The Ultimate Sacrifice: Martyrdom, Sovereignty, and Secularization in the West 9780367424329, 9780367824082

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The Ultimate Sacrifice

This book presents an interpretive, macro-historical, and sociological account of martyrdom. Moving away from the notion of martyrdom as an object of individual behavior and seeing it instead as a significant cultural work performed by communities in the wake of a violent death, it provides a novel interpretation of Western political and religious history. In addition to thus redressing the disproportionate attention given to the concept’s relationship to Islam, the author offers a new perspective on two defining historical processes: secularization and the rise of modern sovereignty in the form of the nation-state. An innovative analysis of the role of sacrifice in contemporary culture, which constitutes a timely critique of long-dominant theories of disenchantment and the privatization of religion, The Ultimate Sacrifice will appeal to sociologists and social theorists with interests in religion, politics, and the connection between the two. Clayton Fordahl is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Memphis, USA.

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory Series Editor: Stjepan G. Mestrovic Texas A&M University, USA

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both ‘classical’ and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it. The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts. Titles in this series Emotions through Literature Fictional Narratives, Society and the Emotional Self Mariano Longo The Appeal of Art in Modernity Michael Symonds Politics and Recognition Towards a New Political Aesthetics Adam Chmielewski The Ultimate Sacrifice Martyrdom, Sovereignty, and Secularization in the West Clayton Fordahl For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ sociology/series/ASHSER1383

The Ultimate Sacrifice Martyrdom, Sovereignty, and Secularization in the West

Clayton Fordahl

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Clayton Fordahl The right of Clayton Fordahl to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-42432-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-82408-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Berglind Ragnarsdóttir

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements

viii xi

1

Introduction

1

2

A theory of martyrdom

19

3

The seeds of the church

44

4

The suffering body and the body politic

76

5

The sacrificial conscience

102

6

To die so that the nation might live

133

7

Western martyrdom in a secularized age

157

Index

172

Preface

The Rue de Martyrs is, for a certain type of observer, the essential Parisian street. Snaking at a dyspneic tilt through the trendy neighborhood of Pigal, the street contains a cinematic proportion of cafes and patisseries. So irresistibly and irritatingly Parisian, the Rue de Martyrs recently received the honor of being called “the only street in Paris” by no less an authority than an American memoirist. The phrase was meant to capture the enduring, authentic street life that survived on the Rue de Martyrs in the midst of a rapidly globalizing city. Most of Paris has long since succumbed to the allure of modern global commercialism, with supermarkets and fast food restaurants now neither uncommon nor unfrequented. But if its laureates are to be believed, the Rue de Martyrs has retained the charming, parochial consumerism of a former age. On the Rue de Martyrs cabaret dancers engage in playful fencing with baguettes, cheese mongers dodge rogue wine barrels that careen charmingly down the cobblestone street, and consumptive children sell copies of L’Aurore. As one approaches either of the street’s ends, this quaint pastiche begins to subside. At the street’s southernmost tip is the 19th-century Church Notre-Damede-Lorette, while the northern end halts at the shadows of Montmartre and the Sacre Couer. Whatever occurs between them, the solemnity and grandeur of these landmarks draws the observer into a history that succumbs less easily to the melodies of the study-abroad memoir. The Rue de Martyrs is so called because of an enduring legend surrounding the death of Paris’s first Christian bishop in the fourth century. Saint Denis, as he is known in the French Catholic tradition, was sent by the Church to minister to the Gauls. As is often the case, his success was his undoing; the number of Parisian catechumens grew, and so too the resentment of local officials. Conflicts between the Christians and Roman imperial administrators concluded with Denis receiving a death sentence. He was taken to Paris’s highest hill and beheaded. As the legend tells it, Denis wanted the last word: his decapitated body arose and carried his head down the hill. As the corpse marched through Paris, it delivered a sermon to shocked and amazed onlookers. And so it was that the alleged route of Denis’s final sermon came to be called the Rue de Martyrs. Today on the Rue de Martyrs headless pedestrians are a daily obstacle: individuals so consumed by private technology that their faces disappear from public

Preface ix view as they stumble down the street with less awareness than a freshly beheaded bishop. In such an age it can be easy to laugh off the legends of our ancestors. But martyrs once clogged the public imagination: their conviction moved people, their strength inspired, and in many cases, their enchanted bodies performed miraculous acts. Since Max Weber gave us the phrase, it is often said that we live in a disenchanted age. It can be difficult to see past the veil of disenchantment, to locate in our cultural landscapes the traces of a past so completely incongruous with our own time. It is still more difficult to see how that past, with its beheadings and decapitated sermons, holds relevance today. But on occasion disenchantment gives way, punctured by some sublime or horrendous force; in these moments, past and present collide and unleash new phantoms of disillusion and discontent, more consuming and destructive than the veil of secular disenchantment worn so jauntily throughout the reign of high modernity. So it has seemed in the 21st century, with Western cities all too frequently exposed to the harrowing violence of religiously infused violence. Paris itself has repeatedly fallen victim to a violence that shakes the foundations of modern social life. In the aftermath of such attacks the martyr once again stalks the modern city. Certainly the attackers have their martyrs, loathsome figures who, enwreathed in zealotry, are often said to embody the worst primordial traits of our species. But the bereaved create martyrs of their own: victims whose courage and dignity is representative of the value of Western culture in the face of barbarism. In these moments, a long-since discarded vocabulary is quickly repurposed. Suddenly the story of Saint Denis seems less frivolous; the power of sacrifice is revealed in all of its glory and sorrow as the public revives the language of martyrdom in processions and vigils, eulogies, and memorials. Yet even as these events testify to the enduring power of martyrdom in public life, they also reveal a poverty of understanding. Contemporary life on the Rue de Martyrs has left us ill-equipped to comprehend today’s martyrs. The events that give birth to martyrdom—a roiling mixture of religion and politics, abstract ideals and earthly suffering—are at odds with the assumptions that have long conditioned daily habits in the modern Western city. Much admirable scholarship has already been produced in response to the ethical and intellectual challenges of contemporary terrorist violence in the West. Through a number of avenues, scholars have reflected upon how these forms of violence challenge a Western politics built on rationalism and secularity, and how these and other recent calamities occasion a reconsideration of Western history, particularly with regards to the relationship between religion, politics, and violence. Yet for all of their accomplishments, scholars hoping to gain new perspectives on these issues have largely overlooked one of the most promising avenues: the Rue de Martyrs. Not the pleasant street of present-day Paris, but the historical route that lies beneath its cobblestone surface. In the figure of the martyr we encounter many of the most pressing concerns of our time condensed to a smaller, more comprehensible scale. Tracking the changes and continuities in cases of

x

Preface

martyrdom offers the potential for new perspectives on the relationship between religion and politics as they intersect in this single figure of ultimate sacrifice. The following pages develop something of a guidebook to this other Rue de Martyrs. Like all guidebooks, it attempts to catalogue points of interest, offering some analysis along the way. Also like most guidebooks, this one is limited by the energy, resources, and intellect of its author. I have attempted to navigate the narrow path between the exhaustive and the exhausting, tracing a route that travels from the martyrs of early Christianity to the present, taking the reader from the time of Saint Denis to the 21st century. Of course, this imagined Rue de Martyrs is but one obscure lane in the vast cartography of history. However, at points it intersects with arteries and avenues more central to contemporary concern. It is here, at these crowded junctures, that the onlooker sees the enduring relevance of martyrdom. It is a relevance not acquired through conviction and suffering alone. Indeed, wherever martyrs have achieved consequence, it has seldom been due to the intentions of the recently departed, zealous though they may have been. More often, martyrs have been elevated by the bereaved, a commemorative community that transforms a violent death through stories of sacrifice. Compiling and comparing such stories across history produces a less lurid perspective on martyrdom. Yet it is my hope that a focus on the cultural and social dimensions of martyrdom, rather than the merely biographical, will cast new light on the concept, so that through it will shine the refractions of a new history.

Acknowledgements

The making of this book required much love and sacrifice, the majority received from others rather than self-generated. The idea for a sociological study of martyrdom originated in Daniel Levy’s course on globalization in the Department of Sociology at Stony Brook University. Daniel’s encouragement and guidance inspired me to transform a germinal idea into a doctoral dissertation. As the chair of my dissertation committee, Daniel was a fundamental part of my success; not only did he provide constant intellectual feedback, but he also shepherded me through many of the more mundane travails of academic apprenticeship. While at Stony Brook I was fortunate to also have the support of Saïd Arjomand and Ian Roxborough, both of whom also served on my dissertation committee. Saïd nurtured my affection for the classical sociological tradition and inspired me to think in civilizational terms about my topic. Ian, more than anyone else, provided a model for what a scholar should be. The best of my sociological impulses developed in Ian’s classes, and much of this book is the result of my desire to write something which Ian might like to read. I will be forever grateful to my three committee members for their formative roles in nurturing my intellectual and professional development. As my dissertation gradually transformed into a book, an ever-growing crowd of well-wishers, editors, and colleagues assembled to support me. My family has been dogged in their enthusiasm. My father, Craig, and my siblings, Skylar and Hanna, maintain their interest in me and this book despite having more important things to think about. My grandfather, David Messick, has proven to be a source of seemingly perpetual wisdom. As the book took shape, the encouragement and insights offered by colleagues proved pivotal in getting me closer to the final sentence. Bryan S. Turner provided immensely useful comments on my dissertation which inspired major changes during the book-writing process. My colleagues in the Sociology Department at the University of Memphis took me in, welcomed me as one of their own, and then performed the great service of listening to my ideas on the topic of martyrdom and providing questions and comments. Their support remains as vital as it is unwavering. As I was completing this book, I published two articles based on the data and ideas contained in its pages. Scrutinizing readers will find some overlap between

xii Acknowledgements Chapters 4 and 5 and my 2019 article, “For Conscience and Kingdom: Martyrs, Monarchs and the Spirit of Modernity in Early Modern England,” which appeared in the European Journal of Sociology, Volume 60, Issue 1, pages 1–29. Sharpsighted readers might also notice similarities between Chapter 7 and my 2018 article, “Suffering and Sovereignty: Martyrdom in the Late Modern West,” which appeared in Thesis Eleven, Volume 146, Issue 1, pages 42–57. The process of publishing these articles proved very important in crystalizing my thinking, and I am grateful to the editors and reviewers at both journals for their comments. I would also be remiss if I neglected to thank Neil Jordan and Alice Salt at Routledge for their efforts, insights, and patience. An anonymous reviewer also provided much needed encouragement and guidance. Finally, I must thank those who have sacrificed daily so that I might have a chance at success. Without my sons this book would have been done in half the time, but I’m sure it would have been only half as good without their humor and love. My wife, Berglind Ragnarsdóttir, read almost every sentence of the book. The best of this book has grown out of her insights or our relationship. I am forever grateful.

1

Introduction

A crowd has gathered in the North African city of Carthage. It is between the end of the second century and the beginning of the third, just over halfway through the lifespan of the Western Roman Empire. Carthage is experiencing growing pains. In less than three hundred years, a city that was once the seat of the Phoenician Empire, and then Julius Caesar’s planned community for landless Roman rejects, is now the administrative capital of the imperial province of Africa. The population has grown, and rapid urbanization has transformed an imperial outpost into a city of culture and commerce. Despite (or perhaps because of) these rapid changes, the air in Carthage is larded with anxiety. A strange cult has been spreading across the Empire and is now stirring on the streets of Carthage itself. Converts are drawn from across the social spectrum: slaves and freemen, merchants and soldiers, the urban poor and highborn elites. A disproportionate number of Carthaginian women have converted. Though the imperial landscape is crowded with imported deities and their worshipers, this new cult is something else. At their secret gatherings, believers are rumored to engage in cannibalism and indulge in bizarre sexual rites. Beyond the rumors, the public behavior of the cult is strikingly insolent: its faithful are obstinate in their refusal to engage in sacrifice to the Emperor, an act of mutiny in a diffuse empire bound by civic ritual. And so it is that much of the city has turned up to witness the force of imperial violence enacted upon a cadre of Christians. The stage is set, the crowd gathered, imperial administrators present. Acts of violence in the arena consecrate imperial Roman authority, and the deaths of these Christians will be no different. But when the Christians face the menagerie of animals assembled to inflict spectacular suffering, the audience is disappointed by a relatively tame performance, most of the group surviving with only minor injuries. But surviving the animals prolongs life only briefly. The group is reassembled on the arena floor for execution by soldier’s sword. When a timorous soldier approaches the group’s ringleader, one of the young women recently gored by the cow, his hands shake. His first attempt at decapitation lands wide of his mark, the blade of his sword digging into the woman’s shoulder. On the second try the woman aids her executioner, guiding his hand in its fatal arc. This is the story of Perpetua, a highborn Carthaginian who would achieve fame and sainthood in early Christian communities across the Mediterranean world.

2

Introduction

The death of Perpetua and her fellow catechumens is memorialized alongside several other stories of early Christian sacrifice that emerged in the first centuries of the Common Era. In that time and ever since, these stories have captured the attention of readers, offering a vivid depiction of suffering, sacrifice, and conviction. Nearly two thousand years after Perpetua’s death, Carthage has been absorbed into the sprawling suburbs of modern Tunis. Much of the landscape has been engulfed by modernity, but the tireless efforts of UNESCO have managed to preserve a handful of historical landmarks under the halo of “world heritage”. A desiccated Roman amphitheater, rumored to be the site where Perpetua was executed, still attracts visitors today (though, if online reviews are to be believed, the unkempt and overgrown grounds prove an underwhelming experience; a recent visitor comments in an online forum that, “I’ve seen better Roman theaters,” and leaves three out of five stars). A few hours south of Carthage on the Trans-African Highway is the regional capital of Sidi Bouzid, located approximately in the center of Tunisia. Besides geographic proximity, Sidi Bouzid is a long way from ancient Carthage. Though hardly a metropolis, Sidi Bouzid is marked by the symptoms of modern urban life: its sidewalks shadowed by solemn and mismatched architecture, its streets busy with surly taxi drivers, its open spaces clogged with sullen teens. But recently this provincial city found itself prominently placed in the drama of history, engulfed by an event not wholly dissimilar to the execution of Christians that had occurred several hundred years ago and a few hundred miles to the north. Around midday on December 17, 2010, a 26-year-old resident of Sidi Bouzid set himself on fire. The man’s name was Mohamed Bouazizi, and in the weeks to come he would achieve global fame as the catalyst of the Tunisian revolution and the opening act of insurrection in the drama of the Arab Spring. His story was strangely similar to the Christian executions sketched above: a tale of belief and unflinching courage that pits individual determination and self-renunciation against a much larger and formidable opponent. Bouazizi’s self-immolation was an unexpected protest against political tyranny. The authoritarianism of then-President Ben Ali was easily overshadowed by the rococo oppression of Tunisia’s neighbor, Muammar Gaddafi, whose decadent rule seemed a more direct descendent of Roman imperial life. But what it lacked in grandeur, the Ali regime made up for in routinized evil. On the morning of December 17, Bouazizi prepared for his typical day selling produce on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. Later that morning he would be interrupted by police, who demanded a payoff from the unlicensed vendor. When Bouazizi refused, the police confiscated his scales. Unable to sell his goods, Bouazizi sought recourse at the local government office, where he was turned away. None of these events were unprecedented or unanticipated; in the course of their daily lives, Tunisians were regularly submitted to the petulant tyranny of the Ali regime. But what followed—from Bouazizi’s immolation to subsequent national and regional revolution—would rupture the predictable oppression that had marked Tunisian life for decades. The historically sensitive reader will likely tense up at the suggestion that the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor bears any similarity beyond

Introduction 3 geographic coincidence to the execution of several Christians in a Roman amphitheater nearly two thousand years ago. Differences abound: the early Christians were executed, whereas Bouazizi killed himself; the beliefs that supported the Christians’ conviction were religious, while Bouazizi was motivated by a sense of political injustice; Bouazizi’s death was instantly and globally commemorated through the circuitry of social media, while the commemoration of the executed Christians was confined to the antiquated mediums of the book and the image. The two cases are different in nearly every way. Different except for a most striking similarity: each case is an act of martyrdom. On the arena floor of ancient Carthage and on the streets of modern Sidi Bouzid death was not an end, but a new beginning. As martyrs, the early Christians and Mohamed Bouazizi became powerful symbols, inspiring contention as communities commemorated their deaths in the language of ultimate sacrifice. For observers, these martyrs seemed to condense formerly nebulous tensions into concrete antagonisms. The convergence of these two cases on the concept of martyrdom is less contrived than it first appears. Martyrdom has a habit of emerging in moments of turmoil. From the rise of Christianity in the first centuries of the Common Era to the myriad conflicts currently unfolding around the world, martyrs have played an enduring role in moments of conflict and social change. What is it about martyrdom that lends it such enduring potency? In a footnote to On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche writes that martyrs move humanity through the swamps of history.1 Like all of Nietzsche’s aphorisms, the phrase can be interpreted in two wholly incompatible ways. Perhaps martyrs are agents of human progress, figures whose tenacious suffering serves to motivate and inspire a sinewy devotion that can pull the masses out of the morass and toward virtue. Alternatively, martyrs might be inheritors of a malign “slave morality”, their passive suffering merely a weakness that threatens to drag all of humanity through history’s sludge. As in most things, the truth of martyrdom lies in the middle. Martyrs are at once figures of weakness and strength, triumph and loss, inertia and action. This tangle of contradictions suggests that martyrdom is not merely enduring, but also elastic, shaping to the contours of particular historical contexts. It is no wonder that, despite its historical endurance and wide-ranging influence, martyrdom has seldom received any sustained analysis. How to make sense of a concept that spans so much of human history but, in its individual manifestations, is often entangled in the particular passions of highly localized historical drama? At the most general level, this book is an attempt to answer that question. In the following pages, I will suggest that a historical sociological approach is uniquely suited to this task, and will outline the central premise and chapter outline of the book. However, before doing so it is worthwhile to reflect on why martyrdom deserves the scrutiny of academic inquiry. Though martyrdom appears throughout history, and has passed into everyday usage (consider the phrase “don’t be such a martyr”), it is an admittedly obscure topic, related to pressing topics like terrorism and political conflict, but perhaps only in a peripheral manner. It may even be

4

Introduction

the case that the concept’s longevity and widespread applications have reduced it to frivolity, a vacuous concept so widely applied in such disparate contexts as to render any general inquiry into its nature either meaningless or irrelevant. Scholars typically justify their work through the application of two competing rhetorical tactics. The first is to suggest that the topic at hand lends some insight into enduring questions about the human experience. This approach is most often characterized by abstraction, reflecting on questions of ethical or moral concern. The second mode of rhetoric argues that the topic under consideration directly relates to current problems, often invoking questions of policy. In contemporary academic writing, reliance on these two rhetorical tactics is typically shaped by disciplinary preferences. Authors in the humanities will justify their work as it relates to universal human experience, while authors in the social sciences will justify their work in relation to pressing contemporary social problems. Martyrdom deserves to be studied because it speaks to both rhetorical positions, simultaneously capturing matters of contemporary public interest as well as enduring features of the human experience. Consider the most recent cases of martyrdom that have seized public attention. In contentious environments around the world, martyrdom emerges from the fault lines of struggle. The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi is perhaps the most dramatic and widely known, but there are also the martyrs of Ukraine’s Maidan Square, suicide bombers in any number of conflicts, Kurdish hunger-strikers in Turkish prisons, civilians murdered in Islamist attacks around the world, and also their terrorist attackers. In these and many other cases, the dead are commemorated as martyrs, their deaths elevated to the status of ultimate sacrifice. In many of these cases, martyrdom crystalizes public anxieties surrounding the relationships between religion and politics, the rise of fundamentalism, and irreconcilable cultural difference. This is particularly true of recent acts of terrorist violence committed by Islamist militants against civilian targets in the West. There is an ineffable quality to the horror of terrorist attacks in New York, London, and Madrid. The violence of these events is often said to be unspeakable. But the language of martyrdom emerged in each case to articulate emergent fears and anxieties. The eager pursuit of martyrdom by Islamist militants was in clear contrast to the passivity of their victims. Martyrdom seemed to emerge from the rifts torn open by terrorist violence, representing the clear differences between the Western public and their antagonists. What is true of public perception holds also in scholarship. Recent studies that have considered martyrdom are drawn most often to cases associated within the Islamic tradition.2 What scant attention the topic has received is devoted to the ways in which martyrdom, as an individual pursuit, is representative of unrelenting devotion to faith and strong communal bonds. Here, martyrdom comes to be seen as analogous to boundless conviction.3 In the age of the Global War on Terror, martyrdom has managed to capture nascent anxieties about religion, politics, and cultural difference. In both the public imagination and academic investigations, a post-sacrificial, liberal and rational West is often juxtaposed with a

Introduction 5 segment of Islamic civilization defined by irrational and illiberal devotions and symbolized most poignantly by the act of martyrdom.4 The proliferation of martyrs in contemporary conflicts and their widespread association with civilizational conflict make the topic of martyrdom an issue of immediate policy relevance. Yet if these cases are examined more closely, it is clear that the materials of martyrdom transcend present anxieties. The attacks that occurred on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January of 2015 are illustrative. To many observers, the murder of satirists by Islamist militants offered yet another example of a clash of civilizations that pitted the values of Western political liberalism against a vague but threatening political Islam. But even as the attacks seemed to cast stark shades of difference, the strange glow of martyrdom attracted parties from both sides. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, observers from both sides of the conflict memorialized their dead using the language of ultimate sacrifice. On the one hand, the slain staffers of Charlie Hebdo were said to be martyrs for free speech, liberty, and a range of other values.5 In direct contrast, global terrorist groups commemorated the attackers as martyrs to their faith. In both cases, the language of martyrdom allowed commemorators to build meaning out of death. The January 2015 attacks in Paris attest to the renewed relevance of martyrdom in a political climate saturated by anxieties over the role of religion in the Western public sphere. At the same time, the attacks also suggest a deeper relevance. Despite the obvious moral and cultural differences between the attackers and their victims, commemorative communities on both sides employed the language of martyrdom. This is true despite accusations that the Western world lives in a postmetaphysical, post-sacrificial age.6 This unexpected convergence suggests that martyrdom, whatever its origins and diffuse applications, corresponds to enduring social needs. Specifically, martyrdom allows otherwise discrepant parties the opportunity to form meaning out of death, using the language of ultimate sacrifice to elevate the deceased and transform them into vibrant social actors. The timely and timeless qualities of martyrdom suggest that the topic deserves further investigation. However, these same qualities complicate any such endeavor. It is worthwhile to reflect briefly on current approaches to the study of martyrdom. At the broadest level, the clearest division in the current literature is between humanistic and social scientific approaches. By humanistic, I mean those historical and theological accounts of martyrdom that investigate the topic in highly particularized settings. Historians have crafted studies of martyrdom organized by region and period, theologians by religious tradition, but in both instances the goal is to unlock the meaning of martyrdom within the thick, viscous webs of local culture.7 Here, martyrdom is perceived to contain an essence accessible only by quarrying the activities of particular actors and local settings. In direct opposition, contemporary social scientific writing on martyrdom tends to eschew historical and cultural investigation, preferring to analyze martyrdom as a tactic unfettered by time, place, or tradition.8 Some social scientists might analyze martyrdom as a pursuit in asymmetrical warfare, others as part of a much broader repertoire of contention.9 In either case, there is a propensity to discard

6

Introduction

local or historical variation in favor of ahistorical variables. These variables may be organized at different levels of measurement—from individual-level forces like the level of education to macro-level forces like foreign occupation—but regardless of scale, they are constructed so as to minimize the role of the actually existing historical agents and the local social settings they operate within, thus generalizing their reliability. This is just to say that most scholarship on martyrdom falls easily on one side or the other of disciplinary boundaries, with scholars in the humanities interested in interpreting meaning and scholars in the social sciences interested in interpreting patterns of causality. These two approaches correspond clearly to the aforementioned rhetorical tactics of justification: social scientists are preoccupied with causality because of potential policy implications, historians and theologians are concerned with meaning in particular settings because of potential insights gained into the story of humanity. While both sides offer substantive contributions, they are each also encumbered with deficiencies. The humanistic approach has sacrificed breadth for depth. The best historical and theological accounts of martyrdom construct rich and rigorous portraits of life within a narrow period. There are many uses and justifications for such a project, but the wider applications of such studies are limited. While it is easy enough to generalize from particular cases, it is difficult for such generalizations to support the full variety of human experience. The more generalizable approach of social scientists to the study of martyrdom suffers from an inverse dilemma. Ignoring particular actors and cultures may allow for a more universally testable theoretical proposition, but when it comes to the study of martyrdom this approach has led to serious theoretical misunderstandings. In operationalizing martyrdom as a tactic or pursuit, either in the context of a specific action (e.g., suicide bombing) or a broader set of activities (a repertoire of extreme self-deprecation that might include hunger strikes, selfimmolation, etc.), social scientists have misconstrued the most essential aspects of martyrdom. Beyond the pursuits of individual actors are the communities that memorialize the dead as martyrs. Because it takes a village to make a martyr, any investigation of martyrdom must foreground the socio-cultural processes that craft narratives of ultimate sacrifice from otherwise meaningless death. What is often said of the social sciences generally is applicable also to the social scientific study of martyrdom: statistics has introduced great rigor, but it has also on occasion introduced mortis. To witness the limitations of current approaches to the study of martyrdom, consider the wide array of cases alluded to thus far. Martyrs crowd the historical record, from the ancient Mediterranean world to today’s globalized wars. An indepth historical investigation of early Christian martyrdom has the potential to uncover new perspectives on the world of antiquity. However, on its own such a study is limited in the insights it might lend to the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi or contemporary acts of violent terror. Similarly, while the reigning social scientific approach may lend predictive power to the study of particular

Introduction 7 violent episodes, it is ill-suited to assess the most consequential features of contemporary terrorist violence: the social responses they generate. The deficits of each approach complement the other: social scientists have overlooked the historically-constituted, meaning-making activities that imbue martyrdom with its characteristic potency, while scholars in the humanities have focused on particular cases at the expense of generalizability and contemporary relevance. What is needed is a methodological approach that seizes upon the dual qualities of martyrdom as both a chronic condition of human history and a latelyemerging symptom of contemporary crisis. Martyrdom must be understood as both an event and a process: as a concept, martyrdom applies to a massive range of distinctive cases, but these cases are connected through the flow of time. To put this in a more academic lilt, the study of martyrdom requires an approach that is at once diachronic and synchronic. Historical sociology, a bastard child of the humanities and social sciences, is uniquely suited to this task. The uncharted qualities of martyrdom exist between the humanities and social sciences: there is little theoretical knowledge about martyrdom as a component of cultural and social life, still less about the shifts and constancies seen in different cases of martyrdom across time and space. From its inception, historical sociology has sought to navigate the choppy waters between history and the science of society. At the most basic level, this interdisciplinary impulse makes historical sociology the most apt methodological approach to fill in the gaps in knowledge about martyrdom. Historical sociology is less a subfield than an instinct which runs through the sociological tradition. Some have suggested the practice of historical sociology is distinguished by its focus on rare but consequential events.10 Others have established still broader parameters, arguing that historical sociology is defined simply by social analysis, which gives due attention to the role of time and place in shaping social structures.11 These are porous boundaries, representative not of a calcified subfield but a broad inclination characterized foremost by an interest in social change.12 This is as true in the classical historical sociology of de Tocqueville and Weber as it is in recent incarnations, from Foucault’s genealogy to the newly ascendant language of path dependency. So too with this historical sociology of martyrdom, which will study martyrdom not as an inert substance stuck in the amber of the past, but as a concept which shapes and is shaped by macro-historical social change. The scope and interdisciplinary inclinations of historical sociology are theoretically well-suited to the study of martyrdom, but how does a broad scholarly inclination get translated into scholarly practice? A systematic study of martyrdom requires attention to the social realities that produce martyrs. Scholars have already attempted both grand theoretical and predictive analysis of martyrdom, but all of these attempts fall short of understanding martyrdom at the level of culture. A historical sociology sensitive to culture must attend first to the meaning-making activities of historical actors who transform individual cases of death into the status of ultimate sacrifice. To understand martyrdom at this level requires the methods of interpretive historical sociology.

8

Introduction

Interpretive historical sociology aspires to achieve Max Weber’s goal of understanding “the characteristic uniqueness of the reality in which we move.”13 This aspiration is achieved with the aid of concepts, which interpretive historical sociologists use as prisms through which to view cultural processes.14 Concepts allow the interpretive historical sociologist to organize and interpret historical data, often with the goal of determining the “characteristic uniqueness” of a case.15 Encompassing these preliminary qualities is the goal of developing a meaningful interpretation of the meaning-making activities of historical actors. This approach follows exemplars like Reinhard Bendix, E.P. Thompson, and Clifford Geertz, all of whom share a preference for studying social life at the level of culture, a sensitivity to the unique realities of the individual case, a marked antipathy for grand theoretical pronouncements, and finally a presumption that the most meaningful interpretive account is that which carries direct implications from the past into the present.16 Such an approach risks being ensnared by the particular and succumbing to the same qualities which detain much of the current humanistic scholarship on martyrdom. Overcoming this hazard requires two steps. The first is the use of comparison; all humanistic studies of martyrdom offer some interpretation of the meaning-making activities involved in creating martyrs, but an interpretive historical sociology has the added benefit of comparing different cases across time and space. The goal of this comparison is to develop an even sharper understanding of the distinguishing features of individual cases, simultaneously throwing into relief those elements which may migrate subtly across cases. The comparison of cases allows the interpretive study of history, sensitive as it is to culture and meaning, to contribute something to the broader quest of understanding processes of social change, if only in a limited manner. The second step in overcoming viscous particularism is to use the concept under consideration, in this case martyrdom, to engage with and excoriate grandtheoretical programs which intrude upon the selected cases. E.P. Thompson once wrote, in response to the ascendant forces of obtuse continental Marxism, that “History is not a factory for the manufacture of Grand Theory, like some Concorde of the global air.”17 Yet even Thompson, determined as he was to locate “real history” amidst mixed metaphors, approached the historical record with a theoretical vocabulary. In an immediate sense, Thompson’s study was an attempt to burn down the strawmen of “scientific Marxism”, uncovering the process by which individuals in history have produced the concept of class through social, rather than strictly material, relations. Yet Thompson was himself a Marxist, and engaged with the theories of that tradition not merely to falsify but to clarify. Thompson’s finished product presents a model for interpretive historical sociology, in which theoretical propositions are deployed in dialogue with historical concepts. Much like the use of comparison, theory, if sparingly allocated, allows the interpretive sociologist to navigate the narrows between empirical particularism and sweeping abstraction. The endurance of martyrdom across the historical record and its presence at the heart of contemporary conflict compel further inquiry into its nature and role

Introduction 9 in history, and an interpretive historical sociology is the most suitable approach to redressing the shortcomings of humanistic and social scientific studies of the topic to date. An interpretive historical sociology of martyrdom holds the potential to unlock the social aspects of martyrdom that distinguish it from other adjacent concepts. However, such an approach requires two deliberate, preliminary decisions in order to achieve its outlined task. The first choice involves case selection. Because martyrdom is a concept of ancient vintage, any attempt to study it must draw from a wide chronology. As discussed earlier, selecting cases based on difference is also necessary in order to establish the unique qualities and social characteristics of particular historical cases. However, this approach to case selection carries clear hazards: in selecting cases based on their diversity, the interpretive historical sociologist risks forcing otherwise incompatible cases into artificial syncopation. Indeed, a fundamental question faces all efforts in historical sociology: when is difference meaningful, and when is it merely difference? Confronting this question requires establishing basic parameters which allow the researcher to maximize meaningful difference. The second choice the interpretive historical sociologist faces is that of theory. Typically, theory is conceived of as a collection of interdependent propositions which allow the sociologist to generate hypotheses. For historical sociologists, theory is most often used to establish epistemological grounds for falsification (in the case of scholars interested in finding patterns of causal variation) or application (in the case of grand theory). In contrast, interpretive historical sociology is often thought of as being allergic to this type of theorizing. Instead, the work of interpretation seeks to build minimalist, inductive theories confined to a particular case. If any colossal theory does lumber onto the page, it is only to trip oafishly over the pocked landscape of real history. Critics suggest that the anti-theorizing of interpretive historical sociologists like Reinhard Bendix ultimately amounts to a sort of disingenuous posturing. While criticizing easy theoretical targets, the interpretive historical sociologist surreptitiously stocks their own analysis with a range of theoretical assumptions that, while less grand, are no less abstract (e.g., a study of authority in medieval Europe derides the Marxist theory of the state while relying on theoretical propositions regarding the essence of “traditional” and “legal” authority). How, then, might an interpretive historical sociology engage productively with theory? The answer to this question exists within the tradition of interpretive historical sociology itself, if only implicitly. In the exemplars in the genre, theory and history are arranged dialectically, in a productive opposition that ties individual cases together in a narrative arrangement.18 Even as theory ties cases together, cases expose the variety of frailties and accuracies that reside within a particular theoretical position. A self-conscious interpretive historical sociology must therefore begin by selecting a theory or theories that might produce such an energetic relationship with the cases under analysis. Any academic investigation necessarily entails a prolonged period of throat clearing, in which the author outlines the theoretical and methodological scope of the work at hand. Interpretive historical sociologists tend to elide this prerequisite,

10

Introduction

knowing that it undermines the rich narrative that lends the genre its appeal. However, this can result in an unsightly tangle of theories, concepts, and history, in which small cases yield big conclusions and large processes are reduced to miniscule happenings. If the interpretive approach tends to obscure the relationship between theory, concept, and case, this seems all the more reason to give these topics due consideration, even at the expense of narrative. This is doubly true for martyrdom, a concept which is torn between theoretical domains, tossed through history, widely used and thoroughly abused (by practitioners and scholars alike). To develop a sociological conception of martyrdom requires engaging with relevant theoretical literature on religious and political topics including sacrifice, charisma, and authority. To use this concept to interpret historical events and processes is necessarily to engage with macro-historical sociological theories regarding the nature of religion and its role in public life, as well as the development of power and authority in history. Choices made at the conceptual and theoretical level implicate the selection of cases, just as the selection of cases necessarily shapes the eventual insights drawn from conceptual and theoretical decisions. Disciplinary controversies play a subtle but significant role in decisions over theory, concept, and case. Again, interpretive historical sociologists have tended to pass over questions of academic controversy for the reason that it distracts from the “real history” found in narrative. However, it is clear that even purists of the genre have been attracted to the interpretive method not as a vehicle to escape academic argument, but foremost to ride over the fields of scholastic debate, crushing adversaries as they go. Thompson’s work is an obvious contribution to internecine Marxist conflict, but even the sober historicism of Reinhard Bendix was ultimately a response to functionalist theories of modernity. This is just to say that even if interpretive historical sociologists have typically diminished the role of academic debate within their writing, such considerations have fundamentally shaped their work. Academic concerns assert an acute pressure on any study, but this is doubly true of a topic like martyrdom, which sees the convergence of subfields, including political sociology and the sociology of religion. In recent years, sociology has been confronted with the specter of postmodernism and it’s more vocal offspring, particularly postcolonialism and postsecularism. In different ways, each of these interdisciplinary hobgoblins has suggested that the goals of sociological inquiry, particularly the historical sociological goal of understanding social change, is doomed to failure. While the fad of postmodernism has come and gone, its heirs have produced more lasting critiques which directly speak to the interests of this book. Despite their differences, postcolonialism and postsecularism both suggest that the epistemology which supports social scientific inquiry is not impartial, but imperial.19 For its postcolonial critics, social science is an agent of colonial power; in its attempt to create a science of humanity, sociology has drawn upon a range of odious oppositions (between the modern and the primitive, the civilized and the barbaric, etc.) that have ultimately served to support Western powers. So too with

Introduction 11 the postsecularist critique, which suggests that sociological propositions about the essence of religion (and attached oppositions between the religious and the secular, the sacred and the profane, etc.) ultimately support a particular political project by undermining alternative social arrangements. This is just to say that the selection of cases, concepts, and theories not only influence one another, but are all in turn implicated by debates and controversies in the wider academic environment. Again, this has been true of all interpretive historical sociologies, even if the conventions of the genre have evaded deliberation on such topics. For a historical sociology of martyrdom, the critiques of postsecularism and postcolonialism infringe upon methodological and theoretical considerations. One needn’t accept every conclusion drawn by these critiques to see that a study which involves a range of political and religious arrangements must approach its topic with heightened reflexivity. The historical sociologist must be attuned to the possibility that actors within the text may also act upon the text. With that in mind, this book develops a sociological conception of martyrdom that borrows heavily from classical and canonical sociology. As I elaborate in the next chapter, a historical sociology of martyrdom must begin with the notion of sacrifice. In conceptualizing martyrdom as a form of sacrifice, I am responding directly to the propensity in existing literature to view martyrdom as an individual, rather than social, action. Yet in drawing on the literature of sacrifice, this study risks perpetuating the presumptions of classical sociology, particularly regarding the essential, religious nature of sacrificial activities (and, by association, the essential nature of religion). At the conceptual level, my goal is the development a sociological conception of martyrdom that can usefully be applied to interpret historical cases without imposing a vocabulary that draws too heavily from the experience and assumptions of Western modernity. One corrective measure I take, again developed in Chapter 2, is to craft a conception of sacrifice unbound to typical oppositions between the sacred and the profane or the secular and religious. Rather, I suggest that the martyr’s sacrifice be understood as the product of cultural deliberations regarding the legitimacy of violence, the uses of suffering, and understandings of the body as a vessel to achieving higher goods and purposes. The martyr’s sacrifice captures these concerns, stimulating in turn equal parts solidarity and struggle. However, a second and equally important tactic involves the cases analyzed in Chapters 3–5. This book is decidedly Eurocentric and is almost entirely confined to Christian Europe, and as such it is, at least at a cursory level, immediately antagonistic to current tastes. However, the focus on Western history is not justified because of the supposed universality or centrality of the European experience. Rather, to take postcolonial and postsecular critique seriously requires not only expanding the empirical range of sociology, but also a reconsidering of our inherited perceptions of Western modernity. A historical sociology of martyrdom can contribute something valuable to this reconsideration by focusing on Western history. This Eurocentrism is motivated first by the disproportionate attention currently given to martyrdom in the Islamic

12

Introduction

tradition. While research in this area is understandably reacting to current events, it tends to uncritically perpetuate popular assumptions about supposed civilizational fault lines that separate a post-Christian West from an Islamic near East. But perhaps more fundamentally, this book’s Eurocentrism is an attempt to examine the deep cultural history that supports such thinking. How did the West come to arrive at its secular position? Perhaps more to the point, why is the Western rational public sphere, supposedly mature in its secularity, so frequently destabilized by the specter of religion (and not only when sourced from external threats)? To answer this question demands a historical investigation into the relationship between politics and religion in the West, and focuses specific attention on Christianity as the most influential religious tradition in Western history. This investigation does not perpetuate modern, Western perceptions about the relationship between religion and politics but rather seeks to understand those perceptions as the result of historical contingency. Martyrdom offers a new perspective on this relationship: in the West, martyrdom emerged from the Christian tradition, and continues to have religious connotations. However, as subsequent chapters reveal, martyrdom has always also involved questions of earthly power, and has maintained at least peripheral relevance in a rapidly secularizing Europe. How has martyrdom’s position at the border of religion and politics shifted across European history, and what, if anything, do these historical contortions say about broader macro historical changes? To answer these questions, I devote four chapters to the analysis of martyrdom in Western and Christian (or post-Christian) history. Across these chapters I have two goals: to develop a thorough historical understanding of martyrdom and to compare cases of martyrdom across epochs to develop a new perspective on the historical relationship between religion and politics in the West. To develop a thorough, historical understanding of martyrdom, I investigate who is responsible for the creation of the martyr (i.e., the commemorative community), out of what cultural materials the martyr is made (i.e., the social scripts of sacrifice), and to what ends. These details will reveal the essential functions of martyrdom as a stimulant of social solidarity as well as a force for contention. I do this through a synthetic analysis of primary and secondary sources. The secondary historical literature on each period discussed in Chapters 3–6 is significant, and I have attempted a wide reading that is sensitive to historiographical controversy without losing sight of my central goals. More fundamentally, I offer an analysis of the primary source materials that constitute the process of collective commemoration. The forms these primary sources take shift through history according to technological development: from epistles and iconography to poetry and song through to modern news media and contemporary social media. However, in each case I approach the primary source material with the fundamental goal of identifying the commemorative community and the meaning-making activities that produce stories of ultimate sacrifice. The result of this analysis is in each chapter the creation of something similar to what sociologists clumsily call a “typology”: focusing on a small sample of martyrs from the given period, I attempt to capture the most salient and startling features of martyrdom within each epoch.

Introduction 13 My second goal with these chapters is comparative, and addresses the aforementioned hope of developing a new perspective on the historical relationship between religion and politics in the West. To accomplish this goal, I have approached these chapters as a narrative: independent cases tied together by macro-historical forces. One thread of this narrative is uninventive: because the cases analyzed are organized chronologically, they are bundled together by the sequence of time. However, the narrative that unfolds in Chapters 3–6 is also held by the scratchier fibers of theory. As I have suggested previously, the interaction between interpretive historical sociology and theory often produces a sour blend of ambiguity and hostility. Yet whatever its faults, the relationship is symbiotic: in their encounter, high theory is brought down to earth while empiricism is ever so slightly elevated out of the muck. Across this book’s empirical chapters, the “real history” of martyrdom converges with an extensive theoretical literature covering both political and religious modernization in Europe. In order to suss out the historical processes which run through our menagerie of martyrs, I have selected two controversial and wholly incommensurable bodies of theoretical literature for sustained analysis. What follows is a brief attempt to justify my somewhat arbitrary theoretical section. Martyrdom, at least as it is discussed in this book, is fundamentally concerned with the work communities do to form meaningful narratives of sacrifice out of suffering, and the consequences of that cultural labor. From Hobbes to Weber, Western social theory has long imagined suffering to be a dynamo of modernity, stimulating drastic historical events. In the classical interpretation, humans have formed two meaningful responses to suffering: the church and the state. The church, or even more generally religion, has responded to suffering by orienting humanity toward a higher good. The state, or political institutions, has responded to human suffering by attempting to organize and distribute earthly goods harmoniously. From Hobbes onward, Western theorists have suggested that history might be mapped according to the migration of the species as it seeks out shelter from pain and misery. For the majority of social theorists, this migratory pattern is quite clear (at least in the West): history is the movement of humanity away from religion and toward a modern state. In the alliterative theoretical discussions of this book, the canonical story of suffering found in human history is captured by two words: secularization and sovereignty. The first of these, secularization theory, is a central theoretical argument in the sociology of religion and a core feature of the sociological account of modernity. The second, sovereignty, is a more voguish and less settled term that has come to dominate recent efforts at Continental theory. It would be difficult to locate a more mismatched pairing: secularization theory contains a long-established set of propositions which are scientific in nature and empirically oriented, while recent theoretical studies of sovereignty are more akin to “critical theory”, aspiring to uncover and undermine the secret conspiracies at the core of modern power relations. However, each speaks directly to the most pressing historical questions about martyrdom, and both provide a vocabulary for

14

Introduction

connecting cases of martyrdom from the distant past to contemporary martyrs and modern social problems. Secularization theory has long sought to explain and predict patterns of religious decline under modernization. A range of theorists have developed grand and middle-range theories to account for this decline, from the privatization of faith to the differentiation of social institutions and the rise of a disenchanting instrumental rationality.20 Though perhaps more eclectic than is often allowed, the range of theorists working under the secularization paradigm are united by a vision of modernity, particularly Western modernity, as a rational, secular epoch whose social spaces, whether in the public sphere or government bureaucracy, are either indifferent or hostile to forms of social action typically characterized as religious. Secularization theory, with its language of religious decline and rationalization, presents a range of possible historical arguments about the fate of martyrdom, foremost among these that it might decline in relevance or fade into extinction with the rise of modernity and its attendant rationalizing of social structures. Critical studies in sovereignty offer a strangely similar conclusion from a vastly different perspective: according to this still-developing branch of theory, sovereignty is a deep-buried structure in all societies.21 If much of political life consists of surface-level governance, sovereignty is said to be that subterranean force which lends politics its legitimacy and capability. Sovereignty consists of certain foundational activities, particularly the establishment of boundaries between subjects and outsiders. But sovereignty is also invoked in those political practices which reenact these foundational statements, including the invoking of “exceptions” and emergency situations, but also “biopolitical” decisions over life and death. This somewhat obtuse argument is clarified when contemporary theorists apply this theory to history: all societies have had sovereignty, a force which drew political boundaries and enforced these through exclusionary activities, but only with the development of the modern state has sovereignty reached its most developed form. Here, modern power relations—characterized by a range of technologies of control—allow for a constant “state of exception”, in which populations are routinely subjected to biopolitical control from sovereign power (the birth of the concentration camp is often taken to be representative of this shift). This perspective has direct implications for martyrdom: if modern powers exercise an increasing dominion over the basic features of life and death, martyrdom might be expected to decline in frequency and potency. Both of these bodies of theory speak to contemporary crisis and directly bear upon the concept of martyrdom. Each suggests, in quite different ways, that the rise of modernity would involve the decline in relevance and frequency of martyrdom. From the perspective of secularization theory, modernity has largely been sanitized of “irrational” activities like sacrifice, thus reducing martyrdom do a vestigial inheritance of a bygone age. For critical theorists of sovereignty, the expanding scope and capability of sovereign power has achieved a monopoly over life and death, reducing both the general likelihood of political contention but also the specific ability of communities to create narratives of ultimate sacrifice from suffering and death. These accounts align neatly with the ailments

Introduction 15 that enfold contemporary cases of martyrdom and political terror: that the West is at once uniquely susceptible to radical religious violence, but also somehow controlled by omnipotent powers who observe and orchestrate all activities of the modern Western citizen. In many ways, the decline of various aspects of institutional religious life and the rise of the modern state have placed limitations on the uses of martyrdom in Western societies. However, the history laid out in this book also reveals certain deficiencies in current approaches to secularization and sovereignty. In its traditional form, secularization theory tends to demarcate clear boundaries between “religious” and “secular-modern” ideas, actors, and institutions. The history of martyrdom provided here illustrates a common critique of secularization theory: that the domains of the “secular” and the “religious” are not universal, but products of historical contingency. The specific case of martyrdom suggests that concepts like sacrifice can migrate between secular and religious realms with relative ease. Furthermore, the endurance of martyrdom long into the reign of secular Europe suggests that certain “irrational” tendencies abide even in an otherwise anesthetized public sphere. Theorists of sovereignty have likewise tended to overstate the stability of authority and the state throughout history, up to and including the sovereignty found in Western modernity. Martyrdom reveals that life and death, supposedly the dominion of sovereign power, are in fact fertile ground for the mobilization of contentious movements. The martyr’s sacrifice not only offers a powerful organizing symbol, it can also generate a potent critique of sovereign violence. The history of martyrdom suggests that modernity does not necessarily see a transformation in the capabilities of sovereignty—which remains as fragile as it has ever been—but rather, in how subjects understand the role of the sovereign in providing for the public good. The history outlined in this book reveals a historical process that unfolds between the pronouncements of secularization theory and recent critical theories of sovereignty. Martyrdom emerged as one component of Christian devotional life which allowed an emerging community to deliberate on its place within a newly revealed sacral order. Christianity, an “other worldly” faith, contrasted sharply with the “this-worldly” practices of Roman civil religion. Martyrdom, as depicted in widely circulated stories and debated in patristic texts, allowed early Christians to think through emergent antagonisms between these two competing sacral orders: it drew stark contrasts between Christian and pagan sacrifice, and juxtaposed the desecrating violence of temporal sovereignty with the redemptive violence of Christian self-sacrifice. Put simply, martyrdom stories allowed early Christians to reflect on their place within a transcendent order and suggested proper conduct in a world where temporal and transcendent sovereigns did not necessarily align. Martyrdom remained a relevant social action for constraining earthly sovereignty in the Middle Ages, when the concurrently centralizing forces of medieval kingdoms and the papacy came into conflict over the administration of justice.

16

Introduction

The Church’s ability to draw on the charismatic powers of martyrs (and the institutionalization of this charisma through the cult of the saints) allowed it to maintain a legitimate claim as the mediator of justice and the higher good on earth. However, the rise of the early modern state, coupled with the Reformation, saw a significant shift in the collective commemoration of martyrs. In the popular martyrologies of Reformation and Counter-Reformation theologians, the higher goods revealed through the martyr’s sacrifice were increasingly mediated not by the Church, but by the state. While the early modern martyr’s sacrifice continued to be tied to an “other-worldly” Christian notion of the good, the earthly purveyor of the Christian sacral order was increasingly located in state authority. This process reaches its apotheosis in the martyrs of modern European nationalism, whose sacrifice is directed entirely toward a system of rights contained within earthly sovereignty. The sacrifice of modern martyrs can no longer be said to be Christian in any meaningful sense, but is rather associated with the liberties and freedoms guaranteed by the modern state. This is true even of those revolutions that appear to bear the traces of religion and sectarianism. The narrative revealed across Chapters 3–7 is one in which the central character, martyrdom, migrates from an “other-worldly” sacral order mediated by a church to a “this-worldly” sacral order mediated by an earthly sovereign. The martyr’s sacrifice retains its ability to orient the collective community toward a set of higher goods, but these higher goods transform from Christian practice to the practices of citizenship. Likewise, martyrdom remains a symbol capable of condensing social antagonism and catalyzing conflict, but these conflicts increasingly tend to unfold between competing claimants of national sovereignty. The counter-sovereign tendencies found in Christian martyrdom are thus diminished, as the martyr’s sacrifice becomes “immanitized”: the only recourse to the desecrating violence of the modern sovereign is sovereignty itself. This story conforms to certain aspects of traditional theories of secularization and recent critical studies of sovereignty. However, it reveals that neither perspective is wholly complete on its own. The story of the Europe’s disenchantment, the gradual depletion of Christianity from the public sphere, is also the story of an emerging sovereignty, enchanted with its own competing sacral order. The history of martyrdom in the Western world reveals one dimension of Europe’s current crisis: the sovereign Western nation-state is imbued with a sacral aura, even as our societies remain susceptible to conflict, violence, and disorder. On the one hand, this means that any failure by the sovereign state to protect and mediate rights and goods (either through internal corruption or external violation) will appear not merely as an institutional failure, but a failure of the sacral order as such. On the other hand, our vocabulary of collective commemoration—particularly in the case of martyrdom—is incapable of consolation (let alone transformation), given that it is itself rooted in this same fragile sovereignty. Martyrdom exposes both the power of secularization in the West, and its ultimate failure to create an anesthetized, purely rational form of social belonging. At the same time, martyrdom reveals the unquestionable rise of the earthly sovereign, even as it reveals the limits of its aspirations.

