits our consideration. The scenes in which Perpetua interacts with her father are complex; they demonstrate Perpetua’s gradual separation from family and earthly ties.8 Although as his daughter (presumably remaining under his legal authority) Perpetua should obey his demands—to sacrifice to the gods and thus be freed—she has so firmly identified with her new faith that she cannot be called anything but “Christian” (3.2).9 The choice she makes, however, is neither simple nor easy; Perpetua is described as firm in her commitment but not without filial love and attachment. Her choice has consequences for her father, and she experiences pain because of it.

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The editor of the Passion also depicts Perpetua experiencing dolor as a result of a vision of her dead brother, Dinocrates, who appears to be enduring some sort of deprivation after death.10 Perpetua feels pain (dolui/dolebam) when she remembers how he died and when she sees his suffering after death (7.1, 7.8). It is telling that while her brother experiences distress or toil (laborare) and her father experiences misfortune (casus), Perpetua’s empathetic response to her family brings her pain (dolui/dolebam). But are these experiences of pain central to the ideology of martyrdom in this text? Is it pain, in other words, that is fundamental to the making of the martyr? Judith Perkins suggests that Perpetua’s visions of Dinocrates reflect Christian arguments for the salvific use of pain. From this perspective the text valorizes the experience of pain, relating it to salvation. “Unlike Dinocrates,” Perkins argues, “Perpetua can make use of her suffering; she is confident she can help her brother. She believes her suffering in prison has earned her favor and influence with the deity.”11 The text, however, does not explicitly describe Perpetua’s imprisonment as useful.12 Before her first vision a fellow confessor tells Perpetua that she is greatly esteemed (magna dignatione), but the text does not explain why this is the case (4.1). The narrative does not, in other words, connect Perpetua’s esteemed status to her imprisonment. If that connection were made, it would presumably also be true of the other confessors who endured similar experiences in prison. Imprisonment then does not appear to earn Perpetua special favor with the divine. Instead of emphasizing privilege, the text focuses on obligation: the unexpected remembrance of Dinocrates—“never before then had [his name] come to my mind” (7.1)—obliges Perpetua to pray for him. Since the memory occurred during prayer, Heffernan argues that the obligation (debere) Perpetua feels arises from her belief that the Holy Spirit brought Dinocrates to her mind.13 The active agent, then, is the Spirit, not Perpetua, and it is the Spirit who works for the good of Dinocrates. Thus whatever suffering Perpetua endures in prison is not explicitly linked to her salvation or that of her brother. Instead of teaching the utility of pain, Perpetua’s visions of Dinocrates may foreshadow the martyrs’ own experiences. The text, for instance, describes Perpetua’s imprisonment and Dinocrates’s suffering in similar terms, as Heffernan notes: “Perpetua narrates this vision at the same time as she has been placed in the stocks, her limbs locked into place. . . . She too lacks all physical control; she cannot move, and she cannot supply herself with water to quench her thirst.”14 In both cases the narrative emphasizes alleviation of toil rather than the experience of pain: just as Dinocrates is toiling (laborare) after death—noticeably not experiencing pain (dolor)—so also Perpetua toils in imprisonment. The author also uses labor to describe Perpetua’s “distress” regarding her child (3.9). Similarly, Felicitas toils in parturition (15.5). God is at work in all three instances, easing the physical toil and emotional distress of Dinocrates, Perpetua, and Felicitas. As the Spirit will

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heed Perpetua’s pleas and relieve Dinocrates of his labors, so also Perpetua and Felicitas will be aided by God, and their labors will likewise be relieved.15 Ironically, then—in a text with demonstrable interest in shielding the Christian body from the experience of pain during torture—it is pain that is the particular experience of this female Christian as she observes the life and afterlife of her nonChristian family members.16 When Perpetua watches her father desperately trying to keep her in this world, at the expense of her eternal salvation, she feels pain, and when she sees an afterlife of perpetual toil, she is pained on behalf of her young, beloved brother. But this pain does not come from an outside agent, from a pagan torturer or a cosmic adversary. Rather, the pain arises from familial attachments to the world, ties that—according to ancient constructions of gender—connect women to the world; these connections must be severed to follow the path of martyrdom.17 This text teaches that responsibilities to, and care for, family make choosing death a difficult task, a task that may be so difficult that it becomes physically painful. This text also employs the term dolor to depict pain associated with motherhood, in particular breastfeeding and childbirth. The author explains, for instance, that when Perpetua’s nursing son was kept from her, she was not in pain (ne . . . dolore; 6.8).18 In this case an anticipated sensation—pain due to the inability to nurse a child—is miraculously absent. The author’s interest in the painlessness of Perpetua’s breasts may be attributed to two narrative goals: first, the text describes the masculinization of the martyr, and the cessation of milk production marks an important moment in the construction of Perpetua’s sex; second, the unexpected absence of pain foreshadows the divine role in protecting the Christian body from the experience of pain.19 Similarly, the author uses dolor in his description of Felicitas’s experience of labor, as we have seen (15.5).20 The interest in pain in the scene describing Felicitas’s labor is unparalleled in early Christian martyr texts: the author employs variations of the term dolor three times in the span of only two sentences. The listening audience might not find the narrative emphasis surprising since the text is, after all, stating what would have been common knowledge: childbirth is painful. The guard’s challenge, moreover, is reasonable: torture and death in the arena are likely more painful than childbirth. When Felicitas responds to the guard, though, she does not accept his characterization of her experience. As we saw in the previous chapter, in this exchange dolor is replaced by patior, “to undergo” or “to endure” (15.6). When referring to Felicitas’s martyrdom, then, the narrative privileges the notion of endurance (patior) over pain (dolor).21 Dolor is not an appropriate characterization of Felicitas’s experience in death. For this text pain is not an uncommon experience for female Christians as they separate themselves from the demands of this world, but in spite of it these women are not deterred from their witnessing, and in that experience they are divinely protected.22

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Although scholars concur that the Latin version of the Passion is the more original text, other versions of the story merit equal study for what they can tell us about discourses of pain in early Christian ideology. In the Greek version of the Passion of Perpetua, the term algeō is typically used for the Latin text’s doleo.23 It is this term that describes Perpetua’s encounters with her father (5.6, 6.5) and her reaction to the vision of her brother (7.1, 7.8). It is, furthermore, this term that is negated (mē . . . algēdoni) when Perpetua stops breastfeeding (6.8). Likewise, when the Greek author narrates Felicitas’s labor, he notes that growing weary with the birth, she felt pain (ēlgei; 15.5). The guard who taunts Felicitas also uses algeō but—just as in the Latin version—Felicitas changes the terms in play. She does not connect pain with her martyrdom; rather, she employs the term paschō. She “endures” labor alone, but in martyrdom “there will be another” who will be in her, who will endure for her, and for whom she will be enduring (15.6). Thus if we assume the Greek text is derived from the Latin, it is telling that this author employs algeō for the Latin dolor, suggesting that the author understood the Latin text to be referring to pain rather than grief (in which case the author would presumably have preferred lupē). The previous chapters have demonstrated that the early Christian martyr texts go to great lengths to avoid connecting the Christian body with pain. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, though, serves as an important reminder that—at least for the communities that utilized this text—divine analgesia did not extend to all areas of life. Christians must expect and prepare for physically painful situations that arise as their families, in particular, oppose their new religious allegiances. The text employs diverse elements of the discourse of pain in martyrdom that affirm, on the one hand, God’s presence with and protection of Christians as they undergo persecution for their faith. On the other hand, the discourse of pain also serves as a warning against complacency and surely also as a template for resistance. Indeed, Kate Cooper argues that Perpetua uses her father to “practice on”; an audience hearing the text might see Perpetua and Felicitas as examples to imitate in their willingness to separate themselves from worldly ties, but they also serve as warnings that such separation may be painful.24 This text then does not negate Christian experiences of pain but instead uses to good advantage both the experience of and the immunity from pain to teach about various aspects of Christian life. Prudentius’s account of Romanus makes a similar—if perhaps more metaphorical—point about the pain martyrs feel because of others’ unbelief. Romanus, as we have seen, explicitly rejected the notion that torture causes him pain (non dolet; Peri. 10.460), but the faithlessness of his persecutors is painful to him: “What pains [dolet] me is the error seated in your breast, and that you are dragging away these lost ones with you” (10.461–62). Just as Perpetua felt pain because of her father, so here Romanus is pained because of the unbelief of the pagans around him. Pagans inflict pain on Christians not through torture and martyrdom but through their refusal to accept Christianity.

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Pain Experienced by Christian Apostates Early Christian martyr texts demonstrate that in addition to instructing Christians that it can be difficult to separate themselves from the demands of this world or to see others reject Christian faith, the discourse of pain can serve as a warning to those whose faith may waver in the face of persecution. Apostates do not star in many martyr texts, but one of the most intriguing episodes concerns one by the name of Quintus in the Martyrdom of Polycarp (4). A prominent theme of this text is the importance of imitating Jesus by waiting for God to hand one over for prosecution and death.25 The anonymous martyrs of chapter 2, Germanicus (3), and Polycarp (5–7) all exhibit this form of faithfulness, and they achieve—the text declares—“blessed and noble martyrdoms” (2.1). Quintus, however, functions as the antitype of the faithful martyr: he hastily gave himself up to the authorities, thereby usurping God’s will, and because he did not have divine help he was unable to see his witness through to death. Whereas the other Christians who imitated the Lord by waiting to be handed over (1.2) were able to withstand persecution and torture, Quintus could not: he quickly succumbed to the persuasion of his captors and offered sacrifice to the gods. Quintus is described as “unmanly” because of his jump-the-gun volunteerism, but the text does not suggest that he experienced unusual pain or suffering because of his actions.26 Quintus’s witness was incomplete—an important point for this text—but the discourse of pain is not central to the text’s argument. The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons is worthy of consideration in this regard, however. In addition to the Christian heroes and heroines of Vienne and Lyons, whose witness we have examined in previous chapters, the letter also describes a second group of Christians: those who were arrested but who subsequently denied their faith. The author refers to this small group as “not ready” (anetoimoi), “unprepared” (agumnastoi), and “weak” (astheneis); they proved to be “miscarriages” (exetrōsan; 1.11). These negative descriptions stand in contrast to descriptions of the faithful Christians who are “manifest” (phaneroi) and “ready” (hetoimoi; 1.11). After describing unimaginable torture endured by Blandina and Sanctus—torture that brought not pain but analgesia—the author turns to describe the plight of those “miscarriages” in prison. Their apostasy did not bring the freedom they expected and for which they traded their salvation: “they received no advantage from their denial” (1.33). Indeed, the apostates received much worse treatment: whereas the confessors were imprisoned “as Christians,” those who denied their faith were imprisoned on the charge of being “murderers and defiled” and received twice as much punishment as the rest (1.33). The author draws stark contrasts between the experience of confessors and that of apostates. Not only were the latter accused of more (and more heinous) crimes— and thus received double punishment—they also suffered negative emotions that

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the faithful Christians did not. Whereas, for instance, the confessors “were lightened by joy” and had “hope” (1.34), those who denied their faith were “greatly punished by their knowledge” (1.34). The two groups were easily differentiated by their miens: the former “advanced merrily” with a mixture of glory and grace on their faces while the latter appeared “dejected,” “downcast,” “misshapen,” and “full of all ugliness” (1.35). While spectators believed that the faithful Christians had “anointed themselves with a perfume,” they ridiculed the apostates as “ignoble and unmanly” (agenneis kai anandroi; 1.35).27 What narrative function might this bifurcation of the Christian community serve? It is, after all, unusual for a martyr text to describe apostates; generally the texts focus on witnesses worthy of imitation, not on failures. In this case the audience is not only provided with a description of the benefits of faithful confession— which leads to fewer charges and painless torture as well as to joy, hope, grace, and beauty—but they are also warned that apostasy, the seemingly easier choice, does not pay. Those who deny their faith should expect double punishment in this world, in addition to suffering eternally after death. The listening audience learns that faith brings beauty and apostasy makes one ugly, but they are not the only ones to learn this lesson. The instructional nature of this story of apostasy is built into the narrative itself: we are told that the apostates’ ordeal bolstered the resolve of the other imprisoned Christians (1.35). The fate of these failed Christians is not further described. Ultimately, it seems, this text is uninterested in relating any more about these miscarriages; they have served their purpose by teaching the audience about the immediate and tangible benefits of faithfulness and the immediate and tangible drawbacks of apostasy. In addition to general descriptions about the perils of apostasy, the Letter provides a closer look at a specific case through the story of Biblis. We are told very little about this Christian woman except that she was among the second group— the miscarriages—and that the devil thought he had “swallowed” her (1.25). The devil considered her to be “easily broken and a coward,” and so he placed her on the rack with the hope of provoking her into incriminating other Christians (1.25). But torture, as we have seen, can have unintended consequences, as is the case here: “but, being stretched on the rack, she came to her senses and she awoke as if being called from a deep sleep, being reminded by the temporary punishment of the eternal chastisement in Gehenna” (1.26). The additional torture does not provide the persecutors with their desired (false) testimony—that Christians practice infanticide—but instead Biblis confesses the truth about Christian piety (1.26). The text implies that Biblis experienced the pain of the rack, which we would expect since she had apostatized, and that the pain brought her back into the fold by reminding her of the eternal retribution that awaits those who deny their faith. The story of Biblis may shed light on one element of this community’s ecclesiology: it admits the lapsed back into the fold. An apostate does not have to continue

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in her denial of faith, as Biblis’s testimony confirms. Having experienced momentary pain, she can come to her senses and rejoin the faithful in their witnessing unto death. The inclusion of failed martyrs in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons therefore serves an important social function, presumably one that is of grave concern to the community that produced this text. Not only does this letter assert divine analgesia; it goes further by depicting the painful consequences of apostasy. The text underscores the reward of faithfulness by means of juxtaposition: the strength and resolve of the martyrs is clearer when it is contrasted with the cowardice and faithlessness of apostates. What appears to be the easy way out— denying one’s faith to save one’s life—turns out to be significantly worse than remaining true to God. According to this text, God “rescues the weak,” making them into “stable pillars” (1.6). But Christians who do not trust God reject “the glory that will be revealed” by attempting to avoid “present sufferings” (1.6). The discourse of pain is useful for instructing Christians about the pain of separating themselves from earthly attachments and for warning them against apostasy. Pain or Injury Experienced by Persecutors or Opponents of Christianity By far the most common way early martyr texts employ the discourse of pain is by transferring it to the persecutors. Shortly after the Edict of Milan was issued in 313 CE, the Christian apologist Lactantius penned a triumphalist treatise on the deaths of those who persecuted Christians. Its focused attention on the “terrifyingly practical consequences of the anger of God” validated Christian acts of faithfulness from the reign of Nero through the Great Persecution of Diocletian.28 Lactantius claims, for instance, that God did not allow Decius to be properly buried; rather— as was “proper for an enemy of God” (4.3)—his body was exposed and left for animals and birds to feed on.29 This postmortem punishment would surely be envied by the emperor Valerian whose punishment, Lactantius asserts, demonstrated that “the enemies of God always receive wages worthy of their crime” (5.1).30 As a captive Valerian was used as a step stool by the Persian king Sapor. Such degradation would be humiliating to be sure, but his death was altogether horrific: “he was flayed, and his skin, being ripped away from the flesh, was stained a red color” (5.6).31 We might see in the postmortem treatment of Valerian’s body an ironic imitation of the martyr cult: his flesh was placed in shrines of Persian gods to commemorate their triumph over Rome. God’s wrath against his enemies, though, had not yet reached the fevered pitch it would against Galerius. Lactantius displays a particular animosity toward this emperor—responsible as he was for atrocities committed during Lactantius’s own lifetime—and so the punishments attributed to divine justice are particularly graphic. God inflicted on Galerius, for instance, “an injurious ulcer in the lower

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part of the genitals” that was especially aggressive (33.1).32 Surgeons attempted to excise it, but postoperative complications almost killed him: the wound broke open and he nearly died from the blood loss (33.3). Galerius began to recover, but just as a scar formed, the ordeal repeated itself. Eventually the cancer was unresponsive to treatment and spread rapidly. Lactantius seems to revel in describing the effects of the cancer: “His organs were rotting from the outside, and his whole seat melted away in putrefaction” (33.6).33 The rotting resulted in maggots infesting his gut, and the smell of decaying flesh pervaded—Lactantius insists—the entire city. As Galerius’s body rotted away, the reader is not left to wonder how this felt: it caused “intolerable pain” (intolerandis dorolibus; 33.8). After a year of living with rot, stench, maggots, bloat, and other ghastly side effects of divinely inflicted cancer, Galerius rescinded his edicts against the church and, thankfully, died.34 Lactantius’s descriptions of the punishments of persecutors served a cathartic purpose for the church.35 They demonstrated that God was not silent and would not overlook cruelties inflicted upon his people. Centuries of injustice were answered, and answered in ways that reflect a concern for equal repayment for injury sustained: Christian bones crushed, bodies destroyed, eyes gouged out, blood spilt, are repaid—measure for measure—in imperial bones, bodies, eyes, and blood. But imagining recompense for suffering is not confined to literature of the post-Constantinian era. A cryptic notice in the Acts of Cyprian may hint at divine retribution for unjust action: immediately after the account of Cyprian’s death, the author reports that “moreover, after a few days the proconsul Galerius Maximus died” (5.7). In most manuscripts this is the last sentence of the account, suggesting its narrative importance. Earlier the text explains that Galerius Maximus had come to Carthage to “recover a good state of health” (2.3). The text may associate the proconsul’s inability to recover with his execution of Cyprian. Retribution is a central element of the coming judgment, and apocalyptic themes in martyr texts regularly invoke God’s justice and the inevitability of punishment for the unjust. But holding persecutors accountable is not merely a future hope: several martyr texts narrate reprisals within the narratives themselves. In these texts the reversal of suffering—from martyr to persecutor—is important to the larger discourse of pain. Thus the discourse of pain is complicated in martyr texts not only by Christian martyrs who feel pain as they extricate themselves from earthly attachments and by apostates who pay for their faithlessness here as well as in the future, but also in the descriptions of the immediate suffering of those who attempt to harm Christians. The martyrs themselves are unaffected both by the threat and the experience of torture, as we have seen, but bystanders are often deeply affected. Although descriptions of these observers do not always explicitly employ pain language, broadening the scope of our investigation to include a study of emotions will aid our understanding of the larger discourse. The anonymous Christians in Smyrna,

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for instance, who remained silent while they were whipped, demonstrated that they had traveled away from the flesh. But in observing the ordeal, bystanders “felt pity and mourned” (Mart. Pol. 2.2). Similarly, the people of Tarragona—both pagans and Christians—loved Bishop Fructuosus; their love of the Christian, however, led to different emotions depending on how they understood the events taking place. When the bishop was led to the amphitheater, “the people” were pained (dolere; Mart. Fruct. 3.1). But “his brothers, who understood he was hastening on to great glory, felt joyful rather than suffering pain” (gaudebant potius quam dolebant; 3.2). The juxtaposition of those who perceive wrongly, and thus experience doleo, with those who perceive correctly, and thus experience gaudeo, reiterates the theme of reality versus perception. One’s status as a Christian results in knowledge about a situation that is not merely cognitive but also somatic: pagans experience negative emotions while Christians feel positive ones. The emotions we might expect a martyr to feel—pain or grief—are moreover often transferred to the persecutor. In the fourth-century Acts of Perpetua I, dolor is used twice but, interestingly, in neither case does it describe Christian experiences.36 Toward the conclusion of a protracted interrogation scene, the proconsul pleads with Felicitas to “have regard” for herself, admitting that he feels pain (doleo) for her. Felicitas responds defiantly: “do what you will, for you are not able to persuade me” (5.8). In this case the thought of executing a young pregnant woman is apparently distressing to the proconsul, whose emotions are characterized by the author with the meaning-laden term dolor, although the feeling is apparently not attributable to the martyr herself. During the interrogation of Perpetua, the proconsul again attempts to persuade a female Christian to deny her faith in order to save her life. Noting the arrival of Perpetua’s family, the proconsul draws the woman’s attention to her parents’ tears, describing them as “tears of pain” (dolorem lacrimae; 6.4). Perpetua resists the emotional pull by insisting that their tears will not shake her resolve. In this text dolor is never the experience of the martyrs themselves but, surprisingly, it is the experience of the non-Christians who oppose them. Some texts describe the transference of the physical effects of torture from martyr to persecutor—and interestingly, even to the instruments of torture. Like the previous cases the language of pain may not be explicitly invoked in these stories, but the texts encourage the audience to imagine how torture might feel since they do not redirect expectations for the injury/pain relationship. For instance, whereas Blandina is not worn out by the torture she endures from dawn to dusk, her torturers admit that “they were vanquished” (1.18). The act of torture conquers an unexpected party: those who were administering the torture rather than their victim. This narrative technique of “reversal of suffering” is also found in the Passion of Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda, as Lucy Grig points out.37 When the young women endure all the terrible torments the proconsul can imagine, he sends them

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away saying, “Go away from me, for I am now faint” (6). At this admission the women taunt him: “In what way are you faint after one hour? You have just now come and already you are weary” (6). This exchange draws the listeners’ attention to the juxtaposition of experiences: the young women, having endured the tortures, are ready for more, while the proconsul, who merely orders the tortures, is faint from exhaustion. The application of torture also exhausts the persecutors in Prudentius’s account of the martyrdom of Vincent. Whereas “the strong men had used up all their strength in eviscerating him, their gasping exertion had weakened and exhausted the muscles of their arms,” it rejuvenates Vincent, who “was so very joyful, his appearance completely void of melancholy and serene, being illumined by the sight of your presence, O Christ” (Peri. 5.121–28). This state of affairs is not lost on Datianus, who exclaims in anger and amazement: “The tortured is braver than the torturer!” (5.132).38 In the Martyrdom of Marculus the persecutors’ emotions are anthropomorphized and defeated: “Rage breathed with difficulty: now fierceness was subdued by the steadfastness of the one enduring and the faintness of the torturers.”39 In all of these cases torture takes a much greater toll on those who inflict it than it does on their victims. Other texts reverse the experience of persecution by suggesting that the martyr’s endurance tortures the persecutor. In the Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs, for instance, Tazelita tortures his persecutor merely by speaking: “By asserting things like this, the glorious martyr himself tormented Anulinus in the midst of his own great torments.”40 The text makes this point even clearer when it juxtaposes Felix with the proconsul: the martyr “advanced into battle . . . uninjured and unconquered” (incorrupta invictaque), but he faced a tyrant whose “mind was ruined” (mente prostratus), whose “voice was dejected” (voce demissus), and whose soul and body were “destroyed” (dissolutus).41 Felix’s confession “pierced through” the “enemy.”42 Through the confession of other Christians the devil was “thrown to the ground” and Anulinus was “shattered.”43 Prudentius imagines how Datianus must feel when he realizes his plans for postmortem desecration of Vincent’s body have been thwarted by the very animals he thought would devour the remains: “How much did the piercing pricks of concealed pain [dolor] make you groan, when you discerned you were conquered by the virtue that was in the body you murdered, and you were inferior even to the bones, and puny compared to the lifeless limbs?” (5.423). The Passion of Maximian and Isaac takes the defeat of the persecutor to an extreme by narrating the torture of the weapons themselves: “Now the rods of the bundle conceded. They were powerless almost as if they were crushed to pieces by battle-axes or scythes.”44 Examples such as these illustrate an important aspect of the ideology of martyrdom: whereas Christians are sustained by divine aid, persecutors and their tools are subject to pain, injury, and defeat. On occasion martyr texts narrate an ironic transfer of pain, injury, or other form of physical suffering in an ancient equivalent of the playground refrain, “I’m rubber,

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you’re glue.” Whereas the martyr experiences divine analgesia, the persecutor or onlookers experience the physical effects of the attempted assault. In a sermon on Vincent’s martyrdom, for instance, Augustine contrasts the experience of the Christian with that of his pagan opponent: “Our martyr possessed coolness in his heart, while [Datianus] was applying the flames from without; but the torches of rage were being kindled, burning inwardly like a furnace, and burning up his tenant, the devil.”45 In an ironic reversal, Datianus attempts to harm Vincent by burning him alive but manages, if only metaphorically, to set his own inner being on fire. The Latin recension of the Martyrdom of Carpus, Pamfilus, and Agathonike offers another interesting case of this type of transference. In this text dolor is used three times in close proximity. Pamfilus did not cry out in pain (vocem non dedisset doloris; 3.5) when he was scraped with claws. But the proconsul, observing Pamfilus’s physical ordeal, pleaded with the Christian to recant and save himself: “In fact, I feel pain [doleo] because of your great torment” (3.5). Pamfilus, however, was unaffected by the torture: “I feel no pain [nullum sentio dolorem] because I have someone to comfort me” (3.6). The repetition of dolor in this conversation is revealing: Pamfilus’s assertions of impassibility frame—and inform—the proconsul’s self-description. Whereas Pamfilus does not experience pain because of his faith and communion with Christ, the proconsul, who stands apart from and against God, is pained by the very torture he inflicts. The same text describes Agathonike steadfastly maintaining her faith in the face of arrest, interrogation, and the threat of death. Arriving at the place where she was to die, she removed her clothes. The crowd around her saw her beauty and “being in pain” (dolentes; 6.5), they wept. This text employs dolor four times: twice it is negated as the experience of Christians, and twice it is affirmed as the experience of those who watch Christians being tortured. The juxtaposition of the martyrs’ painlessness with the persecutors’ pain is the special interest of the Latin author—it is not found in the Greek exemplar—so its occurrence in this text surely signals the author’s contribution to a particular Christian discourse about the body and the real effects of salvation on corporeal sensations. A more dramatic case of ironic transference of injury is found in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas. Saturus was matched with a boar, but the animal attacked not Saturus (he was only dragged by it) but the gladiator who was facilitating the execution.46 The hunter (venator) who had tied Saturus to the animal “was instead gored by that very beast and died a few days after the spectacle” (19.3). Saturus repeatedly escapes harm—that he “was only pulled along” is surely to be understood as divine intervention—but his hapless persecutor is killed. In light of widespread Christian interest in narrating the punishment of persecutors, and in light of this text’s apocalyptic expectation of final judgment (17.1), this episode may be read as immediate recompense for the unjust imprisonment and torture of Christians. The text narrates a foretaste of the eschatological reversal of fortunes by

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transferring injury, death, and presumably also pain, from the Christian to the pagan persecutor. Opponents of Christianity do not benefit from divine analgesia; consequently, they experience the full range of negative sensations in torture. Perhaps the most direct transference of injury from victim to perpetrator is found in the Martyrdom of Pionius. This narrative contains a series of long apologetic speeches delivered by Pionius while he is imprisoned, in which he emphasizes the irrationality of paganism and rehearses the pagans’ history of unjust prosecution (17.2). The text is one of the most confrontational of the early martyr texts, as seen in Pionius’s repeated goading of his interlocutors. It comes as no surprise, then, when Pionius is hit over the head by a soldier, with the intention of wounding him (traumatisai; 18.10).47 In this case the soldier is successful in effecting injury but not, we are led to believe, in inflicting pain since the text states that Pionius was silent after he was hit. The grammar of the text, furthermore, suggests that we are to read Pionius’s silence in contrast to the immediate physical trauma experienced by the soldier: “on the one hand, he [Pionius] was silent. But on the other hand, the hands and sides of the one who struck him were enflamed such that he could only just breathe” (18.10). The initiating event—Pionius being clubbed—led to two contrasting experiences: Pionius’s silence, suggesting his impassivity, and the soldier’s quickly bloating body, which comes just short of suffocating him. This text then simultaneously describes divine protection of the faithful and promises the immediate punishment of those who harm Christians. In the Passion of Maximian and Isaac the emperor threatens to gouge out Isaac’s eyes. This is an ill-timed threat, as it turns out, since the Christian was within arms’ reach of the emperor. Isaac reached in and, “violently extracting [the emperor’s] eye, he emptied out the bereaved face of its seat of light.”48 Although there is no immediate description of the pain the emperor experienced, the narrative is nevertheless a poignant example of the exchange of injury (in this case quite literally an eye for an eye) between the immoral tyrant and the faithful Christian. What the persecutor threatens to do is promptly accomplished within his own body. Shortly thereafter, however, the text does assert that the emperor experienced pain (dolore) when Isaac gouged out his eye, and because of that pain he ordered the Christian to be savagely tortured.49 The fact that martyr texts—and other texts that participate in the construction of ideologies of martyrdom—often reject pain as an experience of Christians as they are tortured does not mean that pain is not an important element in the construction of martyrdom. It regularly functions to mark the human condition, as in the cases of Perpetua and Felicitas who experience pain as they separate from familial and worldly ties. But perhaps more importantly, pain—or more broadly the experience of torture and injury—signals group affiliations. Whereas faithful Christians are divinely delivered from the pain of torture as they confess their faith, apostates and pagans are not. The transference of injury, suffering, and/or

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pain from the martyr to the persecutor demonstrates that those who are not in communion with God remain vulnerable to pain. A similar transfer occurs in later texts, as Caroline Walker Bynum’s work shows. She contrasts the Golden Legend’s account of three women described as “unharmed” and “unhurt”—even though they “were fried in a skillet, had their breasts torn off, were stretched on the rack and finally beheaded”—with the description of their persecutor, whom the text claims “withered away, filled with rottenness.”50 Bynum argues that “whether or not fragmentation or diminution is characterized as significant (or even in fact as occurring) depends not on what happens to the body physically but on the moral standing of the person to whom the bodily events pertain.”51 Although the early martyr texts offer some exceptions to Bynum’s observation, in the vast majority of cases the experience of pain or suffering marks a character as “other,” as non- or anti-Christian. Pain is ubiquitous in the narrative worlds of the martyr texts; it is the human condition to which the body is vulnerable, but it is from this painful human existence that God delivers faithful Christians. M A RT Y R S’ PA I N A S A L O C U S O F M E A N I N G

The early martyr texts certainly broaden the discourse of pain by narrating it in situations apart from martyrdom. But it would be an oversimplification to say that all Christians agreed about the experience of pain in martyrdom; not all texts, to be sure, assert the impassibility of martyrs. Another aspect of the discourse of pain in martyrdom that must be examined, therefore, is one in which Christians do indeed feel the pain of torture. The martyrs’ pain makes a brief but notable appearance in the Passion of Perpetua and sporadically in Eusebius’s recitations of martyr accounts in his Ecclesiastical History. The martyrs’ pain is more prominent— though certainly not ubiquitous—in the treatises and homilies of late ancient Christian writers. Discourse of Pain in Martyr Texts Both Eusebius and the editor of the Passion of Perpetua allow for the experience of pain in martyrdom, though neither presents it as a necessary result of torture. Having observed the dominance of the motif of impassibility in early martyr texts makes these authors’ statements all the more striking and surprising. They remind us that even if there are identifiable trends in the ways martyrdom was imagined, these trends did not restrict authorial license: impassibility was not the only way to understand the events surrounding the deaths of faithful Christians. In terms of the larger narrative impulses of these authors, however, we would be mistaken to interpret these incidences of pain as dominating their ideologies of martyrdom. They are, rather, outliers that may prove the rule more than they redirect the broader aims of the texts. But even as outliers they are worthy of careful analysis.

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The Passion of Perpetua explicitly associates Perpetua’s death with pain. Her fellow Christians died “in silence and without moving,” but Perpetua had “pain to taste” (21.8): she screamed when the gladiator’s sword struck her bone. The sword in this episode is the last in a series of swords found in this text. The Passion uses gladius five times and ferrum twice. In each case the context is life-threatening.52 Perpetua’s first vision—of a bronze ladder ascending to heaven—initiates the sword motif. The sides of the ladder are strewn with “iron implements [ferramentorum] of every kind,” including swords (gladii; 4.3). The ladder functions as “a gauntlet” symbolizing the difficulty and threat of martyrdom.53 The ladder’s narrowness requires Christians to ascend separately (singuli), indicating that martyrdom is a personal battle of endurance and will; moreover, the swords, spears, hooks, daggers, and spikes attached to the sides of the ladder remind the listening audience of the physical harm the martyrs endure as they ascend to heaven.54 Subsequently, the author describes the procurator Hilarianus as having “the right of the sword” (ius gladii; 6.3). This description emphasizes a particular set of procuratorial powers: it focuses attention on Hilarianus’s authority to levy the death sentence rather than on any of his other governing responsibilities.55 The political powers of the ruler are here framed explicitly in terms relevant to the martyr text: the procurator’s role—as far as this narrative is concerned—is to provide the means by which Christians attain martyrdom. The first three references to swords in the Passion, then, are related: Hilarianus’s ius gladii will provide Perpetua an opportunity to scale the ladder strewn with swords. The remaining four references to swords also refer directly to the deaths of the Carthaginian Christians. In Perpetua’s fourth vision, the lanista who oversees her contest with the Egyptian describes the stakes of the agon in this way: “This Egyptian, if he conquers her, will kill her with the sword [gladio]. But if she conquers him, she will receive this branch” (10.9). In the vision Perpetua is victorious and so earns the branch and walks toward the Gate of Life. Here Christian meaning subverts common usage: victory does not indicate reprieve from execution but, rather, success in dying. Perpetua anticipates walking through the gate of eternal life by means of her death. The sword hanging from the ladder—which might scare less steadfast Christians—is now the sword that promises eternal life. Later the editor reports about Secundulus: “his flesh certainly knew the sword [gladium], even if his soul did not” (14.3). As Jacqueline Amat succinctly notes, “la mort de Secundulus est mal précisée.” 56 If the announcement that his flesh knew the sword is clear enough—he died by sword in prison—its accompanying observation about the soul is not. Heffernan suggests that this is the editor’s attempt to preclude questions about Secundulus’s faithfulness. Since his death is not related alongside the others at the end of the text, Heffernan surmises that rumors may have arisen about possible apostasy in prison.57 The editor in this reading is dis-

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missing such rumors by describing Secundulus’s death in prison: his body gave out under the sword, but his spirit remained firm and unmoved.58 The final references to swords occur at the end of the Passion as the deaths of the other martyrs are related. After the Christians had been tortured ad bestias, they were recalled to the center of the arena so that when “the sword [gladio] penetrated their flesh, [the audience’s] eyes might make them partners in murder” (21.7). The martyrs, we are told, went willingly to the appointed spot and exchanged the kiss of peace before meeting the sword (ferrum) “without moving and with silence” (21.8)—all of the martyrs, that is, but Perpetua, who still had “pain to taste” (doloris gustaret; 21.9). While a great deal of the Passion challenges audiences’ expectations of torture and pain, this narrative climax threatens to undermine all that precedes it. Here the author not only uses the word “pain”; he also describes its effect: Perpetua “howled when her bone was punctured” (21.9). The young, possibly inexperienced gladiator struck Perpetua but missed his target. The unexpected wound caused Perpetua to cry out in pain. This episode is all the more surprising given the steady reference to swords in the text, all of which underscore the martyrs’ steadfastness and predict their victories. Although Perpetua appears to feel pain here, the incident—importantly—did not weaken her resolve. This scene therefore does not undo the work of the larger narrative, a point Augustine also makes in Serm. 281.2: “Therefore her pain [dolor] did not suppress the vigor of her strength.”59 In the end we are left with an image not of Perpetua’s pain but of her fortitude: “she directed the wandering hand of the young gladiator to her own throat” (21.9). Whatever she felt that caused her to cry out did not overcome her; she was still able to accomplish her will.60 The motif of swords throughout the Passion informs our interpretation of this final scene: momentary pain inflicted by the ferrum does not compromise Perpetua’s victory in the arena. This incident reveals the Passion’s complex portrayal of martyrdom and pain. As we have seen, the editor readily concedes the experiences of pain caused by empathy with family members or by childbirth, but he distances the martyrs from the physical sensations related to the destruction of the flesh. In most cases the martyr is insensitive to bodily torture, and thus our horizon of expectation about martyr accounts—that the experience of physical pain is central—is activated but quickly rejected. But here at the end, the horizon of expectation is reactivated. The listener who has accepted the text’s promise of divine analgesia is startled when the experience of pain reenters the narrative. Perpetua’s scream rings out all the louder in contrast to the stoic silence of her fellow martyrs. What are we to make of this shocking narrative intrusion? Perhaps in this case the solitary exception proves the rule: Perpetua screams but then valiantly guides the trembling hand of the gladiator to her own throat, proving beyond all doubt that she willed her own death. The author’s assertion—“perhaps so great a woman could not be killed . . . unless she

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herself willed it” (21.10)—suggests as much. Thus the scream in pain serves as a final reminder of the disjunction between our expectations and the narrative claims: pain is of no real concern when God is present with the martyrs. Alternatively, we might interpret this intrusion of pain in light of previous scenes in the Passion. First is the vision of the ladder with swords affixed to its sides. The gladiator’s glancing blow may remind the audience of the difficult ascent of martyrdom: flesh is mangled by metal weapons, just as Perpetua observed in her vision (4.3). The frightening weapons dangling from the ladder, though, harm only those who ascend “negligently or not aiming upwards” (4.3). Perpetua— regardless of the brief experience of pain—has demonstrated her single-minded desire for martyrdom; she is in no way negligent. The vision of the ladder then may assure the reader that Perpetua’s pain does not jeopardize her ascent into heaven: the gladiator’s sword will not impede her journey. Second, we may understand Perpetua’s experience in the arena in light of Felicitas’s assertions regarding Christ’s communion with martyrs: in the arena, another will be in them who will suffer for them (15.6). Heffernan compares these two scenes, asking whether Perpetua’s scream in the arena marks “the precise moment that Perpetua has been joined (as Felicity predicted) by her Lord, who will suffer in her stead?”61 In this case, as Felicitas felt pain in labor before receiving relief through koinonia, so also Perpetua tastes pain with the first blow before being joined by Jesus. Yet another previous episode that may inform our interpretation of Perpetua’s scream is the one in which a heifer attacks Perpetua and Felicitas. The author reports that Perpetua did not feel anything because she was “in the spirit and in ecstasy” (20.8). Thus when Perpetua enters the arena and faces the young gladiator, she has not yet experienced any pain related to her death. This scene may draw on Latin traditions that feminize the fear of pain, as Craig Williams suggests: “whereas the Latin textual tradition is full of assertions that it is womanly to fear or avoid pain or to bear it badly, Perpetua takes action precisely in order to have some taste of pain (ut aliquid doloris gustaret), boldly bringing on death with a gesture that completes an ineffectual man’s botched killing with a purposeful woman’s suicidal thrust.”62 If Perpetua needs to experience pain in order to dismiss perceptions of womanly weakness, and if previous tortures did not result in pain, then here—at the narrative climax—we encounter Perpetua simultaneously feeling and overcoming pain in her quest for martyrdom. The episode therefore may invert gender expectations: Perpetua emasculates her executioner by drawing the sword to her own throat.63 Audiences may connect the death scene and its cry of pain to a number of events in this text, all of which mark the episode as meaningful because of its resonance with other narrative moments. To read it in isolation—as an example of pain in martyrdom—would divorce it from the broader narrative interests of this text and diminish its impact. The Greek version of this scene in the Passion contains an interesting modification of the Latin. Whereas the Latin editor refers to pain—dolor—in his depiction