Introduction 17 This chapter opened with the suffering of historical martyrs and has concluded with the reader suffering through the abstractions of historical social science. Is this book merely another act of the sociological slight-of-hand, promising an investigation into an exciting topic only to veer off into obtuse deliberations on the nature of modernity? Perhaps; but such a question presumes that martyrdom is only interesting insofar as it stimulates our voyeuristic desire for pain, suffering, and agony. Beyond the gore lies a more substantive social action, one that haunts our history and shadows our contemporary social landscape. It is the goal of this book to uncover the social substance of martyrdom. Of course, digging through the sediment of time raises dust. However, as the particles of history rise into view, they will inevitably alter our vision of the present.

Notes 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 188. 2 Ami Pedahzur, Root Causes of Terrorism: The Globalization of Martyrdom (New York: Routledge, 2006); Mohammed M. Hafez, “Martyrdom Mythology in Iraq: How Jihadists Frame Suicide Terrorism in Videos and Biographies,” Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 1 (2007): 95–115; Assaf Moghadam, The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al Qaeda, Salafi Jihad, and the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 3 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 170. 4 Paul Vallely, “Leave ‘Martyrdom’ to the Jihadists,” The New York Times, July 2016, http://nyti.ms/2aMIgD9. 5 Allison Pearson, “I Salute the Charlie Hebdo Martyrs for Their Bravery,” The Daily Telegraph, January 7, 2015, 27; Mary Sanchez, “Charlie Hebdo Victims Were Martyrs, But No Saints,” The Kansas City Star, January 8, 2015, www.kansascity.com/opinion/ opn-columns-blogs/marysanchez/article5663844.html. 6 Gianni Vattimo and Rene Girard, Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 7 Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Lacey B. Smith, Fools, Martyrs, Traitors: The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World (Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999); Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); G.W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); David Cook, Martyrdom in Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Candida Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012); Dominic Janes and Patrick Houen, Martyrdom and Terrorism: Pre-Modern to Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Servais Pinkaers, The Spirituality of Martyrdom: To the Limits of Love (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016). 8 Mario Ferrero, “Martyrdom Contracts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 6 (2006): 855–77; Laurence R. Iannaccone, “The Market for Martyrs,” Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 2, no. 4 (2006); Jim Winkwates, “Suicide Terrorism: Martyrdom for Organizational Objectives,” Journal of Third World Studies 23, no. 1 (2006): 87–115; Lee E. Dutter and Ofira Seliktar, “To Martyr or Not to Martyr: Jihad

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10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20

21

Introduction Is the Question, But What Is the Policy Answer?,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 30, no. 5 (2007): 429–43; Mario Ferrero, “The Cult of Martyrs,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 57, no. 5 (2012): 881–904. Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Bombing (New York: Random House, 2005); Jeffrey W. Lewis, The Martyrdom Business: A History of Suicide Bombing (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012); Michael Biggs, “How Repertoires Evolve: The Diffusion of Suicide Protest in the 20th Century,” Mobilization 18, no. 4 (2013): 407–28. Craig Calhoun, “The Rise and Domestication of Historical Sociology,” in The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, edited by Terrence J. McDonald (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 313–14. Theda Skocpol, “Sociology’s Historical Imagination,” in Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, edited by Theda Skocpol (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1. Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984); Richard Lachmann, What Is Historical Sociology? (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013). Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, translated and edited by Edward Shils and Henry Finch (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011), 72. Theda Skocpol, “Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies,” in Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, edited by Theda Skocpol (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 368–74. Tilly, Big Structures, 88. Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977); Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Penguin Books Limited, 2002). E.P. Thompson, “Historical Logic,” in The Essential E.P. Thompson, edited by Dorothy Thompson (New York: The New Press, 1993), 454. Ellen Kay Trimberger, “E.P. Thompson: Understanding the Process of History,” in Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, edited by Theda Skocpol (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 211–43. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Second Edition (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). Bryan R. Wilson, Religion in a Secular Society: A Sociological Comment (London: Watts, 1966); Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Press, 1967); Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Steve Bruce, God Is Dead: Secularization in the West (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002). Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

2

A theory of martyrdom

On August 18, 2015, an 81-year-old archeologist named Khaled Mohamad alAsaad was executed by members of the so-called Islamic State in the Syrian city of Tadmur. He had been a celebrated expert on Middle Eastern antiquity and was for decades the leading conservator of the ancient city of Palmyra and its archeological treasures. For this work he was publicly beheaded, his decapitated body hung from a light post. In the weeks that followed his death, he was celebrated across the globe as “the martyr of Palmyra”. Roughly two weeks later and half a world away, a provincial Kentucky bureaucrat received the martyr’s crown. On September 3, 2015, the clerk of Rowan County Kim Davis was held in contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her obstinacy concluded in a brief stay at a local detention center for a period of five days. For her suffering she was celebrated as a martyr of America’s culture war. Two weeks after Davis’s sentencing, on September 16, 2015, the Emir of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and a retinue of high ranking officials visited the family of the recently deceased Saif Issa Obaid Al Naqbi in the Emirite of Sharjah. He had been a soldier, killed while deployed in a regional coalition then intervening in Yemen’s Civil War. Joining the family in prayer, Sheikh Mohammed said of the fallen, Martyrs are the sons of this homeland and the leadership will memorize their names in its history with full pride. Their sacrifice will be recalled from one generation to the other to be a guide towards pride and dignity of this precious homeland.1 A murdered archeologist, a persecuted pencil-pusher, and a fallen soldier. How can these discordant events all conclude in martyrdom? This is the sordid reality that a historical sociology of martyrdom must confront. Words that endure across time and space undergo something like evolution, mutating at seemingly random intervals. As with evolution, these mutations may result in great fecundity, with the word expanding beyond its original associations (though just as often these mutations fail to achieve reproductive success). Martyrdom emerged in the first centuries of the Common Era; in subsequent centuries, this ancient word has

20 A theory of martyrdom diffused around the globe and expanded well beyond its original context. While this longevity portends social significance, it also necessarily means that the word will have been applied widely and in disparate circumstance. This is a common if often unconsidered problem for historians and historical social scientists.2 Though some have the good fortune of discovering a previously unarticulated phenomenon—Durkheim’s anomie or Bourdieu’s habitus— most analysts of history work with an inherited vocabulary. This only becomes truly problematic when the language of social life becomes a barrier to its comprehension. Implicit in any social scientific study of revolution or industrial society is a set of definitional criteria which effectively restricts the terms under consideration. Scholars of revolution, for example, typically limit their studies to political transformation, ignoring “revolutionary” technological or cultural events. In the case of revolution, the popular uses of and assumptions about the topic obstruct an analysis that aspires to some greater measure of truth than allowed by our day-today vocabulary. In other words, an initial step in social scientific analysis involves the elevation of everyday words into the more rarified status of concepts. Social scientists have understood the notion of concepts in diverse but largely complementary ways.3 For social scientists, concepts are neither apart from nor apiece of everyday language. Concepts are derived from the social world, but depart in their specificity and autonomy. In most social science research, concepts are the subatomic particles of analysis; though foundational to analysis, they are largely imperceptible. Once conceptual parameters are set, the researcher pursues their object as if the matter were settled. For historical sociologists engaged in interpretive analysis, concepts require more thorough consideration because, it is suggested, these typically imperceptible social particles can reveal unnoticed traits or patterns if they are exposed to more thorough examination. In the preceding chapter I presented two arguments: that martyrdom itself deserves more thorough consideration, and that once considered, martyrdom will reveal new perspectives on macro-historical processes. In this chapter I proceed by developing a sociological conception of martyrdom. This effort at concept-building has two goals: to liberate martyrdom from the confines of methodological individualism and to build a concept that can usefully contain a range of empirical cases without smothering their individual distinguishing features.

Martyrdom: conceptual confusions Martyrdom’s etymological origins lie in the Ancient Greek word martyrs, which is most often translated as “witness”. Unlike most other words of antiquity, martyrdom’s etymological roots still shape much of the scholarship on the topic.4 This is true across the disciplines, but most apparent in the theological debates on the topic. Christian theology offers a rich and varied scholarship on martyrdom. Debates surrounding the nature of martyrdom were central to the emergence and solidification

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of early Christianity. Similar debates continue amongst Christian theologians today, and as with patristic controversies, much of this contemporary work concerns the question of witnessing. Here, the fundamental question is, “what does it mean to be an effective Christian witness, or martyr, in a modern pluralist age?” The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has answered this question by suggesting that martyrdom is enacted by contemporary Christians in their everyday lives, the daily indignities incurred through righteous living a form of witness analogous to cases of historical martyrdom.5 The theologian Jennifer McBride suggests a similar position in advocating for a “nontriumphal” form of Christian witnessing.6 In direct contrast are those theologians who advocate for the endurance of a radical martyrdom achieved only through the renunciation of state violence. Craig Hovey suggests that martyrdom is both the ultimate enactment of Christian faith and a necessary condition of righteous adherence. For Hovey, martyrdom is only ever achieved through the complete renunciation of violence and the state: “there are only those who suffer violence and those who inflict it.”7 Similarly, the Anglican theologian Joshua J. Whitfield suggests that martyrdom is a descriptive gesture of faith enacted by those who die on behalf of their religious adherence.8 Though theologically opposed, both of these perspectives are governed by the assumption that martyrdom is an individual action. For contemporary theologians, martyrdom is an achievement gained through personal righteousness; the debate lies not in the essence of martyrdom itself, which is widely understood to be a resolute form of personal witness, but in which individual behaviors constitute or justify this act of witnessing. This is most clearly illustrated by the writing of the influential theologian Stanley Hauerwas, who has defined martyrdom memorably as an “adamantine sense of self.”9 This adamantine self is likewise a common feature of historical accounts of martyrdom. Most historians approach the topic within the parameters of periodization. Here, martyrs are studied as products of a specific era. Historians of classical antiquity study the martyrs of early Christianity, historians of early modernity the martyrs of the Reformation, and historians of the modern age have uncovered the role of nationalist martyrs in the birth of modern social movements and national identity. In each of these periods, historians have uncovered valuable details regarding the meanings and consequences of martyrdom, and these accounts will be relied upon in the chapters that follow. However, while periodization has allowed historians to uncover the rich details that distinguish cases of martyrdom, this same attention to microscopic detail has meant that historians inevitably pursue martyrdom as an outcome of individual choice and conviction, investigating what historical circumstances led an individual to become an uncompromising witness for their beliefs. As with the theological account of martyrdom this is less a limitation than a disciplinary convention. However, this often leads historical investigations of martyrdom to focus on personal idiosyncrasies and private passions. These limitations are most clearly displayed in those few historical accounts of martyrdom that have attempted a more synthetic approach to the topic. The

22 A theory of martyrdom historian Lacey Baldwin Smith has endeavored to tell “the Story of Martyrdom in the Western World”, cataloguing a range of “fools and traitors” from Socrates to Gandhi who have attained the status of martyrdom.10 Smith’s study is notable for its lively narrative and ambitious scope. Yet Smith’s empirical ambitions are matched by a sanctimonious sort of theoretical modesty, the historian pausing throughout the book to excoriate those social scientists who have tried to capture the illusive topic of martyrdom in the “coarse nets of social science”. Smith suggests that the topic is better approached as a collection of incommensurable oddities and particular perversions, each case of martyrdom the product of a unique and often maligned eccentric. What is wrong with such an approach, particularly if the goal is the “demystify” martyrdom, a topic so often shrouded in the impenetrable auras of piety or reverence? First, Smith’s historical particularism ultimately only reflects the very same aspects of martyrdom he hopes to critique: despite his critical posture toward martyrs in general, Smith reinforces the widely held belief that martyrdom is the result of unbending conviction. This means that Smith’s history ultimately amounts to arbitrary questions of taste: when is conviction a social good and when is it malevolent fanaticism? Furthermore, despite claims to the contrary, Smith must necessarily undertake some preliminary theoretical generalizing to establish which cases he will consider. Given Smith’s aversion to social science, any such concept-building is done surreptitiously. This concludes in a book which assembles widely disparate cases, each more confounding than the last, the conclusion of which can only amount to platitudes on the virtues and hazards of conviction. Whatever the merits or faults of specific historical and theological studies, most satisfy the general requirements of their respective disciplines. Yet these disciplinary conventions necessarily limit the ability to compare cases of martyrdom across time and space. Where comparison is employed, it is inevitably constrained by methodological individualism, confined in both disciplines to investigating the circumstances under which individual conviction might be justified. As might be expected, social scientific inquiries approach the topic of martyrdom with disparate aspirations and methodologies. However, despite methodological and normative differences, social scientific research on martyrdom retains the methodological individualism of theological and historical approaches. Consider the vast social scientific literature on suicide bombing: though not focused on martyrdom as a topic in itself, social scientists are quick to use martyrdom as something analogous to particular tactics of self-sacrifice. Robert Pape’s widely cited work on suicide missions from around the world is paradigmatic.11 Pape’s studies begin with the assumption that suicide bombing is a rational tactic of war within asymmetric environments. Pape references martyrdom throughout his work, but always as a subordinate concept in the rationalizing process that drives the selection and pursuit of tactics.12 Here, martyrdom is one of many rewards offered to the suicide bomber, an epaulet garnered through steadfast commitment. Pape is joined by a host of social scientists who operationalize martyrdom as an individual reward associated with self-destructive tactics in cases of political

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contention. Many of these studies aim to understand the causes of martyrdom, drawing on a wider range of actions that include self-immolation and hunger strikes in addition to sacrificial combat tactics like suicide bombing.13 Much of this literature is based on rational-choice theory, which suggests that human behavior is governed principally by an individual calculus of costs and benefits.14 From this perspective, martyrdom is merely a benefit offered to those who pursue self-destruction. The question for this body of scholarship is under what circumstances the benefits of martyrdom outweigh the costs (i.e., death). The social scientific literature on martyrdom is striking in its congruence with theological and historical accounts. Across disciplines that are typically characterized by rancorous difference is a shared conception of martyrdom as an achievement of individual beliefs and actions. Theological studies attempt to locate the ethical circumstances which justify a martyr’s conviction, while historians investigate the specific historical circumstances that condition extreme beliefs. Both are characterized by a search for justifications, either ethical or circumstantial. Social scientists have retained the methodological individualism of these approaches, but discarded the search for justification in the name of objectivity. Methodological individualism is in keeping with the goals of theologians and historians, but is poorly suited to the social scientist’s goal of interpreting meaning and pursuing causality. Consider the suicide bomber: though they might desire martyrdom, their recognition as martyrs is a fact that lies outside of their control. Martyrdom is a status achieved in death, and therefore exists beyond the individuals who pursue it. It may be justified to suggest that martyrdom is a genuine goal of some individuals, but to conflate martyrdom with the desire for it is to fundamentally mistake what is most essential about the concept. Many who have pursued martyrdom have died in obscurity, forgotten or trivialized in the aftermath of their death, while many of history’s most widely commemorated martyrs achieved their notable status through coincidence rather than contrivance. A few examples may clarify the central confusion in much of the existing literature on martyrdom. Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian produce vendor whose self-immolation was retold in Chapter 1, is often described as the catalyst of the Arab Spring. But Bouazizi was hardly the only person to die by self-immolation in 2011. In April of that year an employee of the France Telecom company set himself on fire outside of the company’s offices in the French town of Mérginec to protest proposed corporate restructuring that would have resulted in layoffs.15 A month later a divorced American father of three died after self-immolating on the steps of a courthouse in New Hampshire in protest of court-ordered child support payments.16 The following November a 29-year-old teacher in Ethiopia died as a result of self-inflicted burns, his self-immolation an act of protest against his country’s autocratic leaders.17 None of these cases achieved notoriety or public influence, each death was confined to brief coverage in local press and met by a befuddled public. This is true despite the motivations of each man to achieve the status of martyr. The Ethiopian teacher made it known that his act of sacrifice was modeled after Bouazizi, and

24 A theory of martyrdom that he hoped his death might inspire his oppressed countrymen to rise up just as Tunisians had done only months before. The divorced father left a long manifesto, published in local newspapers, which advocated for revolution and violence against a national government which had been thoroughly corrupted by an unseen cabal of feminists. Rather than solidarity, each case seemed to inspire only scattered expressions of sympathy. Martyrdom is not then a product of individual desire, but of social and cultural life. Pursued by many, martyrdom is attained by few. The causes and meaning of martyrdom cannot be found in individual motivations but in the communities who are responsible for grieving a death. Indeed, across theological, historical, and social scientific literature there are faint acknowledgements of the social qualities of martyrdom.18 Yet this insight is lost in the operationalization of martyrdom: because martyrdom is seen only as an incentive for calculating individuals, existing studies have failed to provide an adequate account of the salient variables which transform only a limited number of deaths into cases of martyrdom. In the wake of death, communities forge the meanings which are essential to the creation of martyrs. This commemorative process imbues the martyr with whatever potency they may attain; without it, the self-destructive tactics of the suicide bomber or the suffering of the civil protestor result only in the ineffable qualities of personal pain. Research to date has developed a conception of martyrdom closely tied to the act of individual witness contained in the word’s ancient Greek heritage. Whatever its merits, this approach misses an essential etymological ambiguity: the martyr is witnessed as well as witness. In fact, as failed attempts at martyrdom illustrate, the martyr’s audience may be a more decisive variable in the creation of martyrs than individual desire. Understanding martyrdom—that is, understanding why some deaths are grieved as instances of martyrdom and others forgotten—requires constructing a concept at the cultural, rather than individual, level. This socio-cultural conception of martyrdom has several advantages over contemporary accounts based on methodological individualism. First, where theological and historical accounts tend to isolate historical cases of martyrdom to individual hearts and minds, a sociological conception of martyrdom proposes a definitional language more suitable for comparison. But perhaps more fundamentally, a sociological concept captures those aspects of martyrdom largely ignored: the collective work performed by communities to elevate deaths into acts of martyrdom. In the following pages I develop a conception of martyrdom by accentuating certain features that appear in cases across time. These features are accentuated precisely because they occur in those cultural and social spaces that have been ignored in the literature, and are acutely absent from social scientific studies of martyrdom. Yet contemporary social scientific approaches to martyrdom are stunted not only by their methodological individualism, but also by their quest for objectivity. Though the goal of producing replicable and reliable scientific analysis is perfectly laudable, it has often been the case that the pursuit of scientific neutrality has meant discarding questions of the good, or what Weber called

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value-relevance. What theologians and historians understand, and social scientists forget, is that martyrdom inevitably involves deliberations of value. This is the ultimate contribution of an ideal-typical concept of martyrdom: that it can develop definitional criteria capable of wide historical applications without diminishing the moral and ethical deliberations that are central to the creation of martyrs.

Martyrdom as contested death In the early morning of May 2, 2011, a small group of American Special Forces operatives entered a compound in the hinterland of Hyderabad, Pakistan, and executed the world’s most-wanted fugitive. The death of Osama bin Laden was widely held to be a symbolic victory for the United States government and the presidency of Barack Obama. It was widely celebrated by the American public and seemed to serve as an act of closure for the nation. But bin Laden’s death presented American officials with a strangely archaic policy dilemma: what to do with the body? First, of course, it had to be properly identified. Bone marrow and swabs were taken for DNA testing, and photographs of the corpse were processed using sophisticated facial recognition software. These hyper-modern techniques were complemented by a simpler method, one more symmetrical to the age-old chore of matching a body to a name: a navy man of considerable stature lay head-to-toe with the corpse, confirming that its height was close to official estimates of the towering terrorist. With the body identified, next came the more formidable question of disposal. What to do with the corpse of the world’s most notorious terrorist, a man both reviled and revered? Those charged with the task faced two competing problems of policy. The corpse had to be disposed in such a way as to avoid controversy; burial procedures would have to accord with Koranic tradition so as not to offend or incite protest. Weighing against this injunction was the concern that any gravesite might become a shrine, inviting more recruits to the cause and stimulating solidarity at a time when bin Laden’s terrorist network had been successfully fractured. In essence, this was a policy debate about martyrdom. How to bury bin Laden’s legacy along with his corpse? How to prevent followers from transforming the body into a meaningful symbol? The only solution that seemed to satisfy both concerns was a religious burial at sea. The case of bin Laden’s corpse saw the United States government engaged in social theorizing of uncharacteristic sophistication. Like social scientists, most policy makers devote their time trying to understand the mysteries of the living. But with bin Laden’s corpse, authorities recognized that death does not necessarily conclude matters of policy, and that in some cases a single dead body can precipitate crisis. These policy deliberations may seem grotesque or lurid, but this is only because American society, as with much of the contemporary world, does not give much thought to the governing of the dead. This has not always been the case: throughout history, governments and rulers have understood the auspices of their

26 A theory of martyrdom authority as extending over the dead as well as the living. Consider one of the oldest works in the Western canon, The Iliad. The turning point in that epic occurs with the desecration of the Trojan prince Hector’s corpse by Achilles. In the midst of war, his kingdom on the brink of collapse, King Priam travels beyond Trojan walls to beg with his son’s killer for the return of the corpse, “who lies/on the bare beach deprived of all obsequies.” For Priam and Achilles alike, funeral rites were not a matter of private grief and consolation, but public duty. Over Hector’s corpse, two enemies agreed to a 12-day truce. But more often than not, the governance of the dead has catalyzed conflict. Keeping with the ancient Greek world, the story of Antigone recalls a culture where the care of the dead was a contentious issue that transcended private bereavement. In its essentials, the case is not dissimilar to the handling of bin Laden’s corpse. A government is confronted with the body of an enemy of the state and must treat the remains as a matter of policy. Creon’s decision has calamitous consequences, fracturing the royal family and cultivating public sympathy for Antigone, who, “under cover of darkness . . . mourn with the girl.”19 Between Greek tragedy and bin Laden are innumerable cases of authorities deliberating on how to govern the dead. These concerns are elevated when the dead bear the traces of a volatile history. In some cases, the remains are of a malign, deposed leader, and the matter of disposal chiefly concerns depriving erstwhile followers of a physical or even symbolic space of congregation. Whatever their sordid details, these cases are reminiscent of bin Laden’s burial at sea, all efforts to marginalize legacy of a dangerous leader. Efforts to obscure the dead are not confined to the internment of history’s villains. Indeed, these very same villains have often enough engaged in attempts to govern the dead. Anonymous graves are the most infamous example, frequently employed by history’s tyrants to erase traces of misconduct. Whether it is mass graves or the unmarked burial of a deposed leader, these cases converge in the attempt to control the dead. Implicit in each instance is the belief that the dead are animate forces in the world of the living, and therefore objects of contention. This is perhaps unsurprising; any person who has experienced bereavement knows that the dead have a way of lingering on. The dead endure in memory, but can also exert a subtle and lingering hold over the day to day. The deliberations of public authorities over corpses merely expand this essential feature of human experience from private life to public sphere. While individuals may see death as “that undiscovered country”, death has long been a contended territory in social life. How do social actors attempt to control the dead? At a basic level, the dead often enter into the social world through physical practices like burial. But underpinning these practices are the beliefs and values that constitute human culture. The legacies of the dead are only contestable when death itself is imbued with meaning by the living. The internment of a corpse may entail physical action, but the necessity of public burial or private disposal is motivated by human beliefs. It is here, in this cultural space where the living attach meanings to the dead, that a properly sociological account of martyrdom begins to form. But as this

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discussion illustrates, martyrdom is but one concept in a much wider set of activities in which the dead are resurrected as social actors. What distinguishes martyrdom from these other activities? What particular meanings are attached to those deaths which are labeled as acts of martyrdom? Under what contexts does martyrdom emerge, and who is responsible for the creation of martyrs? To answer these questions, it is first necessary to consider the topic of sacrifice, which inevitably accompanies the creation of martyrs.

Martyrdom as ultimate sacrifice When the Emir of Dubai visits the families of fallen soldiers and suggests that the dead have ascended to martyrdom through their sacrifice, he employs a word that accompanies martyrdom like a shadow. Wherever there is martyrdom, there is sacrifice. Writing on the topic of martyrdom in the third century, the Church Father Origen reminded Christians of Paul’s demand that Christians “offer up your bodies as a living sacrifice.”20 The martyrologies of the Reformation are filled with sacrificial language, as in the description of the death of Anne Askew given by John Foxe, who “being compassed in with flames of fire, as a blessed sacrifice unto God, slept in the Lord, A.D. 1546.”21 Nationalist revolutionaries who attain the status of martyrdom are glorified in the language of sacrifice. Sometimes the language of sacrifice is used by aspiring martyrs, as in the case of the Irish nationalist Seán Mac Diarmada, who in 1914 wrote that “the Irish patriotic spirit will die forever unless a blood sacrifice is made in the next few years.”22 At other times, sacrifice is invoked in the commemorative process, as at Taiwan’s National Revolutionary Martyr’s Shrine, where qualifications for being respected as a martyr are based first on sacrificing one’s life on behalf of the Republic of China. The language of sacrifice is found in the last testaments of contemporary suicide bombers, but is also invoked by their comrades in commemorative propaganda. If martyrdom is first a form of contested death, it is distinguished from a range of related concepts through its associations with sacrifice. But while sacrifice may be an essential component of martyrdom, it is itself a word of much contention and confusion. Just what exactly is sacrifice, and what sort of power does it lend to the martyr? Here is an age-old dilemma in the construction of concepts: seeking definitional criteria, the social scientist reaches for established terms which, on further examination, are themselves worn jagged with controversy. Sacrifice is used in everyday speech to suggest an act of renunciation. In the cases of martyrdom described previously, this renunciation is complete and irrevocable: what the martyr has given up is life itself. But the language of sacrifice is not merely synonymous with the loss of life or even the purposeful renunciation of the self. Not every act of renunciation is an act of sacrifice. This is doubly true of self-harm and self-destruction, which are more likely to be accompanied by the ignoble language of suicide than the ennobling language of sacrifice. Sacrifice must then be understood not merely as an act of renunciation, but one which is given for a higher good.

28 A theory of martyrdom This definition suggests that sacrifice is a particularly perplexing paradox: in sacrifice, the contradictory terms of annihilation and creation become one. How do communities connect notions of the good with acts of sacrifice that necessarily involve loss or destruction? This is not as obscure or incidental a question as it might at first seem; in fact, the paradox of sacrifice has long been a point of cynosure for social scientists. Beginning in the 19th century, anthropologists pondered why so many societies, particularly “primitive” social groups, associated acts of deliberate destruction with renewal and reward. For these earliest practitioners of the science of human culture, sacrifice seemed a riddle which might, if properly understood, unlock some hitherto unseen features of human history and cultural evolution.23 Early social scientific theories of sacrifice tend to suggest two widely divergent ways in which the martyr’s sacrifice might be understood. Either the martyr’s sacrifice reinforces a bond between the community and their god(s), as in the theories of William Robertson Smith, or the martyr’s sacrifice is something like a gift given to the god(s), as in the work of Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss. At a general level, the classical literature affirms the connection between sacrifice and renunciation, a connection that has clear applications to martyrdom. Because martyrdom emerges from cases of death, the sacrifice associated with the martyr necessarily emerges from loss. Similarly, the classical work on sacrifice awakens the social dimensions of sacrifice; across this anthropological literature it is clear that sacrifice is an activity that is only meaningful in the space of social life. But the specific form of sacrifice contained in martyrdom does not seem closely related to the ritual-based theories of communion or the offering offered in classical anthropology. Recent theories of sacrifice seem more immediately relevant to martyrdom, given that contemporary theoretical analysis of sacrifice often intersects with germane issues like religious violence and social conflict. Indeed, the most prominent contemporary theorist of sacrifice, Rene Girard, often alluded to martyrdom in his work, and his acolytes have developed quite elaborate readings of martyrdom using their Girardian vocabulary.24 But in the work of Girard, all the shortcomings of classical theories of sacrifice are merely reincarnated, now carrying the added baggage of postwar continental philosophy.25 Briefly, Girard’s argument is as follows: (1) all humans desire, (2) much of desire is “mimetic”, or a product of envy, (3) desire’s mimetic form leads to conflict over objects of shared interest, and (4) which can only be peacefully resolved through an act of violent sacrifice. As with certain 19th-century thinkers, Girard has a propensity for invoking imagined primordial drama. However, Girard’s primordial drama is unique in that it revolves solely around the figure of the scapegoat. The scapegoat emerges between steps (3) and (4) as the object of sacrifice which can effectively absorb and temporarily exhaust the mimetic violence that threatens a community’s existence. Girard’s theory of mimetic violence and the scapegoat makes two claims. First is the insinuation that scapegoating is the defining sacrificial act, and second is the pronouncement that sacrifice is the act

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which consecrates and sustains human social life. For Girard, the sacrifice of the scapegoat is the forgotten root of all human culture. According to Girard’s theory, the purging of communal conflict through the sacrifice of the scapegoat is essentially meaningless: victims are chosen by circumstance and violence is impulsive. However, newly revitalized communities come together in the wake of sacrifice to make sense of the violence. The meanings which become projected onto the slaughter are incorporated into rituals, which come to constitute the founding acts of all religions. According to Girard, if religion is the original form of human culture, and if the violent sacrifice of the scapegoat is the original form of religion, then the sacrifice of the scapegoat is also the foundational act of all subsequent forms of culture. Girard’s fixation on the scapegoat, a quite particular form of sacrifice, might suggest that his work is even less relevant to the concept of martyrdom than his 19th-century predecessors. But mimetic theory was never inclined to theoretical modesty, and Girard’s sweeping claims about the nature of sacrifice have been widely circulated in the 21st century. Girard himself argued that the Global War on Terror was merely an example of mimetic rivalry played out on a global scale. Students of Girard have similarly applied his theory to a range of conflicts and violent acts, including martyrdom.26 Though Girard sought to develop a universal theory of violence and sacrifice, his focus on the scapegoat ultimately corrodes the differences between cases of sacrifice, transforming all cases of violence into matters of desire. If Girard’s theory is correct, then the erasure of particular facts and circumstances might be forgivable. But even if this indulgence is allowed, further complications ensue. Mimetic theory does not lead to a definitive account of any number of diverse empirical cases to which it might be applied. For some, the Girardian account suggests that martyrdom is a sort of über-scapegoat, while others find in martyrdom an absolvatory sacrifice capable of closing the circle of mimetic rivalry and violence. The original sin of Girard’s work is not then its universalism, but the fact that this universalism doesn’t produce a substantial and definitive conclusion. Girard can hardly be blamed for his hollow universalism: from the classical statements of Robertson Smith onward, the social scientific literature on sacrifice has harbored a clear universalizing impulse, each study not merely an investigation of a particular form of sacrifice, but ultimately of sacrifice as a universal act. But this universalizing impulse extends further, suggesting that a compelling theory of sacrifice can effectively unlock the mysteries of human behavior. For generations of scholars the paradox of sacrifice—an act of creation that emerges from destruction—has seemed to promise something essential about the human condition. This quest to discover the truth at the heart of sacrifice has meant that the practices contained within particular cultures—whether at the tribal or civilizational level—are inevitably trivialized. This is clearly true in Girard’s work on the scapegoat, which reduces all forms of sacrifice to a single process, but is true also of Robertson Smith’s work on sacrifice as consumption and communion, where all forms of sacrifice emerge from the attempt to rationalize the slaughter

30 A theory of martyrdom of revered animals. Even the more refined work of Hubert and Mauss necessarily obscures the substantial differences between the Hebrew and Vedic traditions on which their work relies. Whatever their merits, theorists of sacrifice have formed a concept that is poorly suited to the analysis of historical topics like martyrdom. To conceptualize the martyr’s sacrifice as a form of scapegoating, communion, or offering is to impose a universal set of meanings and motives on historical cases that span centuries. The danger of this operation has already been exposed by the penetrating analysis of Marcel Detienne, who has convincingly shown that there is no unifying, cross-cultural impulse across different sacrificial practices.27 Is it possible to develop an understanding of sacrifice that is sufficiently general for historical comparison without succumbing to the impulse to universalize? Developing an affirmative answer to this question requires putting aside the foremost ambition of the literature. The social sciences cannot derive a meaningful understanding of sacrifice from the goal of resolving its defining paradox. Rather than seeking to resolve the paradox of sacrifice, social scientific theory should reside within the paradox. How does one reside within the paradox of sacrifice, and how might this posture produce a more meaningful engagement with the form of sacrifice unique to martyrdom? First, the martyr’s sacrifice needs to be approached not as a gnostic mystery, where the investigator meditates on the secret meanings at the heart of the practice, but as a diverse bundle of empirical cases, each with immediately interpretable meanings and actions. A basic attention to the meanings and actions associated with unique forms of sacrifice will not resolve the tension between creation and destruction common across different forms of sacrifice, but it will reveal the specific tensions that exist within each form. This approach would not seek to universalize from the sacrificial practices of scapegoating, communion, and offering, but rather would locate what is unique about the tensions found in each of these forms of sacrifice. What, then, is distinct in the sacrifice of martyrdom, and what sort of meanings are associated with the sacrifice of martyrs found in early Christianity, the Reformation, and modern revolutions? In other words, what traits are minimally necessary to distinguish the sacrifice of martyrdom from alternative sacrificial practices without flattening the differences between historical cases? First, the sacrifice of martyrdom is distinguishable insofar as it involves the loss of a human life. Already, this most basic element of the martyr’s sacrifice distinguishes it from other modes of sacrificial practice outlined previously, where the object of sacrifice itself is seen as inessential. In fact, for most theorists of sacrifice, the object of sacrifice is only important insofar as its permutations reveal the fundamental irrationality of the act. This is clearest in Girard, who suggests that sacrifice asserts lasting influence only when the scapegoat becomes routinized and transferred onto a ritual object. In martyrdom the object of sacrifice—a human—is essential and invariant. However, as a form of human sacrifice martyrdom is not unique (one thinks of infamous cases of human sacrifice, from the New Fire ceremony of the Aztecs to

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the regicides described by Frazer).28 What is essential to martyrdom is not only the object of sacrifice, but the unique tension which passes through the martyr’s body. Again, previous studies of sacrifice begin with the goal of resolving this tension, searching for underlying impulses in the human condition which might explain the paradoxical encounter between destruction and creation. But a more productive and historically sensitive approach begins with a search for the meanings contained in these contradictions rather than primordial impulses which drive them. Throughout its history, martyrdom has been associated with a form of human sacrifice that emerges at the intersection of two distinct vectors of destructive force: a desecrating violence and a redemptive violence. In other forms of sacrifice, from scapegoating to communion, creation and destruction are contained within a single sacrificial act. Not so with martyrs, whose destruction comes at the hands of a desecrating violence which is imposed upon the martyr. This act of desecration is contrasted with the redeeming violence for which the martyr has given their life. At the risk of further confusion, reference to the work of Walter Benjamin seems necessary. His essay, “Critique of Violence”, has tempted academic proponents of revolution since its publication in 1921, the cerebral allusions and dizzying jargon offering heady sustenance to those who would mix Molotov cocktails from their armchairs.29 But beyond the apologia is a penetrating diagnosis of violence which bears directly upon the martyr’s sacrifice. Highly abridged, the argument runs like this: violence is either enforcing or liberating, a mechanism either for the maintenance of order or its rupture. In Benjamin’s jargon, violence is either “mythic” (that which creates or restores law) or ‘divine’ (that which pursues justice). Again, this reference may only confuse matters, especially given the vast secondary literature devoted to Benjamin’s critique. But the traits which Benjamin ascribes to mythic and divine violence are at least similar to the desecrating and redemptive violence that produces the martyr’s sacrifice. For Benjamin, mythic violence is coercive while divine violence is revolutionary. Mythic violence is oriented toward the good of the status quo (those in power, in contemporary history, the state), while divine violence is oriented toward a higher good which transcends the status quo. In Benjamin’s own words: If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood.30 These same oppositions are found in the desecrating and redeeming violence that intersect to form the martyr’s sacrifice.31 These are the creative and destructive tensions unique to martyrdom; desecration and redemption intersect in a single figure but by different and oppositional vectors. This unique entanglement produces a constellation of meanings and actions that further distinguish martyrdom

32 A theory of martyrdom from other forms of sacrifice. In forms of sacrifice that involve communion, offering, or scapegoating, the rites of destruction and creation coexist within the same ritual form and are enacted by a unified social group. The martyr’s sacrifice is too restive to succumb to ritual; it is the product of opposing forces and competing claims, incapable of resolving tension but quite good at perpetuating it. The meanings associated with ritual sacrifice, though unique in each form and culture, are alimentary and conciliatory. The sacrifice contained in acts of communion is imbued with meanings which sustain its ritual participants, the sacrifice of scapegoats is associated with meanings which engender consolidation. Not so with martyrdom. As Benjamin’s writing on violence suggests, the intersection of competing forms of violence necessarily entails forms of culture work that are at once more deliberative and more competitive. Enmeshed in the martyr’s sacrifice is a network of meanings which defy dormancy, propelling all involved toward questions of the good and the just, of the uses of violence, and of the legitimacy of power. Early Christian martyrdom was not merely understood as a form of communicating with or partaking in the divine. Rather, the martyr’s sacrifice was a moment for the early Christian community to reflect on the legitimacy of imperial power, the just applications of violence, and the proper ends and uses of the embodied self. So too with the contrasting case of Bouazizi, whose sacrifice served not to reenact primordial drama, but as a platform for restless and roiling deliberation on questions of authority and power particular to the historical circumstances of early 21st-century Tunisia. So far, the creation of an ideal-typical concept of martyrdom has involved two assertions. The first is that martyrdom is a case of contested death, the second that this form of death ascends to martyrdom when commemorated in the language of sacrifice. Though death is typically seen as the end of social life, I have argued that throughout history the dead have been powerful social actors. In this martyrdom is not unique. What distinguishes martyrdom from other forms of contested death is the presence of sacrifice. Here I have suggested that the martyr’s sacrifice is produced by two competing and contrasting forms of violence, one desecrating and the other redeeming. I have further argued that martyrdom is a unique form of sacrifice insofar as these two forms of violence are understood to be authored by different forces, rather than residing within the same ritual act. Because the creative and destructive forces which produce martyrs are in competition, the meanings produced are subject to debate and necessarily involve questions of justice, legitimacy, and authority. I believe this ideal-typical conception of martyrdom—a corpse reanimated through the language of sacrifice—has advantages over competing definitions and conceptions. First, it directs research away from the minds and tactical motivations of martyrs and toward the more consequential cultural work that begins with a death. Second, I believe this ideal-typical concept contains a capacity for historical-comparative analysis, operating as it does at the domain of culture, which has been lacking in the literature. Finally, I believe the conception of martyrdom outlined previously retains an awareness for the moral dimensions of martyrdom without succumbing to the easy moralizing of much of the literature.

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However, the task of concept construction remains incomplete. Having established the essential features of martyrdom, it is necessary to locate the coordinates of the concept within the social world. The ideal-typical traits of martyrdom outlined in the preceding discussion suggest that the topic is torn between the realms of politics and religion. The precedent established by classical social scientists suggests that any sacrificial act ought first to be categorized as a form of religious life. However, the meanings which proceed from the martyr’s sacrifice impinge upon topics which are typically understood as political, particularly questions of authority and legitimate violence. Locating martyrdom’s position with respect to these two domains is a necessary prelude to historical analysis.

Is martyrdom a religious or a political concept? In the early 20th century, the historian and Christian socialist R.H. Tawney set out to clarify the relationship between the religious transformations of early modernity and the rise of the capitalist economy. Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism had pursued a similar goal, but Tawney felt that Weber had been overly charitable in his characterization of capitalism. For Tawney, what was essential to capitalism was not principally its distinguishing rationality, nor its moral and ethical pretensions, but the “acquisitive self” who served as its organizing unit, the individual stripped of obligations to community now free to glut itself at the trough of the free market. Though Tawney parts from Weber in many ways, his radicalism offers an immediate contrast to Weber’s analytic sobriety.32 But it was not Tawney’s radicalism which attracted the outrage of his critics. Rather, many of Tawney’s academic readers were disturbed by what they perceived to be his careless and abusive treatment of concepts. Tawney’s riposte, offered in his preface to the 1937 edition of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, was to recommend that “Verbal controversies are profitless; if an author discovers a more suitable term, by all means let him use it.”33 It is a valuable piece of advice, reminiscent of Seneca’s remarks on the dialecticians of his time: “I have no time to investigate disputed inflections of words, or to try my cunning upon them.”34 Of course, Tawney (and Seneca before him) was writing prior to the advent of the cultural and linguistic “turns” in the humanities and social sciences. Today, verbal controversy is highly profitable, if no more enlightening than it was in Tawney’s day. Where Tawney struggled against the rigidity of reigning classificatory systems, today’s social scientists search desperately for classifications that haven’t suffered at the hands of postmodernists, Foucaultians, deconstructionists, and other inheritors of the poststructuralist wave. No topic has suffered as much as religion. Where Tawney fought against critics who held to religion as a fixed and discernable entity, contemporary scholars struggle to locate anything essential about it. Prominent critiques have suggested that the idea of religion as a coherent and universal realm of social life is an artifice manufactured by 19th-century social scientists. This criticism is not wholly without merit; studies by the postcolonial scholars have demonstrated the ways in which the social scientific study of world religions emerged from intra-European

34 A theory of martyrdom sectarian tensions, with 19th-century social scientists projecting Europe’s Protestant-Catholic division into a universal dichotomy between ritualistic and contemplative religions.35 What this body of criticism suggests is not that particular traditions (Christianity, Islam, etc.) do not exist, but rather that these traditions do not inherently or empirically conform to an analogous or readily comparable aspect of social life. Surely, though, there is something essentially religious about Islam, Christianity, or any number of other sects, churches, and faith traditions we might name? This has certainly been the claim of social scientists for more than a century, who have contributed enduring insights to such definitional dilemmas. Can one dismiss Durkheim’s notion of the sacred, or Weber’s conceptions of hieratic authority and competing value spheres, as purely ideological? What of those contemporary theorists who point out that across otherwise disparate traditions exists a tendency to appeal to higher powers for salvation and grace?36 Inconveniently, martyrdom offers no immediate answer to these questions. If anything, the many historical permutations of martyrdom seem to bolster the postmodernist claim. The definition of the martyr’s sacrifice established here—as the intersection of two opposing forms of violence—evades notions of religion for the simple fact that not all instances of martyrdom are immediately commemorated in a language that is recognizably religious or theological. Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation is only one recent example of a martyr whose sacrifice is commemorated in the language of revolutionary politics and human rights.37 Even cases of martyrdom which seem quintessentially religious show a tendency to slip into the realm of politics. The early Christian community, which developed a concept of martyrdom that continues to endure and influence, were subject to persecution for civil disobedience. Similarly, the martyrs of the European Reformations were just as likely to be sentenced to death for political treason as religious heresy. These cases seem to suggest that there is something to the poststructuralist critique; even within the limited confines of historical Western Christianity, the seemingly hardened walls that surround religion appear on further inspection to be porous and brittle. Does this reluctant admission require succumbing to the analytic paralysis of postmodern relativism? Is it time to renounce the use of “religion” as an analytic category all together? Recent world-historical events—the war on terror, the rise of militant fundamentalism, etc.—have compelled scholars, policy makers, and the general public to consider this very question. Yet, despite the allure of relativism in a world turned upside down, much of the most compelling scholarship has forged onward in undaunted pursuit of the essential nature of religion. This stillemerging literature, characterized foremost by an awareness of the heterogeneity of historical experience, cannot resolve the question of whether martyrdom is religious or not. However, it does offer a useful path forward in the quest to classify martyrdom.38 This scholarship is reminiscent of those classical social scientists like Emile Durkheim and Max Weber who aspired to understand the essential and universal

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traits of religious life. However, where their predecessors paired essentialist accounts of religion with universal history, contemporary scholars of religion incline toward historical contingency and particularity. Religion continues to be described in terms similar to those established by classical social scientists, with frequent reference made to the human need for transcendence or the sacred.39 However, while religion bears the weight of a familiar language, these authors are quick to denounce the universalism of their classical predecessors. How is it possible to maintain an essentialist account of religion without also expounding a Universalist account of religion? Across this emerging literature, authors struggle to maintain this seemingly impossible balance with varying degrees of success. What distinguishes the most successful efforts is a sensitivity to the limits of sociological jargon. For classical scholars, discovering the defining essence of religion and religious life meant forming a schema that was both universal and rigid. To the extent that religious diversity across societies did exist, this difference was largely a matter of chronology, some societies suffering through primitivism, others more highly evolved. If religion was always a domain set apart from the rest of the social world, classical scholars of religion believed this tendency would only grow more pronounced as history progressed. Max Weber once famously suggested that the world was divided between competing realms of “value spheres”, each exclusive and hostile toward the others, driven toward conflict by “warring gods”.40 For the contemporary scholars I am drawing on here, the world may very well be divided between distinct realms—political, religious, and economic to borrow again from Weber’s work. Yet the capricious deities that preside over these dominions are not consistent in their rule. Much like the pantheons of myth and the dynasties of history, the gods and ghouls of the value spheres are mercurial beings, driven not only to conflict but also alliance and often enough cohabitation. The boundaries between these spheres shift across time and space, sometimes resulting in territorial disputes and war, but just as often hosting fruitful and friendly symbiotic exchange. As many contemporary writers have suggested, the boundary between religion and politics is a particularly lively region of social life. If, at certain points in Western history, it has seemed that each sphere is protected by impenetrable barriers, this is hardly an inevitable or immutable outcome. From this perspective, investigating the spaces that are in between spheres (as well as the actors that populate them) offers a more penetrating if less precise view of human social life. Following these insights, martyrdom becomes a compelling object of inquiry not because of its supposed religious essence, but because it occupies an uncertain territory, shifting between the religious and the political, its movements determined by macro-historical patterns but also by the constitution of religion and politics within a specified historical setting. The goal of a historical study of martyrdom cannot be to establish any resolute coordinates within religious or political life, but to investigate how religion and politics intersect in cases of martyrdom. In doing so, martyrdom can provide a unique perspective on the interaction of religion and politics in particular cases.

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Martyrdom, secularization, and sovereignty Scholarship across the humanities and social sciences has returned to the topic of religion as a matter of universal interest and concern. However, this same scholarship has tended to eschew the universalizing tendencies that have historically dominated the study of religion. In this emerging literature, religion is studied in its many varied historical permutations, a domain of social life whose boundaries and occupants change significantly across time and space. Those same scholars who have grappled with the historical complexity and diversity of religion have often done so in the context of rethinking the relationship between secularization and modern politics. Driven by an emerging sensitivity to contingent and divergent religious histories, these scholars have begun to reconsider the assumptions of classical models of modernity. Rather than seeing secularization and the modern state as largely independent symptoms of a progressively unfolding universal modernity, there is a gathering tendency to see these processes as interdependent and unfolding along crooked civilizational pathways. Here the decline of religion and the rise of the state are interdependent and exist within the unique timeline of European power struggles. Efforts at reconsidering the relationship between secularization and the state— tending to be particularized to the West rather than universalized, contingent rather than evolutionary, focusing on the symbiosis of religion and politics as much as their antagonisms—are, whatever their underlying similarities, often operationalized in quite different terms. Some maintain the credibility of the secularization thesis, but now privilege the rise of the state as the dominant agent of religion’s decline.41 Here, the modern, Western state can play several roles: its centralizing tendencies can diminish the power of civil society, its borders hinder the development of global ecumenicism, its bureaucratic authority may diminish the appeal of religious leadership, and its systems of social welfare may displace those services traditionally rendered by local churches. From this perspective, the birth of the modern state is not an autonomous process, but the culmination of struggles over power, the state engaged in successive conquests across the landscape of social life. Alternatively, some have suggested that the rise of the modern nation-state amounts not first to a decline in religion but a form of displacement. From this perspective, the modern, Western nation-state does not merely subsume the functions of religion, but first assumes those features which had traditionally been monopolized by religion. Here, the state assumes a posture of transcendence and omnipotence, not only an organ of power but also of ethics and rights. From this perspective, the modern Western nation-state is not secularized, but sacralized.42 This revisionist account of the modern state is typified by recent critical studies of sovereignty. Much of the recent literature on sovereignty is centered on the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, by way of Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault.43 For Agamben, sovereignty is an enduring, if subterranean, force in human societies. Sovereignty for Agamben refers to that confluence of powers and authority which exert the most primal pressures over social groups.