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of Perpetua’s death, the Greek text uses ponos: Perpetua had more “distress” (ponos) to taste (21.9). The semantic range of ponos is wide and while it can refer to bodily distress or pain, it typically means something more like “labor,” “stress,” or “distress.” As we have seen, the Greek author typically translates dolor with algos, so the shift to ponos in this scene may reflect the Greek text’s unflagging assertion of the painlessness of martyrdom.64 This author’s interest in downplaying the possibilities of pain may also inform the translation of Perpetua’s response to the gladiator’s strike: whereas the Latin states that when the gladiator struck her on the bone Perpetua “howled” (exululo), the Greek employs the term alalazō, which on the one hand can refer to a shout, but on the other is often used in the sense of “raising a war cry” or a “victory cry” (21.9).65 The Greek text’s preference for ponos over algos in the scenes of torture and martyrdom, coupled with the use of a term that may bring to mind a victory shout rather than a cry of defeat, suggests that this version—perhaps even more than the Latin—disassociates martyrdom and physical pain.66 The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas serves as an important reminder that early Christian ideologies of martyrdom are not univocal. Although most martyr texts—including the Passion—portray the martyrs as immune or indifferent to torture, they do so in different and sometimes mutually exclusive ways. As we strive to appreciate trends as well as differences among the early martyr texts, we must be careful to avoid collapsing the texts into one another, as if they were literarily dependent on one another. While many martyr texts appear to participate in a discourse about the divine protection of Christian bodies, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas reminds us to watch for exceptions that may either preserve discordant voices and traditions or reinforce narrative claims by recalling and then renegotiating expectations at critical narrative moments. In this text pain is not simply rejected. Rather, the text offers a nuanced argument about the expectations for and experience of pain in the world—for Christians and non-Christians alike. My reading of the text does not lead to the conclusion that this author privileged pain as a locus of meaning in martyrdom—too much of the text challenges this view—but it does suggest that the author found pain, not just painlessness, to be a useful category for understanding the human condition and the requirements for perfecting faith. Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History also employs pain language from time to time within the discourse of martyrdom, notably in his account of the Martyrdom of Polycarp.67 The Eusebian text is in part a précis: everything that takes place before Polycarp’s arrest—that is, the material between Mart. Pol. 2.2 and 7.3—is summarized briefly before the account focuses in more detail on Polycarp’s witness. It is the epitome of the deaths of the unnamed martyrs—found in Mart. Pol. 2.1–4— that is of interest here. Eusebius states that the martyrs stood firm against pain (algēdonas; 4.15.4). In this version of the account, the group of anonymous Christians who are whipped until their bodies are torn open are explicitly said to have

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experienced pain, though they do not give in to it. The text of this martyrdom, however, is preserved independently of Eusebius’s History. Indeed, the authors of the most recent critical editions of Polycarp reconstruct the text on the basis of other—non-Eusebian—manuscript traditions.68 The Martyrdom of Polycarp as reconstructed from these other traditions never mentions pain felt by the martyrs. As opposed to Eusebius who refers to martyrdom as “painful,” the more original text, as we have seen, explains that “the fire of the cruel torturers was cold to them” (Mart. Pol. 2.3). The Eusebian version, moreover, contains no references to impassibility or to the separation of spirit from body, suggesting that in his hands pain may be a locus of meaning. Without the assertions about painlessness, those who observed the martyrs’ actions were “struck with amazement” precisely because the martyrs stood firm against pain (H.E. 4.15.4). Thus Eusebius—or his source— recounts the deaths of these Christians in such a way that pain is meaningful to the ideology of martyrdom. The Letter of Phileas, preserved in Greek by Eusebius, also describes the martyrs’ experiences as painful.69 The letter purports to be penned by the imprisoned bishop of Thmuis, who was implicated in the Diocletianic persecutions.70 The letter is addressed to the Christians in the Thebaid, detailing the atrocities the martyrs endured. Before Eusebius quotes the letter itself, he introduces the difficult circumstances of its production: “But both the tortures and the pain [algēdonas] endured by the martyrs of the Thebaid exceed all words” (H.E. 8.9.1). This introductory notice guides the audience’s subsequent interpretation of the account of torture. Bodies torn by sharp shards, women suspended in the air upside down and naked, Christians quartered by the inventive use of tree branches, decapitations, executions by fire and axe: all are described through a lens of pain (8.9.1–3). In spite of the spectacle of torture and pain, Eusebius reports, Christians continually turned themselves in, joyfully exclaiming their piety. Pain in this narrative highlights Christian faithfulness. Pain continues to be an interpretive guide in the portion of the letter attributed to Phileas himself. As the bishop details the torture of being suspended from the roof by one hand, he observes that “the stretching of their joints and limbs brought nothing but the most terrible pain [algēdonas]” (8.10.5). The tortures that visibly marked the Christian bodies, Phileas reports, were even more frightful to see than they were to experience (8.10.8). Such a statement stands in contrast to accounts of other martyr texts that report the miraculous healing of the body such that the marks of persecution could not be seen at all. It also stands in contrast to martyr texts that describe Christian spectators as seeing—through spiritual eyes—the perfection rather than the torture of martyrs. This text instead emphasizes the psychological trauma endured, presumably, by Christian observers who nevertheless come forward of their own free will to confess their faith. Phileas continues, asserting that it was through endurance of these kinds of tortures—and the accom-

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panying pain—that the martyrs defeated the adversary: “In this way, on the one hand, some died from the torture, putting to shame the antagonist by their persistence; on the other hand, others were shut up in prison half-dead, and after a few days, overcome by their pain [algēdosi], attained perfection” (8.10.9). This description of martyrdom highlights both persistence and the endurance of pain in the process of Christian perfection. Whereas the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons suggests that Sanctus’s and Blandina’s painless torture sustained other imprisoned Christians, Eusebius places pain squarely within the audience’s purview. Here the endurance of pain testifies to Christian piety and perfection. Some of the martyr narratives included within Eusebius’s triumphalist history therefore provide evidence of alternative ways of making meaning of persecution. Though most early texts depict divine analgesia, some of Eusebius’s accounts locate meaning in pain. In addition to his account of the Smyrnaean martyrs and the letter of Phileas, we might note the Alexandrian Christians Epimachus and Alexander who “endured infinite pain” (murias dienegkontes algēdonas) from scrapers and scourges before they died (H.E. 6.41.17). Peter, a Christian in Nicomedia, moreover, “tread underfoot these pains” (algēdonas; 8.6.3). In all of these stories pain functions as many modern readers expect it to: the martyrs endured pain in their steadfast witness to their faith and for this they are praised. Eusebius does not avert his audience’s gaze away from the physical effects of torture. Indeed, many of the scenes of torture and martyrdom in Eusebius’s History are more graphic than those of earlier texts, and the thick descriptions of bodily dissolution are not alleviated by assertions of impassibility. In these cases pain appears to be a locus of meaning: the endurance of pain proves the martyrs’ piety and is the basis of their veneration. Eusebius does not, however, present a consistent ideology of martyrdom that centers on the experience of pain. Alongside texts like the Letter of Phileas are stories—such as those in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons—that consistently assert analgesia in martyrdom. Indeed, the vast majority of accounts of martyrdom chronicled within the Ecclesiastical History make no mention of pain whatsoever. Neither though do they regularly claim analgesia or anesthesia. By and large pain is simply not of concern in the accounts Eusebius relates. It is unclear how many of these martyr texts, furthermore, represent Eusebius’s own ideology, and how many he merely reproduces from his sources. The most we can say with assurance, it seems, is that Eusebius was equally content to relay stories that privilege pain as a locus of meaning as he was to relay stories that reject pain as an experience of martyrs. These seemingly divergent views stand together in his History without explanation or apology. The martyrdoms related in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History and in the Latin Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas provide striking exceptions to the more common narrative interests in early Christian martyr texts regarding pain and martyrdom. Pain per se does not appear to be a locus of meaning for martyrdom in the

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Passion, but it may on occasion function as such in Eusebius. In neither case, however, do the authors shy away from incorporating pain into their depictions of martyrdom. Such variety in the textual record suggests that historians should not merely be relieved of, but deterred by the task of identifying the early Christian view of martyrdom, as Grig has argued: “we need not follow them in their attempts to iron out, smooth over or even obliterate tensions in pursuit of a party line.”71 More useful, it seems, is investigating where and to what effect ideologies of martyrdom differ. Discourse of Pain outside Martyr Texts This book’s focus is primarily on martyr texts, but there is a broader literary tradition that makes use of, reflects on, and interprets the torture and deaths of Christians. The epistolary, philosophical, and homiletical traditions of Late Antiquity exhibit continued interest in the experience of pain and painlessness in martyrdom. As we will see in the following overview, some texts echo the position of earlier martyr texts by claiming that martyrs are impassible in the face of torture, while others suggest that pain is an important aspect of martyrdom. Some authors, furthermore, take varying positions on pain within their own literary corpora. We have already seen, for instance, places where both Prudentius and Augustine assert impassibility, but we will examine other occasions in which these authors, and others, highlight pain in martyrdom. Thus late ancient texts testify to the growing elasticity of the discourse of pain in martyrdom. Impassibility of Martyrs. The third-century North African Christian apologist and heresiologist Tertullian is often characterized as enthusiastically advocating martyrdom.72 The locus classicus for Tertullian’s interest in martyrdom is a portion of his treatise De Anima, which the Ante-Nicene Fathers translates, “Observe, then, the difference between a heathen and a Christian in their death: if you have to lay down your life for God, as the Comforter counsels, it is not in gentle fevers and on soft beds, but in the sharp pains of martyrdom” (55.4).73 Here Tertullian’s exhortation appears to privilege martyrdom by emphasizing its painfulness. Dying for God is not a peaceful death—one of gentle fevers and soft beds—but one of “sharp pains.” The Latin itself, however, does not make precisely this point: non in mollibus febribus et in lectulis, sed in martyriis (“not in mild fevers and in beds but in martyrdoms”). The Ante-Nicene Fathers translation betrays an ideological position that is not Tertullian’s—or at least not explicitly advocated by Tertullian in this text. He makes a similar claim in De Fuga: “Do not wish to pass away in beds, nor in miscarriages, nor in mild fevers, but in martyrdom” (De Fuga 9.4).74 In both texts Tertullian contrasts fevers and beds to martyrdom, but the contrast does not highlight pain as the distinguishing factor. Tertullian’s interest appears to be about private versus public deaths: Christians should wish to witness publically unto

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death rather than dying privately at home. Pain itself, though, is not a category of interest in these reflections on martyrdom.75 In his letter to the martyrs, Tertullian urges the imprisoned confessors to remember that the Holy Spirit is with them, and he compares the prison to the desert: it is a place of refuge where the pollutions of pagan life are absent (Ad Martyras, 2).76 The discomfort the martyrs experience in prison is likened to the training soldiers endure, training that will ensure a “good contest” and the victory wreath. Alternatively, Tertullian suggests, they might view the prison as a wrestling school, so that like those well trained in all kinds of hardships the martyrs may be presented victorious at judgment. Virtue, he argues, is built up by hardness and destroyed by softness. Nevertheless, Tertullian empathizes with the flesh (caro) that may fear the “heavy sword and the elevated cross, and the rage of the beasts and the extreme punishments of fire and all the ingenious tortures of the executioner” (4.2). The confessors, however, are urged to remember that others—“not only . . . men but also . . . women”—have endured these tortures for fame and glory (4.3). Although Tertullian enumerates specific tortures and the natural fears that accompany contemplation of them, his point is not that pain makes these deaths meaningful— indeed, he does not use pain language at all in this letter—but that Christians can endure for celestial victory anything pagans have endured for earthly fame. Tertullian’s address to the martyrs, furthermore, explicitly claims that the flesh of faithful Christians is impassible: “the leg feels nothing in its tendon [nihil crus sentit in nervo] when the soul is in heaven” (2.10). Like so many of the texts we have examined, the thrust of Tertullian’s argument to the martyrs is the promise of painlessness in torture when one is wholly devoted to God. In “On the Martyrs,” John Chrysostom makes a case similar to Tertullian’s. As I have mentioned, he imagines the Maccabean martyrs addressing his congregation and saying, “The tortures are not a burden for even a short time for those who look to the things that are destined.”77 He goes on to have the martyrs say: “When the blessed Stephen, too, saw Christ with the eyes of faith, because of this, he did not see the showers of stones, but instead of those, he counted up the game prizes and crowns. Therefore you also shift your sight from that which is ready at hand to that which will be and you will catch not even a little sensation of the tortures.”78 The martyrs’ statement to the audience suggests two things: first, their actions and concomitant impassibility are not unique but can be imitated. By focusing on the future, the martyrs promise that others can also be immune to the pain of torture. Second, Chrysostom anticipates his congregation’s reticence and acknowledges the difficulty they might have in believing the martyrs’ claims to impassibility in torture. Thus he introduces the martyrs as “far more persuasive” than he could be in asserting “torture is not burdensome.”79 The claims, Chrysostom acknowledges, are difficult to grasp: how can such torture not hurt? But the victims themselves speak their truth: God protects them from harm.

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Pain Experienced by Martyrs. While Tertullian and Chrysostom provide examples of the martyrs’ impassibility, early Christian and late ancient authors also present the experience of pain in martyrdom as meaningful. Origen is an interesting case in this regard because his writings predate some of the martyr texts we have already examined. Exhortation to Martyrdom, for example, was written in 235 CE for Ambrose and Protoctetus as the threat of persecution by Maximin loomed.80 Origen’s ideology of martyrdom in this text casts martyrdom as expiatory sacrifice, as Elizabeth Castelli has noted.81 This ideology serves a communal purpose: “the martyrs not only come from the Church but serve it by their baptism of blood, cleansing and purifying it.”82 Origen focuses on the experience of pain as a measure both of one’s faith and of the efficacy of one’s sacrifice. That Origen’s focus is not merely on dying but on the difficulty of the death is apparent in his discussion of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane that “this cup” pass from him (Exhortation to Martyrdom, 29). He argues that Jesus is not asking for a reprieve from death—in which case he would ask that the cup pass—but for a different cup (not this one but another one). He surmises that the cup Jesus prefers would bring a “more grievous” (baruteron) death so the benefits of his sacrifice would be more widely distributed.83 Origen therefore underscores not merely dying for one’s faith but the onerousness of that death. Throughout his Exhortation to Martyrdom, Origen emphasizes the pain and agony endured by the faithful, arguing that “those who have endured tortures and labors” in martyrdom demonstrate a “more illustrious virtue” than those who have not.84 The latter, who have not been tested by torture and labor, must “concede first place” to the former, “whose endurance has been manifested on the rack and by manifold tortures and by fire.”85 Origen quotes the Maccabean martyr Eleazar when he encourages others to embrace their pain: “I bear bodily pains [sōma algēdonas] from flogging, and in my soul I welcome these things because I fear him.”86 According to Origen, the story of the Maccabees shows that piety and love of God is best demonstrated through “the roughest labor and the most grievous tortures.”87 More than any other author we have considered, Origen’s writings on martyrdom center on the somatic experience as especially important for the efficacy of martyrdom. Basil’s understanding of pain in martyrdom, as articulated in his homily on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, resonates with Origen’s assertions. After Basil recounts the governor’s sentence—that the martyrs will be exposed to the elements—he painstakingly details the physical processes of freezing to death, which highlight for his audience the excruciating pain endured by the martyrs: The body that has been exposed to icy cold first becomes all livid as the blood freezes. Then it shakes wildly and seethes, as the teeth chatter, the muscles spasm, and the whole mass contracts without purpose. A piercing pain [odunē de tis drimeia] and an

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unspeakable distress [ponos arrētos] touches the marrows and causes a freezing sensation that is hard to bear. . . . The heat is chased away from the extremities of the body and flees into the depths. On the one hand, it leaves dead the parts that it has deserted, and on the other hand, those parts into which it is compressed, it gives over to pain [odunais], as little by little death is present from freezing. (Hom. 19.5)88

Basil walks his audience through the biological responses to freezing temperatures; his detailed account of blood, teeth, and flesh draws listeners in as they empathize with the martyrs. Who hasn’t experienced that strange sensation of bitter coldness that burns hot? Our teeth, too, chatter in winter and we shiver in the cold. The description engages the audience’s imagination by invoking familiar life experiences. Pain is not incidental to this description; it is the shared experience of both martyrs and observers. Pain is also central to the martyrs’ own descriptions of their experiences. Enduring the cold, they cry out: “the winter cold is piercing, but paradise tastes sweet: freezing is painful [algeinē], but rest is pleasant” (Hom. 19.6).89 The repeated emphasis on pain as the experience of the martyrs—in both the third-person observation of freezing to death as well as the first-person account of the martyrs’ experience—suggests that pain is particularly important to Basil’s understanding of the meaning of these deaths. Pain in martyrdom is endured in exchange for eternal reward: one pays in pain briefly on earth to redeem eternal joy. Pain as payment is demonstrated by the martyrs’ exhortations to each other: “let the foot burn, so that it may dance continually with the angels; let the hand fall away, so that it may bring access to the Lord” (19.6).90 The common endurance of excruciating pain demonstrates the solidarity and virtue of the Forty; it is also what makes them martyrs. Prudentius’s poems on martyrdom in Peristephanon contain varying assessments of martyrs’ pain. We have seen numerous occasions when he asserts the impassibility of Christian martyrs, but on other occasions the presence of pain is unclear. In recounting the martyrdom of Cyprian, for instance, he describes the Spirit descending on Carthage, empowering the Christians and teaching them “neither to be agitated nor yield nor be conquered by pain [dolore]” but “to resemble Christ and maintain faith” (13.74–75). Are the martyrs not vanquished by pain because they do not feel it? Or do they feel the pain but are not overcome by it? In still other poems, however, pain is explicitly foregrounded. Prudentius, for example, laments the “pains [dolore] the tormentor inflicted” on Emeterius and Chelidonius (1.81). The poet focuses on pain in the martyrdom of Cassian when he contrasts the merciful child, whose stylus struck deeply so as to hasten death, with the cruel child, whose stabs will not bring death but rather “stinging pains” (dolorum spiculis; 9.62). In another poem Prudentius describes the bleeding wound of one of the martyrs of Caesaragusta and the way “the burning pain” (dolor . . . ardens)

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clung to the flesh, drawing out the moment of death (4.130). As the martyrs’ experiences are described, listeners incorporate the corporeal experience into their interpretations, but in none of these poems is pain central to the meaning of martyrdom. Pain is not the locus of meaning. Prudentius’s account of Cyprian’s death, however, is a different case. The North African bishop asserts that “pain [doloris] is the price we pay for the hope of light and everlasting day” (13.43–45). In direct contradiction to Cyprian’s promise to Flavian in the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius, here the bishop claims pain is payment for future reward. Pain is central to the salvific value of martyrdom in this poem. Thus Prudentius’s Peristephanon includes a range of claims about the physical experience of martyrdom—from impassibility to insignificance to foundational. Augustine’s writings likewise reflect different positions on pain in martyrdom. Previous chapters have examined a number of instances in which he claims that martyrs feel no pain. In other sermons, however, he asserts that pain is experienced but only to a degree that is appropriate for training. In one of his sermons on Perpetua and Felicitas, for example, Augustine discusses the scene in which the women are tossed by the heifer. He explains that the martyrs despised both “death and pain” (et mortem et dolores) for Christ (Serm. 280.4).91 But Jesus was present in the martyrs, protecting them from much—though not all—of the discomfort: “The one who lived in them conquered in them. . . . He was showing them spiritual delights, so that they would not feel bodily distress [ne sentirent corporales molestias], more than which lays the foundation not for failure but training” (280.4).92 Augustine imagines a small bit of physical discomfort will discipline or train martyrs, but Christ protects them from a surplus of pain. A common refrain in Augustine’s sermons on martyrs is that the experience of pain is not itself meaningful because common criminals endure that. Even stoic endurance of pain is not praiseworthy because that can merely signal a person’s stubbornness. In his sermon on St. Vincent, for instance, Augustine argues that “it is not endurance” that makes martyrs victorious.93 It is the cause—not the punishment— that makes a martyr praiseworthy. After all, “many people, in fact, have endured pain out of obstinacy rather than steadiness; out of vice not virtue; being perversely wrong, not directed by reason; being mastered by the devil, not their persecutor” (Serm. 275.1).94 Likewise, in a sermon on the martyrs of Marseilles, Augustine teaches that it is possible for someone who has been “conquered by the devil” to conquer pain, thus proving again that endurance of pain is not itself proof of piety (283.4). Augustine’s sermons taken together reflect varying appraisals of pain, ranging from outright rejection of the martyrs’ experience of it to acknowledgments of its existence. In the latter case, however, Augustine tempers the impulse to overvalue pain as a marker of piety. In John Chrysostom’s homily on Julian, pain is a natural result of torture. Chrysostom describes both the physical—“the pain [odunē] of the attacks”—and

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the psychological—“the agony of what would be”—trauma Julian faced.95 In this sermon, however, pain belongs to “the momentary and temporary age” and does not overshadow the pleasures of the immortal age.96 A boxer who wins the crown, Chrysostom teaches, has “no perception of the dangers at hand” and is not “exceedingly strained” by them.97 If such is true for the boxer, how much more true is it of martyrs who, although “enduring myriad dangers and having their bodies lacerated by different tortures,” nevertheless fix their sights on the heavenly rewards.98 By doing so, they teach that “the things that are burdensome and unendurable by nature become light and easy with the hope of things to come.”99 Pain in this homily is an expected result of torture, but it is the focus neither of the martyrs’ gaze nor of Chrysostom’s homily. Pain is inconsequential for those who believe in the rewards that await Christians in heaven. Gregory of Nyssa’s homily “On Theodore the Recruit” engages with the discourse of pain through ekphrasis.100 Gregory draws his audience’s attention to artistic elements of the martyrium where they have gathered for the feast day: he describes the beauty of the carpenter’s and the mason’s works before turning to the contributions of the painter who captured the martyr’s “excellence, his opposition, his pain” (tas algēdonas).101 The artistic works are expected to relate—“as if in a book that speaks”—the details of the event to the worshiping crowd.102 In setting the scene of martyrdom, then, Gregory introduces the experience of pain as central to the interpretation of Theodore’s contest. Similarly, in the final portion of the homily, Gregory relates Theodore’s pain to the efficacy of his witness. In a direct address to the martyr, Gregory implores him to leave his heavenly home and return to his fatherland to observe the love and adoration of his people for him. The blood Theodore shed and “the pain” (algēdoni) he felt in the fire will bring him honor.103 Interestingly, the middle section of the homily, in which Gregory details the martyrdom itself, suggests that the martyr may not have felt pain. As Theodore endured torture—being hanged on a stake while his flesh was torn to pieces—he sang psalms “as if someone else was submitting to the punishment in his place.”104 That Theodore’s pain is relieved by the presence of another being resonates with the Passion of Theodore.105 In the Passion, for instance, Theodore asserts that he is not afraid of pagan tortures because “My Lord and God is before my face, releasing me from these tortures; you do not see him because you do not look with the eyes of the soul” (4).106 The miraculous protection of Theodore’s body—a theme likely drawn from the Martyrdom of Polycarp—provides further evidence of the saint’s prophetic words: Christ does save Theodore, though it is obvious only “to whom it was granted” (8).107 If Gregory’s homily on Theodore makes use of preexisting traditions, then it may represent an attempt at reframing an earlier martyr narrative around the experience of pain.108 The sermon establishes pain as an interpretive lens that guides the congregants’ experience of hearing the martyr story within the martyrium.

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Gregory, however, does not always locate pain as central to the meaning of martyrdom. His sermon on the Forty Martyrs, for instance, concedes the experience of pain but rejects its importance. Thus whereas Basil’s homily repeatedly invokes the pain experienced by these martyrs, Gregory rejects pain as relevant to the ideology of martyrdom. In his homily Gregory grants that it is the nature of bodies to feel pain but because their spirits triumphed over their bodies the martyrs may not have actually experienced the pain: “Their nature endured what is proper and it received pain [algeina], but the nobility of the athletes contended against nature itself.”109 The athletes’ nobility fighting against their nature suggests that the martyrs vanquished pain. The martyrs were no longer susceptible to corporeal frailty. Gregory’s observation about a soldier left behind—“he was alive only inasmuch as he felt pain [algeinōn]”—should be understood in light of this triumph of the spirit: the soldier’s soul had already ascended to heaven and only his body, and its sensations, remained.110 Gregory does not shy away from expressing the pain that is normally associated with torture, but he—unlike Origen and Basil—does not isolate pain as foundational to the meaning of martyrdom. This illustrative overview of late ancient writings on martyrs reveals that there was little consensus among commentators on the meaning of pain in martyrdom. In these texts the martyrs’ experience of pain could be rejected or accepted, and when accepted it could be understood as a minor nuisance—in comparison to the rich rewards to come—or a central aspect of salvation. Some authors’ positions resonate with the earlier martyr texts while others reimagine the experience altogether. My aim is not to present a comprehensive analysis of these authors’ ideologies of martyrdom but to shed light on the discordant voices participating in the discourse. If the martyr narratives themselves are similar—though by no means identical—in their claims to Christian insensitivity to pain in torture, later texts introduce alternative viewpoints. These differences are important because they illustrate that the discourse of martyrdom was dynamic; they may also inform readings of earlier texts. It is, after all, the nature of interpretation to set an earlier text in a new (and sometimes different) context. Authors such as Eusebius, Prudentius, and Augustine who rework martyr stories as they retell them, make choices about what elements they wish to emphasize. Thus later suggestions that martyrs experienced pain may affect rereadings of earlier texts that deny exactly that.111 Martyr texts and reflections on martyrdom contribute to an intra-Christian discourse on pain. Most of this study has been devoted to giving voice to an oftneglected perspective about divine analgesia, but even texts that insist on the impassibility of the martyr make use of pain alongside painlessness. The discourse of painlessness, that is, does not exist in isolation apart from larger concerns about who experiences pain and why. Martyr texts do not merely reject pain as an experience of the Christian body; they also employ pain to illustrate group allegiances. But discourses are created through the contributions of multiple voices, and even

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within Christian traditions the discursive claims are not identical. Some authors mention pain in passing—as if it were simply the obvious but ultimately meaningless consequence of physical torture—while others focus on its relationship to salvation. While intra-Christian disagreements about pain and martyrdom are important to recognize, Christian voices are not the only ones that contribute to the discourse on pain and martyrdom. Pagan authors also construct Christian identity vis-à-vis martyrdom, and so another set of voices, those of nonChristians, must be heard as well. The following chapter examines various contexts—political, philosophical, and eschatological—from which the discourses of martyrdom and pain emerge and to which they contribute.

5

Narratives and Counternarratives Discourse and Early Christian Martyr Texts The advantage of a revolutionary situation consists precisely in the fact that even a small group can become a great force in a brief space of time, provided that it gives a correct prognosis and raises the correct slogans in time. —leon trotsky, the spanish revolution (1931–1939)

Martyrs’ bodies, particularly descriptions of their somatic experiences, are discursive tools employed in social, political, and theological contests. While some interpretations privilege the historicity or historical verisimilitude of these bodies, my interest is in the rhetorical construction of them. I am not arguing, that is, that torture and execution really do not cause pain; neither am I positing physiological explanations for the claims to analgesia. The martyrs’ corporality signifies much more than human flesh, and thus these bodies are not neutral sites for which a Rankean history—“to show what actually happened”—can be written.1 Instead of asking what really happened, I ask, “What do these bodies mean?” I argue that the textual body is a highly contested locus of both force and discourse.2 In the martyr texts the body as a site of force is obvious: it is seen in the action taken against Christians in an effort to persuade them to apostatize or to punish them for obstinacy. While force is often a tool of the ruling class, marginalized groups also have access to it, “if only that of their own bodies.”3 Individuals can, that is, use their bodies as sites of personal resistance and contestation. But while force may help the ruling class avert revolt, it does not ensure social stability and so it must be supplemented by the “ideological persuasion” of discourse.4 The body as a site of discourse is equally important for the meaning making of Christian martyr texts. Discourses legitimate and perpetuate the power of the ruling class, but other social groups may script counternarratives that undermine the dominant discourse. Counter-discourses aim both at deconstructing existing patterns as well as at constructing new ones.5 Marginalized groups then can utilize discourse to gain power: their counternarratives can delegitimate the status quo 122

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and thereby challenge the very discourses used to subordinate them.6 The success of a counternarrative depends on several factors: how widely the discourse is propagated, its persuasiveness, and its popularity. When all three factors are met, a discourse is both rationally and morally appealing; it strengthens feelings of attachment among group members and fosters feelings of estrangement from nongroup members.7 The success of early Christian discourse, as Todd Klutz has argued, ultimately lies not in its historical accuracy but in its rhetorical persuasiveness.8 Textual bodies, like those of the martyrs, can be claimed and deployed by societies to affirm or resist hegemonic power, to strengthen or challenge the status quo.9 Thus even if we were to concede the historical reliability of the martyr texts— that is, they record “what really happened”—the discursive function of the textual body is not constrained by the martyr’s political, religious, or social intentions. The textual bodies of martyrological discourses are blank slates on which authors inscribe meaning, and as such they become a “map of memory” through which historians can trace ideologies.10 But if “the body never lies”—as Martha Graham suggests—Brent Shaw rightly queries, “what truth does it speak?”11 The “truth” the martyr texts tell in most cases is of a Christian body invulnerable to pain. This textual body may strike modern readers as counterintuitive, but viewed from the perspective of an ancient audience—an audience facing the possibility, even if not the probability, of arrest, torture, and death—the narrative devaluing of pain is shrewd.12 The promise that God protects Christians from the inventive and excruciating tortures of the Romans fosters faithfulness and resolve. For a listening audience that is in all probability familiar with public torture and execution—for individuals who have watched criminals being mauled by animals or forced to participate in arena games—the reality of pain in the Roman judicial system is all too real. The martyr texts alleviate the fears of these Christians by asserting that the bodies of the faithful receive divinely administered analgesics and that what appears to be torture is really a remedy. In these texts God is not only in power but is demonstrably victorious; God’s victory is evident when Christian deaths take place apart “from the agonies of dying.”13 While this depiction of the invulnerable Christian body offers comfort to ancient Christians, its social function is more complex. In this chapter I argue that assertions of the martyrs’ impassibility draw on and contribute to preexisting cultural discourses in the ancient world, both Christian and non-Christian. The assertions of painlessness in torture, that is, are not alien to ancient narrative scripts but instead resonate with available cultural discourses. Listeners who had access to any of these cultural conversations, therefore, could make sense of the martyr texts’ claims. Eschatological expectations, for instance, are apparent in a number of martyr texts, and teachings about the end times affect the ways Christian bodies are imagined: they may suggest that Christians—or at least martyrs—can lay claim proleptically to the promises of glorified bodies that reside in a perfected world.

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Christian claims to analgesia may also reflect interactions with the broader discourse of Stoic philosophy.14 However, Christians are not the only ones engaged in conversation about martyrs’ bodies, and they are not the only ones who have something at stake in the way these stories are told. Pagans, too, contribute to the discourse of pain and martyrdom—to their own social and political ends. Thus discourses about martyrs reflect various groups’ attempts to spin events in particular ways and to particular ends. These texts simultaneously point to ways the martyr is deployed in intra-Christian discourses and in interreligious rivalries. E S C HAT O L O G IC A L D I S C OU R SE S A N D R E SU R R E C T E D B O D I E S

As we have seen, martyr texts look backward by rescripting history: they assert that what appeared to happen did not actually happen, that torture is not painful but a remedy. We have not yet examined the ways they also look forward by staking claim to a “mythic future.”15 Gail Streete has posited that martyrdom “can only function as a valid discourse in a society that sees itself in apocalyptic terms, living on the borders between life and death, engaged in a struggle between good and evil.”16 Just as the retelling of past events serves present needs, so also the future, as Bruce Lincoln reminds us, “enters discourse in the present always and only for reasons of the present.”17 Indeed, the future world promised by the martyr texts is not simply a distant utopia unrelated to the current situation; the hoped-for future impinges on the present, and martyr acts narrate its realization.18 The martyr texts, then, promise that the rewards for faithfulness are attained—at least in part—in the present world. Such a claim has important ramifications for understanding the social function of the martyred body immune to pain. Eschatological Expectation The “mythic future” that the authors of the martyr texts imagine is not wholly their invention. It is the scripturally and theologically predicated eschatological promise of the messianic age. Scholars often note the eschatological themes and apocalyptic resonances found in martyr narratives.19 The Passion of Perpetua, for instance, has received extensive attention in terms of its dependence on apocalyptic literature: scholars have posited parallels between the Passion and 1 Enoch, the Apocalypse of Peter, Shepherd of Hermas, and Revelation.20 Even when literary dependence on specific apocalypses cannot be ascertained, eschatological themes are nonetheless prevalent in martyr literature. Cosmic dualism, which pits God against Satan, is ubiquitous in martyr texts. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for instance, the strategies devised for torturing Christians are those of the devil (3.1), and it is the “evil one,” the “enemy of the race of the just,” who—working through Nicetes—prevented the Christians from obtaining Polycarp’s remains (17.1). Like-

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wise, in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, the Adversary initiated the persecution against the Christians: he “darted in with full power” and went “to great lengths familiarizing and training his own against the slaves of God” (1.5). When his first attempts failed, the “devil contrived other devices” in a more strenuous effort to lead Christians to apostasy (1.27). Dualism is plainly on show when the author states that whereas the jailers are “completely filled with the Devil,” the Christians “regained strength and were vitalized through the Lord” (1.27, 1.28). Here, as in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Satan is the force behind the persecution as he animates and empowers his servants to fight on his behalf. Cosmic dualism resolves in the promise of ultimate vindication. Just as eschatological expectations are built on the assumption that God will defeat Satan in a cosmic battle, so many martyr texts portray the defeat of Satan through martyrdom. The martyr texts thus preview the final victory that is soon to come. The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, for instance, narrates Christ’s victory over the Adversary in the body of Sanctus (1.23). Likewise, in Perpetua’s fourth vision, she defeats the Egyptian, signaling her “fight against the Devil” and assuring her of victory (Pass. Perp. 10.14). Fructuosus and his fellow martyrs “trampled upon the devil’s head” through their martyrdoms (Mart. Fruct. 7.2). The author of the Martyrdom of Marian and James writes that “the rage of the dangerous Devil” threatened to weaken the faithful (2.2). Although the magistrates—“priests of the Devil”—applied myriad tortures to the Christian bodies, they could not avoid “the Lord’s victory” (5.1, 5.10). Through the bodies of the martyrs, God defeats the forces of evil.21 Such is clearly the point made by the author of the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius: “we receive the reward of our crowns because the battle has already occurred” (4.6). Just as miracle stories in the Gospels represent a microcosm of the coming cosmic battle, so the contest between Christ and Satan taking place within the bodies of the martyrs brings the eschatological combat into the present moment.22 Christians are victorious here and now, the texts claim. Their victory is not to be accomplished through some unspecified future battle; they are crowned with crowns of immortality when they fight for and with Christ. Accompanying the themes of dualism and vindication is the expectation of inevitable judgment. On the one hand, Christians avoid apostasy in anticipation of the judgment to come, as Carpus indicates: “We were born of the same mother, Eve, and we have the same flesh, but having in view the true court, let us bear all things” (Mart. Carp. A40). The Latin recension of this martyrdom makes the judgment clearer: “Being mindful of God’s true judgment, we choose to endure this and to disregard the orders of perishable judges rather than to meet that true and eternal judgment, where there will be no mercy” (B4.4). That unmerciful sentence includes an eternal fire “unextinguishable,” which will be wholly destructive: it will “burn up the sea, the mountains, and the forests” (B4.5). This text juxtaposes the short-lived fire of persecution with the eternal raging fire of judgment, which

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cannot be avoided. Likewise, the Martyrdom of Polycarp contrasts “one hour” to “eternal punishment” when it describes the choice made by the martyrs: they preferred the temporal fire because “they held before their eyes escape from that which is eternal and never put out” (2.3). The fear of judgment then is said to drive Christian behavior and motivate faithfulness in torture. On the other hand, many martyr texts anticipate a judgment that will punish the unjust actions of the persecutors. The Martyrdom of Marian and James asserts that “the vengeance of the blood of the just is coming” by means of “various worldly plagues, for instance pestilence, captivity, famine, earthquakes, and the torture of poisonous biting flies” (12.7).23 The horsemen of the Apocalypse, images of impending judgment, also make an appearance in this text: to both the martyrs and the Christian witnesses—though not, the text insists, to the pagan persecutors—“there appeared above horses of a brilliant snowy-white color, which bore youths clothed in white” (12.5).24 The presence of the horsemen was confirmed by those who heard the “the snorting and the sound of the horses” (12.6). In the Passion of Perpetua the imprisoned Carthaginian Christians respond to pagan taunts with a somber prophecy, warning the spectators of God’s judgment and anticipating their own enjoyment at the reversal of fortunes: in the end they will experience joy when their tormentors are suffering. Saturus, speaking for the rest of the Christians, asks the mob to look at the prisoners’ faces carefully so as to recognize them “on the day” (Pass. Perp. 17.1). Promises of eschatological judgment serve communal needs for retribution that may currently lie beyond reach; they assure listeners that the atrocities committed against innocent Christians will be repaid. Glorified and Resurrected Bodies Even more pertinent than the eschatological themes of martyr texts, however, are the ways that hopes for the future, and its anticipation of the resurrection, shed light on the martyr texts’ depictions of the Christian body.25 Saturus’s directive to the spectating audience—“make note of our faces”—suggests an expectation of material continuity after death (Pass. Perp. 17.2). If the persecutors are to recognize those whom they have harmed, then the martyrs must retain identifiable bodies. Indeed, scholars have shown that it is precisely in this period—the second and third centuries CE—that Christian discourse about the resurrection shifts to emphasize the materiality of the raised body.26 Justin, for instance, asserts that the resurrection affects both body and spirit: “He has called the flesh to the resurrection and promises to give it everlasting life” (On Resurrection 8). Indeed, for Justin the physical resurrection is the good news of Christianity that differentiates it from pagan philosophies: while Plato and Pythagoras taught the immortality of the soul, Jesus brings “the good news of a new and strange hope . . . to turn that which is not immortal to immortality” (On Resurrection 10).27 In their treatises on resurrection, Christians construct a counternarrative to pagan arguments about

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the absurdity—indeed, the repugnancy—of the doctrine. That is, Christians are not merely proposing a belief but defending it against their detractors. Celsus’s, Porphry’s, and Julian’s acid critiques of Christian views of the resurrection remind us of the cacophony of voices contributing to the discourse on the fate of the body after death.28 Not all Christians argued for material continuity after death, however. Rival Christian views concerning the resurrection may be preserved in the Passion of Perpetua.29 On the one hand are narratives that assume material continuity.30 In addition to Saturus’s statement about the martyrs’ faces, this perspective is also reflected in Perpetua’s third vision, in which her prayers for her deceased brother Dinocrates have been answered. No longer dirty and pale, unable to reach water to quench his thirst, the boy is now happy and healthy, drinking from a bottomless golden cup. Importantly, his body has been healed: where there was once a wound, there is now only a scar. Thomas Heffernan interprets the scar as “the experiential evidence of the healing.”31 The narrative is concerned not only with Dinocrates’s soul but also with his body: he drinks freely—surely a profound promise in arid North Africa—and his body is healed.32 This vision of paradise does not devalue bodily needs and physical injuries: God cares for both. On the other hand, Saturus’s vision may privilege a noncorporeal afterlife. Saturus relates that having left the body (exivimus de carne; 11.2), the martyrs were carried by angels to a garden with blooming bushes. As they entered the house of the Lord, they saw an old man with white hair and a youthful face. The martyrs and angels attending the Lord sang, as in a single voice, the Trisagion. Perpetua claims to be happier at that moment than she was “in the flesh” (in carne; 12.7). So nourished by the sights and sounds of paradise, Saturus reports that they were “satiated” by it. Both Saturus’s and Perpetua’s statements in this vision are built on a dualism between spirit and flesh. Jan Bremmer, however, argues that this vision describes a bodily resurrection: since Saturus walks through the garden in his body, “leaving the body” must be understood as a euphemism for death.33 But Eliezer Gonzalez argues that this vision imagines a resurrection of the spirit and not of the flesh.34 Similarly, Heffernan suggests that the language of embodiment is allegorical: the vision “depicts the souls as if they were bodies: they walk, talk, and act as if they were embodied.”35 That the vision likely imagines a noncorporeal resurrection is also suggested in the narrative’s repeated insistence that the martyrs had left the flesh (caro) behind.36 The Passion therefore appears to preserve discordant views of the resurrected body. At least in the final form of the text, these inconsonant perspectives sit side by side without comment.37 Even those Christians who agreed that the body would be raised did not necessarily agree on the physical characteristics of the resurrected body. Third Corinthians, for instance, appears to imply that resurrected bodies bear the marks of persecution (35).38 Similarly, the Martyrdom of Fructuosus describes the martyrs ascending

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to heaven still attached to their stakes (5.1). But more commonly authors imagine that the resurrected flesh is healed. Justin, for instance, argues that “the flesh shall rise perfect and entire” (On Resurrection, 4).39 Just as Jesus healed the infirmities of those whom he encountered during his ministry, Justin avers, how much more will the resurrected flesh be healed and perfected? Justin’s writings reflect a doublepronged concern for material continuity and its incorruptibility, a concern that pervades patristic writings on resurrection: what is raised must be the same body but it is transformed into something greater and more perfect. A similar concern for the perfection of the resurrected body can be seen in Theophilus’s Ad Autolycum. The body, Theophilus asserts, is like a broken clay vessel that is “restored and made new and perfect”; at the resurrection the body will be “without blemish and just and immortal” (26).40 Similarly, Irenaeus asserts that the body that is raised is “in a healthy condition” (Haer. 5.12.5).41 The claim is perhaps most clearly and succinctly stated by Tertullian: “To nature, not to injury, are we restored” (Res. 57). Christian interest in the materiality of resurrection and the perfection of the body is not unrelated to the context of persecution. Early Christian discussions of the nature of the resurrected flesh suggest that the body imagined in these treatises “was quintessentially the mutilated cadaver of the martyr.”42 The most important contributors to the doctrine of resurrection in this early period were writing in the context of persecution, and thus their depictions of the resurrected body “originate in the facts of martyrdom,” as Caroline Walker Bynum has argued.43 That these doctrines developed under fear of persecution suggests that for these Christians the ultimate threat was not death but bodily dissolution.44 The promise of resurrection, therefore, provides compensation for martyrdom.45 According to Bynum, this type of compensation theory is found in patristic writings on resurrection, but not in the earliest martyr texts themselves.46 The future reward of resurrected bodies as compensation for martyrdom, however, may be more prevalent than Bynum suggests.47 In the Martyrdom of Pionius, for example, the martyr explains why he is rushing to the amphitheater: “I am eager for this reason: so that I may be raised quickly, making visible the resurrection of the dead” (21.4). So also the connection between martyrdom and the promise of resurrection may be found in the Martyrdom of Fructuosus. As the martyrs faced their deaths, they were “happy to experience the fruit of the holy Scriptures according to the promises” (4.2). For good measure the raised martyrs also appeared to the persecutor to “rebuke and taunt” him and to prove that they were in glory (7.1). That the martyrs’ expectations for resurrection were met is made clear by a vision received by two Christians. They saw “the saintly bishop Fructuosus together with his deacons rising, crowned, up to heaven” (5.1). They were “cheerful about the resurrection” (4.3). Similarly, the author of the Martyrdom of Marian and James juxtaposes martyrdom with the promise of resurrection when he asserts that God “strengthens those who place their trust in his name,” but he also “restores [them]

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to life” by means of the “blood ransom” (13.4). That the blood ransom refers to the martyrs’ deaths—rather than the benefit received from Jesus’ death—is made clear a few sentences later: the author states that the “loan we believe to be repaid by our own blood is granted by the omnipotent God” (13.5). The Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius goes further by wholly conflating death and resurrection: the day of Flavian’s death “was endured not like a day of martyrdom but like one of resurrection” (17.4). Claims to resurrection, therefore, are abundant in the martyr texts. Even when explicit claims to resurrection are lacking, the descriptions of the martyrs suggest the texts are contributing to this discourse. Often the martyr’s body is described as being transformed into a glorified, resurrected form. Successus, for instance, appeared to the imprisoned Flavian with face and garments “equally brilliant beyond measure” (Mart. Mont. 21.8). Flavian had difficulty recognizing Successus because he “transfixed the bodily eyes with an angelic splendor” (21.8). Here Successus reveals himself to Flavian in a transformed, glorified body. Similarly, the description of Pionius’s corpse is likely a glimpse of the perfected, unblemished, resurrected body: his body was not deformed by the pyre but instead it became younger and stronger. As if fulfilling the Lukan eschatological prophecy, not a single hair on Pionius’s head was lost (22.3).48 Martyr texts therefore reflect early Christian thinking about resurrection, but do they also reveal some slippage between the “then” and the “now”? Are resurrected bodies necessarily “other”—necessarily subsequent—to martyred bodies, decisively separated by the chasm of physical death? Or might martyrs receive the eschatological promises of glorified and perfected bodies before death? There are occasions when narrative interests in the corporeal experiences of martyrdom indicate an elision between martyred and resurrected bodies here and now, not just in the promise of future rewards. Consider, for instance, Perpetua’s first vision in which she tramples on the head of the dragon as she ascends the ladder to heaven (Pass. Perp. 4.4). In addition to being a reference to Genesis 3:15, this episode may also allude to the dragon of Revelation 12–13, which is defeated in Revelation 20. In this reading Perpetua imagines her martyrdom as a victory over Satan. After successfully scaling the ladder, she finds herself in an Edenic garden joined by thousands of people dressed in white robes. She watches an old shepherd—clearly an image of the divine—who is milking sheep. He gives her a mouthful of the milk, which she receives in cupped hands before consuming it. Scholarly interest in the milk has tended to focus on the difficult lexical pairing of caseus and mulgeo: how is cheese milked?49 On occasion scholars use this scene to establish the heterodox perspective of the text.50 But the translation of this paradisiacal substance—whatever it is—into the earthly realm has consequences for our understanding of Perpetua’s martyred and resurrected body: Perpetua awakens from her vision “still eating some unknown sweet” (4.10).51 The sustenance she is given in heaven remains with her when she returns to her earthly existence. I suggest we consider this episode as

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reflecting a realized eschatology: for the martyrs the benefits of future reward are translated into earthly life. In considering the possibility of martyrs receiving the benefits of glorified, resurrected bodies, Tertullian’s claim about the resurrected flesh is provocative: after the resurrection, he asserts, the flesh will be “impassible, inasmuch as it has been liberated by the Lord so that it is no longer possible for it to suffer” (Res. 57.13). When the martyr texts claim that martyrs feel no pain, and when they describe martyrs’ bodies as unmarked by torture and execution, might we see glimpses of the resurrected flesh? This proposition could be comforting to Christian communities experiencing or fearing persecution. For as Bynum suggests, “if flesh could put on, even in this life, a foretaste of incorruption, martyrdom might be bearable.”52 The fear of torture might be allayed by the hope that “a sort of anesthesia of glory might spill over from the promised resurrection into the ravaged flesh of the arena, making its experience bearable.”53 As we have seen, the martyr texts contrast momentary persecution to eternal punishment. The martyr texts take the opportunity to invert the conventional narrative: where pain in execution is expected— foreshadowing eternal torture—anesthesia is presented—foreshadowing eternal reward.54 The impassible flesh is the reward of faithfulness, the marker of victory, the donning of the resurrected body even before death. The promises contained in Revelation 21:4 may be instructive here. After Satan is defeated, the New Jerusalem is revealed as a place in which “death will be no more; mourning and crying and distress [ponos] will be no more.” While Greek manuscripts read ponos, Latin translations of John’s Apocalypse opt for dolor.55 Augustine, too, preserves dolor as the reading for this passage.56 Thus at least for some Christians hearing this text, the promises of the New Jerusalem might include painlessness. Satan has been defeated in the bodies of the martyrs; and through the martyrs’ impassibility the kingdom of God has been realized.57 The narrative description of the martyrs as experiencing torture without the anticipated pain may then be understood as the realization of the vindication promised to those who remain faithful to God.58 If in treatises on resurrection the raised body was less “the triumph of martyrs over pain and humiliation” and more about “the triumph of martyrs’ bodies over fragmentation, scattering, and the loss of a final resting place,” for the early Christian martyr texts the former is at least as important as the latter.59 The texts I examine in this book locate the martyrs’ deaths as the moment of victory, and it is a moment that is not marked by pain. Concerns about fragmentation are present as well, of course. Bodies that are unharmed by fire or that are healed by torture display the immunity of the Christian body to rot and putrefaction; martyr texts preserve the bodies of the faithful in the eternal perfection of the glorified body. If vindication takes place in the body of the martyr, judgment is also intricately connected to the doctrine of the resurrection.60 Tertullian, for instance, asserts

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that judgment requires a bodily resurrection so individuals may be punished for sins committed in the body.61 In De Testimonio Animae he explains to the soul that it will be reunited with its “original substance by returning to the material and memory” of the person it was, because “it is not possible to feel either evil or good apart from passible flesh; there is no reckoning of judgment without the presence of the one who deserves to endure the judgment” (4.1). Similarly, in his Apology, Tertullian explains: It is our argument that it is altogether more deserving of belief that a man will come back as a man. . . . In fact, since the reason for restoration is establishing judgment, it must necessarily be the same one who was who will be produced, so as to bear judgment from God for his merits, for the good or the opposite. Accordingly their bodies will also be present, because the soul alone cannot endure anything apart from solid matter, that is the flesh; and because, whatever souls owe to God to endure, they did not earn it apart from the flesh, in which they were impelled to all things. (48.3–4)

The soul, Tertullian insists, is not alone in deserving reward or punishment; the body and the soul act together in earthly existence and so must be judged together. As we have seen, martyr narratives’ interest in retribution is widespread, extending from the earliest Christian martyr texts to Lactantius’s lengthy descriptions of persecutors’ deaths. The insistence within martyr texts on divine protection and consequent impassibility, moreover, hints that something more is at stake in the discourse of judgment. These texts promise that the assaults pagans were unable to make against Christian bodies will be successfully enacted upon their own bodies. In the coming judgment, which entails bodily resurrection, pagans will answer for their persecution of Christians, and they will pay with bodily pain. There will be no divine protection that brings anesthesia or soothes and comforts the broken body; the torture applied will be corporeally experienced in its fullness. Martyr texts build upon a number of themes from preexisting eschatological discourses to bolster their claims about God’s interest in and protection of the bodies of the faithful. In addition, developing views about the glorified body—its perfection and impassibility—complement martyrological interests. Eschatological discourses are not solely focused on reward for faithfulness, however. They are also concerned with retribution, with assuring God’s people that their oppressors will be held accountable for their actions. Evil will not win in the end. This theme is prominent in martyr texts. Some texts depict immediate justice for the torture of Christians, while other texts promise redress as a part of the coming judgment. In imagining reparations, the experience of the martyrs—who are not really tortured and not really harmed—is compared to the torment that awaits the persecutors. Without divine aid, God’s opponents will bear the full brunt of torture; their bodies will feel every application of fire, rack, and sword. Martyrological discourse is not produced in a vacuum but instead reflects deep engagement with Jewish

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and Christian eschatological expectations and with developing doctrines of the resurrection. ST O IC D I S C OU R SE S A N D M A RT Y R S’ B O D I E S

In addition to Jewish and Christian eschatological discourses, martyr texts draw on the broader cultural discourse of Stoicism, which in the second and third centuries CE made widely available the notion of a body that could be unaffected by pain. Stoicism was one of the dominant ideological systems in the Roman world. It was so common, as Shaw argues, that “it became the silent medium of thought in which [ancients] habitually worked.”62 Stoic discourse so pervaded the air of the Roman Empire that it was a “shopping centre” philosophy.63 Scholars have identified wide-ranging Stoic influences on Christian beliefs.64 Thus many Christians’ views were informed by Stoic categories and ideals even if they were not themselves formal devotees of the philosophy.65 In what follows, I argue that assertions of Christian indifference—and even insensitivity—to pain correspond with certain understandings of Stoic teachings on pain. The resonances between Stoic principles and martyr texts, both Jewish and Christian, have been well rehearsed by scholars.66 As Nicola Denzey notes, “the death of the Christian martyr mirrors or refracts the death of the Stoic philosopher, reduplicating its image.”67 Indeed, the death narratives popular among Stoics during the reigns of Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian, which Pliny labeled “exitus illustrium virorum,” were precursors to—and likely models for—Jewish and Christian martyr texts.68 Pliny mentions such a collection of death narratives when he notes that Gaius Fannius died before finishing his accounts of “the deaths of those who were killed or exiled by Nero” (Ep. 5.5.3). He also mentions his intentions to attend a reading by Titinius Capito, who was “writing about the deaths of famous men” during the reign of Domitian (Ep. 8.12.4). These death traditions are largely Stoic-influenced anti-imperial texts that depict the death of philosophers at the hands of the emperors.69 One of the most famous of the “stoically stylized” noble deaths—that of Seneca—is related by Tacitus, who draws on traditions about Socrates’s death to oppose imperial actions.70 Tacitus, for instance, clearly connects Socrates’s death to Seneca’s suicide when he describes the Stoic philosopher maintaining self-control throughout the situation, consoling his family and friends and offering a sacrifice to the gods before drinking the hemlock (Ann. 15.62–64). Plutarch’s account of Cato’s death also fits within the Socratically informed Stoic death narrative: Cato participates in a philosophical discourse with his companions before his death, in particular regarding Stoic teachings on freedom; he consoles his friends; he reads Plato’s Phaedo—twice—and then embarks on the ultimate display of personal freedom: self-death (Cato minor 68–70).71 The resonances between the Stoic noble deaths and martyr texts are marked: both emphasize self-

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control, free will, and resistance to the allure of actions that may save one’s life but compromise one’s virtue and conscience.72 Christianity may also share with Stoicism a bent toward antiauthoritarianism.73 On the one hand, Shaw admonishes against assigning this as central to Stoic thought though he acknowledges individual Stoic philosophers’ opposition to emperors. Tension between senators and emperors was widespread and thus the Stoicism of, for example, Thrasea Paetus may be incidental to his conflict with Nero.74 On the other hand, Catharine Edwards argues that the relationship of senatorial opposition to Stoicism is important because “at the very least their philosophical views give them a place from which to speak, help them confront the dangers they run in articulating unwelcome truths to tyrannous rulers.”75 Thus even if the tenets of Stoicism do not necessitate an antiauthoritarian stance, the noble deaths illustrated for Christians the utility of Stoicism for resisting oppressive power.76 They provided a model for Jewish and Christian authors to follow in scripting their own “unwelcome truths to tyrannous rulers.”77 Stoicism’s influence on martyr literature is not limited to its stories of death at the hands of tyrants. It may also serve as a philosophical grounding for the narrative claims to martyrs’ disinterest in—even impassibility during—torture. Judith Perkins argues that in the second century CE there were two contrasting cultural representations of the body: first is what she calls the “traditional Hellenic subject,” those who pass through suffering but are “unmarked by the experience” (in particular, the Stoic wise man); and second, the Christian martyrs who find power and redemption in suffering.78 Thus on the one hand, martyr texts “offered their readers and listeners a self-understanding of themselves as sufferers, empowered by the experience of suffering.”79 On the other hand, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus “had rejected the body’s claims and had instructed his students to master and ignore them.”80 For the Stoic sage, “pain and suffering mattered little to the self ’s real essence.”81 The Stoic body as constructed by Epictetus is one that, as Perkins notes, “passes through suffering but is unmarked by the experience”; it is “exempt from the experience of pain and suffering.”82 This construction of the body, moreover, “was circulating in the ideological environment of the period.”83 Thus in the second and third centuries CE one available discourse in the Roman world was of a body that was unaffected by pain. In light of claims for Christian indifference— and even insensitivity—to pain, I argue that the martyr texts are closely aligned with, rather than opposed to, Stoic teachings on pain. Stoic assessments of pain are related to the philosophy’s concern with living in accordance with nature. Arrian begins his account of Epictetus’s teachings with a discussion of the “most excellent” faculty, that of reason (Disc. 1.1.4, 1.1.7). Refining this gift of the gods, Epictetus teaches, should be one’s sole focus in life. The sage will not worry about things he cannot change; rather, we must “make the best of what is up to us” and accept what is not (1.1.17). Whether I am executed, for

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example, is not up to me. But I can control whether I groan while being executed. Being fettered is not up to me. But wailing when I am fettered is (1.1.22). These distinctions, moreover, should occupy the philosopher’s daily life, and mastering them will make him “noble” (1.1.25, 1.2.32).84 Epictetus illustrates this ideal by recalling a conversation between the senator Helvidius Priscus and Vespasian. Vespasian threatened to have the senator executed if he spoke out in the Senate. Helvidius Priscus’s response would not be surprising in the mouth of a Christian martyr: “It is yours to kill, mine to die without trembling” (1.2.21). While Epictetus taught that a person could fully control his reactions, other Stoics allowed for involuntary reactions to external stimuli.85 Chrysippus, for example, taught that the wise man feels pain (SVF 3.574).86 Likewise, Seneca asserts, “We do not deny that it is a disagreeable thing to be beaten and hit, to be deprived of some limb, but we deny that all these things are injuries. We do not deprive them of the sensation of pain, but of the name ‘injury,’ which is not possible if virtue is preserved” (Const. 16.2). Thus for Seneca the wise man feels “bodily pain” (dolor corporis; 10.4). He writes, “I do not deny that the wise man feels these things; for we do not assert for him the hardness of stone or iron” (10.4). Elsewhere he makes similar claims: “I do not withdraw the wise man from the category of human, nor do I remove pain from him as if he were a rock without sensations” (Ep. 71.27). The Stoic aim was not to reach a state of impassibility but instead to prevent one’s actions from being affected by pain; in Seneca’s words, “it is not pain that we praise, but him whom pain has not coerced” (Ep. 82.11).87 Stoicism, properly speaking then, does not teach that the wise man is immune to pain. Thus classicists and philosophers rightly note that when Stoics discuss bodily indifference to affliction, they typically employ the term lupē—grief—rather than algos—pain. When Epictetus asks, for instance, “Am I not free from pain?” (alupos; 3.22.48, LCL), and when he promises that those who follow him will “feel no pain” (lupēthēsesthe; 2.13.11, LCL), he apparently does not mean to imply that the sage is immune to all physical sensations, but rather that he is free from grief or distress.88 John Rist states the issue firmly: “one thing that the term ἀπάθεια, which denotes the aim of the Stoic sage, does not mean, is insensibility.”89 This corrective is important, but the distinction between apathēs—mastery of the passions—and anaisthēsia— insensitivity—is nevertheless easily blurred, even in antiquity. For instance, the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius stated that a person could only be harmed if he considered what happened to him to be harmful (Med. 7.14). His maxim “remove the assumption ‘I am harmed’ and the harm is removed,” might be easily applied to the context of persecution and, thus, be understood to suggest that a person could gain immunity to physical injury (Med 4.7). Although Rist asserts that “only a fool would maintain that any human being could be totally insensible to pleasures and pains,” there is compelling evidence that certain Stoics claimed—or were understood to have claimed—precisely that. Indeed, Rist acknowledges that Stoics were misunderstood

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or mischaracterized on this point: “The Stoics never proposed insensibility, or anything like it, as an ideal, but they were thought to have proposed it even in antiquity.”90 Seneca, for example, exhibits concern about misinterpretations of Stoic teachings on pain: “You must not think that our virtue ranges beyond nature; the wise man will tremble, will feel pain [dolebit], will turn pale, for all these are sensations of the body” (Ep. 71.29). Dispelling this kind of confusion may also undergird Seneca’s statement about torture: “What then?” is the query; “if the sword is directed toward the brave man’s neck, if he is pierced in this place and in that repeatedly, if he sees his internal organs in his lap, if he is attacked anew after a respite so that he feels greater torment, and if the blood flows again out of the gut where it had recently dried up, is he not afraid? Do you say that he has not felt pain [dolere]? Certainly he felt pain [dolet]; for no human virtue can strip off physical sensations. But he is not fearful; unconquered he observes his pain [dolores] from on high.” (Ep. 85.29)

The issue is even clearer when Calvenus Taurus claims that some Stoics equated freedom from the passions (apatheia) with insensitivity (analgēsia).91 Pliny the Younger tells the story of the suicide of Arria and the encouragement she gave to her husband, Caecina Paetus, to steel him for his own suicide: “Paetus, it does not hurt” (non dolet; Ep. 3.16). And Cicero recalls the rejection of Stoicism by Dionysius because he misunderstood Zeno’s teachings on pain: “We think it was shameful of Dionysius of Heraclea to withdraw from the Stoics because of eye pain [dolorem]. As if he had learned from Zeno that feeling pain [doleret] was not painful [dolere]! What he had heard, though he did not learn, was that it was not an evil, because not dishonorable, and that it was manly to endure it” (Fin. 5.31.94).92 Our ancient sources attest, therefore, that Stoic teachings on pain were occasionally misunderstood or mischaracterized. Certain Stoic authors, such as Seneca, devoted much time and energy to heading off such misperceptions.93 There is another Stoic text that illustrates this alternative understanding of pain.94 In 4 Maccabees, an important precursor to the Christian martyr texts, the Jewish Stoic author explains that “devout reason” masters the passions that stand in the way of manliness, namely anger, fear, and pain (ponos; 1:4). In his list of the passions reason conquers, this author replaces the typical Stoic term “grief ” (lupē) with “pain” (ponos). Here ponos must connote physical pain because the ensuing stories focus explicitly on the mastery of algos. The story of Eleazar, for instance, proves that reason “masters external pain” (kai tōn exōthen algēdonōn epikratei; 6:34).95 The author moreover asserts that the seven young boys were “contemptuous of the passions” and “complete masters of pain” (autokratores tōn algēdonōn; 8:28). Thus this author teaches exactly what Dionysius (mis)understood Zeno to have taught him: virtue can lead one to a state of impassibility.96 As David Seeley observes, “the author names several feelings in 1.3–4, but the way in which he

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shows the conflict being played out indicates that, for him, emotion gains expression via bodily pain and weakness.”97 In 4 Maccabees, then, we find yet another example of a Stoic author asserting the triumph of self-control over pain. Since 4 Maccabees was known and used by many Christian authors, it would not be surprising that they too might portray insensitivity to pain as evidence of Christian rationality and freedom from the passions.98 The early Christian martyr texts differ from one another in many respects. They converge, though, in depicting Christians being tortured but—with the exception of Perpetua and the sword—not being in pain. Within the discrete narrative worlds of these texts, if not in reality, martyrdom does not hurt. Thus the martyr is, after all, akin to the Stoic sage who “passes through suffering but is unmarked by the experience,” and who is “exempt from the experience of pain and suffering.”99 Rather than finding pain empowering, early Christian martyr texts reject the experience of pain as a locus of meaning altogether. In addition to providing a model for nobility in death and a philosophical argument for impassibility, Stoicism may also make virtue language, particularly the discourses of masculinity, available to Christianity. The Stoic self-control exhibited by the martyrs during torture is a powerful illustration of Christian masculinity. The martyrs did not become angry or fearful during their ordeals. Rather, they endured torture willingly, remaining loyal to their faith commitments, and thereby exhibiting ideal masculine virtues.100 The Stoic author of 4 Maccabees, for instance, assumes the correlation of endurance with masculinity.101 A brief review of pagan literature, moreover, reveals that endurance was often associated with masculinity and must have been understood—at least in certain circumstances—as active (i.e., manly) rather than passive (womanly). Aristotle, for example, lists hypomonē among the masculine virtues.102 Endurance was also an important virtue in Stoic ethics.103 Indeed, Epictetus taught that two vices were more appalling than all others, namely lack of endurance and lack of self-control.104 He also taught that the free and noble man would endure being beaten to death.105 As we have already seen, when Cicero wrote about Dionysius’s misunderstanding of Stoic teachings on pain, he states that it is “manly” to endure it.106 Zeno coupled lack of endurance with cowardice.107 And Seneca associates endurance of torture with bravery, honor, and courage.108 Within the context of Stoic philosophy, then, the martyrs’ endurance of torture should be understood as a subset of manliness. Endurance of torture and insensitivity to pain may work together in these texts to cast the Christian martyr in the likeness of the virtuous Stoic wise man.109 Masculinity, though, may too narrowly define the benefits of Christian appropriation of Stoic ideals and the social function of the discourses with which the martyr texts were engaging. Indeed, drawing on Stoic ideas provided Christians with respectability, “a precious social commodity,” as Denzey demonstrates.110 Aligning Christian discourse with Stoicism provided Christians with a particular

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claim to social status. As we have seen, Christians told stories about the deaths of their heroes in ways similar to the stories told by Stoics—the exitus illustrium virorum—and in both cases the accounts “marked their performers not just as brave or honorable”; they also functioned to raise “the social status of performers as participants in a higher, more rarefied discourse.”111 Christians, then, had a choice between breaking “further from mainstream society”—that is, being countercultural—or embarking “upon a public relations campaign in order to lessen the conceptual difference between themselves and others.”112 It is the latter option that the authors of Christian martyr texts appear to take: associating Christianity with Stoic ideals allowed Christians to make claims to rationality and to offer a narrative of respectability that, as we shall see, disrupted pagan characterizations of Christians. Careful scripting of virtue in death was particularly important for both Stoics and Christians since both were known for their willingness to die for their beliefs.113 Like the highly lauded Stoic martyrs who chose death over submission to tyranny, the Christian martyrs’ rebellion “against the extravagant displays of a ‘demonic’ empire” demonstrated their virtue.114 Yet as Denzey and others have noted, this particular model of virtue was, itself, “Roman, traditional, and conservative. Christians chose voluntary death to rebel against empire because such a death was already the way by which a good citizen registered nobility of spirit against the tyranny of the state.”115 Thus the literary depiction of the martyrs “gaining status and respectability through voluntary death gave second-century Christians muchneeded cultural capital.”116 What Denzey deftly points out is that Christian martyr texts represent a discursive project through which a marginalized group claimed coveted cultural ideals in an attempt to reframe or rescript a narrative and thereby “potentially garner the very social respectability that Christianity lacked.”117 Participating in discourses surrounding Stoic philosophy provided substantial benefits to Christian self-descriptions. Martyr texts describe Christian deaths in ways that resemble the noble deaths of pagan philosophers who willingly died in order to stay faithful to their beliefs, in order to avoid compromising their virtue. Christian resistance to tyranny—as the apologists point out—is one way that Christianity maps on to broader cultural ideals. At the same time, Stoicism offers Christians a well-trod path to claiming masculinity as a group characteristic, but even more important is the respectability that inheres in the conflation of Christianity and Stoicism. Perhaps most important for my present concerns is Stoicism’s claim—at least as (mis)understood by some in antiquity—that virtue can bring analgesia. The similarities between descriptions in Christian martyr texts and Stoic teachings on pain therefore suggest that the martyrs do not displace the “traditional Hellenic subject,” but instead become exemplars of it. Pain and suffering either do not exist for, or have no effect on, the Christian martyrs who have set their eyes on the immortal crown. By accepting the necessity of death and enduring torture

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without suffering, the martyr embodies the ideals—and lays claim to the cultural capital—of Stoicism. J U D IC IA L B O D I E S : D I S C OU R SE A N D C OU N T E R- D I S C O U R SE

When Christians wrote the stories of the martyrs in ways that resonated with Stoic philosophy, virtues, and narratives, they were participating in a discourse of identity construction. These stories placed their heroes and heroines within categories widely recognized, and claimed for them prized virtues. This discursive project was crucial for early Christianity because if pagans knew anything about Christians it concerned their approach to death.118 Perkins argues that pagans knew about Christian suffering because of Christian self-presentation: “Christian suffering was the message encoded in nearly all of the Christian representation of the period.”119 I have argued, however, that suffering is not a narrative focus of martyr texts. While pagan authors such as Pliny, Tacitus, Galen, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus are concerned with Christian deaths, Christian suffering, importantly, is not central to the points they make. Rather, these authors focus on two issues: first, Christians deserve the punishment they receive; and second, Christians have an irrational desire for death. Pagan narrative depictions of Christianity are of course as much a construction of Christian identity—one side of a discourse—as Christian martyr texts are. Both pagans and Christians, that is, contributed to competing discourses that sought to characterize Christians and pagans in particular ways, but neither of these discourses focus on suffering as a Christian ideal. Pliny’s testimony about Christians concerns judicial practice. Pliny identifies Christianity as a hetaeria, a “club,” which carried with it connotations of political disturbance (Ep. 10.34, 10.96). He also referred to Christianity as a “superstition” (10.96).120 The claim that Christianity was a superstitio marks it not only as untraditional but also, according to Stoic thinking, as unreasonable behavior; superstition entails excessive fear, a passion that should be rejected. For some Roman authors, moreover, it connoted false beliefs.121 Thus Pliny may be characterizing Christianity as politically threatening, irrational, and/or false. When discussing his program for prosecution, the governor of Bithynia asserts his belief that Christians who refuse to recant their faith should be punished, if for no other reason than their stubbornness: “For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their confession, resolute stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy [pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem] must be punished” (10.96). Pliny’s discussion of Christianity does not focus on pain and suffering in death but on his perceptions of Christianity’s relationship to the Empire. He casts Christian beliefs and attitudes as politically threatening to the well-being of Rome. At the same time, of course, this casts traditional Roman religious practice as “normal” and stabilizing. The

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characterization of one group, that is, informs the characterization of its narrative opposite.122 Tacitus describes in vivid detail the torture of the Christians arrested and killed by Nero after the fire in Rome. In an attempt to redirect blame for the conflagration, Nero rounded up the Christians living in Rome and “inflicted extraordinary punishment” (Ann. 15.44). The ruse was potentially effective because the Christians were “loathed for their disgraceful acts” (15.44). The “deadly superstition” and “evil” thing, Tacitus asserts, spread from Judea to Rome (15.44). Tacitus’s rhetoric is unrelentingly negative, describing Christians as a particularly abhorrent lot. They were convicted, we are told, “not so much because of the charge of arson but for hatred of the human race” (odio humani generis; 15.44). While Tacitus goes on to describe the horrific deaths of those convicted of arson—some were covered with animal skins and torn apart by dogs while others were fastened to crosses and burned as lamps to light up the night—his point is that Christian misanthropy deserves punishment. Indeed, as Christians were punished, they were a “laughing stock” (ludibria; 15.44). Ultimately, though, Nero’s excessive torture brought about public pity. Tacitus regrets the public’s emotional response because, he asserts, Christians were guilty and “merited this extreme punishment” (15.44). Their deaths were for the common good, but this point was in the end lost on the public because of the “barbarity of a single man” (15.44). Tacitus’s vitriol is aimed at Nero, but he does not spare Christians: Nero’s actions were excessive, but Christians were deserving. The historian’s concern centers on judicial process and its effect on the public, not on Christianity’s glorification of suffering. Both Pliny and Tacitus, as Dale Martin explains, cast Christianity in terms of “the particularly Roman fear of supersitito.”123 In their writings Christianity is scripted as a political and social threat to imperial life, and therefore punishment of Christians is not merely just but honorable. Galen bestows the title “philosophy” on Christianity, though he appears not to think it is a particularly successful one. In De pulsuum differentiis, Galen compares Jews and Christians to physicians whose conclusions “were faulty and imprecise” because their approaches were not “based on careful investigation and sound reasoning” (3.3); instead, they “talk of undemonstrated laws” (2.4).124 Christians, according to Galen, do not provide evidence for their beliefs but merely “appeal to commonly held opinion”125 and “accept everything on faith.”126 Because Galen identifies Christianity as a philosophical school, he can criticize it on philosophical grounds, as Robert Wilken has noted.127 Galen is not, however, wholly critical of Christianity: he praises Christians’ contempt of death and self-control in continence, asceticism, and pursuit of justice.128 Galen then is not interested in Christian suffering but in the philosophical grounding of their beliefs. His writings preserve mixed assessments of the success of the Christian philosophy: on the one hand, it appeals too strongly to faith rather than evidence, but on the other hand,

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its quest for justice is to be lauded.129 Unlike Pliny and Tacitus, Galen’s discussion of Christianity is not primarily political; rather, he criticizes the group for their lack of scientific grounding, for ignoring evidence and rationality. Despite their flawed motivations, however, their actions are virtuous. The testimonies of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus are especially intriguing because while both of these Stoic philosophers acknowledge that Christians sought death, they also assert that Christians sought it inappropriately. Marcus Aurelius may have Christians in mind several times in his Meditations: in 1.6 he credits Diognetus with teaching him “to be incredulous of miracle-workers and sorcerers who talk about spells and getting rid of demons”; in 3.16 he may be accusing Christians of atheism, lack of patriotism, and secretive actions; in 8.48 he may have Christian stubbornness—“unreasoning obstinacy”—in mind; and in 8.51 he is perhaps quoting Christians when he writes, “They kill us, they divide up our flesh, they drive us away with curses!” What follows, however, is not a discussion of human suffering but a discussion of Stoic mastery of the passions: “How does that keep your mind from remaining spotless, sound, self-controlled, just?”130 If the quote in 8.51 is intended to recall Christianity, the challenge that follows is a criticism of Christian action for not being sound, self-controlled, or just. That the emperor thinks Christians do not remain “self-controlled” in the face of death is clear in the only passage that explicitly invokes Christianity: Marcus Aurelius complains that Christians are obstinate and showy instead of rational. He writes, “What a soul that is which prepared, if now it must be released from the body, and ready either to die or be scattered or continue. But this preparedness must come from one’s own judgment not from mere obstinacy—as with the Christians—but with calculation and solemnity and, indeed also to persuade others, without fuss” (11.3).131 For the Stoic philosopher and emperor, that Christians seek death is not— indeed, cannot be—the problem. Stoic ideals not only allow for but valorize choosing death over compromising one’s virtue. It is the way Christians seek death, the motivation underlying their actions, that is unreasonable, according to Marcus Aurelius.132 The Meditations rejects Christianity as an example of Stoic mastery of the passions. Instead, it presents Christianity as the antithesis of Stoicism: obstinate, unconsidered, and ignoble. Likewise, Epictetus criticizes the Christian manner of seeking death, and he too implicitly denies that Christians act in accordance with Stoic ideals. In discussing the goal of living without fear, Epictetus asks, “If, then, a man wishes neither to die nor to live at all costs but only as it is granted to him, when he comes before [the tyrant], what prevents him from coming before him without fear?” (Disc. 4.7.5). Epictetus goes on to attribute such an attitude to Christians but rejects them as examples of virtuous behavior because, he asserts, they act out of habit rather than reason (4.7.6). Christianity offers nothing more than custom to guide behavior; it does “not offer a truly philosophical approach to life and death because their actions

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are not based on sound reasoning.”133 Epictetus—like the other pagan authors— discusses Christianity in relation to death, but his interest is not in Christian suffering. His comments focus on Christianity’s inferior philosophical teachings and their inability to teach virtue. The writings of Pliny, Tacitus, Galen, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus suggest that Christians were principally known for their stubbornness and irrationality, not for their attitudes toward suffering. Pagan characterizations of Christianity focus on its antisocial and anti-Roman nature and on its deficient philosophical teachings: Christianity is politically threatening and philosophically useless. These authors draw on discourses about religious piety, imperial allegiance, and philosophical ethics to construct Christianity in particular—that is, negative—ways. Perkins argues that pagan views of Christianity were informed by Christian selfrepresentation, but a more complex discursive relationship between Christian self-presentation and pagan views may better account for the evidence.134 Presumably pagans would have little interest in or access to Christian martyr texts; similarly we need not posit the literary dependence of Christian authors on pagan texts. Rather, both pagans and Christians used existing discourses to claim cultural capital for themselves and to deny that capital to their opponents.135 Pagan authors, as we have seen, often cast Christians as stubborn members of a politically subversive club who were justly—and legally—tortured and executed by Romans. These accounts describe the victory of Roman power over obstinate, lawless individuals. But the martyr texts offer a competing narrative. While Christians could not deny that they were on occasion arrested, tortured, and killed, they could redirect attention in a bid to change the way this history was understood. Indeed, that the martyr texts’ accounts of history ultimately triumphed over pagan accounts is evident in scholarly descriptions of the history of persecution rather than the history of prosecution.136 Pagan sources presenting judicial procedures involving Christians describe prosecution, while Christian sources—which are notoriously silent about charges leveled against martyrs—portray persecution.137 Modern scholarly discussions of “persecution” therefore orient history in favor of Christian rhetorical biases. The history of “persecution” takes sides in the discursive competition between pagan and Christian narrative goals. Ancient authors who discuss Christian torture and death at the hands of Roman authorities are involved equally in the construction of both Christianity and paganism, and it is important to recognize that this discursive competition is central to their narrative aims. If Christians were known for their approach to death, what better place could there be than the martyr texts for these authors to offer a defense of their heroes’ actions and their religion’s existence? Pagan discourse highlights Roman power, piety, rationality, and intellectualism while it simultaneously casts Christianity as opposing or lacking all of these virtues. The Christian discourse starred the impassible martyr and undermined pagan constructions of