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It is that which draws boundaries, carving out spaces of inclusion and exclusion. It is the force which endows the powerful with the ability to enact and enforce law, but also imbues them with the capability to suspend law. These aspirations have been historically constrained by the sovereign’s capabilities. In pre-modern societies, the relative weaknesses of institutionalized sovereignty meant that sovereign decisions tended to take symbolic forms, as in the figure of homo sacer from classical Roman jurisprudence. Modern politics sees sovereignty achieve an institutional power of unprecedented capabilities, with sovereign decision making extending over every subject. Agamben’s studies of sovereignty fall within wider transdisciplinary efforts to rethink the relationship between religion and politics, secularization, and the rise of modern Western nation-state. For Agamben (and his many commentators), sovereignty is often described in numinous language. Much like traditional accounts of religion, sovereignty is a power that is central to the community but is also transcendent. Agamben’s description of sovereign acts of exclusion and exception, particularly his infamous study of homo sacer, often evoke religious notions of the sacred. In Agamben’s writing, the sovereignty of modern states appears divine in its powers and authority. Yet, as with broader trends in the literature, Agamben’s reassessment of sovereignty manages to muddle, rather than clarify, our everyday conceptions of religion and its relationship to power and politics. For Agamben, what is “religious” about sovereignty—its transcendence, its power over life and death, and its ability to draw sharp boundaries of social exclusion—is not religious in any theological or denominational sense. Similarly, the defining capabilities of modern states—there ability to wage global war, to call upon notions of citizen sacrifice, to destroy life in the name of preserving it—are not in any sense distinctly modern, but merely the fruition of potentialities that have always existed in political organizations. Despite their independence, classical models of secularization and the formation of the nation-state converged in several meaningful ways: both tended to view history as a sequence of progressive (even evolutionary) stages, both saw modernization as a global and universal process, and both were colored by bloodless optimism. Most profoundly, each saw politics and religion as wholly autonomous and tending toward ever greater divergence. Revisionist thinking on sovereignty and secularization also tends to converge, if in directly opposite ways: that religion and politics overlap and that their functional or institutional divergence in modern Western history belies a deep and enduring nearness. Where once theories of religious decline and the rise of the state focused on institutional changes—the erosion of congregational life, the proliferation of bureaucratic offices, etc.—revisionists have preferred investigating intangible shifts in cultural life and power relations. These new modes of thinking about modernity, which involve revisiting theories of secularization and sovereignty, intersect with martyrdom in immediately discernable ways. The historical picture painted by revisionist studies in secularization is one in which the border between politics and religion is continually

38 A theory of martyrdom shifting as a consequence of power struggles. Martyrdom inhabits the borderland between these territories. Because of its nomadic position, martyrdom is necessarily a subject in this history. Examining the position of individual cases of martyrdom relative to the turbulent history of secularization will reveal a clearer perspective on the social processes that go into producing a particular martyr. Revisionist forms of secularization theory focus attention on the particular struggles over the religious and political meanings which go into the creation of a martyr. This theoretical literature suggests that in European history martyrdom will gradually fall under the control of the state and the secular public sphere, but that this process will involve significant struggle and the potential absorption of martyrdom’s religious components into secular life. Recent critical accounts of sovereignty also implicate the historical study of martyrdom. The work of Agamben and others suggests a history in which the immortal aspirations of the sovereign to control social life are gradually realized by modern nation-states. This control is achieved through means both technological (the rise of modern surveillance and carceral systems) and cultural (the emergence of modern notions of citizenship). This transformation is increasingly seen in the sovereign management of life and death itself (commonly referred to in this literature as biopolitics). While sovereign power always aspired to assert biopolitical control over its subjects, it is only with the rise of the modern nationstate that these aspirations are fully realized. Because martyrdom fundamentally involves the commemoration of death and the social reanimation of corpses using the language of sacrifice, it follows that martyrdom will be drawn into this process. As with revisionist theories of secularization, new theories of sovereignty suggest that martyrdom will gradually fall within the orbit of the sovereign. There is little controversy in suggesting that, across Western history, martyrdom is likely to be purified of its religious elements and absorbed by the state in a reduced and rationalized form. These hypotheses correspond rather neatly with traditional accounts of modernization, secularization, and the rise of the nationstate. However, while recent critical accounts of secularization and sovereignty do not fundamentally transform this thesis, they do expose a series of unresolved questions which can fruitfully guide the historical study of martyrdom. While traditional accounts of Western modernity tend to enclose inquiry, revisionist accounts produce unresolved questions and muddied historical narratives. These qualities make them all the more valuable for the historical researcher. New accounts of secularization emphasize historical contingency, power struggles which involve contestations over symbolic and cultural claims to authority, and the gradual, irresolute emergence of a modern secular public sphere which must contend with undying impulses now restively contained in within the shrinking confines of religious life. Here, the institutions, actors, and culture that compose social life resist easy compartmentalization, even within the highly compartmentalized spheres of modernity. This alternative narrative, however incomplete, suggests that martyrdom cannot be approached as an antiquated holdover from a religious age or a gradually shrinking practice on the edge of expiration. Rather, martyrdom absorbs the

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shocks of those collisions that occur at the fault lines of religion and politics, thrown about by the convulsions of historical struggle. Because this historical narrative is marked by inconsistency, martyrdom (and similarly located forms of social action) becomes a key prism through which to view these struggles. Taken together, the recent literature on secularization and sovereignty aid in overcoming the natural inclination, long reinforced in traditional sociological models of modernity, to think of history as a triumphal march of progress. On martyrdom, classical and revisionist approaches to these topics conclude with a similar outcome: martyrdom enfeebled, diminished by a weakened religion and emboldened secular state. It is in their perspective that the revisionist approaches are enlivening: history is not foremost a story of progress but of struggle, social change is best studied in the depths of human culture, that the shape of Western modernity was neither an inevitable nor an immutable result. A historical study of martyrdom must confront this literature, allowing for both the benefits it may bring and the limitations it may impose. At the case level, these theoretical perspectives inculcate a sensitivity to chaos, contingency, rupture, and unsettled boundaries. Here, the case is not assumed to be immediately hospitable to a classical analytic vocabulary. Rather, cases are treated in their own terms, with attention given to how particular interactions of religion and politics, as locally understood, are used by historical actors to form meaningful narratives of sacrifice out of death. At the macro-historical level, a historical account of martyrdom becomes a testing-ground for revisionist theories of martyrdom. Here the primary goal is first to scrutinize the historical accounts of martyrdom hypothesized by theories of secularization and sovereignty, principally the expectation of a martyrdom weakened under Western modernity. But perhaps more significantly, a historical account of martyrdom can clarify the processes which remain largely unarticulated in the revisionist literature. How do the contingent power struggles of European history conclude with greatly transformed visions of the good and the just, of the legitimate ends and uses of coercive force, of the rational public sphere and privatized religion? As a form of contested death which involves the collective creation and commemoration of sacrifice, martyrdom offers the opportunity to confront these questions, if only partially. Observing the creation and resolution of historical cases of martyrdom, as well as the changes in martyrdom across Western history, the following chapters will offer a specific account of how shifting practices in the commemoration of sacrificial deaths have interacted with larger shifts in the conception of sovereign authority and the boundaries of religion and politics.

Conclusion The preceding pages have established the essential traits of an ideal-typical conception of martyrdom, distinguishing the concept from similar objects of inquiry and delineating those axes of change most likely to induce change in the concept (namely, religion and politics). I have argued that martyrdom is a case of contested death, wherein the dead are commemorated using the language of sacrifice.

40 A theory of martyrdom I have further argued that the martyr’s sacrifice is unique, in that the sacrificial act is divided between two antagonistic forms of violence, one desecrating and the other redeeming. This conception of martyrdom challenges the dominant assumption that it is an individual pursuit. Rather, martyrdom emerges in the aftermath of a death as a commemorative community engages in a particularly fitful form of social bereavement. This is a social and relational process in so far as it involves a community, composed of individual actors and institutions, who together commemorate a martyr’s death. It is also a cultural process; the creation of a martyr requires that the commemorative community draw upon the materials of meaning to create stories of sacrifice. The creation of a martyr requires not only a receptive and participatory public, but also cultural circumstances conducive to the formation of narratives of sacrifice. Understanding specific cases of martyrdom requires examining the actors and institutions who make up commemorative communities. It also requires a wider investigation of the cultural milieu which enables a commemorative community to form. After creating this ideal-typical conception of martyrdom, the next step is cutting into the history, locating the actors and institutions involved in the creation of martyrs, and assessing the meaning-making activities that these actors engage in to create martyrs. Further labor is required to interpret this culture work and investigate its influence in moments of historical change. But historical cases run aground of historical processes. Individual moments of history can be difficult to comprehend without some sense the wider historical landscape. This is particularly true of a concept like martyrdom, which does not conform to traditional taxonomic categories of historical and social scientific analysis. In order to comprehend the intersection of religion and politics within a particular case, the researcher must first look to broader historical currents which shape the contours of individual instances of martyrdom. This is all the more true if martyrdom does not conform to either religious or political categorization, or if the categories of religion and politics are themselves irresolute. To suggest that martyrdom involves the intersection of religion and politics, and that religion and politics are highly mercurial categories, necessitates a widening of the historical analysis to include those broader social transformations which pass through individual cases. I have suggested in the preceding pages that two literatures on macro-historical change in Western history are particularly germane to the study of martyrdom. Recent attempts to rethink secularization in Western history have focused on the role of contingent power struggles in shaping the eventual formation of Western secular modernity and the way modern social scientists have tended to think about religion and politics. As a creature of the borderlands between religion and politics, martyrdom is likely to be caught up in these power struggles. Similarly, the literature on sovereignty, which suggests that social life rests upon a bedrock of sovereign power, has a variety of implications for the historical study of martyrdom. Because sovereign power is said to extend over life and death, it follows that it will also extend over martyrdom.

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In the following chapters, I analyze historical cases of martyrdom, identifying their conformity and divergences from the ideal-typical conception outlined previously. I analyze both how martyrs are created and the consequences of martyrdom within the historical context of the case. However, this analysis is complemented by an attention to theories of sovereignty and secularization. These theoretical perspectives are consulted with two goals: to form a clearer understanding of the convergence of religious and political impulses in individual cases, and to form a meaningful interpretation of macro-historical processes which connect cases of martyrdom across history.

Notes 1 Gulf Today, “Leaders Interact with Family Members of Martyrs,” Published September 2015, http://gulftoday.ae/portal/491638af-b84f-492a-a3e8-544643b3b431.aspx. 2 The most instructive exception here being Swedberg’s discussion of dysnomia in The Art of Social Theory, which has significantly informed the contents of this chapter. See: Richard Swedberg, The Art of Social Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 52–79. 3 Herbert Blumer, “What Is Wrong with Social Theory,” American Sociological Review 18 (1954): 3–10; Howard S. Becker, Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You’re Doing It (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 4 A Latin equivalent, testis, had two meanings: one legal and the other anatomical. Thankfully, Greek was the language of the learned, and as a consequence we have been spared a century of Freudian scholarship on the topic. 5 Rowan Williams, Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles our Judgment (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eedrmans Publishing Company, 2003). 6 Jennifer McBride, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 7 Craig Hovey, To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today’s Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), 48. 8 Joshua J. Whitfield, Pilgrim Holiness: Martyrdom as Descriptive Witness (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009). 9 Stanley Hauerwas and Thomas L. Shaffer, “Hope in the Life of Thomas More,” Notre Dame Lawyer 54 (1979), 570. 10 Lacey B. Smith, Fools, Martyrs, Traitors: The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World (Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999). 11 Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Bombing (New York: Random House, 2005). 12 Ibid., 92. 13 Michael Biggs, “How Repertoires Evolve: The Diffusion of Suicide Protest in the 20th Century,” Mobilization 18, no. 4 (2013): 407–28. 14 Mario Ferrero, “Martyrdom Contracts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 6 (2006): 855–77. 15 France24, “Self-Immolation Shows That France Telecom Suicide Saga Not Over,” Published April 2011, www.france24.com/en/20110426-france-telecom-orange-selfimmolation-suicideworker-stress. 16 Mark Arsenault, “Dad Leaves Clues to His Desperation,” Boston Globe, July 10, 2011, http://archive.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2011/07/10/divorced_ dad_eaes_clues_to_his_desperaion/?page=1. 17 Angus Stickler, “Ethiopian Man Burns Himself to Death in Protest,” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, November 15, 2011, www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/ 11/15/ethiopian-man-burns-himself-to-death-in-protest/.

42 A theory of martyrdom 18 Pape, Dying, 82. 19 Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, translated by Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Books, 1984). 20 Origen, Prayer & Exhortation to Martyrdom, translated by John J. O’Meara (New York: Newman Press, 1954), 151. 21 John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: Select Narratives, edited by John N. King (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 32. 22 National Library of Ireland, “1916: Personalities and Perspectives, 4.2 Sean Macdiarmada” (Dublin, Ireland, 2016). 23 William R. Smith, Lectures on the Religions of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions (London: A&C Black, 1927); Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1964). 24 Rene Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 209; Michael Kirwan, “Girard, Religion, Violence and Martyrdom,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, edited by Peter Clark (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 910–24. 25 Girard is often acclaimed as a thinker who “defies categorization”. In the psychiatric literature this same language is invoked to describe someone suffering from a personality disorder. 26 Mark Juergensmeyer, “Martyrdom and Sacrifice in a Time of Terror,” Social Research 75, no. 2 (2008): 417–34; Kirwan, “Girard, Religion, Violence and Martyrdom,” 910–24. 27 Marcel Detienne, “Culinary Practice and the Spirit of Sacrifice,” in The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks, edited by Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 1–20. 28 J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (New York: Canongate, 2010), 183–205. 29 Walter Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (New York: Shocken Books, 1986), 277–300. 30 Ibid., 297. 31 Despite these parallels, it is clear that Benjamin was offering a study of the enactment of violence. The two intersecting forms of violence which are central to the martyr’s sacrifice are formed after death (that is, after the actual enactment of physical violence), as a commemorative community begins to make meaning of a corpse. 32 The key analytic distinction seems to be Tawney’s acknowledgement of the social and economically conservative elements in Calvin and (especially) Luther. For Tawney, these solidaristic aspects of Protestant thought were eroded by 17th-century Puritans, who were in effect agents of capitalist development. Describing the loss of these sorely missed aspects of Protestant theology, Tawney renders what is surely one of the more graceful passages in the repository of the historical social sciences: “The rules of Christian morality elaborated by Baxter, Bunyan, and others were subtle and sincere. But they were like seeds carried by birds from a distant and fertile plain, and dropped upon a glacier. They were at once embalmed and sterilized in a river of ice.” See: R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), 226. 33 Tawney, Religion, xii. 34 Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Volume 1, translated by Richard M. Gummere (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 327–8. 35 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 36 Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996); Martin Riesebrodt, The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

A theory of martyrdom

43

37 This is true unless one adopts the position sketched earlier, in which all acts of sacrifice are essentially efforts at communing with the sacred (or the social). However, accepting this argument would not resolve the taxonomic question, but only complicate it. 38 It is difficult to write of a body of literature which is yet to receive its appellation. Some refer to this literature as “post-secular”, though given the heated controversies which so often follow that term I will avoid it here. In general, I am referring to the highly reflexive multidisciplinary literature that has emerged to confront the crisis of religion in the 21st century. In the main text, I also refrain from an extended discussion of particular authors, in the hope of avoiding tedium. For a brief review of the relevant authors that make up this literature, see Philip Gorski, David Kyuman Kim, John Torpey and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, ed., The Post Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society (New York: NYU Press, 2012). 39 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 20; Bryan S. Turner, Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation, and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 40 Guy Oakes, “Max Weber on Value Rationality and Value Spheres: Critical Remarks,” Journal of Classical Sociology 3, no. 1 (2003): 27–45; Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, with a Foreword by Bryan S. Turner (New York: Routledge, 2009), 147–8, 153, 343. 41 Philip Gorski, “Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca 1300–1700,” American Journal of Sociology 65, no. 1 (2000): 138–67; David Martin, Religion and Power: No Logos without Mythos (New York: Routledge, 2014). 42 John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2008); William T. Cavenaugh, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011); Paul W. Kahn, Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 43 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).

3

The seeds of the church

Origin stories tend to invite controversy. All history is an argument about what has passed, but beginnings—of people, societies, and ideas—are particularly susceptible to rancor. Reformist sects often use origin stories in the pursuit of piety and purity. Politicians invoke origin stories of the nation or the party to legitimate their claims and undermine opponents. Origin stories influence even the most intimate relationships, their content often subject to ruthless debate in moments of dissolution and annulment. The beginnings of a social arrangement, whether intimate or public, are subject to constant and vigorous interpretation, molded to accommodate changing taste or temperament. The origin story of martyrdom is something of a black hole, perpetually devouring the energy of generations of scholars, its insatiability a threat to all who approach. Debates surrounding the earliest beginnings of martyrdom range in their profitability, but are consistent in their belligerence. Arguments persist over when, precisely, martyrdom was first used in a recognizable form.1 Tensions only increase when historians begin to deliberate on which religious tradition is responsible for introducing the concept.2 Though most would accept that early Christians were the first to popularize a recognizable form of martyrdom, re-tooling the ancient Greek word martys in the first centuries of the Common Era, this agreement only invites further controversy.3 The early Christians recounted stories of their persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire, and described those who died for their devotion to Christ as martyrs. But to what extent did these stories of martyrdom conform to actual, historical cases of persecution? Even if martyrdom stories coincide with verifiable instances of persecution, can they be relied upon as documentary evidence? In this chapter I consider the early Christian origins of martyrdom, but in a manner more consistent with the goals of a macro-historical study of martyrdom than with the specialist literature on early Christianity. As such, I eschew questions concerning the precise chronological origins of martyrdom. Similarly, I will avoid relying on specific stories of early Christian martyrdom as factual testimony of persecution, and will instead interrogate them as cultural objects which can lend some perspective on the development of early Christianity, particularly with regards to its influence on temporal power, religion, and the relationship between the two.

The seeds of the church 45 While I will not pursue typical historiographical questions here, this chapter is nevertheless a search for origins. It is an attempt to see early Christian martyrdom as the initiating point in a path dependency, a bundle of contingent moments which assert some degree of influence on subsequent cases of martyrdom and, even more imperceptibly, on the interaction of religion and politics in Western history. While this chapter is framed in macro-historical terms, I also hope to offer an earnest interpretation of early Christian martyrdom in its own time, focusing on the role of martyrdom in the volatile interactions of early Christian communities and the Roman Empire. In order to gain a clearer understanding of the influence of early Christian martyrdom in its own time and subsequently, I employ a comparison in this chapter between the competing ascetic practices of the Greco-Roman world, specifically the Stoic tradition, and those found in early Christian martyrdom stories. If one wants to understand both the uniqueness of early Christian martyrdom, as well as why it should exert such profound historical consequences, it seems necessary to compare the case with adjacent instances of violence and persecution. The Stoics also had stories of suffering at the hands of Roman power; in comparing these stories with those of early Christian martyrdom, we will gain a better sense of each. In this chapter, I am going to focus my comparisons on the period that falls between the rise of the Roman Empire in the first century CE and the Edicts of Toleration issued in 311—this period covers varying degrees of growth and persecution for both the Stoics and the early Christians, but concludes in the triumph of Christianity, the gradual dissolution of paganism, and the diminishing influence of competing modes of asceticism. It is tempting to jump from this preliminary outline straight into the history. However, before doing so, it feels necessary to situate this comparison within a wider literature, particularly given the relative obscurity of classical history within historical sociology and the social sciences generally. While comparisons of classical asceticism may not be common in the social sciences, they are canonical. Max Weber, one of the most intellectually significant of sociology’s founders, developed a theory of modernity that endures in insight and influence. For Weber, Western modernity was defined by rationalization, the rise and supremacy of rulebased systems patterned for efficiency. But what initiates the historical process of rationalization? In Weber, the historical possibility of rationalization is conditioned by religious orientations. In both his famous essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and the wider reflections of his Sociology of Religion, it is forms of religious practice, what Weber calls “pathways to salvation”, that cultivate particular ethical inclinations, which can in turn initiate or foreclose rationalization.4 In The Protestant Ethic Weber argued that it was the inner-worldly asceticism of Protestantism that produced the cultural vapors which would eventually condense into the spirit of modern rational capitalism.5 But Weber’s intellectual ambitions reached beyond the spirit of capitalism. So it was that he turned toward all the varied pathways to salvation that snake through the centuries and weave through the histories of the great civilizations.

46

The seeds of the church

Beyond inner-worldly asceticism, Weber located three alternative paths: otherworldly asceticism, world-rejecting mysticism, and inner-worldly mysticism. These four pathways vary along two axes: their relationship to the world, and their relationship to action. Some reject the world, others reside within it. Some pursue salvation through practice, others through contemplation. But for Weber it is only inner-worldly asceticism that generates an ethical system suitable to the cultivation of Western capitalist modernity. Weber’s historical studies led him to consider the pre-Reformation history of rationalization in the West. In his Sociology of Religion, Weber characterizes the paganism of Roman civilization during the late republic and early empire as a sort of proto-rationalist religion—not a religion of salvation, but a set of highly ordered and even technocratic procedures which anticipates later developments in rationality.6 This pagan order is ruptured by the charismatic prophet Jesus Christ, who initiates a new religion of salvation. If one follows Weber, the rise of Christianity in the first centuries of the Common Era is perhaps the single most influential moment in Western history. Where others had failed, Christianity succeeded in turning the eyes of the Mediterranean masses up toward the heavens, causing them to abandon their conservative, legalistic rituals in favor of a revolutionary ethics oriented toward a newly revealed transcendent order. From this perspective, early Christian martyrdom encapsulates all that is most essential in Christianity’s rise: a growing number of faithful, uncompromising in their devotion to an otherworldly god, confront a befuddled imperial administration. A radical, world-rejecting asceticism meets an anemic quasi-rational state religion. Persecuted, the Christians persevere, enduring not despite their asceticism but because of it. Rather than fleeing suffering and death, the early Christians create the special category of martyr to honor those whose devotion to Christ embodies the most tenacious form of world-rejecting asceticism. As the most radical and notable form of asceticism, early Christian martyrdom portends the eventual triumph of Christianity. This is a common enough interpretation of early Christianity and the role of martyrdom in its improbable success story. But not all who have considered the revolutionary impact of the early Christians have confined themselves to purely religious comparisons. We might contrast Weber’s studies of asceticism with those of Michel Foucault.7 Like Weber, Foucault believed that the growth of early Christianity and Christian asceticism had a profound influence on the history of power in the Western world.8 In his telling, the asceticism found in Greco-Roman philosophies like Stoicism cultivated a highly individualized notion of truth, accessed by the ascetic through self-abnegation. This pagan asceticism achieves access to truth through self-denial, and is thus equipped to resist any forms of domination or rule which conflict with their own refined ethical system. In Foucault’s analysis, pagan asceticism is contrasted with the asceticism of early Christianity, which is found to be comparatively structured and hierarchical. Where truth in pagan asceticism was highly individual, truth in Christian

The seeds of the church 47 asceticism was received. Ascetic practice was not concerned with practicing upon the self to gain access to individual truth, but rather focused on stripping away the self to access a higher truth. According to Foucault, this means that while pagan asceticism inculcated an ethic of resistance, Christian asceticism inculcated an ethic of obedience. This obsequiousness was the genesis of “pastoral power”, a system of domination that Foucault claimed thrives in greatly expanded forms across the world today. For both Weber and Foucault, the new forms of ethical life introduced into Western civilization by Christianity were revolutionary in their consequences. Both believed that the forms of asceticism introduced by Christianity were distantly responsible for the maladies of modernity. Despite these general similarities, each drew radically different conclusions from their comparative studies of asceticism. For Weber, the early Christians introduced a model of human life oriented away from this world, thus altering the meaning and interpretation of social life. For Foucault, early Christianity is historically significant because of the way it orients believers toward temporal power. Foucault and Weber offer an interpretation that, despite theoretical abstraction and macro-historical aspiration, likely hovers close to the lived experiences of the early Christians and their neighbors. The central contest here is not piety versus pleasure or reason versus faith, but competing visions of what is true and how one might live a good life in accordance with that truth. This is a contest of dramatic consequences. As Weber suggests, the proliferation of an other-worldly mentality has implications for a range of behaviors in this world. As Foucault argues, matters of truth pass through politics and power relations, conditioning in one way or another how members of a society interact with institutions and offices of power. The truth can be a resource for resistance or submission. If these interpretations of the early Christian moment seem removed from the concerns of this chapter—understanding early Christian martyrdom—this is only because the topic of early Christian martyrdom is so commonly pulled between dry historiographic controversies and the gory imagery of popular myth. Weber and Foucault offer a more compelling interpretive path forward: viewing martyrdom in terms of broader transformations in the popular understanding of what is true, how one might live a good life in accordance to that truth, how one should reconcile devotion to truth and the good life with the obligations of social life on this earth. In this chapter I will contrast the asceticism of early Christian martyrdom stories with that of the Stoic school. My goal with this comparison is to answer a general question: what was early Christian martyrdom? More specifically, I want to develop a sense of the distinct religious and political dimensions of early Christian martyrdom by assessing its contrasts with a competing form of asceticism. At the same time, I want to use this comparison to draw out what it was about early Christian communities that led them to the concept of martyrdom, and evaluate the role that martyrdom might have played in the success of early Christianity relative to competing modes of asceticism.

48

The seeds of the church

In some sense, this comparison diminishes both the scope and value of this chapter; it means, for instance, that no substantive analysis is provided of the relationship between early Christian martyrdom and antecedent Jewish traditions of sacrifice, and that regional variations in early Christian culture are necessarily diminished. However, it is my belief that the narrowed comparative perspective of this chapter allows for a heightened sensitivity to the central concerns of this study, namely the religious and political impacts of a contested death that has been elevated to the level of ultimate sacrifice through social commemoration.

The historiography of early Christian martyrdom The martyrs of early Christianity have achieved an iconic status that transcends the Christian tradition, enduring in contemporary popular memory, their stories continually adapted and retold in art, literature, and film.9 In popular retellings, it is their patience and devotion, even under torture and threat of death, which secures the eventual triumph of the Christians. This story has been told by apologists and critics alike. Martyrdom seems to embody the story of the rise of Christianity in the Roman world. But beyond the caricature is a snarled history that has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Ambiguities in early Christian history have, over the centuries, tended to calcify into intractable controversies. The topic of martyrdom has been particularly hardened in this respect. Historians today continue to debate whether the Christians invented a new practice in martyrdom or merely modified the practices of their predecessors. Similarly, arguments continue to fester over the precise chronological development of martyrdom in early Christian communities. The most pugnacious and consequential debates have involved the extent of official Roman persecution and the number of actually existing early Christian martyrs. At stake in all of these historiographical debates is not only the “realness” of early Christian persecution and martyrdom, but also the essential nature of early Christianity. Excoriating the history of early Christian martyrdom has been one way by which historians have evaluated the improbable transformation of a marginal and persecuted sect into a global phenomenon. Even after centuries of scholarship there is little consensus on the questions which have defined debates concerning early Christian martyrdom. W.H.C. Frend’s widely celebrated tome, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church, located continuities between the stories of Jewish suffering during their first war against the Romans in the first century and the later persecutions of early Christians that followed shortly thereafter. Some have dismissed Frend’s argument and advocated for the revolutionary distinctiveness of early Christian martyrdom, while others have amplified Frend’s thesis to polemical volumes.10 Between these various positions are those who see cultural similarity, but not direct influence. Quests for historical veracity, which seek to falsify our inherited legends of persecution or the verisimilitude of particular stories of martyrdom, have their own value. But we should acknowledge the stories of martyrdom which circulated in

The seeds of the church 49 early Christian communities as social facts: objects which are true in their consequences if not always true in their details.11 A study attuned to the cultural reality of early Christian martyrdom stories, as social facts which reflect and interact with the anxieties and hopes of a nascent movement, cannot contribute to the traditional historiographic study of early Christian martyrdom. It can, however, contribute to our understanding of the influence of early Christianity on cultural notions of power, religion, the body, and truth in the Roman world of late antiquity. Assessing early Christian martyrdom within a comparative study of asceticism promises new perspectives on the role of early Christianity in altering the cultural conception and institutional constitution of religion and politics. At the same time, stepping back from traditional historiographical controversies may allow for a clearer investigation of how the specific case of early Christian martyrdom interacts with the historical trajectory of martyrdom in the West.

The historical setting of early Christian martyrdom stories: the Roman Empire in the first three centuries of the Common Era To understand the role of martyrdom within early Christian communities and their influence on historical configurations of religion and politics, it is necessary to first consider the wider social world in which they existed. Commentators have often stressed the tension between early Christianity and the cultural milieu of the Roman Empire. Early Christianity was a “world-rejecting” movement, wading upstream against the powerful currents that flowed from the Tiber. The very existence of early Christian martyrdom stories suggests a community in conflict with the wider world. But what exactly was this world that the early Christians sought to reject? In the first centuries of the Common Era, the Roman Empire expanded its territorial reach immensely, marching further north into barbarian Europe, expanding across northern Africa, and reaching eastward toward Arabia. With geographic growth came political agglomeration. Ruling and civilizing this empire required an unprecedented, unstable, and often unruly political structure. In the Roman Empire, power and authority were centralized, radiating from the emperor out across the provinces.12 Such was the extent of imperial power that Tacitus recalled how “The Divine Augustus cowed the legions who had fought at Actium with one look of his face.”13 Yet outside of the Italian peninsula, the operations of power and authority in daily life were highly localized, law and order being exercised by provincial governors and their personal discretion.14 This unlikely partnership of political centralization and localism was reinforced by a certain degree of openness to the traditions and customs of conquered peoples. The paradox of a political system at once highly centralized and diffuse was paralleled by a social structure that maintained its inherited, traditional elitism even as it fostered new forms of social pluralism and innovation. The tension

50 The seeds of the church between traditional elitism and social change is well-displayed in the matter of citizenship. Roman citizenship had originally been a narrow category, granted to freeborn men of the city and then expanded to include the freeborn population of the Italian peninsula.15 In the imperial period, citizenship was expanded by imperial fiat, with the first emperors bestowing citizenship upon elites of the provinces; in 212, Emperor Caracalla issued a seismic proclamation endowing all free men of the Empire with citizenship, bestowing upon millions basic rights including the right to marry, engage in legal contracts, and the right to trial.16 Social life is never perfectly harmonious, but the tensions and paradoxes found in the Roman Empire are particularly dizzying. It was a period that combined centralization with localism, traditional elitism with new forms of meritocracy, the unflinching exercise of military force with more benevolent forms of authority. How could these contradictions be contained across the centuries? The survival and growth of the Empire, and the endurance of its most basic social institutions, is evidence of a degree of unity and social coherence regardless of underlying conflict and contradiction. This unity was essentially cultural in nature, the product of a Roman civic life that managed to sew the many contradictions of the imperial world together, however restively. At the heart of imperial cultural life was religion, a force that managed to forge bonds of allegiance and solidarity in a diverse and divided society. Romans of the imperial period were gripped by the myths, gods, and rituals of their ancestors, and the poetry of the early imperial period—in Horace’s odes, Ovid’s Fasti, and Virgil’s Aeneid, for example—suggest a people eager to maintain or reestablish the traditions of their ancestors. In Virgil’s telling, Rome emerges from the tongue of Jupiter, who vows: “To this people I assign no boundaries in space or time. I have granted them power without limit.”17 But this nostalgia was accompanied by a great thirst for the new: the imperial period saw the creation of new temples and shrines, new rituals, and the emergence of new gods.18 The reciprocal flow of cults and gods between Rome and its provinces created a unique and unprecedented religious diversity. Here is yet one more contradiction of the Roman Empire: the period saw an intense eagerness to maintain traditional piety, but also witnessed an equal ebullience for new gods, new cults, and new forms of worship. During the imperial period, a Roman might worship a traditional god like Venus, an eastern god like Cybele, a hero like Hercules, a leader like Divus Julius, or a virtue like courage. A Roman might encounter all of them in a single day, engaging in public rituals for a traditional god, offering private entreatments to a domestic deity, joining in cultic worship to an eastern god, and contemplating virtue. Yet despite these vivid markers of religious life, the Roman Empire may also have claim to being one of the least religious societies in world history. The religious life of the Empire did not offer a coherent moral or ethical system, had no notion of a transcendent deity, and lacked anything analogous to a congregation or regular services.19 Measured against even as flexible a standard as that offered by the American Internal Revenue Service, the paganism of the Roman Empire was

The seeds of the church 51 no religion. Even so, it managed to contain and pacify the disparate elements of Roman social life. This is because the many gods and myriad cults of the Roman Empire were subjects of a public religion, one that mixed politics with religion into something of a “public piety”.20 Rituals, festivals, offerings, and prophecies were coterminous with political and public life. The array of activities which the modern observer associates with Roman religion—the Vestal Virgins, the office of the Pontifex Maximus, the Sibylline books—were not components of a separate, religious realm. The modern term that comes closest to describing this state of affairs is what sociologists call “civil religion”. Perhaps the most radical development in Roman public piety during the imperial period was the deification of the emperors. The transformation of Julius Caesar into Divius Julius after his death initiated a trend of the posthumous deification of celebrated emperors throughout the imperial period.21 This development was complemented by the emergence of cults devoted to worshipping living emperors, which were born in the eastern provinces and had spread to the Italian peninsula by the first century of the Common Era.22 Yet the divinity of the emperors was also consistent with traditional public piety; deification did not endow the emperors with transcendence, but rather placed them at the center of Roman culture and public piety. From the divinity of the emperors to the rejuvenated temples and numerous priesthoods, religion in the Roman Empire was not something set apart from social life. The civil religion of the Roman Empire was not ‘sacred’ in our common sense of the term: it was neither a distinct realm of enchantment or transcendence. The public religion of the Roman Empire was mechanical, quasi-rationalist, even technocratic.23 The formulae of imperial civil religion worked as a form of social cohesion precisely because it did not transcend social life; rituals of prayer and sacrifice were reenactments of tradition which merely served to consecrate the existing order. If religious life in the Roman Empire managed to mollify the centrifugal forces of social change, this was not because of its essentially religious content (e.g., the power of the sacred or the force of the sublime), but because of its sovereign qualities. In a society torn between expansion and centralization, tradition and innovation, elitism and egalitarianism, the ceremonies of public religion served as a reminder that all aspects of social life, even those in direct conflict, proceeded from the sovereignty of the emperor. Civil religion in the Roman Empire managed to consecrate the emperor’s rule with a legitimacy of uncommon ingredients, combining an unlikely blend of rational, traditional, and charismatic authority. The fundamentally legalistic aspects of Roman public piety—its rituals enshrined in programmatic text, its ceremonies enacted to achieve precisely specified ends—conferred the figure of the emperor with the mechanical legitimacy of rationality. Yet even as civil religion coated the emperor’s rule with the veneer of rationality, it also dusted him with charismatic power. The deification of the emperor meant that the office radiated charisma, purportedly imbuing the officeholder with supernatural powers. Finally,

52 The seeds of the church the centrality of the emperor to traditional public piety lent the position the venerable luster of traditional authority. In all, the ceremonies and rituals of public piety in the Roman Empire lent the figure of the emperor (if not always the person) an impossible combination of authoritative traits. Social life in the Roman Empire was marked by certain tensions or contradictions. Given that all societies are similarly afflicted, this is something of a truism: likely accurate, likely unremarkable. If there is any controversy in this contextual summary, it is the suggestion that these social conflicts were fostered and contained by a type of sovereignty in which all power and authority radiated from the figure of the emperor. The corollary argument about Roman religion— that it held various conflicting social forces together by re-asserting the primacy of imperial sovereignty, garnishing the office with a near garish combination of rational, charismatic, and traditional traits—may be similarly problematic. Both interpretations risk entering conspiratorial territory, suggesting as they do that an essentially invisible concept is somehow at the center of social life. There is also a totalizing quality to both. In arguing that there was a singular sovereignty, a figure of the emperor who possessed all legitimate power and authority, one risks mistaking the omnipotent symbolic form of sovereignty with its ever fragile and constantly besieged reality. Even so, I think this interpretation captures something essential about the cultural and symbolic world of the Roman Empire. This was a world in which both the late second-century Church Father Origen and his pagan sparring partner Celsus could agree that “Whatever you receive in life you receive from him [the Emperor]”.24 This fundamental reality can be overwhelmed by the tumult and diversity of social life in the Roman world: by the seeming autonomy of elites in Rome and the provinces, by the pluralism and tolerance shown to conquered peoples, and by the gradual expansion of rights across the history of the Empire. Yet even these sordid aspects of history existed as a consequence of the absolute power and authority of the emperor (that is to say, they were extensions of his sovereignty). As the second-century Greek Sophist Aelius Aristides wrote: “The governors who are sent to the cities and provinces are each and all rulers of them in their own right, but . . . they are likewise all subjects. . . . Such is the awe universally instilled of the mighty ruler who presides over the whole.”25 The public religion of the Romans, with the emperor at its center, offers the most vivid example of imperial sovereignty and suggests how, through cultural acts like ritual and public prayer, a society stretched by contradictions remained bound together, tied as they were to a distant but all-powerful sovereign. To suggest that the Empire had at its heart a unitary and singular sovereign is to look at the society through the lens of political culture. This is not an analysis of how politics worked, but how power and authority were understood by the people of the Empire. Reality offered frequent frustrations to imperial sovereignty in the form of rebellion, war, cabals, and invasion. But just as often challenges emerged in the realm of culture, with growing movements that advertised worldviews which departed from the norms of everyday social life. These movements responded to the deficiencies or cruelties of Roman political and religious life,

The seeds of the church 53 offering conceptions of a good life notably absent in the practical administration of imperial politics or the arcane rituals of public religion.

Asceticism and “world-affirming” religion in Stoicism Encountering the muddled reality of cultural, religious, and political life in the Roman Empire, one begins to understand why Foucault avoided framing his study of asceticism in religious terms. Next to the tumult of gods and the din of festivals, the asceticism of pagan philosophers seems orderly and familiar. The fact that the asceticism of Stoic philosophers focuses on ethical conduct seems to set such philosophical thinking apart from the odd, arbitrary, and antiquated practices of pagan religion. While the diversity of practices and beliefs found in Roman religious life defy our expectations of what a religion ought to look like, the ascetic writings of ancient philosophers can often seem surprisingly secular and startlingly contemporary. But Stoicism has a coherent and relatively consistent ethical system, an account of good and evil, and offered adherents both a proscribed set of behaviors and a shared identity. In this respect, Stoicism might be said to appear more like a modern religion than a modern secular philosophy. Because it is both a product of a time in which religion was not yet a recognizably separate sphere, and because of the ways in which it stands askance of that time, Stoicism ought to be treated as in some sense religious. This was clear enough to Seneca, who defined philosophy as the divinorum et humanorum scientiam (“science concerning the divine and human”).26 But in what manner does pagan asceticism interact with the pagan civil religion of ancient Rome? Continuing with Seneca (c. 4 BC–AD 65), a man whose life was sewn into the power structures of the early Empire, one finds a form of Stoic thought that stands askance of both skepticism and superstition. Seneca’s thought begins in the full acknowledgement of the inevitability of death. This acknowledgement must for Seneca take the form of acceptance: “We must make ready for death before we make ready for life.” As he writes in a different letter, “let the bread be hard and grimy.”27 Seneca’s willingness to accept suffering and death, to eat the hard and grimy bread that is given to him, is conditioned by a religious orientation that is both a part of and apart from the religious sensibilities of his time. Throughout his writing, Seneca refers to the divine, but the Stoic god he describes is a startlingly commutative entity. At times, Seneca refers to a personal god: “God is near you, he is with you, he is within you . . . a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian.”28 Elsewhere, the god of Seneca approaches pantheism, as when he asks in his Natural Questions, “What is god? The intelligence of the universe. What is god? All that you see and all that you see and all that you do not see.”29 These two descriptions of the divine, one personal and one pantheistic, may seem contradictory. However, across all of his scattered references to the divine, Seneca is describing a universe that is connected through an ordered and harmonious

54 The seeds of the church cosmological unity. The proper askesis, or ascetic practice, opens the individual to this reality. This askesis conditions the practitioner—through fasting, self-inflicted poverty, study—to a certain awareness of the natural, divine order. Within this ascetic practice, an awareness of pain and death, the ability to comprehend that we are “dying daily”, allows the Stoic to see such suffering within the natural order, and in so doing to gain proximity of the divine order. Seneca’s religious and philosophical sensibilities rest uncomfortably in the broader cultural sensibilities of the pagan Empire. When he writes of the divine, Seneca is reflecting on an order wholly apart from the ritualized life of Roman civil religion. At the same time, there are moments when Seneca seems to address the traditional gods, as in his Epistles: “The first way to worship the gods is to believe in the gods; the next to acknowledge their majesty, to acknowledge their goodness without which there is no majesty.” Seneca continues, recommending that whomever seeks to worship to gods should first imitate them and “be a good man.”30 It would seem that Seneca’s Stoic god, encompassing as it does all that is orderly and good in the universe, can contain the traditional gods. While Seneca would perhaps scorn the traditional rituals and superstitions associated with public worship, he seems willing to accommodate the presence of the traditional gods, even suggesting a certain divine agency that seems intermediate to his personal and pantheistic conceptions of god. This religious sensibility was carried through the centuries, passed down to Seneca’s student Epictetus, who wrote of a god who is manifest in reason,31 and culminating in the second-century writings of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. In his Meditations, Marcus writes reverently of reason, through which we can gain a sense of our place in the universe. Following reason, one becomes “indeed a priest and servant of the gods, behaving rightly towards the deity stationed within him, so ensuring that the mortal being remains unpolluted by pleasures, invulnerable to every pain, untouched by any wrong”.32 Here, Marcus seems to offer a synthesis of traditional public piety with Stoic asceticism. This synthesis requires a feat of intellectual contortion to maintain the public piety of paganism without fully succumbing to it. For the modern reader, significant portions of Stoic asceticism will seem strikingly religious: the divine is a constant reference point, an ideal which the Stoic strives toward through adherence to ascetic practices. At the same time, these religious elements did not seem to interfere with the Stoic’s ability to engage in the civil religion or public piety. Indeed, though the Stoics often depict the divine as the purest form of reason, this understanding did not prevent them from dutifully fulfilling traditional pagan worship. In this brief analysis of the religious dimensions of Stoicism, it is clear that for some portion of the Stoic tradition the truth revealed through asceticism was something akin to an awareness of a harmonious divine order. Yet this awakening is not “other-worldly”, and does not lead the Stoic to reject the world. The highly individualized nature of the Stoic’s divine truth was fully compatible with Roman public piety, even if the demands of traditional rituals were seen as frivolous or

The seeds of the church 55 superstitious. To the extent that the religious dimensions of Stoic philosophy had some influence on the Stoic conception of truth, the effect was essentially tranquilizing.

The “world-rejecting” salvation of early Christian asceticism Subtle readers of history have often noted a general symmetry between Stoicism and early Christianity.33 Indeed, the “Stoicizing” of early Christianity by Paul and other Christian Fathers has assumed a near-canonical, if still controversial, stature in certain circles of Church historiography.34 For Foucault, however, it was clear that the two traditions were rivals, separated by deep cultural fissures. Before Foucault, Weber had similarly distinguished between the prophetic, world-rejecting aspects of Christianity and the contemplative passivity of the Stoics.35 These interpretations share a kinship with certain strands of Renaissance and Enlightenment historiography which viewed early Christianity as a malign intrusion upon the civility of the pagan culture of the Greco-Roman world. Yet for Foucault (and perhaps for Weber too) there was a crucial point at which these perpendicular traditions converged. As competing ascetic traditions, each aimed to shape the individual’s relationship to the world through practices upon the self. Unlike the Stoics, the early Christians practiced an asceticism founded in an other-worldly religious orientation, one which urged a rejection of life on this earth. Where Stoics understood the divine in terms of universal harmony, early Christians spoke of a living God who acted upon history. While Stoics understood life on earth as an extension of a harmonious order, early Christians understood life on earth in terms of sin and the original rejection of God by man. Both Stoics and early Christians had some conception of free will, but the Stoics believed the goal of human agency should be to act in accordance with the natural order, while the early Christians sought to escape the status quo, reconciling themselves to God by living in accordance with Christ. Truth for the Stoics was a product of the individual, whereas truth for the early Christians was revealed and received. Given these contrasts, it is perhaps surprising that the practiced asceticism of early Christians and Stoics—the various habits enacted in pursuit of truth—should appear so similar. The asceticism of Paul in Romans and of subsequent Church Fathers, which emphasizes chastity, poverty, and prayer, bears a strong resemblance to the ascetic practices advocated by Seneca, Marcus, and other GrecoRoman Stoics. Observing an early Christian and Stoic side by side, each striving to live in accordance with truth, it would be easy to mistake one for the other. Despite their outward resemblance, the Stoic and the early Christian approached asceticism with discordant motivations. The Stoic’s asceticism was driven by the desire to attain an individual awareness of a divine cosmic order; in paring their life down to its barest essentials, the Stoic could attain a better grip on a truth that was essentially individual, a truth that contained their personal relationship to the natural order. The early Christian’s asceticism was enacted in pursuit of a higher truth; life on this earth was contaminated by sin, and asceticism offered the individual Christian a method to approach other-worldly salvation.

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That these competing truth claims should each manifest in outwardly similar ascetic practices is significant. Asceticism, whether world-embracing or worldrejecting, naturally creates some tension between practitioners and their surrounding social environment. The ascetic, whatever their underlying truth claim, necessarily encounters their social reality as an obstacle to achieving a life of truth. How, then, did the Stoics and early Christians interact with the wider social world? To what extent did similarities in behavior produce similar relationships with wider imperial society?

The political dimensions of Stoicism and early Christianity Surveying the Stoic tradition from its founder Zeno to the reflections of Marcus Aurelius, it is impossible to locate any uniform theory of power, politics, and social life. There is little discussion, and less consensus, on the ideal Stoic state or politics. If there is something common to the Stoic tradition it is a general aversion to abstract political or social theory, preferring to approach such topics as merely another domain in which to cultivate virtue and forestall vice. Seneca, for example, developed a cosmopolitan approach to politics, wherein the purely accidental boundaries of a city, and the vices of everyday politics, are juxtaposed with the universal commonwealth of virtue. The contrasts drawn by Seneca—between the coarse politics of everyday rule and the ennobling qualities of a virtuous politics—do not preclude political engagement, but suggest a highly individualized form of political activity. For the Stoic, actions made in the social realm must align with one’s personae, or individual character.36 The individual Stoic, seeing the world through cleareyed virtue, might tolerate a political system or ruler, but they could also see individuals or institutions as incompatible with the natural order. Because Stoics had a highly individualized form of truth, underlying ambivalences toward social and political life could be resolved personally, as the Stoic worked to reconcile their natural personae with social life. The world-rejecting asceticism of the early Christians could not offer any similar form of resolution. Though it was widely held amongst early Christians that salvation could only come for those who turned away from the world, less certain was how the worldrejecting Christian might use their time on this earth, particularly when it came to the competing obligations and complicated loyalties of public and political life. This dilemma was particularly pronounced for later generations of Christians who lived without the certainty that the Second Coming would occur in their lifetime. On the one hand, Jesus had told his apostles that he possessed “all authority in heaven and earth” (Matthew 28:18). In the context of the Roman Empire, such a statement might be taken as insurrectionary. However, Christ had also expounded that his followers should “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Luke 20:25). The example of Jesus’s life did not necessarily clarify this tension: he had been executed by the order of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, but had maintained that he was not inciting rebellion, and ultimately asked that his executioners be forgiven.

The seeds of the church 57 Such tensions persisted throughout the history of the early Church. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul wrote that Christ is “far above all rule and authority”, and that the Church must struggle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world” (Eph. 1:10; 6:12). Yet in Romans Paul would write that “The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted” (Rom. 13:2). In these passages we see the early Church struggle between the demands of daily life on this earth and the obligations of an otherworldly religion. Across the writings of first- and second-century Church leaders one finds frequent attempts to reconcile Christianity with the reigning social order. Thus, in the second century the apologist Justin addressed his writings first to the emperor Antoninus Pious and later to the Roman Senate. In his apologies Justin attempts to refute the charge of sedition, drawing upon the imagery of a higher kingdom to prove that devout Christians are essentially incapable of political intrigue. To rebel or revolt, to “[look] for a human kingdom”, would require “ignor[ing] our Christ”37 Tertullian, a second/third-century Carthaginian Christian, penned similar addresses. Despite his penchant for painting Rome as the “whore of Babylon”, Tertullian composed a lengthy apology to local governors in 197. In it, he describes the Christian as “living among you, eating the same food, wearing the same attire, having the same habits, under the same necessities of existence”.38 Christians may devote themselves to a higher power, but their faith is perfectly at ease in the daily life of the Roman Empire. As with the Stoics, the asceticism of early Christianity produced a tension between Christians and the wider society. For early Christians, a life lived in pursuit of other-worldly truth necessarily entailed a certain rejection of the world. But what was the nature of this rejection? Should Christians defy earthly powers? Should they flee pagan society? Such questions were defining preoccupations throughout the first centuries of Christianity. Unlike the Stoics, early Christians could not leave such matters to the individual—theirs was a truth received, not crafted. The writings of the apostles and their immediate successors reveal a community straining to reconcile their immediate duties under the Empire with their obligations to a higher power. Rejecting this world in favor of Christ did not require political resistance. However, the demands of the Kingdom of God and the Empire of Rome were often at odds. It was in these moments of confrontation that the differences between Stoicism and Christianity—world rejection versus world acceptance, individual truth versus revelation—were finally clarified.