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Christianity on two fronts: first, it problematized the judicial theory of violence; and second, it promised the imperviousness of the Christian body social. That is, while the pagan discourse centered on the lawful extermination of a political threat, the Christian counter-discourse demonstrated not only the falseness of the claim itself but also the impossibility of routing out Christianity from the Empire. Pain and Judicial Violence Christians participated in a propaganda campaign through their narrative descriptions of martyrdom. Christian martyr texts, as Jill Harries notes, were written to provoke hatred for the enemy as much as to urge sympathy for the protagonist.138 The goal of such accounts was not “dispassionate truth” but polemics regarding “the infliction of excessive pain” on innocent victims.139 While Christian interests in the narration of martyrdom are clear, pagans had just as much at stake in their own narratives of judicial action against Christians. In descriptions of trials, tortures, and executions, Roman authors inscribed imperial power and authority on to the broken bodies of Christian criminals. Both Christians and pagans, therefore, are involved in discursive practices that construct group identities. These texts should be understood as two sides of a coin, as discourse and counterdiscourse, as narrative and counternarrative. One version is not necessarily more truthful than the other; rather, they are both rhetorical constructions of self and other that draw on and function in the service of particular social and cultural ideologies. The amphitheater and its spectacles, for instance, symbolized Roman power. The justice sought in the amphitheater demonstrated to spectators the threat of lawless barbarian lands: the arena walls were, according to J. C. Edmondson, a “social barrier.” Spectators “were ipso facto defined as part of the Roman social order, while those who performed down in the arena were socially dead, or, at best, déclassé.”140 Thus social and political order were created and maintained through amphitheatrical events. Descriptions of Christians in the arena—whether from pagan or Christian sources—invoke (perhaps subversively) this discourse of power. But Roman power was on display not only in the amphitheater but also in the trial processes themselves, especially through the application of torture. According to ancient judicial theory, pain in torture accomplished two related goals: first, the application of pain elicited confession and guaranteed its truth; and second, public torture served as a deterrent to others. Christian martyr texts, however, contravene both of these assumptions about judicial torture. The application of pain was a standard part of interrogation procedures in the Roman legal system, particularly for lower classes.141 During the quaestio a person was subjected to “torture and bodily pain for the purpose of eliciting the truth.”142 As Peter Brown explains, torture was not an end but the means by which truth was revealed: “the dramatic dialogue between judge and culprit carried with it a sincerity that pain alone could guarantee.”143 According to this judicial logic, the body

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subjected to painful torture could do nothing but tell the truth and, moreover, “only torture guaranteed truth.”144 Thus confession elicited through torture was deemed true precisely because it was prompted by pain. Some scholars have applied this judicial theory to Christian martyr texts, positing that the martyrs’ endurance of torture and pain signaled the truth of their confession.145 Because the martyrs did not change their testimonies, because their confessions withstood the application of pain, their statements—according to the logic of the system—must be truthful. Martyr texts are unusual, however, because in these narratives Christians are not tortured to elicit their confessions; indeed, their confessions are freely and repeatedly given. At least according to the literary accounts of Christian trials, the martyrs’ actions stymied the conventional aims of the quaestio because the Christians voluntarily and eagerly offered their truthful confession. In the martyr texts torture is applied to compel Christians to recant their voluntary confessions.146 Through judicial torture, pagans urged Christians to renounce their faith and align themselves instead with socially sanctioned beliefs by performing sacrificial acts. The martyr texts complicate expectations of judicial torture even further by undermining altogether events that are integrally related in Roman jurisprudence: torture, confession, and the evaluation of truth.147 Christians confess before they are tortured—thus torture does not produce confession—and furthermore, torture does not generate pain. In the martyr texts Christian confession is produced neither by torture nor in pain. Christian testimony is given freely and narratively precedes torture. Perhaps the texts are implying that God—the only judge who matters—evaluates the martyr’s confession; if this is the case, then the authors are denying the power of the persecutor to judge Christian confession. The ineffectiveness of torture proves that God has judged the martyr’s confession to be truthful. When we do not recognize the ways martyr texts disrupt the causal connections among torture, pain, and truth, the impassibility of the martyr becomes problematic: if, that is, pain guarantees truth, what is the meaning of a confession of faith made apart from pain? Does the martyrs’ analgesia compromise the reliability of their statements? The martyr texts disallow this line of questioning because they have rejected the philosophical principle on which it relies. Claims to divine analgesia do not call into question the martyrs’ trustworthiness; rather, they offer proof of it. The rescripting of judicial power in martyr narratives, therefore, may be politically subversive and socially empowering. Romans, however, saw pain as useful not only for compelling testimony but also as a public deterrent, as Pseudo-Quintilian explains: “all punishment pertains less to the crime than to the warning.”148 Since the application of torture was typically a public event, its potential as a deterrent was obvious.149 Thus public trials and torture promote the ideals of the ruling party by displaying the consequences of opposing points of view.150 The judicial employment of pain, therefore, aims not merely to punish specific Christians for their

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obstinacy or other flagitia—though it does this—but also to dissuade others from pursuing similar paths and to promote a particular ideology of empire. In their assertions of Christian insensitivity to pain, however, the martyr texts undermine this judicial aim as well: Christian audiences, as we have seen, are taught that what appears to take place is not in fact what does takes place. Torture that is presumed to cause harm is in reality a healing salve. Descriptions of torture, as Perkins has noted, may communicate the exercise of power—“a mutilated body seems the consummate image to instantiate both the brutal possibilities inherent in power and the ‘fragility of human personhood’ and its vulnerability”—but the martyr texts reject the reality of their persecutors’ power.151 In response to this display of strength and its inherent threats to the martyr’s body, Christians insisted “on their bodies’ resilience through the doctrine of material resurrection.”152 As we have seen, beliefs in bodily resurrection developed in the second and third centuries, at least in part in response to threats of torture and execution. But material continuity is not the only way martyr texts challenge Rome’s power over the Christian body: they reject Rome’s ability to harm Christians in the first place. The Christian bodies of martyr texts do not represent “the fragility of human personhood and its vulnerability” but the opposite: they are bodies that cannot be harmed. If through public torture and pain persecutors aimed to persuade Christians to apostatize and simultaneously to deter other Christians from similarly witnessing to their faith, in the narrative world of the martyr texts they fail miserably on both counts. Not only are the martyrs unaffected by torture and pain; the texts consistently argue that the torture and execution of Christians brings others to the faith. The Martyrdom of Apollonius asserts that “as many of the obedient ones as the unjust kill without trial, so much more will their numbers multiply through God” (24). Similarly, Tertullian famously claims that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”153 The general principle that martyrdom is a motivation for rather than a deterrent to other Christians is illustrated by Agathonike, who is spurred to confess after watching Carpus and Papylus die (Mart. Carp. A42). Similarly, in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons Vettius Epagathus—who had not been arrested with the other Christians—spoke out in response to the cruel treatment of the confessors and was executed (1.9–10). Christian discursive practices, therefore, combat both judicial aims of the quaestio: they challenge Rome’s ability to torture Christian bodies and inflict pain, and they present martyrdom as motivating—not deterring—other Christians. By undermining the judicial theory of pain, martyr texts destabilize the entire system that supports social, political, and religious life in imperial Rome, since judicial torture is concerned with the activation of power. As Foucault has argued, public executions are not primarily about establishing justice but about asserting power: “in this liturgy of punishment, there must be an emphatic affirmation of power and of its intrinsic superiority. And this superiority is not simply that

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of right, but that of the physical strength of the sovereign beating down upon the body of his adversary and mastering it.”154 We misread the martyr texts, however, if we understand the contestation of power to be solely between the pagan ruler and the Christian martyr. The contest—the one that makes understandable the claims to anesthesia—is equally between God and Satan. The Christian body cannot be displayed as “marked, beaten, broken” because to do so would be to affirm the power of Satan. In the unharmed bodies of the martyrs, the power of Rome—animated by Satan—is forcefully rejected.155 And thus it is here that the subversive power of Christian counter-discourse is fully revealed: whereas the body of the condemned is a site for the inscription of dominant power—in Foucault’s terms, “the anchoring point for a manifestation of power”—the martyrs’ bodies testify in surprising ways.156 Their insensitivity reflects the victory of Christian theological interests over Roman ideological ones. In the condemned and tortured but impassible bodies of the martyrs, God’s victory and sovereignty are manifest. Rival discourses constructing the Christian body on trial—its guilt and its fragility—may be traced through pagan and Christian sources. The pagan discourse of power and vulnerability focuses on the legal and justified application of pain to the Christian body in punishment of a crime and as a deterrent to other Christians.157 By shifting the discourse from prosecution to persecution, Christian authors invert the accusations. The Christian counternarrative focuses on the unjustified, cruel, and inhumane torture of innocent individuals. The most dramatic challenge to the pagan discourse, however, is the claim of Christian bodily immunity to judicial torture: Christian innocence is demonstrated by the martyrs’ divinely administered analgesia. Power Discourses and the Body Social If public torture and pain aim at establishing power, then the martyrs’ insensitivity challenges Rome’s authority over them. But it does more than that. The individual body reflects social relationships, as Mary Douglas has argued: “the human body is never seen as a body without at the same time being treated as an image of society.”158 While the individual is not wholly eclipsed by the social body, it does symbolize—is a microcosm of—social concerns and social relationships. Thus the martyr’s body is not merely the locus of individual resistance, where a single person’s agency and autonomy are attacked and defended. It is also a representation of the Christian social body. The martyrs’ bodies at once represent their own strength and faithfulness as well as that of Christianity; their bodies illustrate God’s love for the community; they mark critical social boundaries. Since the individual body is, as Willie Smyth argues, a “salient symbol for the social and political order”—or, in the case of Roman prosecution of Christians, for social and political disorder—the power displayed in Roman torture was not

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simply the power of a Roman official over an individual unruly Christian.159 Rather, it was representative of the destruction of the Christian social body, which was constructed by Romans as an unlawful, misanthropic movement.160 Moreover, while the martyr texts undoubtedly appropriate images of judicial torture from public trials and spectacles—creating verisimilitude even if the texts are themselves not historically reliable—the bodily torture they depict is equally symbolic of the ostracism and persecution Christians experienced and feared. Thus the martyr texts are not merely stories about the injuring and killing of Christians but also reports of the attempt—unsuccessful though it may be—of the unmaking of the Christian social body.161 The threat, that is, is greater than the sum of martyrs: the very existence of Christianity is at stake in narratives of persecution. The dissolution of the Christian body politic is not accomplished primarily through execution of individuals but symbolically and discursively through the attempts to force the retraction of confessions of faith. The social body that is constructed discursively, that is, is also annihilated discursively. In Christian martyr texts the confession created a gulf between the martyr and society at large: community was not possible so long as “Christianus sum” hung in the air in opposition to “Romanus sum.”162 Rather than using the quaestio primarily to punish this confession, however, Romans are depicted in the texts as urging recantation. Roman trials attempted, as Lucy Grig has argued, “to force the accused to obliterate the crime,” and thereby to return Christians to “normal Roman society.”163 Reintegrating into society—bridging the chasm of confession—however, severs another relationship: that of the martyr to Christianity. Thus in seeking to break the Christian martyr’s body—to force apostasy—the system simultaneously seeks to break the Christian body social. The failure of Rome to accomplish its goal is clear when the texts place the martyrs’ bodies before the audience’s gaze. Tortured bodies reveal much about a person’s social status: bodily scars left by whips and rods are “markings of a servile body, insignia of humiliation and submission.”164 While the apostle Paul turns this cultural expectation on its head—presenting “his abject body as evidence of his authority”— the martyr texts take a different tack.165 By erasing the marks of persecution from the bodies of the martyrs altogether, by wholly rejecting the persecutor’s power to harm Christian bodies, these texts reject the power of Rome. As it does not succeed in the one case, so it cannot succeed in the other: the persecutors are impotent to harm the martyrs’ bodies individually, and so their actions against Christianity writ large are doomed to fail. Since claims to individual impassibility also reflect claims about the invulnerability of the group, by shoring up the boundaries of the martyrs’ bodies— through the various narrative techniques of insensitivity—the texts claim impenetrability for Christianity as a whole. Just as Romans cannot really harm Perpetua or Pionius or Polycarp, neither can the Romans harm the church; God protects and fights in, with, and for both.

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This chapter has offered snapshots of competing discourses by means of which Christianity aimed to change the story—if not for Romans then for themselves— about Christian death from one that emphasized criminality, irrationality, stubbornness, and subjection to one that aligned Christian faith with piety, self-control, and glorification. At the center of all these Christian counter-discourses is the impassible martyr, a figure that has strong resonances with both Christian and nonChristian discourses. The discursive project Christians engaged in was crucial for the community because through their counternarratives authors boosted the morale of their audiences. Roman judicial processes illustrate the social control exercised by the dominant power, but discourses and ideologies rarely exist in isolation from competing discourses.166 We find then that Christians rejected Roman claims to power over martyrs’ bodies. But the martyr texts go further by inscribing their own ideologies on the body, which also promote certain behaviors. That is, while Roman judicial intentions aim at deterring comparable action, Christian martyrological intentions aim at replicating it. By “appropriating and mutating existing” ideologies and discourses and “by using the justifications and legitimations of existing ideologies of power as leverage for their own views,” Christians fought against the dominant discourse that depicted Christianity as susceptible to Roman judicial torture and replaced it with an equally powerful discourse that illustrated Christian ideologies and scripted Christians’ behaviors.167

Conclusion If we accept death with a calm and steadfast mind and we realize that it is not an evil and therefore not even an injury, we will much more easily endure other things—losses and insults, humiliations, exiles, bereavements, and separations. —seneca, const. 8.3

The judge, sitting with head thrown back, asked: “What is he called?” and they stated that he was called Hippolytus. “Hippolytus let him be, then. Let him get a team frightened and agitated and be torn to death by wild horses.”. . . Off go the horses headlong, rushing about blindly wherever the din and their quivering nerves and frantic excitement drive them, spurred by their wild spirit, carried on by their dash, impelled by the noise, and in their swift career unconscious of the burden that goes with them. . . . The body is shattered, the thorny shrubs which bristle on the ground cut and tear it to little bits. Some of it hangs from the top of rocks, some sticks to bushes, with some the branches are reddened, with some the earth is wet. (Peri. 11.85–122; LCL)

Thus Prudentius, sometime in the late fourth century, relates the death of Hippolytus. This unfortunately named Christian is forced to participate in a “fatal charade” in cruel imitation of his pagan namesake.1 The similarities between Seneca’s account of the pagan Hippolytus—with which chapter 1 began—and Prudentius’s description of the Christian Hippolytus are striking though unsurprising since the death of the former is explicitly invoked as the model for the death of the latter.2 As we have seen, in many ways post-Augustan literature can serve as a model for interpreting Christian martyr texts. In its indifference to pain and suffering it helps us recognize that narratives of bodily dismemberment are not necessarily valorizations of pain. Prudentius, like Seneca, gives no attention to Hippolytus’s somatic experience. As the horses drag him, the Christian merely prays, “Let these snatch away my limbs, but Christ, my soul” (11.110). The audience is not asked to imagine the painful experience of being dragged to death by horses that “destroy fences and 149

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break through every obstacle” and that drag Hippolytus’s body “through woods and tumbling down rocks,” “downward and over rough ground” (11.115–20). Also like Seneca, Prudentius offers graphic and gruesome descriptions—by means of ekphrasis—of the dissolution of Hippolytus’s body. Prudentius describes the picture above the martyr’s tomb as portraying Hippolytus’s “bloody limbs as he was being dragged along” (11.125–26). In the painting the Christian poet testifies to seeing “the points of rocks dripping” and “dark red marks deposited on the thornbushes where a hand practiced in portraying green thornbushes had copied the blood-red in red-lead” (11.128–30). The painting depicts as well the aftermath of Hippolytus’s death, as those who loved him grieve while recovering his body. Prudentius painstakingly describes the effort to retrieve the Christian Hippolytus’s body parts, strewn hither and yon: One could see the parts torn asunder and lying scattered in disorder up and down at random. The artist had painted too his loving people walking after him in tears wherever the inconstant track showed his zig-zag course. Stunned with grief, they were searching with their eyes as they went, and gathering the mangled flesh in their bosoms. One clasps the snowy head, cherishing the venerable white hair on his loving breast, while another picks up the shoulders, the severed hands, arms, elbows, knees, bare fragments of legs. (11.131–40; LCL)

To this point Prudentius may seem to be following Seneca’s script carefully. But the interests of the martyr texts are not identical to those of non-Christian postAugustan literature, a point that becomes clear when the two authors describe the corpses of their respective Hippolytuses. Seneca’s Hippolytus is never fully recovered: the servants’ toil has not yet “succeeded in completing the body” (Phaedr. 1114). Seneca’s emphasis on bodily dissolution, however, does not end with the narration of Hippolytus’s death. It recurs throughout the play as characters recall the spectacle: when looking at his corpse, both Phaedra and Theseus must ask if they are looking at Hippolytus, so lost are any markers of his identity (1168–73, 1244–49).3 Seneca pushes the point to the edge as he narrates Theseus’s grief: “What is this formless and repulsive thing, with multiple wounds having been torn off from every quarter? What part of you it is, I am uncertain, but it is a part of you: here, place it here, not in its place, but in an empty place” (1262–68). This scene highlights the irrecoverable and unrecognizable nature of Hippolytus’s body. The fragmentation is so complete that even partial reconstruction is hopeless and thus correct positioning of parts retrieved is a futile effort. Theseus exclaims, “How great the part is yet absent for our tears!” (1261). Seneca’s story is one of unrelenting loss. The allusions to Seneca’s account highlight the fundamental differences between pagan and Christian textual bodies, distinctions that emerge when Prudentius focuses his audience’s attention on the concluding scene of the martyrium’s painting.

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As we envision the Christian funereal band collecting the martyr’s remains, we see perhaps for the first time the crucial difference between the Hippolytuses: With their garments also they wipe dry the soaking sand, so that no drop shall remain to dye the dust; and wherever blood adheres to the spikes on which its warm spray fell, they press a sponge on it and carry it all away. Now the thick wood held no longer any part of the sacred body, nor cheated it of a full burial. The parts were reviewed and found to make the number belonging to the unhurt [integri] body; the pathless ground being cleared, and the boughs and rocks wiped dry, had nothing of the whole man still to give up. (11.141–49; LCL)

The Christian Hippolytus does not remain fragmented; he is not the ancient Humpty Dumpty whose body is not put together again. Thus it is here that Prudentius’s careful allusions to Seneca’s work pay off. These Hippolytuses are not the same. Commonality of name and correspondence of death highlight rather than erase the fundamental differences in their identities: the martyr’s body is protected by God and is not susceptible to “scattering, rot,” or “putrefaction.”4 Not only are the Christian Hippolytus’s limbs, flesh, and skin reassembled; even the last drops of his blood are recovered. In striking contrast to his tragic counterpart, the Christian martyr’s body is miraculously restored such that visual inspection confirms its wholeness: we are asked to gaze on his dead but “unhurt” body. Thus Prudentius’s ekphrasis does not stop at the moment of dissolution but instead carries the audience well beyond Hippolytus’s death to the full restoration of his glorified body. Earlier martyr texts, I have argued, are engaged in a similar process: they paint a picture of the martyr’s torture and death but then direct the audience to an image of a renewed, miraculously whole, triumphant body. In Divine Deliverance I have argued that a cluster of narrative techniques contributes to a particular early Christian discourse about pain and martyrdom. Rather than valorizing pain and suffering, early martyr texts reject it as a locus of meaning for Christian martyrdom. But some important questions remain. Who is served by texts that depict mutilated and tortured bodies as neither harmed nor in pain, by texts that in fact portray dead Christians as triumphant? How do the unresolved tensions in these texts affect their audiences, ancient and modern? When we look at these martyr texts in their larger context, what meanings and functions do they reveal? W HO SE I N T E R E S T S A R E SE RV E D B Y NA R R AT I V E PA I N L E S SN E S S ?

The stories of brave Christians who endured painless torture in witness to their faith served fairly obvious needs when communities feared persecution. On the one hand, these narratives promised divine presence in and with the faithful: God

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protected the martyrs from the pain their persecutors sought to inflict. These stories therefore provided answers to pressing questions about theodicy: where is God when Christians are arrested, tortured, and killed? On the other hand, martyr stories also teach, at least implicitly, that those who apostatize will bear the full brunt of torture. Concerns about apostasy are broad and do not entail simply the abandonment of Christianity for paganism but, as Tertullian implies, a concern about shifting allegiances to forms of Christianity that (purportedly) devalue martyrdom. In Scorpiace, for instance, Tertullian reflects on the relationship between persecution and defection to Gnosticism: “When, therefore, faith is tossed and the Church is burning like the bush, then the Gnostics break forth, then the Valentinians creep forth, then all the opponents of martyrdom boil over, being themselves hot to strike, to transfix, to destroy” (1.5). Discourses of painlessness, then, are not merely useful in interreligious discourses but also serve heresiological interests.5 Éric Rebillard’s work on the multiplicity of Christian identities raises an important issue: discourses about martyrdom are not only comfort literature but may also be attempts at galvanizing communal boundaries when Christian “groupness” was not necessarily salient.6 Recent work in affect theory suggests another possible use of martyr texts. Amy Cottrill argues that violent texts engage audience’s fears of physical vulnerability and create a desire for protection.7 The textual violence in these texts, therefore, may have political significance beyond the rejection of “bad” rulers like Eglon, Sisera, or indeed Roman procurators: it demonstrates the ways in which the individual or community is vulnerable to existing power structures and resolves that vulnerability by presenting a particular political/religious figure as one who restores order and security. In the case of Judges, with which Cottrill is working, the violence of the Ehud and Jael narratives promotes the Deuteronomist’s political interests in the monarchy. In the Christian martyr texts, the textual violence promotes communal solidarity and presents an unsubtle threat to apostasy. While the martyr texts narrate what God does for those who remain faithful, they simultaneously narrate the consequences of the absence of that protection. Christian martyr texts, however, served communities aside from those under the immediate threat of persecution, as is evident by their continued use long after the age of persecution had come to an end. Perhaps then there is yet another way of understanding the relationship between the martyr and the audience: might the martyrs’ bodies continue to be good “to think with”? Returning to post-Augustan literature as a starting place for reflection, Glenn Most suggests that in Seneca and Lucan, “the fictional bodies are gashed . . . [but] the persons whose sufferings seem to concern these authors most are not the victims, but ourselves.”8 Similarly, Catharine Edwards notes that in Seneca’s letters “we are brought to search for meaning . . . in the suffering body of the reader.”9 For Seneca, “the suffering body is now made to become an aid to self-knowledge, a route to philosophical progress.”10

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Descriptions of bodily dissolution may be as much about the readers’ bodies and corporeal experiences as they are about those of the narrative characters. An interpretation of the impassible martyr indeed benefits from—though is not exhausted by—an analysis of its relevance to “the suffering body” of the listener. Once we remember that pain was an unavoidable part of ancient life, and once we take seriously the unreliability of pain management in the ancient world, meaning comes to be made in the juxtaposition of the non-suffering martyr with the suffering audience.11 In this case the listeners themselves are in pain—perhaps simply by virtue of being alive in the ancient world, but perhaps also in anticipation of persecution—and the texts are offering faith as an analgesic. The authors describe an existence that is fundamentally different from the one in which the listeners are currently situated: the world created by the texts is one in which pain no longer exists.12 Eschatological expectations, as we have seen, affect the ways martyr acts envision Christian bodies: the martyrs lay claim proleptically to the promises of resurrected and glorified bodies. The listening audience, moreover, is given fellowship with the martyrs; they are invited to join in the eschatological moment—to embrace the anesthesia that faith, and nothing else in the ancient world, can offer—to participate in a world in which there is no death, no mourning, no crying, and no pain. The transmission of eschatological glory to those left behind is apparent in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons. The martyrs, we are told, received life through their deaths, “and this they shared with their neighbor” (2.7). The martyrs loved peace, and it was peace that they left behind for the community, “entrusted to us forever” (2.7). Their martyrdom left “no distress [ponos] for their mother, no discord or combat for their brothers, but rather joy, peace, concord, and love” (2.7). Here too the promises of the New Jerusalem are gifted to the Christians remaining, a gift of charity from the martyrs who have gone off “completely victorious to God” (2.7). Ancient medicine could not reliably, effectively, and safely alleviate pain. Ancient philosophies such as Stoicism offered ways of intellectually disregarding pain but not of alleviating it.13 But Christian faith, as depicted in the martyr texts, offers a remedy that is bold, promising, and otherwise unavailable: freedom from pain. Perhaps we might understand not just martyrs but Christians more broadly as finding within the martyr texts a promise of divine analgesia. C A N M A RT Y R T E X T S D O T H I S ?

If one question this study raises is that of interest—what and who is served by the descriptions of violence in martyr texts and the authors’ particular resolutions to it—another question revolves around the textual tensions inherent in the martyr texts. When my colleague asked whether the texts can actually do what they seem to want to do, my initial response was to show that the language of analgesia and

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other assertions and depictions of painlessness in martyrdom were demonstrably present in a large number of the earliest martyr texts. But that left me to struggle with the possibility that the texts undermine their argument when they so carefully catalogue the torture applied to Christian bodies. Is it really possible for a text simultaneously to detail dissolution and assert impassibility? This book is the result of my struggle with that question. Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that the careful description of injury is a necessary component to the subsequent rejection of pain. Edwards’s description of Seneca’s project is analogous in this vein: according to Seneca, in order to “rise above physical distress,” we must face suffering head on. We must “know death for what it is, in order to be able to view it with contempt.”14 To deny pain, in other words, requires that we first name it. But rejecting the existence of pain is almost impossible when we approach the martyr texts through the lens of history. When we share somatic experiences with the martyrs, the narrative descriptions of impassibility—or even impassivity—strike us as absurd fantasy. Like the Bollandists who eschewed the miraculous, our encounters with divine analgesia in martyr texts may be an unwelcome intrusion into the historical world. Scholars have examined the ideological interests of martyr texts, but these interests typically remain within the realm of historical verisimilitude: the martyr texts construct Christian communal identity by narrating historylike events. But what have perhaps been underappreciated are the deeply theological—and sometimes ahistorical—claims within these texts. We have emphasized the “martyr as model” but have thereby displaced “God as actor.” Foregrounding the discourse of painlessness brings God back into the action as the central narrative figure, without whom the story would be dramatically different and excruciatingly painful. If, however, we read the martyr texts as miracle stories, our focus on the merciful and miraculous acts of God in torture and death shifts the horizon of expectation. The audience can now make sense of the counterintuitive claims to Christian insensitivity: because God has intervened, bodies that should be in pain are not in pain. The stories of divine protection we have surveyed in this book—of the Smyrnaean martyrs for whom the fire was cooled, and of Blandina for whom torture brought anesthesia, and of Pionius whose body was perfectly preserved through the fire— sit alongside the exorcisms and healings performed by Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. In every case the miracle attests to God’s presence among the faithful and divine concern for physical life. In attempting to answer the question posed by my colleague, therefore, I argue that the description of torture is necessary and that some of the tension dissipates if the texts are read as theological assertions of God’s justice, mercy, and concern for corporeal existence. But there is yet another piece of the puzzle to examine. In earlier chapters I described the ways texts employ “ostensibly empathic narrative techniques” to engage the audience emotionally in an effort to guide them through

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difficult terrain, arriving at a particular understanding about Christian martyrdom and the miraculous interventions that protect martyrs’ bodies from the experience of pain.15 My focus has been on the listener who is sympathetic to and accepting of the text’s goals. But if the texts are clear about the martyrs’ experiences, why don’t we see that more easily? Why is the tension between what we expect and what we read so great that modern readers often do not overcome it? To explain why so many contemporary readers understand the martyr texts differently from the way they seem to have been interpreted in antiquity, I draw on Suzanne Keen’s work on narrative empathy. First, readers are not identical. Openness to empathic readings depends on timing and context, as well as on individual readers’ openness to emotional experiences with narratives, which can be affected by “inattention, indifference, or personal distress.”16 Second, texts do not retain the same ability to invoke empathy across time. Keen observes that some texts “may only activate the empathy of their first, immediate audience, while others must survive to reach a later generation of readers in order to garner an emotionally resonant reading.”17 Third—and perhaps most important for the present discussion—is a phenomenon Keen labels “empathic inaccuracy,” which is “a strong conviction of empathy that incorrectly identifies the feeling of a literary persona.”18 In the case of empathic inaccuracy, there is discord between “an author’s intention and a reader’s experience of narrative empathy,” which may “contribute to a reader’s outraged sense that the author’s perspective is simply wrong.”19 For all of the reasons I mention above, readers expect to empathize with the martyrs’ pain. But in my reading, their empathy is at cross-purposes with the texts’ claims. This leads to a resistant interpretation by which readers assert a more plausible scenario—that martyrdom hurts—despite the texts’ claims to the contrary. Keen gives an example that illuminates the ways empathic inaccuracy can affect interpretation, and her discussion may shed light on the ways modern interpretations of martyr texts might derive from empathic inaccuracy. The scene she describes comes from Flora Nwapa’s 1966 novel Efuru, which she argues is “almost certain to create confusion through the empathic inaccuracy of Western readers.”20 The scene describes female genital cutting and focuses the reader’s attention on the pain of the surgery: “Efuru screamed and screamed”; “Efuru’s husband was in the room. He felt all the pain.” Keen observes that empathetic readers who have imagined Efuru’s pain during surgery find it difficult to comprehend the woman’s descriptions of happiness immediately thereafter. She observes that readers “sometimes react with outrage at what they regard as an unjustifiable or implausible turn of events in the emotion cues offered by the novel.” In an attempt to resolve this emotional tension, some readers suggest that Efuru is speaking ironically when she describes the benefits of the surgery.21 But the novel itself, Keen argues, does not present Efuru’s evaluation of her condition in ironic terms. Nwapa, she says, is interested in economic independence for women, a state achieved by Efuru

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through female circumcision. While the novel urges readers to feel empathy for Efuru’s attainment of independence by means of the surgery, many Western readers empathize inaccurately because “their own cultural context condemns female genital cutting.”22 In this example, Keen demonstrates the ways that readers’ cultural expectations may resist or “defy the implicit intentions” of the text.23 At other times a text’s empathic cue may be wholly incomprehensible because it conflicts with “readers’ convictions about the universality of human nature.”24 Readers or audiences have difficulty empathizing with the impossible. Keen’s insights suggest that if modern readers find claims to the martyrs’ impassibility too discordant with their own empathic experiences with the narrative, they may discard the texts’ claims because they see the empathic cues as historically, culturally, theologically, or generically problematic. When this obtains, readers make meaning of texts that are otherwise—to them—meaningless. Thus an answer to my colleague’s query about the martyr texts’ ability to do what they seem to want to do may not be an answer at all, but another question: Who is reading? Can martyr texts graphically depict the dissolution of the Christian body while simultaneously claiming—without irony—that the martyrs experienced no pain? I think so, at least for some readers in some times and places. But because meaning is always made between a text and its recipient, a text can mean differently. Some readers may find the tension between description and assertion too great and thus reject (consciously or not) the texts’ claims. Other readers may not find the texts’ description and claims discordant and thus accept the empathic cues within the narratives. My interests in this book have been with observing the narrative tools and techniques that privilege a particular ideology of martyrdom. For all of the unique aspects of the texts, they converge in their insistence on the painlessness of martyrdom. But authors cannot control readers’ interpretations, and so readers may reject claims that seem improbable or impossible. I am less interested in arguing against particular interpretations of martyr texts and more interested in examining where readers find tensions in texts, why those tensions exist, and how those tensions are resolved. E A R LY C H R I S T IA N M A RT Y R T E X T S I N C O N T E X T

Given the developing interest in the suffering body across the Roman world in the second century CE, it is not surprising that Christian texts demonstrate interest in and concerns about the body. Although I have argued that the martyr texts illustrate such concerns by rejecting the susceptibility of the Christian body to suffering, their authors still participate in the larger cultural discourse of the suffering body. What this unexpected use of the discourse of the “suffering self ” may suggest is that Christian texts offer a promise of relief to the human condition: faithfulness provides relief from the life of pain. Christian Stoicism and developing

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doctrines about the resurrection may intersect with discourses about the suffering body, in answer to the problem of human suffering. Interpretations of martyr texts that privilege the body in pain credit the Christian tendency to embrace bodily suffering as a contributing factor in the triumph of the new movement. It was the Christian sufferer, Judith Perkins argues, that “was essential for the growth of Christianity as an institution.”25 Her argument about the centrality of the discourse of suffering in this period is, I think, right. Not only was the ancient world a world full of pain; it was by the second century CE becoming a world where the pain and suffering of individuals was seen.26 The reality of life came to be culturally acknowledged in a new discourse, which allowed people to locate themselves discursively within this new category of “sufferer.” I also agree with Perkins that Christians exploited this discourse to good effect. If, however, the martyr texts reject pain as an experience of the martyrs, how does impassibility relate to this larger cultural interest in the self as sufferer? My reading of the early Christian martyr texts suggests that Christians did indeed find the suffering self a useful discourse by which to construct their identities, distinguish their teachings, refute antagonistic claims, and retain believers. In these texts, however, suffering is not embraced as an identity but presented as a problem to be solved. Pain is the experience of those who live apart from God. At least in the moments at issue in martyr texts—trial, torture, and death—the Christian self is decidedly not a sufferer. God’s intervention miraculously transforms the physical experience. The torture that should hurt instead heals; the body that should be fragmented is instead made whole. In a world of sufferers, Christian martyrs serve as promises of another world where there is—existentially and not merely metaphorically—no pain.

notes

P R E FAC E

1. L. Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 10. I N T R O D U C T IO N

1. http://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2013/07/17/michael-landy-saints-alive-a-first-handexperience-of-the-national-gallery-exhibition/ 2. See www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/michael-landy-saints-alive (31 July 2013); Colin Wiggins and Richard Cork, Michael Landy: Saints Alive (National Gallery London) (London: National Gallery London, 2013). 3. Joseph Flaherty, “This Steampunk Exhibit Invites You to Torture Famous Saints,” Wired, 10 July 2013, www.wired.com/2013/07/torture-saints-at-interactive-exhibit/ 4. Landy makes this statement in an advertisement for the exhibit in Mexico City: https://youtu.be/oLlEXJSRFi4 5. www.wired.com/2013/07/torture-saints-at-interactive-exhibit/ 6. I have argued elsewhere that the martyrs’ actions might be usefully interpreted as destructive—though not self-destructive. Their single-mindedness for attaining martyrdom fractures the social fabric built on families. See L. Stephanie Cobb, “Women’s Leadership in the Early Church: Possibilities and Pushbacks,” in Frontiers in Spiritual Leadership: Discovering the Better Angels of Our Nature, ed. Scott Y. Allison, Craig T. Kocher, and George R. Goethals. Jepson Studies in Leadership (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 17–33. 7. This is not to say that ancient culture was oral rather than literary. As Carol Harrison notes, antiquity was “a culture of the book . . . but it depended on educated, literate, articulate 159

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individuals to continue and communicate it to an illiterate majority” (The Art of Listening in the Early Church [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013], 38). On literacy, see William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); and Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 1–41. 8. Darryl Tippens, “Reading at Cockcrow: Oral Reception and Ritual Experience in Mark’s Passion Narrative,” Essays in Literature 20 (1993): 146. 9. Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 39. 10. Jane P. Tompkins, “The Reader in History: The Changing Shape of Literary Response,” in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 206. Tippens makes a similar case for understanding the Gospel of Mark: “Mark’s Gospel is a narrative of action designed, like most texts from the ancient world, to elicit action in the auditor” (“Reading at Cockcrow,” 147). See also M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 20–21; and Robert M. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1996), 23, 50. 11. All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. 12. Werner H. Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), xvi. 13. See Harrison, Art of Listening, 1; Gamble, Books and Readers, 30, 204; and David Rhoads, “Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Second Testament Studies—Part I,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 36 (2006): 118–33. 14. Augustine, Serm. 313A.3. Discussed in Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 86. 15. Augustine, Serm. 313A.3. Discussed in Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 87. 16. Michael Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 145. 17. Peter Brown argues that martyr texts “brought the past into the present. . . . When the passio was read, the saint was ‘really’ there: a sweet scent filled the basilica, the blind, the crippled, and the possessed began to shout that they now felt his power in healing” (The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981], 82). Roberts makes a similar point: “Observers before a picture of the suffering saint feel themselves observers of the event itself.” This is true not only for the visual image, but also for the reception of the narrative: “the narration of the martyrdom and the picture of the same event are essentially equivalent” (Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs, 138–39). 18. Stephen D. Moore, Literary Criticism and the Gospels: The Theoretical Challenge (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 95. See also Lou H. Silberman, “ ‘Habent Sua Fata Libelli’: The Role of Wandering Themes in Some Hellenistic Jewish and Rabbinic Literature,” in The Relationships among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. William O. Walker Jr. (San Antonio, Tex.: Trinity University Press, 1978), 215.