Stoic exempla and early Christian martyrdom: the ascetics of resistance Given their shared ambivalence toward political life, it is perhaps unsurprising that both early Christianity and Stoicism would experience confrontations with political authorities across their history. However, each tradition engaged with

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periods of persecution and conflict according to their respective worldviews. These discordant approaches to crisis and political domination may account for variations in the rate of persecution endured by Stoics and early Christians, and may explain the different motives given by imperial powers for punishing one group or the other. More consequentially, the interpretation of violence and persecution after the fact—the ability to orient such events according to respective truth claims— reveals something about the ability of each movement to overcome moments of persecution. In comparing the history of persecution experienced by Stoics and Christians, it is important to assess not only the relative propensity of each movement to resist domination but also the capability of each movement to create meaning from these encounters. Instances of domination and persecution pushed ascetic conviction to its limits, forcing the Stoic or the Christian to weigh the merits of a truthful life against the likelihood of suffering and death. The stories which recount instances of domination and persecution, whether Stoic or early Christian, come to us secondhand. The noble deaths of Stoics from Cato to Seneca and Helvidius Priscus are recalled in the letters of their Stoic successors and in the chronicles of Rome provided by later historians like Tacitus. This is doubly true of the early Christian martyrdom stories that circulated in the first centuries of the Common Era. Though some, like The Passion of Perpetua, contain first-person narrations, one should not assume that the vivid details and lively dialogues of these stories offer perfect historical accuracy. Such sources need to be treated carefully: these are not perfectly reliable testimonies of historical events. Rather, each is an attempt by the living to reconcile suffering and death with the daily, ascetic lives of adherents and the worldview (world-affirming or world-rejecting) of either tradition. The violent death of individual Stoics, particularly those who had achieved some renown, would have presented an immediate challenge to the Stoic tradition. How could a tradition that hoped to cultivate a tolerance for the natural order palate political domination and persecution, particularly cases involving sudden and often grotesque deaths? Stoics worked through such questions in their accounts of the lives and deaths of their luminaries. These stories are often categorized as a distinct genre called exempla, a name that denotes the exemplary status of persecuted figures in the Stoic tradition.39 Perhaps the most famous of these was Cato the Younger, whose death was described and analyzed by subsequent Stoics including Lucan and Seneca. Cato had been a member of the Roman elite, and though born into prosperity and endowed with a substantial inheritance he became known for his adherence to a Stoic life of moderation. He pursued this life of discipline in the first century BC/AD, witnessing the sclerotic final decades of the Republic, living through Sulla’s dictatorship, the first triumvirate, and finally the civil war that would conclude in the downfall of republican Rome. As an uncompromising defender of the Senate and republican tradition, Cato stood athwart the advancing ambitions of Julius Caesar, first in the Senate and then in battle. But Caesar’s military victories pushed Cato from Rome, and the Stoic statesman eventually fled to the North

The seeds of the church 59 African city of Utica. As Caesar approached Utica, his victory secured, Cato took his own life, opening his bowels with a sword. Later generations of Stoics would have to contend with the life of Cato: his famous devotion to the Stoic ascetic, his prominence in political life, and his dramatic end forced those who followed to consider his place in the Stoic tradition. But how did these accounts accommodate Cato’s defiance, particularly his final act of violent resistance, with the equanimity of Stoic philosophy? Seneca’s Epistles offer the most complete, if perhaps the most contradictory, answer. Writing to the young Stoic Lucilius on the topic of death, Seneca uses Cato’s suicide as an example of how one might confront the end of life without fear. In his letter, Seneca has Cato speak the following words on the eve of his death: “Fortune, you have accomplished nothing by resisting all my endeavors. . . . Now, since the affairs of mankind are beyond hope, let Cato be withdrawn to safety.”40 These are not the words of a defiant man. According to Seneca, Cato’s death is in keeping with his life, the final harmonious note of a career devoted to the republican ideal. Ultimately, Seneca uses the death of Cato as an example of how his correspondent Lucilius might come to accept death. Seneca advises Lucilius to accept death as an inescapable component of life: “we die every day. For every day a little of our life is taken from us . . . the very day which we are now spending is shared between ourselves and death.”41 From Seneca’s perspective, Cato’s death is exemplary because it was in keeping with his life. Indeed, Seneca’s understanding of death—as something that happens every day, a necessary corollary to life—deprives Cato’s suicide of much of its symbolic power. Cato is not a model of resistance, but of acceptance; Cato is not to be eulogized because he defied a tyrant, but because, as Seneca wrote in another letter, “No one ever saw Cato change.”42 Just over a century after Cato’s death, Seneca would meet a similar end, though driven by different circumstances. If Cato’s story captured the dying energies of a principled age, Seneca’s was a product and portrait of the early empire. His proximity to the emperor Nero meant that Seneca held both the emperor’s ear and a consulship by the year 56. However, Seneca’s influence appears to have been short-lived; in the year 65, Nero uncovered an assassination plot. Because Seneca was known to associate with the leaders of the plot, he was accused of treason and commanded by Nero to commit suicide. Later Stoics would have encountered the tale as it is recorded in the Annals of Tacitus, which recalls the events leading up to Seneca’s death some 50 years after they occurred.43 According to Tacitus, Seneca accepted his fate “quite unmoved”, and bequeathed to his surviving friends “the noblest possession yet remaining to him, the pattern of his life”.44 His death seems to have combined unenviable portions of tedium and agony: though he opened veins in his arms and legs, the blood flowed so slowly that the geriatric philosopher sought out poison, then a warm bath, finally expiring in a steam room after hours of suffering. Seneca’s death might first appear to be at odds with the model he had celebrated in Cato, but whatever their differences, both men sought a death that was

60 The seeds of the church in keeping with their life. When Seneca’s companions begin to cry, he admonishes them for abandoning the lessons of Stoic philosophy. He continues by asking of them “Who knew not Nero’s cruelty?”45 This may be read as a final rebuke of the emperor, but it is more likely a reminder of Stoic principles. A Stoic who has attained some awareness of the natural order should be able to anticipate the natural consequences of Nero’s disposition. Such an awareness would not mistake Nero’s actions for virtue, but would accept that cruel policies should be expected from cruel leaders. The Stoic’s recourse to such eventualities is a hardened acceptance, avoiding the pitfalls of pity and cowardice in favor of a death in keeping with one’s life. These themes are echoed in the discourses of Epictetus, composed by his student Arrian at the beginning of the second century. In his passing allusions to the lives and deaths of such Stoics as Helvidius Priscus, Epictetus perpetuates the features of Stoic exempla. Helvidius Priscus had been a senator and student of Stoicism during the reign of Vespasian, sentenced to death for his political obstinacy. In his Discourses, Epictetus describes an exchange between Helvidius and Vespasian, in which the emperor warns the philosopher to be silent in the senate or risk death. Helvidius replies: “You will do your part, and I will do mine: it is your part to kill; it is mine to die, but not in fear; yours to banish me; mine to depart without sorrow.”46 Epictetus’s analysis of this exchange is even more striking than Helvidius’s resolve. When Helvidius is remembered today it is as a champion of political dissidence. In contrast, Epictetus is indifferent to Helvidius’s political cause. For Epictetus, Helvidius attains the status of exemplum by merit of his self-discipline. In the paragraphs preceding the story of Helvidius, Epictetus considers the question of what it means to live a rational life. As a good Stoic, it is clear to Epictetus that a rational life is that which conforms to nature. The irrational life is therefore that which deviates from the natural order. Happiness follows the first, misery the second. But how might one identify the rational life? According to Epictetus, this question can only be resolved at the individual level, because “the rational and the irrational appear such in a different way to different persons.”47 Epictetus suggests that the only way to know whether or not it is “good” to go to the theater (to use his own example) is to have a clear sense of one’s self. To attain this self-knowledge “we need discipline, in order to learn how to adapt the preconception of the rational and the irrational to the several things conformably to nature.”48 Put another way, through Stoic asceticism one can achieve a clearer understanding of nature and one’s rightful place in it. It is here that Epictetus turns to the example of Helvidius Priscus. What we ought to admire in Helvidius, according to Epictetus, is his ability to play his part, his devotion to his individual nature and his awareness of his role within the natural order. Conversely, Epictetus seems to suggest that the emperor Vespasian can only be critiqued for his irrationality. If Helvidius is virtuous irrespective of his political allegiances, then Vespasian’s cruelty also exists independent of his power, his political office, or even his ability to execute opponents. Just as Helvidius is exemplary in his constancy, Vespasian is a model of caprice. What

The seeds of the church 61 Epictetus admires in Helvidius is not his rebelliousness, but his devotion to the Stoic conception of a rationally ordered universe, even in the face of death. Over 150 years separate the death of Cato from Epictetus’s discourses. In that period, life in the Mediterranean world was profoundly altered by the development of the Empire. Yet despite the seismic transformations that accompanied imperial rule, the exempla were models of Stoic consistency, passing stories of noble death from generation to generation. All of the cases discussed here depict a Stoic gripped by the vices of Roman politics. In each instance, the exemplary Stoic confronts political domination equipped with a determination to be true to themselves. Searching for political critique in the Stoic exempla is a profitless endeavor. As with Stoic philosophy in general, the exempla do not purport to offer a model for political life, nor do they suggest any consistent theory of power or statecraft. Rather, the genre of the exempla offers a vivid depiction of the world-embracing asceticism of the Stoics. Faced with any event that is apparently unpleasant, the Stoic reflects on two questions: how does this unpleasantness relate to the natural order, and how should I respond to such unpleasantness given my own place in the natural order? Ascetic pursuits, what Epictetus called discipline, equipped the Stoic to respond to such events with equanimity. As a genre, early Christian martyrdom stories bore a strong resemblance to the Stoic exempla: both center on the suffering of devout individuals, and both tend to focus on encounters between the righteous individual and the officialdom of imperial Rome. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, which describes the violent death of a second-century bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor, is often identified as the first text to use the ancient Greek word martys to designate suffering for one’s convictions. While the dating of the text remains controversial, it was known to early Christian communities by the middle of the third century (that is, over 50 years before Constantine’s conversion). The story of Polycarp’s martyrdom comes to us in epistolary form, the narrator offering an eyewitness account of the sufferings of the ancient and pious bishop. Given its revered place in the history of Christian martyrdom, Polycarp’s story has a startling beginning: a devoted and beloved octogenarian bishop fleeing his congregation in Smyrna for the hinterland. But the narrator assures their correspondent that this is no retreat: so revered was Polycarp that when his congregants learned that he was wanted by provincial authorities, they compelled their bishop to leave town. Polycarp’s flight is short-lived: after the authorities torture his whereabouts out of two youths, the Bishop voluntarily surrenders to his pursuers. Polycarp is then taken to Smyrna by chariot, watched over by the region’s irenarch (or sheriff). On their brief journey, the lawman asks the bishop to call the emperor “lord” and offer a sacrifice to his wellbeing. Polycarp laconically refuses, and for his impudence is thrown from the chariot, breaking his leg in the fall. Arriving at an arena, Polycarp is again asked, this time by the proconsul, to “Swear by the fortune of Cæsar; repent, and say, Away with the Atheists.” Polycarp contentedly replies “Away with the Atheists”, but continues: “Eighty and six

62 The seeds of the church years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?”49 This exchange continues, the proconsul threatening to unleash wild animals or burn the aged bishop if he does not renounce Christ and offer a sacrifice to the emperor. The bishop is resolute: “we are not accustomed to repent of what is good in order to adopt that which is evil”. He concludes his exchange with the proconsul defiantly: “But why are you waiting? Bring forth what you will.”50 Polycarp is then bound “as a noble ram out of flock” and set atop a pyre to burn.51 However, even as the flames grow around him, the bishop is unaffected. He does not burn, but glows, and the smoke that rises from the fire smells of incense rather than charred flesh. When the fire fails to do its purpose, an executioner approaches and stabs Polycarp with a dagger. A torrent of blood sprays from the wound, extinguishing the flames and the life of the bishop at once. Whether or not The Martyrdom of Polycarp is the earliest written account of a Christian martyr, it does contain features which are common across the genre. At the center of this story is an encounter between a devout Christian and members of the imperial government. These encounters take the form of an antagonistic exchange, wherein requests by the authorities to partake in acts of public piety are met with adamant resistance. These examinations conclude in violent death, though the convicted Christian is described as indifferent to their suffering. This same narrative structure is found in one of the era’s most popular martyrdom stories, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity. The story of the death of the young mother Perpetua and her slave Felicity achieved fame across the Roman world, and by the time of the Emperor Constantine’s conversion in the early fourth century, the date of their deaths, March 7, had been incorporated into the Christian calendar. The Passion unfolds in North Africa, in and around the city of Carthage in the year 203. At the center of the story is a young woman “respectably born”, Vibia Perpetua. She is a child of the city’s elite, but has recently strayed from family under the influence of local Christians and become a catechumen (one receiving instruction). The first portion of The Passion is recounted from Perpetua’s perspective. She has been detained along with her fellow catechumens, and is held in prison, where she is confronted by her angry father and worries over her newborn son. Perpetua then describes her examination by the proconsul Hilarianus. The exchange is brief, with the proconsul asking that Perpetua remember her family, and “Spare the grey hairs of your father, spare the infancy of your boy, offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperors.” Perpetua response is brief: she admits that she is a Christian and refuses to abandon her faith or sacrifice to the emperors. Hilarianus responds first by having Perpetua’s father beaten, and concluding that the proceedings “condemns us to the wild beasts”. Perpetua then describes the group’s response: “we went down cheerfully to the dungeon.”52 Perpetua continues by describing a series of visions she has in the course of her imprisonment. The narration then transitions to describing the visions of a fellow catechumen, and concludes with the testimonial of a witness who reports on

The seeds of the church 63 the group’s final hours. “The day of their victory” arrives and the Christians are described as eager to face their deaths. But the excitement of the crowd and the Christians alike is somewhat denuded when the animals fail to enact the sentence. A bear cannot be coaxed from his pen, a boar gores his handler, and a bull succeeds only in knocking Perpetua to the ground. Only a single member of the group is killed by an animal—by the single bite of a leopard—and his death arrives only after he gives a soldier his ring, along with the request that he “let not these things disturb, but confirm you.”53 The surviving Christians are then executed by gladiators, but even the steel of their executioner’s swords seems hesitant. Perpetua has to guide a young gladiator’s sword to her neck, for “Possibly such a woman could not have been slain unless she herself had willed it.” Despite stylistic differences, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity and the Martyrdom of Polycarp are fundamentally similar in narrative structure: both recount conflicts between imperial authorities and Christians, both depict an interrogation in which the Christians announce and hold fast to their religious convictions, and both conclude with scenes of prolonged violence. These themes are echoed in one of the few recorded encounters between a Stoic Roman official and early Christians. Q. Iunus Rusticus, Marcus Aurelius’s Stoic teacher, had begun to climb the ranks of Roman officialdom by the mid-third century. Sometime around 160, Rusticus encountered the formidable Christian philosopher Justin, most likely while holding the office of Prefect of Rome. Their encounter, recorded in the Acts of Justin, contains the same elements as the stories described previously. Where Polycarp’s martyrdom is recounted in epistolary form, and Perpetua’s comes to us in the style of a dramatic passion narrative, the story of Justin’s martyrdom is recounted in a form similar to the official reports of Roman courts, lending it a scintillating air of authenticity. In terms of plot, Acts conforms to the model found in the stories of Polycarp and Perpetua: Justin and six companions are brought before the prefect, examined, and then sentenced to death. What distinguishes this particular interaction is the nature of the dialogue; where Polycarp was upbraiding and Perpetua modest, Justin is cerebral, his speech matching a reputation for philosophical reflection. Just as surprising, his adversary Rusticus diverges from the expectations of officials established by the Martyrdom of Polycarp and the Passion of Perpetua. Rusticus does not begin his inquiry by asking why the group refuses to sacrifice to the gods, or whether those who have been brought before him are Christians. Fittingly, the Stoic teacher begins his inquiry with a simple, penetrating question: “How do you live?” Justin’s reply is brief and, given the role and status of his questioner, cutting: “A blameless life, not to be condemned by any human.” Rusticus continues his philosophical inquiry, asking what teachings Justin offers and whether those teachings bring him joy. Justin responds by noting that he has sampled many teachings, but has happily settled on “the true teachings of the Christians”.54 The exchange then expands to include Justin’s companions, all of whom affirm their pious Christianity. The prefect concludes with a warning: “If you don’t obey,

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you will be punished.” To which Justin replies, “This is exactly what we pray for, that we will be saved through punishment.” Rusticus then declares that “Those who were not willing to sacrifice to the gods have to be whipped and carried away in conformity with the laws.” The story concludes with a third-person narration which tells in passing of the group’s eventual death by beheading, a conclusion whose summary detail seems to accept violent death as something of an inevitability for the pious Christian.55 As with the Stoic exempla, the early Christian martyrdom stories described here present a diverse range of cases, describing the deaths of martyrs that occurred across decades and throughout the imperial world, from the capital to Asia Minor and North Africa. In their style the stories are equally eclectic, taking a variety of narrative forms, varying not only in perspective but also voice. Some mirror the staid prose of a stenographer, others describe death and suffering in a tone that borders the romantic. However, just as the exempla converge on particular themes, the early Christian martyrdom stories also contain underlying similarities, and as with the exempla, these similarities can largely be described with reference to the movement’s religious and ascetic orientation. The exemplary Stoics and the Christian martyrs extoll the virtue of ascetic discipline even under duress. Because these stories all depict asceticism at its boundaries, where individual devotion to truth is pressed up against individual agony, they affect the audience’s perception of the entire ascetic project. For Cato, the meaning found in a Stoic life was only confirmed in death, just as Justin’s sentencing was the defining moment of his Christian faith. For the reader, too, these experiences come to define each tradition by depicting the boundaries of ascetic devotion. As models of asceticism, both genres offer a model of how to live and die in accordance to the religious orientations of their respective traditions. Yet these are hardly theological works: they do not describe the tenets of either tradition, but focus on lived experience, and are centrally concerned with the collisions of Stoicism and Christianity with the organs of imperial Rome. These are not merely descriptions of Christian and Stoic ideals, but models of how one might live as a Stoic or a Christian within the particular world of the Roman Empire. As such, these texts need to be interpreted not only within the confines of their traditions, but also according to their position within a wider social world.

Sacrifice and sovereignty: the politics of early Christian martyrdom In terms of their religious content, the most striking contrast between the Stoic exempla and early Christian martyrdom stories may be their depictions of sacrifice. The deaths of Cato, Seneca, and Helvidius Priscus were described by their chroniclers as exemplars of the Stoic tradition: each was able to accept death, whether painful or seemingly premature, because the alternative would deviate from the pattern of life they had achieved through Stoic practice. For these Stoics, a death that aligned with their perception of the natural order was preferable

The seeds of the church 65 to a life that defied divine reason. The Stoic death depicted in the exempla is ultimately an embrace of life. Early Christian martyrs like Perpetua, Justin, and Polycarp face similar pressures and meet similar ends, but their stories depict this trajectory as a renunciation of life in favor of obedience to a higher power. Logically, one might anticipate the loss of life depicted in the Stoic exempla to be described in sacrificial language. If Stoic asceticism was fundamentally shaped by a world-embracing religious orientation, then renouncing life—a life bestowed by the divine, in a universe that is naturally good and rationally ordered—would presumably require some form of sacrifice. By the same reasoning, one might anticipate that stories of early Christian persecution forgo sacrificial rhetoric. If the world has fallen from grace, and earthly bodies are mere reservoirs of sin, then presumably the loss of one’s earthly life would be more of a liberation than a loss. In actuality, the elevation of death to sacrifice is central to early Christian martyrdom and essentially absent from the Stoic exempla. Why was it that early Christians, so eager to turn away from the world, developed a sacrificial notion of violent death, but the Stoics, who savored opportunity to pursue a rational life on this earth, failed to do so? The Christian ability to conceive of suffering and death in terms of sacrifice was, of course, a product of their other-worldly orientation. What Christians had, and what Stoics lacked, was a higher power to receive sacrifice. The divine Reason of the Stoics meant that any death, no matter how violent, was always a product of divine will. From this perspective, no death could ever be conceived of in terms of loss because death was an inevitable component of the divinely ordered universe. By contrast, the early Christians understood the divine not as a diffuse, immanent force, but as a higher power, the creator of heaven and earth. Yet their creator was distant—the corrosive force of sin had caused mankind to fall from grace. Christ’s death served to redeem humanity, offering salvation through his sacrifice, while simultaneously offering a model of the redemptive powers of suffering. The importance of ascetic differences lies in the consequences of asceticism on social life more generally (or, to borrow more directly from Weber, competing paths of salvation will diverge through the wider array of value spheres, generating potentially influential differences in economic or political behavior). To fully comprehend the meaning of early Christian martyrdom requires turning away from its value within early Christian asceticism and interpreting its meanings relative to the broader social milieu. Or, to put it in the terms of Foucault’s study of asceticism: to understand early Christian martyrdom requires contemplating its role with respect to the power dynamics its time. Having already established that the early Christian martyrdom stories and Stoic exempla allowed both traditions to integrate persecution and political domination into their respective religious worldviews, we should next consider the meanings these stories generated with respect to each tradition’s position in social and political life. A closer examination of the role of sacrifice in early Christian martyrdom stories and Stoic exempla is suggestive. Again, the notion of sacrifice contains the fundamental differences in the Stoic and early Christian approach to narrating and

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interpreting violent political death. The world-affirming asceticism of the Stoics, and the Stoic conception of a divine Reason, meant that the tales of suffering and death found in the exempla tended not to invoke the language of sacrifice. The world-rejecting asceticism of the early Christians, oriented toward a higher power and revealed through Christ’s sacrifice, meant that early Christian communities were predisposed to interpret violent death in the language of sacrifice. This notion of sacrifice is ultimately what distinguishes the early Christian martyr from the deaths portrayed in the Stoic exempla. But what did this sacrifice mean for Christians living in the Roman Empire? Despite their many differences, the stories of Polycarp, Perpetua, and Justin all find their titular martyrs engaged in a dialogue with a member of the political hierarchy of the Roman Empire. In all of these exchanges, sacrifice is the central point of contention. Recall that as Polycarp is being propelled by chariot toward his grizzly end, his captor, the local irenarch, beseeches the Bishop to say that “Caesar is Lord” and offer a sacrifice of incense in his name. When he is later confronted by the proconsul, Polycarp is accused of teaching “multitudes not to sacrifice or worship”. As a frenzied crowd prepares to burn Polycarp at the stake, the Bishop utters a prayer, that: “I be received among these in Your presence this day, as a rich and acceptable sacrifice.” In these last words, the Martyrdom of Polycarp describes two intersecting and irreconcilable acts of sacrifice: a ritual offering made to the Emperor and the willing renunciation of life made in devotion to the Christian God. In early Christian martyrdom stories, the ambiguities of a world-rejecting faith toward social and political life appear suddenly taut and unforgiving. The demands of social life in the Roman Empire are depicted in terms wholly incompatible with the life of a devout Christian. The choice that Polycarp, Perpetua, and Justin are each presented with, between two competing forms of sacrifice, condenses the values and loyalties of both pagan Rome and the early Christian Church and pits them in violent opposition with one another. The sacrifice that defines the early Christian martyrs is not constituted solely by the interior matter of Christianity, but also by its contrasts with the competing sacral order of the Romans. But the dramatic meeting of two sacral orders described in these stories does not merely perpetuate existing Christian ambiguities toward the social world. The martyr’s sacrifice described in these stories is both an affirmation and a critique, the celebration of one sacral order and the defiance of another. Because of this, the martyr’s sacrifice has to be interpreted not merely as a model of world-rejecting asceticism, but also a rejection of the sovereign order of the Roman Empire. Public piety in the Roman Empire was central to the communication of the Emperor’s sovereignty, amounting to a sort of viscous cultural web that bound the centrifugal forces of a polyvalent empire into a unified social system. In practice, the might of imperial sovereignty was limited; whatever its aspirations, the centralized operations of the emperor’s power and authority were circumscribed by geography, technology, political plots from within the empire and the threat of invasion from without. But in the face of these constraining forces, the

The seeds of the church 67 civil religion practiced across the Roman world reinforced the supremacy of the emperor, binding millions of disparate peoples to his authority and illustrating the wide reach of his powers. Such public rituals affirm the range of his power and scope of his legitimacy, confirming and conferring the emperor’s traditional, charismatic, and rational authority. The sacrifice of the early Christian martyrs described in the stories of Polycarp, Perpetua, and Justin depict uncompromising encounters with this civil religion. In their clashes with imperial authorities, the early Christian martyrs not only resist engaging in the public piety of their opponents, but impose a competing sacral order against that of imperial civil religion. In each of these martyr stories, the central figure is described in terms that align with the features of imperial sovereignty, propelled by charismatic, traditional, and rational authority equal and opposite that of imperial domination. Throughout her trials and imprisonment, Perpetua is described in terms that radiate charisma. But it is in her physical trials that the young catechumen achieves powers that inspire awe even in her tormenters. Confronted by an enraged cow, Perpetua is unperturbed, worrying only for her modesty as she frets with her gown. After the cow knocks her into a brief period of unconsciousness, Perpetua awakes slightly stunned but wholly unaware of her encounter with the beasts. So enchanting is her endurance and fortitude that Perpetua has to guide the soldier’s hand as he executes the death blow. Where Perpetua’s suffering is muted by the glory of her charismatic endurance, the Bishop Polycarp’s death is enwreathed with the authority of tradition, his final days recounted in terms that parallel the last days of Christ. At the opening of the story, Polycarp tells his followers that he has foreseen his own death: “turning to those that were with him, he said to them prophetically, ‘I must be burnt alive.’”56 This prophecy bears clear similarities to a moment in the Gospel of Matthew, when Christ warns his apostles of his own coming death and resurrection. So, too, with his arrest: Polycarp is detained by a man named Herod, just as Christ was taken before Herod Antipater. Finally, just like Christ, Polycarp arrives to the scene of his trial atop a donkey. While historiographical studies of Polycarp’s martyrdom often take such details as evidence of the text’s unreliability, for early Christian audiences in the third century the striking parallels between deaths of Christ and Polycarp would have lent the bishop of Smyrna the legitimacy of tradition. In the Acts of Justin and His Companions, a paragon of imperial rationality, the Emperor’s Stoic tutor Rusticus, engages in intellectual combat with the Christian philosopher Justin. Like Perpetua, Justin shows a fortitude that emanates charisma, and like Polycarp, the Acts of Justin does not shy from biblical allusion. However, what is most striking about the story of Justin’s trial and conviction is its depiction of the collision of two competing forms of rational authority: the rational duties of the imperial subject matched by rational conviction, both perfectly conforming to their respective worldviews, both unyielding. The early Christian martyrdom stories are not mere reflections on civil disobedience; they also describe individual commitment to a sacral order that transcends Roman public piety. Each story constructs a form of sacrifice, the meaning of

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which emerges from its contrasts with the sacrificial order of imperial civil religion. Where the rituals of public sacrifice consecrated the charismatic, traditional, and rational components of imperial sovereignty, the early Christian martyrs are characterized in equal and opposing terms. The sacrifice which constitutes the very essence of early Christian martyrdom emerges only when the world-rejecting asceticism of early Christianity collides with imperial civil religion. In the early Christian martyrdom stories, these collisions imbue individual members of the Christian community with a power in symmetrical opposition to that of the forces of earthly domination. The accumulation of contrasts which go into the making of the Christian martyr’s sacrifice culminate in a single conclusion: the supremacy of God’s sovereignty over earthly powers. Testimony of this supremacy is offered in the power of martyrs’ lives, which display the force of tradition, charisma, and rationality. But the truth of God’s unmatched sovereignty can only be realized in death. As testimonies of death-sentencing, the early Christian martyrdom stories describe the ultimate enactment of imperial sovereignty. The acts of execution described here conform perfectly to what Walter Benjamin called “mythic violence”, events which restore the reigning order and its legitimacy in the face of resistance. Faced with defiance and world-rejecting powers of early Christians, Roman magistrates must resort to the supreme gesture of sovereignty, the manipulation of life and death. The execution of seditious subjects could restore harmony to a disrupted civil religion, reasserting the unmatched power of the emperor and restoring his divine legitimacy through blood sacrifice. Yet it is at this moment that the critique contained in early Christian martyrdom stories is at its most potent. Just as the sovereignty of the emperor appears absolute, death reaffirms the martyr’s connection to a transcendent sacral order. The resistance that the early Christian martyr carried out in life are perpetuated in death, offering final confirmation of God’s supremacy of Caesar. What was initially an act of mythic violence becomes what Benjamin would call “divine violence”, an act which ruptures the reigning order. The revolutionary qualities of early Christian martyrdom are only affirmed when we seek out comparisons with the Stoic exempla. While sacrifice is largely absent from the stories of Stoic deaths under persecution, there is one exception. In his final hours, seeking to hasten an agonizing death, Seneca submerged himself in a bath, hoping the water might speed the bloodletting. As Tacitus tells it, the bath failed in its purpose; however, as the blood mixed with his bathwater Seneca began to splash his attending servants, offering the mixture up as a sacrifice to Jupiter. The differences between Seneca’s sacrifice and that offered by Polycarp, Perpetua, and Justin could not be more pronounced. Where the Christian martyrdom stories depict a form of sacrifice that resists imperial sovereignty at its pressure points, Seneca’s sacrifice seems to conform to his domination. Where the martyr’s sacrifice suggests a connection to a transcendent sacral system, Seneca’s libation for Jupiter is wholly contained within the ritual life of sovereignty. Both the Stoics and the early Christians encountered sporadic waves of persecution. While the causes of persecution varied—sometimes spurred by fits of

The seeds of the church 69 revanchist traditionalism, other times a clear case of scapegoating—both groups were marked by distinctive practices and beliefs that likely attracted scrutiny. Stoicism and early Christianity were both inclined toward the ascetic pursuit of ethical ideals, practices that instilled a propensity for obstinance. Yet the ascetic pathways of each tradition led in opposite directions. For Stoics, asceticism was a practice aimed at cultivating an awareness of divine Reason and an accompanying acceptance of the natural order. In contrast, asceticism allowed early Christians a path away from the world. Both groups were confronted with the force of imperial sovereignty, but Stoics and Christians each responded in accordance with their respective religious orientations. When Stoics studied the violent deaths of their eminent predecessors, they found texts that reinforced their understanding of the world as a divinely organized, fundamentally harmonious place. In the Stoic exempla, the violent death that results from sovereign domination is merely the final opportunity to observe ascetic principles, the ultimate test of Stoic acceptance. By contrast, early Christian martyrdom stories depict antagonistic encounters between a word-rejecting asceticism and the civil religion of the Romans, their general form following their religious orientation. In each of these stories, the titular figure confronts a representative of the Roman Empire, and in each case the Christian bests the official at their own game, exuding charismatic, rational, and traditional authority in direct opposition to the primary thrusts of imperial sovereignty. These confrontations culminate in the meeting of two incommensurate forms of sacrifice, one a ritual directed toward earthly power, the other focused toward an other-worldly divine. Refusing to participate in sacrifice to the emperor, the Christians in these stories are sentenced to death, a gesture of imperial power and authority meant to restart the currents of ritual and reaffirm the supremacy of the emperor’s sovereignty. But for a world-rejecting religion, death is not the end. In their gruesome deaths, the martyrs are described as fulfilling a sacrifice, reaffirming the connection of the Christian Church on earth with a transcendent sacral order. The Stoic exempla and the early Christian martyrdom stories reaffirm a basic truth of asceticism: as a practice of self-care, it is less a form of abandonment than a means of forging a consistent devotion to truth in a world beset by distractions (some pleasurable, some perilous). Yet, the world-affirming asceticism of Stoicism was never capable of offering any systematic resistance to domination; indeed, the basic principles of Stoicism were antithetical to the very notion of resistance. Ironically, it was the world-rejecting asceticism of early Christianity that managed to forge meaning out of earthly loss and bodily suffering. The form of sacrifice described in early Christian martyrdom stories complemented the young faith’s ascetic bent, offering the ultimate affirmation of a disciplined devotion to truth. Yet at the edge of ascetic practice the early Christian martyrdom stories encounter imperial sovereignty. Rather than shrink from this encounter, early Christian martyrdom stories rush toward it. In each instance, the individual

70 The seeds of the church Christian’s unyielding devotion to the truth produces in them a might equal to the most supreme figure of earthly power. In death their power only expands, lifted from the jaws of imperial sovereignty through a sacrifice that transcends creaturely life and temporal authority. The martyr’s sacrifice is not, then, merely a distillation of early Christianity’s religious worldview, but an interpretation of how that worldview might be pursued under violent pressure. In this way, the martyr’s sacrifice not only reveals a new sacral order, but suggests a new sovereignty as well.

Conclusion As models of early Christian adherence to a world-rejecting truth, martyrdom stories describe encounters with imperial authorities in fiery and defiant language. In each story, Christians meet with some representative of the emperor and are ordered to participate in acts of public piety. Here, the lingering ambiguity of early Christianity toward the imperial state is suddenly encumbered with urgency. The titular figures of the martyrdom stories take their world-renouncing asceticism to its logical conclusion and reject the prescribed rituals even under pain of execution. Motivated by their conviction and disciplined in their response, the early Christians described in these stories are ennobled with qualities equal and opposite that of the imperial sovereign. Just as the emperor’s power and authority were elevated through ceremony and ritual, the early Christian martyrs are described endowed with a similar, even contiguous power and authority by merit of their conviction to Christian truth. However, these texts are not satisfied with mere rebellion. The power of early Christian truth depicted in martyrdom stories is also productive. As with all collisions, the clash of earthly and otherworldly powers produces a kinetic energy. Out of opposition, the early Christian martyrdom stories generate a new social action, one which is built from the truth claims of Christianity and the desecrating violence of imperial sovereignty. The martyr’s sacrifice emerges at the creases where these two great forces meet. It is enabled by the myriad oppositions contained within the narrative of early Christian martyrdom stories. These oppositions, which pit the early Christian against the Roman Empire, are all variations on a theme; the juxtaposition of political and social life in the Empire and a redemptive Christian truth. The fickle and feckless force of the emperor leads to death. The power of Christian truth revives the dead, effectively parrying the ultimate gesture of imperial sovereignty and reclaiming the dead. Foucault admired the Stoics and related philosophical schools for their ability to cultivate individual means of resisting domination. He was particularly fond of the concept of parrhesia, a concept which refers to the “fearless speech” displayed by Helvidius Priscus and other ancients who dared to speak truth to power, even risking death to do so. For Foucault, fearless speech was a model of resistance in the face of domination: it was independently arrived at, and as such modeled a form of truth that was wholly opposite the forms of truth proffered by systems of power.

The seeds of the church 71 But speech is a comparatively evanescent form of resistance (it may be that Foucault counted this as one of its virtues). However fearless it may be, an individual’s speech dies with their body. The Stoic exempla are a case in point: an iconic thinker chooses death, but what begins as resistance concludes as an act of acceptance. When the Stoic speaks truth to power and dies as a consequence, their truth dies with them. When they are remembered, it is not in fact as models of resistance or rebellion, but as icons of acceptance. By contrast, in early Christian martyrdom stories death does not mark the conclusion of resistance, but transforms an act of resistance into something more meaningful. Death elevates these early Christians into martyrs, figures whose sacrifice broadcasts the failures of imperial sovereignty and herald a higher power. These stories do not merely offer a model of resistance to sovereign domination, they articulate a new sovereignty that transcends the ritual space of the Roman Empire. The early Christian martyrdom stories allowed the Jesus movement to envision a situation in which their truth claims were confronted with the full force of earthly powers. These stories dissolve any ambiguities toward earthly powers, and depict the other-worldly truth of Christianity as irreconcilable with the ritual life of the Roman Empire. Against the cultural world of the Roman Empire, in which religion and political life were indistinguishable, the early Christian martyrdom stories described a universe of clearly gradated cosmic hierarchy, in which all life on earth is subservient to and distinct from a higher power. These stories described for early Christians what it meant to live in accordance with this higher power while surrounded by hostile forces. These stories suggested that in life a Christian might radiate a power and authority as great, or even greater than, an earthly sovereign. Indeed, the early Christian martyrdom stories seem to suggest a community attempting to translate the charismatic powers of their prophet into a more stable form of authority, equal parts traditional, rational, and charismatic. But beyond this, early Christian martyrdom stories allowed the movement to envision a form of social action, martyrdom, in which death was not the end of truthful resistance, but a new beginning. In martyrdom stories, the discipline inculcated by ascetic practice is not merely a method to reject the reality of this world, but ultimately also a means of connecting with the other-worldly truth of Christianity. Comparing the early Christian martyrdom stories to the Stoic exempla at least partially affirms the canonical interpretations of asceticism offered by Weber and Foucault. Weber wrote of the intense, even revolutionary power of worldrejecting pathways to salvation. As the purest creation of Christianity’s world rejecting asceticism, early Christian martyrdom stories show how a movement that was fundamentally concerned with the hereafter was nevertheless able to formulate a potent critique of the Roman Empire. For his part, Foucault suggested that despite similar ascetic practices, the conflicting forms of truth developed by early Christians and Stoics conditioned different responses to domination. Of course, the interpretations of Weber and Foucault seem to lead in different directions, the former suggesting the rise of a revolutionary, world-shaking

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movement and the latter seeing in early Christianity the seeds of oppressive domination. The conflicts depicted in early Christian martyrdom stories cannot reconcile these two interpretations. They do, however, suggest a historical situation somewhere between the two. Early Christian martyrdom stories are cultural objects which reflect a movement working through the social ambiguities of adherence to a world-rejecting religion. The religion of the early Christians that we encounter in these stories is hardly the pliant faith depicted by Foucault. Indeed, given nature of imperial sovereignty, the early Christian rejection of earthly life always contained revolutionary potential. Martyrdom stories were one way for the early Christians to interpret the direction of this potential. But in their conclusion, these stories forecast the formation of a new order, fashioned from the sufferings of Christ and his earliest followers. Formerly a world in which all powers are contained within the bounds of empire, the martyrs’ stories suggest a new sovereignty, one that exists beyond this earth but whose presence is clearly felt. These stories are not, then, only signs of a transformation in sovereignty, but also a moment in which the boundaries of religion and politics appear suddenly and dramatically altered. They begin in a world in which religion and politics cannot be meaningfully distinguished, and conclude with the two realms fissured. In this respect, the early Christian martyrdom stories offer one of the earliest unambiguous testimonies of Christian political theology. At the same time, there is a hint in them of a then unanticipated future; in envisioning clear boundaries between religion and politics, the early Christian martyrdom stories unknowingly prophesy the distant process of secularization. From this perspective the early Christian martyrdom stories are perhaps more familiar, and more relevant, than we might at first acknowledge. There is much a modern reader might recognize in the Stoic exempla—concepts like fate and acceptance, gestures to a vague spirit or deity—but if lingered on for any length, their conclusion is strikingly alien. The deaths of Cato, Senenca, and Helvidius Priscus were not recorded with any reference to the good or the just, and though their modern admirers may look to them as principled defenders of democracy, the testimonies we are left with do not suggest any preference for one form of politics over another. Early Christian martyrdom stories, by contrast, are enwreathed in questions of right and wrong, questions which continue to linger in the hearts of those who feel a death to be an act of injustice. The system of sacrifice invented in these stories still echoes in contemporary conflicts. Then, as now, martyrdom was a form of sacrifice that emerged from conflict; not merely the violent conflict of two competing interests, but the clash of values. These competing value systems are drawn into conflict over the question of violence: who has the power and legitimacy to justify a violent act? Where, in other words, does sovereignty ultimately lie? The case of the early Christians suggest that certain traits might have predisposed the movement to martyr-creation: their general propensity for asceticism conditioned the prerequisite steadfastness, their monotheism stimulated social tension, and their cultural prolificacy meant that they were predisposed to the

The seeds of the church 73 literary art form. Of all their assets, it was the precise bent of their religious worldview that distinguished the early Christians. They rejected the world, but their rejection was not conditioned by nihilism or loathing. It was a natural byproduct of their knowledge of and love for a greater, transcendent power, and their knowledge that their time on this earth kept them from that power. Early Christian martyrdom stories present new interpretations of sovereignty and the relationship between religion and politics, and do so by focusing on the lives of individual Christians. All of the elements of the individualist interpretation are present: an individual facing clear choices between religious salvation and political pressure, choosing death because of their personal conviction. Ironically, while individualist and rational choice theories cannot explain early Christian martyrdom, early Christian martyrdom can explain, or at least account for, the historical possibility of individualist theories of religion. The very same traits which make early Christian martyrdom stories seem more modern than contemporary works like the Stoic exempla—their division of social life between religious and political elements, the prominent role of grievance and legitimacy—were products of the ambiguities of the early Christian community toward their social surroundings. Though the martyr’s sacrifice could not dissolve these ambiguities, they allowed early Christian communities to envision a new order, in which Christian truth would win out over imperial sovereignty. But the revolutionary shifts heralded by early Christian martyrdom stories could not permanently resolve the social tensions induced by a world-rejecting religion. While martyrdom may have allowed early Christian communities to think through their ambiguities toward social and political life, the imagined sovereignty contained within these stories managed to generate new controversies. What might Christian governance look like? What was the rightful character of earthly sovereignty, given the supreme power and authority of God? Such questions would linger in the wake of the martyrdom stories, as the world-rejecting faith found itself increasingly successful in its mission on earth.

Notes 1 Candida Moss, “On the Dating of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,” Early Christianity 1, no. 4 (2010): 539–74. 2 W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (New York: New York University Press, 1967); G.W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 3 The single most incisive discussion of these debates is offered in Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making, see Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 10–32. 4 Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, translated by Ephraim Fischoff and with forewords by Talcott Parsons and Ann Swidler (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 151–83. 5 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958). 6 Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 10–13. 7 Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 1997), 281–301; Michel Foucault, The Government of Self and Others: Lectures and the College de France 1982–1983, edited by Arnold I.

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8 9 10

11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

The seeds of the church Davidson (New York: Picador, 2011), 335–8; Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth (The Government of Self and Others II): Lectures at the College de France 1983–1984, edited by Arnold I. Davidson (New York: Picador, 2012). Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 366; Foucault, Ethics, 284–5. Cecil B. Demille, The Sign of the Cross (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1932); Mervyn Leroy, Quo Vadis? (Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Meyers, 1951). See: G.W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), for early Christian martyrdom as a radical innovation; see: Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (New York: HarperOne, 2013), for a critique; See Luke T. Johnson, “Persecuting the Persecuted,” Commonweal 140, no. 13 (2013): 28–30, for a critique of the critique. The phrasing here is borrowed from W.I. Thomas. Barbara Levick, The Government of the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook (London: Croom Helm, 1985), 6; Colin M. Wells, The Roman Empire, Second Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 81; Richard Miles, “Communicating Culture, Identity, and Power,” in Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman Empire, edited by Janet Huskinson (New York: Routledge, 1999), 32.; David J. Mattingly, Imperialism, Power, Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 125–45. Tacitus, The Annals and the Histories, edited by Moses Hadas and translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (New York: The Modern Library Classics, 2003), 25. Brian Campbell, The Romans and Their World: A Short Introduction (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 129. John Matthews, “Roman Life and Society,” in The Oxford History of the Roman World, edited by John Boardman, Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 390. Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015), 15. Campbell, The Romans and Their World, 103. Tacitus, The Annals and the Histories, 69. James J. O’Donnell, Pagans: The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity (New York: Ecco, 2015), 66. Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 150. Lily R. Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (New York: Garland Publishing, 1979), 78–100. S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Beard, North and Price, Religions of Rome, 9. Origen, Contra Celsum, translated by Henry Chadwick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965). Aelius Aristides, “Oration 26, Panegyric on Rome, 30–3,” in The Government of the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook, edited by Barbara Levick (London: Croom Helm, 1985), 116–17. Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Volume 2, translated by Richard M. Gummere (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 380–1. Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Volume 1, translated by Richard M. Gummere (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 118–19. Ibid., 272–3. Seneca, Natural Questions, translated by Harry M. Hine (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Volume 3, translated by Richard M. Gummere (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 88–9.

The seeds of the church 75 31 A.A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 142–206. 32 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, With Selected Correspondence, translated by Robin Hard (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 18. 33 Ernst Troeltsch, “Stoic-Christian Natural Law and Modern Profane Natural Law,” in Sociological Beginnings: The First Conference of the German for Sociology, edited by Christopher Adairr-Toteff (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2005). 34 Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Louisville, KY: Westminster, 2001); Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Paul’s Stoicizing Politics in Romans 12–13: The Role of 13.1 10 in the Argument,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 29, no. 2 (2006): 163–72. 35 Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 232. 36 P.A. Brunt, “Stoicism and the Principate,” The Papers of the British School at Rome 43, (1975): 7–35; Phillip H. De Lacy, “The Four Stoic Personae,” Illinois Classical Studies 2, (1977): 163–72. 37 St. Justin Martyr, The First and Second Apologies, translated and edited by Leslie William Barnard (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 29. 38 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers, Down to 325, Volume 11: The Writings of Tertullian, Volume 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1869), 125. 39 William Turpin, “Tacitus, Stoic Exempla, and the ‘Praecipuum Munus Annalium’,” Classical Antiquity 27, no. 2 (2008): 359–404. 40 Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Volume 1, translated by Richard M. Gummere (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917a), 171–2. 41 Ibid., 177. 42 Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Volume 3, translated by Richard M. Gummere (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917c), 208–9. 43 Tacitus, The Annals and the Histories, 336–8. 44 Ibid., 366. 45 Ibid., 337. 46 Epictetus, The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheiridion and Fragments, translated and edited by George Long (London: George Bell and Sons, 1877), 10. 47 Ibid., 8. 48 Ibid. 49 Kirsopp Lake, trans., The Apostolic Fathers, Volume 2: The Shepherd of Hermas, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Epistle to Diognetus (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 325. 50 Ibid., 327. 51 Ibid., 331. 52 Herbert Musurillo, trans., The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 112. 53 Ibid., 129. 54 Ibid., 55. 55 Ibid., 36–8. 56 Lake, The Apostolic Fathers, Volume 2, 319.