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19. Tippens rightly reminds us that “If we forget the recipient, we lose one of the important coordinates by which we map meaning” (“Reading at Cockcrow,” 147). 20. Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200–400 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 12–13. Both Mart. Pol. and the Pass. Perp. seem to imagine recitation in communal gatherings. The Concilium Hipponense of 393 explicitly affirms the reading of martyr acts in church services. See discussion in Valeriy A. Alikin, The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 171–72. 21. Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L. Rapson, Emotional Contagion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 165–72. See also Elaine Hatfield, Megan Carpenter, and Richard L. Rapson, “Emotional Contagion as a Precursor to Collective Emotions,” in Collective Emotions: Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Sociology, ed. Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 108– 22. On the role of group focus on a particular object as required for emotional contagion, see J. David Knottnerus, “Religion, Ritual, and Collective Emotion,” in Collective Emotions: Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Sociology ed. Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 315–16. 22. Hatfield et al., Emotional Contagion, 169. 23. Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995), 213, 217. 24. Randall Collins, “Interactional Ritual Chains and Collective Effervescence,” in Collective Emotions: Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Sociology ed. Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 299. Knottnerus suggests that the arena games are examples of highly focused group attention that could lead to emotional effervescence (Knottnerus, “Religion, Ritual, and Collective Emotion,” 316). Theories of emotional contagion or collective effervescence do not, however, require that all individuals in a group experience emotions at the same level. See James M. Casper, “Emotions, Sociology, and Protest,” in Collective Emotions: Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Sociology, ed. Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 348. 25. Gamble surmises that Christian readers were assigned particular texts because “public reading would have required study of the texts in advance.” He continues, “that different readers should have different books may indicate that each reader was practiced only in certain texts” (Books and Readers, 147). “Practice” is likely related not merely to the ability to read the texts orally but to deliver them appropriately, that is, according to ancient standards and expectations. Douglas Burton-Christie discusses the difference between reading texts and an oral experience of them in “Listening, Reading, Praying: Orality, Literacy and Early Christian Monastic Spirituality,” Anglican Theological Review 83 (2001): 197–221. 26. Cicero, De Or. 2.189–94; Quintilian, Decl. 6.2.26–36. 27. Discussed in Harrison, Art of Listening, 44. 28. Harrison, Art of Listening, 42. 29. Aristotle, De an. II.8; Probl. 31–35; Philo, Abr. 149–50; Augustine, Conf. II.14.147. Philo devalues hearing to sight by likening the former to woman’s passivity and the latter to masculine activity, but both are, nonetheless, associated with philosophy and “hold the leading place” over “the three most animal and servile” sensations: taste, smell, and touch.

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That hearing was a passive sense—dependent on a prior external act—is almost universal in ancient theories. On ancient theories of sight and hearing, see David Chidester, Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992). 30. Plutarch discusses the power of words to disfigure a person’s character or to cleanse it (Mor. 38B, 42B). 31. Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 131. 32. Diane Fruchtman, “Modeling a Martyrial Worldview: Prudentius’ Pedagogical Ekphrasis and Christianization,” Journal of Late Antiquity 7.1 (2014): 140. 33. Harrison, Art of Listening, 35. Miller writes, “Like Augustine, Prudentius used a technique of visualization in order to make the martyrs present in the reader’s eye” (Corporeal Imagination, 90). On ekphrasis, see also Fruchtman, “Modeling a Martyrial Worldview,” 135–38; and Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination, and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). On ancient theories of sight, see Frank, Memory of the Eyes; and Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 86–87. 34. Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata 7.118. See discussion in Andrew Sprague Becker, The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 25. 35. Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine, trans. Hugh Jackson Lawlor and John Ernest Leonard Oulton (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1927), 1:329. 36. Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 105. 37. Becker, Shield of Achilles, 25. 38. Trans. Edmund Hill, Sermons III/8 (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1994), 296. See discussion in Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 87. 39. Fruchtman, “Modeling a Martyrial Worldview,” 136. This is so much the case, Fruchtman argues, that “orators would create verbal pictures that bore the same emotional and evidentiary weight that a bloody cloak or bit of bone brought into a courtroom might achieve” (137). 40. Trans. John Leemans, Wendy Mayer, Pauline Allen, and Boudewijn Dehandschutter, Let Us Die That We May Live: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine, and Syria c. 350–450 AD (New York: Routledge, 2003), 104. 41. Leanne Bablitz, Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom (London: Routledge, 2007), 50; cf. 325. 42. Gamble, Books and Readers, 8. 43. On the ways in which a martyr text might interpret Scripture, see L. Stephanie Cobb, “Polycarp’s Cup: Imitatio in the Martyrdom of Polycarp,” Journal of Religious History 38 (2014): 224–40. 44. Raymond van Dam, Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 135. 45. Van Dam, Becoming Christian, 136. 46. Brown, Cult of Saints, 81. On locating martyr texts within particular liturgical moments, see Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 11–15.

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47. Augustine, An. orig. 1.10.12; cf. Maureen Tilley, “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas,” in Searching the Scriptures, vol. 2: A Feminist Commentary, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 835. 48. Pliny complains about bad audiences in Ep. 1.13 and 6.17. 49. Harrison, Art of Listening, 144. 50. Harrison, Art of Listening, 145. See also Frederik van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop: Religion and Society at the Dawn of the Middle Ages, trans. Brian Battershaw and G. R. Lamb (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 339–40; and Robin Lane Fox, “Literacy and Power in Early Christianity,” in Literacy and Power in the Ancient World, ed. Alan K. Bowman and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 145. 51. Harrison, Art of Listening, 159. See also Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 83–84; Leemans et al., Let Us Die, 45–47; and Alexandre Olivar, La predicación cristiana antigua (Barcelona: Herder, 1991). Plutarch describes the listener as a “participant in the discourse and a fellow-worker with the speaker” (Mor. 45D). Van Dam characterizes Christian sermons as “dialogues” (Becoming Christian, 101–50). Van der Meer likewise characterizes some of Augustine’s sermons as “dialogues” (Augustine the Bishop, 427). Cf. Jaclyn L. Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 79; and Philip Rousseau, Basil of Caesarea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 46. Neil Adkin discusses the Fathers’ “complaints about noisy congregations,” sometimes due to idle chatter, but sometimes due to “the fervor of a zealous congregation” (“A Problem in the Early Church: Noise during Sermon and Lesson,” Mnemosyne Fourth Series 38 [1985]: 161–62). Van der Meer comments that Augustine’s congregation were in the habit of reacting to whatever was read or preached with all the liveliness of their temperament. They shouted comments, sighed, laughed, like children at the cinema. When a few stereotyped expressions occurred such as “Have mercy on us,” or at the word Confiteor or at “Forgive us our trespasses” in the Our Father, they made a practice of very audibly beating their breasts. When the speaker made some telling remark they loudly acclaimed him, and protested as loudly when there was anything in his utterances of which they disapproved. (Augustine the Bishop, 339; see also 427–32) See also Lane Fox, “Literacy and Power in Early Christianity,” 145. 52. On the Carthage amphitheater, see D. L. Bomgardner, “The Carthage Amphitheater: A Reappraisal,” American Journal of Archaeology 94 (1989): 85–103. In The Story of the Roman Amphitheater, Bomgardner estimates the seating capacity of the Carthage amphitheater to be greater than he does in “Carthage Amphitheater”: 44,400 versus 30,000 (The Story of the Roman Amphitheater [London: Routledge, 2000], 159). 53. Quintilian, Decl. 9.6; trans. Garret G. Fagan, The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 305. 54. Participatory responses to literature are discussed in Richard J. Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), 65–96, 158–59. 55. Tertullian, Spect.; Augustine, Serm. 51.2, 280.2, 301A.7.

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56. As van der Meer notes, “where a modern audience might do no more than slightly nod their heads or purse their lips, the people of antiquity would use their voices to let the speaker know that they had understood him, that they had recognized a text or grasped a pun” (Augustine the Bishop, 427–28). 57. For a concise distinction of these classifications, see Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), ix; and Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1997). 58. Dominick LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 38. For an analysis of LaCapra’s contributions to historiography, see Clark, History, Theory, Text, 126–29, 141–43. 59. Caroline Walker Bynum, “Bodily Miracles and the Resurrection of the Body in the High Middle Ages,” in Belief in History: Innovative Approaches to European and American Religion, ed. Thomas Kselman (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 68. 60. On occasion, scholars suggest that the early martyr texts are products of a sadomasochistic impulse and that they are a form of early Christian pornography. David Frankfurter has offered a compelling reading of martyr texts through this lens. He writes, “in framing graphic, often explicitly sexualized, scenes of violent atrocity within the context of Roman judicial savagery, early Christian martyrologies allowed their audiences to contemplate in safe form scenes that were so fascinating, even titillating, that they could not legitimately be enjoyed otherwise” (“Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 [2009]: 217). Other scholars, however, argue that characterizing martyr texts as sadistic or masochistic is unhelpful, at least in terms of understanding the ancient audience’s interests. Gillian Clark, for instance, asserts that “it may be unjust, or simply anachronistic, to assume that the authors and audiences of martyr-acts were deriving sadistic or masochistic pleasure from the spectacle of pain” (“Bodies and Blood: Late Antique Debate on Martyrdom, Virginity and Resurrection,” in Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity, ed. Dominic Montserrat [London: Routledge, 1988], 106). Similarly, Candida Moss suggests that “we might reasonably infer that Sanctus enjoys the experience of suffering for Christ, but it is not necessary, or even appropriate, to categorize his experience as masochistic” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012], 110). 61. There are disagreements among scholars as to the dates of many of the early Christian martyr texts. The arguments of this book are not affected by the specific dates of the texts because I am more interested in the theological functions of the texts. I do not differentiate between “orthodox” texts and “heretical” (e.g., Donatist) texts since they are all examples of martyrological storytelling in the early Christian world. In general, I assign the pre-Constantinian texts as follows. Second century: Acts of Justin; Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs; Martyrdom of Polycarp; Acts of Carpus, Pamfilus, and Agathonike; Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons. Third century: Passion of Perpetua; Martyrdom of Pionius; Martyrdom of Fructuosus; Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius; Martyrdom of Marian and James; Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, Chione; Acts of Cyprian. Fourth century: Martyrdom of Irenaeus; Acts of Gallonius; Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs; The Passion of Saints Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda; Letter of Phileas. I place these pre-Constantinian texts alongside later, postConstantinian texts—such as Prudentius’s Peristephanon, The Martyrdom of Conon, The

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Passion of Maximian and Isaac, and The Martyrdom of Marculus—to illustrate the resonances among them regarding their claims to impassivity and impassibility. It is not only the later texts, that is, that make these claims; they are also found in the earliest extant martyr texts. 62. Catharine Edwards, “The Suffering Body: Philosophy and Pain in Seneca’s Letters,” in Constructions of the Classical Body, ed. James I. Porter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 253. C HA P T E R 1

1. Glenn Most, “disiecti membra poetae: The Rhetoric of Dismemberment in Neronian Poetry,” in Innovations of Antiquity, ed. Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden (New York: Routledge, 1992), 400. 2. Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 3. 3. Apuleius, Flor. 16, quoted in Perkins, Suffering Self, 1. 4. Perkins, Suffering Self, 61. 5. Ibid., 2. 6. See Erik Gunderson, Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 4; and Gail P.C. Streete, Redeemed Bodies: Women Martyrs in Early Christianity (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 15. 7. See, for instance, Judith Lieu, Neither Jew Nor Greek: Constructing Early Christianity (London: T&T Clark, 2002). 8. See, for instance, Catherine Conybeare, “The Ambiguous Laugher of Saint Laurence,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002): 175–202; and Cobb, Dying to Be Men. 9. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). 10. Perkins, Suffering Self. 11. Ibid., 142. Perkins writes, “The discourse of the martyr Acts, representing pain as empowering and death a victory, helped to construct a new understanding of human existence, a new ‘mental set’ toward the world that would have far-reaching consequences” (122–23). 12. Joyce Salisbury, The Blood of the Martyrs: Unintended Consequence of Violence (New York: Routledge, 2004), 20. 13. Susanna Elm, “Roman Pain and the Rise of Christianity,” in Quo Vadis Medical Healing: Past Concepts and New Approaches, ed. Susanna Elm and Stefan N. Willich (New York: Springer, 2009), 49. Elm argues that “Since public killings are traditional means to establish dominance, the victim’s endurance represents a reversal of the power-dynamic” (49). On the relationship of torture and power, the classic study is that of Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 14. David B. Morris, The Culture of Pain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 13. Ronald Melzack and Patrick D. Wall describe a similar contrast between participant and observer. Discussing an East African ritual during which large portions of participants’ scalps and muscle are removed and the skull is scraped, Melzack and Wall write:

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Films of this procedure are extraordinary to watch because of the discomfort they induce in the observers which is in striking contrast to the apparent lack of discomfort in the people undergoing the operation. There is no reason to believe that these people are physiologically different in any way. Rather, the operation is accepted by their culture as a procedure that brings relief of chronic pain. The expectation of relief, the trust in the skill of the doktari as well as other psychological factors appear to alter the experience of pain. (The Challenge of Pain [New York: Basic Books, 1983], 29–30) 15. Morris, Culture of Pain, 129. The late second-century philosopher Sextus Empiricus observed, “sometimes the patients themselves bear a surgical operation, while the bystanders swoon, because they hold the opinion that it is a horrible experience” (Pyr. 3.235f, quoted in Josef Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum on Pain,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 [2002]: 212). Miller suggests a similar phenomenon occurs in reaction to Prudentius’s Liber Peristephanon: the author’s descriptions make the torture “seem so real that the reader cannot help but imagine it in a visceral way” (Corporeal Imagination, 92). 16. Morris, Culture of Pain, 129. For a discussion of medieval art and its communication of pain, see Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, The Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 75. Merback, for instance, describes the thieves crucified alongside Jesus as struggling “in painful torpor against the binding cords, refusing to bend to the will of the apparatus” (75). 17. Hippolyte Delehaye, The Work of the Bollandists through Three Centuries, 1615–1915 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1922), 12. 18. Ibid., 113. 19. Ibid., 93. 20. Edmond Le Blant, for instance, using legal vocabulary to differentiate authentic from fictional martyr accounts, argued that instances of miracle “should create a doubt of their antiquity.” He states baldly that “there are no miracles” in historical acts (Les Actes des Martyrs: Supplément aux Acta sincera de Dom Ruinart [Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1882], 37). See also, Adolf von Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1958); and Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1996). 21. E.C.E. Owen, Some Authentic Acts of the Early Martyrs (London: SPCK, 1933), 11. Owen dismisses this view by differentiating authentic from inauthentic acts. In defining the “marks of authenticity,” Owen includes “absence as a whole of the miraculous” (13). 22. Joseph Barber Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers II.I: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp (London: Macmillan & Co., 1885), 627. 23. Though historicity has not completely been erased, as is clear in Timothy D. Barnes’s Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). 24. In the preface to his collection of early Christian martyr texts, Herbert Musurillo explains that he has chosen texts that he considers “most reliable” (Acts of the Christian Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972], xii). 25. Translations of early Christian martyr texts are based on the text of Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, unless otherwise stated.

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26. Esther Cohen, The Modulated Scream: Pain in Late Medieval Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 4. 27. As David Aune has noted, “By repeatedly emphasizing that these courageous martyrs experience no human suffering, the author demonstrates his thesis that ‘pious reason’ overcomes the passions” (“Mastery of the Passions: Philo, 4 Maccabees, and Earliest Christianity,” in Hellenization Revisited: Shaping a Christian Response within the Greco-Roman World, ed. W. E. Helleman [Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994], 137). 28. Trans. Leemans et al., Let Us Die, 119. 29. Ibid., 131. 30. It is worth noting that an emphasis on pain does not require that pain per se is a text’s locus of meaning. Ellen M. Ross, for instance, argues that twelfth- to fourteenthcentury interest in the pain and agony of Christ “functions as the primary scriptural symbol for conveying the depth of a merciful God’s love for humankind. Jesus Christ’s endurance of agony and death reveals a God of boundless love seeking to heal the breach between humanity and God” (The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], 5). She continues with an observation that is applicable both here and to the discussion of the function of texts in chapter 2: “The flooding of viewers’ senses with extravagant depictions of pain and anguish comprises an urgent appeal to the audience to respond to Jesus Christ’s expression of love” (6). 31. Esther Cohen, “Towards a History of European Sensibility: Pain in the Later Middle Ages,” Science in Context 8 (1995): 47–74. 32. Esther Cohen, “The Animated Pain of the Body,” American Historical Review 105 (2000): 62. 33. Cohen, Modulated Scream, 6. Richard Kieckhefer has likewise argued that for fourteenth-century mystics, “atonement came not from charitable works, not from prayer, nor from enlightenment, but from pain” (Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-century Saints and Their Religious Milieu [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], 89). 34. Jacobus de Voraigne, The Golden Legend, as Englished by William Caxton, vol. 7, trans. F. S. Ellis (New York: AMS, 1973), 43. 35. Ibid., vol. 6, 203. 36. Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 290. See also Alain Boureau, La Légende dorée: Le système narritif de Jacques de Voragine (+1298) (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1984), 60–61, 115–33. 37. Sherry L. Reames, The Legenda aurea: A Reexamination of Its Paradoxical History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 98. 38. Reames, Legenda, 98. 39. Cohen, Modulated Scream, 235. 40. Ibid., 243. 41. Ibid., 243, 250. 42. Ibid., 244. 43. Aquinas, ST III.15.5. 44. Aquinas, ST II.II.123.8. Cohen notes that for Aquinas, when martyrs exhibit both fortitude and charity, they may possess impassibility (Modulated Scream, 246–47).

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45. Some scholars note the literary motif of painlessness. Thomas Heffernan mentions the “analgesic state” of Perpetua and Blandina, observing that immunity to pain becomes a “conventional topos in later vitae sanctarum” (Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages [New York: Oxford University Press, 1988], 196–97). Judith Perkins observes, “By rejecting that they experienced pain or defeat, Christians rejected the power structures surrounding them, and rejected the social order these supported” (Suffering Self, 117; see also 180). Candida Moss comments on Sanctus’s painlessness in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, noting that he “appears to feel no pain” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 109). Moss writes further on miracle and painlessness in “Miraculous Events in Early Christian Stories about Martyrs” in Credible, Incredible: The Miraculous in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Tobias Nicklas and Janet E. Spittler (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 283–301. Here Moss argues that miraculous events are typical of later hagiographical writings but rare in pre-Decian texts. I agree that later texts are often even more filled with the miraculous; I argue that this is also an important aspect of the earliest martyr accounts. While Heffernan, Perkins, and Moss mention the motif of painlessness, none offers an interpretation of martyr texts that fully accounts for it. 46. Ariel Glucklich, Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17; Ariel Glucklich, “Sacred Pain and the Phenomenal Self,” Harvard Theological Review 91 (1998): 402; Ariel Glucklich, “Self and Sacrifice: A Phenomenological Psychology of Sacred Pain,” Harvard Theological Review 92 (1999): 479–506. Glucklich draws on the work of Melzack and Wall, who argue that the absence or delay in feeling pain is due to the “Gate Control Theory.” 47. Glucklich writes, Neuropsychology can explain why the soldier experiences less pain than the car passenger. But in experiential terms the soldier is relieved that the loss of his hand will remove him from the battle and the possibility of far greater harm. In fact, the injury to the hand may well have saved his life. In other words, the soldier feels as though he had sacrificed a “part of himself ” for a more urgent goal—the survival of the person. (“Self and Sacrifice,” 489) Another explanation of painlessness is posited by Daniel de Moulin, who notes, “it became apparent as early as 1778 that hypnotic trance may be accompanied by insensitivity to pain” (“A Historical-Phenomenological Study of Bodily Pain in Western Man,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 48 [1974]: 543–44). It is possible to explain Perpetua’s insensitivity to being tossed by the heifer as a side effect of a hypnotic trance; she is, after all, described as “being in ecstasy.” This explanation, however, may be unnecessarily reductive of the narrative work as a whole. 48. Such an interpretation may apply to Ignatius in his epistle to the Romans (esp. Rom. 4.1, 3, 5.1–3, 6.3, 8.3). 49. Perkins, Suffering Self, 34. 50. This is true even if one accepts the first-person account in Pass. Perp. as authentic. Since the first-person narrative does not include a description of her death, even in this case we do not have unmediated experience related to us. 51. Morris, Culture of Pain, 16. See the insightful discussion of pain by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen and Karl Enenkel, “Introduction: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early

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Modern Culture,” in The Sense of Suffering: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early Modern Culture, ed. Jans Frans van Dijkhuizen and Karl A.E. Enenkel (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 1–18. 52. Modern views of the inextricability of the physical from the emotional in experiences of pain often scapegoat Descartes as the origin of this dualistic view, though Descartes’s work on pain was more complex than these discussions often allow. See Dijkhuizen and Enenkel, “Constructions of Physical Pain,” 2; and G. Duncan, “Mind-Body Dualism and the Biopsychosocial Model of Pain: What Did Descartes Really Say?” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 25 (2000): 485–513. 53. Melzack and Wall, Challenge, 16. 54. See discussion in Melzack and Wall, Challenge, 72–86. 55. Allan I. Basbaum, “Unlocking the Secrets of Pain: The Science,” in 1988 Medical and Health Annual, ed. Ellen Bernstein (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1987), 95. 56. Basbaum, “Unlocking the Secrets,” 95. 57. Henry K. Beecher, “Pain in Men Wounded in Battle,” Annals of Surgery 123 (1946): 96. See also Patrick D. Wall, “On the Relation of Injury to Pain,” Pain 6 (1979): 253–64. See also P. L. Carlen, P. D. Wall, H. Nadvorna, and T. Steinbach, “Phantom Limbs and Related Phenomena in Recent Traumatic Amputations,” Neurology 28 (1978): 211–17. 58. Beecher suggests that one reason a soldier wounded in battle might report less pain than expected is that “his wound suddenly releases him from an exceedingly dangerous environment, one filled with fatigue, discomfort, anxiety, fear and real danger of death, and gives him a ticket to the safety of the hospital.” On the other hand, a civilian similarly wounded in a car accident might report the feeling of pain much differently because “the civilian’s accident marks the beginning of disaster for him” (“Pain,” 99). 59. This division is responsible for the tendency to translate dolor as “grief ” rather than “pain,” even though it does not—as the discussion below demonstrates—necessarily indicate nonphysical sensations. 60. Morris, Culture of Pain, 9. See also Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment (New York: Norton, 2000), 56–57; and Fruchtman, “Modeling a Martyrial Worldview,” 145. 61. See Alan Fogel, “Emotional and Physical Pain Activate Similar Brain Regions,” Psychology Today, April 19, 2012; Naomi I. Eisenberger, M. D. Lieberman, and K. D. Williams, “Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion,” Science 302 (2003): 209; and Ethan Kross, Marc G. Berman, Walter Mischel, Edward E. Smith, and Tor D. Wager, “Social Rejection Shares Somatosensory Representations with Physical Pain,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108 (2011): 6270–75. A new study suggests slightly different neural passages are used for processing social rejection: T.D. Wager, L. Y. Atlas, M. A. Lindquist, M. Roy, C. W. Woo, and E. Kross, “An fMRIbased Neurologic Signature of Physical Pain,” New England Journal of Medicine 368 (2013): 1388–97. 62. Matthew Botvinick, Amishi P. Jha, Lauren M. Bylsma, Sara A. Fabian, Patricia E. Solomon, and Kenneth M. Prkachin, “Viewing Facial Expressions of Pain Engages Cortical Areas Involved in the Direct Experience of Pain,” Neuroimage 25 (2005): 312–19. This is true at least for those considered to be in-group members: Xiaojing Xu, Xiangyu Zuo, Xiaoying Wang, and Shihui Han, “Do You Feel My Pain? Racial Group Membership Modulates Empathic Neural Responses,” Journal of Neuroscience 26 (2009): 8525–29.

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63. See, for instance, Madhukar H. Trivedi, “The Link between Depression and Physical Symptoms,” Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 6 Supp. 1 (2004): 12–16. 64. In the discussion of martyr texts below, I do not assume a distinction between mental and physical pain unless the text itself makes such a distinction clear. If an author uses the same word—for instance, dolor—to describe both an emotional state and a physical wound, I assume the use of the same word indicates a comparable state: pain. In other words, my translation theory is that distinguishing pain from grief—physical from mental pain—is a product of modern dualism that distances the mind from the body and, thus, I will resist importing that dualism into the ancient texts unless there is a clear case to be made otherwise. Roselyne Rey makes this point when she writes, “It must be said that the distinction between physical and moral pain is not an appropriate criterion for distinguishing the terms” (The History of Pain, trans. Louise Elliott Wallace, J. A. Cadden, and S. W. Cadden [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995], 12). Cohen observes that medieval authors “made no distinction between the physical and spiritual anguish of Christ. All his pains are listed together as one total experience of the soul” (“Animated Pain,” 46). It is the case that some ancient philosophers considered mental anguish to be a “sense” or pain to be an “emotion” but these discussions occur in contexts of debates over whether pain—of any cause—originates in the body or the soul. See, for instance, the discussion on philosophical debates over pain in Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum.” The translation point made above is sometimes borne out in these ancient discussions where, for instance, an author might differentiate affectus timoris and sensus doloris (see Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum,” 214). Similarly, Stanley E. Hoffer, writing about the topic of health in ancient epistles, states: “Epistolary discussions of health do not always distinguish sharply between bodily and mental health; the shared terminology . . . reflects a shared conceptual basis, the humoral theory” (“Cicero’s ‘Stomach’: Political Indignation and the Use of Repeated Allusive Expressions in Cicero’s Correspondence,” in Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography, ed. Ruth Morello and A. D. Morrison [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 97). 65. Morris, Culture of Pain, 4; Dean A. Tripp “A Biopsychosocial Therapy Model for Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome,” in Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome, ed. Daniel A. Shoskes (Totowa, N.J.: Humana Press, 2008), 145; John D. Loeser, “Unlocking the Secrets of Pain: The Treatment: A New Era,” in 1988 Medical and Health Annual, ed. Ellen Bernstein (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1987), 120–31; De Moulin, “Historical-Phenomenological Study,” 569. For a discussion of the major theorists Morris lists, see Melzack and Wall, Challenge, 195–208. 66. Described by D. D. Kosambi, “Living Prehistory in India,” Scientific American 216 (1967): 104–14. Kosambi also reports another ritual performed among some Indian tribes during which a chosen dancer “plunges his hand into a pan of boiling oil, evidently without ill effect” (107). For a discussion of other rituals that should be painful but, because of ritual meaning attached, appear not to be experienced as such, see Melzack and Wall, Challenge, 28–30, 31–32; and Doreen R.G. Browne, “Ritual and Pain,” in The History of the Management of Pain, ed. Ronald D. Mann (Park Ridge, N.J.: Parthenon, 1988), 31–39. 67. Kosambi, “Living Prehistory,” 111. 68. As Glucklich comments, “This constitutional sentiment, if taken seriously, situates the pain of parturition in a moral universe in which pain is not meaningless, or even merely

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biological. It is the automatic moral consequence in an iron logic of action and reward” (Sacred Pain, 16). 69. See René Fülöp-Miller, Triumph over Pain (New York: Library Guild, 1938). See discussion in Pamela Edith Klassen, Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 179; and Lillian Nayder, The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), 162–63. 70. William Henry Atkinson, “Discussions—Miscellaneous,” American Dental Association 12 (1872): 105. The convention adopted a resolution that recommended the abandonment of dental anesthesia, but for safety reasons, not theological ones (see 32–33). See also Martin S. Pernick, A Calculus of Suffering: Pain, Anesthesia, and Utilitarian Professionalism in Nineteenth Century American Medicine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 71. Morris, Culture of Pain, 1. 72. See Aristotle, De an. II.II, III.I. 73. See also Plato, Gorg. 2; Tim. 2; Phileb. 4. Pain also becomes an important element in Christological and anthropological debates. See, for instance, Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum.” 74. Edwards, “Suffering Body,” 257. 75. Thomas Dormandy, The Worst of Evils: The Fight against Pain (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 10. 76. Lisa Wayne Smith, “ ‘An Account of the Unaccountable Distemper’: The Experience of Pain in Early Eighteenth-Century England and France,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 41 (2008): 459–60. Jennifer Burek Pierce likewise notes that sixteenth- to nineteenth-century medical dictionaries used the term dolor as a synonym for “melancholy” and “mania,” drawing on classical understandings of the tradition that can be traced to Galen (“Defining Health, Melancholy and Mutation in Early Modern and Modern Medical Dictionaries,” in “Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors”: Unexpected Essays in the History of Lexicography, ed. Michael Adams [Monza: Polimetrica, 2010], 149). Pierce argues that over time, the term dolor was detached from definitions of melancholy and was used to refer to physical pain only (149–50). 77. Abraham P. Bos, “Aristotelian and Platonic Dualism in Hellenistic and Early Greek Philosophy and in Gnosticism,” Vigiliae Christianae 56 (2002): 273–91. 78. See, for instance, Eliezer Gonzalez, “Anthropologies of Continuity: The Body and Soul in Tertullian, Perpetua, and Early Christianity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 21 (2013): 479–502. 79. For a helpful discussion of πάσχω and its cognates, see the entry in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (V.904–39). Michaelis also states that πάσχω is sometimes translated saibar in Syriac, which means “to bear” or “to endure.” 80. This understanding of patior is also reflected in its common use during the Augustan period as a technical term to refer to the passive sexual partner. For a discussion of the sexual connotations of patior, see J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 189–90. There are also instances where πάσχω is used in this way (e.g., Aristophanes, Thesm. 201; and Menander, Dysk. 892). 81. Elm, “Roman Pain,” 44–45. 82. Karen King, “Martyrdom and Its Discontents in the Tchacos Codex,” in The Codex Judas Papers, ed. April D. DeConick (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 25.

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83. Perkins, Suffering Self, 13. Perkins, though, does warn against overstating imitative suffering in martyr texts (216n9). 84. See Cobb, “Polycarp’s Cup,” 224–40; See also Michael W. Holmes, “The Martyrdom of Polycarp and the New Testament Passion Narratives,” in Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 424. 85. See, for instance, the discussion in Robert J. Karris, “Luke 23:47 and the Lucan View of Jesus’ Death,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105 (1986): 69. The meaning of pain—both humanity’s pain, generally, and Jesus’ pain, specifically, was the subject of debate among early Christian thinkers. For a discussion of Julian of Aeclanum’s views (particularly as opposed to Augustine’s) see Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum,” 203–43. Relatedly, it should be noted that the crucifixion is not a central theme in Christian art contemporaneous with the martyr texts. Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal C. Parsons, for instance, write, “Apparently—and this is the startling fact—a crucified Christ is not depicted in representational art by a Christian until the fifth century, and not with regularity until the seventh” (Illuminating Luke, vol. 2: The Public Ministry of Christ in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Painting [New York: T&T Clark, 2005], 2). See also Robin Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London: Routledge, 2000), 143–48; Graydon F. Snyder, Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1985); Graydon F. Snyder, “Agape, Eucharist and Sacrifice in Early Christian Art,” in Interpreting Christian Art: Reflections on Christian Art, ed. Heidi J. Hornik and Mikael C. Parsons (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2004), 60; Nigel Spivey, Enduring Creation: Art, Pain, and Fortitude (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 45–48; and Lucy Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London: Duckworth, 2004), 119. On martyrological art, see F. Bisconti, “Dentro e intorno all’iconografia martiriale romana. Dal ‘vuoto figurativo’ all’ ‘immaginario devozionale,” in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans, ed. M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 247–92; A. A. Grabar, Martyrium: Recherches sur le culte des reliques et l’art chrétien antique (Paris: Collège de France, 1946); J. B. Ward-Perkins, “Memoria, Martyrs’ Tomb, and Martyr’s Church,” in Studies in Roman and Early Christian Architecture, ed. J. B. Ward-Perkins (London: Pindar Press, 1994), 495– 516; and A. Provoost, “Les Representations de martyrs à la fin de l’antiquité,” in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans, ed. M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 235–46. 86. The rejection of pain—or at least the appearance of impassibility—is part of the passion narrative in the Gospel of Peter (4). 87. Hilary rejects the idea that Jesus could feel pain in The Trinity X.23. See also Clement of Alexandria, who argues that Jesus was impassible (ἀπαθής; Strom. 6.9). Aquinas cites Hilary in his argument that Jesus did in fact feel pain (ST 3.15, obj 1 and reply to obj 1). See also Origen, “the first-born power was not hurt, as if it had not suffered anything” (Comm. Matt. 125; cf. Origen, Comm. Matt. 100; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.71.2). P. M. Head has argued that elements often assigned to “docetic” interests in the Gospel of Peter are really elements of second-century martyrological traditions, which have informed the construction of the Passion narrative (“On the Christology of the Gospel of Peter,” Vigiliae Christianae 46 [1992]: 209–24). See also Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 178;

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and Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), 446. 88. Quoted in Kevin Madigan, “Ancient and High-Medieval Interpretations of Jesus in Gethsemane: Some Reflections on Tradition and Continuity in Christian Thought,” Harvard Theological Review 88 (1995): 163. 89. See, for example, Irenaeus, Haer. 3.18. 90. Morris, Culture of Pain, 42. C HA P T E R 2

1. Miller, Corporeal Imagination, 91; Virginia Burrus, “Torture and Travail: Producing the Christian Martyr,” in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature, ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Maria Mayo Robbins (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 70. 2. As Streete notes, martyr texts engage “not only the actual audience that is watching but also the one that is intended to ‘watch.’ ” (Redeemed Bodies, 13). 3. Suzanne Keen, “A Theory of Narrative Empathy,” Narrative 14.3 (2006): 214. See also Mary-Catherine Harrison, “How Narrative Relationships Overcome Empathic Bias: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Empathy across Social Difference,” Poetics Today 32 (2011): 255–88. Harrison argues that readers empathize with protagonists more than with characters who align with their own “demographic similarity,” such as “race, class, age, or gender” (258). To connect to a character does not, however, demand that readers reject their identities altogether: “we might simultaneously imagine ourselves in multiple perspectives—not only protagonist and/or narrator but also other minor characters, narratee, and narrative audience—all the while remaining cognizant of our own spatiotemporal and emotional perspective as an actual reader” (264). 4. Keen, “Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 216, 213. David Lodge makes similar claims about narratives disarming readers in Consciousness and the Novel: Collected Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 87–88. 5. As Maia Kotrosits observes, “as swept up in any cultural zeitgeist as one might be, the mobility of affect means that its permutations are never single or predictable” (“Seeing Is Feeling: Revelation’s Enthroned Lamb and Ancient Visual Affects,” Biblical Interpretation 22 [2014]: 495). 6. Keen, “Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 213. Elsewhere Keen writes, “Readers may and do sometimes respond indifferently to appeals to their feelings. This is not a matter of readerly incompetence; it reflects differences in readers’ dispositions and experiences” (“Empathetic Hardy: Bounded, Ambassadorial, and Broadcast Strategies of Narrative Empathy,” Poetics Today 32.2 [2011]: 372). I discuss the issue of rejecting texts’ calls for empathy in the conclusion of this book. 7. Keen discusses three categories of narrative. What she labels “bounded strategic empathy” aims at securing feelings of empathy with an in-group; it is within this category that martyr texts should be placed. The other two categories she discusses are ambassadorial and broadcast. The former is addressed to a specific set of out-group individuals “with the aim of cultivating their empathy for the in-group, often to a specific end”; the latter aims to evoke empathy in all readers, often “by emphasizing common vulnerabilities and hopes” (“Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 215).

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8. See David Aune, Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 339–42. Aristotle discusses the three proofs in Rhet. 1.2.3–6. See also Cicero, De Or. 2.114. 9. Affect theory, as Amy C. Cottrill notes, “brings into focus the reader’s corporeal experience and how this experience may illuminate the rhetorical and theological effects” of texts (“A Reading of Ehud and Jael through the Lens of Affect Theory,” Biblical Interpretation 22 [2014]: 431). 10. In discussing narrative empathy, Keen notes that “generic differences are likely to play a role in inviting (or retarding) empathic response” (Empathy and the Novel [New York: Oxford University Press, 2007], 85). 11. For a discussion of the history of scholarly categorization, see Gary A. Bisbee, PreDecian Acts of Martyrs and Commentarii (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988); Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 2–7, 44–47; and Candida R. Moss, “Current Trends in the Study of Early Christian Martyrdom,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion 41 (2012): 22. Moss identifies Christian martyr texts as lying at the “intersection of elements of court documents, philosophical bioi, and Greek novels” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 47). My interest is especially in ways the final form of texts—not their possible antecedents—informs audience expectations of the genre. 12. Maureen Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories: The Church in Conflict in Roman North Africa (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), xix, xxi. 13. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 47. Although Tilley acknowledges the possibility of documentary origins for acta, she differentiates the genres primarily on the basis of narrative emphasis rather than source material. 14. Johannes Quasten, Patrology (Utrecht and Antwerp: Spectrum, 1950), 1:176. 15. Barnes admits that acta may demonstrate some editorial activity. Nonetheless, he argues—see discussion below—that the texts should be read as containing documentary evidence obtained by Christians from official court records. 16. This point is made clearly by Jan N. Bremmer: most classifications of martyr texts, he argues, impose “a unity on what is . . . an essentially heterogeneous corpus of texts” (“Perpetua and Her Diary: Authenticity, Family, and Visions,” in Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten, ed. W. Ameling [Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002], 78). 17. Martyr texts may also simultaneously serve as apologies, apocalypses, and heresiologies, among other things. For discussions of martyr texts having apologetic interests, see Cobb, “Polycarp’s Cup”; and Bart D. Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 493–508. 18. Grig dismisses the distinction of acta from passio: “It is clear that all martyr texts are, in some sense at least, literary products, and that the purported acta format is just one of these literary constructions” (Making Martyrs, 24). 19. Andrew Riggsby, Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War in Words (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 139–40. 20. Columella, Rust. 11.65. See discussion in Riggsby, Caesar, 146. 21. Riggsby, Caesar, 149. 22. Ibid. On the function of letters, see discussion below. 23. On commentarius-form martyr texts, see Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts, 5, 8–11. 24. Bisbee, Pre-Decian Acts, 36. Bisbee draws on the work of R. A. Coles, Reports of Proceedings in Papyri. Papyrologica Bruxellensia 4 (Brussels: Fondation Egyptologique

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Reine Elisabeth, 1966). See also Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs; Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 43–96; and Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Pagan Martyrs: Acta Alexandrinorum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 249–51. 25. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 55. Barnes’s argument is based on the existence of “copies of official documents” such as “reports of court proceedings in all types of legal cases” (55). 26. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 58. Bisbee’s analysis demonstrates that narratives in commentarius form have been heavily edited (Pre-Decian Acts, 96, 117.) 27. This would be analogous to speech writing in ancient historiography, which was not a verbatim transcript but rather the invention of the author; speeches were required only to be appropriate to the person, time, and place of the speech. See discussion in Clare K. Rothschild, Luke-Acts and the Rhetoric of History (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 1–23. 28. Fergus Millar, The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution, vol. 1 of Rome, The Greek World and the East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 35. Likewise, O. F. Robinson writes, “These stories of Christian martyrs were preserved to honour their memories; they are gesta, not court acta, and their purpose was hagiographic, not legal” (Penal Practice and Penal Policy in Ancient Rome [London: Routledge, 2007], 100). 29. Leonardus Spengel, ed., Rhetores Graeci (Leipzig: Teubner, 1854–56), 3:493. 30. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci, 2:119–20. 31. Keith Oatley writes, “Fiction transports the reader to the story world. No longer in this place and time, in this body, or even (sometimes) in this universe, we travel to the place of elsewhere, where strange and exciting things occur” (“Emotions and the Story Worlds of Fiction,” in Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations, ed. Melanie C. Green, Jeffrey J. Strange, and Timothy C. Brock [Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002], 41). See also Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds. Lists of historical persons can be problematic for scholars wishing to claim historical authenticity for these accounts because there are often elements that cannot be reconciled. (An especially controversial example is that of the Mart. Pol., which has concerned scholars for centuries; see discussion in Ehrman, Forgery, 499.) On the affective work of such detail, see Cottrill, “Reading of Ehud and Jael,” 440. 32. Joseph Verheyden makes this point regarding Eusebius’s Martyrs of Palestine: the inclusion of historical data has “the effect that the events to be told are made all the more ‘real’ and that the reader is thrown into them as if he himself were present” (“Pain and Glory: Some Introductory Comments on the Rhetorical Qualities and Potential of the Martyrs of Palestine by Eusebius of Caesarea,” in Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Antique Christianity; Festschrift Boudewijn Dehandschutter, ed. J. Leemans [Leuven: Peeters, 2010], 358). 33. Richard J. Gerrig and David N. Rapp discuss what they term the “willing construction of disbelief,” which involves “readers’ feelings of having been transported into narrative worlds. The data suggest that readers must expend strategic effort to reject the information they acquire from literary narratives”; “people must engage in effortful processing to disbelieve the information they encounter in literary narratives (as well as other types of narratives)” (“Psychological Processes Underlying Literary Impact,” Poetics Today 25 [2004]: 265, 267). In other words, data suggest that a reader’s starting point is belief, not disbelief; suspension of belief must be consciously activated. See also Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990), 65–66; and Daniel T. Gilbert,

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“How Mental Systems Believe,” American Psychologist 46 (1991): 107–19. Psychological studies such as Gerrig and Rapp’s complement historical studies of ancient “spiritual exercises” and their relationship to martyr texts. See, for instance, Nicole Kelley, “Philosophy as Training for Death: Reading the Ancient Christian Martyr Acts as Spiritual Exercises,” Church History 75 (2006): 723–47; and Perkins, Suffering Self, 104–23. 34. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 46–47. 35. Ibid., 42. 36. The introductory notice lists only six Christians, but the subsequent narrative relates the deaths of twelve. Musurillo supplies the remaining six names, positing they were accidentally omitted in the transmission of the narrative (Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 87). 37. John J. Winkler discusses the importance of narrator reliability, especially by means of relaying the sources of information, in Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 65–69. Grig notes that “Christian stories were supposed to have happened in historical time, often specifically and pedantically marked out as such, and were also firmly and fundamentally connected to a concept of time which linked this historical chronology with the supernatural past and future” (Making Martyrs, 5). 38. On the ability of narratives to transport readers to different worlds, see Melanie C. Green and Timothy C. Brock, “In the Mind’s Eye: Transportation-Imagery Model of Narrative Persuasion,” in Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations, ed. Melanie C. Green, Jeffrey J. Strange, and Timothy C. Brock (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), 315–41. 39. On the various types of and roles for audience members in ancient Roman courtrooms, see Bablitz, Actors and Audience, 51–70, 120–98. On texts as visual cues, see Chrysostom, Hom. 18.4; Augustine, Serm. 280.1, 301.1; and Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 98–99. Grig writes, “Rhetorical textbooks praised this vividness as a prime quality; one described it as ‘when an event is so described in words that the business seems to be enacted and the subject to pass before our eyes’ ” (Making Martyrs, 111). The technique of ekphrasis is often limited in modern discussions to descriptions of works of art, but as Grig reminds us: What is important in defining an ekphrasis is not the object described but the effect the description should have on its audience. It wishes to communicate the experience of the subject described, including the judgements, and emotions of the describer, both a clear representation and a “thick description.” It can also be said to comprise a psychological aspect in its link to imagination and memory. It is important that we bear this broader definition of ekphrasis in mind when talking about pictorial images because it reminds us that authors were using figures from literary tradition as well as works of art, real or imaginary, to construct their ekphraseis. (Making Martyrs, 112) See also Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25–52; and Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs. 40. As I discuss below, emotional misalignment may occur—and may even be caused by the text itself—but when it does it serves to instruct; the misalignment is created and then rejected. 41. Grig, Making Martyrs, 5, 39. 42. On the importance of resistance to persuasion, see Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 72–76.

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43. As Alison Goddard Elliott notes, the narratives are “directed beyond the seemingly intended receiver in the text—exceeding, therefore, their apparent dramatic function—to the audience at large” (Roads to Paradise: Rereading the Lives of the Early Saints [Hanover, N.H.: Brown University Press, 1987], 25). Similarly, discussing the Gospel of Mark, Tippens writes: “Pronouns and adverbs at the story level merge with pronouns at the level of discourse. ‘You’ and ‘I’ apply both to characters in the story and to listeners in the congregation. Often plural pronouns in Mark’s Gospel, as has been noted frequently, lack precise referents, making it easier for listeners to place themselves in the story (cf. Fowler [Let the Reader Understand] 200); ‘here and now’ in the story inevitably fade into the ‘here and now’ of the auditor” (“Reading at Cockcrow,” 151). 44. Grig, Making Martyrs, 46. 45. Elliott, Roads to Paradise, 18. 46. David S. Miall has suggested that characters’ motives, rather than their traits, account for the affective engagement and self-projection of readers into characters (“Affect and Narrative: A Model of Responses to Stories,” Poetics 17 [1997]: 259–72). See discussion in Keen, “Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 218. 47. Elliott, Roads to Paradise, 18. 48. Charles F. Altman, “Two Types of Opposition and the Structure of Latin Saints’ Lives,” Medievalia et Humanistica: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture n.s. 6 (1975): 2. 49. Ibid. 50. Similarly, Maureen Tilley argues that authors “expected the stories to proclaim the validity of the charismatic authority of the martyrs, to manifest martyrs as exemplars of virtue, and to show people how to react during interrogation by Roman authorities. Thus the readers were inscribed in the narratives as potential martyrs” (“Scripture as an Element of Social Control: Two Martyr Stories of Christian North Africa,” Harvard Theological Review 83.4 [1990]: 383). Also, Roberts argues that Prudentius “emphasized that the emotional force of veneration at a martyr’s shrine depends on sympathetic identification between devotee and saint” (Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs, 137). 51. Elliott draws on the work of Altman, who depicts early Christian passio as containing “diametrical opposition” (“Two Types of Opposition,” 1–2). For discussion of dualism in martyr texts, see Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 127–28; and Grig, Making Martyrs, 5. 52. The Latin recension is different on this point, counting Agathonike among the group arrested for being Christian (1). 53. Tertullian, Apol. 50. See also Mart. Apoll. 24. Justin Martyr says his conversion to Christianity was due to the martyrs (2 Apol. 12). 54. Keen notes, “The naming of characters (including the withholding of a name, the use of an abbreviation or a role-title in place of a full name, or allegorical or symbolic naming, etc.) may play a role in the potential for character identification” (“Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 217). 55. Elliott, Roads to Paradise, 20–21. Judith Lieu similarly argues that Christian identity is enacted in the confession, Christianus sum (Neither Jew Nor Greek, 213). 56. The status of Mart. Pol. as the first Christian martyr text has been questioned. See Ehrman, Forgery, 501; Candida R. Moss, “On the Dating of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,” Early Christianity 1 (2010): 539–74.

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57. Giuseppe Lazzati, Gli sviluppi della letterature sui martiri nei primi Quattro secoli. Con appendice di testi (Turin: Società editrice internazionale, 1956). See discussion in Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 362–64. 58. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 363. 59. See discussion in Stanley K. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 17–20. Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. L.R.M. Strachan, rev. ed. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927), 146–251, esp. 227. See also Francis Xavier J. Exler, “The Form of the Ancient Greek Letter: A Study in Greek Epistolography,” PhD dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1923, 16–18. 60. Jennifer V. Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians: Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 21. She points out that there are serious problems with the distinction between real and non-real letters, “not least of which is the fact that authors themselves did not think in such terms” (21). 61. Concerning early discussions of epistolography, Ebbeler observes: “Absent to the discussion was any real appreciation of the extent to which even explicitly historical prose letters share in the rhetoric and textual strategies of their fictional counterparts” (Disciplining, 21). Modern scholars tend to recognize the fluidity of the epistolary genre. Ruth Morello and A. D. Morrison, for instance, suggest a broad definition of the genre: “it is a medium for creating shared virtual space for communication” (“Editors’ Preface,” Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], v). They go on to argue that differences between technical, philosophical, and literary letters should be considered “matters of degree and not of kind” (vi). See also Owen Hodkinson, “Better than Speech: Some Advantages of the Letter in the Second Sophistic,” in Morello and Morrison, Ancient Letters, 285. 62. Morello and Morrison, Ancient Letters, vii. 63. See Jason König, “Alciphron’s Epistolarity,” in Morello and Morrison, Ancient Letters, 258–59. König draws on the work of Janet Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982). 64. John Henderson, “ ‘ . . . when who should walk into the room but . . . ’: Epistoliterarity in Cicero, Ad Qfr. 3.1,” in Morello and Morrison, Ancient Letters, 45. 65. Morello and Morrison, Ancient Letters, vii. König echoes the importance of recognizing the power inherent in letters’ claims to intimacy and immediacy: “letters so often stand halfway between sincerity and artificiality, purporting to offer us unmediated access to the authentic voice of the letter writer, while at the same time always relying on the projection of a more or less self-consciously fabricated epistolary persona” (“Alciphron’s Epistolarity,” 281). 66. Moss offers the salutary reminder that this martyr account is preserved only in Eusebius, who may have “refashioned the account to conform more fully to the genre of 1 Clement and the Martyrdom of Polycarp” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 103). It is also possible that Eusebius’s editorial activity altered the form of the letter so as to omit the traditional closing greetings. Since the letter is extant only in H.E. 5.1.1–2.8, it is impossible to adjudicate between the options; nor, however, is such adjudication necessary for my present purposes. Whether or not the letter was penned as an actual piece of correspondence does not change the way an audience is affected by the genre. 67. See Morello and Morrison, Ancient Letters, vi.

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68. Letters, Stowers argues, “elicit capacities for social bonding,” a point that is particularly germane to the present study (Letter Writing, 15). Seneca states that a letter transports him to his friend and brings reality to the events it describes (Seneca, Ep. 40.1). A papyrus fragment of a friendship letter to Isidorus—the author’s name is not extant—praises Isidorus’s letter “through which I experienced the feeling of seeing you” (Stowers, Letter Writing, 62). 69. William G. Doty labels Mart. Pol. a “letter-essay” and suggests that “letter-essays have pronounced epistolary features, especially in openings and closings, and follow epistolary restrictions as to range and style—usually one main topic—and the presentation is in fairly simple diction” (Letters in Primitive Christianity [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979], 8). Later he describes Mart. Pol. as “most closely related to the Hellenistic public letter in occasion and form” (Letters, 73). 70. There is ample evidence that ancient authors often had larger—or different— audiences in mind for their letters than simply the stated addressee. Cicero, for instance, appears to be writing to Caesar even more than to his brother, the ostensible addressee of his letter. See Henderson, “‘ . . . when who should walk into the room but,’” 37–85; Grig, Making Martyrs, 41; and Chris Frilingos, “‘For My Child, Onesimus’: Paul and Domestic Power in Philemon,” Journal of Biblical Literature 119 (2000): 98–104. 71. Ehrman has demonstrated the proclivity of forgers to utilize a first-person narrative. He notes that the eyewitness claims are conveniently located at moments of miracle; it is a tool by which “the author vouches for its occurrence by claiming to have observed it” (Forgery, 497; see larger discussion on 497–502). 72. Ehrman, Forgery, 498. This point is elaborated by Moss, who suggests that the voice heard in the stadium is an “allusion to scriptural accounts of the baptism of Jesus in which it is unclear whether passersby heard the voice of God (Mark 1:11; Matt 3:17; Luke 3:22)” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 61). 73. Ehrman, Forgery, 498. 74. Carlin Barton, “Savage Miracles: The Redemption of Lost Honor in Roman Society and the Sacrament of the Gladiator and the Martyr,” Representations 45 (1994): 57. 75. The third-person report of Christian persecution in Mart. Pol. 1–4 does not necessarily negate audience empathy, as recent neurological studies suggest. Suzanne Keen writes, “Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal propose that witnessing or imagining another in an emotional state activates automatic representations of that same state in the onlooker, including responses in the nervous system and body” (“Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 211). 76. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 44. 77. In addition to creating intimacy, letters, as Owen Hodkinson argues, provide an opportunity for “the writer to be ‘heard’ out. . . . Letters are frequently employed to persuade the addressee of something” (Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982], 293). He continues, “A text is fixed, and a letter-writer can take advantage of this to produce an unbroken stream of rhetoric, ensuring his motives are not misunderstood—in short, attempting to get a proper ‘hearing,’ without argument or interruption” (292). That the martyr acts have a particular message to relate—that they need a hearing—is discussed below. 78. For a compelling argument that many of these texts are literary inventions—often with apologetic aims—see Ehrman, Forgery, 493–508. Regarding Mart. Pol., Ehrman writes, “It is clear even from a superficial reading of the ‘Martyrdom’ that it was never meant to be

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a disinterested account of the death of Polycarp, but had from the outset literary pretensions and apologetic motives” (494). 79. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 140. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid., 141. 82. Although vitae are typically differentiated from passio, scholars recognize the biographical roots of both. See, for instance, Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 145; and Sebastian P. Brock, “Early Syrian Asceticism,” Numen 20 (1973): 2. 83. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 146. 84. Elliott, Roads to Paradise, 22. 85. Tessa Rajak, “Dying for the Law: The Martyr’s Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature,” in Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire, ed. Mark J. Edwards and Simon Swain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 40. Grig characterizes the importance of the performative value of martyr acts this way: “they substituted for the martyr him/herself. The martyr became present in the text. . . . The muchvaunted charisma of the martyr was constructed through liturgical performance” (Making Martyrs, 52). 86. Streete, Redeemed Bodies, 24. 87. Ross, Grief of God, viii. 88. Ibid., 6. 89. Theory on the visual imagination is widely discussed. See, for instance, Jennifer Glancy, “Text Appeal: Visual Pleasure and Biblical Studies,” Semeia 82 (1998): 63–78; and Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 98–102. 90. Augustine gives us an indication that audiences did in fact imagine the scenes of martyr texts, when he introduces his homily on Perpetua by invoking the senses of hearing and seeing: “We heard of the encouragement they received in divine revelations, and of their triumph in their sufferings, as it was all being read; and all those things, recounted in such glowing words, we perceived with our ears, and actually saw with our minds” (Serm. 280.1). 91. Here and elsewhere, unless otherwise noted, I follow Musurillo’s labels for extant recensions of the martyr texts. The purpose of the sand was to absorb the blood so that combatants would not slip as the fight continued. See Bomgardner, Story of the Roman Amphitheatre, 21. 92. For a survey of views of Roman power, particularly as displayed in the amphitheater, see Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 33–59. 93. Ray Laurence, Roman Passions: A History of Pleasure in Imperial Rome (London: Continuum, 2009), 129. 94. In the following discussion I am indebted to Winkler’s arguments in Auctor and Actor, when he describes a narrative element of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass as implicating the reader in an “I got you!” moment. He argues that The Golden Ass “contains many jokes, structural ironies, and explicit discussions concerning stories that take on new meanings at the end, particularly those that require a category shift or radical revision of sense” (Auctor and Actor, 12). 95. Winkler, Auctor and Actor, 9. Fruchtman argues that the renegotiation of meaning resulting from tension between expectation and ekphrasis would have been used by ancient audiences as an opportunity to reconsider their beliefs: “any inserted surprise—any illfitting imagery, any jarring or challenging authorial inclusion—would force the listener to

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take notice, to evaluate and to engage. When the narrative or the logic of the story could no longer be taken for granted, late ancient readers would have understood this moment as a signal of instructive detail, requiring their thought, engagement, interpretation, and renewed attention” (Fruchtman, “Modeling a Martyrial Worldview,” 138). 96. Winkler, Auctor and Actor, 9. 97. Augustine makes a similar distinction in Serm. 51.2. Castelli writes, “For Augustine in this sermon, those who look on with the eyes of the mind are akin to the gazing holy angels. They see beneath or beyond the somatic experience of the martyrs, beneath or beyond the surface of the image, focusing on a different spiritual scene where a splendid spectacle is visible and a different body of significations is available” (Martyrdom and Memory, 105). 98. On the possibility of conflict between a reader’s experience and a text’s appeal, see Keen, “Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 214–15, 222; and Keen, “Empathetic Hardy,” 372. 99. PL. 8.762B. 100. PL. 8.765C. 101. PL. 8.765B. 102. PL. 8.765B. 103. PL. 8.765C. 104. PL. 8.772B–772C. 105. PL. 8.772C. 106. PL. 8.772D–773A. 107. PL. 8.773B. 108. PL. 8.773A. 109. Justinian, Dig. 47.10.15.41. Grig discusses the distinctive ways quaestio functions in martyr texts: “While torture sought to extract a confession from the recalcitrant villain, that of the martyr tended to be an inversion of this process. The Christian had already confessed his or her crime and what the torturer sought to force was a recantation” (Making Martyrs, 69). Moss, commenting on the quaestio in the Letter of Vienne and Lyons, writes, “The account reproduces the notion of torture as truth as a means of guaranteeing Christian authenticity—the martyr’s inflexibility and stubbornness under torture serve as markers of truth for the Christian audience” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 108). See also Kate Cooper, “The Voice of the Victim: Gender, Representation, and Early Christian Martyrdom,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library of Manchester 80 (1998): 147–57. For a discussion of the rationale of inflicting pain in the Roman world, see Chris L. de Wet, Preaching Bondage: John Chrysostom and the Discourse of Slavery in Early Christianity (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 215. 110. As Moss observes, “The author creates a literary trompe l’oeil in which . . . the administration of pain solidifies the martyr’s body” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 109). 111. These types of stories are common in Christian hagiography and appear to underscore God’s protection of faithful Christians. A well-known example is the inability of pagans to kill Thecla because God repeatedly intervenes to thwart the execution (Acts of Paul and Thecla). In the Passion of Saints Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda, a hungry bear refused to harm the holy women (6). On the motif of animals refusing to harm holy persons, see Maureen Tilley, “Martyrs, Monks, Insects and Animals,” in The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays, ed. Joyce E. Salisbury (New York: Garland, 1993), 93–107.

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112. Daniel 3:25–27. 113. Donald G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 2001), 186. 114. PL. 8.762A. 115. On the relationships among the recensions, see F. C. Burkitt, “The Oldest Manuscript of St. Justin’s Martyrdom,” Journal of Theological Studies 11 (1910): 61–66; Gary A. Bisbee, “The Acts of Justin Martyr: A Form-Critical Study,” Second Century 3 (1983): 129–57; Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 63–64; and Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 89–93. 116. In James 2:22, to take but one example, Abraham’s faith was “perfected” (ἡ πίστις έτελειώθη) by his act of faith in preparing to sacrifice Isaac. 117. Musurillo’s translation in Acts of the Christian Martyrs focuses on dying rather than perfecting: Agape and Chione are said to “be consumed in the flames” (5.1) and Irene “died” (7.2). 118. Presumably σφραγίζω is used to denote a mark of approval, perhaps the sign of the cross. 119. On the narrative use of scent in early Christian texts, see Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 120. Grig, Making Martyrs, 82; Grig writes about Agnes, though the description of the audience’s gaze is equally applicable to Mart. Pol. 121. Prudentius’s account of Lawrence’s martyrdom presents an interesting complementary case, this time differentiated by faith allegiances. To pagans, Lawrence’s flesh smelled of roasting, whereas to Christians, his burning flesh smelled of nectar. “The same sense, varied by a different aura, in the one case brought on the nostrils an avenging horror, in the other charmed them with delight” (Peri. II.389–91). 122. Harvey, Scenting Salvation, 12. 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid., 14. 126. Miller suggests a similar shift—though perhaps with different aims—in Prudentius’s poems: “A rhetoric of gore yields to a rhetoric of liberation. By giving the martyrs’ stories detailed narrative life, and by undercutting the surface realism of the narratives with surreal images of spiritual intrusion into human life, Prudentius gave visual immediacy not only to a dead person’s life but also to the religious ideas that gave that life meaning” (Corporeal Imagination, 94–95). 127. See Scarry’s important work on the political interests served by torture. Scarry, for instance, notes that “the problem of pain is always bound up with the problem of power” (Body in Pain, 12). For a discussion of the political capital of torture and the infliction of pain in the ancient world, see Thomas Weidemann, Emperors and Gladiators (London: Routledge, 1992), 55–101. C HA P T E R 3

1. Although it has been argued that modern (in this case, post-1845) people are more sensitive to pain than were earlier people, I am not arguing for (or against) such a conclusion. It is not necessary to enter into this debate in order to argue that the postanalgesic

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world has a different relationship to pain than did the preanalgesic world. For arguments that sensitivities are different, see J. H. van den Berg, Leven in Mervoud (Nijkerk: G F. Callenbach, 1963); E. Seifert, Der Wandel im menschlichen Schmerzerleben (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1960); and discussion of these and other works in de Moulin, “HistoricalPhenomenological Study.” 2. Elm, “Roman Pain,” 42. See also Merback, Thief, 50. Rey writes, When scanning this quite lengthy period from Homer’s time to that of the Hippocratic texts, because the participants throughout this period are not comparable, it would be dangerous to try to extract some constant factors or a uniformity of practice in the answers to pain in Greek society. It is possible to go back and discover attitudes which endured, however, such as the acceptance of pain as an inevitable fact of life for both the ill and healthy alike. (History of Pain, 22) 3. For a survey of common diseases in the ancient world, see Vivian Nutton, Ancient Medicine (London: Routledge, 2004), 19–36. 4. Morris, Culture of Pain, 71. Similarly, F.J.J. Buytendijk observes, “Modern man takes offense at many things that used to be accepted with resignation. He takes offense at growing old, at a long sick-bed, frequently even at death, but certainly at pain. Its occurrence is inacceptible [sic]” (Over de pijn, 2nd ed. [Utrecht and Antwerp: Het Spectrum, 1957], 14–15; quoted in Moulin, “Historical-Phenomenological Study,” 541). 5. There is little evidence that in the ancient world preoperative anesthetics were ever used broadly. This may be related to concerns in the ancient world that linked pharmaka with magic. On the use of pharmaka in magic (including its appearance in the Twelve Tables), see Fritz Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). Much the same could be said for the early modern period as well. Van Dijkhuizen and Enenkel write, “early modern medicine also had a limited ability to mitigate pain (although some of the painkillers it prescribed are likely to have had at least some effect)” (“Introduction: Constructions of Physical Pain,” 8). 6. The leaves and bark of the willow tree contain one of the ingredients in aspirin— salicin—and references to the willow tree can be found in the Hippocratic Corpus. 7. Dioscorides, De Materia Medica lib. 4, cap. 75; Pliny, NH. 37.25.94; Galen, Method. med. 12.1; Galen, De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis 5.19; Galen, De Compositione Medicamentorum Secundum Locos, 7.5; Celsus, On Medicine, V.25. For a discussion of ancient remedies for pain, see Dormandy, Worst of Evils, 9–33. 8. Dormandy notes the unreliable effects of anesthetics known in the ancient world: “All the plant extracts recommended as anodynes or narcotics could also be fatal” (Worst of Evils, 31). Indeed, he notes that although such treatments might have been offered for surgery, there is no evidence of them being used to treat acute pain. 9. Perkins, Suffering Self, 2. 10. The Acts of Carpus is extant in two recensions. In the Greek recension (A), the martyr’s name is Papylus; in the Latin (B), it is Pamfilus. I have observed this distinction throughout. 11. In the Greek recension, as Carpus endures being scraped by claws he cries out not in pain but in confession: “I am a Christian” (Χριστιανός εἰμι; A23). Thereafter he grows exhausted and silent. In the Latin version, Musurillo translates the term laborauit with

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the English term “agony” (B2.4). If, however, he is correct about the relationship of the recensions—that the Latin is a translation of the Greek—we should read laborauit in light of the Greek term ἔκαμνεν (A23) to mean “he was tired” or “weary.” 12. On Prudentius’s poem on Romanus see Fruchtman, “Modeling a Martyrial Worldview,” 144–68; and Robert Levine, “Prudentius’ Romanus: The Rhetorician as Hero, Martyr, Satirist, and Saint,” Rhetorica 9 (1991): 5–38. 13. Liddell-Scott defines αἴσθησις broadly as “sense-perception” and “sensation,” used “esp. of pain.” 14. That the moment of disrobing results in an epiphany about the true nature of the body is reminiscent of Perpetua’s fourth vision (Pass. Perp.10.7). 15. The interaction between Flavian and Cyprian, aimed as it is at the comfort of the not-yet-dead, is reminiscent of reports of Arria the Elder’s words to her husband Paetus: “Paete, non dolet” (Pliny, Ep. 3.16.6; cf. Dio Cassius, Roman History 60.16.6; Martial, Epigrams 1.13.5). 16. Seneca writes, “The mark of true greatness is not to perceive [sentire] a blow” (De ira 3.25). 17. Augustine asks, “What was she enjoying, that she did not feel this?” (Quo fruens, ista non senserat?; Serm. 280.4). Throughout this section Augustine relies on two terms, dolor and sentio. Dolor is what the martyrs should have felt, Augustine suggests, yet the martyrs were insensitive to it. In Serm. 280, therefore, we see a continuation in the narrative tradition that distances the martyrs’ bodies from the experience of pain. Augustine stands as an ancient witness to the horizon of expectation regarding martyr narratives, an expectation that is activated (i.e., they should feel pain) but that is promptly denied (they do not feel the pain). 18. The exception occurs in 21.9 and will be discussed in chapter 4. 19. Craig Williams, “Perpetua’s Gender: A Latinist Reads the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in Perpetua’s Passions: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 68. 20. On the Acts of Gallonius, see Paolo Chiesa, “Un Testo Agiografico Africano ad Aquileia: Gli Acta di Gallonio e dei Martiri di Timida Regia,” Analecta Bollandiana 114 (1996): 241–68.3 21. PL. 8.761D. 22. PL. 8.762A. Grig explains that “the excesses of torture that follow demonstrate Marculus’ miraculous denial of pain” (Making Martyrs, 55). 23. PL. 8.769C. See discussion in Grig, Making Martyrs, 70. 24. PL. 8.693D. 25. PL. 8.693D. Tilley translates integer and inconcusus as “whole and unshaken” (Donatist Martyr Stories, 34). In a text that teaches that torture is “small and of no consequence” (10), however, we might understand the description of Dativus’s soul in stronger terms than this. The text asserts the impenetrability of the Christian spirit: the martyr’s body is wasted but his soul is “unhurt” (integer) and “unchanged” (inconcussus). 26. PL. 8.694C. 27. A similar claim may be found in Romanus’s speech as told by Prudentius. In comparing torture to various diseases and ailments, Romanus compares the torture to surgery: whereas the persecutors “appear to be rending my wasting limbs,” they are in reality giving “healing to the living substance within” (10.504–5).

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28. Brent Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1996): 309. 29. PL. 38.1253. 30. PL. 38.1254. 31. PL. 38.1256. 32. PL. 38.1256. 33. PL. 38.1256. 34. Clark, “Bodies and Blood,” 105 (emphasis added). 35. Isabelle Kinnard, “Imitatio Christi in Christian Martyrdom and Asceticism: A Critical Dialogue,” in Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Oliver Freiberger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 141. 36. Thomas J. Heffernan discusses the semantic range of conforto in relation to the Passion of Perpetua: “The Latin conforto is nuanced—suggesting a shaping of ideas, a bringing into harmony, a training of the will, educating and causing to agree (OLD, s.v. conforto)” (The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], 44). 37. The identity of the one who strengthens Pamfilus and endures for him is not specified. It is perhaps in episodes such as this that we are most clearly reminded of the development of early Christian theology: in some cases the martyr texts allow for positions that are closely akin to patripassianism, an ideology that would later become labeled heresy. This text is clearly uninterested in differentiating Jesus from God here. 38. The Passio has come down to us in both a Latin and a Greek form. Scholars are generally in agreement that the text was originally written in Latin. But there remains some uncertainty regarding the relationship of the extant Greek and Latin forms—whether, that is, the Greek represents an independent tradition, whether it is a translation of our Latin text, or whether the extant Greek and Latin texts share a common (no longer extant) Latin archetype. Also unclear is whether any of the visions were originally written in Greek, as opposed to the editorial prologue and conclusion, which appear to have been originally written in Latin. All critical editions of the text take up these issues. For a succinct history of the issues, see Bremmer and Formisano, eds., Perpetua’s Passions; and Jacqueline Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1996), esp. 51–66. J. Rendel Harris and Seth K. Gifford argue for the priority of the Greek text (The Acts of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas [London: C. J. Clay and Sons, Cambridge University Press, 1890]). For arguments relating to the priority of the Latin text, see J. Armitage Robinson, The Passion of S. Perpetua (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891; repr. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2004), esp. 1–15; Cornelius Johannes Maria Joseph van Beek, Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1936); P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, “Osservazione sopra alcuni Atti di martiri da Settimio Severo a Massimino Daza,” Nuovo bollettino di archelogia cristiana 10 (1904): 6–8; and Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, xxvii. For arguments that both the extant Latin and Greek descend from an earlier Latin text, see Jan Bremmer, “The Motivation of Martyrs: Perpetua and the Palestinians,” in Religion and Cultural Discourse: Essays in Honor of Hans G. Kippenberg on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. B. Luchesi and K. von Stuckrad (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 535; James W. Halporn, Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Bryn Mawr, PA: Thomas Library, Bryn Mawr College, 1984), 3; and Amat, Passion de Perpétue, 65. Adolf Hilgenfeld argues that the extant text is a translation of an original Punic text (“Zu dem Martyrium der Perpetua,” Zeitschrift

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für wissenschaftliche Theologie 34 [1891]: 367–69); Paul Monceaux argues that Saturus’s vision was penned in Latin but Perpetua’s visions were written in Greek (Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique chrétienne: Depuis les origins jusq’a l’invasion arabe, vol. 1: Tertullien et les origenes [Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901], 70–90); and Åke Fridh argues that Saturus’s vision was written in Greek while the rest of the Passio was written in Latin; thus the document was originally bilingual. Eventually, the Greek was translated into Latin, and finally, the entire Latin text was translated into Greek (Le Problème de la Passion des saintes Perpétue et Félicité. Studia graeca et Latina. Gothoburgensia 26 [Stockholm: Almqvist et Wiksell, 1968]). 39. This exchange demonstrates that dolor should not be understood as “grief,” as many who adhere to a distinction between physical and emotional pain suggest. On the rejection of the distinction between physical and mental sufferings, see the discussion in the Introduction. 40. In 17.1 the author asserts that the martyrs will find joy in their endurance (passionis suae felicitatem). In this way, perhaps, the Passio recalls Stoic expectations of the wise man whose actions are not affected by the experience of pain. It is possible, therefore, to interpret these instances of dolor in the Passio as indicating that Perpetua and Felicitas endured pain but were not persuaded by their painful experiences to veer from the path of martyrdom. See discussion in Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum,” 211. 41. In the Greek version of the Passion of Perpetua, πάσχω should not be translated as a synonym for “pain,” as the episode in 20.8 demonstrates. Here the author explains how it is that Perpetua did not know she had been tossed by the heifer: she was “in the spirit and under the influence of [παθοῦσα] ecstasy.” Certainly this example does not rule out a wide semantic range for πάσχω—even within this particular text—but it does suggest that the term may be used to signal something other than physical discomfort. In this case, as also in the episode relating Felicitas’s labor, πάσχω indicates the endurance of an experience. Thus the martyr is aided and comforted by the presence of the divine, and in both cases communion with the divine results in the martyrs’ insensitivity to pain. 42. Lists of potential tortures serve similar ends as descriptions of performed tortures: they remind the audience of the bodily trauma possible in persecution. On the recitation of past torture, see Grig, Making Martyrs, 68. 43. The distinction is not held uniformly throughout the text, however. For example, in describing Blandina’s torture, the author employs πάσχω (1.41, 1.56). However, ὑπομένω is more frequently used of the martyrs. 44. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 113. Elsewhere Moss echoes this same sentiment: Blandina “plays Christ so well that she disappears, the audience sees only Christ” (The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom [New York: HarperCollins, 2013], 71). Moss uses the term “deidentification” to describe Jesus’ replacement of the martyr, and it is a theme she traces throughout the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons. I understand the relationship of martyr and Jesus differently, as discussed above. This type of “deidentification,” however, does appear in the fourth-century Donatist martyr text The Passion of Maximian and Isaac. In this case when the narrator describes the torture of Maximian, the human martyr drops out altogether and is replaced in the agon with Jesus: “From this point on, who could describe the strength of Christ or the savagery of those mangling him, the torturers’ punishments or the victories of Christ, the extended insanity of their rage or the constancy of his Christian endurance?” (5; trans. Tilley, Donatist Martyr

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Stories, 66). Shortly thereafter, the narrator moderates the language such that Maximian is still present as the “clothing” Jesus wears: “But opposing them was Christ who was clothed in the limbs of his soldier” (5). 45. Elizabeth A. Goodine and Matthew W. Mitchell, “The Persuasiveness of a Woman: The Mistranslation and Misinterpretation of Eusebius; HE 5.1.41,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 13 (2005): 1–19. 46. Ibid., 4. 47. Ibid., 5. 48. Ibid., 4. 49. Streete, Redeemed Bodies, 16. 50. In the introduction to the letter, God is described as “the Father” and Jesus as “our Lord”; thus here I read “the Lord” as referring to Jesus. On the translation of this passage— and its importance within the letter—see Cobb, “Polycarp’s Cup.” 51. This is ultimately not a tenable position for the ideal reader to hold since the author repeatedly denigrates the bystanders as irrational. See the discussion of the crowd in Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 81–84. 52. The use of ἀποδημέω is much more evocative than Musurillo’s translation, “not present,” suggests. The term is used of those who journey abroad, who are away from home. In this case the body becomes the structure—the home—that is vacant; the martyrs have journeyed and now abide elsewhere, as the text goes on to suggest. 53. Χάρις does not appear to be used as a technical term in Mart. Pol., although it certainly carries much weight in other early Christian texts. In Mart. Pol. it seems most often to be a divine attribute (7.3, 20.2, 22.2). In 12.1 it is likely that Polycarp is filled with God’s χάρις. The only other use of the term is found in 3.1, where it is a formula for thanksgiving. In 2.3, then, I have translated the text as a subjective genitive. In two recent translations of the text, the difficulty in assessing the author’s meaning here is clear. Michael W. Holmes translates the phrase so as to highlight the ambiguity of the genitive: “the grace of Christ” (Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007], 309); while Bart D. Ehrman comes down squarely on the side of the objective genitive: “the gracious gift of Christ” (LCL, 369). 54. The manuscript tradition of Mart. Pol. 2.3 contains a variant: manuscript m reads ζωὴν and manuscript g reads κόλασιν: the martyrs either “purchase eternal life” or “buy off eternal punishment.” I have followed Lake (LCL) and Ehrman (LCL) in reading with manuscript m; though Holmes reads with g. Both readings make sense within the context of the passage. 55. Interestingly, the text sets up a scene in which none of the participants are understood to be human. The torturers are “inhuman” (ἀπανθρώπων) and the martyrs are “no longer human” (μηκέτι ἄνθρωποι). Thus the differences between them—evil versus good— are hyperexaggerated in the moment of torture. 56. This section of the letter does not ask the audience to imagine bodily torture apart from the analgesic presence of Christ. It is possible, however, given the emphasis on Christ’s aid to martyrs, that chapter 4 may be read as a warning about what happens when someone attempts to seek martyrdom apart from Jesus: rather than masculine fortitude, the person will become “unmanly.” This reading places God/Jesus as the main motivators of Christian endurance, rather than seeing the martyrs as unique examples of faithfulness. Whomever God chooses, in other words, is capable of endurance. The presence of God’s grace with the

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martyr also allows Polycarp to pray—he was “unable to be silent”—for two hours straight (7.3). 57. That the child was Jesus is made clear in Mart. Mont. 7.5. 58. PL. 8.761C-D. 59. PL. 8.761D. 60. PL. 8.762. 61. Interestingly, this text introduces a theme of food—and the avoidance of it—that may be reminiscent of Daniel. The martyrs are condemned to death during a ritual fast. Fructuosus’s Christian companions offer him drugged wine, but he refuses it, preferring to break his fast with the martyrs and prophets in heaven (3.2–3). 62. As Kinnard notes, “the martyrs story illustrates the continuing presence of Christ in the world and is thus reassuring” (“Imitatio Christi,” 141). 63. Serm. 274; PL. 38.1253. 64. Serm. 280.4; PL. 38.1283. 65. As Peter Brown has aptly observed, fourth- and fifth-century Christians came to martyria to “participate in the unearthly ‘glory’ of a moment of total triumph over pain and death. . . . For the martyrs had been rendered immune by God to the horrors inflicted on their flesh” (“Enjoying the Saints in Late Antiquity,” Early Medieval Europe 9 [2000]: 7). Brown goes on to note the sense of awe felt by late ancient Christians in the presence of one “in whose strangely altered body they sensed the presence of a mighty god” (“Enjoying the Saints,” 8). 66. PL. 8.762. 67. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 40. 68. PL. 8.762B. 69. A similar claim is made in the account of the martyrdom of Anahid: “Do not be amazed at this, sirs, for the Lord has sent his angel and he has healed my wounds by laying his hands on my body. If God can raise up the dead and restore them to life, how much more can he heal my wounds?” (The Martyrdom of Thekla, a Daughter of the Covenant and of Four Other Daughters of the Covenant with Her, 317, trans. Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987], 95). 70. PL. 8.713A. 71. PL. 8.713A. 72. The reference to his hair may be an allusion to Luke 21:18. 73. For a discussion of many of these themes in later Christian texts, such as Prudentius’s Liber Peristephanon, see Brown, “Enjoying the Saints.” 74. PL. 8.765B. 75. See the thorough discussion in Mary Beard, Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 155. 76. Laurence’s statement is explicitly cast as humorous: Prudentius characterizes it as having been said “in jest” (ludibundus); during the repartee that precedes the execution, the prefect grows angry at Laurence’s speech because he appears to be laughing at the prefect; the prefect describes Laurence with the terms “mimus” and “saltas fabulam,” which place Laurence in the category of the comic (II.313–20). The Legenda Aurea offers an interesting emendation. In this version of the legend, St. Laurence says to Decius: “Learn, thou cursed