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In 410 the barbarian king Alaric took the city of Rome, successfully leading an army of thousands through the capitol of the Western world, seizing its treasures and terrifying its populace. The “Sack of Rome” has since achieved an infamy disproportionate to its immediate historical significance. Alaric’s raid was a shocking moment, but its consequences were essentially symbolic: the Western Empire did manage to wheeze on for half a century more. But the memory of a barbarian king leading an army through Roman streets seemed to capture the ignominy of the Empire’s sclerotic descent and eventual collapse. The most famous reaction to these events was offered by Augustine, serving at the time as the aged bishop of the marginal North African city of Hippo.1 In the 15 years following the Gothic invasion, Augustine collected his thoughts on the fate of Christian revelation in a time of civilizational decline. His efforts concluded in the mammoth, 23-book treatise Civitas Dei, or The City of God. Augustine’s masterpiece is separated by at least a century from the early Christian martyrdom stories. In Augustine’s time, Christianity was no longer threatened by the towering force of imperial sovereignty but by its collapse. For Augustine, the Christian dilemma was no longer associated with the travails of a minority sect living under sovereign domination. Writing for Pagans and Christians across the Roman world, including refugees then fleeing the capitol, Augustine’s City of God asks how Christians might move through a world of political turmoil as they journey toward the Kingdom of Heaven. Where early Christian martyrdom stories had looked beyond the seemingly impervious imperial state to a higher sovereignty, Augustine assayed a flourishing Christian culture faced with the impetuous roil of earthly politics. Yet even though Augustine was removed from the milieu of the Early Christian martyrs, their legacy loomed large over the bishop and his time. Indeed, the opening passages of City of God allude to the many Romans who sought refuge in the city’s martyr shrines during the sack of 410. If Christians in the Mediterranean had been shocked by the Goth’s success, it was not necessarily because of the impiety of the invaders (many of the Goths, including Alaric, were Christian converts), but because Rome was by that point not merely the capitol of civilization, but the capitol of a Christian civilization. The city was bejeweled with holy shrines, sepulchers, and the Basilicas of Paul and Peter. Distant Christians pined for the city’s

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“sacred graves”, which could only mean that the city’s inhabitants were “seven times blessed” by their proximity to the holy dead.2 Augustine’s description of the protective potency of the city’s martyr shrines is a rebuke to the worrying Christians and critical pagans who would suggest that the city’s supposed sacral connections failed to protect its residents in their most desperate days. Pagan critics took the coincidence of Christian growth and Roman collapse as a sign of the corrosive influence of Christianity. Though the first books of City of God take these critics to task—pointing to the many instances in which pagan gods failed to protect their city, for instance—the latter half of the text offers a very slight confirmation of the pagan critique. This is not to suggest that Augustine faults Christianity for the collapse of the Roman Empire. Rather, in the final books of City of God, Augustine untangles the specious association between earthly powers and the heavenly kingdom. Augustine’s metaphor of two cities—the City of God and the City of Man—suggests that the earthly politics of the Empire and Christianity are ultimately exclusive entities. Each is finally organized according to the form of love which inspires action and human association. The City of Man is defined by the basest love: that of self. Augustine famously declares that all states are merely brigands and pirates, some are simply more successful than others; but even great empires are merely the concatenation of avarice and the “desire for domination”.3 By contrast, the City of God is organized by world-rejecting love, a love directed solely toward God. The boundaries between the two cities could not be clearer: there is nothing permeable, no liminal space or ambiguity between the lust for domination and the love for the divine. Even so, our perspective from Earth is limited. We are fallen creatures who must bear the burden of ignorance wrought by our sinful nature. Ultimately, it is only the Last Judgement which will render the cities from one another. The urbanization of the cosmos which Augustine outlines in City of God extends the divisions that were sewn in the early Christian martyrdom stories. Testimonies of early Christian suffering and sacrifice were built from a vivid chain of contrasts which concluded in the ultimate division of a profane and sinful world from a higher power. Augustine’s City of God does the same. But where in the early Christian martyrdom stories this division was initiated by political domination, Augustine had to wrestle with the uncertain political environment promised by the Christianization of the West. According to Augustine, Christians faced with the decline of the Empire had plenty to console themselves with. First is the comfort provided by linear history, a knowledge that time is unfolding according to God’s will and moving ever closer to Judgement Day. More immediately, Christians could take solace in the prospect of an earthly peace. Through education and law, humanity could hope to build just societies, in which a peace (ever fragile, ever limited) might be reached in order to better secure a Christian life. Though the cities of Man and God might be distinct (and morally stratified), they are not necessarily distinguishable in the here and now, nor are they inevitably antagonistic (even given their disparate moralities). There are clear limits to the goods which can be achieved through

78 The suffering body and the body politic politics, and we should be awake to the inherent violence of earthly sovereigns, but in their brief, earthbound cohabitation, the cities of God and Man can occasionally, through divine grace, achieve harmony and symbiosis. In Augustine’s lifetime, the legacy of the early martyrs—their total embrace of a world-rejecting faith, their sacrifice built from resistance to earthly powers— collided with historical calamity. What would define the Christian community after the fall of Rome, and how might Christians interact with governing institutions in a world that retained its brutality even amidst the diffusion of Christian culture? Augustine’s solution was to amplify ambiguity, reaffirming the superiority of the City of God, but not foreclosing alliances with temporal powers so long as Christians were living as pilgrims on earth. Augustine’s view has had a lasting influence over theologians, political philosophers, and the institutional history of Christianity. Beyond its influence, City of God also offered a prescient forecast of Western European history after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the East, the relationship between religion and politics was more settled: the cities of God and Man were both ruled over by the Byzantine emperors, who governed through caesaropapist rule. By contrast, Western Christendom would live through bouts of confusion, contention, and cooperation between the religious and the political for over a millennia following the decline of Rome. This was not so much a war between the cities of God and Man (very few people in medieval Christendom would care to pledge allegiance to the latter) as a struggle over who might claim to be the legitimate mediator of the City of God on Earth. It is, indeed, somewhat misleading to designate this as a period of struggle between the religious and the political (though this may be the most useful shorthand). Nor would it be particularly accurate to label this a period of conflict between Church and State—these are institutional distinctions that would be products of, rather than parties to, the conflicts within Christendom. Rather, the relevant conflicts between the 5th and the 16th centuries essentially concerned frenetic attempts to answer the question of who might legitimately exercise the Christian God’s justice on Earth. It is perhaps unsurprising that martyrdom, significant in Augustine’s time as a source of excitement and contention, should continue to find its way into the power struggles of historical Christendom. Given that such struggles inevitably involved disputed claims over the nature of terrestrial Christian practice, over what it meant to rule a Christian society and who had legitimate claim to the title of Christian ruler, martyrs were almost bound to feature in the conflicts within Christendom. Yet the cultural distance between the martyrs of early Christianity and Christendom is vast. Put simply, Christianity was no longer a minority sect living under an unpredictable regime. This begs the question: what did martyrdom come to look like in a predominantly Christian world? Or what does martyrdom, a product of conflict, look like when all parties to that conflict share a culture? In seeking to answer that question, this chapter necessarily occludes those inestimable cases of martyrdom that emerged from “foreign” conflicts and skirmishes at Christendom’s boundaries. Most notable here is the role of martyrdom in the

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Crusades, as well as the martyrs produced by Christianity’s northward expansion into Scandinavian and the Baltic region. Such cases play an influential role in the development of a Christian and European civilizational identity. In this study, however, I have bracketed historical interests to the relationship between martyrdom, sovereignty, and secularization. Confining this chapter to cases of martyrdom produced within Christendom will offer a better perspective on these macro-historical changes. Similarly, while the martyrs of missionary and military adventures perpetuate the tendency in early Christian martyrdom to draw contrasts with an external, non-Christian foe, the martyrs internal to Christendom offer a historical contrast. Ultimately, I believe that pursuing cases of martyrdom that occurred within Christian civilization will provide a clearer perspective on historical changes in martyrdom, secularization, and sovereignty. Yet even limiting this chapter to cases of martyrdom within Christendom, the field of potential cases is overwhelming. The historian Peter Brown has designated the world of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages as a period of “microChristendoms”—the Christianization of the Western world was complicated by the fractured and highly localized nature of social life in the West following the decline of the Roman Empire.4 Cataloguing all of the martyrs of the archipelago of micro-Christendoms would produce a volume of oppressive proportions. What’s more, such an encyclopedic endeavor might become so exhausted by the particulars as to lose sight of the general goal: to study changes in the interaction of martyrdom, sovereignty, and the historical process of secularization. In pursuing this goal and in keeping with the larger theoretical and methodological thrust of this book, I have selected two cases of martyrdom that stretch from the height of medieval Christendom in the 12th century to the rapidly changing world of the late medieval 15th century. Cases have been selected based on two basic criteria. First, following historical-sociological custom, I have selected cases based on their historical uniqueness and influence. Each has a rightful claim to those fundamental criteria. Their uniqueness and influence are evidenced by the fervor they aroused in their own time and by the massive literature which each has inspired across the centuries. More to the point, their influence is most clearly demonstrated by the convergence of conflicting social actors around a corpse, drawing upon the legacy of the dead to struggle over the central question of the day: who has the right to exercise legitimate violence, and what is the nature of legitimate violence within the cultural world of Christendom? If uniqueness and historical influence represent the first threshold for case selection, the second criterion is difference, or diversity. Though this chapter concludes with the birth of the early modern state and the fragile division of religion and politics (now church and state), such conclusions were hardly inevitable. Thus, one goal in selecting cases from this period is to capture, however imperfectly, the diversity of potential sovereignties contained in Christendom and the Middle Ages. The cases analyzed in this chapter—the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, 12thcentury archbishop of Canterbury, and Joan of Arc—illustrate alternative purposes to which martyrdom could be used. The case of Thomas Beckett reveals

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an instance in which the collective commemoration of sacrifice could be leveraged against the legitimacy of a charismatic king, even in a period of monarchic ascendance. By contrast, the case of Joan of Arc suggests that even an enfeebled king like Charles VII might draw upon the martyr’s sacrifice to support sovereign claims. In their many contrasts (and convergences), the cases of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc each suggest the fractured nature of temporal sovereignty in the age of Christendom. Both cases capture the cultural confusion typical of those martyrs produced in Christendom’s internal power struggles. Here, the question facing commemorative communities and their opponents is what might characterize legitimate Christian sacrifice when all parties to a struggle happen to claim the same Christian faith. As always, the goal of analyzing martyrdom alongside sovereignty and secularization is to gain new perspectives on the historical changes in all three. This still carries the risk of descending into something like those halls of mirrors found in county fairs, yielding new perspectives that distort, obscure, and misshape historical events. Given this, it is a good idea to maintain some sense of the limits of this study. It is my hope that the comparisons in this chapter might reveal new perspectives on the changing nature of sacrifice in Western Christendom and the interaction of those shifts with coincident changes in sovereignty. These comparisons are confined to the religious and political culture of Christendom, and cannot hope to shed any new light on the already well-documented individual personalities that populate the following pages. Even so, I hope this chapter can contribute to the sociological understanding of the pre-modern sovereign system and the role of religion (specifically of religious change; more specifically of changes in Western Christianity) in responding to the growth of kingship in the late Middle Ages.

Murder in a cathedral: the martyrdom of Thomas Becket Posterity has not been kind to Thomas Becket (1118–1170), chancellor to the Angevin King Henry II, Archbishop of Canterbury, and perhaps the most celebrated martyr and saint of late medieval Christendom. Many modern students can recount at least one of the stories from The Canterbury Tales, but very few could name, let alone describe, the martyr who had made Canterbury the pilgrimage site du jour. The conflicts that marked the life and death of Thomas Becket radiated from a relatively new and historically innovative source: gradually centralizing, increasingly bureaucratized regional powers. The increasing capabilities of monarchs in late medieval Christendom, most clearly represented in the kingdoms of France and England, catalyzed conflicts both cultural and martial. Culture and violent force intersected on questions of justice and liberty. In the early days of feudalism (i.e., the later years of the Carolingian dynasty) power and authority were “parcelized”, which is to say fractured and local.5 So long as this was the case, the perilous ambiguity of Christian political theology could be deferred.

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But the latent tensions in Christian political theology would be brought to the forefront of social life with the ascendance of the French and English kingdoms in the 11th century. By the 12th century, French and English kings ruled over expanding stretches of territory through a synthesis of traditional and charismatic authority, and were developing increasingly stable networks of loyal extractive bureaucracies.6 But these kings faced one insurmountable obstacle: the sovereignty of God and his church on Earth. Thomas Becket’s life is perhaps the clearest example of this conflict. Becket was a parvenu, climbing from obscurity to become chancellor to the Angevin King Henry II in 1154 and, from there, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162.7 Within a year of his election to Canterbury, Becket was feuding with Henry II, his former companion and employer. At the heart of the conflict between Thomas Becket and Henry II was a struggle over the boundaries of monarchal power and authority. Henry’s reign saw the monarchy’s capabilities expand. Yet despite growing powers and a multiplication of authority, Henry’s rule faced one obvious and irritating obstacle: the judicial independence of English clergymen. At the time of Thomas’s appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, the English church maintained the liberty to act as sole arbiter in the judgment and sentencing of any church official accused of a crime, regardless of the nature of the accusation.8 Thousands of Henry’s subjects, from clergymen to those employed by abbeys and churches, could claim ecclesiastical immunity from the king’s justice by virtue of an office in the church. That this massive section of the kingdom could claim ecclesiastical immunity meant that even those guilty of murder might escape the king’s justice if they had even a loose affiliation with the church.9 Throughout 1163 and 1164, Henry II and Thomas Becket, now Archbishop of Canterbury, feuded over the matter of ecclesiastical courts. A series of dramatic showdowns between the two men culminated in Thomas being formally accused of a litany of crimes. With Henry II seeming to get the better of the archbishop at every meeting, and a guilty verdict imminent, Thomas and a small band of loyal clerks fled the country, eventually finding sanctuary as exiles in France. Thomas and his companions would stay in France for six years, his conflict with Henry transformed into a bitter epistolary attrition. This was not merely a matter of vendetta. Thomas and Henry were feuding over the nature of power and authority in a Christian culture. To support their rival claims, each sought out alliances with the continent’s elite, both lay and clerical. In July of 1170, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry II, King of England, were formally reconciled. The armistice had been affected by Pope Alexander III. However, even as the king and the archbishop were formally reconciled, the fundamental issues underlying the conflict remained unresolved. When Thomas landed in England he was immediately met by a delegation of prelates and representatives of the king. When he attempted to travel the kingdom and formally reconcile with the heir apparent, he was detained by royal representatives and ordered to stay at Canterbury.10

82 The suffering body and the body politic With tensions mounting, Thomas celebrated Christmas Eve mass by excommunicating anyone who impinged upon the liberties of the church, referencing his neighboring royalist foes by name. With this dramatic gesture Thomas assured further conflict: not only had he alienated almost every bishop in the primacy, he had defied Henry’s much prized customs by not consulting with the king before pursuing excommunication. Christmas Day brought the unwelcome news to Henry, adding to the surfeit of grievances he held against Thomas. Henry raged that his household was full of “miserable drones and traitors . . . who let their lord be treated with shameful contempt by a lowborn clerk!” Hearing that remark, four of the king’s knights discretely departed for Canterbury, intent on avenging their king’s honor (and him unaware of their plan).11 When the four knights reached England, they joined local royalists, and together led a force to Canterbury with the apparent goal of taking over the archiepiscopal palace and pressuring Thomas into absolving all those whom he had recently excommunicated. On December 29, the party reached Canterbury and the four knights sought an interview with the archbishop. The knights charged Thomas with disrupting the peace, defying custom, and inspiring sedition. In his defense, Thomas likely cited his role as a papal legate, his discussions with Henry at their reconciliation, and the indignities he had suffered in exile and since his return.12 The conversation erupted in mutually exchanged threats and the knights departed. The small invading force then entered the palace, forcing its residents and guests to flee into the adjoining church. Thomas and his entourage moved toward the church deliberately, marching in ceremonial procession behind the archbishops’ cross. The archbishop’s retinue was shortly followed by the four knights, each fully armored and armed. Thomas was not cornered, but even as his clerks fled, the archbishop turned to face his pursuers. When the knights cried out for the traitor, Thomas replied, “Here I am. No traitor to the king, but a priest of God. What do you want?”13 It is uncertain what, exactly, the four knights wanted. They would later claim to have hoped to seize Thomas and take him to the king. In any case, Thomas resisted the knights’ attempts to grab him, and as more onlookers gathered to witness the commotion, some combination of desperation, confusion, and rage led the knights to raise their swords. Thomas then bent in prayer. A bystander attempted to protect Thomas, but the first blow cleaved the archbishop’s skull. The next blow opened his skull. Finally, one of the men pierced the skull, crushing the brain and opening a gory flood of blood and matter.14 Even in its last, agonizing minutes, the life of Thomas Becket managed to capture the fundamental conflicts of Christian social life in late medieval England, and to do so in a manner that seems nearly choreographed for all of its symbols and poignant rhetoric. The final words exchanged are not quite scripted, but still capture the spirit of the scene. As they beat and stabbed the archbishop, the four knights shouted about royal honor, while in his dying moments Thomas is reported to have gasped “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the church I am ready to embrace death.”15

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If Thomas’s life and murder vividly captured a power struggle characteristic of expanding monarchic ambition, his subsequent martyrdom suggests how particular features of medieval culture could be mobilized to critique or undermine the sovereignty of an otherwise ascendant king. In death, Thomas would achieve more than he ever could have in life; his posthumous influence weakened Henry and fortified the cultural and institutional powers of Christian culture in England and across the West. Almost immediately after the murder, two commemorative processes began to unfold that would transform a controversial cleric into one of the most beloved martyrs and saints of his time. The first process central to the martyrdom occurred at the level of popular culture. Just days after his death, reports began to spread of miracles associated with the archbishop. Catalogued primarily by the monks of Canterbury, the miracles most frequently involved a dramatic health recovery.16 In the year following his death, 176 miracles were attributed to Thomas. Though initially concentrated around Canterbury and associated with visits to the murder scene, roughly half of the miracles that occurred in the first year happened outside of the immediate vicinity, some as far off as Flanders.17 The proliferation of miracles generated mass affection for Thomas, but this seemingly spontaneous process was joined by a more deliberate form of commemoration. Immediately following his death, a tireless industry of literary production emerged. The prodigious epistolary efforts of Thomas’s clerks Herbert of Bosham and John of Salisbury, coupled with the reportage of the Canterbury monks, formed a narrative of suffering in which the miracles of Thomas were inseparably bound to his conflicts with the king and his eventual murder. In essence, the commemorative efforts of Christendom’s literary elite forged a story of sacrifice in which Thomas’s death redeemed his own struggles and suffering even as it exposed the injustice of Henry’s violence. This process would culminate in the canonization of Saint Thomas of Canterbury by Pope Alexander III three short years after the murder. The process of creating a martyr was initiated almost immediately following his death. John of Salisbury, one of Thomas’s oldest friends and a witness to the murder, composed a widely circulated letter in early 1171. Just weeks after the murder, John assumes that readers on the continent are “already well-informed about the passion of the glorious martyr Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury . . . commonly known throughout the whole Latin world”.18 In the same letter, John proceeds to establish the essence of the martyr’s sacrifice: “Every circumstance in the archbishop’s death agony conspired to glorify the dying man forever, to reveal the depravity of the assailants and brand them eternally with shame.”19 In John’s telling, Thomas is not only “the holy archbishop, primate of Britain, legate of the Holy See”, but also “incorrupt”, “protagonist of the Church’s liberty”, “a man who ‘fought to the death to preserve his God’s law and to make nought abuses which came from ancient tyrants.”20 Thomas had “shown himself long since a living sacrifice.”21 John describes Thomas as the ideal Christian: “he had been used to offer Christ’s body and blood upon the altar: and now, prostrate

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at the altar’s foot, he offered his own blood shed of evil men.”22 John catalogues the sins of these evil men at length: not only are they murderers, but they commit sacrilege, murdering the archbishop on a holy day and in a sacred place. Others quickly joined John of Salisbury: Louis VII, King of France, wrote to Alexander III regarding “the man who commits violence upon his mother,” who “has with the sword pierced the beloved son of Christ.”23 Louis describes the violence as an act of injustice so brazen that it is unprecedented: “the novelty of a cruelty so unheard of”. This is contrasted with the “Divine glory” of Thomas’s suffering, which are “revealed in miracles”. Faced with such a contrast, Louis suggests that the Pope “Let the sword of Saint Peter be unsheathed to avenge the martyr of Canterbury.”24 Why was Thomas’s death the cause of such commemorative commotion, with pilgrims crowding Canterbury, clerics penning hagiographies, and kings rushing to assume postures of piety? Faced with the turmoil and conflict of high medieval Western Christendom, it can be difficult to see the cultural consensus that bound combatants of the period. Thomas Becket, Pope Alexander III, Louis VII, Henry II, John of Salisbury, and the pilgrims seeking intercession at Canterbury: all shared the same assumptions about the workings of the cosmos. Despite political conflict and raucous theological debate, this was an era in which it was assumed that everything good on Earth was the product of a higher good: divine providence. Thomas and Henry II were not disputing this fundamental reality, but were engaged in a protracted struggle over how God’s higher goods would be mediated on Earth. Thomas’s murder and martyrdom was a dramatic and morbid extension of this debate. Whomever controlled the legacy of his death might be able to draw on the magic and popularity of the murdered archbishop to advance their claims. On their own, the miracles might have been politically neutral. However, Thomas’s sympathizers formed a productive commemorative community that forged an influential explanation of Thomas’s posthumous powers as a miracle worker. In their letters to elites across Christendom, the commemorative community offered vivid descriptions of the murder which formed a contrast between the saintly Thomas, honest and humble servant of God, and the villainous henchmen who murdered him on sacred ground. The descriptions of Thomas’s sacrifice formed in these early postmortem correspondences produce a potent opposition: the sanctified archbishop who would suffer all for his God and church, and the king’s men, lured by evil to violent sacrilege. As ever, it is difficult to measure the direct consequences of a cultural object like martyrdom, doubly so if our measurements are transcribed in the units of modern politics. In 1173, Thomas was formally canonized by Pope Alexander III. This meant that the charismatic powers of Thomas were formally given a reality within Christian social life. For English Christians, and particularly clerical office holders, this recognition would have been a potent symbol: Thomas Becket would henceforth become a model for English clergymen. But a more important, if less discernable outcome of Thomas’s martyrdom involves its influence on the Angevin monarchy. After the martyrdom, Henry was

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forced to assume a penitent posture. Contrition is not a word frequently employed by Henry’s biographers, but the pressure was immense: the frenzy over Thomas’s miraculous powers would only grow over the years. These powers were increasingly associated with the sacrifice of the archbishop, an act of violence that was said to be produced by the collision of the monarch’s ambition with Thomas’s devotion to Christ. Given the excitement over Thomas’s miracles, and their emerging association with the archbishop’s suffering on behalf of church liberty, the king was forced to concede his involvement and accept some form of papal punishment if he was to be absolved. Some 18 months after the murder, Henry met with papal legates in Avranches, Normandy. After two days of deliberation, the king and the papacy were reconciled, the parties having agreed to the general terms of penance.25 Henry promised to go on crusade the following year and nullified the Constitutions of Clarendon, formally withdrawing claims of customary jurisdiction over the clergy. To what extent were Henry’s concessions merely symbolic? Henry’s incipient bureaucracy, which established his reign as one of the era’s most effective and influential, retained much of its power. However, its expansion into ecclesiastical territory was thwarted, particularly with regards to the issue of “criminous clerks” which had catalyzed the conflict in the first place.26 But beyond administrative policy, the consideration of the nature of Henry’s concession prompts a reflection on the symbolic content of Angevin kingship and the influence of Thomas’s martyrdom on the understanding of monarchical sovereignty. If Becket’s murder and martyrdom left Henry chastened, the subsequent rebellion against the king, led by his sons and encouraged by his wife, would see him hobbled, if only temporarily. Thomas Becket may or may not have inspired the “king in waiting”, Henry III, to rise up against his father. Thomas had been the younger Henry’s tutor and mentor for years, and the two had an affectionate relationship. It has been suggested that Thomas’s murder inspired bad feelings between Henry II and his heir.27 Yet even if the martyrdom was not directly responsible for inspiring the rebellion, it played a pivotal role in its conclusion. When fighting first broke out in April of 1173, Henry II proved himself a tenacious opponent. But when conflict persisted, Henry II sailed for England. Writing just decades after the event, the historian William of Newburgh offered the following description of Henry II’s return to England: “remembering how much he had sinned against the church of Canterbury, he proceeded thither when he landed, and prayed, freely shedding tears at the tomb of Thomas”.28 The vivid descriptions of Henry’s pilgrimage offered by historians writing in the aftermath of the events seem to suggest a genuine contrition. William of Newburgh, for example, continues his brief description of the pilgrimage by recounting how “On entering the chapter of the monks, he prostrated himself on the ground and with utmost humility entreated pardon; and, at his urgent petition, he, though so great a man, was corporally beaten with rods by all the bretheren in succession.”29

86 The suffering body and the body politic Other historians focus on similar acts of suffering, recounting how the king ate only bread and drank only water throughout the pilgrimage, how he walked the last miles to Canterbury barefoot, and how, perhaps in homage to Thomas, he donned clothes of irritating fabric.30 While details of Henry II’s pilgrimage vary, general aspects are confirmed across the histories: that under duress Henry II made a pilgrimage to Canterbury, where he pleaded for forgiveness and the saint’s intervention. Nor is there any doubt that the end of the pilgrimage coincided with near immediate victory for the elder Henry. The martyrdom of Thomas Becket—that is, the efforts of a vast commemorative community dedicated to connecting his life and causes to his posthumous powers—formed a rebuke to monarchic ambition. That the martyrdom prompted policy concessions, however slight or temporary, is undeniable. But perhaps more consequentially the martyrdom of Thomas Becket made material those ethereal elements of Christian political theology which offered implicit rejection of absolute and divine monarchy. As an earthly king, Henry II could only ever be proximate to the divine. By contrast, the Christ-like suffering of Thomas Becket culminated in a sacrifice that opened a direct connection to a higher power and offered the most perfect earthly incarnation of the medieval Christian higher good. Henry II’s reign is generally seen as a gradual displacement of the “parcelized sovereignty” of medieval Western Christendom by a centralizing power. His reign was not, in any traditional sense, a revolution in rule. Rather, his success was achieved by modification, retaining much of the customs, institutions, and offices of feudalism but drawing them ever tighter in the webs of monarchic sovereignty. Against these developments, the symbolic contents of Thomas Becket’s martyrdom proved a formidable bulwark. If the perpetual ambiguity of medieval Christian political theology had, for a moment, seemed to endow Henry II’s early reign with far-reaching power and authority, the martyrdom of Thomas Becket drew clear limits to the sovereign ambitions of the regnum. As with the early Christians, the martyrdom of Thomas Becket developed a potent narrative that deflected earthly sovereignty at all of its central vectors, subjugating the charismatic, bureaucratic, and traditional bases of Henry II’s rule under the divine power revealed by the martyr’s sacrifice. But was Thomas’s martyrdom as potent or radical as the challenge of early Christian martyrdom? The stories of Perpetua, Justin, and Polycarp encourage early Christians to envision a new cosmic order, one in which the emperor’s divine omnipotence was reduced to a feeble and capricious violence. By contrast, Henry II’s reconciliation with Pope Alexander III and the continued success of his reign may imply that martyrdom had lost some of its potency as a cultural resource for countersovereign mobilization. Perhaps, with Western Europe united under the banner of Christendom, Christian culture and Christian martyrdom were now reduced to minor obstacles to sovereign ambition. To assess this possibility, it is necessary to briefly offer a case that, in its basic details, appears the perfect contrast with “the Becket Affair”. Joan of Arc, perhaps the only medieval martyr of greater fame than Thomas Becket, was by most conventional accounts a martyr whose death served a very particular purpose:

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the empowerment of her lord, the scrofulous and inept French monarch Charles VII. How does a medieval monarch’s apparent attempt to create and manipulate a martyr for his own success challenge the tendency of martyrdom as a form of counter-sovereign rebuke?

The maiden martyr If the life and martyrdom of Thomas Becket have often been rendered as a prototype of medieval church and state conflict, the story of Joan of Arc has just as often been described as an exemplar of the connivance between the same. If the tumult of “the Becket Affair” seems, but for the murder, relatively tame—confined to epistolary barbs and bureaucratic machinations—the backdrop of Joan’s life, consumed in war, chaos, and the ever-ominous spirit of “the Inquisition” seems comparatively cinematic. And if Becket’s death can’t help but be infused with the poetry of defiance, the slow, cruel burning of a 19-year-old girl is inevitably associated with brutality and despair. The two cases are, in their most immediate details, perfect contrasts. It is difficult to imagine two personalities that, when glimpsed through history and hagiography, appear more different: the 50-year-old archbishop, learned and cosmopolitan, the 19-year-old girl, audacious and pugnacious and likely illiterate. What does it mean that these disparate cases represent the most iconic and lasting instances of martyrdom in the Middle Ages? And what can a comparison of these cases tell us about the nature of medieval sovereignty, particularly with regards to the interaction of religion and politics? The general facts of Joan’s life, trial, and death are well-established and widely known.31 Joan was born at the tail-end of medieval Christendom, 1412, in the French province of Lorraine. Her family were of peasant stock, but were likely prosperous and perhaps even prominent members of their village of Domremy. At the age of 12, Joan began to receive visions of angels. Her visions coincided with an escalation of violence: the so-called Hundred Years War having spilled into Domremy, eventually displacing Joan’s family. This Hundred Years War, a prolonged war of succession in which a series of English kings (aided by the duchy of Burgundy) claimed rightful inheritance to the French throne, had, by Joan’s childhood, gone in favor of the English and the Burgundians. Joan’s village had traditionally been loyal to the French monarchy, and so was adversely affected with the decline of the French line. Burgundian invasions drove Joan’s family to flee Domremy when she was 16 years old. Shortly after their displacement, Joan decided to seek out the embattled French dauphin Charles VII, prompted by exhortations from the angels that came to her in visions. Guided by fortune or angels or grit, a 17-year-old Joan was admitted to the shadow court of Charles VII. As legend has it, the court set a trap for Joan, introducing a decoy king while Charles VII hid amongst the courtiers. Joan, of course, was not fooled and picked the king out of the crowd. After this performance, and a brief interrogation by clergymen and doctors of the church, Joan was received as the genuine article, a woman touched by the hand of God.

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The next great chapter in Joan’s life came at the siege of Orleans. The English had surrounded the city, and Joan’s forces were meant to resupply the besieged French defenders. In a series of impetuous maneuvers, Joan and her troops managed to drive off English forces, surprising opponents and allies alike. Joan’s victory at Orleans inspired the French to continue to Reims, where Joan hoped to see Charles VII crowned and anointed with the holy oils contained in the city’s cathedral. On July 17, 1429, Joan achieved that goal: the king was anointed and crowned, no longer the dauphin, now a ruler imbued with the sacral legitimacy conferred by the legendary oils and Joan’s miraculous victories. But those same miraculous powers would shortly abandon Joan. Eager and confident, Joan pursued Charles’s enemies without pause for strategic deliberation. She was captured when her small band attempted to take the village of Compiègne from a much larger force. Her Burgundian captors sold Joan to the English in negotiations mediated by English-supporting churchmen. Joan was eventually moved to the English stronghold of Rouen in Normandy, where she would face trial for witchcraft, cross-dressing, apostasy, heresy, and a list of additional charges. As is clear from the accusations, Joan was tried by an ecclesiastical court, the court of the French Inquisition. Why would the English pass Joan off to be tried in an ecclesiastical court, rather than holding her for ransom or executing her under royal authority? First, an ecclesiastical court, focused on heresy and related charges, might delegitimize Joan’s status as a soldier and cunning strategist. But more importantly, if Joan was found guilty of witchcraft and heresy, her miracles and conquests would be deprived of divine sanction. This, in turn, would do significant damage to Charles VII’s reputation and authority, which owed so much to Joan. If Joan’s powers were revealed to have demonic origins, the claims of Charles VII would be rendered guilty by association. Joan’s trial is one of the more spectacular moments in medieval Christendom; its details are widely known, having been translated and adapted in countless artistic and historiographic renditions across time and media. Joan’s performance during the trial matched her battlefield success in improbability and tenacity. But, as in battle, Joan was eventually overwhelmed. Lengthy imprisonment, the constant threat of physical and sexual violence, dizzying interviews by learned theologians—all would eventually prove too much for the 19-year-old Joan. On May 24, 1431, just over a year after her capture and nearly six months into the trial process, Joan signed a cédule of abjuration, a document that was both an admission of guilt and a plea for forgiveness. The contents of the cédule are debated. The theologians of the University of Paris had reviewed the transcripts of the trial and found Joan guilty of a litany of crimes, including schism, heresy, and blasphemy.32 The official records of the trial contain a lengthy cédule in which Joan confesses to all of the sins and crimes of which she was accused.33 However, witnesses suggest that the document Joan signed was significantly shorter than that contained in the official record. In any case, Joan’s admission involved some general renunciation of her visions and divinely given powers. But in the end it was Joan’s attire that proved central

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to her conviction and eventual fate. Throughout her trial, Joan had continued to wear the masculine attire of a knight, and in her abjuration Joan promised to never do so again. On May 27, 1431, Joan “relapsed”, returning to masculine attire. The following day, she was interrogated again; at the last interrogation, Joan disavowed her abjuration and pledged to continue dressing in men’s clothing so long as she was guarded by men (in order to better preserve her virtue). On the 29th of May, Joan’s captors found her guilty of relapsed heresy, an offense which carried the penalty of death. On Wednesday, May 30th, Joan was burned alive in the Old Market Place of Rouen before an audience of some 800 soldiers. The day had been marked by administrative inconsistency: though she was a relapsed heretic, Joan was given the Eucharist. Despite the fact that her relapse should have condemned her to a secular trial and judgement, she was given to the executioner immediately following her conviction. Finally, despite her conviction before an audience of enemies, many present seemed to sympathize with Joan—clerical witnesses described their confusion at the execution, and recounted the tears and pity of the English soldiers, one of whom hastily fashioned a cross for Joan to hold on the pyre. Joan’s persecutors (and their English supporters) had attempted in her trials and execution to neutralize the reputation of her miraculous powers. Joan’s performance at the trial, and her piety on the day of execution, challenged these efforts. However, the smothering force of heresy remained a threat to Joan’s legacy. Indeed, efforts were made to spread the news of Joan’s heresy: a June letter from the King of England addressed to “All the Princes of Christendom” recounts her trial, conviction, and execution so that “she contaminate not the other members of Jesus Christ.”34 The University of Paris fomented similar criticisms; an affiliated journal published an article which described Joan’s life “as one of fire and blood and the murder of Christians”.35 These efforts to spoil Joan’s legacy likely encountered some popular resistance, at least amongst parties loyal to Charles VII. There was, for instance, a persistent rumor that Joan had escaped execution, and at least one imposter was able to use Joan’s popularity to fleece the grateful and unassuming people of Orleans. But there were also efforts to immortalize and legitimize Joan of Arc in the more elite and literate circles of French society. Two prominent examples were already circulating before the execution. The first was written by the theologian Jean Gerson just prior to Joan’s capture; it attempted, through “discernment of spirits” to investigate the legitimacy of Joan’s visions. Gerson was a renowned assessor (and debunker) of mystical feats, affiliated with the University of Paris but living in exile at the time of Joan’s campaigns owing to his opposition to the Anglo-Burgundian regime. Gerson had a history of using similar investigations to critique female mystics, but Joan’s case was different. Writing at the zenith of Joan’s success, Gerson found the legitimacy of Joan’s claims beyond reproach.36 Another defense of Joan’s divine mandate, more popular and lasting in its influence than the theological arguments produced on either side, was offered in Christine de Pisan’s Ditié de Jeanne d’Arc. Like Gerson, Christine de Pisan composed

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her celebration of Joan prior to the Maid’s capture. Unlike Gerson, Christine was unambiguous in her verse and unhindered by the obligations of dialectical debate. The “Song of Joan of Arc” is composed of 61 stanzas, beginning with lamentations for France, and concluding with the inevitable triumph of Charles VII to be achieved by Joan’s military successes. Given the poem’s subject, Joan arrives rather late, finally mentioned in the 11th stanza. But her tardiness is fitting; the poem is a story of suffering, of its redemptive powers and of liberation through divine grace. Thus, the first ten stanzas must be dedicated to the “frozen wintertide”, the “dismal hue”, and the suffering of the dauphin Charles at the hands of “evil Fortune”.37 Joan breaks into this bleak scene to deliver the “countryside/Once battered down by war’s cruel blast.” Joan is described as a maternal Moses, who might lead the French people “out of Evil” even as she “offers France the gentle breast”. Throughout the Ditié Joan’s miraculous deeds and the redemption promised by her final victory are attributed to the Maid’s legitimate connection to the divine. In stanza 31, Joan’s arrival is prophesied by the ancient English saint Bede. If the reader is not convinced by prophecy, Christine suggests they look to Joan’s “Holy life/[which] shows well the she is in God’s grace”. A litany of Joan’s holy attributes is compiled, such that the conflict between the English and the French is ultimately transformed from a power struggle into a battle of the good and the godly against the evil and heretical. Stanza 42 finds Joan delivering divine justice to a desecrated land: “The Christian faith and Holy Church, /Will both be set to rights through her, /She will destroy the evil-doers . . . those who soil the Holy Law.” The early efforts to celebrate Joan’s sudden rise and military success, whether in the theological examination of John Gerson or the poetry of Christine de Pisan, point to the fantastically improbable victories achieved by the teenage peasant girl as irrefutable evidence of Joan’s divine mandate. In the Ditié Christine de Pisan takes this evidence to its natural conclusion, seeing in Joan the long-awaited intervention of God, a deliverance from sin and suffering, redemption for the French people. The opposing sides of the Hundred Years War had each developed conflicting interpretations of Joan of Arc. However, the ongoing chaos of the war meant that these cultural differences were essentially detained behind the fighting lines. The papacy—a potential ally in the creation of martyrs—might have intervened, but ongoing schism prevented any sustained consideration of Joan’s case by the Holy See. As Charles VII fitfully fought to regain territory, the legacy of Joan of Arc was deferred. It remained to be seen whether Joan’s legacy would wash away with her ashes, or if she might live on after death. In November of 1449, Charles VII rode into Rouen leading an army. It had been 20 years since Joan’s death in the town’s Old Market Square. Charles had finally seized the English stronghold of Normandy, marking the beginning of the end of English power in France. Almost immediately after capturing Rouen, Charles ordered a theologian at the University of Paris (now loyal to Charles) to investigate the nature of Joan’s trial

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and the validity of its findings. Many have speculated about the motivations of Charles VII in re-opening Joan’s case: was it inspired by guilt, an act of penance for his seeming indifference during her trial? Or perhaps it was mere propaganda, a gesture meant to vilify the English and bolster his own legitimacy? In any case, Charles VII would almost certainly benefit from Joan’s posthumous vindication. The Anglo-Burgundian partisans had attempted to tarnish Charles’s legitimacy by branding his great heroine a heretic. Any redemption for Joan might fortify the symbolic dimensions of Charles’s still fragile rule. The investigation ordered by Charles was a cursory affair: it revealed the iniquities of Joan’s trial, but could not nullify the verdict. Because of the nature of Joan’s trial, a formal investigation by the French Inquisition would be required in order to withdraw her conviction. This “rehabilitation” would occur in 1455, at the behest of a newly emboldened pope. In the course of the rehabilitation, testimony was gathered from across France: Joan’s native village, the cities of Orleans and Paris, and in Rouen. The transcripts of her original trial were analyzed, and the inconsistencies and procedural errors were uncovered (with particular emphasis given to her confinement in a military jail while under ecclesiastical judgement; other deviations included the absence of adequate representation for the accused, an established norm for Inquisition trials). In 1456, the sentences and documents of the original trial were overturned. Joan’s visions were now legitimized; it was obvious to the judges that “every word of them testifies to the most devout piety.” The judges claimed that ultimately “she was delivered, as they promised, from the prison of the body by martyrdom and a great victory; the victory of patience.”38 Almost 30 years after her death, Joan of Arc was vindicated. Now a celebrated martyr, Joan’s rehabilitation neatly coincided with the ascension of Charles VII and the re-establishment of a centralized French monarchy. At her rehabilitation trial, the theological treatise of Jean Gerson was introduced in defense of Joan’s mystical visions and miraculous victories; Joan’s suffering, coupled with the ultimate victory of Charles VII seemed to confirm Gerson’s original assessment. By the conclusion of her rehabilitation trial, Joan’s final moments on the pyre—once grotesque or shameful—were now glorious, a moment of sacrifice that revealed the purity and authority of her mission and exposed the depravity and sacrilege of her foes.

The medieval type of martyrdom The cases of Joan of Arc and Thomas of Canterbury may not be cut from the same cloth, but they burnish the matching hue of circumstance. At the most abstract level, the creation of these two formidable martyrs involved the interaction of transcendent values with the creaturely art of statecraft. The specific entanglements may vary, but in both cases, religion and politics interact in a manner characteristic of the later Middle Ages. Despite a popular tendency to view Thomas Becket as a papal warrior or Joan of Arc as a victim of the Church’s tyrannical

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hold on medieval life, these are not stories principally concerned with the struggle between an organizationally coherent Church and State. Indeed, the seeming coincidence of a weakened and distracted papacy shadows both cases, and the ever-shifting allegiances of local prelates and feudal nobility provides infinite opportunities for confusion. The conflicts that engulfed Joan and Thomas precede the institutional coherence of both Church and State. In each case, the eventual martyr was caught in a bitter power struggle, and in both instances the particular circumstances surrounding the death were shadowed by larger struggles involving the expanding powers of the medieval monarch (though the specific controversies of kingship were obviously quite different in each case). But these power struggles were submerged in the unique cultural milieu of medieval, Western feudal society. This is just to say that these were conflicts defined in no small part by the culture of Christendom. The transformation of Joan of Arc and Thomas Becket into popularly commemorated martyrs was catalyzed in both cases by power struggles that fundamentally involved the nature of earthly sovereignty in a cultural world defined by its relationship to a transcendent, omniscient, and divine sovereign. Who, in a Christian world, might claim to be the rightful administrator of God’s justice on earth? The martyrdom of Joan of Arc and Thomas Becket offer powerful responses to this question, products of a fiery and contentious debate on the nature and execution of Christian justice. Though there is always a temptation to limit martyrdom to passion or irrationality, the cases of Joan and Thomas are enwreathed in the comparatively sober language of jurisprudence—Joan’s execution was the conclusion of a months-long trial, and Thomas was murdered over what was essentially a much exaggerated legal debate. However, each case leads to a different settlement. Thomas’s martyrdom proved a powerful, if not quite permanent rebuke to the aspirations of monarchic sovereignty. In contrast, the martyrdom of Joan of Arc offered vindication or legitimation to a king, confirming the divine mandate of Charles VII. What do these contrasting conclusions suggest about martyrdom, and what might be inferred from these contrasts about the nature of sovereignty in “late” medieval Western Christendom. The most obvious answer—the answer a sociologist runs to like a dog to a postman—is to infer some form of social change. The two cases are separated by more than two hundred years, so it is reasonable to suspect that in the intervening years there was some change in politics and culture that might influence the nature of martyrdom and/or sovereignty. The most obvious hypothesis is that temporal authority generally, and the French monarchy specifically, had an enlarged or fortified claim to sovereignty, and that compared with the incipient centralization of Henry II, the 15th-century Valois monarchy had both greater power and expanded sovereignty. This might explain why the martyrdom of Thomas Becket chastened Henry II while Joan of Arc’s sacrifice seems to have offered further propulsion to the reign of Charles VII. This hypothesis is challenged by the strength and resilience of Henry II’s reign and the comparatively anemic rule of Charles VII. Further obstruction is offered

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by the general historical circumstances surrounding each case. There are undeniable differences between the reigns of Charles VII and Henry II, but there are is also a general resemblance. It might even be fair to suggest that the Valois dynasty developed more slowly than the Angevin dynasty, such that the various successional crises of the Hundred Years War and their influence on French kingship had a vague resemblance to the successional crises of the English monarchy in the late 12th century.39 This is just to say that the years separating Thomas Becket from Joan of Arc do not suggest a rapid development in the capabilities of the French monarchy, and to the extent that any change is discernable, it is perhaps best characterized as a matter of delayed development on the part of the French monarchy. If historical developments in medieval kingship are not primarily responsible for the different outcomes in the martyrdom of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc, the next most likely culprit may be some contingent interaction between the specific monarchs and martyrs. From this perspective, there is nothing essential about medieval politics or the culture of Christendom which determines the outcomes of any specific case of martyrdom in the Middle Ages. To explain why Becket’s martyrdom obstructed Henry II while Joan’s martyrdom empowered Charles VII, one need only look at the specific relationship each monarch had to Christian culture. Henry II had an essentially antagonistic relationship with the administrators and guardians of Christian culture, while the Valois monarchy was famous for cultivating strong relationships with the various representatives of Christianity, particularly the papacy. Thus, the martyrdom of Thomas Becket shows a diverse commemorative community responding to systematic infringements upon ecclesiastical liberty, while the rehabilitation of Joan of Arc allowed Charles VII’s allies to aid in the stabilization of a stalwart ally. This particularist hypothesis is complicated by the divided loyalties of the ecclesiocracy in both cases, as well as the seemingly organic public responses that followed each martyrdom. Furthermore, even if one accepts that the different outcomes of each case were in some way conditioned by each monarch’s place in Christian culture, that conclusion only renders the juridical nature of both cases all the more perplexing. If each case of martyrdom only reflects the degree of tension between a particular monarch and religious institutions, why would both cases revolve around the general question of who rightfully administers justice in a Christian society? Perhaps Christianity was highly malleable, and any apparent changes in cases of medieval martyrdom are merely the product of unique styles of rule and the mercurial reactions of a pliable and inconsistent religious culture? Answering this possibility requires a more thorough excavation of the meanings that define each case of martyrdom. In order to understand the contrasting outcomes of each case, one needs to first account for the sacrificial narratives that define each martyr. What evil, what force of desecration, is revealed in the martyr’s death? What higher good is opened by the martyr’s willingness to endure suffering and death? For the commemorative community mourning the death of Thomas Becket, it was clear who was responsible for the murder. Four knights, all barons loyal to Henry II, are named as the murderers across the letters and early biographies that

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commemorate the event. The knights were witnessed by a crowd, and their guilt was never questioned. But the condemnation conveyed by the commemorative community was not confined to the four knights alone. The murderers were guilty, and their punishment was inevitable. Of greater concern for the commemorative community was the force that propelled those men to commit such a transparently sacrilegious act. The 12th- and 13th-century biographies describe the murderers as consumed or corroded by a demonic darkness. More important than the identities of the men themselves is the Luciferian shadow that envelops their actions. The chronicles unanimously suggest that all four knights believed that they acted justly in murdering the archbishop. It is here, in their moral confusion, which the knights are at their most sulfurous, beating and stabbing a prostrate man and shouting the glories of the king. Henry II may be physically absent from these accounts of the murder, but his influence is ever present. However atmospheric, the figure of the king looms throughout commemorative efforts: he catalyzes the knights on their misguided quest and his name echoes in the darkened cathedral as the knights cut Thomas down. Yet even as Henry II is portrayed as the driving force of violence in the early biographies of Thomas Becket, the authors are at pains to avoid casting him as a personally villainous figure. It is not that the monarch is evil, nor that there is anything inherently desecrating about the violence of a king’s rule. Rather, the retellings of the murder suggest that evil and violent desecration are produced by good men gone astray. When the powerful lose sense of their rightful roles and duties, those beneath them become unmoored, incapable of discerning sin and sacrilege from justice. Unlike the case of Thomas Becket, the martyrdom of Joan of Arc lacked specified villains. Blame could be spread from Paris to Normandy and beyond to England (though Pierre Cauchon, lead prosecutor of Joan’s first trial, features prominently in retellings). Even so, Joan’s rehabilitation trial, which investigated the circumstances of her death 20 years after the fact, offers a surprisingly precise diagnosis of the circumstances of Joan’s death. All of Joan’s trials, from the six-month endeavor that concluded in finding her guilty of schism, to the brief examination of her supposed relapse, and finally her rehabilitation trial, were organized by the French Inquisition. When, 20 years after her death the Inquisition returned to her case, the investigators faced a difficult question. How could a group of learned, pious Christians, steeped in the wisdom of the Church, be so profoundly mistaken? Human fallibility was an insufficient excuse; this was not a trivial mistake, but a murder committed in God’s name against a woman who was increasingly identified as someone possessed of uncommon grace. The conclusion of Joan’s final trial was unambiguous. Much like the knights who murdered Thomas Becket, the clergymen who originally investigated and convicted Joan believed that they were administering justice. However, the judges of the rehabilitation found that Joan’s prosecutors were corrupted by their

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proximity to temporal power. The rehabilitation judges could see the occasional glimpse of better judgement in the original trial; after her conviction, Joan was allowed to take communion (an act of mercy not typically granted to convicted heretics). Twenty years later, this seemed to the Inquisition to be an admission of guilt: Joan’s original judges knew they were in the wrong, but their corruption by English and Burgundian forces inhibited their ability to administer God’s justice. The guilt of Joan’s inquisitors is noticeably similar to the guilt of Henry II’s knights in the case of the Thomas Becket’s murder. The desecrating violence which assaulted the blameless bodies of Joan of Arc and Thomas Becket was not the stuff of steel or fire. Indeed, one striking congruity across both cases is just how lenient the commemorative communities were on those most directly responsible for the death of the martyrs. The knights were grievous sinners and Joan’s judges were grievously wrong. But in both cases, those who killed the martyrs were less responsible for the deaths than a dark force that blinded Christian men from discerning Christian justice. Specific men were not responsible; Henry II, his knights, Pierre Cauchon, the English and the Burgundians are all described with contempt, but none bear sole responsibility for murder. Rather, in both cases the catalyst for desecrating and unjust violence was an insatiable and unchecked growth in temporal power. In the cultural world of Christendom, a world anticipated in Augustine’s famous description of the two cities, the martyrdoms of Thomas Becket and later of Joan of Arc exposed the ever-present danger of earthly powers. Augustine had suggested that during their pilgrimage on Earth, Christians might expect to inhabit spaces alongside the wretched residents of the City of Man. Such was the nature of human social life, which no earthly community could ever realistically hope to be wholly rid of sin. This did not have to be a corrupting experience: Christians could expand their ranks, moving humanity incrementally closer to a condition of harmony. Even temporal powers could contribute to the cultivation of the common good in limited ways, establishing a peace that might allow its populace to live a more Christian life. But this is a progress of a limited and fragile sort, forever threatened by the nature of a fallen species and the “sin of the world”. For just when Christianity had achieved a civilizational coherence in the form of Western Christendom, it was beset by sin and turmoil. The martyrs Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc exposed in death the threats to Christendom which Augustine had warned against. In characterizing the unjust violence which desecrated the bodies of Joan and Thomas, their respective commemorative communities continually returned to the threat posed by those who were so corrupted by their proximity to temporal power that they mistook the justice of an earthly city, always liable to violence, for the more righteous justice of God. Of course, in forming narratives of martyrdom from the deaths of Joan of Arc and Thomas Becket, those commemorative communities were not merely regurgitating the Augustinian critique of politics. The general tendency to avoid criticizing specific powerful men, or even temporal power as such, suggests one important distinction in medieval martyrdom. If Augustine’s theology was one

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step removed from the radical critique of early Christian martyrs, the martyrdom of Thomas Becket and of Joan of Arc took one step further. The central crisis which motivated the early Christian martyrdom stories was the collision of two wholly incommensurable sacral orders. The nature of the sacred was not similarly disputed in Western Christendom. As Thomas Aquinas wrote: “In the old Roman days monarchs opposed Christ. But now kings comprehend, and because of what they have learned, they serve our lord Jesus Christ in fear.”40 But what happened when that fear was overcome by ambition or tyranny? The commemorative communities of Joan of Arc and Thomas Becket depicted the outcome of such scenarios, and in doing so captured the anxieties of a Christian culture faced with the expanding powers and capabilities of monarchic sovereignty. Thomas Becket’s loyal clerk and hagiographer John of Salisbury composed one of medieval Christendom’s most influential political tracts, Policraticus, in approximately 1160. In it, John famously described society as a living organism, each part functioning for the betterment of the whole. Working together, these various organs and limbs of the body politic could achieve a fragile equilibrium. This harmonious social body, held together by what medieval theologians would call the corpus mysticum (the mystical body of Christ) offered an idealized image of how a Christian society might reconcile, however fragilely, the demands of temporal and spiritual authority.41 Throughout the age of Christendom, medieval theologians sought out ways to harmonize the appendages of the body politic. For Aquinas, this meant conceiving of the earthly prince as always bound by the directive powers of the divine. Before Aquinas, the 10th-century monk Sedulius Scottus had written De Rectoribus Christianis to instruct rulers on how to reconcile Christian faith with earthly duty. Some medieval theologians like James of Vitterbo and Giles of Rome would attempt to craft a vision of earthly politics ruled over by the papacy, others, like Jean Quidort, would argue for the relative autonomy of kings. All shared with Aquinas and John of Salisbury the tendency to understand society in organic terms, where the foremost goal was achieving an equilibrium in which all parts might function together. In cases of medieval martyrdom like those of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc, that bodily equilibrium was disrupted. One organ, having failed to recognize its proper function and rightful boundaries, disturbs the harmony of the social body, corrupting otherwise earnest Christians and inspiring them to enact a dark and desecrating violence. But the commemorative communities that formed in the aftermath of a martyr’s death were not merely building a cultural critique of the rapidly metastasizing powers of late medieval monarchy. In the cases of Joan of Arc and Thomas Becket, both commemorative communities built narratives of sacrifice that celebrated the martyr’s own righteous sacrifice even as they scorned the desecrating violence of temporal powers. Both Joan of Arc and Thomas Becket were celebrated by their commemorative communities for their charismatic and miraculous powers. But in each instance, celebration had to overcome the specter of impiety. Joan’s miracles on

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the battlefield were undeniable, but their divine authenticity was challenged by the nature of Joan’s death, shadowed as it was by accusations of heresy. Thomas Becket’s case was the exact opposite: it was his reputation in life that might have threatened the legitimacy of his death and posthumous miracles. Yet in both cases these concerns were neutralized by the sublime and overwhelming suffering that both martyrs would endure. In the case of Thomas Becket, his early biographers would depict the archbishop’s life as a successive passage of suffering, Thomas ascending from the mere misery of courtly life and its vices, onto the sufferings of a penitent and pious exile until he was finally prepared to suffer, Christ-like, for God and the liberty of his church. In Joan’s case, the rehabilitation trial uncovered a range of testimonial evidence relating to her capture, trial, convictions, and execution. Though these sources vary in their loyalty and credibility, all of the evidence gathered converges on Joan’s dignity in a time of suffering and persecution. As with Thomas, Joan’s initial prosecution is recalled by witnesses as a progressive path of suffering that culminates in a noble and pious death. Of all the testimony gathered during the rehabilitation trail of Joan of Arc, the most powerful evidence, that which is most gripping and suggestive of miraculous power, comes from witness accounts of Joan’s death. Whatever evidence can be gathered about the motivations of Joan’s prosecutors, it is clear that their actions on that day were harried and inconsistent. By contrast, Joan’s steadfastness impressed all those who witnessed her death. She was, even in her dying moments, resolute in piety. As the flames consumed her flesh, she held tightly onto a makeshift cross given to her by an English soldier. Through the agony, she cried out repeatedly to Jesus, causing soldiers to turn from the scene and cry openly. One man saw a dove fly from her body. Her executioner fled to a nearby pub, where later, under the fog of inebriation, he would swear that he was damned to hell for his actions that day.42 There is a simple and stark contrast in the commemorative efforts that surround the deaths of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc. Against unnatural acts of debasing violence is a persistent suffering. When the machinations of the persecutors finally culminate in the ultimate act of violence, the martyrs are prepared. They have been cleansed and hardened by tribulation, and are now willing to renounce life for the higher good of Christ. In the culture of medieval Christendom, these narratives of suffering would have resonated across feudal society. This was not merely because pain and suffering are universal, and were acutely universal in the Middle Ages. Beyond the incidental solidarity of agony was a culture in which suffering was generally associated with divine salvation. Christ had redeemed humanity through pain and violence. It was his sacrifice, his flesh and blood, which promised redemption from sin and communion with God. The power of Christ’s suffering was a central feature of medieval life. Anselm of Canterbury, a predecessor of Thomas Becket, was the first to codify a theology of atonement. His 11th-century Cur Deus Homo postulated that in suffering and death Christ “pays what is due for the sins of the world.”43 The redemptive

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value of Christ’s suffering would be further codified by scholastic theologians like Aquinas. But beyond theology and elite culture, medieval Christendom was crowded with figures who taught, by text or example, the good in suffering. Francis of Assisi inspired thousands to live a spartan life and embrace poverty so that they might live in accordance with Christ’s example. In the 14th century, Catherine of Siena urged Christians to embrace bodily suffering as a means to overcome selflove. A generation later Thomas à Kempis composed the massively popular book The Imitation of Christ, which reminded readers of the constancy of suffering, and how the patient and quiet endurance of calamity might bring them closer to God. Finally, and perhaps most obviously, there was the proliferating ranks of monks and mendicant preachers who, in their encounters with the people of Christendom, offered a reminder of the virtues of suffering. This is just to say that the commemorations of suffering that followed the deaths of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc were disseminated in a culture where the value and meaning of suffering was already established. The pain that Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc endured, the patience with which they tolerated their agonies, and their willingness to die for Christ all accumulated in a vivid sacrificial tableau that was the perfect contrast to the perfidious violence of their executioners. The sacrificial content of these two iconic medieval martyrs was composed of a powerful contrast between a noble, long-suffering servant of God and the authors of their suffering, once honest Christians who had been corrupted by their proximity to strayed temporal powers. Compared with their early Christian forbears, one senses a certain conservatism in the commemoration of these medieval martyrs. This is not a revolutionary commemorative process which seeks to supplant one sovereign with a new order. Rather, the commemorative communities of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc seem to seek a restoration of normalcy, a return to the functioning equilibrium of the body politic. Though medieval martyrs may lack the radicalism of their predecessors, they remain the products of an anti- or contra-sovereign imagination. The narratives of sacrifice central to medieval martyrdom rebuke the glutinous appetites of Western monarchs, and in both cases point to the corrupting and even sacrilegious consequences of a temporal power that exceeds its natural limits. At the same time, these stories of sacrifice re-asserted the dominion of God over Christendom, forming implicit associations between the suffering of the martyr, the suffering of Christ, and the redemptive powers of suffering that were widely celebrated at the time. The transformation of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc into martyrs, and their posthumous powers in granting miracles and even restoring royal power, might have allowed their respective commemorative communities to reaffirm the boundaries and limits of political sovereignty. This was an era of “parcelized” sovereignty, in which power and authority remained penned-up and pocketed. But the growing capabilities of high and late medieval monarchs threatened to rupture the ties that bound those parcels, and with them the cultural and theological compact that had been cautiously settled in the wake of the Roman Empire.