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wretch, that thy coals give to me refreshing of coldness. . . . And after this he said with a glad cheer unto Decius, Thou cursed wretch, thou hast roasted that one side, turn that other, and eat” (4.36). Conybeare demonstrates the gendered aspects of Laurence’s jesting, which stands at odds with the aggressive hegemonic masculinity of the persecutor (“Ambiguous Laughter,” 175–202). Beard discusses the portrayal of Laurence as scurra in Prudentius’s account (Laughter in Ancient Rome, 154–55). 77. James A. Thorson, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Morgue: Some Thoughts on Humor and Death, and a Taxonomy of the Humor Associated with Death,” Death Studies 9 (1985): 206. 78. Gary Meltzer, “Dark Wit and Black Humor in Seneca’s Thyestes,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 118 (1988): 309. Meltzer goes on to discuss the cannibalism at the heart of Thyestes: Thyestes “directs one’s attention away from the hideous spectacle of his children’s severed heads to the hideous condition of Atreus’ soul. The effect of Thyestes’ remark . . . is to shift the focus from the victim to the victimizer” (323). 79. The insightful work of Andrew McGowan on cannibalism is applicable here. “Eating People: Accusations of Cannibalism against Christians in the Second Century” Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 413–442. 80. Meltzer, “Dark Wit,” 330. 81. E. B. White and Katharine S. White, “The Preaching Humorist,” Saturday Review of Literature 24 (1941): 16. 82. Sigmund Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious (New York: Moffat and Yard, 1916), 378. 83. Paul Lewis, Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humor in Literature (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 8. For discussions of other instances of gallows humor in ancient literature, see Dorota M. Dutsch, Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy: On Echoes and Voices. Oxford Studies in Classical Literature and Gender Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 125–26; Erich Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968); and Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer, eds., Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World: Cultural Interaction and the Creation of Identity in Late Antiquity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 2. 84. As Paul Lewis observes, “It is humorous by virtue of insisting on the right to be humorous in spite of unpleasant facts” (“Joke and Anti-Joke: Three Jews and a Blindfold,” Journal of Popular Culture 21 [1987]: 71). 85. Ibid. 86. On the intentionality of gallows humor, see James A. Thorson, “Did You Ever See A Hearse Go By? Some Thoughts on Gallows Humor,” Journal of American Culture 16 (1993): 18. 87. Wendy Doniger relates one well-known story: As World War II drew to a close, the advancing Russians came upon a town only recently vacated by the retreating Germans. They went to the Jewish ghetto and found that every single Jew, man, woman, and child had been hung from hastily erected gallows. As they stared in silence, one Russian said to another, “Look what a horrible thing those barbaric Germans have done; they have hung every single Jew

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in the town.” “Yes,” said the other, “it is a terrible thing. They didn’t leave a single one for us to hang.” (“Terror and Gallows Humor: After September 11?” www.press.uchicago .edu/sites/daysafter/911doniger.html) 88. Jean François Steiner, Treblinka (London: Weidenfelt and Nicholson, 1967), 204. 89. Willie Smyth, “Challenger Jokes and the Humor of Disaster,” Western Folklore 45 (1986): 254. 90. Lewis, Comic Effects, 69. 91. Elliott Oring, “Jokes and the Discourse of Disaster,” Journal of American Folklore 100 (1987): 284. 92. “Fast Chat The Onion,” Newsweek, 15 October 2011, p. 9, www.newsweek.com/fastchat-onion-154021 93. Beard, Laughter in Ancient Rome, 18. 94. See the thorough discussion in ibid., 155. 95. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories, 23. 96. The martyrs appear to be punning on the term fatuus, which can refer to tasteless food or to a foolish individual. 97. On consummo versus consumo, see discussion in Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 358. Heffernan prefers consumo because it dramatizes the moment more. But the Greek recension reads τελειοῦμαι, which recalls other martyr texts that focus on martyrdom as perfection. 98. See discussion in Garrett G. Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 76. Robinson refers to this episode as a “coarse jest” (Passion of S. Perpetua, 8). Margaret R. Miles suggests this may be a phrase from a ritual sacrifice to Saturn (Rereading Historical Theology: Before, during, and after Augustine [Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2008], 76). If that is the case, the potential for humor is elevated since the text rejects the pagan practice as it affirms Christian salvation through baptism. Another case of humor in martyr texts from pagans rather than Christians may occur in the Martyrdom of Fructuosus: “Aemilianus, the ruler, said to Fructuosus: ‘Are you a bishop?’ Fructuosus said, ‘I am.’ Amelianus said, ‘You were’ ” (2.8–9). 99. See Heffernan’s discussion of this pun, particularly his observation that the Greek author either misses it or rejects it (Passion of Perpetua, 359). 100. On double entendre in ancient humor, see Beard, Laughter in Ancient Rome, 117. 101. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. J. Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), 162. 102. Smyth, “Challenger Jokes,” 255. 103. Lewis, Comic Effects, 14. 104. Rod A. Martin, The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach (Burlington, Mass.: Elsevier Academic Press, 2007), 19. 105. Erin Runions, “From Disgust to Humor: Rahab’s Queer Affect,” Postscripts 4 (2008): 52. 106. Oring, “Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster,” 284. 107. Peter Farb, “Speaking Seriously about Humor,” Massachusetts Review 22 (1981): 764, 765, 766. 108. Linda E. Francis, “Laughter, the Best Medicine: Humor as Emotion Management in Interaction,” Symbolic Interaction 17 (1994): 147. See also Lewis, Comic Effects, 37. Impor-

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tant analyses of Jewish humor during World War II suggest that humor both “bolsters the resistance of the victims and, at the same time, undermines the morale of the oppressors” (Antonin J. Obrdlik, “ ‘Gallows Humor’—A Sociological Phenomenon,” American Journal of Sociology 47 [1942]: 713). 109. Oring, “Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster,” 282. 110. Lewis, Comic Effects, 13. 111. The most recent discussion of the low rates of prosecution is that of Candida Moss, Myth of Persecution. C HA P T E R 4

1. Grig begins her study of early Christian martyrdom with the assertion that early Christians “made” martyrs: “This ‘making’ was a matter of representation: of text and image. The story made the martyr” (Making Martyrs, 161–218). 2. De Wet, Preaching Bondage, 215. 3. This chapter expands our purview to include injury apart from explicit statements of pain. This broader perspective coheres with my arguments above relating to horizons of expectation. When audience assumptions about the relationship between injury and pain are not reframed, the preexisting expectation stands: injury leads to pain. 4. For example, Fructuosus and his companions were “happy” (4.2). 5. As Heffernan observes, the emotionality of this text differentiates it “from the idealizing propensity of many of the Acts of the Martyrs” (Passion of Perpetua, 161). 6. Pass. Perp. 3.6–9; Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 164. 7. Other terms used include sollicitus (3.6, 8, 9); suffero (3.5); tabesco (3.8); contristo (15.3); and luctus (15.2). For a discussion of dolor in Augustine, see Josef Lössl, “Dolor, dolere,” Augustinus-Lexikon 2.3/4 (1999): 581–91. For a discussion of patior, see below. 8. Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 97–107. Augustine comments on this section of the Passion: Perpetua “despised his words, but nonetheless felt pain [condoleret] at his beating. Certainly she felt pain [doluit] at the affront on her old parent” (Serm. 281.2). 9. During this time the most common form of marriage was sine manu, under which women remained part of their father’s family. For discussions of Roman marriage, see Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). 10. Augustine (An. orig. I.XII [X]) understands this vision—the authorship of which, interestingly, he questions—to reflect the punishment of postbaptismal sin, from which Perpetua’s prayers saved her brother. Although we might label this type of pain “emotional” or “mental” pain (or “anguish”) and thus distinguish it from physical pain, Morris argues that this (“Myth of the Two Pains,” as he calls it) is a modern and artificial division (Morris, Culture of Pain, 9). 11. Perkins, Suffering Self, 108. 12. See also Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 170. 13. Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 212–13. Heffernan mentions a textual variant in manuscript N “which reads pati instead of petere, and thus has Perpetua say that she knew she was worthy to ‘suffer’ for him” (213).

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14. Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 229. See also Jan N. Bremmer, “The Passion of Perpetua and the Development of Early Christian Afterlife,” Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 54 (2000): 109. 15. In terms of analogy—if not Christology—we might push the comparison even more: as Perpetua feels pain on behalf of Dinocrates (7.8), so Jesus will endure on behalf of the Christian martyrs (15.7). It is not necessary to assume an equivalence of vicarious suffering—that the martyrs are equal to Jesus—in order to see a type of foreshadowing in the vision. 16. Kate Cooper argues that Perpetua’s father may have been Christian, but of the antimartyrdom sort. Even if that were the case, Perpetua must still sever familial ties in her quest for martyrdom (“A Father, A Daughter and a Procurator: Authority and Resistance in the Prison Memoir of Perpetua of Carthage,” Gender and History 23 [2011]: 691). 17. See Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 103; on Perpetua’s separation from her family, see 97–107. 18. Augustine summarizes this section by asserting that Perpetua’s “pain did not hold back the firmness of her resolve and it added glory to her endurance” (proinde et dolor ille nihil retraxit robori fortitudinis, et aliquid addidit laudibus passionis; Serm. 281.2). 19. On the masculinization—and complications to this—of the female martyr, see Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 97–107. 20. This exchange demonstrates that dolor should not be understood as merely “grief.” See also the rejection of the distinction between physical and mental sufferings in Morris, Culture of Pain, 9. We need not, however, be militaristic in translation; there are times when “grief ” or “sadness” is indeed the most appropriate translation of dolor, as for instance in Mart. Fruct. 3.2 where dolor is contrasted to gaudeo: the Christians were glad rather than sad. 21. In Pass. Perp. 17.1, the author asserts that the martyrs will find joy in their endurance (passionis suae felicitatem). 22. In this way, perhaps, the Passion recalls Stoic expectations of the wise man whose actions are not affected by the experience of pain. It is possible, therefore, to interpret these instances of dolor in the Passion as indicating that Perpetua and Felicitas endured pain but were not persuaded by their painful experiences to veer from the path of martyrdom. See discussion in Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum,” 211. 23. The Greek text used in what follows is that of Amat, Passion. 24. Kate Cooper, Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women (New York: Overlook Press, 2013), 115–16. Maureen Tilley makes the argument about martyr texts providing templates for ascetic discipline in “The Ascetic Body and the (Un)Making of the World of the Martyr,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59 (1991): 467–79. Augustine makes precisely this point—that Christians must resist the persuasion of family—in Serm. 159A, where he mentions specifically Perpetua and Felicitas (159A.11). 25. On the text’s emphasis on the divine sign and its import for this passage, see Cobb, “Polycarp’s Cup.” 26. Candida R. Moss problematizes the notion of voluntary martyrdom in “The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern,” Church History 81 (2012): 531–51. 27. On unmanliness in martyr texts, see Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 22, 87–90. 28. Mary Francis McDonald, trans., Lactantius: The Minor Works. The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 54 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1965), 122.

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29. PL. 7.201A. 30. PL. 7.201B–202A. 31. PL. 7.203A. 32. PL. 7.246A. 33. PL. 247A. 34. Cf. Eusebius’s account of Galerius’s death, H.E. 8.16.4–5, who adds that the physicians who were unable to cure Galerius were executed. 35. In relation to Donatist martyr texts, Grig has argued that the projection of pain “back onto the inflictor, as seen in the case of the Donatist martyrs, is only a foretaste of the mighty reversal of suffering to come at the end of time when the persecutors will become the persecuted” (Making Martyrs, 70). I argue that the same is true for the earlier martyr texts. 36. The fourth-century Acts are extant in two versions (I and II), both of which are shorter than the Passion, and may have been created to meet liturgical needs for a shorter account of the martyrdoms. On the production of the Acts for liturgical purposes, see Brent Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” Past and Present 139 (1993): 36; Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 81, 442; and Robinson, Passion of S. Perpetua, 15. Most analyses assume a literary relationship between the Passion and the Acta. Important exceptions to the assumption of literary dependency are James W. Halporn (“Literary History and Generic Expectations in the Passio and Acta Perpetuae,” Vigiliae Christianae 45 [1991]: 223–41); and Ross Kraemer and Shira Lander (“Perpetua and Felicitas,” in The Early Christian World, vol. 2, ed. Philip Francis Esler [London: Routledge, 2000]: 1048–68). 37. Grig, Making Martyrs, 70. 38. See Grig’s discussion of Vincent’s martyrdom in Making Martyrs, 72. On Prudentius’s varying presentations of pain in martyrdom, see Fruchtman, “Modeling a Martyrial Worldview,” 144–45. 39. PL. 8.762A–762B. 40. PL. 8.693A. 41. PL. 8.696A. 42. PL. 8.696A. 43. PL. 8.698A. 44. PL. 8.770C. See discussion in Grig, Making Martyrs, 70. 45. Serm. 276 (PL. 38.1257). 46. Eusebius narrates a similar event in H.E. 8.7.2. In this case the animals that were to kill the Christians in Tyre did not approach them but instead attacked the persecutors. 47. ὥστε can indicate an accomplished act or the intention or goal of an act. Given this text’s insistence on the impassibility of Pionius and on the inability of torture to effect dissolution of the body, or even its disfigurement, I read ὥστε in the latter sense: the soldier hit Pionius in an attempt to wound him. The interpretation that follows is not, however, discounted by a reading that privileges accomplished action. 48. PL. 8.771A. 49. PL. 8.771B. 50. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 294. 51. Ibid. 52. See Heffernan’s discussion of the use of swords in Passion of Perpetua, 268.

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53. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua, 174. 54. Ibid.; Peter Habermehl, Perpetua und der Ägypter oder Bilder des Bösen im frühen afrikanischen Christentum: Ein Versuch zur Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992), 77. 55. See Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 201; Peter Garnsey, “The Criminal Jurisdiction of Governors,” Journal of Roman Studies 58 (1968): 52, 55; and A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament: The Sarum Lectures 1960–1961 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 8–10. 56. Amat, Passion, 242. See also W. H. Shewring’s note on this passage: “The narrator’s words are not clear, but seem to mean that Secundulus was beheaded in prison” (The Passion of SS. Perpetua and Felicity [London: Sheed and Ward, 1931], 34). 57. Heffernan is, to my knowledge, the only scholar to posit rumors of apostasy as an explanation for the author’s statement. Other commentators may nod at the vagueness of the phrase (e.g., Joyce Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman [New York: Routledge, 1997], 115; and Amat, Passion, 242). More commonly, however, it is simply not discussed. 58. Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 301. Secundulus’s name was included with the other martyrs’ on an inscription in Carthage, which suggests that any such rumors—if they existed—were not ultimately compelling to the church. 59. PL. 38.1284. 60. Indeed, the editor adds an aside to this effect. He writes, “It may be that so great a woman could not otherwise be killed, feared as she was by the unclean spirit, unless she herself willed it” (21.10). 61. Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 355. 62. Williams, “Perpetua’s Gender,” 75. See also Edwards, “Suffering Body,” 262; Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity,” 285–86; Cicero, Tusc. 2; and Seneca, Ep. 78. 63. On the gender implications of this scene, see also Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 107. 64. This same terminological shift also occurs in the scene in which Perpetua is tossed by the heifer: in pulling down her tunic, Perpetua thinks “more about shame [αἰδου˜ς] than distress [πόνων]” (XX.4). Although the Latin author introduces the possibility of pain here, the Greek author may work against that option: if πένομαι is used in distinction to ἀλγέω, then the author rejects pain as an experience in this scene. Interestingly, the Greek text contains what appears to be a secondary gloss—αἰδουμένη, μηδαμῶς φροντίσασα τῶν ἀλγηδόνων (“being ashamed, not paying attention to pain”)—that introduces, unequivocally, the experience of pain. This clause, however, has not been accepted by most translators (see Amat, Passion, 256) and seems to contradict the more general thrust of the Greek text. 65. Only rarely—according to Liddell and Scott—does the term refer to a cry of pain. While we must be sensitive to the limits of lexical work in assessing a term’s meaning in any particular context, it is nevertheless interesting that the terms chosen by both the Greek and Latin authors are not those that are widely associated with physical pain in the ancient world. See Liddell and Scott entry under ἀλαλαγή. For the use of ἀλαλαγή as a battle cry, see Xenophon, An. 5.2.14, 6.5.27. The use of both πονός and ἀλαλαγή, therefore, may bring martial imagery, as opposed to pain, into play. 66. In neither form of the Acta is there reference to Perpetua’s cry of pain when being struck by a gladiator’s sword, and there is no reference to her guiding the sword to her own

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throat. Thus later accounts of the deaths of Perpetua and Felicitas appear to be more adamant in their rejection of pain as an experience of martyrs. 67. The version of the text used by Eusebius contains a number of distinctive readings, many of which agree with the text extant in the Codex Mosquensis 159. See Bart D. Ehrman, trans., Apostolic Fathers, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 363. 68. Ehrman, Apostolic Fathers; Holmes, Apostolic Fathers; Kirsopp Lake, trans., Apostolic Fathers, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985). 69. Rufinus’s abbreviated Latin version contains no explicit references to pain. 70. See the discussion in Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, xlvi; and Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 146–47. 71. Grig, Making Martyrs, 16. 72. Tertullian’s enthusiasm for martyrdom is often associated with Montanism. See, for instance, Graham Stanton, Studies in Matthew and Early Christianity, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 309 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 397. 73. ANF 3:231. 74. Ronald E. Heine assigns both of these statements to the Montanist prophets (The Montanist Oracles [Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1989], 7). 75. Tertullian does discuss the pain experienced by souls in hell, in An. 7.1. 76. ANF 3:694. For an insightful discussion of Ad martyras, see David Wilhite, Tertullian the African: An Anthropological Reading of Tertullian’s Context and Identities (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 162–67. See also Gerald Bray, Holiness and the Will of God: Perspectives on the Theology of Tertullian (London: Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1979). 77. PG. 50.647. 78. PG. 50.647. 79. PG. 50.647. 80. See discussion in John Ernest Leonard Oulton and Henry Chadwick, Library of Christian Classics, vol. 2: Alexandrian Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 388–92; and Ronald E. Heine, “Origen,” in The Routledge Companion to Early Christian Thought, ed. D. Jeffrey Bingham (London: Routledge, 2010), 200. On Origen’s Exhortation and its relationship to 4 Maccabees, see David A. DeSilva, “An Example of How to Die Nobly for Religion: The Influence of 4 Maccabees on Origen’s Exhortatio ad Martyrium,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 (2009): 337–56. On Origen’s views of martyrdom more generally, see Thomas P. Scheck, Origen: Homilies 1–14 on Ezekiel (New York: Newman Press, 2010), 18–21. 81. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 52; on the cultic and sacrificial imagery in Exhortation to Martyrdom, see Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 52–53. See also Prosper Hartmann, “Origène et la théologie du martyre d’après le ΠΡΟΤΡΕΠΤΙΚΟΣ DE 235,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 34 (1958): 773–824; and George Heyman, The Power of Sacrifice: Roman and Christian Discourses in Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2007), 206–9. 82. Rowan Greer, Origen, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 26. 83. PG. 11.600. 84. PG. 11.584.

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85. PG. 11.584. 86. PG. 11.592; cf. 2 Macc 6:30. 87. PG. 11.596. 88. PG. 31.516. 89. PG. 31.517. 90. PG. 31.517. 91. PL. 38.1282. 92. PL. 38.1282. 93. PL. 38.1254. 94. PL. 38.1254. 95. PG. 50.670. 96. PG. 50.667. 97. PG. 50.667. 98. PG. 50.667. 99. PG. 50.667. 100. On this homily, see Johan Leemans, “Hagiography and Historical-Critical Analysis: The Earliest Layer of the Dossier of Theodore the Recruit (BHG 1760 and 1761),” in Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Antique Christianity: Festschrift Boudewijn Dehandschutter, ed. J. Leemans (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 135–60; “Style and Meaning in Gregory of Nyssa’s Panegyrics on Martyrs,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 81 (2005): 109–29; “Grégoire de Nysse et Julien l’Apostat: Polémique antipaīenne et identité chrétienne dans le Panégyrique de Téodore,” Revue des études augustiniennes 53 (2007): 15–33; and Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 45–46. 101. PG. 46.737. 102. PG. 46.737. 103. PG. 46.748. 104. PG. 46.745. 105. Gregory’s homily is the earliest documentary evidence for the martyrdom of Theodore, followed by the Passion of St. Theodore. Although the Passion postdates Gregory, it is possible that Gregory was familiar with oral traditions of Theodore that influenced his account of the martyrdom itself. Leemans compares Gregory’s homily with the Passion in “Hagiography and Historical-Critical Analysis.” 106. Translation based on the Greek text of Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Légendes grecques des saints militaires (Paris: A. Picard, 1909), 130. 107. On the relationship of the Passion of Theodore and the Martyrdom of Polycarp, see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, “Attorno al più antico testo del Martyrium S. Theodori Tironis,” in Note agiografiche III (Studi e testi 22), ed. P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri (Rome: Tipografia poliglotta vaticana, 1909), 91–107; and “La Passio S. Theagenis,” in Note agiografiche IV (Studi e testi 24), ed. P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri (Rome: Tipografia poliglotta vaticana, 1912), 179–85. See discussion in Christopher Walter, “Theodore, Archetype of the Warrior Saint,” Revue des études byzantines 57 (1999): 166; and Leemans, “Hagiography and Historical-Critical Analysis.” 108. Alternatively, the Passion may have reframed the materials. Leemans argues that the Passion and Gregory’s homily are not literarily related but rather represent independent

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streams of tradition based on existing hagiographical (written or oral) traditions (“Hagiography and Historical-Critical Analysis”). 109. PG. 46.768. 110. PG. 46.769. 111. For an example of the ways later texts reframe earlier ones, see Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 109–110, on Augustine’s sermons on Perpetua and Felicitas. C HA P T E R 5

1. Leopold von Ranke, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (Leipzig: Dunker und Humblot, 1874), vii. 2. As Brent Shaw has observed, the body is “the critical site of power discourses that flow through it and are inscribed upon it—a substance at the epicenter of the microactions and resistances that constitute and are power” (“Body/Power/Identity,” 309). 3. Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4. 4. Lincoln, Discourse, 4. Lincoln argues that force is always “something of a stopgap measure: effective in the short run, unworkable over the long haul” (4). 5. Ibid., 8. 6. See discussion in ibid., 5. 7. As Heyman notes, “the more a less dominant subgroup like the early Christians could persuade ideologically and emotionally, the more they would destabilize the ideological borders of the dominant Roman world” (Heyman, Power of Sacrifice, 171). See also Lincoln, Discourse, 9, 23, 35. 8. Todd Klutz, “The Rhetoric of Science in The Rise of Christianity: A Response to Rodney Stark’s Sociological Account of Christianization,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 184. 9. As Brent Shaw reads the discourse of martyrdom: “bodies could be self-inscribed with ideologies that ran wholly contrary to those of the dominant power. Individuals could choose to forge and hold ideas about themselves and their bodies independently of the set repertoire presented to them” (“Body/Power/Identity,” 311). 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 269. 12. Moss has most recently reminded us that prosecution of Christians was not widespread (Myth of Persecution). While such reminders are important, I agree with Caroline Walker Bynum who argues that “neither research that minimizes the numbers of martyrs nor interpretation that draws parallels between pagan and Christian behaviors should be used to suggest that fear of martyrdom was an insignificant motive in shaping Christian mentality” (The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200–1336 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1995], 44). 13. Morris, Culture of Pain, 42. 14. Stoicism and Christian apocalyptic expectation may be related. See J. Albert Harrill, “Stoic Physics, the Universal Conflagration, and the Eschatological Destruction of the ‘Ignorant and Unstable’ in 2 Peter,” in Stoicism in Early Christianity, ed. Tuomas Rasimus,

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Troels Engberg-Pedersen, and Ismo Dunderberg (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2010), 115–40. 15. Lincoln, Discourse, 38. 16. Streete, Redeemed Bodies, 121. 17. Lincoln, Discourse, 38. 18. David Frankfurter makes this point when he argues that communities like the one that produced the Passion of Perpetua devoted themselves to “actualizing an other-worldly status” (“The Legacy of Jewish Apocalypses in Early Christianity: Regional Trajectories,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, ed. James C. VanderKam and William Adler [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996], 168). 19. As David Frankfurter has argued, “apocalyptic literature . . . provided a principal instrument of martyrological propaganda” (“Early Christian Apocalypticism: Literature and the Social World,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, vol. 1: The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, ed. Bernard McGinn and John J. Collins [New York: Continuum, 1998], 436). 20. See, for instance, Cecil M. Robeck, Prophecy in Carthage: Perpetua, Tertullian, and Cyprian (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1992), 25; Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion, 102; Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 398, 400–401; and Jean Daniélou, The Origins of Latin Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 60. On apocalypticism in the Passion, see Amat, Passion de Perpétue, 45; Moss, Other Christs, 129–30, 136–37; Daniélou, Origins of Latin Christianity, 59–62; Donald W. Riddle, “From Apocalypse to Martyrology,” Anglican Theological Review 9 (1927): 271–72; Rowland, Open Heaven, 396–402; Shewring, Passion of SS. Perpetua and Felicity, xxii; and Robin Darling Young, In Procession before the World: Martyrdom as Public Liturgy in Early Christianity (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2001), 11. The apocalypticism of the Passion is so pervasive that Frankfurter has argued it is an attempt “to reformulate Jewish apocalyptic literature” (“Legacy of Jewish Apocalypses,” 137). 21. Streete writes that the persecutors “are even now defeated by the cumulative actions of the martyrs, as they will be in some hoped-for and eternally soon-to-be-achieved future” (Redeemed Bodies, 121). 22. This interpretation of Jesus’ miracles—particularly exorcisms—is widespread. See, for instance, Eric Sorensen, Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 129. 23. The list is reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt and those of Revelation. 24. The whiteness of the horse in Revelation signals victory (cf. Rev. 2:17, 3:5). Here then the symbolism is victory through martyrdom. See discussion in Wilfrid J. Harrington, Revelation. Sacra Pagina Series, 16 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1993), 89–90. 25. As Moss has argued, “ideologies of martyrdom shaped not only community selfdefinition and Christian identity, but also the construction of the body itself ” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 166). 26. See discussion in Bynum, Resurrection; and Claudia Setzer, Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Doctrine, Community, and Self-Definition (Boston: Brill, 2004). 27. Setzer, Resurrection, 81.

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28. See Robert M. Grant, “Resurrection of the Body,” Journal of Religion 28 (1948): 120– 30; and Setzer, Resurrection, 99–108. 29. The martyr texts do not, as Moss rightly points out, portray one Christian view of resurrection but rather preserve the variety of early Christian positions (Other Christs, 123–24). 30. Eliezer Gonzalez argues—primarily on the basis of Saturus’s vision—that the Passion of Perpetua contains “a discourse that does not involve the physical body and its resurrection” (“Anthropologies of Continuity,” 491). Thus, according to Gonzalez, the Passion posits a corporeal spirit akin to Stoic philosophical thought, but displays no interest in the continuity of the flesh. But even if one were persuaded by Gonzalez’s arguments regarding the corporality of the soul in Saturus’s vision, we need not assume all of the strands of tradition contained in the Passion are identical. It seems most likely that the text records varying positions on material continuity. 31. Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 233. 32. There is an imperial critique implied here as well: Roman aqueducts made life possible in many parts of North Africa. Without Roman engineering, there could not be civilization in many areas. But this vision promises eternally available water, divine water, living water. 33. Bremmer, “Passion of Perpetua,” 102. 34. Gonzalez, “Anthropologies of Continuity,” 491. 35. Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 274, emphasis added; cf. 276. 36. On the centrality of caro (as opposed to soma or corpus), see Bynum, Resurrection, 26. 37. On authorship issues related to Saturus’s vision, see Bremmer, “Passion of Perpetua,” 100; Jacqueline Amat, “L’Authenticité de songes de la Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité,” Augustinianum 29 (1989): 177–91; Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 61. 38. See discussion in Bynum, Resurrection, 29. Moss notes that not all discussions of martyrdom posit the healing of wounds. Augustine, for instance, “appears torn” between wanting the martyrs’ marks to be reminders of their witnessing and desiring no wounds in heaven (“Heavenly Healing: Eschatological Cleansing and the Resurrection of the Dead in the Early Church,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79 [2011]: 1010). 39. See discussion in Setzer, Resurrection, 79; and Moss, “Heavenly Healing,” 1004–6. 40. See discussion in Robert M. Grant, “Theophilus of Antioch to Autolycus,” Harvard Theological Review 40 (1947): 238. 41. See discussion in Moss, “Heavenly Healing,” 1006–8. 42. Bynum, Resurrection, 43. See also Setzer, Resurrection, 123, 145–46. 43. Bynum, Resurrection, 44. 44. Bynum rightly notes that recent scholarship on the rarity of persecution of Christians is unrelated to the fear of persecution that drives the production of Christian literature (Resurrection, 44). 45. Bynum writes, “the persecuted want to claim that those who die for their faith will be rewarded in another life with the good fortune they have clearly in some sense been denied in this one” (Resurrection, 47). 46. Bynum notes, for instance, that Mart. Pol. collapses resurrection and martyrdom imagery. In the description of Polycarp’s body that remains unharmed by the fire, “the images are exactly those we find in theological treatises about resurrection, but here

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the martyr becomes while still on earth the hard and beautiful minerals or undigested bread all our bodies will finally become at the end of time” (Resurrection, 50). The martyr texts, then, may translate rewards that are typically otherworldly and future to the here and now. 47. Perkins argues that “Christians, as the Acts of the Martyrs have shown, offered their bodies as texts for their neighbors to read as proof for the reality of another world” (Suffering Self, 172). 48. Luke 21:19. Didascalia Apostolorum 19 specifically relates this Lukan passage to the resurrection promise. 49. Or relatedly, how is a liquid received into the hands? See the discussion in Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua, 182–83; and Amat, Passion, 206–7. 50. In this case scholars have argued that Montanists used cheese in celebrations of Eucharist. See for example Rex Butler, The New Prophecy and ‘New Visions’: Evidence of Montanism in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2006), 95; and discussion in William Tabbernee, “Initiation/Baptism in the Montanist Movement,” in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, ed. David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Øyvind Norderval, and Christer Hellholm (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 933. 51. This vision exhibits Jewish influences. See A. P. Orbán, “The Afterlife in Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in Fructus centesimus: Melanges offerts a G. J. M. Bartelink à l’occasion de son soixante-cinquième anniversaire, ed. A.A.R. Bastiaensen, Anthony Hilhorst, and Corneille H. Kneepkens, Instrumenta Patristica, 19 (Steenbrugis: Abbatia S. Petri, 1989), 271–72. Amat suggests that the sweetness serves as a marker of the veracity of the dream (Passion, 207). 52. Bynum, Resurrection, 45. Bynum suggests that Christian apologists both “cultivated and proselytized for the expressionism of suffering” and that they “held out to potential martyrs the promise of an ‘anesthesia of glory’ against pain” (45n94). 53. Ibid., 46. 54. Michel Foucault argues that the “torture of the execution anticipates the punishments of the beyond; it shows what they are; it is the theatre of hell; the cries of the condemned man, his struggles, his blasphemies, already signify his irremediable destiny” (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan [New York: Vintage, 1979], 46). 55. So reads the Vulgate; where Vetus Latina includes this phrase, the manuscripts employ dolor; see Roger Gryson, ed., Vetus Latina: Die Reste der Altlateinischen Bibel 26/2: Apocalypsis Johannis (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 2003). 56. Augustine, City of God, 20.17. 57. Robert W. Wall argues that for John, the new Jerusalem is a metaphor for “the eschatological people of God” and, thus, “hope is centered in the prospect not of a heavenly place but of transformed human existence” (Revelation, New International Bible Commentary [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1991], 243). 58. As Bynum notes, “preachers and teachers sometimes suggested that the ability of the martyrs to withstand pain or corruption was owing to an assimilation of their bodies on earth to the glorified bodies of heaven” (Fragmentation and Redemption, 267). 59. Bynum, Resurrection, 50.

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60. Setzer, Resurrection 77, 153. 61. On Tertullian’s argument about the unity of soul and body, particularly as it affects views of resurrection, see Setzer, Resurrection, 141. According to Gonzalez, in De Anima Tertullian follows Stoic philosophy in positing some real, though limited corporeality to the soul such that it is able to suffer in some limited ways without the body. But in Apology, Tertullian contradicts his earlier statements on the susceptibility of the soul to suffering (“Anthropologies of Continuity,” 485–87). 62. Brent Shaw, “The Divine Economy: Stoicism as Ideology,” Latomus 44 (1985): 18. 63. Shaw, “Divine Economy,” 21. 64. Scholarship on Stoicism and Christianity is vast. See, for instance, the essays in Tuomas Rasimus, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, and Ismo Dunderberg, Stoicism in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2010). For a discussion of ways Christian use of Stoicism’s categories fundamentally changed their meaning, see Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), 368–69. 65. On ways Christians denounced Stoicism as a philosophy but claimed its virtues and ideals, see the insightful discussion by Nicola Denzey, “Facing the Beast: Justin, Christian Martyrdom, and Freedom of the Will,” in Stoicism in Early Christianity, ed. Tuomas Rasimus, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, and Ismo Dunderberg (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2010), 176–99. 66. See, for instance, Aune, “Mastery”; Denzey, “Facing the Beast”; Carole Straw, “A Very Special Death: Christian Martyrdom in Its Classical Context,” in Sacrificing the Self: Perspectives in Martyrdom and Religion, ed. Margaret Cormack (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 39–57; and Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 65, 88, 95–96. 67. Denzey, “Facing the Beast,” 183. 68. The name of the genre is taken from Pliny’s characterization of a collection of death accounts collected by Titinius Capito (Ep. 8.12.4). 69. Alessandro Ronconi’s famous definition of these texts is: “antimonarchial literary works with a Stoic imprint that seek to glorify the victims of the Caesars’ tyranny” (“Exitus Illustrium Virorum,” Reallexicon für Antike und Christentum 6 [1966]: 1258). Mark Morford argues, “Such a body of writing would be an appropriate source for an historian wishing to record the deaths of viri illustres, victims of a regime that had perverted the concept of the res publica” (“The Neronian Books of the ‘Annals,’ ” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 33.2 [1990]: 1593). For discussions of exitus literature, see Ronconi, “Exitus illustrium virorum,” Studi italiani di filologia classica n.s. 17 (1940): 3–32; F. A. Marx, “Tacitus und die Literatur der exitus illustrium virorum,” Philologus 92 (1937): 83–103; H. Bardon, La Littérature latine inconnue, vol. 2 (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1956), 207–9; Miriam Griffin, “Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: II,” Greece and Rome 33 (1986): 197–98; T. D. Hill, Ambitiosa mors: Suicide and the Self in Roman Thought and Literature (New York: Routledge, 2004), 187; Catharine Edwards, Death in Ancient Rome (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), 132; Morford, “Neronian Books of the ‘Annals,’ ” 1592–93; and Ulrich Eigler, “Exitus illustrium virorum,” Der Neue Pauly 4 (1998): 344–45. 70. As Gregory Sterling has argued, Tacitus “combined the traditions about Socrates with the exitus illustrium virorum tradition in order to note Stoic opposition to the Caesars” (“Mors philosophi: The Death of Jesus in Luke,” Harvard Theological Review 94 [2001], 389). These types of stories are related to the earlier genre τελευταί.

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71. Arthur J. Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 34. Catherine Edwards observes that “Cato’s protracted and laborious end offered a perfect example of specifically Stoic endurance of suffering” (Death in Ancient Rome, 3). 72. Adela Yarbro Collins observes the similarities between the Jewish martyr stories in 2 Maccabees and Stoic noble deaths: “The deaths of Eleazar, the seven brothers, and their mother in second Maccabees are clearly modeled on the death of Socrates and are thus Jewish adaptations of the Greek tradition of the noble death” (“Finding Meaning in the Death of Jesus,” Journal of Religion 78 [1998]: 181). See also Jonathan Goldstein, II Maccabees, Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 285. Gospel literature has also been linked to noble death traditions, as have Christian martyr texts. See, for example, Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Genre of the Passion Narrative,” Studia Theologica 47 (1993): 3–28; Adela Yarbro Collins, “From Noble Death to Crucified Messiah,” New Testament Studies 40 (1994): 481–503; Collins, “Finding Meaning,” 175–96; Sterling, “Mors philosophi,” 383–402; and John S. Kloppenborg, “Exitus clari viri: The Death of Jesus in Luke,” Toronto Journal of Theology 8 (1992): 106–20. 73. Ramsay MacMullen, for instance, characterizes both Stoics and Christians as groups “who sought to tear [the Roman Establishment] down” (Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Empire [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966], 93). 74. Shaw writes, “there was always a core of senatorial, or better, upper class resistance to emperors and their power—feelings of friction and resentment that were hardly limited to adherents of Stoicism” (“Divine Economy,” 47). 75. Edwards, Death in Ancient Rome, 122. In Ann. 16.22.4–5, Tacitus reports Cossutianus Capito’s accusation against Thrasea Paeta, which centers on his adherence to Stoicism. Shaw is sensitive to the deep-seated nature of philosophical adherence, however, and resists the outright rejection of Stoic influence on political resistance (“Divine Economy,” 48–49). His point appears to be that Stoicism is not necessarily or primarily an anti-imperial philosophy. 76. Shaw argues forcefully against earlier scholarly arguments that posited an inevitable clash between Stoicism and authority (“Divine Economy,” 45–48). But the collections of stories valued by Stoics nonetheless characteristically contain such antiauthoritarian tendencies. Collins, for instance, notes that “a number of these have as their main feature the tension between the protagonist and a tyrant” (“Genre of the Passion Narrative,” 10). 77. On the relationship of martyr literature and exitus traditions, see Cobb, “Polycarp’s Cup”; Jan Willem van Henten and Friedrich Avemarie, Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2002), 5, 12–14; Christel Butterweck, “Martyriumssucht” in der alten Kirche? Studien zur Darstellung und Deutung frühchristlicher Martyrien (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1995); G. Roskam, “The Figure of Socrates in Early Christian Acta Martyrum,” in Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Ancient Christianity: Festschrift Boudewijn Dehandschutter, ed. J. Leemans (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 241–56; Collins, “From Noble Death,” 483; Klaus Döring, Exemplum Socratis: Studien zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der kynisch-stoischen Popularphilosophie der frühen Kaiserzeit und im frühen Christentum, Hermes Einzelschriften, 42 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979), 143–61; David J. Ladouceur, “The Death of Herod the Great,” Classical Philology 76 (1981): 25; and Musurillo, Acts of the Pagan Martyrs, 236.

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78. Perkins, Suffering Self, 77. 79. Ibid., 142. 80. Ibid., 142; cf. 173. 81. Ibid., 173. 82. Ibid., 77. 83. Ibid. 84. Importantly, γενναῖος is one of the most common adjectives applied to the Christian martyrs. See, for example, Mart. Pol. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2. 85. Epictetus allows for groaning when one feels pain (in this case a headache), though this groaning must not be “from within” (ἔσωθεν μὴ στενάξης; Disc. 1.18.19). 86. Cf. Cicero, who writes, “I do not deny pain to be pain—for were that the case, in what would courage consist?” (Tusc. 2.14). Cicero was not a Stoic but an adherent of Academic skepticism. He was sympathetic to many Stoic positions, however, and often summarizes their positions. For discussions of Cicero and Stoicism, see Shaw, “Divine Economy,” 17–18; and A. E. Douglas, “Cicero the Philosopher,” in Cicero, ed. T. A. Dorey (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), 135–70. 87. See discussion in John M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 37–53. 88. In LCL, Oldfather translates λύπη and its cognates as “pain” rather than “grief,” which distorts the philosopher’s point. On the problem of translation and interpretation, see Jan Edward Garrett, “Is the Sage Free from Pain?” Volga Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences 6 (1999), http://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/painst.htm. 89. Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 38. 90. Ibid., 52. 91. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 12.5.10. See discussion in Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 52. 92. Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.4. 93. That there were misunderstandings of such a complex topic should not be surprising in a popular and widespread philosophy, one that Brent Shaw describes as “ill-defined,” “flexible,” “eclectic,” and lacking “an absolute orthodoxy” (“Divine Economy,” 19). 94. On the Stoicism of 4 Maccabees, see Robert Renehan, “The Greek Philosophical Background of Fourth Maccabees,” Reinisches Museum für Philologie 115 (1972): 223–38; and Stanley K. Stowers, “4 Maccabees,” in Harper’s Bible Commentary, ed. James L. Mays (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988): 923–34. 95. Cf. 4 Macc 6:35, 13:5, 14.1, 14.11. 96. As Aune has noted, “By repeatedly emphasizing that these courageous martyrs experience no human suffering, the author demonstrates his thesis that ‘pious reason’ overcomes the passions” (“Mastery of the Passions,” 137). 97. David Seeley, The Noble Death: Graeco-Roman Martyrology and Paul’s Concept of Salvation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 96. 98. For discussion of Christian use of 4 Maccabees, see W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 19–20, 198–99; Glen W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 77–81; Boudewijn Dehandschutter, “The Martyrium Polycarpi: A Century of Research,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.27.1 (1993): 507–8; Jan Willem van Henten, The Maccabean Martyrs as Saviours of the Jewish

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People: A Study of 2 & 4 Maccabees (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 77, 302; William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 53, 64; Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 80; Aune, “Mastery of the Passions,” 139; O. Perler, “Das Vierte Makkabaeerbuch, Ignatius von Antiochien und die aeltesten Martyrerberichte,” Rivista di archeologia cristiana 25 (1949): 47–72; and Samuel Sandmel, Judaism and Christian Beginnings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 277–79. 99. Perkins, Suffering Self, 77. 100. See Cobb, Dying to Be Men, 10. Moss makes a similar argument when she suggests that “the narrative’s denial of pain gesture[s] to ancient constructions of masculinity” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 110). 101. Endurance as a masculine virtue, however, has been called into question. For example, in a discussion of 4 Maccabees, Brent Shaw argues that in juxtaposing ὑπομονή—which he translates “passive endurance”—with ἀνδρεία—“manliness,” the author instigated a “moral revolution of sorts” because passivity is womanish (“Body/Power/Identity,” 279). Shaw suggests that the equation of nobility with passive endurance “would have struck the classic male ideologue of the city state as contradictory, a moral oxymoron” (279). He is even more explicit later: in his discussion of the Testament of Job, Shaw states that the use of hypomone reflects “a manifest ‘feminization’ of the text” (281). In comparing 2 and 4 Maccabees, Shaw writes, “The degree of shift, paralleling the increased emphasis on the mother of the seven sons in Fourth Maccabees as compared to Second Maccabees, must be deliberate and must reflect the desire of the author to develop the problem of patience by deploying a more ‘feminized’ rhetoric” (284). Similarly, Elizabeth Castelli observes that there is something “a bit startling about ἀνδρεία keeping easy company with ὑπομονή, active courage finding a peer in passive perseverance” (Martyrdom and Memory, 64). Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, however, argue against the assumption that endurance was a feminine quality in the Roman Empire (“Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 117 [1998]: 257). See also Grig, Making Martyrs, 65. 102. Aristotle, Nic. 3.10; see also Homer, Il. 5.498, 15.312; Herodotus, The Persian Wars 6.96.1; Plato, Gorg. 507b; Theaet. 177b; Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.42.4; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 11.9.4. 103. See, for example, discussion in Nigel Martin Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 112; and Nancy Sherman, Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 104. Epictetus, Ench. 10.5. 105. Epictetus, Disc. 2.2.13. Panaetius taught that endurance was a subset of the primary virtues, which he lists as prudence, courage, justice, and temperance (Diogenes Laertius 7.92). See discussion in Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson, Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1988), 137. 106. Cicero, Fin. 5.31.94. 107. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 9.26. 108. Seneca, Ep. 67.4. 109. In identifying the virtues of the Stoic wise man, A. A. Long discusses his “steadiness and orderliness,” referring to the consistency of the sage’s moral principles; his “timely

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behavior,” referring to the appropriateness of his actions in specific situations; and most tellingly, his freedom from all passion. These criteria, as Long notes, “set up a canon of excellence which could within limits be vouched for by any observer” (Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986], 207). The martyrs’ consistency and the appropriateness of their actions are clear in the martyrologies. In discussing the passions in Stoic thought, Long notes that “the Stoics distinguished good men from others by reference to the consistency of their logos” (177). Long’s example of inconsistency is particularly apt: if he is not a sage whose life is on a consistently even keel, he is liable to sudden changes and fluctuations of his governing-principle. At one moment he may assent to the true Stoic proposition that pain is not a bad thing; but if this judgment is insecurely based it will not be strong enough to reject a contrary judgment, that pain is something very bad, which comes to mind and is accompanied by a bodily reaction as the dentist starts drilling his tooth. (177) We have seen that the martyrs are described as insensitive to pain; they do not react to external stimuli. Rather, their rational judgments—namely, that death is preferable to apostasy—consistently trump physical sensation. The martyr’s choice for death, moreover, is deemed “appropriate” in these cases because the alternative requires compromising his virtue. 110. Denzey, “Facing the Beast,” 177. 111. Ibid., 190. 112. Ibid., 189. 113. As Perkins has argued, “it is safe to say that one thing contemporaries knew about Christianity (in fact, for some the only thing they give any evidence of knowing) is that Christians held death in contempt and were ready to suffer for their beliefs” (Suffering Self, 18). Similarly, William Turpin has suggested that “if there is one thing the Stoics were known for, it was their willingness, when appropriate, to die. Even more important, for our purposes, was their willingness to talk about the subject” (“Tacitus, Stoic exempla, and the praecipuum munus annalium,” Classical Antiquity 27 [2008]: 368). 114. Denzey, “Facing the Beast,” 194. 115. Ibid.; see also Cobb, Dying to Be Men. 116. Denzey, “Facing the Beast,” 194. 117. Ibid. 118. See discussion in Perkins, Suffering Self, 20. 119. Perkins, Suffering Self, 23. Here Perkins is drawing on Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984). 120. On the charge of superstition in the ancient world, see Dale B. Martin, Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). 121. See discussion in Martin, Inventing Superstition, 127. 122. In her recent book Maia Kotrosits argues that Pliny’s use of the word “Christian” in his correspondence with Trajan may be an example of imperial identity-construction focused on producing subjects. She writes, “Are there truly ready-made Christians, understanding themselves as such, hiding out everywhere around the Mediterranean, negotiating

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survival as a new cult? It rather seems that the appearance of the term ‘Christian’ in this particular period represents a standard and imperializing tactic of grabbing onto rhetoric and applying identity categories where the messiness of belonging fails to produce any obvious delinquents” (Rethinking Early Christian Identity: Affect, Violence, and Belonging [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015], 60). 123. Martin, Inventing Superstition, 135. 124. Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 72. 125. Ibid. A similar claim is preserved in “On Hippocrates’ Anatomy,” a text that is extant only in an Arabic compendium. See Richard Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), 87. 126. Galen, “On the Prime Mover,” another text extant only in Arabic. See Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians, 15. 127. Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 73. 128. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians, 91. 129. Ibid. 130. In his LCL translation C. R. Haines suggests that each of these passages invokes Christianity (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916], 382–83). 131. Some scholars have argued that the phrase ὡς οἱ Χριστιανοί is a later gloss. See, for instance, Gregory Hays, Meditations: A New Translation (New York: Modern Library, 2003); P. A. Brunt, “Marcus Aurelius and the Christians,” in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, vol. 1, ed. C. Deroux (Brussels: Latomus, 1979), 483–519; and Maxwell Staniforth, Meditations (London: Penguin Books, 1964). But Joseph J. Walsh argues the opposite position, that 11.3 is original (“On Christian Atheism,” Vigiliae Christianae 45 [1991]: 274). Even if this is not original to Meditations, it nonetheless represents an ancient characterization of Christianity that is relevant to the present discussion. 132. As Wilken observes, “To Marcus, the Christians appeared fanatical and foolish. . . . Their presumed lack of fear did not arise out of genuine self-control, or out of an understanding of the self, or out of free will, but from mere obstinacy based on irrational ideas” (Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 82). Lucian’s satirical account of Peregrinus echoes the sentiments of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus: Christians choose death without rational grounding (Passing of Peregrinus, 11–14). 133. Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 82. 134. Perkins, Suffering Self, 23–24. 135. In this we may see resonances with the aims of Christian apologetics, which as Jennifer Wright Knust and others explain, were likely not read by pagans (Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, [2006], esp. 89–92). Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price argue that the apologies were texts intended for “internal consumption within the church” (Religions of Rome, vol. 1: A History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], 310). See also Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price, eds., Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Jörg Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, and Maijastina Kahlos, Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2009); and Robert L. Wilken, “Toward a Social Interpretation of Early Christian Apologetics,” Church History 39 (1970): 437–58.

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136. Moss has called attention to the power of this rhetorical shift by reminding us of the difference between the two phenomena: “A persecutor targets representatives of a specific group for undeserved punishment merely because of their participation in that group. An individual is prosecuted because that person has broken a law” (Myth of Persecution, 14). 137. The classic discussion of charges leveled against Christians is that between Sherwin-White—who argues Christians were prosecuted for contumacia—and Ste. Croix— who argues Christians were persecuted “for the name”: G.E.M. de Ste Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?” Past and Present 26 (1963): 6–38; A. N. Sherwin-White, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted? An Amendment,” Past and Present 27 (1964): 23–27; G.E.M. de Ste Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted? A Rejoinder,” Past and Present 27 (1964): 28–33. 138. Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 119. 139. Harries, Law and Empire, 119. 140. J. C. Edmondson, “Dynamic Arenas,” in Roman Theater and Society, ed. William J. Slater, E. Togo Salmon Papers, 1 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 83. 141. This was certainly the case for slaves, but “torture creep,” as Jill Harries has described it, led to the application of the philosophical principle—that torture was essential in the uncovering of truth—to lower classes as well (“Contextualising Torture: Rules and Conventions in the Roman Digest,” in War, Torture, and Terrorism: Rethinking the Rules of International Security, ed. Anthony F. Lang Jr. and Amanda Russell Beattie [New York: Routledge, 2009], 45). 142. Ulpian writes, “ ‘Quaestionem’ intellegere debemus tormenta et corporis dolorem ad eruendam veritatem” (Justinian, Dig. 47.10.15.41). See discussion in Grig, Making Martyrs, 67–69. The classic discussion of judicial torture and pain is that of Foucault, Discipline and Punish, esp. 3–69; though, as scholars have noted, ancient authors could—and did—argue the ineffectiveness of torture for the establishment of truth. See Harries, “Contextualising Torture,” 46–47; and Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 167–68. 143. Brown, Cult of the Saints, 109. 144. Harries, Law and Empire, 123. 145. As Moss, for example, observes regarding the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, “the account reproduces the notion of torture as truth as a means of guaranteeing Christian authenticity—the martyr’s inflexibility and stubbornness under torture serve as markers of truth for the Christian audience” (Ancient Christian Martyrdom, 108). 146. See discussion in Harries, Law and Empire, 126; and Grig, Making Martyrs, 69. 147. Following the traditional reading of martyr texts as valorizing pain, some scholars have argued that martyr texts use Roman expectation of torture and pain to narrate Christian victory. Karen King, for instance, argues, “Christians fully exploited the Roman rhetoric that pain produces truth. They sought to declare that the real truth displayed by their bodies under extreme and sustained pain was the piety of their beliefs and the reality of their God.” It was through their endurance of pain, King continues, that Christians “claimed moral righteousness, dignity, and honor while contesting Roman legitimacy and power” (“Christianity and Torture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, ed. Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson [New York: Oxford University Press,

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2013], 298). Thus in this reading the endurance of pain demonstrates Christian piety and the truthfulness of the martyrs’ beliefs. 148. Quintilian, Decl. 274. See also Plato, Gorg. 525b; Taurus made a similar claim (Aulus Gellius, Noct. att. 7.14.4). See discussion in K. M. Coleman, “Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments,” Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 46–49. 149. Harries, Law and Empire, 130–31. As Harries argues, “the state’s justification for punishing its citizens publicly and painfully was that they deserved it and that the display of terror would act as a salutary deterrent for others” (144). 150. In Grig’s words, “the torture chamber functions as a theatre of social and ideological enforcement” (Making Martyrs, 68). 151. Judith Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 2009), 57. 152. Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities, 57. 153. Tertullian, Apol. 50. Similarly, Justin Martyr attributes his conversion to the martyrs’ influence (2 Apol. 12). 154. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 49. 155. Ibid. 156. Ibid., 55. 157. It is worth noting in this regard that Pliny congratulates himself on a positive side effect of his prosecution of Christians: “It is certainly quite clear that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented, that the established religious rites, long neglected, are being resumed, and that from everywhere sacrificial animals are coming, for which until now very few purchasers could be found. Hence it is easy to imagine what a multitude of people can be reformed if an opportunity for repentance is afforded” (Ep. 10.96). Pliny argues that the superstition can be halted, and he points to the resurgence in local religiosity as proof of his success. 158. Mary Douglas, “Social Preconditions of Enthusiasm and Heterodoxy,” in Forms of Symbolic Action, Proceedings of the 1969 Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, ed. Robert F. Spencer (Seattle and London: American Ethnological Society, 1969), 71. 159. Smyth, “Challenger Jokes,” 254. Smyth here draws on Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon, 1982), vii–x. That the martyr symbolizes the larger social group of Christianity is clear, as Perkins argues: “The portrayal in Christian documents of the physical body scraped with claws, pierced with knives, roasted, whipped, strangled and mauled by beasts is a microcosm for a community assailed on every side according to Melito (Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 4.26.2), Hermas (Pastor 3.2.1), and Justin (II Apologia 12)” (Suffering Self, 15). 160. As Maud W. Gleason has argued, “to mark the body of another in the ancient world was to signal that ownership and agency rested not with the one who bore the mark but with the person who imposed it” (“Mutilated Messengers: Body Language in Josephus,” in Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic, and the Development of Empire, ed. S. Goldhill [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 79). Gleason argues that “dramatizing one’s ability to control individual bodies . . . was a vital point in making a claim to political power” (74). Jennifer Glancy has also noted that wounded bodies in particular “instantiate relationships of power, of legal status . . . of domination and submission,

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of honor and shame, and of gender” (Corporal Knowledge: Early Christian Bodies [New York: Oxford University Press, 2010], 26). 161. Elaine Scarry argues that part of the “unmaking” of the soldier is “the emptying of the nation from his body” (Body in Pain, 122). Applying Scarry’s work to the martyr texts, we might see in Roman torture not only an attempt to empty the Christian “from his body,” but also an attempt to “unmake” the Christian—via apostasy. 162. Kotrosits suggests that the term christianus may have imperial origins (Rethinking Early Christian Identity, 60, 90). 163. Grig, Making Martyrs, 69. 164. Glancy, Corporal Knowledge, 24. 165. Ibid., 27. 166. As Shaw has argued, “The spectacular trials and executions of the Christians are but an extreme instance of the use of force to elicit a certain public behavior from subject bodies, to inscribe one sort of ideology on the body” (“Body/Power/Identity,” 311). 167. Ibid. C O N C LU S I O N

1. Coleman has labeled such role play “fatal charades” (“Fatal Charades,” 44). 2. Prudentius’s project, as described by Fruchtman, was to teach Christians how to view the world around them—including Roman literary traditions—through the lens of “Christimitation and martyrdom” (“Modeling a Martyrial Worldview,” 131). Hippolytus’s martyrdom is a fitting example of just such a project. On the influence of Seneca on Prudentius, see Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs, 155; Anne-Marie Palmer, Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); and G. Sixt, “De Prudentius’ Abhängigkeit von Seneca und Lucan,” Philologus 51 (1892): 501–6. 3. In Most’s words, “the severed pieces of Hippolytus’ body dominate Seneca’s Phaedra” (“disiecti membra poetae,” 394). 4. Bynum, Resurrection, 50, 58. 5. On Tertullian’s discussion of persecution and heterodoxy, see Éric Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), 44–45. 6. Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities, 46–47. 7. Cottrill writes: “images of exposed and violated bodies create anxiety, unease, and a heightened awareness of the physical vulnerability of the unprotected. The visceral affect of anxiety and the intensity of bodily violence position the reader emotionally and physically to feel the need for security and protection” (“Reading of Ehud and Jael,” 447). 8. Most, “disiecti membra poetae,” 400. 9. Edwards, “Suffering Body,” 253. 10. Ibid. 11. Esther Cohen makes a similar point when she writes: “exempla, sermons, stories about impassible martyrs, and tales of sufferers who were miraculously cured existed in constant contradiction with a harsh reality where there was no effective cure for pain. But such stories could work only for listeners who did know what pain was, so that they could appreciate how wonderful relief, or utter lack of pain, was” (Modulated Scream, 4).

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Regarding the painfulness of ancient life, Seneca ranks “hunger, thirst, ulcers of the stomach, and fevers that burn our innermost parts” alongside the torturer’s weapons as examples of pain (Ep. 14.6; quoted in Edwards, “Suffering Body,” 258). See also Seneca, Ep. 78.14; and Sextus Empiricus, Against Ethicists, 152–49. 12. According to Augustine, dolor does not exist in perfect states of being, such as in God and in paradise. Dolor is an effect of original sin. See discussion in Lössl, “Dolor, dolere,” esp. 586, 588. 13. As Edwards notes, Stoicism’s teachings on pain assert that “by thinking about it in the right way, they can make it more bearable, but they cannot hope to eliminate it altogether” (“Suffering Body,” 265). 14. Ibid., 264. 15. Keen, “Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 216. 16. Ibid., 213. 17. Keen, Empathy and the Novel, xii. 18. Keen, “Theory of Narrative Empathy,” 222. 19. Ibid., 215. 20. Keen, Empathy and the Novel, 139. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 140. 24. Ibid. 25. Perkins, Suffering Self, 214. 26. During this time, as Perkins argues, “the suffering body became a focus of significant cultural concern and this gave rise to the creation of a new subjectivity—the self as sufferer” (Suffering Self, 7).

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Index

acta, 33–34, 174n13, 174n15, 174n18, 175n28 Acts of Cyprian, 58, 102 Acts of Gallonius, 70 Acts of Maximilian, 58 Acts of Perpetua, 103, 193n36, 194n66 Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs, 71, 82, 104 Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, 36, 58 Aelius Theon, 8 affect, 4, 5, 32, 33, 34, 37, 41, 46, 90, 152 Agathonike, 38–40, 60, 105, 144. See also Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike algeō/algos, 12, 28, 65, 66, 74, 98, 111, 134, 135 Altman, Charles, 38 Amat, Jacqueline, 108 amphitheater, 10, 47, 49, 61, 103, 128, 142 analgesia, ix, 12, 13, 64, 65, 91, 99, 105, 109, 113, 120, 122; divinely bestowed, 21, 72, 73, 74, 80, 101; and judicial torture, 143, 145; in martyr texts, 51, 66; and Stoicism, 124, 135, 137; withheld from the unfaithful, 106 anesthesia, 12, 13, 22, 23, 27, 64, 65, 68, 80, 91, 93, 130, 145; withheld from the unfaithful, 131 apocalyptic, 34, 102, 105, 124–132 apostasy, 37, 54, 82, 99–101, 108, 122, 125, 144, 146, 152 apostate, 13, 83, 94, 99–101, 106 Appolonia, St., 1 arena, 10, 11, 42, 47, 50, 56, 69, 84, 97, 109–110, 123, 130, 142, 161n24

Aristotle, 27, 136 Arrian, 133 athlete, 51, 76, 83, 120 audience: ancient, ix, x, 3, 4, 5, 6–11, 164n56; emotional engagement of, 4, 6, 7, 31, 33, 62; and expectations for pain, 3, 12, 27, 29–30, 46–49, 61, 81, 93; as hearers, 3–4, 6–11; modern, ix, xi, 3, 156; as readers, 3–4; suffering of, 14, 152–153 Augustine, 4, 8, 9, 28, 130, 163n51, 180n90; and painlessness of martyrdom, 72, 80, 105, 109, 184n17; and pain of martyrdom, 118, 192n18 aurality, 3–5 Barnes, Timothy D., 33–35, 41, 174n15, 175n25 Barton, Carlin, 43 Basil, 116–117 Beard, Mary, 87, 189n76 Biblis, 54, 100–101. See also Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons Bisbee, Gary, 34, 175n26 Blandina, 48, 51, 56, 66, 75–77, 81, 103, 113, 154, 168n45, 186n43, 186n44. See also Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons bodies: as Christian social body, 145–147; as culturally constructed, 11; dissolution of, 2, 16, 20, 47, 49, 50, 61, 145–147; glorified, 78, 123, 124–132, 151, 153; in the Golden Legend, 21–22; immune to pain, ix, 2, 13, 18, 20, 30,

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bodies: immune to pain (continued) 50–52, 65–68, 114–115, 155; in pain, 13, 17, 18, 22, 24, 54, 97–101, 107–114, 116–121; pagan, 15–16, 150–151; persecutors’, 101–107; prelapsarian, 22; protected from injury, 2, 13, 52–53, 55, 79, 81, 83, 151; versus spirit, 13, 64, 68–72; and suffering, 16–17, 18, 63–64, 152–153, 156–157; as textually constructed, 18, 20, 46, 77, 122–123; tortured, ix, x, 12, 25, 39, 46, 47, 142–145. See also resurrection; Stoicism Bremmer, Jan, 127, 174n16 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 11, 107, 128, 130, 197n12, 199n46 Cameron, Averil, 45, Carpus, 38, 39, 40, 57, 60, 125, 144. See also Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike Carthage, 10, 17, 36, 69, 102, 108, 117, 126, 163n52, 194n58 Castelli, Elizabeth A., 8, 36, 44, 81, 116 Catherine, St., 1 Cato, 132 Celsus, 64 Charito, 50 Chariton, 50 Christian: arrest of, 2, 35, 36, 44, 45, 66, 91, 95, 99, 105, 111, 123, 139, 141, 144, 152; charges against, 5, 36, 45, 100, 141, 207n137; as criminal, 14, 138–139, 142, 147; as irrational, 14, 138, 140–141, 147, 206n132; as name, 40, 146; social body, 145–146; as stubborn, 14, 48, 49, 122, 138, 140, 141, 144, 147, 206n132; as subject to Roman power, 49, 52, 54, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 70, 74, 81, 89, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145–147; Roman views of, 138–142; trials of, 5, 34–35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 44, 45, 55, 58, 67, 89, 143, 145, 157 Christology, 3, 22, 30 Cicero, 7, 135, 136, 203n86 Clark, Gillian, 73, 164n60 collective effervescence, 6, 161n24 Columella, 34 commentarius, 33–40 Cooper, Kate, 98, 192n16 Cottrill, Amy, 152, 174n9 counter-discourse, 13–14, 122, 138, 142, 145, 147 counternarrative, 13, 93, 122–124, 126, 142, 145, 147 courtroom, 5, 36, 40, 44 crown of immortality, 75, 76, 78, 137 Culler, Jonathan, 4 Cyprian, 67, 70, 78; in Augustine, 4; in Prudentius, 117. See also Acts of Cyprian

death: as announced in passing, 12, 57–60; as obscured by text, 12, 57, 60–61; perfected through, 58, 59; of the persecutor, 101–102 Decius, 101 Denzey, Nicola, 132, 136, 137 De Wet, Chris L., 93 Dinocrates, 96–97, 127. See also Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 6, 7 Dionysius of Heraclea, 135, 136 Dioscorides, 64 doleo/dolor, 12, 27, 27, 28, 30, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 78, 79, 87, 95, 96, 97, 98, 103, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 111, 117, 118, 130, 134, 135, 169n59 Donatists, 70, 71, 87. See also Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs; Martyrdom of Marculus; Passion of Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda; Passion of Maximian and Isaac dualism: cosmic, 44, 124–126; mind/body, 13, 64, 68–72, 127 Ebbeler, Jennifer V., 41 ecclesiology, 3, 100 Edict of Milan, 101 Edwards, Catharine, 14, 27, 133, 152, 154, 202n71, 210n13 Ehrman, Bart. D., 42, 179n71 ekphrasis, 8, 9, 11, 91, 119, 150, 151, 176n39, 180n95 Elm, Susanna, 18, 29, 63 emotional contagion, 6 empathic inaccuracy, 155 empathy, 8, 12, 14, 25, 32, 37, 38, 48, 61, 86, 109, 155, 156, 173n6 endurance: and masculinity, 136, 204n100; of pain, 18, 21, 22, 29, 49, 59, 77, 112–113, 117, 118; of torture, 42, 47, 50, 54, 69, 72, 73–74, 78, 82, 97, 104, 136 Epictetus, 133–134, 136, 138, 140–141, 203n85 epistle, 33, 34, 40–46; influence on audience, 41–42, 43, 45–46 eschatology. See apocalyptic Eulalia, 68 Eusebius, 8, 45; and pain as a locus of meaning, 107, 111–114 exitus illustrium virorum. See noble death eyewitness: audience as, 4, 37, 38, 43, 45, 58; to martyrdom, 6, 42, 43, 45, 52, 83 Farb, Peter, 91 Felicitas, 10, 69, 73–74, 80, 96–98, 103, 110, 118. See also Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas

index Felix, 104. See also Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs Flavian, 29–30, 60, 67–68, 70, 78–79, 129. See also Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, 9; in Basil, 116–117; in Gregory of Nyssa, 8, 120 Foucault, Michel, 144, 145 4 Maccabees, 20–21, 116, 135–136 Francis, St., 1 Freud, Sigmund, 90 Fruchtman, Diane, 8, 180n95 Galen, 64, 138, 139–140, 141 Galerius, 101–102 genre, 3, 29, 33–46, 62 Germanicus, 11, 61, 99. See also Martyrdom of Polycarp gladiator, 10, 11, 56, 105, 108–111 God: as focus of martyr texts, 64, 154; with the martyr, 9, 52, 56, 60, 72–80, 83, 146; protecting martyrs from pain, x, 20, 22, 47, 55, 115, 123, 146, 151–152 Gonzalez, Eliezer, 127 Goodine, Elizabeth, 76 Gregory of Nyssa, 8, 119–120 Grig, Lucy, 37, 103, 114, 146 Harries, Jill, 142 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, 60 Heffernan, Thomas, 95, 96, 108, 110, 127 Hippolytus: in Prudentius, 149, 150, 151; in Seneca, 15–16, 27, 149, 150, 151 house church, 6, 8, 11, 36 humor: of the martyrs, 39, 44, 83–92; social function of, 85, 86–87, 90–91 identity: constructed by Christians, x, 18, 23, 40, 48, 138, 154, 157; constructed by Romans, 121, 138 ideology of martyrdom, x, 22, 59, 65, 93, 96, 104, 112, 113, 116, 120, 156 imitatio Christi, 29–30 impassibility: as attribute of prelapsarian existence, 22; as attribute of resurrected bodies, 130, 131; of Christian martyrs, x, 2, 13, 17, 46, 50, 66, 67, 71, 72, 73, 77, 93, 105, 114–115, 143, 145, 146, 147, 153, 154; and magic, 17, 22; medical theories of, 23 impassivity: 2, 21, 22, 46, 50, 80, 83, 106, 154 insensitivity, ix, x, 21, 30, 51, 57, 63, 64, 65, 66, 69, 73, 77, 84, 120, 132–136, 144, 145, 146, 154 Irenaeus, 67, 128

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Jerome, St., 1 Jesus: as differentiated from martyrs, 29, 75; as impassible, 30; with the martyrs, 64, 72, 74–79, 80, 118; pain of, 21, 29, 30, 46 John Chrysostom, 9; and painlessness of martyrdom, 21, 115; and pain of martyrdom, 118–119 judgment, 130–131; of Christians, 45, 115, 125, 126; of persecutors, 89, 94, 102, 105, 126, 131 Judicial system: Roman, 2, 13, 33, 35, 36, 138–139, 141, 142–145, 147; violence of, 14, 22, 52, 54, 61, 82, 123, 142–144, 146. See also quaestio Julian, 21, 118–119 Justin, 47, 50, 58–59. See also Martyrdom of Justin Justin Martyr, 126, 128 Keen, Suzanne, 155–156 Kinnard, Isabelle, 73 Kyle, Donald, 56 Lactantius, 101–102, 131 Landy, Michael, 1–2, 12 Laurence, 84–87 Letter of Phileas, 112–113 Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, 20, 41, 44, 48, 51, 54, 56, 60, 66, 74, 81, 84, 94, 99, 101, 113, 135, 144, 153 Longinus, 7, 36, 37 Lucan, 16, 17, 20, 152 MacMullen, Ramsay, 6 magic, 17, 22 Marcus Aurelius, 64, 134, 138, 140, 141 Marian, 49, 51–52. See also Martyrdom of Marian and James Martin, Dale, 139 martyrdom: and bodily preservation, 2, 8–83; divine presence during, 72–80; future rewards of, 124–125, 128–130, 131 Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, and Chione, 59 Martyrdom of Bishop Fructuosus and His Deacons, Augurius and Eulogius, 80, 103, 125, 127, 128 Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, 183n10; Greek recension, 38–40, 57, 59–60, 84, 89, 125, 144, 183n11; Latin recension, 57, 60, 65, 73, 105, 125, 183n11 Martyrdom of Conon, 57, 60, 74 Martyrdom of Irenaeus, 67 Martyrdom of Justin, 47, 58, 59 Martyrdom of Marculus, 52, 79, 81, 83, 104 Martyrdom of Marian and James, 49, 52, 70, 125, 126, 128

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Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius, 20, 29, 60, 67, 70, 78, 118, 125, 129 Martyrdom of Pionius, 66, 82, 84, 88, 106, 128 Martyrdom of Polycarp, 19, 29, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50–51, 54, 60–61, 69, 77–78, 84, 89, 99, 119, 124–126; in Eusebius, 111–112; humor in, 44, 89 martyr texts: as hagiography, 19; as historical documents, 9, 11, 19, 33, 122, 154; as historically verisimilitudinous texts, 3, 11, 16, 20, 25, 31, 36, 38, 46, 122, 146, 154; as miracle stories, x, 9, 12, 14, 19, 20, 22, 47, 56, 57, 60, 61, 64, 125, 154, 155; and oral delivery, 3–5, 8 masculinity, ix, 18, 136, 137 masochism, x, 2, 12 Meltzer, Gary, 85 Millar, Fergus, 35 Minucius Felix, 73 Mitchell, Matthew, 76 Moore, Stephen D., 5, 50 Moss, Candida, 76 Most, Glenn, 16, 152 narrative empathy, 14, 155 Nikolaus, 35 noble death, 33, 132–133, 137 Origen, 116 Oring, Elliott, 91 pain: in the ancient world, 26–28, 63–64; of apostates, 99–101; cultural meanings of, 3, 12, 17, 20, 21–22, 24–27; definition of, 24, 25; experienced apart from martyrdom, 94–98; experienced by martyrs, 107–121; in humoral theory, 27–28; of non-Christians, 101–107; as result of injury, 24–26; unexpected Christian responses to, 83–92. See also algeō/algos; audience, expectations for pain; bodies, immune to pain; bodies, and suffering; bodies, in pain; doleo/dolor; imitatio Christi; insensitivity; quaestio; soul, in pain; suffering, and emotional pain; transference, of injury painlessness. See analgesia; anesthesia; bodies, immune to pain Pamphilus. See Papylus Papylus, 38–40, 57, 59, 84, 89, 144, 183n10. See also Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike paschō, 28, 29, 74, 75, 98 passiones, 33, 34

Passion of Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda, 71, 103 Passion of Maximian and Isaac, 53, 54, 71, 104, 106 Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas: in Augustine, 9, 80, 109, 118; humor in, 56, 88; and martyrs’ emotions, 94–95; pain in, 94–98, 107–111, 118; as scripture, 9; swords in108–109; visions in, 96, 98, 108, 110, 125, 129 Passion of Theodore, 119 pathos, 4, 33 patior, 28, 59, 73, 78, 97 Perpetua, 10, 11, 69, 80, 84, 95–96, 97, 98, 103, 106, 108–111. See also Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas persecution, 2, 3, 75, 80, 84, 86, 88, 89, 91, 98, 99, 101, 116, 128, 130, 131, 134, 141, 145, 146, 151, 152, 153; versus prosecution, 99, 138, 141, 145 persecutor: as incompetent, 52, 54, 56–57, 91, 105; as powerless, 56–57, 60, 62, 74, 81, 85, 89, 105, 143, 146, 147; suffering of, 13, 94, 102–107 Plato, 28, 126 Pliny the Elder, 64 Pliny the Younger, 132, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141 Plutarch, 4, 9–10 Polycarp, 11, 24, 29, 42–44, 54–55, 60, 66, 82, 89, 99, 146. See also Martyrdom of Polycarp ponos, 20, 111, 117, 130, 135, 153 Ponticus, 60 Porphry, 127 Prudentius: and martyrdom of Cyprian, 118; and martyrdom of Eulalia, 68; and martyrdom of Hippolytus, 149–151; and martyrdom of Laurence, 84–85; and martyrdom of Romanus, 65–66, 87, 98; and martyrdom of Vincent, 68, 104; and painlessness of martyrdom, 65–66, 68–69, 87, 98, 114; and pain of martyrdom, 117–118 quaestio, 54, 82, 142–144, 146, 181n109 Quintilian, 7, 10, 143 Quintus, 99. See also Martyrdom of Polycarp Rajak, Tessa, 46 resurrection: of Jesus, 29; and judgment, 130–131; of martyrs, 126, 128–130, 144; nature of, 126–128, 130, 144 Revelation, 13, 124, 129, 130 Revocatus, 56. See also Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas

index rhetoric: and ancient theory, 4, 6–8, 35, 41; in martyr texts, 7, 9, 11, 30, 33, 57, 77, 122, 123, 141–152 Riggsby, Andrew, 34 Rist, John, 134 Romanus, 65–66, 87, 98; humor in, 87. See also Prudentius Ross, Ellen M., 46 sadism, x, 164 Sanctus, 20, 48–49, 51, 66, 74–75, 76–77, 81, 99, 113, 125. See also Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons Saturninus, 82. See also Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs Saturninus, 56. See also Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas Saturus, 11, 56, 88–89, 105, 126–127. See also Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas Seeley, David, 135 self-violence, 2 Seneca, 15–17, 20, 27, 64, 85, 132, 134–136, 149, 150–151, 152, 154 sense perception, 7, 11, 27, 28, 161n29; hearing, 7–8, 11; sight, 7, 11, 27; touch, 8 Shaw, Brent, 71, 126, 132, 133 Socrates, 132 soul, 7; versus body, 13, 22, 51, 53, 68–72, 115, 116, 120; as corporeal, 28; as incorporeal, 131; in pain, 28; of persecutors, 85, 104 Stoicism, 138, 140, 156; theories of pain in, ix, 13, 20–21, 27, 64, 124, 132–138, 153 suffering, 12, 13, 14, 21; definition of, 18, 23, 27–29; and emotional pain, 16, 25, 27–29 superstition, 65, 138–139

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Tacitus, 132, 138, 139, 141 Tazelita, 104 Tertullian, 11, 28, 39, 114–116, 128, 130–131, 144, 152 theodicy, 49, 80, 152 Theon, 8, 35 Theophilus, 128 Thomas, St., 1 Thorson, James, 85 torture: as deterrent, 142, 143, 144, 145; by forces of nature, 52–54; ineffectiveness of, 52–57; as remedy, 54, 75, 80, 81–83, 112, 123, 124, 144; as semblance not reality, 52–53, 55, 57, 62, 65, 67, 68, 75, 81, 87, 90–91, 103, 144 transference: of emotion, 6, 102–103; of injury, 80, 94, 95, 103–107 trauma, 13, 23, 24, 27, 48, 60, 69, 77, 81, 90, 106 trials. See Christian: trials of Ulpian, 54 Valerian, 84, 101 van Dam, Raymond, 9 Vettius Epagathus, 45, 144. See also Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons Victor, 79. See also Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius Vincent, St.: in Augustine, 72, 80, 105, 118; in Prudentius, 68–69, 104 vindication, 125, 130–131 violence. See judicial system, violence of Williams, Craig, 69, 110 Winkler, John J., 50