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Ascendant monarchies threatened to transform the body politic, every limb now moving at the whim of the earthly sovereign. The ever ambiguous boundaries between the Cities of God and Man would be dissolved, and all would kneel at the throne of the king. Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc offered an alternative to a social world suddenly best by dramatic change, guidance to a body politic stumbling through growth spurts. The sacrifices of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc reaffirmed through suffering the limits of temporal powers. Their posthumous miracles were testimony to the unparalleled supremacy of God over Christendom. Yet though these medieval martyrs offered a vivid depiction of the limits of royal power, the dangers that might follow when those limits were breached, and the supremacy of the Christin divine, they could not permanently detain the movements of history. As cultural objects, their influence was important—they could bring a king to his knees or restore his authority—but it was also impermanent. What would become of martyrdom when earthly sovereigns again began to test the boundaries of their dominion, this time abetted by cultural and structural circumstance?

Notes 1 Reading Augustine’s biographers, one notes a marked inconsistency in descriptions of Hippo, with characterizations of the city varying in accordance with any given author’s larger biographic narrative. Those who wish to characterize Augustine as a thinker shaped by life on the Roman periphery—a towering genius emerging from obscurity— tend to describe the city modestly, while those who wish to depict the bishop as a figure of influence in his own time will almost inevitably allude to the city’s strategic importance as the “breadbasket” (or some analogous agricultural metaphor) of Rome. 2 Peter I. Kaufman, “Augustine, Martyrs, and Misery,” Church History 63, no. 1 (1994): 2. 3 Saint Augustine, The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, a New Translation: The City of God, Volume I, translated by Rev. Marcus Dods (Edinburgh, MA: T&T Clark, 1888), 214. 4 Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200– 1000 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). 5 Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (New York: Verso, 1974), 15. 6 Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 277–88. 7 Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), 24–63. 8 Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law before Edward I, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Little, Brown & Company, 1889), 111–37. 9 Lacey B. Smith, Fools, Martyrs, Traitors: The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World (Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 127–9. 10 Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), 230. 11 Ibid., 235.; Simon Schama, A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3000 BC– AD 1603 (London: BBC Books, 2002), 142. 12 John Guy, Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel (New York: Random House, 2012), 314–24. 13 Ibid., 245. 14 J.H. Black, ed., The Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Beket, Archbishop of Canterbury, from the Series of Lives and Legends Now Proved to Have Been Composed By Robert

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

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of Gloucester in Early English Poetry and Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages, Volume 19 (London: Printed for the Percy Society by T. Richards, 1846), 109. Guy, Thomas Becket, 321. Eriker Magnusson, ed., Thómas Saga Erkibyskups: A Life of Thomas Becket in Icelandic, Volume 2 (London: Longman & Co, 1883), 141. Donald S. Prudlo, “Martyrs on the Move: The Spread of the Cults of Thomas of Canterbury and Peter of Verona,” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 3, no. 2 (2011): 32–62. J.A. Giles, ed., The Life and Letters of Thomas à Becket, now first gathered from Contemporary Historians, Volume 2 (London: Whitacker & Co., 1846), 727. Ibid., 727. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Internet Medieval Sourcebook. “Roger of Hovedon: The Chronicle: On the Disputes between Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and King Henry II of England” (The Bronx, NY: Fordham University, 1998). http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/ hoveden-becket.asp. Ibid. Guy, Thomas Becket, 324–36. Mary G. Cheney, “The Compromise of Avranches of 1172 and the Spread of Canon Law,” English Historical Review 56, no. 222 (1941): 189. Thomas M. Jones, ed., The Becket Controversy (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1970), 30; Björn Weiler, “Kings and Sons: Princely Rebellions and the Structures of Revolt in Western Europe, c. 1170–1280,” Historical Research 82, no. 215 (2007): 21–2. Joseph Stevenson, trans., William of Newburgh, The Church Historians of England, Volume 4, Part II (London: Seeley’s, 1856), 493–5. Ibid. Magnusson, ed., Thómas Saga Erkibyskups, Volume 2, 176–7. I have drawn biographical details principally on Régine Pernoud’s 1966 book Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses, a sort of narrative compendium of primary source material, as well as the author’s later biography Joan of Arc: Her Story. This section is also indebted to Deborah A. Fraioli’s Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War for its macroscopic perspective. Régine Pernoud, Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (New York: Stein and Day, 1966), 207. Ibid., 214. Ibid., 237. Ibid., 238. Dyan Elliott, “Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment of Spirits, and Joan of Arc,” American Historical Review 107, no. 1 (2002): 26–54. All quotations of the Ditié de Jeanne d’Arc are from Leah Shopkow’s 2004 translation. Accessible at: www.indiana.edu/~dmdhist/joan.htm#christine. Régine Pernoud, The Retrial of Joan of Arc: The Evidence at the Trial for Her Rehabilitation, 1450–1456 (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1955), 246. Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 409. Dino Bigongiari, ed., The Political Ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Representative Selections (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1957), xxxiv. Cary J. Nederman, ed., Policraticus: On the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philsophers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Cary J. Nederman, “John of Salisbury’s Political Theory,” in A Companion to John of Salisbury, edited by Christophe Grellard and Frederique Lachaud (Boston: Brill, 2015), 258–88.

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42 Régine Pernoud, Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (New York: Stein and Day, 1966), 233. 43 Sidney N. Dean, trans., Saint Anselm: Proslogium; Monologium; An Appendix on Behalf of the Fool of Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo (La Salle, IL: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1951), 261.

5

The sacrificial conscience

To compare early modern social life with earlier periods is to engage with the quest that defines modern historical social science. It is, fundamentally, to compare “tradition” to “modernity”. It is to compare the world of Augustine—of two cities, each restlessly enduring the pilgrimage before Judgement—with the world of modern thinkers like Hobbes and Bodin, in which a great sovereign has swallowed the two cities, dissolving them into a new form of cohabitation in its bowels. In fairness, many of the great modern thinkers—Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, and many others—were more fundamentally concerned with the maturing modernity of the 18th and 19th centuries, drawing only implicitly on comparisons with the “dark ages” and the seismic ruptures of late 16th-century social life. But the great revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries—the revolutions of modernity—required the still greater shifts that occurred during the transition from the late medieval to the early modern period, when the fragile cultural unity of Christendom was shattered, and the fragile political unity of the early modern state was established. Shakespeare, a herald of modernity, wrote that “All the world’s a stage.” Following that metaphor, it might be said that the tumult of early modernity was a great shift in the theatrical production of Western social life. Whether gradual or sudden, the scenery has changed. And not just the scenery, but the cast. And not just the cast, but the script—its themes, its plot, its very language. Somehow, also, the audience has changed, as has even their relationship to the action on the stage. It is here, in thinking about how the audience, a public, relates to the drama of sovereignty, that martyrdom can offer a new perspective. Shifts in martyrdom—in the cultural materials that are used to construct sacrifice, and the uses to which those materials are put—interact with changes in sovereignty. Specifically, the struggles that produce cases of martyrdom crystalize cultural processes that are at the heart of changes in sovereignty: who can claim to be the arbiter of legitimate violence, to what uses legitimate violence might be put, or who can claim to be a rightful earthly mediator of transcendent good. Martyrs and martyrdom offer a new perspective on the shift from “traditional” to “modern” societies. Analyzing the changing nature of the martyr’s sacrifice provides a new perspective on the shifting nature of sovereignty and the

The sacrificial conscience 103 reconfiguration of cultural-religious meanings that attend to the rise of an early modern state sovereignty. This is something of a departure from the sociological theories of the early modern state which have come to dominate macro-historical inquiry on the subject. It is tempting to categorize this literature into antagonistic camps: the Marxists versus the Weberians, those who study culture against those who study conflict, or theories of raw power pitted against theories of varnished authority. In The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx offers a pithy analysis of the passage from the Middle Ages to early modernity. The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle . . . in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs . . . modern . . . society has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society. . . . Our epoch . . . possesses . . . this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms.1 That is the Marxist theory of Western modernization. The erosion of tradition and the rise of modernity involves a single engine, economic production, propelled by a single piston, class struggle. Never content with their founder’s precision, elegance, or simplicity, Marxist scholarship has devoted more than a century to torturing this theory with the blunt objects of obtuse language and historical variation. The period at hand—the transition Marx identified from feudalism to modern bourgeois society—enjoyed a brief but highly influential few years of prominence in Marxist historiography of the late 20th century. One of the most influential Marxist studies of this period was Immanuel Wallerstein’s first volume in his history of the world system. Wallerstein summarizes his argument as follows: from 1450 to 1640, “the capitalist world-economy was built on a world-wide division of labor . . . on the other hand, political action occurred primarily within the framework of states which, as a consequence of their different roles in the world economy were structured differently.”2 Describing the relationship of the state to capitalist modernity, Marx had famously said that “force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.”3 But in Wallerstein’s schema, the midwife is neglectful, seldom present for the action. Power, authority, and sovereignty are the oblivious handmaidens to capital, and only rise to significance in their failings. Thus, the decline of the Spanish and French empires enables the scrappy entrepreneurs of northern Europe to stretch their exploitative tentacles around the world. It is unfair to criticize a book for not answering questions it never thought to ask. Wallerstein was not interested in explaining the manifold changes induced by the rise of early modernity in Western Europe, but in describing the rise of a new, global economic system. But it is worth noting that Wallerstein’s comparative history, perhaps the most influential sociological study of the period, subordinates all cultural and political change (or, more precisely, super-ordinates these changes) to the world-wide division of labor.

104 The sacrificial conscience There were more politically and culturally minded attempts at a Marxist analysis of the early modern transition, like Perry Anderson’s 1974 book Lineages of the Absolutist State. But despite clear differences, Marxist historians of the early modern period are alike in what they leave out. Neither Wallerstein nor Anderson aspire to study the cultural changes that developed in the period. This is jarringly true in the case of Wallerstein. Anderson is less dismissive of the cultural changes afoot in the period between medievalism and modernity, but he refuses to be detained by them. Of course, there was a competing vision, that which might be called (keeping with canonical divisions) “Weberian”. To simplify, it might be said that Weber focused on changes in the cultural legitimation of rule, and was chiefly concerned with the transition from rule by tradition to rule by bureaucratic-legal rationality.4 This general concern would prove foundational to later historians like Marc Bloch, who chronicled the rise and decline of charismatic kingship, and Joseph Strayer, who offered a comparative study of incipient bureaucracies during the early Angevin and Capetian dynasties.5 The sociologist Reinhard Bendix would expand the Weberian timeline to the scale of a Wallerstein or Anderson, comparing the range of historical outcomes offered by the transition of systems of authority.6 As with all prolonged battles, it eventually becomes difficult to discern the allegiances of combatants, the bloodshed rendering opponents indistinguishable. There are those who have carried the Marxist banner of conflict away from the fallow fields of class antagonism. Foremost here is Charles Tilly, whose macrohistorical study of European states suggested that early modern powers emerged out of reinforcing cycles of war-making and taxation.7 So too with those social scientific studies which have focused on the relationship between the Reformation and early modern states. Daniel Nexon’s study of the religious dimensions of early modern power struggles elevates culture to a central role in state formation, while maintaining the primacy of inter-state conflict.8 The goal across all of the sociological literature on the transition to early modernity is to understand patterns of variation with regards to political absolutism, and by implication assess the variety of historical pathways to democratic modernization. What this literature fails to do—even in the case of culturalists like Bloch and Weberians like Bendix—is account for the deep cultural adjustments that necessarily enabled the massive shifts from feudal Christendom to early modernity. These are changes that occur in the spaces between the traditional camps, changes that occur in the viscous webs of meaning that form between popular belief and political power. Much of the historical-sociological literature on the social changes of early modernity have failed to connect structural transformation with lived experience. They have failed to connect the period’s most significant political transformation, the rise of the early modern centralized state, with its most impactful social development, the birth of a new culture of the individual. This is particularly striking given that so much of the grand theoretical literature in the sociological tradition has been an attempt to come to terms with the rise of an individualistic society.

The sacrificial conscience 105 How did the people of Western Europe reconcile an emerging popular belief in the emancipated individual amidst a period of rapid centralization, in which feudal kingdoms were transformed into states with an ever-increasing monopoly over force? This is a big question, asked here not in the hopes of locating a conclusive answer, but only to expose the poverty of current historical-sociological research on the period. In focusing almost exclusively on the structural causes of the early modern state, historical sociologists have tended to overlook the changes in social life and human culture that accompanied political realignment. This is noteworthy for many reasons, not least of which is the likely influence of culture on the trajectories of the state. Comparing disparate cases of martyrdom within this period, I hope to use differences across cases of ultimate sacrifice to illuminate the shifts in cultural understandings of legitimacy, power, and authority that occurred as the mercurial sovereign arrangements in feudal Christendom transformed into early modern sovereignty. At the same time, I hope to use these cases to distill the essential characteristics of martyrdom in early modernity.

Martyrdom in early modern England The selection of “early modern” martyrs faces a challenge almost diametrically opposite of that presented by their medieval predecessors. Where the martyrs of the Middle Ages appear singular, the sheer multitude of martyrs who might be categorized as “early modern” is overwhelming. The European Reformations, those seismic contractions which induced the formation of early modernity, were unrivalled in their martyrological enthusiasm. This is not merely because this was an era of unprecedented persecution, but also because the age was marked by the birth of a great martyrological machine. Aided by new printing technologies and new patrimonial networks, martyrologists like John Foxe (1516–1587), Antonio Gallonio (1556–1605), and Thieleman Jan van Braght (1625–1664) produced the foundations of a new form of commemorative community at once more literary than medieval devotion and more popular than the early Christian actum. For the sake of congruity, the selection of early modern martyrs will be limited to England and France. Even so, the quantity of martyrs produced in the relevant period and places is dizzying. Between the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, each successor to the English throne (and those who sought to abolish it) engaged in some conflict or prosecutorial violence which added to the litany of martyrs produced by Catholic, Protestant, and nonconforming commemorative communities. In France, the so-called Wars of Religion engulfed the region in a decades-long conflict that included acts of infamous popular violence like the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which ended with thousands of Protestants murdered in a 48-hour period. At this scale it becomes difficult to select any single case that might claim to be representative of martyrdom in the early modern period. With that in mind, this

106 The sacrificial conscience section offers a survey of English martyrs created by commemorative communities between the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. I have narrowed the abundant potential cases down based on three criteria: historical influence, uniqueness, and religious-political affiliation, with the ultimate goal of producing a survey that captures the breadth and complexity of martyrs produced in England’s first steps into early modernity. Within these parameters, Thomas More (1478–1535) is the first in line, his death and martyrdom first of an era and foremost in fame. More’s record as an intellect and writer, civil servant and persecutor, rebel and martyr, have motivated hagiographers and historians since his execution in 1535. With his canonization in the 20th century, More’s celebrity increased and, ironically, became increasingly secularized. He was briefly celebrated as a saint not just of the Catholic Church, but also of the human spirit and the powers of conscience over coercion.9 In recent years, More’s reputation has again withered under the scorching attention of a rigorist humanism that cannot abide contradiction, let alone superstition.10 Across the centuries, Thomas More’s interpreters have continually stumbled on the seemingly innocuous obstacle of periodization. Was More modern or medieval? Many a character study has fallen on the question, and all stagger on to the conclusion that he must have been both. For his admirers, it is More’s synthesis of the medieval and the modern that nurtured his finest qualities: an individual conscience and independent self (modern) that cohabitated with a clear devotion to a higher good (medieval), producing a man of unique and iron-clad principle. His detractors suggest that the fusion of medieval and modern rendered only contradiction, crippling a once promising humanist and leaving him an unprincipled fanatic.11 But if in life More contained multitudes, what of his death? Was his martyrdom also a sordid chimera of medieval and modern? In his manner of death More is frequently compared with Thomas Becket (a comparison urged by More in a late letter, and by circumstance—More was executed on the day of Becket’s translation). It is an instructive comparison. There are, of course, several coincidences: two Thomases face off against two Henrys, both conflicts generally involving some peculiar interaction of religion and politics. Both Thomas Becket and Thomas More were former loyal servants to the king, and both emerged from relatively marginal London families to positions of prominence. But to what extent do these symmetries extend into posthumous territory? The circumstances of More’s death need only be treated briefly. More, long a silent partner to Henry VIII’s ambition and desire, retired from the office of chancellor in 1532. His official reason for retirement was sickness, but this was likely an excuse. The same year that More retired, Parliament had drafted a series of documents at the behest of the king. The Supplication of the Ordinaries, the Act of Codified Restraints and Appeals, and The Submission of the Clergy, all produced in 1532, contributed to the separation of the English church from Rome.12 For More, devout in his orthodoxy, these developments breached the minor controversy of “the King’s Great Matter” (as his matrimonial crises were called), and brought the kingdom dangerously close to heresy.

The sacrificial conscience 107 But More’s distaste at these developments was harbored secretly in his retirement. Two years after retiring, Parliament passed a succession of bills that further established royal supremacy over the English church. The Act Respecting the Oath to the Succession, passed in 1534, intruded upon More’s contemplative retirement. More could not accept the terms of the oath, which compelled those who were asked not only to pledge loyalty to Henry VIII (something More would not have objected to), but to publicly accept Anne Boleyn as queen, honor the legitimacy of their offspring, and renounce the rights of “any foreign power or potentate” (i.e., the papacy) to influence English domestic life.13 When called upon to publicly take the oath, More tactfully declined: he would not denounce its words, nor would he commit to them. For this obstinacy, More was imprisoned for the period of a year in the Tower of London. During his imprisonment, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy (1534), which formally granted the king complete supremacy over the English church. This sealed More’s fate: in a brief interrogation, More seems to have slipped from silent obstinacy to vocal defiance, declaring that Parliament had no authority to declare the King of England to be the head of the country’s church. Days later, More was tried for treason. Though he astutely parried all of the accusations presented, he was inevitably found guilty and sentenced to death. He was beheaded in a public ceremony at Tower Hill on July 6, 1535. There is much in the precipitating details of More’s death to distinguish it from the murder of Thomas Becket. At the cultural level, the influence of the early Reformation offers a clear contrast with the culture of Christendom that suffused Becket’s murder. Becket and Henry II had quarreled over the institutional boundaries of a Christian polity, the broader, defining features of that society were never in question. The eventual verdict that found Thomas More guilty testifies to a much deeper conflict: not merely who might administer justice, but on what basis and, most profoundly, what just might be defined as. There are also stark political contrasts—namely, More’s trial and execution were both authored by Parliament, a far cry from the rogue knights who murdered the 12th-century Archbishop of Canterbury. In these broad contrasts, the case of Thomas More appears distinctly modern, even as the man himself fought to preserve the medieval legacies of men like Thomas Becket. If the circumstances of the death were tinged by early modernity, what of the martyrdom that followed? Perhaps most strikingly, Thomas More’s death was not followed by intense popular commemoration, and certainly not at the scale of Becket’s rapid ascent to acclaimed and universal sainthood. This is itself significant: though the Henrician reforms were just underway, they had effectively diminished the size of potential commemorative communities at the elite and popular level. At the level of popular culture, there is some evidence of commemoration, sometimes surreptitious and sometimes seditious. A biographer who was raised in Sussex in the years just following the execution recalled that More was a hero to the local boys, who were all raised on stories of his bravery.14 As early as 1539, prominent figures could be accused of treason for referring to More as a martyr.

108 The sacrificial conscience In 1544, the laymen German Gardner declared from the scaffold that he followed the path of Thomas More, willingly accepting death for treason rather than a life of heresy.15 These furtive instances of popular commemoration suggest that More’s death was important enough to register in the minds of common folk (and at a time when it might have paid to avoid even the appearance of traditional piety). But to understand More’s martyrdom requires turning to the earliest literary efforts at hagiography, written in the years after More’s death. In the early years of the Catholic Mary Tudor’s reign, as the monarchy sought to revive the remains of monastic life and traditional worship (a process ignited in part by the bonfires of persecution), lay English Catholics were attempting in their own ways to reconstitute after 20 years of anti-Catholic reforms in England. It was in this context, at a time of continuing conflict but also renewed hope for Catholics, that Thomas More’s son-in-law William Roper commissioned Nicholas Harpsfield to write a biography of More. In 1556, Roper began to compose his recollections of his father-in-law’s life and death in the hopes of providing Harpsfield with source material. Efforts to publish Roper’s recollections and Harspfield’s biography were confounded by Mary Tudor’s death and the permanent decline of English Catholicism under Elizabeth I (though Roper’s memoir would be published in Paris the following century). However, manuscripts of both works did circulate amongst English Catholic exiles in France and Rome, and also managed to be surreptitiously shared by the Catholic underground in England. Indeed, when More’s grandson Thomas Morell was arrested in April of 1582, his copy of Roper’s memoir proved a pivotal piece of evidence in his prosecution.16 Much of Roper’s recollections are devoted to More’s career and character—a man of “wit and forwardness”, “more pure and white than the whitest snow”.17 Throughout passages devoted to his career, More is described as loyal, productive, and widely admired for his intelligence. It is by virtue of these qualities that More is promoted to positions of power and influence, including the chancellorship and his brief stint as speaker of the House of Commons. But in Roper’s recollections, there are also premonitions of the conflict to come. He recalls an afternoon walk along the Thames, during which More declared that he had only three desires: peace between Christian princes, the resolution of doctrinal disputes in Rome, and the peaceful conclusion of Henry VIII’s matrimonial dispute. Roper suggests that More’s three desires are driven by nothing less than his complete devotion to Christendom.18 Roper recalls other, less ambiguous premonitions of his father-in-law’s fate: just before “his trouble” More is recorded as having spoken to his family of “the lives of holy martyrs, of their grievous martyrdoms, of their miraculous patience, and of their passions and deaths that they suffered rather than that they would offend God.”19 Roper continually foregrounds More’s devotion to catholic Christendom, a devotion that overwhelms all other loyalties, including those owed to the crown. By the time Roper comes to describe More’s conflict with the king, the author has already staged the scene, with More fully prepared to meet his end.

The sacrificial conscience 109 When he is finally called to Lambeth to face prosecution, More turns to his sonin-law and happily declares: “I thank Our Lord, the field is won.”20 More’s stint in the Tower of London is described by Roper in terms that are reminiscent of the stories of Thomas Becket and Joan of Arc. What would seemingly be an unpleasant experience is, for Thomas More, a period of redemption, even contentment. A month into his confinement, More tells his daughter that “God maketh me a wanton, and setteth me on his lap, and dandleth me.”21 Yet, as Roper builds a narrative of More’s sacrifice, the text begins to depart from the conventions of medieval martyrdom stories. Of More’s final sentencing, Roper recalls the ultimate rebuke More offered to his accusers. More suggests his relationship with the king, and the king’s noble traits, disprove any charge of treason: “the manifold goodness of the king’s highness . . . my singular good lord and gracious Sovereign, that hath so dearly loved and trusted me . . . were in my mind, my lords, matter sufficient to convince this slanderous surmise . . . so wrongfully imagined against me.”22 This is hardly the bitter clash of earthly powers and divine sovereignty depicted in medieval martyrs’ stories. While Roper depicts the court’s administrators and witnesses in an unflattering light, there is no challenge to the basic legitimacy of the court. In his final address to the court, given after his conviction, More does question the legitimacy of those laws he has been found guilty of violating: “May no temporal Prince presume by any law to take upon him . . . a spiritual pre-eminance by the mouth of our savior himself.”23 But his fiery denunciation of the Reformation Parliament comes to an ambivalent close. When told that all of England’s bishops and reputable theologians had approved of the laws except for him, More replies: “then I see little cause, my lord, why that thing in my conscience should make any change.” This dispassionate statement is made absurdly dramatic by the circumstances. Rather than pursue a fundamental assault on the legitimacy of the reforms, More shrugs and suggests that, given their general acceptance, no one should mind much if an old statesman rejects them in the quiet of his conscience. When, seven days after his conviction, More is told of his coming execution, he responds with more equanimity: I have been always much boundan to the kings Highness for the benefits and honours that he hath still from time to time most bountifully heaped upon me . . . and so, help me God . . . I am bound to His Highness that it pleaseth him so shortly to rid me out of the miseries of this wretched world. And therefore will I not fail earnestly to pay for his Grace, both here and also in another world.24 This is a dramatic, even revolutionary departure in the history of Western martyrdom. There had always been in the Christian tradition a certain willingness to die for the faith. Indeed, this was a consistent feature even in the earliest martyrdom stories. But the gratitude of More’s words is a departure from the condemnations voiced by Thomas Becket or the excoriations of Joan of Arc. It is perhaps

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easy to take Thomas More’s words as the product of his almost uniquely earnest faith. But even so, it is striking to consider how little Roper reflects on his fatherin-law’s persecutors. If More’s life and last words seem to strike a noble stand for Christendom, the early commemorative efforts of Roper seem indifferent to the traditional tropes of Christian martyrs. Almost no attention is given to the perpetrators of violence. Even at moments ripe for condemnation or critique, Roper emphasizes his father-in-law’s persistent loyalty and gratitude to the king. It may be that Roper’s proximity to Thomas More informed his own thinking on the execution, that his father-in-law’s acceptance of death and gratitude to Henry VIII prevented the son-in-law from slipping into indignation or radicalism. But even those 16th-century biographers who knew their subject less intimately approach government with a robust ambiguity. Nicholas Harpsfield’s The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, commissioned by Roper and likely written in 1557, offers a more traditional, if not purely impartial, biography. Harpsfield’s account of More’s life and death, based on research rather than memory, is more inclined to evaluation. Harspfield’s many digressions—on the character of Cardinal Wolsey, on Henry VIII’s attraction to Anne Boleyn—are colored with the author’s personal assessments regarding character and motive. Harpsfield is certain as to what Thomas More died for: the unification of Christendom. At the conclusion of the biography, Harpsfield expounds upon the unique role of the English nation within the history of Christianity, giving particular attention to the role England has played in conflicts over the faith.25 According to Harpsfield, More sacrificed his life for a unified Christendom, once again proving the special status of England within the history of the Church. But what violence was responsible for More’s death? Who did a Catholic observer blame for the martyr’s death? Harpsfield offers no transparent answer; still, blame and critique are not entirely absent. Perhaps surprisingly, Harpsfield is most critical of Cardinal Wolsey, a papal legate and More’s immediate predecessor in the chancellorship. This is startling given Wolsey’s devotion to the Holy See (however complicated and ineffectual). Yet it is Wolsey’s incompetence, his utter inability to offer the king sound advice and spiritual counsel, that Harpsfield blames for the king’s descent into impiety.26 If Wolsey receives much of the blame, a larger specter shadows much of the biography, driving the action and ultimately perpetuating the execution. This figure is not the king, who is faulted but largely absent from the text (as are the king’s chief advisors, Thomas Cromwell and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer). The catalyst of More’s execution is the spectral force of heresy. England is described as “lamentably overwhelmed” by “heinous and hideous schisms and heresies”, and Harpsfield argues that “there be no greater enemies to the commonwealth than wretched and disparate heretics.”27 For Harpsfield, the desecrating force of heresy had corrupted England, and Thomas More’s sacrifice, his stand for the unity of Christendom, “hath . . . triumphed upon the most grievous enemies that this realm has had.”28 In his death, More became “the most notable and valiant captain against these pestilent and

The sacrificial conscience 111 poisoned heretics.”29 As Harpsfield concludes his account of More’s martyrdom, he suggests that More’s death was a “blessed intercession” which moved God to “cast his pitiful eye” and restore the kingdom of England to its rightful place though “his blessed minister and Queen, Lady Mary, and by the noble, virtuous, excellent prelate Cardinal Pole”.30 Harpsfield’s Life and Death of Sir Thomas More is not the biography a modern reader might expect. The subject is, of course, presented as a model of virtue, and More’s own words make Harpsfield’s hagiographical efforts redundant. But this is not a story of conflict between a rapacious king and his pious servant. There is little overt conflict in Harpsfield’s biography, a surprise given the turmoil that accompanied the dramatic social changes of Reformation England. In Harpsfield’s telling, the martyrdom of Thomas More was produced by a conflict between the true and orthodox Christianity lodged in More’s conscience, and the heretical forces that had come to overwhelm England’s body politic. If More’s sacrifice was a “blessed intercession” against heresy, it was not, in Harpsfield’s consideration, an intercession against the violence of the crown. The primary threat in the biography, heresy, may have corrupted the temporal sovereign, but the fundamental legitimacy of monarchical sovereignty remains unquestioned. Three aspects of the biography’s conclusion might even be read as deferential, implicitly supporting the expansion of the crown’s power and authority. First, More’s sacrifice is characterized as the first “lay” martyrdom in English history. Harpsfield suggests that Thomas More is an heir to the English martyrological tradition embodied by the earlier sacrifice of Thomas Becket. But unlike Thomas Becket, Thomas More never held an office of the Church. In Harpsfield’s interpretation, this only amplifies the sanctity and glory of More’s martyrdom. Whereas Thomas Becket’s fight concerned law and justice, and was thus enmeshed in organizational and material concerns, More’s fight was one of personal conscience. Harpsfield’s biography argues that More’s struggle and death have inaugurated a new martyrological tradition unmediated by organizational loyalty, untainted by connivance and driven only by conscience. A martyrdom of conscience immediately diminishes the stakes of sacrifice, reducing transcendent or divine claims of truth and justice to the mercurial motives of the self. This is only further enforced by Harpsfield’s final characterization of Thomas More, whose death and sacrifice is ultimately equated with the death of Cicero, the semi-Stoic whose defense of the old Roman Republic had cost him his life in the first century BC Whatever one makes of this allusion, it is a far cry from Christ’s passion, the favored allusion of commemorative communities past. Harpsfield’s depiction of More as a new Cicero, dying for the purity of his conscience, suggests at least some sort of departure from the radical countersovereignty of the early Christians or the contra-sovereign sacrifice offered by medieval martyrs. But it is only in Harpsfield’s final paragraph that the implications of More’s martyrdom, of his sacrificial intercession, are made plain. What did More’s sacrifice produce? How can skeptical readers be assured that it was More’s conscience—rather than Henry VIII’s or Thomas Cranmer’s—that

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was justified and true? Harpsfield can find no better proof than the ascendance of Mary Tudor, a good Catholic ruler, and her aide-de-camp, the loyal Catholic Cardinal Pole. If in life Thomas More strained to uphold and maintain the cultural essence of medieval Christendom, in death he was thrown into early modernity, the first in a new genus of martyrs. Of course, such a vocal proponent of the old often appears out of place in the new, and thus his commemoration could not help but be muddled and, often enough, contradictory. But More was hardly the only English martyr produced by the Reformation and the birth of the early modern English state. In fact, an entire industry would develop devoted to producing the new martyr, its massive commemorative machinery smoothing and polishing the details that appear so rough in More’s martyrdom. Just one year after Harpsfield’s biography of More was published, the accession of Elizabeth I heralded the final defeat of Catholicism in England. In the early years of her reign, the Protestant John Foxe would publish a catalogue of Christian martyrs from the faith’s early days to the time of “our gracious lady now reigning”. Foxe’s book was first published in 1563 as “The Actes and Monumentes touching things DONE AND PRACTISED BY THE Prelates of the Romishe Churche . . . with such persecutions, and horrible troubles, as have haypened in these last and pearilous dayes . . .”, the title continuing on and running out at a length of 91 words. Popularly known as The Acts and Monuments, and more recently as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the text is perhaps the longest, and certainly the most successful, martyrology ever created. Foxe’s book has been credited with catalyzing early modern British identity, inspiring centuries of anti-Catholicism, and establishing a model for titillating mass market publications.31 Writing The Acts and Monuments in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, Foxe had to form meaning out of decades of persecution at a time of uncertainty and faint promise for the Protestant cause. The challenge of commemoration in the wake of rapid social change is most clearly demonstrated in Foxe’s account of the Marian martyrs, those Protestants killed not by a reform-minded king but by the avowed Catholic Mary Tudor. The case of Thomas Cranmer, former archbishop of Canterbury and death bed companion to Henry VIII is particularly compelling. Shortly after the accession of Mary Tudor in 1553, the archbishop was sent to the Tower of London accused of treason. Subsequently transferred to a prison in Oxford, Cranmer was tried under papal jurisdiction and on December 4, 1555 was found guilty of heresy and deprived of his archbishopric. In the following months, Cranmer issued several recantations, each successive iteration growing more desperate as his execution day approached. Yet despite submitting to the monarch, acknowledging papal supremacy, disavowing Luther, and accepting transubstantiation (that is, repudiating his entire theological legacy), and in defiance of the standard practice of absolution typically granted after such recantations, Cranmer’s death sentence was upheld by the queen. He was burned alive on a stake in Oxford on March 21, 1556.

The sacrificial conscience 113 Cranmer’s manner of death complicated his commemoration. He had been a leading figure of the Reformation in the courts of Henry VIII and Edward VI. But his recantations, recorded and widely circulated by Marian loyalists, presented an immediate obstacle for potential commemorative interpreters like John Foxe. Yet in The Acts and Monuments Foxe was able to forge a case of ultimate sacrifice from Cranmer’s death, and to do so without defaming the monarchy (or even the Catholic monarch Mary Tudor). Thomas Cranmer’s examinations were scholastic in nature, and Foxe offers the theological back and forth in long form (despite its reputation for gore and sadism, The Acts and Monuments contains a high proportion of the sort of theological arguments that might strike a contemporary reader as uniquely bloodless). But at the conclusion of these tempestuous dialectical dialogues, in which Cranmer artfully bends between tradition and reformation, Foxe must accommodate Cranmer’s lapsing back into Romeish ways. Foxe remedies this biographical blemish first by establishing much evidence of Cranmer’s virtues. He was never corrupted by money, he was generous, and he was an open and liberal-minded scholar. So pure was Cranmer’s heart, that when Henry VIII attempted to murder his daughter Mary, Cranmer intervened and saved her life, in full knowledge that she might grow up to become a Catholic queen32 In Foxe’s telling, Cranmer’s affection for the child Mary grew and matured into an honest and pure loyalty. Foxe recounts how, after Mary’s accession the archbishop was detained for publically denouncing attempts to reconcile with Rome. At his initial interrogation, Cranmer despairingly expresses “the greatest greefe I have . . . one of the greatest that ever I had in al my lyfe, to se the kyng and Quenes maiestyes by their Proctos here to beco my accusers.”33 Cranmer continues with a recognition of the Queen’s authority: “theyr maiesties have sufficient auctorite & power both from God, and by ordinunce of the realm to punish me.”34 Cranmer continues with an extended meditation on the powers of the English monarch, which are “supreme” and undivided, and the powers claimed by the papacy, which erroneously claim spiritual supremacy over the monarch. This develops into a crisis of conscience: Cranmer knows that the queen is an absolute sovereign, but what if the queen submits to the foreign (and specious) authority of the papacy? In Foxe’s telling, Cranmer’s subsequent tribulations, his wavering and his recantations, are a response to the intractable dilemma of a conscience completely loyal to the monarch, but in full knowledge of the monarch’s corruption.35 Cranmer summarized his own predicament well in a letter to the queen published in The Acts and Monuments, noting that he resisted papal authority because of his “bounden dutye to the crown, liberties lawes and customes of thys realme of England, but most specially to discharge my conscience in vttering the truths to Gods glory”.36 In The Acts and Monuments, Cranmer’s struggles, his lapses, and his final triumphs are, much like the stories of Thomas More (whom Cranmer had interrogated 20 years earlier), a battle of the conscience, torn between the truth of royal sovereignty, divine truth, and the belief that the two are in some profound way interdependent. Foxe’s resolution to this struggle (for it

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was Foxe who made the martyr) is ultimately not dissimilar from his contemporaries Roper and Harpsfield. Having established the legitimacy of Cranmer’s conscience, Foxe is brief on Cranmer’s lapse. And in any case, Cranmer’s recantation was but a stumble, and in Foxe’s telling the archbishop’s conscience was shortly rectified. On the March 21, 1556, Cranmer was taken to a sermon, where he was presented on stage so that he might read his recantation and publically humiliate the Protestant cause. Speaking from the pulpit, Cranmer was “never before more gloriously” exemplifying “true humilitie . . . sincere pacience, ardet criying to God, depe sighing in spirit”.37 But after exhorting his audience to practice Christian love and charity, Cranmer quickly denounced both papal supremacy and the doctrine of transubstantiation. Foxe reports that the audience was “astonished, dyd marueyle”, at Cranmer’s unanticipated denunciations, and suggests that cruelty had never been “more notably or better deluded and deceiued”.38 He was dragged from the pulpit, taken to the place where his pyre had been prepared, and chained to the stake. As the flames rose, Cranmer appeared a model of “constancie and stedfastness”.39 Reflecting on the death, Foxe describes Cranmer as the “very middle man of all the Martyrs”.40 It might seem a curious statement given Cranmer’s preeminent position within English Protestantism and his prominent role in the The Acts and Monuments. But Foxe seems to be using “middle” in two distinct ways. First, Cramner was executed approximately halfway through the Marian persecution, and his death connects early Henrician and Edwardian reformers to those who came of age in the Marian persecutions. But more importantly, Foxe seems to be suggesting that Cranmer is something of a composite or average of English Protestant martyrdom. Cranmer’s struggle, though heightened and extended, is paradigmatic of the struggle that tears at the seams of the early modern conscience. It was clear enough to Foxe (and presumably Cranmer) who was at fault for this violence abuse of conscience. The heresy of Roman Catholicism corrupted all that it touched. And, as with generations of Christian martyrs, the martyrs of Foxe’s book, from Cranmer on died for their faith. It would be easy to halt the analysis there, to suggest that Foxe’s Acts and Monuments is the product of a persecuting society in which one’s enemies are satanic agents who must be destroyed at any cost. From this perspective, the difference between ancient and medieval martyrdom on the one hand, and early modern on the other, is that where in the former the agents of desecrating violence are (for all their faults) human, in the latter the enemy is something else, more oppressive and worthy of retribution. This perspective fits easily into the canonical historical interpretations of the period: that various social changes induced a sort of mania or violent irrationality, and that the early modern state emerged and consolidated in the following centuries in order to rescue European civilization from the throes of militant superstition. There may be something to this interpretation, but it misses the substance of 16th-century English martyrdom for all of its fiery rhetoric. Beneath the tirade and polemic, martyrologies of both the Protestant and Catholic traditions converge in several shared qualities. These same qualities do not fit easily into the analysis

The sacrificial conscience 115 of sectarian warfare and enlightened sovereignty outlined in the preceding paragraph. What unites Thomas More and his interrogator Thomas Cranmer is conscience. Both men may have died for a truth inherited from early Christians, but the nature of that truth, confined to the interior reflection of the person, is a faint shadow of the world-rejecting Christianity of Perpetua and Polycarp. Conscience moves on the currents of contemporary events, sometimes lulled and sometimes thrashed, sometimes offering resistance but often in repose. Conscience can only ever be of this world. More and Cranmer were martyrs to personal conscience—a conscience formed by Christian tradition, but conscience all the same. Conscience is a strikingly ecumenical concept in English Protestant and Catholic commemorative communities. Not only is it central to, even defining of martyrological traditions, but controversialists from both parties, otherwise bitter enemies like Harpsfield and Foxe, approach the concept on essentially equal terms. In every case, conscience exists in absolute opposition to heresy. Heresy authors the horrible violence of persecution, but conscience redeems the persecuted to form the pure sacrifice of martyrdom. The power of heresy—Protestant or Roman Catholic—overwhelms all it touches, but it never touches the righteous conscience. Foxe assures his readers that Cranmer may have affirmed the Catholic creed with his signatures, but he was never truly at risk of falling into heresy. A solid conscience is an armor that heresy cannot pierce. This might seem an oddly mellow conflict—two wholly opposed forces utterly incapable of meeting, the sort of battle one sees in the stagecraft of scripted wrestling matches. But conscience and heresy are each equipped with violence by their intermediary, the royal sovereign. If the martyr’s conscience is never truly bothered by heresy, it is perpetually vexed by the sovereign, who is always both the most powerful vessel of divine authority but also, incongruously, constantly susceptible to the whispers of a well-placed heretic. Conscience is, then, both a cause of the martyr’s predicaments (personal and prosecutorial), but also its solution. The martyr’s crisis of conscience is produced by a theological commitment which is mediated by sovereign authority. A corrupted sovereignty disorients that commitment, sending loyal servants of the crown like Cranmer and More into a spiral of doubt and grief and further doubt. How to articulate the truth of one’s conscience without critiquing a sovereign who, however corrupted they may be individually, remains its cornerstone? It is at this point that the early modern martyrologists sets to work, solving the dilemma through the work of commemoration. For it is only in death, and in the words of grief that follow, that the crisis of conscience can be fully resolved. The commemorative community, whether Harpsfield on More or Foxe on Cranmer, can see what the martyr could not: that their sacrifice in death is a restorative measure. For Harpsfield, More’s sacrifice nudged God into promoting Mary Tudor. Foxe is just as confident that the Marian martyrs catalyzed the rise of Elizabeth. In all cases, the noble conscience which is offered in sacrifice reaffirms its central premise while resolving its contradictions. Between Thomas More and Thomas Cranmer—or, more accurately, between Nicholas Harspfield and John Foxe—a new martyr appears to be forming. In the

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commemoration of Thomas Becket in the 12th century, the forces of desecrating violence were urged on by a corrupting sovereignty. The medieval sovereign was a necessary organ of the body politic, but if its desire for domination went unchecked, then the polity would expect a metastasis of sin. In the medieval martyr these malignant monarchies faced a potent treatment, for medieval martyrs like Becket, fueled by righteousness and armed with miracles, were a reminder of a higher power, a rebuke to political ambition that could marshal tremendous public excitement. By contrast, the author of desecration in 16th-century martyrologies is the noxious vapor of heresy, occasionally embodied by the distant figure of the Pope or Martin Luther. This change produces an unlikely effect on the role of the sovereign in martyrologies: still ostensibly culpable for the violence of persecution, they are nevertheless absolved of their brutality. Avarice and unjust violence, which had previously been thought of as a threat inherent to earthly sovereignty, are now, for early modern commemorative communities, an aberration induced by a sort of demonic possession. Gone is the sacred heart of Jesus, with its overwhelming other-worldly commands, displaced by the whinging heart of individual conscience. This change does not merely muffle the critique of the sovereign, but reverses it: the sacrifice of the pure conscience restores the true nature of the sovereign rather than rebuking it. In these early modern martyrologies, the sovereign is not quite wholly sacred, but offers a compelling earthly reflection of divine will. Perhaps these changes are confined to 16th-century England. In that country the monarchy was comparatively strong and the ecclesiocracy fairly pliable. It follows that commemorative communities in 16th-century England might be more likely than their continental peers to appeal to monarchy and use religious difference to achieve political ends. To assess this possibility requires turning once again to France.

Protestant martyrology in early modern France: Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques The violence and tumult of 16th- and early 17th-century France is, at least in its scale, incomparable to the English Reformations of the 16th century. The Marian persecutions, often taken as paradigmatic of “religious violence” and persecution resulted in approximately 300 executions over the course of eight years. By contrast, in 1572 a brief burst of mass violence across France, known as the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, resulted in the deaths of perhaps as many as 100,000 suspected Protestants in a period of just three days. Viewed from a safe distance, the Reformations of early modern France and England do, of course, share the vague marks of their time. Each involves a massive change in culture induced by Protestantism and born by persecution. Yet in their particulars, the cases diverge. As the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre suggests, the scale of violence in early modern France was massive. Where the English Reformations are often (mistakenly) viewed as merely productions of

The sacrificial conscience 117 royal machination, the French Reformations are just as often associated with war and mass mobilization. The French “Wars of Religion”, a series of conflicts between Catholic and Protestant partisans during the second half of the 16th century, involved the combination of a weak monarchy, mass mobilization and popular violence, and an intractable regional elite financed and encouraged by foreign powers. In these essential qualities the period offers a marked contrast to reformation England. These differences extended to persecution. While the violence of certain aspects of reformation England was certainly harrowing, it never reached the nightmarish qualities of the adjacent persecutions in France. If, in the long interrogations of Thomas More and Thomas Cranmer one detects the faint odors of Enlightenment humanism, similar accounts of persecution in early modern France wreak only of brutality, sadism, and the basest depths of human cruelty. In 1542, a young Parisian heretic had his tongue cut out in public. The executioner proceeded to slap the boy with his tongue, before offering it to an assembled crowd, who then “picked up the still throbbing tongue and threw it back in the young man’s face.”41 Scenes like this suggest a prosecutorial violence at once more carnivalesque and more cruel than persecution in England. One historian has dubbed this aspect of French prosecutorial violence the “Theatre of Martyrdom”, for the violence was not only a public spectacle, but a highly choreographed one.42 Thus, condemned heretics were often forced to wear demeaning costumes, and executions often followed lengthy public processions, during which the possibility of popular violence often threatened to engulf the heretic before they reached the pyre. Given the broad differences in circumstance and the dramatic distinctions in prosecutorial violence, it is worth examining French martyrologies with the goal of testing the preceding analysis of early modern English martyrs and their commemorative communities. This is particularly necessary given the divergent roles of the monarchy in each case, as well as the comparative success of Catholicism in the French case. The symmetry between English martyrologies and their French equivalents— the Protestant Jean Crespin’s 1554 Livres des Martyrs and 1570 Histoire des vrays testmoins—beckon for comparison, particularly given the diverging historical outcomes of England and France. Yet the sources of symmetry between 16th-century French and English martyrologies also creates challenges for comparison. Crespin, the most prominent and influential of the Francophone martyrologists, produced his work while exiled in Geneva. There he encountered the lively international Protestant community, including none other than John Foxe. This encounter influenced both writers to such an extent that entire passages of their respective martyrologies appear as perfectly translated reflections of one another. This cross-pollination would make it difficult to assess the authenticity or independence of Crespin’s own conception of martyrdom, sacrifice, and royal sovereignty. In order to assess the French martyrological tradition in its own right it is necessary to look beyond the work of Crespin to his peers. One figure of particular

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interest is Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, a scholar, aristocrat, warrior, and committed Protestant who spent his later years in Geneva. Agrippa d’Aubigné was born in February 1552 and raised in a Calvinist household. He was inculcated in an age of rapidly escalating tension and violence. In d’Aubigné’s adolescence, the Conspiracy of Amboise and the Massacre of Vassy would transform sporadic fits of prosecutorial violence into an all-out war between Protestant (or Huguenot) and Catholic partisans, each group led by an aristocratic house with the royal sovereign caught between the two.43 In 1562 d’Aubigné was arrested with his Calvinist teacher and fellow students as they fled Paris following the Massacre of Vassy.44 Ten years old, d’Aubigné was sentenced to death along with his fellow companions. Narrowly escaping, d’Aubigné went on to study at the University of Orleans and later in the Calvinist refuge of Geneva. In 1568, at the age of 16, d’Aubigné joined Protestant forces in a series of sieges, transitioning from student to warrior of the faith and quickly gaining a reputation for valor. In 1570 a truce brought freedoms for French Protestants, but it was short-lived: the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre initiated a new round of violence, and d’Aubigné was shortly thereafter back on the battlefield. Beginning in 1573, d’Aubigné would serve as an aide to Henry of Navarre, a Bourbon prince and a leader of French Protestantism. The next decade of d’Aubigné’s life was tumultuous, a succession of wars punctuated by brief periods at the court of Navarre. The wars reached a fiery crescendo in 1584, when a Valois heir to the French throne died, leaving the Protestant Henry of Navarre the rightful heir upon the death of Henry III. The recently formed Catholic League put up a bitter fight to prevent Henry of Navarre from living out the role of heir. In 1589, Henry III was assassinated. When Henry of Navarre acceded the French throne as Henry IV of France he inherited a fractured kingdom and the enmity of his foes in the Catholic League. A year later, amidst seemingly endless skirmishes, Henry IV announced he would consider converting to Catholicism after he had heard from the learned theologians of both sides. In 1593, Henry IV vowed to abjure Protestantism and accept Catholicism, so long as the leadership of the Catholic League supported him. The accession of a king who had both Protestant credentials and the willingness to convert to Catholicism effectively diminished the momentum of sectarian conflict (peace was likely aided by the fatigue from a decades-long conflict, an economically devastated countryside, and the hobbling of the Catholic League’s leadership). In 1598, Henry IV issues the Edict of Nantes, granting Protestants wide liberties and diminishing any further popular support for violent conflict. D’Aubigné was crestfallen. As a loyal aide to the king, he felt he had lost a once righteous crusader for French Protestantism to a Catholic cabal. Freedom to worship and hold political office meant nothing if the nation and its ruler were Catholic. Retiring from court, d’Aubigné devoted the rest of his life to recording French Protestant history, eventually taking flight to Geneva in 1620 during the reign of Louis VIII, apparently fearful of persecution.

The sacrificial conscience 119 D’Aubigné’s biography, so marked by the velocity and rigor of late 16thcentury France, makes him somewhat unique among martyrologists of the time. He was a successful soldier, achieved influence in the French Protestant community and for a time held sway in the French court. Yet his personal successes coincided with the defeat of political Protestantism in France, and despite his enduring affection for Henry IV, d’Aubigné harbored resentments against the sovereign and developed a reputation late in life as a mild critic of monarchy and centralized sovereignty. Surely this influential voice of radical, politicized Protestantism would be able to harness the counter-sovereign legacy of martyrdom? After retiring from court, d’Aubigné was prodigious in his publishing efforts, composing a bestiary in verse, a collection of poetry, a narrative history of recent French wars, and his memoirs. But it was his seven-book verse drama Les Tragiques, published in 1616 after decades of labor, for which d’Aubigné gained his literary fame. Les Tragiques is d’Aubigné’s attempt to frame the violent strife of 16th-century France within a Protestant, Calvinist cosmological narrative. The first three books detail the general misery of the French kingdom and its political corruption. This is followed by an account of the suffering and struggles of French Protestants, the divine punishments wrought on Catholic persecutors, and lastly the Final Judgement. Of all the martyrologies of the Protestant Reformation, Les Tragiques seems to offer the most concerted effort to capture and claim the legacy of the early Christian martyrs. While martyrologists like Crespin and Foxe inevitably included a catalogue of early Christian martyrs, the poetry and eschatology of Les Tragiques infuses the work with something of the radical, world-rejecting asceticism of the early Christians. Much of Les Tragiques will be familiar to readers of early modern polemic and martyrology. The villain who creeps through each of the poem’s books is, once again, the vaporous figure of heresy. Sometimes personified in the form of the pope or the Cardinal of Lorraine, other times possessing the once noble leaders of France, heresy is the source of all that is wrong in France. But there are new characters too. The reader may be startled to encounter people who “are not Great, but simple peasants”, “fleeing people, hounded from their villages”.45 Though Les Tragiques revives the tropes of early modern polemic, it expands the scale of conflict to encompass the wide swath of humanity whose lives have become disturbed by the violence of heresy. The violence and violation of the poem reach well beyond the dogmatic cruelty of persecution. D’Aubigné describes a countryside destroyed by lawlessness and famine, and recalls scenes of rape, pillaging, and the cannibalism of children. This is not a text likely to contain passages of theological debate or conflicts of conscience; the dread of heresy is not abstract, but a real violence that plagues the entire populace and threatens to plunge the countryside into horror and depravity. Thus, while Les Tragiques does not eschew the general formula of early modern martyrology, it does expand or perhaps exaggerate the violent powers of heresy, which now rakes its claws over a whole population of innocents. In the face of such overwhelming violence, the martyr’s sacrifice becomes less a matter of an

120 The sacrificial conscience overwhelmed conscience than a mere consequence of living a pure Christian life amidst the desecrating cruelty of heresy D’Aubigné interlaces accounts of popular sacrifice with references to the Christian martyrological tradition, with particular attention paid to early Christian martyrs, but also to the recent persecutions of English martyrs like Thomas Cranmer. Les Tragiques is foremost a lamentation for the French kingdom and its long-suffering people, but throughout his horrifying accounts of the miseries of 16th century France d’Aubigné draws upon the long history of Christian persecution, casting the traumas of reformation France as the latest chapter in Christian history, ultimately bringing the French people toward a final and ultimate deliverance. Given the general apocalypticism of Les Tragiques, it is not surprising that d’Aubigné’s analysis of temporal powers should contain the most stinging criticism of monarchy in the canon of Reformation martyrdom. In the section of Les Tragiques devoted to power (Book II, Les Princes), d’Aubigné describes the “bloody tyrants” as responsible for “bloody massacres”.46 But how does d’Aubigné, a former courtier, account for the corruption of noble kings and their transformation into tyrants? In search of an explanation, d’Aubigné locates a surprising villain: French courtly life. This is a startling diagnosis, particularly given that the bulk of Les Tragiques is devoted to chronicling the everyday indignities of suffering of commoners in the French countryside. D’Aubigné writes that much of the ongoing violence in France is owed to the work of “flatterers” at court who “sing of vices . . . in terms chosen to paint delights.”47 These courtiers disguise “Nero as beloved Trajan”.48 D’Aubigné warns: “Princes, do not lend yourselves to flatterers:/. . . I see almost no one saved from their snares.”49 It is the flatterer who “Makes the king not half, but the entire enemy.”50 D’Aubigné goes so far as to argue that “there is nothing to choose between false counsel and an iniquitous king!”51 Here, the central cause of tyrannical violence is not a king, but a corrupted court in which malign advisors become indistinguishable from the corrupt monarch. Why, in a poetic history of the suffering and sacrifice of French Protestants, does d’Aubigné’s critique of royal power fixate on courtly intrigue? What does it mean that the fire of d’Aubigné’s pen lingers on flatterers and courtly advisors? Why does the conclusion of Les Princes directly address those who “draw . . . support from tyrants” rather than the tyrant himself?52 The answer to these questions is simple: d’Aubigné was not a critic of monarchy or even an opponent of absolutism. For d’Aubigné, the only logical solution to a corrupt monarch is an enlightened and ennobled successor. This is why, for all of the poetic fury d’Aubigné directs at the abstract concept of tyranny, the poet devotes his attention and directs his condemnation toward the flatterers at court. Kings are, in d’Aubigné’s phrasing, a breed of lions, a species apart from humanity, born to rule. There is nothing innate in the leonine monarch which predisposes him to tyranny. It is flatterers and advisors who are responsible for turning kings into cowards, dogs, hermaphrodites, and women (all d’Aubigné’s preferred insults for the tyrant).

The sacrificial conscience 121 Focusing his derision on courtly life, rather than on rulers, allows d’Aubigné to develop a critique of tyranny that is wholly detached from monarchy. The chief cause of tyranny is not the structure of monarchic sovereignty, but its corruption. Even in this, the most critical account of temporal power reviewed thus far, the true villain is revealed to be heresy, which is pedaled by malignant forces at court and blinds the monarch to truth and justice. D’Aubigné’s study of the decadent corruption of courtly life is not, then, as out of place within Les Tragiques as it first seems. In analyzing the perverse working of flatterers and advisors, d’Aubigné is extending his chronicles of the violence wrought by heresy. So powerful is this evil that it extends its talons from the arms of the French hinterland to the royal palaces of the monarch. In the face of such an opponent, virtue and truth must struggle, suffer, and sacrifice, nobly embodied by the Protestant martyrs. But their suffering is not without purpose or direction. Because d’Aubigné withholds from criticizing monarchic sovereignty, he can look to deliverance from a ruler who embodies virtue and truth. What might this enlightened, virtuous monarch look like? In d’Aubigné’s succinct assessment, he is a “secondary God, or image of God”.53 Far from a critic of monarchy, d’Aubigné seems to be an early promoter of the divine and absolute right of kings. If d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques exaggerates many of the features of early modern martyrology, liberally drawing on poetic license to describe a horrific tableau of cruelty and sacrifice, it also manages to replicate, perhaps even perfect the genre’s most fundamental elements. Beneath its literary flourishes, Les Tragiques is a story of violent opposition between the forces of heresy and their victims, innocent Protestants who nobly sacrifice for truth and virtue. In the midst of this violence is the sovereign, a figure whose corruption by heresy is absolved by the divine mandate which legitimates all monarchs. At the conclusion of the second book of Les Tragiques, d’Aubigné directs his verse at the courtiers in direct address. Here, in the final stages of the section of his poem dedicated to critiquing French power, he admonishes the courtesan. He admonishes the courtly reader for the fact that in flattering the monarch they do a disservice to king and country. It is the courtier’s flattering that dooms the king to tyranny and the kingdom to tragedy. Once again, the matter of conscience creeps into the scene, having migrated from the martyr’s heart to the sovereign’s chamber. Much in the way that a purified conscience can resolve a martyr’s frustrations, it can also, when guided by truth, shape the sovereign into d’Aubigné’s longed-for earthly deity. Addressing the courtier, d’Aubigné alternates between entreatment and admonishment, pleading with these potential purveyors of good conscience to be virtuous and true and chastising them for their shortcomings. With this conclusion, d’Aubigné brings all of the loose elements of early modern martyrologies together. Just as a conscience shaped by truth and justice can lead a steadfast believer to violent sacrifice, it can also deliver a people from suffering in the form of a godly sovereign. What d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques adds to our understanding of early modern martyrdom is a perspective on how conscience also relates to the early modern

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sovereign. Where the violence of a medieval monarch could be condemned for denying a transcendent truth or good (e.g., John of Salisbury’s divinely ordered body politic), the early modern martyrology, focused on an opposition between good conscience and heresy, has little recourse to transcendent critique. This may explain why monarchs get so little attention in early modern martyrologies. But where temporal sovereigns are criticized, as in Les Tragiques, the author must return to conscience, the strongest force available to prevent or minimize sovereign violence. When d’Aubigné beseeches the courtiers, he is not criticizing the civilizing process, but pleading for it. Conscience is the vehicle through which the civilizing process influences human action. Conscience can have a potentially tranquilizing influence; it is also impermanent, individual, and immanent. It can be sued to rebuke and redress individuals, but it cannot form the basis of a substantive critique of sovereign violence. Thus, the only hope for d’Aubigné is to limit or restrain or enlighten the sovereign through the work of virtuous and truthful courtiers. The sovereign, now a sort of god on earth, cannot be rebuked from on high, but can only be reformed in his own halls.

Qualis rex, talis Grex As the king goes, so go the people: a truth widely accepted by medieval Christians. Modern thinkers have tried to bend this observation into a causal statement, their efforts resulting in the now largely discredited “Great Man” theories of history. But our medieval forerunners were not social scientists—they did not believe that the actions of a medieval sovereign determined the character of a people. Qualis rex, talis Grex is a descriptive, rather than causal statement. But what is it describing? Certainly not a perfect symmetry between king and people: the medieval sovereign was hardly a perfect representative of its people. For practical purposes, the parcellized sovereignty of medieval life meant that kings alone could not claim to represent a people, nor could a single monarch hope to shape an entire people into their own image. Of course, over centuries the truth of this aphorism adapted to circumstance. The early modern state operated in practice and theory as an entity which could claim to represent a people and influence them. If “Great Man” theories of history ever held explanatory power, it was in these, the earliest days of the state, when sovereign authority resided in individuals and sovereign power extended over larger and increasingly solidified territory. In terms of intellectual history, this transformation is captured most clearly in the rupture between John of Salisbury’s treaty on kingship and the body politic and early modern theorists like Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin.54 For John of Salisbury, the body politic was not defined in terms of an absolute governmental sovereignty, but by the correspondence of interdependent parts. The parcellization of sovereignty, of power and authority, through these various social organs meant that the sovereign monarch held necessarily finite, if still exceptional, powers and authorities. In Hobbes and Bodin, by contrast, society is coterminous with

The sacrificial conscience 123 monarchical sovereignty. Just as strikingly, both Bodin and Hobbes suggest—in stark contrast to John of Salisbury—that sovereignty is a singular force, indivisible and wholly contained within the figure of the earthly sovereign. These basic suppositions mean that despite their sectarian differences and varied political allegiances, Bodin and Hobbes offer a complementary vision of early modern social order that is unified in its opposition to the medieval notions of the body politic. Much effort has been put into understanding the causes of the early modern state, how the earthly sovereign could go from one organ of the social body to the body itself. Sociologists and social scientific historians have tended to concentrate on a variety of causal processes relating to conflict and cultural rationalization. Analysists have identified regional conflict, global economic expansion, taxation, and the birth of centralized bureaucracies as particularly salient forces in the development of early modern states.55 Regardless of the particular causal paths emphasized in these studies, all conclude in the emergence of a new social order: national borders hardened by conflict, efficient bureaucrats steeled by the challenges of extractive taxation, and ever-more centralized states who now wield a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. Sovereignty is utterly changed, and Western social life enters early modernity. But the shift toward early modernity and the early modern state are not purely structural. The birth of early modernity has also been of particular interest to intellectual historians. Here, there is a tendency to locate the roots of Western modernity in particular shifts in thought and discourse, particularly in theology and religion. Thus, for Karl Löwith and later John Gray the early modern thinkers are characterized by their early efforts to “secularize” Christian notions of history and progress.56 For others, Hans Blumenberg, the young Jürgen Habermas, and more recently Mark Lilla, early modernity is distinguished by intellectual attempts to construct a wall between religious considerations and public rationality.57 Still others have attempted to explain early modernity with reference to both its social structural and intellectual components. This was Weber’s goal in unwrapping the relationship between the Protestant ethic and modern capitalism. Foucault’s historical studies are moved by similar aspirations, mining discourse and institutions to comprehend modern power. The challenge of explaining early modernity, whether in causal investigations of the early modern state or hermeneutic studies of early modern thought, is rather neatly captured by a surprising source, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In a late article, Bourdieu suggested that, “To endeavor to understand the state is to take the risk of taking over (or being taken over by) a thought of the state.”58 This is just to say that as the closest historical approximation of the ideal of sovereignty, the modern state has displayed an unparalleled and adept effort to monopolize most fields of social life. This monopolization extends over the categories and practices of knowledge which we use to describe and analyze the state. Bourdieu’s own solution to this dilemma, a solution that runs parallel to the efforts of Weber, Foucault, Elias, and others, is to overcome the common opposition drawn between the “physicalist version of the social world” (e.g., Marx,

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Tilly) and the “semiological vision which portrays them [social relations] as relations of symbolic force”.59 The object of this historical-sociological analysis is to comprehend the “minds of the state”, the “properly symbolic dimension of the power of the state” which appears as “primordial political belief”.60 What Bourdieu is suggesting is that to understand the state one must endeavor to think beyond either its raw capability to enact violence (i.e., war-making, a la Tilly) or its cultural reality (i.e., the modern rationality and authority of the pure Weberian), and rather focus on the relationship between the cultural reality of the state and the physical reality of state violence. It is only here, in the domain of violent symbols and symbolic violence that one can comprehend the state without succumbing to it (by which Bourdieu probably means that one can develop a descriptive and explanatory language that does not rely on categories that might unwittingly legitimate the state). This level of social reality that Bourdieu is referring to is merely sovereignty by another name. Like much of the critical literature on sovereignty, and like continental writing on the subject of power more generally, it occasionally smells of desperate paranoia. Yet it also captures some dimensions of social reality that social scientists, even those focused on the birth of the state, have tended to overlook. Specifically, theorists and social scientists have largely ignored the ways in which the birth of the state occurs coincident with shifts in the social, cultural reality of violence. Those who have identified the importance of war-making have focused, forgivably, on the material consequences on inter-state conflict in establishing the basis for centralized states (e.g., taxation). Theorists of the culture of the state have tended to concentrate on shifts in rationality and social organization (e.g., the rise of bureaucrats). Those who have worked at the nexus of culture and violence have either been vulgarized (as with Elias’s civilizing process, by now used as a cute shorthand for the enlightened peace of Western states) or rather vague (as in Foucault’s historical work, in which power is everywhere, constitutive of everything, but also somehow nowhere at all). How does martyrdom relate to sovereignty (to Bourdieu’s symbolic violence and violent symbols), and how can a historical comparison of types of martyrdom access these seldom considered aspects of social reality? Martyrdom is at once a form of violence and its cultural representation. In martyrdom, a commemorative community forges narratives of ultimate sacrifice out of violence, and in the process of doing so creates meanings regarding the legitimacy of temporal powers, the higher goods and ethics of the community, and the relationship between violence and those higher goods. In medieval and early modern Western societies, commemorative communities were most likely to draw on the cultural materials of Christianity as they attempted to comprehend the nature of violent sacrifice, sovereignty, and the higher good. The creation of martyrs therefore intersects with those aspects of the state (symbolic violence and violent symbols) that constitute its sovereign reality. Assessing changes in the nature of martyrdom can provide a new perspective on the sovereign reality of the state without succumbing (per Bourdieu’s warning) to the logic

The sacrificial conscience 125 of the state. Specifically, this historical comparison is well-positioned to assess the relationship between the rise of the early modern state and the “religious” (which in the case means Western Christian) dimensions of power, authority, and legitimate violence. Two general hypotheses about martyrdom in this period might be crafted in an attempt to synthesize existing theories of the early modern state with a more critical attempt to understand the social realities of early modern state sovereignty. The first I will call the “centralization thesis”, and the second the “rationalizationsecularization” thesis. Bringing together the work of thinkers like Charles Tilly, Norbert Elias, and Bourdieu, the centralization thesis would generally posit that the rise of the early modern state is distinguished in history by vast and unprecedented trends toward monopolization. Thus, war-making powers are centralized (Tilly), but so are the cultural interpretations of violence (Elias), and the entire “field” of cultural production more generally (Bourdieu). From this thesis proceeds a more particular hypothesis regarding martyrdom: that the monopolization of power and authority and perhaps even culture by the state effectively absorbs Christianity into the logic of the state and thus tends to diminish the potency and frequency of martyrdom as a form of critique and commemorative mourning. The rationalization-secularization thesis would be drawn from a synthesis of the work of Weber, Strayer, and Gorski. It would posit that the defining processes of state sovereignty include the growth of bureaucratic organizations and the rise of new forms of authority based on the routinized logic of emerging legal systems. According to this general theory, the essence of the state’s sovereign reality (its symbolic violence and violent symbols) is its steel-hard logic, a new rationality which deflects its opponents as degenerate or backwards while applauding the state as a noble protector of reason and reasonable people (this theoretical perspective does not necessarily celebrate rationalization so much as expose the relationship between rationality and the state). Such a position would hypothesize either a general sanitation of martyrdom (the erasure of its other-worldly demands and their replacement by the thoroughly this-worldly) or its extinction (the anesthetized social life of state sovereignty being inhospitable for such a concept). Here, the rationalization of Christianity (by which one might mean certain organizational and theological adjustments, but also a certain degree of displacement) leads to secularization, to the decline and displacement of religious life and related phenomena, including martyrdom. Both the centralization and the rationalization theses suggest that martyrdom would be reduced or supplanted by the early modern state. Each receives partial empirical validation. Thus, in the case of English history, the subsumption of a semi-autonomous class of literate clerical elites into the royal domain meant that potential members of a commemorative community—learned, literate, and versed in Christian tradition—were disincentivized to create stories of sacrifice that might impugn the royal sovereign. Indeed, the sponsorship of John Foxe’s martyrdom industry suggest a monopolization and centralization of the English martyrological tradition.

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But what of the dissenters, like the Anglo-Catholic biographer Nicholas Harpsfield, or the French Protestant poet-warrior Agrippa d’Aubigné, both of whom forged stories of martyrdom that were in opposition to dominant political and religious culture? On the one hand, such cases provide an important caveat to theorists of centralization and monopolization. Despite the growth of organizational capacities, the expansion of central powers, and the monopolization of authority, critique continued to exist in the era of the early modern state. However, it is worth noting that English Catholic commemorative communities were most industrious during the reign of friendly monarchs like Mary Tudor. During years of persecution, commemorative communities (and particularly the essential literate elite) performed their cultural labors in exile. This was also true for the commemorative work of French Huguenots like Agrippa d’Aubigné. This is important because it limited the extent to which literary efforts could achieve wider appeal. But perhaps even more importantly, these dissenters, whether Catholic or Protestant, tended to avoid or mute criticisms of the royal sovereign. Even when an agent of the state was identified as particularly egregious in their prosecution of a martyr, early modern martyrologists tended to explain such malevolent behavior as the result of a corrupting heresy. This is in contrast to the commemorative communities of medieval Christendom, who inevitably explained violence as the result of excessive earthly rulers who, because of individual acquisitiveness, were driven to defy the natural and divinely ordered society. Those who commemorated martyrs during the age of Christendom contrasted the violent sacrifice of the dead, which mirrored Christ and the Christian higher good, with the violent desecration of an earthly sovereign who had forgotten their rightful place. In early modern martyrologies, the earthly powers that author a martyr’s death get off comparatively lightly. The centralization thesis cannot completely account for the endurance of dissident commemorative communities in the age of the early modern state. But more fundamentally, it cannot fully explain why early modern commemorative communities tended, across divided confessional movements, to occlude any critical reflections on the role of earthly powers in the deaths of martyrs. To explain this divergence from the martyrological traditions of Christendom one needs to synthesize monopolization and rationalization theories. It is tempting to think of the early modern martyrologies as a singularly irrational element of a still-young modernity, as the last bloody relic of a formidable age in the midst of rapid modernization. From a certain vantage point—that of the modern state and its defenders—the turmoil of reformation Europe has always seemed a chimerical thing. On the one hand, the Reformation is seen as a sharp break with the past, a triumph for individualism, liberalism, and centralized and secular states. But it is also tainted by excesses—of belief, principally—that remind this observer of a dreary past. From the heights of modern statehood, early modern martyrdom must surely be a holdout from the medieval past. The evidence of this chapter suggests just the opposite. The forms of sacrifice created by medieval and early modern commemorative communities offer a

The sacrificial conscience 127 dramatic lesson in opposites. Contrary to the cursory reading of history, changes in the nature of martyrdom from the medieval to the early modern period are due precisely to the influence of forces of rationalization. The influence of rationalization is most clearly evident in each periods’ disparate depictions of the “higher goods” reflected in and defended by the martyr. In cases of medieval martyrdom, the martyr’s sacrifice, whether in the murder of Thomas Becket or the execution of Joan of Arc, was made for God, and specifically for the divinely authored social order. The sacrifice of the martyr restores health to a sickly social body threatened by an earthly sovereign. Martyrs of the early modern period also made sacrifices for their Christian beliefs, but in these cases the right and truthful Christianity was interiorized, contained not out in the universe but inside the believer’s heart. Sacrifice in this case does not restore a natural order, but resolves a worried conscience. At a basic level, the shift in the nature of the martyr’s sacrifice corresponds neatly to the core feature of modern rationality: individualism. It is not surprising that Thomas More, for all of his own sympathies for medieval society, is commonly remembered as a martyr for individualism. The commemorative community that made More’s death into a case of martyrdom described his struggle and death as a matter of conscience, of individual reflection, rather than as a conflict between divine virtues and human vice. Less obviously, the changes in sacrifice reflected in early modern martyrdom reflect the theological rationalizing of the late medieval and early modern periods. These changes are typically associated with the controversy of nominalism, a theological movement developed by the 14th-century theologian William of Okham that enjoyed a brief flourishing in Europe through the 16th century. In an extremely condensed form, nominalism argued against the reality of universals— of universal characteristics of things and against the existence of universal goods or ideas.61 Nominalist theology argued that if universals have no concrete form, then God must be some concrete reality. Similarly, because concrete reality exists only in particulars, it is impossible to know God through philosophical inquiry given philosophy’s own dependence on universals. Thus, knowledge of God is dependent on God’s revelation to humanity. Though nominalism was rebuffed by medieval Catholicism and its scholastic theology, it gained influence over leading Reformation theologians like Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli.62 The distinction between martyrs of medieval Christendom and martyrs of early modernity is, at some level, a reflection of the difference between theological realism and nominalism. For commemorative communities in medieval Christendom, a martyr’s sacrifice formed a connection to real universal goods. The reality of these goods was clear enough in the posthumous miracles associated with martyrs. The sacrifice of a martyr in medieval Christendom was commemorated in sacramental terms. The goods enshrined by early modern martyrs, by contrast, were confined to the individual martyr. In objection one might point to the seemingly hyper-irrational features of early modern martyrology. While medieval martyrdom stories centered upon specific conflicts, the writings of early modern martyrdom were often framed in general,

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even apocalyptic terms. While heresy may be an individualized force, it also suggests a greater evil, a Satanic power, not readily apparent in medieval martyrdom. However, it is important to note that the “apocalyptic” scale of early modern martyrology is in fact the vehicle by which martyrologists communicated narratives of emerging national history. The seemingly messianic elements of early modern martyrology—their focus on Satanic enemies and the Final Judgement—are contained within national history, and allow martyrologists to condemn particular partisan factions without spoiling a story of national progress. The differences between early modern and medieval cases of martyrdom suggest a convergence of both the centralization and the rationalization paradigms. However, the evidence suggests one significant modification. Whereas both paradigms would suggest a decline or weakening of martyrdom coincident with the rise of early modern states, the history shows a thriving martyrdom industry during this period. Why? Martyrdom remained a fixture of early modernity, and in the martyrdom factories of writers like John Foxe it is clear that martyrdom was also foundational to the formation of the early modern state. This was not merely because commemorative communities were suddenly manipulated by a royal sovereign. It was also because the cultural materials used by commemorative communities to create martyrs had been transformed. Strands of theology found in nominalism and Luther’s Protestantism merged with the proto-humanism of the day to form narratives of sacrifice fixated on conscience and the great corrupter of conscience, heresy. Martyrdom was not weakened or diminished, but the central components of martyrdom stories now reflected and reaffirmed developments in culture, developments which were themselves reflections in a new emerging sovereign order. It is a sovereignty based on monopolization, centralization, and rationalization. In this new order, the royal sovereign can claim sole control over force, can execute that force with ever-increasing efficiency, and can rely on a legal authority that standardizes all social relationships, removing the variety of social barriers and mediations that characterized feudalism. However, it is not enough to think of this new sovereignty as purely rational and centralized. Changes in the nature of martyrdom between feudal and early modern periods also suggest that this new sovereignty was a transcendent, even divine force. Divine monarchy has, of course, long been associated with the early absolutist state. Its early advocates and theorists, like Boudin, envisioned a sovereignty that was not only supreme and undivided, but also fundamentally numinous. The quasi-divinity of early modern sovereignty is clear enough in the writings of a supposed anti-monarchist like Agrippa d’Aubigné, who looked forward to the day when the long-suffering people of France would be ruled by a Protestant king, one who might rule as a god on earth. Early modern martyrdom stories reveal one of the deep ironies of Reformation history: that despite ostensible arguments about the legitimacy of sacramental mediation on earth (particularly concerning transubstantiation and papal authority), both sides of the theological controversy ultimately yielded sacral authority to earthly sovereignty. Why should this be the case?

The sacrificial conscience 129 It is worth reflecting on the English case, if only because it is often held up as something of a contrast with France. While Louis XIV was perfecting the art of absolutism, England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 achieved the first great success for parliamentarianism in Europe. Similar contrasts are drawn between early modern theorists of sovereignty from England and France. Jean Bodin is understood as a theorist of absolutism, while Thomas Hobbes has achieved a reputation as the first great theorist of the enlightened secular nation-state. But early modern English martyrologies suggest a slightly different story, one more closely aligned to developments on the continent. In 1610, the poet John Donne published a pamphlet dedicated to the “mightie and sacred Soveraigne” titled Pseudo-martyr. In this brief, polemical tract, Donne crafted a critique of martyrdom that has since achieved wide circulation (though Donne is seldom given the credit he deserves). Donne’s goal with Pseudo-martyr was to convince English Catholics of the legitimacy of Protestant monarchs, and of their duty to obey and take an oath of allegiance to the sovereign. He pursues this argument through a critique of Catholic martyrdom, with specific reference to conscience.63 According to Donne, Christians have on occasion succumbed to the belief that martyrdom is an act of good faith, that it possesses some sacral power which bestows divine grace upon the martyr and their community. This, says Donne, is a Catholic heresy. It has encouraged individuals to seek out death and suffering, to commit the sin of suicide, based on the false belief that any case of martyrdom will be received by God as a good work. According to Donne, English Catholics who flaunt royal authority and submit to execution are committing a double-heresy. First, they violate the dignity of their own life in the pursuit of false glory. But they also violate natural law, for “God hath immediately imprinted in man’s nature . . . to be subject to a power immediately infus’d from him.”64 In other words, the monarch rules by divine right, and submission to the king is imprinted on human nature by God. In his double-critique of martyrdom, Donne is not merely creating a theological challenge to the efficacy of sacrifice, but is more generally rebuking the religious basis of political dissension. Surprisingly, Donne’s analysis of martyrdom and sovereignty is nevertheless slightly sympathetic to the English Catholic predicament. Catholics should not pursue martyrdom because doing so would constitute a mortal sin. They also should take any administered oath of loyalty to the crown, because the monarch’s sovereign is received directly from God. But, Donne allows, the Catholic subject may still feel conflicted, especially when the terms of political loyalty cut against papal or priestly pronouncement. In such instances, however, the Catholic should take solace: their crisis of conscience, their internal suffering, is a true and pious form of martyrdom. In effect, Donne argues that in pledging loyalty to the monarch, the English Catholic can shape their conscience into a living sacrifice without succumbing to the heresies of pseudo-martyrdom. With John Donne’s meditations on conscience, martyrdom, and sovereignty, the tendencies in English martyrdom first revealed in the case of Thomas More come to their logical conclusion. In Donne, as in the biographies of Thomas More, the

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martyr’s sacrifice has lost its sacramental character. In Psuedo-martyr, martyrdom is now entirely post-sacramental: wholly contained within the conscience, suffering and sacrifice are now essentially passive, mere progressions of selfhood. Changes in the nature of martyrdom between the 12th and 17th centuries reflect broader shifts in the nature of state sovereignty toward centralization and rationalization. But, as Donne’s polemic confirms, these changes also reflect—and reinforce—an emerging conception of the state not merely as a centralized and rationalized sovereign, but as a sacral one. Early modern martyrologies described the conflicts of their subjects as essentially interior, a struggle between conscience and heresy. The royal sovereign stands between conscience and heresy, always vulnerable to corruption, but also uniquely capable of intervening in history, and indeed the only figure with enough sacral power and authority to correct the course of history and reconcile the kingdom to divine will. In conceiving of the monarch as a uniquely sacral figure, in developing absolutist theories of divine right, Western Europeans were giving the empirical processes of the early modern state a cultural reality. Divine right both explains and justifies the centralization of power and the rationalization of authority. Early modern martyrdom stories, a product of their time, reflected these developments. However, as a historical form of resistance, used by early Christians to translate otherworldly demands into a counter-sovereign claim, and by medieval Christians to rebuke monarchic overreach, the early modern period saw fundamental changes in the commemoration of sacrifice and the relationship between martyrdom and sovereignty. Martyrs were now increasingly contained within wider histories of the nation, in which the sovereign was seen as the nearest source of divine power and will, capable, if of pure conscience, of rescuing a people from their suffering. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe had struggled with the ambiguous political theology of Christianity. As Europe gradually developed into the fragile and fractured community of Christendom, the tension of Augustine’s famous “two cities” metaphor gave way to more unitary conceptions of social life. Society was now conceived of in organic terms, as a body politic. Like all bodies, the social body could succumb to illness. But all of its components were held and propelled by the divine, each organ or limb guided in its work by the Holy Spirit. In moments of extreme affliction, the body politic could rely on the remedying force of divine power, channeled in some instances by a martyr’s sacrifice. At the dawn of modernity, the body politic began a gradual process of mutation: where once the royal sovereign was a mere organ, it increasingly came to operate as an autonomous body in its own right. That this body was still said to be animated by the spirit of the divine is a testament to the endurance of Christian culture. That martyrdom was now peacefully absorbed into the body politic suggests that Christian culture survived in a nearly pasteurized form.

Notes 1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition, with an Introduction by Eric Hobsbawm (New York: Verso, 1998), 34–5.

The sacrificial conscience 131 2 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 162. 3 Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1 (New York: Penguin Classics, 1990), 916. 4 Max Weber, Economy and Society, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), 941–1005. 5 Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, translated by L.A. Manyon (New York: Routledge Classics, 2014). 6 Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980). 7 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States: AD 990–1992 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992). 8 Daniel Nexon, The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 9 Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (New York: Vintage, 1966); Smith, Fools, Martyrs, Traitors. 10 Richard Marius, Thomas More: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 11 Hillary Mantel, Wolf Hall (New York: Picador, 2010). 12 Leo F. Solt, Church and State in Early Modern England, 1509–1640 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3–28. 13 Ibid., 29. 14 E.E. Reynolds, ed., The Lives of Saint Thomas More, by William Roper and Nicholas Harspfield (London: Everyman’s Library, 1963), 200. 15 Clark Hulse, “Dead Man’s Treasure: The Cult of Thomas More,” in The Production of English Renaissance Culture, edited by David Lee Miller, Sharon O’Dair and Harold Weber (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994): 190–224. 16 Ibid. 17 Reynolds, ed., The Lives of Saint Thomas More, 3–4. 18 Ibid., 14. 19 Ibid., 28. 20 Ibid., 36. 21 Ibid., 37–8. 22 Ibid., 44. 23 Ibid., 45. 24 Ibid., 49. 25 Ibid., 171–3. 26 Ibid., 177. 27 Ibid., 75. 28 Ibid., 168. 29 Ibid., 169. 30 Ibid., 175. 31 Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas S. Freeman, Religion and the Book in Early Modern England: The Making of John Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 32 John Foxe, “The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online or TAMO” (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011) (1576 edition), www.johnfoxe.org. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid.

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39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 David Nicholls, “The Theatre of Martyrdom in the French Reformation.” Past & Present 121 (1988): 61. 42 Ibid., 49–73. 43 The Conspiracy of Amboise refers to a 1560 attempt by Huguenots to abduct the King of France, Francis II. Its complete failure resulted in mass executions of thousands of French Protestants. The Massacre of Vessy occurred in 1562, when the Duke of Guisy, a leader in the subsequent wars, ordered a Protestant church in Vassy destroyed, killing at least 60 congregants. 44 I have drawn on the 1953 doctoral dissertation of Jesse Zeldin for D’Aubigné’s biographical information. 45 Jesse Zeldin, “Agrippa d’Aubgine’s ‘Les Tragiques’: A Translation with Introduction and Notes of Books I, II, and III” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses International, 1953). 46 Ibid., 207. 47 Ibid., 196. 48 Ibid., 197. 49 Ibid., 198. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 215. 52 Ibid., 255. 53 Ibid., 215. 54 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin Classics, 1982); Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty (Cambridge Texts on Political Theory), edited by Julian H. Franklin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 55 Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States; Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems of Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011). 56 Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2008). 57 Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, translated by Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985); Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (New York: Knopf, 2007). 58 Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field,” translated by Loic J.D. Wacquant and Samar Farage, Sociological Theory 12, no. 1 (1994): 1. 59 Ibid., 13. 60 Ibid., 15. 61 Michael A. Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized a Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 62 Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Briel and Late Medieval Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001). 63 John Donne, Psuedo-Martyr: Wherein, Out of Certaine Propositions and Gradations, This Conclusion Is Evicted, That Those Which Are of the Romane Religion in This Kingdome, May and ought to Take the Oath of Allegiance (London: W. Stansby for Walter Burre, 1610). 64 Ibid., 131.

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As the Western world matured from early modernity to modernity, the systems of rationality and monopolization that converged to legitimate kings by divine right became increasingly oriented toward notions of citizenship and popular sovereignty. In essence, the processes begun in early modern martyrdom stories—of truth interiorized and justice terrestrialized—reached a new stage of development. Modern revolutions catalyzed changes in the state such that sovereignty was now dispersed from the unity figure of the monarch to the popular image of the people. It is here that modern sociology rushes onto the scene, doing its best to describe and explain the rapidly unfolding canvas of modernity. There are strong tendencies in the social sciences to think of this period as one of advancement and progress. Here, the successes of modern revolutions are seen as the triumph of reason over reaction. For early social scientists like Comte and Spencer, the modern European nation-state could be defined quite literally in evolutionary terms: industrial society was more productive and complex than any other social organism in recorded history.1 Perhaps inevitably, celebration turned to lamentation. With the cork of modernity popped, its contents go suddenly flat. So it seems in some of the more memorable passages of Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. This is a world in which people are “the most wretched of commodities”, trapped in an “iron cage”, facing a “polar night of icy darkness”.2 Nowhere is this loss felt more acutely, nowhere does the ambiguity of modernity weigh so heavily, as in the case of religion. Durkheim put the matter succinctly and bleakly: “man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society.”3 Like any period of adolescence, sociology’s development coincided with bleakness and depression. The modern sociology of religion, centered around the notion of secularization and religious decline, voices this discontent poignantly. Modernity entails a certain amount of dying—perhaps not the individual death of Durkheim’s Suicide, but the falling away of certain patterns of social life, particularly religious life. Though Weber and Durkheim are often contrasted, there is a brotherhood in their bleakness. For both, secularization is a defining process of modernity, and secularization is defined in terms of loss. As his concise assessment of modern suicide suggests, Durkheim was troubled by a decline in thick bonds of social

134 To die so that the nation might live solidarity conditioned by the decline of religion. Weber’s meditations on modernity, also suffused with mourning and enflamed by dark prophecy, were less concerned with what was lost than with what he supposed had taken its place. Both Weber and Durkheim believed the vines of religious life had withered, but Weber was uniquely worried about the weeds that had grown in amongst the decay. Rationalization had the potential to reduce all human social life to the mundane and rigid rules of the bureaucracy. The proto-sociologists like Condorcet and Comte had offered an essentially optimistic account of religious decline, while the canonical theories of secularization found in Durkheim and Weber were fundamentally mournful. By the mid20th century, secularization was once again in the hands of the cheerful, this time in the form of tail-wagging “modernization” theorists. Where modernists from Eliot to Auden and Durkheim to Weber were always reticent about the new age, their descendants in the mid-20th century were triumphant. For these thinkers, the ascendance of the modern Western nation-state was an unambiguous achievement. In the work of modernization theorists like Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, the bleak social atomization of Durkheim and the steel-hard bureaucracy of Weber are turned on their head, now standing as the twin pillars of a lauded liberal order.4 In modernization theory, the decline of religion and the inevitable victory of secularization are one process of Western modernity’s global triumph. In the social evolutionary writings of Talcott Parsons, the functions of religion are integrated into modern, secular public institutions.5 Inevitably the historical world, with its enduring misery and violence, suffocated modernization theory and smothered much of its optimism. No systematic paradigm has managed to supplant modernization theory in the intervening decades. While sociologists have continued to consider the relationship between religion, politics, and public life under Western modernity, they have done so without any governing consensus. Even so, the contemporary literature can be divided into two broad camps, each at odds with the other and both defined in terms of how they relate to the original theories of religious decline enunciated by Weber and Durkheim. The first camp might be called theorists of “politicized religion”. These thinkers suggest that Durkheim and Weber were correct both in their assessment of modernity and in their pessimism. Yet the same elements which define modernity— social atomization and cultural rationalization—also stimulate a “traditionalist” backlash. Across the world, from the American “moral majority” to the Muslim Brotherhood, religion is “politicized” by parties and coalitions in an attempt to beat back the forces of modernization. There is intense disagreement within this camp on the question of whether politicized religion presents sustainable recourse to global modernization. Some see politicized religion as the last, dying fits of the old era.6 Others see politicized religion as a real trend in de-secularization that will generate sustained revivals of traditional religion.7 The second camp might be called theorists of “sacralization” (or perhaps civil religion). This sordid body of literature has been built off of the initial insights of Robert Bellah. In a 1967 article, Bellah developed the concept of civil religion

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to explain the congeries of religious and civic imagery in American public life. Bellah, a Durkheimian by training, used the concept of civil religion to account for the seemingly impervious bonds of patriotic solidarity that held together an American society otherwise characterized by hyper-modern fragmentation and disenchantment. In his original article, Bellah suggested that American public life was characterized by persistent attempts to wed a vague deism with secular symbolism. This civil religion managed to enable public life with divine majesty without forcing potentially alienating demands of an other-worldly religion on a modern public.8 For Bellah, American civil religion represented the noblest aspects of American life and explained why, decades into modernity’s reign, the American experience offered a general confirmation of classical sociology even as it tempered the bleaker prognostications of Weber and Durkheim. But not all theorists of sacralization have agreed with Bellah. Notably, many have suggested that the collective worship of national symbols has often abetted violence of the grandest scale, most obviously in the worship of the citizen-soldier.9 Similar arguments have been made about sacralization in European nationstates. Historians have argued that fascist and totalitarian movements in Europe infused the state with a sacral essence in order to legitimate atrocity.10 Between the poles of statist optimism and paranoia are those like Bryan S. Turner, whose approach most closely resembles the concerns of Durkheim and Weber. For Turner, modern social life sees the convergence of citizenship with a consumeroriented religion.11 The mingling of vague religious spiritualism with individualistic notions of citizenship means that Western societies have finally perfected the dire prophecies cast by Weber and Durkheim over a century ago. At present these camps—of “politicized religion” and “sacralized politics”— dominate the field of historical social science that is concerned with the relationship between religion, politics, and public life under Western modernity (an admittedly peripheral group). Each camp offers a competing explanation of religion and politics in the West, and through those explanations offers some assessment of the nature of modern life. Sacralization theorists suggest that the most powerful aspects of religious life have been absorbed by the state. This position implies that beneath the surfacelevel processes of rationalization, modernity is, at its heart, defined by a twisted spirituality of the state. Theorists of politicized religion, by contrast, maintain that modernity is defined largely in terms of bureaucratic rationality. Religion is one component of a modern culture that is defined by its fragmentation. Like other enduring forms of cultural identification, traditional religion can be used to mobilize segments of the public in political action. While the various articulations of politicized religion may appear irrational, they are ultimately aimed at rational ends and conditioned by the rationally ordered public sphere. The original story of modernity told by Weber and Durkheim has fissured into these two rival theoretical camps. Sacralization theorists are the inheritors of the discipline’s founding grievances, the descendants of the sociological jeremiad. Theorists of politicized religion, inheritors of the modernist strands of the

136 To die so that the nation might live sociological tradition, tend to fret over those aspects of modernity that are unfinished or incomplete. If one were to translate this rift into political terms, one might say that each camp offers a competing account of sovereignty. Sacralization theorists mirror critical theories of sovereignty like those offered by Agamben, in which society is defined by an ominous and omniscient sovereign force. Theorists of politicized religion re-articulate a Hobbesian theory of sovereignty, in which society is threatened by any movement which might undermine a united sovereign order. Given these differences, each theoretical camp can be taken to offer distinct hypotheses concerning martyrdom. Theorists of politicized religion would tend to see modern causes of martyrdom as inheritors of an earlier age, now used by movements as a cultural resource that leverages the lingering powers of irrationality to achieve legitimate and rational political ends. This general inclination might be formed into any number of testable sub-hypotheses: that martyrdom diminishes in frequency but expands in influence, that martyrdom is more likely to be used by “traditionalist” movements, and that the social power of martyrs is likely to diminish as a movement achieves its desired ends. Sacralization theory would suggest that the modern state would absorb martyrdom into statist ritual. Here, martyrdom would retain its general potency, still a ritual form of social action in the commemoration of the dead, but would tend to direct processes of commemoration toward the glorification of the state. In this chapter, I will use cases of martyrdom from modern history to assess the general credibility of theories of politicized religion and of sacralization. The cases of martyrdom discussed in this chapter conform to two broad types of modern revolutionary movements in the West which vary in their relationship to Christianity: secular nationalism and religious nationalism. Secular nationalist movements are those that seek to purify the nation-state of religion and are driven by a patriotic spirit. Religious nationalists draw upon Christian culture in their pursuit of revolutionary nationalism. In each case, I will interpret the collective commemoration of martyrs, the social production of martyrdom out of shared stories of sacrifice. The goal of this analysis is to locate and categorize these forms of contested sacrifice in order to understand the varied interactions of religion and politics under Western modernity. Sacrifice is a useful concept for understanding the relationship between religion and politics not because it is a stable category of an objective religious reality, but because it has historically adapted to circumstance, capturing the social enunciation of higher goods and values. Comparing cases of martyrdom across these political movements, I will show that the dominant theories of religion and politics under Western modernity—of sacral politics and politicized religion—are not antagonistic, but complementary. Individually, each theory misses substantive aspects of social life under Western modernity. But, as the following comparison makes clear, the processes of sacralization (of the state) and politicization (of Christianity) are interdependent. It is only when the nation-state, the modern sovereign, becomes enshrined in a sacral or transcendent legitimacy that the traditional religion of Christianity is reduced

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to a mere component part of political culture. At the same time, it is only when Christian culture is squeezed through the “immanent frame”—when its demands are suddenly expressed in the mundane language of earthly politics—that sovereignty can appear, by contrast, as a transcendent thing.12 While particular aspects of each theoretical camp may prove insufficient, the findings of this chapter support the full bleakness and futility which has animated the more forceful elements of sociology from Weber and Durkheim to the present.

Martyrdom and secular revolution One of the earliest articulations of the theory of secularization was the late 18thcentury French thinker the Marquis de Condorcet. According to Condorcet, human history was best understood as a process of mental evolution, beginning with the primitive mind and culminating in the rational mind of the Enlightenment. Somewhere along the way, the human mind would reach a stage of development at which religion was no longer necessary.13 Condorcet’s theory of human progress and secularization was famously born amidst the fervor the French Revolution. Of all modern revolutions in the West, the French Revolution remains a particularly dramatic, even romantic model for a secularist revolutionary politics. In the French Revolution one finds the first conscious articulation of a modern secularist politics, in which Christianity is seen as antithetical to the state and to its people. Revolutionary France saw the active promotion of secularization as a state policy, an attempt to actively subtract religion from public life. Of course, one of the more perplexing features of the French Revolution was a propensity for ritual and invented liturgy, expressed both by the revolutionary masses and by the vanguard. This is perplexing precisely because of the avowed secularism and anti-clericalism of the revolutionary movement. From the creation of new holidays and festivals to Robespierre’s cult of the “Supreme Being”, the ritual life of revolutionary France suggests that the active subtraction of religion from social life may also entail the sacralization of the state. Indeed, two of the most enduring critiques of the French Revolution targeted its fanatic “religious” zeal with particular scrutiny. Edmund Burke’s infamous critique painted the revolution as essentially sectarian, a struggle between dogmatic atheists and traditional religion. Burke warned of the “spirit of atheistical fanaticism” whose “sermons have filled the populace with a black and savage atrocity of mind.”14 Much like Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the French Revolution was defined by its abstraction, by the role of grand ideas, spirit, and dogma. And, as with Burke, Tocqueville suggests that it was ideas, rather than material interest, that spurred the Revolution’s passage: “By seeming to tend to the regeneration of the human race . . . it roused passions . . . such as the most violent revolutions had been incapable of arousing.”15 Both Burke and Tocqueville seem to define religion in terms of abstract ideals and transcendent principles. Putting aside the utility of this definition, the question remains of how the abstract principles of the revolution—of liberté, égalité,

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fraternité—came to achieve a sudden prominence and permanence in French culture. How, in an era of anarchic change, did ethereal concepts come to play such a powerful role in cultural life, apprehended by masses and articulated in a range of quasi-ritualistic ceremonies? How, to borrow from Tocqueville, did this “sort of new religion” come to “cover the earth with its soldiers, apostles, and its martyrs”?16 The revolutions many martyrs provide a compelling window into the process of sacralization, moments when French publics used a death to form meanings concerning the higher goods of the Revolution and identify the enemies that threatened to dissolve those achievements. The period is dotted with cases of martyrdom in which commemorative communities used stories of sacrifice to form a new culture of the revolutionary state. Stories of violent sacrifice allowed these commemorative communities to reinterpret essential categories of culture: of political belonging, the nature of justified power and legitimate authority, and of some enemy who is singularly responsible for an act of unjust and desecrative violence. There are several cases of martyrdom during the revolutionary period which might offer a compelling perspective on sacralization. The collective grieving following the “Champs de Mars Massacre” in 1791 likely radicalized republicanism, while the heroic sacrifice of the Parisian cobbler Gefroy, who thwarted an assassination attempt on the lives of Jacobin leaders served as a rallying point at the height of the Terror.17 However, one case stands out for its influence and its timing. The murder of the radical aristocrat Louis-Michel Le Peletier on January 20, 1793, only hours before the execution of Louis XVI, was met with massive popular commemoration. Occurring at a transitory phase in the Revolution, when aspirations were high but politics essentially uncertain, the commemorations of Le Peletier’s death allowed radical partisans and the Parisian rabble to meditate on the purpose and value of revolution and identify those obstacles which threatened to stall their progress. Specifically, the martyrdom of Le Peletier allowed the French people to reflect on the nature of sovereignty in the period directly following the execution of Louis XVI, to think of what sovereignty would be without a singular sovereign. Louis Michel Le Peletier, titled by birth the Marquis of Saint-Fargeau, was perhaps an unlikely candidate for revolutionary martyrdom. For starters, his highborne origins were conspicuous amongst his fellows of “The Mountain”, the infamous Montegnards who populated the radical wing of the National Convention and were drawn from the raucous ranks of the Jacobin club. Le Peletier’s politics, which drove him to abandon his aristocratic title in August 1789, was also more practically oriented than many of his allies. He channeled his political energies into designing a comprehensive plan for national education. He was also an early advocate of the guillotine, arguing that executions should be modeled on the Montegnard vision of republican government: efficient, humane, and egalitarian (all heads drop into the bucket in roughly the same manner).18 But Le Peletier’s own death was distinct. On January 20, 1793, the night before the scheduled execution of “Citizen Capet”, former King of France, Le Peletier was dining at a café in the Palais-Royale.

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Depictions of the events that evening, which quickly spread across the country, show a solitary Le Peletier, eating frugally and sunk in reflection. But we know Le Peletier was dining with company because his companions would be called upon to describe what happened next. A man approached Le Peletier’s table and inquired, amicably it would seem, if he was speaking with Michel Le Peletier, the same man who had condemned the king to death on the previous day. When the Montegnard confirmed his identity, the guest drew a sword and plunged it into Le Peletier’s chest. The assassin, later revealed to be a member of the king’s bodyguard, fled the scene. In death, this unlikely figure—a soft spoken aristocrat greatly occupied by policy—became the nation’s first “martir de la liberté”, later joined by Marat and Chalier.19 Le Peletier’s body was displayed publicly for four days in the Place Vendôme, the corpse set on a pedestal formerly occupied by a statue of the late king. Stairs were constructed so that the public might see the corpse up close. The body was clothed in the robes of Roman antiquity, but the blood-stained garments worn on the night of murder were gathered at the feet of the corpse. Resting on the garments was a plaque emblazoned with the purported last words of the martyr: “I am content to spill my blood for my country; I hope it will serve to consolidate liberty and equality, and to reveal their enemies.”20 After the fourth day, a choreographed procession took the martyr’s corpse through the streets of Paris, bringing it first to the National Convention and then to its intended final resting place at the Pantheon. The procession, perhaps choreographed by Jacques-Louis David, was saturated in symbolism: marchers carried a banner with the martyr’s ever-more mythic last words, and a soldier carried the bloodied garments on a pike wrapped in oak and cypress.21 The National Convention convened two days after Le Peletier’s murder (and just one day after the execution of Louis XVI) to commemorate their fallen comrade. Despite the fractious nature of the chamber, there was at least some semblance of sobriety and respect. Bertrand Bereré, a late convert to the Montegnard cause, declared that the sovereignty of the people had been wounded, and that Le Peletier was a martyr for liberty.22 Of course it was Robespierre, ever the spokesman of the revolution, who distilled the sordid particles of commemoration into a fully formed story of martyrological sacrifice. “Citizens, Friends of Liberty and Equality, it is our responsibility to honor the memory of the martyrs of this truly divine religion whose missionaries we are.”23 From addressing his audience, Robespierre turned to address his subject: “O Le Peletier, you were worthy to die for the fatherland. . . . Dear and sacred shadow, receive our vows and our oaths! Generous citizen . . . we swear by your virtues . . . by your . . . glorious death to defend on your behalf the saintly cause for which you were the apostle.”24 The public display of the body in the Place Vendôme established a fundamental contrast which rendered the corpse intelligible, an opposition of two basic elements: blood and liberty. Onlookers would learn, from the bier’s plaques that the body before them was an agent of liberty. On mounting the platform, they would be confronted with the costs of that devotion: garments likely frozen into a gruesome sculpture, the folds of Le Peletier’s costum d’mort now hardened by blood.

140 To die so that the nation might live These efforts to forge a general sacrifice out of Le Peletier’s death reached beyond Paris. An address published in newspapers across the country days after the murder warned the citizens of the new republic: “it is not Michel Lepeletier who has been basely assassinated, it is you; it is not against the life of a deputy that the blow has been dealt, but against the life of the nation, against public liberty, against popular sovereignty.”25 During the trial of Louis XVI, the Jacobins had argued that with the king’s execution sovereignty would be distributed to the people, restoring the General Will of the people to its rightful prominence. The transformation of Le Peletier into a martyr for the revolution, coinciding with the execution of the king and directly preceding the terror, was one way in which the vagaries of a spiritual General Will could be concretized. In funerary procession, speeches, and other forms of commemoration, the martyrdom of Le Peletier served to represent the General Will, to embody the spirit of popular sovereignty. The French Revolution witnesses the relationship between sovereignty and martyrdom changed once again. Martyrdom had once called its spectators to observe a transcendent sovereignty; then it served to mediate higher goods and rebuke political avarice; in early modernity, martyrdom became a struggle of personal conscience against heresy, and the earthly sovereign became an ally to truth. In the case of Le Peletier, all forms of mediation are eroded. The martyr is now the sovereign, or least a fitting representative of sovereignty. In the martyr, all of the abstract values that defined modern revolution, from liberty and equality to a notion of “the people” were given form. Martyrs had historically offered a commemorative community a tangible embodiment of intangible ideas. But for much of its history martyrdom had also cut against the ambition of earthly powers, inevitably bent toward total power and absolute authority. In the case of Le Peletier, the ideals of the martyr are suddenly fused with the sovereign. If the characterization of sovereignty was transformed, so too were the depictions of the martyr’s enemies, those marauding forces of desecrating violence that formed an equally important role in the creation of the martyr’s sacrifice. From its inception, martyrdom had been the byproduct of capricious sovereign violence. In early modernity, the agents of desecration had transformed into the vaporous, corrupting force of heresy. In the case of Le Peletier, the force of desecration is further abstracted, now an equally ominous but for more mercurial concept, “the enemy of the people”. Le Peletier’s martyrdom suggests two distinguishing features of modern desecrating violence. In ancient and medieval cases of martyrdom, desecration was personalized, authored by known individuals. In early modern martyrdom, desecration was authored by heresy, effectively absolving individuals. The modern martyrdom of Le Peletier synthesizes these two earlier types: now desecration is as personalized as in medieval martyrdom, but is also permutable, as in the early modern cases. Thus, the enemies of popular sovereignty that were exposed by Le Peletier’s sacrifice were specific agents with discernable motives and ideologies. It was clear to his commemorators that Le Peletier had been killed by royalists.

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Commemoration focused on Le Peletier’s vote for regicide, and on the assassin’s former connection with Louis XVI. But over time, attention shifted: commemorators in the National Convention quickly focused on the role of foreign governments in aiding the assassin. Still later, Robespierre would shift the blame to political foes, arguing that the moderate Girondin faction harbored counterrevolutionary ambitions and encouraged violence against the people and their cherished liberty. Indeed, Robespierre would make frequent use of Le Peletier’s portrait in his speeches at the Convention.26 At moments of crisis Robespierre would excoriate some new foe and remind his listeners of the sacrifice made by Le Peletier in the face of the enemies of the people. It would be difficult to imagine a case better suited to the theory of sacralization. The secularist program of the revolutionaries had decimated the institutional church. But beyond that, the Revolution had done irreparable damage to the notion of a supreme and divinely ordained monarchic sovereign. French society, rocked by faction and threatened by invasion, lacked a cultural sense of self, and what notions it did have—of liberty and equality—lacked a sovereign coherence, or a system of power and authority to bind the people and contain their common culture. The popularly commemorated sacrifice of Le Peletier allowed the French nation to envision a new sovereign order. In this new republic, the citizen was both the recipient of liberty and, as an agent of popular sovereignty, its arbiter. Yet this bold and unprecedented vision of society was under constant harassment from the miserly agents of reaction. To protect and respect principles of the revolution, the new society would need ennobling and enlightening rituals: parades, oaths, even churches.27 It would also need to remain vigilant. Popular sovereignty was a unique triumph, but also uniquely precarious. The martyrdom of Le Peletier accomplished both of these tasks: awakening the French people to the glory of liberty and to the ever-present dangers faced by popular sovereignty. In the words of Robespierre and in the churches across the country, where citizens replaced relics with busts and effigies of the martyr, the French people were giving social life to their newborn sovereignty through the cultural power of sacrifice. But what does it mean to say that the French Revolution sacralized sovereignty? What does it mean to be sacral, to be religious, in a secular (or secularist) society? Perhaps this might be seen as a return to classical politics (the dream of so many French revolutionaries), in which rituals were mere displays of power? Or was this a mutated Christianity, a warped politics driven mad by eschatology? To get the full measure of these changes will require turning to a case seemingly opposed to the French Revolution in its culture and revolutionary ethos. In order to comprehend “sacral politics”, one must turn to its obvious alternative, politicized religion, to a movement fueled by the very cultural elements so despised by the soldiers, apostles, and martyrs of the French Revolution.

The martyrs of the Easter Rising There is a thread, however faint and frayed, which loosely binds the two cases of this chapter. The distance between the revolutions of France in the 18th century

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and Ireland in the 20th is undoubtedly vast. The French Revolution was popular, largely secularist, a radical attempt to disintegrate the fetters of tradition. The revolution of Ireland, beginning with the 1916 Easter Rising, was driven by small cells of dedicated radicals, the plurality of whom avowed some affiliation with Catholicism, and was directed against a foreign occupation. For the purposes of this chapter, the most meaningful difference between the cases involves the traditional religion of Christianity, a resource of some sort for 20th-century Irish revolutionaries, an enemy to the French in their own revolution. But the connection between the two cases is not entirely arbitrary. At least one strand of the Irish revolutionary tradition had been born during the French Revolution: in 1798, Wolfe Tone, Ireland’s most famous 18th-century rebel, attempted to lead a revolutionary uprising in Ireland with the help of thousands of French soldiers.28 The uprising was meant not only to expand the ranks of liberated nations, but also to divert British attention away from the continent and their ongoing war with the young French republic. By any measure, the 1798 rebellion was an unqualified failure. Over a century later, in April of 1916, a new band of rebels would carry the banner of Tone in an uprising that was similarly doomed. Yet these failed revolutionaries were distinct from Tone in two meaningful ways. First, their vision of revolution, in which an old society would be violently overthrown so that a new nation could be born, was a clearer articulation of Jacobin revolutionary doctrine than any ever espoused by the hopelessly romantic Tone. Second, where Tone’s failure had meant the collapse of popular revolution, the failure of the 1916 uprising catalyzed further revolutionary violence, bringing the Irish people to the cusp of revolution. While Tone’s death was met with scattered elegies, the deaths of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were followed by the emergence of a massive and energetic process of commemoration. The Easter Rising lasted for six days. On the morning of April 24, Easter Monday, a group of just over 1,000 men and women mobilized in central Dublin. The phrase “rag-tag” is often used to disparage rebel groups, but here it fits: some among them wore uniforms, most didn’t. The majority were affiliated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, but a significant wing of the fighters were trade unionists from the Irish Citizen Army. They seized a scattering of buildings, some tactically useful, most not.29 The revolutionaries were out-manned, out-gunned, and ultimately outmaneuvered by the British military. By the time of the rebels’ surrender on April 29, hundreds were dead—most of them civilians—and much of central Dublin was in ruins. The rebels were detained and tried for sedition, as were thousands of additional suspects. Throughout the first weeks of May, the British government executed 15 of the rebels who had been convicted for their roles in leading the Rising. A brief period, ending calamitously for the revolutionary leadership. But in national memory and historiography the Easter Rising looms. For roughly a generation, from the events themselves to the emergence of the Irish Free State in 1923 and through to the birth of a fully independent Ireland in 1937, popular

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memory and historiography were agreed on the memory of the Easter Rising. In this period of national awakening, during which the spirit of Irish identity was finally given institutional form, the consensus was that the martyrs of the Easter Rising had offered a “blood sacrifice” that awakened the dormant spirit of the Irish people. In death, the leadership of the Easter Rising achieved what they could not in life: a national revolution. If the martyrs of the French Revolution present a prototype of what sacrifice might look like in secular revolutions, the Irish case would seem to offer an alternative. Here, the modern revolutionary state does not absorb the cultural materials of sacrifice; traditional religion retains its monopoly over sacrifice and lends those materials to nationalist revolution. This produces a revolutionary state which enshrines and protects the traditional religion. Ireland has often been taken as an exceptional case in the history of Western secularization, and not a little effort has gone into explaining this exceptionalism (this was particularly true up until the 1970s).30 Typically, these explanations are pitying in tone and content. Woefully, the Irish weren’t really Western: they were suffering colonial subjects, or the victims of economic underdevelopment, or maybe just governed by a different spirit and sensibility than the English and other Western Europeans. The Easter Rising, essentially a bloody religious sacrifice, seems to confirm this. But before explaining why the Irish case should deviate from the twin path of secularization and secularism, it is worth reflecting on the actual content of the Easter Rising’s blood sacrifice, a catalytic moment in revolutionary Ireland, a formative event in national memory, and thus a particularly useful window into the “politicized religion” of 20th-century Ireland. All assessments of the martyrs’ sacrifice begin and end in the mind of Patrick Pearse, ostensible leader of the Easter Rising and the president of its short-lived republic. Pearse, a charismatic figure and compelling writer, is an irresistible lure that, once consumed, permanently alters one’s view of the Rising. Throughout his writings, Pearse wrote longingly of violent sacrifice and believed that bloodshed was a necessary prerequisite to nationhood. However, the leaders of the Easter Rising were not transformed into martyrs by Pearse’s imagination, but by the Irish public who mourned them. This basic fact is all too frequently forgotten by those who have become intoxicated by the stridency and gore of Pearse’s prose. In the immediate aftermath of the Rising, at least one Irish newspaper, The Southern Star, referred to the supposed mastermind as “Peter Pearse” (sic), a local headmaster. It took some time for “Peter Pearse”, headmaster, to be transformed into Padraig Pearse, father and chief theorist of the nation. All the same, it is worth reflecting on Pearse’s writing if only because he is often taken as being representative of the “religious” contingent of revolutionaries. Pearse was schooled by the Christian Brothers, a lay Catholic educational organization that sought to produce good Catholics and good Irishmen, and didn’t tend to distinguish between the two. Pearse’s writings are saturated in Christian imagery and allusion. But what was the role of traditional religion in Pearse’s mind?

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One of his last published essays, “The Sovereign People”, provides a clear answer. Published just before the Rising in 1916, the essay is a brief polemic meant to endorse violent revolution. Pearse argues that the case for revolution is simple: that “the end of freedom is human happiness,” and ‘the end of natural freedom is individual freedom,” that “national freedom implies national sovereignty,” and therefore that “National sovereignty implies control of all moral and material resources of the nation.”31 In essence, if people are to be happy, they must also be sovereign, and that popular sovereignty must be indivisible, extending over every aspect of national life. If this is a “religious” pamphlet, it is only religious by way of Rousseau. The discerning reader will note that Pearse peppers his essay with references to divine will. To wit: “The nation is of God; the empire is of man”, or that “God has given us strength and courage and counsel.”32 But Pearse’s argument for national sovereignty is startlingly devoid of the divine (for a man widely identified as a Catholic nationalist). Sovereignty, according to Pearse, has two components: the physical (power) and the spiritual (authority). The spiritual dimension of sovereignty resides entirely within the people. Indeed, the spirit of popular sovereignty is awakened not by revelation or Christian tradition, but by what Pearse calls the “four gospels of the new testament of Irish nationality”, a reference to the Irish nationalists Wolfe Tone, James Finton Lalor, John Mitchel, and Thomas David.33 As if to fend off any charges of Catholic influence, Pearse approvingly cites a passage from the Protestant Irish republican John Mitchel: “Courage, Jacobins, for ye, too, are ministers of heaven.”34 Pearse continues by describing his movement as “the religion of Irish nationality”, a religion complete with its own church, gospels, and prophets. Searching Pearse’s writings for politicized religion, one finds only sacral politics, in which all aspects of life, “material and moral” are subsumed by popular sovereignty. Where Christianity is invoked, it is usually to serve as a metaphor, or occasionally to draw a contrast between the worthiness of the Irish cause and the satanic motives of the British Empire. Pearse was a religious zealot, but his devotion was always to the religion of the Irish nation. But this does not necessarily mean that his martyrdom was not forged with the molds of traditional religion, a cultural resource close at hand for the Irish public that would commemorate the sacrifice of the Rising’s leadership. It is worth noting, however, that the immediate reaction to the Easter Rising by the Irish public seemed to range from perplexity to indignation. There is no evidence that the Irish public’s immediate response was sectarian. Indeed, the most common reaction to the Rising in its immediate aftermath seems to have been bewilderment. A reporter from The Southern Star wrote on May 6, roughly one week after the Rising had finished, that “After . . . a brief study of the faces of frightened, worried, dazed women . . . I judge there is little sympathy for the rebellion.” Ambivalence and fear were joined by hostility. The May 5th edition of the Irish Independent, the voice of Irish parliamentarianism, famously decried the revolutionaries as a “rabble” and argued that the only way that Ireland could atone for

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the act was to have the leadership executed. Even those papers which might have been sympathetic to the cause seemed to waiver between shock and indignation. The Evening Herald, a nationalist and republican newspaper, suggested that No useful purpose can be served dwelling on the muddled political motive that inspired the awful, pitiful tragedy. The whole ghastly rising was insane; the iniquitous conduct of those responsible for it is quite properly condemned in every corner of the island. Pearse and his soldiers had hoped to inspire the spirit of the Irish people, but as the leadership was marched off to Kilmainham Gaol, the country was perplexed. This means that, whatever their intentions, the leaders of the Easter Rising were not the authors or instigators of their own martyrdom. But it is also significant because it does not seem as if any bystander understood this as an attempt at religious revolution. In the immediate aftermath of the Rising, no average Irish observer seems to have even considered this a struggle over identity or culture. Indeed, where it is mentioned, traditional religion seemed at first opposed to the Rising. The Irish Independent’s May 3 edition suggested that Pope Benedict XV might “exhort the clergy and Catholic people to maintain perfect loyalty to England.” Searching for optimism amidst the smoking ruins of central Dublin, the Independent suggested that the pulverized area “offers an ideal square for a Catholic cathedral.” During and immediately after the Rising, the broadsheets seemed unconcerned with the religious affiliations of the revolutionaries; where Catholicism was mentioned, it always appeared as a mollifying force in a moment of great uncertainty. Faced with the confusion and chaos of Easter week, many sought stability. The Church seemed an immediate contrast to the revolutionaries, its sobriety now clearer against the backdrop of republican violence. But it was not long before public sentiment began to shift. Between May 3 and May 12, those who were identified as leaders of the Rising were prosecuted in secret military tribunals and, once declared guilty, executed by firing squad. By Saturday, May 13, the editors of the Irish Independent, formerly eager for the prosecution of the rebels, were pleading for an end to the executions and arguing that “the ‘rounding up’ process [had] been carried too far.” In the wake of the executions, a new narrative emerged to commemorate the dead. But even as a narrative of sacrifice begins to emerge, the Catholicism of the event, so obvious to later hagiographers and critics, remains noteworthy only in its absence. The terms of commemoration which were crafted following the executions focus, rather, on the soldierly aspects of the dead. As early as May 5, only two days into the execution process, the formerly hostile Evening Herald was reporting on the “stoical resignation” of the “condemned men”. By May 12, the final day of executions, the same paper carried two telling articles, one using the words of George Bernard Shaw to excoriate the executions as “cold blooded murder”, another declaring that the revolutionaries had held their ground for more than three days, thus achieving legal status as soldiers.

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It is this contrast—between the honorable work of soldiers and the desecrating violence of their judges—that transformed the failed leaders of a botched revolution into sacrificial martyrs. By May 13, the editors of the Evening Herald described the Rising’s leadership in a language typically reserved for battlefield casualties: “You will have learned . . . how those 15 men . . . met their death. Not one flinched during their dread ordeals . . . They were rebels . . . But they were Irishmen . . . the great majority of those rebels fought a clean fight.” The editors claimed that they had no desire to “glorify them into . . . martyrs”, yet their language established the basic materials to do just that. By July, The Catholic Bulletin, ostensibly a journal of culture but long sympathetic to republican nationalism, would write that “history does not record a cleaner fight than that fought by the volunteers. Another landmark has been fixed in our history. Another epoch has been opened.” The political sympathies of the Bulletin make such praise less surprising than that offered by the Evening Herald or the Irish Independent. But the terms of praise are startling given the journal’s notoriously sectarian nationalism. The Bulletin, which foregrounded the role of Catholicism in national identity, focused not on the Catholicism of the Rising, or even the Christian heritage of martyrdom, but on the leadership’s legitimate military status. Indeed, to complement its commemorative efforts the Bulletin devoted significant attention to the widows of the “war dead”. These commemorative efforts were joined by public fundraising throughout the summer to provide for the widows of the executed (an effort obviously inspired by similar charitable activities to support the families of those Irishmen who continued to be killed in the trenches of France).35 The martial glory of the dead was only reaffirmed by the brutality of their executioners. By the third week of May, most newspapers reported the circumstances of rebel James Connolly’s execution in universally outraged tones. Connolly, a prominent figure in the Irish labor movement and perhaps the most competent of the Rising’s leaders had been severely wounded during Easter week.36 But he was granted no leniency; too weak to stand for his execution, he was placed before the firing squad slouched in a chair. But indignation extended beyond Connolly’s execution. On Friday, May 12, the Evening Herald noted that Sean MacDiarmada, with Connolly the last of the leaders to be executed, had a congenital deformity and was widely admired for his “kindly and gentle disposition”. By June 1916, churches across Ireland were holding requiem masses for the executed leaders. This was hardly an inevitable outcome. While the politics of a parish priest might vary, the upper echelons of Church society tended to favor stability. Furthermore, as the Irish Independent suggested in its May 5 edition, initial signals from Rome were hostile (though rumors abound regarding the relationship between Pope Benedict XV and the Rising’s leaders). But in early June of 1916 a meeting of Irish clerical elites decided against any formal admonishment of the rebels or of Irish republicanism more generally. No formal criticism was ever issued by the church hierarchy, and, by July, both the Archbishop of Dublin William Walsh and Bishop Edward O’Dwyer had offered criticisms of the British response.37

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A Requiem Mass might have been an expectedly somber affair, as was the case on June 17, 1916, when a Father Augustine celebrated Mass for the repose of the soul of James Connolly before a large audience at Dublin’s Capuchin church (as per the June 6 edition of The Freemans Journal). But a few days earlier, a Requiem Mass for the soul of Sean MacDermott had been a rowdier event: republican flags were held aloft on the steps of the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, and as the congregation exited the building they cheered the rebels and sang the nationalist anthem “God Save Ireland” and the still quite new “Who Fears to Speak of Easter Week?” (as per the June 16 edition of the Kerry Sentinel). Here, on the steps of the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, almost two months after the execution of the Rising’s leadership, the revolutionary generation appears to don its vestments. The Christian imagery of Pearse’s prose, of a people assuming the cross, finally appears prophetic now joined to the institutional presence of the Catholic Church. Traditional religion continued to contribute to the martyrdom stories of the Easter Rising: on the anniversary of the Rising in 1917, masses were held to honor the dead, and prayer cards invoking their memory were printed in bulk. Did this comingling of traditional religion and nationalism amount to a case of “religious” martyrdom? Does the eventual rapprochement of the institutional Church with the Rising’s dead suggest that this was essentially a religious revolution, an exceptional case in the midst of a rapidly secularizing Europe? As with the martyrdom of Le Peletier in the French Revolution, such questions immediately expose the frailty of our concepts. If “religion” refers to theological intent, then the Rising was hardly religious. Even a cursory review of Pearse’s writing shows that he worshipped at the altar of the Irish nation. That altar might have been adorned with Christian symbols, but even the figures of traditional religion appear wrapped in a green flag. Nor does it seem that the Irish people intended to make the Rising’s leaders into Christian martyrs. There is no evidence that the Rising was immediately understood as an aspect of Catholic religion or identity. The earliest evidence of popular support, as seen in the gradually shifting reports offered by the Irish press, tended to focus on the valor, dignity, and poise of the Rising’s leadership during their trials and execution. Even so, it is also clear that both the institutional and cultural dimensions of traditional religion played a role in the transformation of the Rising’s leadership into martyrs. In the summer of 1916, and on the first anniversary of the Rising, the Irish people gathered in churches to commemorate the dead. And then there are the forms of commemoration: song, poetry, and other forms of art, but also prayer. The Irish people prayed for the souls of the Rising’s leadership. Finally, the role of the Church hierarchy looms ambiguously over the Rising, its martyred leadership, and its legacy. Throughout the course of the Rising, the rebels looked to the Catholic Church for spiritual support, and found it in clergymen who were willing to administer confession and the last rites. In order to properly account for the religious dimensions of the Easter Rising’s martyrs, one must think in comparative terms. The relationship between

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religion and politics is defined by people—in this case, by Irish people actively establishing the terms by which the Easter Rising’s martyrs might be commemorated. However, this local culture work is only intelligible if read amidst the wider sweep of history, from which the local case derives its general orientation. Similarly, a parochial case will only appear consequential to the modern observer insofar as it interacts with wider historical concern.

The sacred and the sovereign in nationalist revolution How might one profitably compare two cases so disparate in circumstance as the martyrdom of Louis-Michel Le Peletier in 1793 and the 15 dead men of the Easter Rising, killed in 1916? Not only are the two cases of martyrdom separated by more than a century, by their distinct national identities, and by the details surrounding the deaths in each instance—they also seem to suggest quite nearly incompatible visions of social life under a modern, Western nation-state. The case of Le Peletier is in many respects emblematic of the cultural life of revolutionary France: a system of rights and liberties that is defined in the first instance by its opposition to inherited custom and norm. By contrast, the Irish martyrs of the Easter Rising may evoke a traditionalist backlash to modernity, wherein inheritance is positively expressed in its contrasts with a modernity that is foreign and imposed. Yet the varying role of religion in each case is an asset for comparison, particularly given that each case of martyrdom emerged at a formative point in each nation’s history. Both cases provide a window into the cultural deliberations that are at the heart of revolution: decisions regarding ideology, identity, and governance. In the case of martyrdom, these deliberations converge on the notion of sacrifice, of higher goods and their violent opposites. Comparing the substance of sacrifice in each case will provide a clearer sense of the relationship between religion and politics in each instance of national revolution. At the same time, this comparison will test the seemingly opposed theories of politicized religion and sacralization, each of which posits a general theory of modernity based on the place of religion in modern nation-states, and each of which seems to suggest an essentially irreconcilable vision of contemporary social life in the West. The martyrdom of Le Peletier concentrates so many of the puzzles of modern social life that it demands careful handling. Inhaling its vapors can be intoxicating, fooling the observer into paranoid generalizations. Amidst a speedy and militant secularization, prompted by the secularism of Parisian radicals, the nation of France forged a markedly ceremonial commemorative process, creating a meaningful story of sacrifice out of the murder of a revolutionary deputy. In this case, secularization and sacralization converge: as traditional religion is toppled, it is substituted with a new system of ritualized life. From the public display of the corpse to the parade and the eventual iconography, the martyrdom of Le Peletier mimics the customs of traditional religion. Yet the social content of the revolutionary martyr’s sacrifice is entirely distinct from earlier Christian tradition. The higher good or purpose for which the martyr

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dies is the sovereign itself, now understood as a sovereignty of the people granted by a system of rights. Here, revolution invokes an antipathy toward the traditional order, including traditional religion. This antipathy begets an acutely destructive secularization. This new revolutionary society lacks a symbolic form, and thus risks appearing impersonal or contrived. In martyrdom, the revolutionary community achieves its symbolic form, a corpse which imbues popular sovereignty with a sacral aura. Here, modern revolutionary politics appears both secularizing and sacralizing, old devotional systems melt away to be replaced by a new worship which bends toward the sovereign nation-state. The Irish revolution would seem to suggest a clear contrast: national revolution fortifying the place of traditional religion within the new order. In the case of the Easter Rising’s martyrs, the Catholic Church in Ireland was a resource in commemoration. If a revolutionary movement is not secularist, and it is not accompanied by rapid secularization, does the theory of sacralization lose its relevance? The narratives of sacrifice which enwreathe the Easter Rising martyrs suggest not. With the secretive executions of the Rising’s leadership, media accounts turned to the bravery and stoicism of the convicted men. Traditional religion did not enter into these narratives of sacrifice in a discernable way. These men were not doing God’s work, but were working on behalf of the Irish nation and its people. The Irish martyrs of the Easter Rising were commemorated in a language that parallels that of fallen soldiers. The rebels had thought of themselves as an army, and in the public interpretations of the leader’s trials and eventual executions, the Rising came to be viewed as a military conflict. In this, the Rising’s martyrs were not dissimilar from the case of Le Peletier. Though the French revolutionary martyr was murdered in a café, his commemorators styled him a defender of the Republic. But where the typical commemoration of fallen soldiers tends to inspire confidence, the commemoration of these modern martyrs instilled something closer to dread: they had lost their lives at the hands of an enemy that continued to threaten the people. The sacrifice of Le Peletier and the Easter Rising martyrs was, then, fundamentally similar. Each sacrifice was composed of a defender of the nation, who embodied the rights and values of popular sovereignty in the face of a violent foe. Each is an instance of sacralization. However, their differences with regards to traditional religion suggests an important lesson about secularization in Western modernity. The sacralization of the modern state can be initiated by secularism and secularization. In such cases, the rapid erosion of traditional religious life may be followed by secularist liturgy and ritual which seems to pantomime the rites of the old faith. The commemoration of a martyr like Le Peletier is a good illustration: all of the ceremonies commemorating his death look quite similar to traditional religion, with the divine now replaced by an abstract system of rights. But the Irish case suggests an important caveat: that the sacralization of modern, Western sovereignty is not dependent on secularization. This is important both for what it tells us about modern sovereignty and for what it tells us about

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religion under modern sovereignty. Cases like the martyrdom of Le Peletier, rabid and rapid in their secularism, can suggest that the sacral-sovereign is essentially “religious” in the same way that medieval Christianity was religious. In the highly stylized commemorative events celebrating the sacrifice of Le Peletier, the popular understanding of sovereignty appears at times transcendent. But the Irish case, in which traditional religion is never far from the commemoration of nationalist martyrs, suggests an important corrective. Like traditional religion, a sacralized sovereignty will entail some form of worship, and as with the Christian divine, the sacral sovereign will bestow some assemblage of higher goods and ideals. But unlike a traditional notion of God, the sacral sovereign cannot transcend the social order. It may be, as both cases of martyrdom suggest, that the sacralized sovereign transcends the individual. Even so, the sacral sovereign never transcends society. When the leaders of the Easter Rising were given their last rites, they were engaging in commemoration with a transcendent God in a manner characteristic of traditional religion. When commemorative communities mourned those men on the steps of the Dublin Pro-Cathedral, they were forming a narrative of sacrifice wholly contained within the spirit of the emerging Irish nation. Thus, any sense of the sovereign state’s omnipotence is only ever an illusion. Like the best illusions, it can involve a tremendous amount of orchestration, but all who participate understand its artifice. Indeed, their worship tells them as much; the commemoration of a nation’s martyrs cannot help but reveal the fragility of the people’s sovereignty, their perpetual fragility. But even as the sovereign state is brittle, its sacralization amounts to a monopolization of the higher goods which animate social life. It is this monopolization that renders traditional religion into a mere utility for politics. This is not to say that traditional religion will necessarily disappear into irrelevance under the conditions of a modern sacral sovereign. However, as a vehicle for articulating higher goods, traditional religion will appear either outdated or incomprehensible. In certain settings, particularly absent an effective secularism, individuals may continue to commune with the transcendence offered by traditional religion. But the sacralization of sovereignty—the popular understanding of sovereignty as both the limit and the source of higher goods and rights—will diminish the likelihood of traditional religion’s ability to make other-worldly demands on public life. In a sense this conclusion reaffirms the common understanding of secularization. Under Western modernity, religion declines in influence, and where it persists it does so in a weakened, individualized form. But, if we understand the cases of Le Peletier and the Easter Rising as being contained within the same domain of modernity, this perspective is altered in an important way. In their underlying unity, these two cases suggest that secularization and sacralization are complementary processes. More importantly, these cases suggest the centrality of the sovereign nation-state in inducing secularization. The sacralized, sovereign nation-state monopolizes the language of higher goods and their symbolic form by containing them entirely within the sphere of society. This necessarily alters the practice of traditional religion under modernity. It also alters our

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understanding of what it means to conceive of contemporary political movements as “sacral” activities. But what can this comparison tell us about either case of martyrdom? On their own, each case appears as a “pure” form of one theory of modernity or another. The martyrdom of Le Peletier suggests the birth of a new secular religion, in which the people worship the state as a god. The martyrs of the Easter Rising appear as figures of a traditionalist backlash, a politicized religion which rejects the forces of modernity and modernization. Yet the content of sacrifice in each case is remarkably similar; both enshrine popular sovereignty and its rights and liberties even as they decry some foe of the people. Read together, each case is profoundly changed. The rowdy civil religion of the French Revolution is no longer “totalitarian” in the strictest sense, but is a response to the fundamental weakness of the young republic. In its sentience and self-doubt, this new sacrificial system is a poor, mutated offspring of traditional religion. The politicized religion of the Irish revolution is similarly transformed; no longer a primordial inheritance, now a very modern articulation of politics and identity, also a mutated and diminished descendent of its ancient history.

Conclusion In recent years, two rival theories emerged to account for the perceived failures of secularization theory. Each suggested in quite distinct ways that the historical process of modernization had stalled. Modernity remained an unfinished project, and this meant that some aspect of pre-modern social life endured. Each theory departs from this shared assumption. Sacralization theory suggests that the modern nation-state has displaced traditional religion as an object of worship, and argues that the celebrated rationality of modern governance is really a veneer obscuring the deeply irrational constitution of modern sovereignty. Theories of politicized religion, by contrast, suggest that secularization (and therefore modernization) is incomplete to the extent that movements continue to use traditional religion as a tool of political mobilization. One theory posits that religion continues to exist because the nation-state is a totalizing and totemic power. The other argues that religion continues because the state has failed to absorb the functions of traditional religion. Both posit that modernity is unfinished and essentially damaged. The martyrs of modern revolutions suggest that these seemingly opposed theories are, in truth, complementary, but that their shared critique of Western modernity is misplaced. If cases of modern martyrdom are read in isolation, they can often appear to conform perfectly to one of these theories or the other. Thus, a “secular” martyr like Le Peletier seems a model of sacralization, while the “Catholic” martyrs of the Easter Rising seem born from an anti-modern impulse, the bloodied children of a politicized religion that uses traditional faith to strike back at modernity. However, when these two cases are compared, when their stories of sacrifice are read side by side, an underlying cultural logic is suddenly apparent. The sacrifice of modern revolutionary martyrs is wholly confined within the domain of

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national sovereignty. Martyrdom in the Western tradition has tended to interact with sovereignty. The cultural deliberations which create martyrs involve questions of violence and legitimacy which almost inevitably intersect with the spirit of power and authority which comes with the essence of the modern sovereign. But the interactions of martyrdom and sovereignty have varied across history. In its origins, martyrdom was the ultimate gesture of an other-worldly Christianity which rejected the sovereignty of earthly rulers in favor of a higher power. The martyrdom of the Middle Ages saw the concept transformed by a culture in which the majority of people adhered to a Catholic Christianity. In the cultural world of Christendom, the radical rejection of the world was supplanted by a shared urge to forge a more perfect body politic, one that moved in unison according to the mystical body of Christ. In such a culture, a martyr’s sacrifice achieved something of a sacramental quality, reaffirming the transcendent powers of God even as it confirmed the limits of monarchal sovereignty. The revolutions of early modernity ruptured this sacramental martyrdom. Truth became increasingly interiorized, and the martyr’s sacrifice became more and more associated with personal conscience. In such circumstances, the commemorative community that forged narratives of sacrifice looked to earthly sovereigns for salvation. Even as the faithful suffered on the rack, they looked for a future monarch who might resolve the struggles of conscience which animated social conflict, a sovereign capable of forestalling the spread of heresy by any means necessary. The martyrs of modernity are the natural offspring of early modern innovation. Now the martyrs’ sacrifice is made for sovereignty. It is only here, in Western modernity, that one finally encounters a form of earthly sovereignty that lives up to its reputation, a sovereignty which, by whatever virtue, has enveloped the language of higher goods, of values, and of rights. The comparison made in this chapter, between a martyr of the French Revolution and martyrdom in revolutionary Ireland, suggests a deep complementarity between theories of sacralization and politicized religion. This underlying agreement in turn seems to validate secularization theory. However, this is hardly the sanitized secularization one sometimes encounters in postwar modernization theory, in which the enlightened man gradually discards the chains of traditional religion, now free to pursue a reasonable life as reasonably as his reason will allow. No, this is secularization of a different sort. It has lately become fashionable to think of the cultural world of the modern rational and reasonable man as a sort of “immanent frame”. But viewed from a different angle, this immanent frame is merely another manacle, a steel-hard casing, perhaps an iron cage, forged by the dual calamity of evaporated tradition and the ever-emboldened sovereignty of the nation-state. In this respect, the revolutionary martyrs also offer some validation of the contemporary, critical theorists of sovereignty. This body of literature, descended from Schmitt and perfected by Agamben, can often appear paranoid, decrying the machinations of the invisible, omnipotent forces of sovereignty.38 Yet, the historical trajectory of martyrdom suggests that, at least in the case of the modern nation-state, these panicked critical theorists may have captured some quality of truth.

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Modern martyrdom in the West is descended from the radical, world-rejecting tradition of the early Christians and the righteousness of Christendom’s martyrs. But for all of their violence and zeal, the commemorative communities that cast contemporary martyrs are only the long-domesticated descendants of their otherworldly forbears. Modern martyrdom is both more evanescent and more malleable than the martyrdom of earlier eras. Because the modern martyr sacrifices for the sovereign, the nation-state can dispose of them when their purpose has been served. As the Reign of Terror came to its bloody end, the giant portrait of Le Peletier that had hung in the meeting hall of the National Convention was hauled out of sight, hidden from public view, and eventually defaced by Le Peletier’s own daughter, the revolutionary spirit having gone out of vogue. In 1917, the Irish republican leader Eamon de Valera spoke of building a worthy republic atop the sacrifice of the Easter Rising’s leaders. Twenty years later, as President of Ireland, de Valera commemorated the Easter Rising at Dublin’s General Post Office, the most famous building held by the rebels on Easter Week. De Valera placed a statue at the post office to honor the martyr’s sacrifice. The statue depicts the death of the ancient Irish folk hero Cúchulainn. With this gesture, the leaders of the Easter Rising finally melted into the mists of national myth, their revolutionary demands, political or otherwise, now smothered in bronze. The transience of modern martyrdom and its apparent pliability by the state underscore a more fundamental trait: that the truths which are formed in the wake of a violent death are now wholly contained within the logic of the sovereign nation-state. The martyr’s sacrifice, long a system of meanings which allowed a bereaved community access to a higher power or truth, is now limited to profane culture. At times, these forces can appear transcendent. Le Peletier’s sacrifice, draped in the language of liberty and equality, certainly transcends any individual. Even so, these concepts are thoroughly human; their abstraction can never transcend the creaturely life from which they are born. Similarly, the modern martyr’s sacrifice can rebuke sovereign violence, reminding a commemorative community of an acute injustice. However, the higher truths revealed by the martyr’s sacrifice inevitably directs the commemorative community toward a singular recourse. Against the violence of modern sovereignty, only more sovereignty will do. Quite often, this will appear revolutionary. The martyrs of the Easter Rising aided the Irish people in imagining a new state, in which ideals and interests were coterminous. But of course this revolutionary vision couldn’t help but take the form of a nation-state. In modern cases of martyrdom, the horrifying sovereignty of contemporary critical theory appears in a startling form: a human corpse, reanimated with the language of sacrifice. Confronted by sovereign violence, the bereaved community can only conjure up a revenging sovereignty. But it is worthwhile to note the discrepancy between this sovereignty and the demiurge who stalks the pages of Schmitt and Agamben. In the pages of contemporary critical theory, the sovereign really does appear as a god: impenetrable, permanent, all powerful and unquestionable. But the commemoration processes which create modern martyrs suggest

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an alternative: that sovereignty can appear at once all powerful and entirely too fragile. In the sacrifice of Le Peletier, the French people envisioned their own greatness, the unprecedented glory and power of a people’s sovereignty. But they also glimpsed their own frailty, the utter inability of an earthly sovereign to ever permanently protect its people. The martyrs of the Easter Rising allowed a people to imagine their own greatness, but also their own weakness. The order revealed by the martyrs of modern revolutions seems to confirm the most unfashionable theories. Durkheim and Weber were right. They were correct in their diagnosis of secularization, but also in their deep pessimism for modernity and social life in the modern West. Modernity is not so grand as theorists of sacralization imagine. Disenchantment precludes the likelihood that the modern nationstate can ever achieve the status of an other-worldly god. But Western modernity is also not as shattered as theorists of politicized religion imagine: modern social life, including the life of revanchist religious groups, is entirely contained within the sovereignty of the nation-state. Of course, as Durkheim observed, the sacred, and our longing for it, survives. Contemporary social theorists have developed a ritual that Durkheim might not have enjoyed, but would surely appreciate. Every so often, a rabble of theorists emerge from their holes to drag their predecessors through the mud. By this point Durkheim is particularly worn, his theory of religion threadbare. His theory, it is alleged, is the worst offender of 19th-century Western thought: a thoroughly colonial fiction, crafted to bend the diverse histories and cultures of the world into a neat story that will be digestible for the metropolitan reader. According to Durkheim, all of human experience is divided between the sacred and the profane. The sacred is a mere projection of ourselves. But what if that inquisitive imperialism that contemporary theorists bemoan is turned inward? What if we suspend theoretical judgement of aboriginal totems and direct our attention to the ritual life of Western modernity? Here, in a relatively brief period of time and finite geographic space, one senses the profundity of Durkheim’s theory—not as a general theory of humanity, nor even as a theory of religion, but as an inquiry into the poverty of spirit that defines modern, Western social life. Confronted with violence, brutality, and the craven capriciousness of the modern nation-state, the commemorative community looks to the martyr’s sacrifice for solace and for hope. In that sacrifice they glimpse only their own reflection. The sight is stirring: a vision of their own power, of the ideals that bind them together. It is also harrowing, a glimpse of frailty and of the impossibility of ever finding a permanent solace.

Notes 1 Herbert Spencer, Essays: Scientific, Political, Speculative (London: Williams and Norgate, 1891). 2 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 181; Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (New York: International Publishers, 1964), 106; Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H.H. Gerth

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and C. Wright Mills, with a Foreword by Bryan S. Turner (New York: Routledge, 2009), 128. Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson (New York: Routledge, 2005), 123. Gabriel Almond and G. Bigham Powell, Comparative Politics: System, Process, and Policy (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1978). Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt, “American Values and American Society,” in Talcott Parsons on Institutions and Social Evolution: Selected Writings, edited by Leon H. Mayhew (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 327–38. Olivier Roy, Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways (New York: Columbia, 2011). Peter Berger, The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 1999). Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96, no.1 (1967): 1–21. Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle, “Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no. 4 (1996): 767–80. Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, From the French Revolution to the Great War (New York: Harper, 2006); Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). Bryan S. Turner, Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation, and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011). The phrase is of course borrowed from Charles Taylor’s monumental 2007 book A Secular Age. In a sense, this chapter—and the larger project of this book—is an attempt to trace Taylor’s historical study of the secular age by a different path, that of power and authority. Nicholas de Condorcet, “The Future Progress of the Human Mind,” in The Portable Enlightenment Reader, edited by Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1995). Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited by J.G.A. Pocock (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987), 135. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution (New York: Harper & Brother Publishers, 1856), 27. Ibid., 27. David Andress, Massacre at the Champ de Mars: Popular Dissent and Political Culture in the French Revolution (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2000); Antoine de Bacque, Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths under the French Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2002). Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1989), 262; Eli Sagan, Citizens and Cannibals: The French Revolution, the Struggle for Modernity, and the Origins of Ideological Terror (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 106–7; Philip Smith, “Narrating the Guillotine: Punishment Technology as Myth and Symbol,” Theory, Culture, and Society 20, no. 5 (2003): 27–51. Ernest F. Henderson, Symbol and Satire in the French Revolution (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912), 373. Schama, Citizens, 671–3. Anita Brooker, Jacques-Louis David (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980), 110–12. Donna M. Hunter, “Swordplay: Jacques-Louis David’s Painting of Le Peletier de Saint-Fargaeu on His Deathbed,” in Representing the French Revolution: Literature, Historiography, Art, edited by James A.W. Heffernan (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992), 184. Jesse Goldhamer, The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence in Modern French Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 37. Ibid., 37–8. David Roberts, Jacques-Louis David, Revolutionary Artist (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 77.

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26 Robert Simon, “David’s Martyr-Portrait of Le Peletier De Saint-Fargeau and the Conundrums of Revolutionary Representation,” Art History 14, no. 4 (1991): 451–87. 27 Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, translated by Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 28 Thomas Pakenham, The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 (New York: Crown Publishing, 1998). 29 Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (New York: Penguin, 2006). 30 Nicolas Hornsby-Smith, “Social and Religious Transformations in Ireland: A Case of Secularisation?,” Proceedings of the British Academy 79 (1992): 265–90. 31 Padraic Pearse, The Sovereign People in Political Writings and Speeches (Dublin: Phoenix Publishing, 1924), 337. 32 Ibid., 343. 33 Ibid., 365. 34 Ibid., 369. 35 Diarmaid Ferriter, A Nation Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913–1923 (London: Profile Books, 2015). 36 Townshend, Easter 1916, 289. 37 Jerome Aan De Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, 1914–18: War and Politics (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003). 38 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

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“Is there a life before death?” This unassuming phrase decorated the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland, throughout the 1970s. For the residents of Ulster there was no easy answer to the question; over 3,500 people died in the course of a 20-year period laconically known as the Troubles, most of them civilians. Caught between paramilitary forces and the British military, the civilian population was exposed to random violence, capricious coercion, and a constant, acute antagonism that smothered all sectors of public existence. “Is there a life before death?” Though the question was, in the poet Seamus Heaney’s phrase, “chalked up/ in Ballymurphy”, it echoed across those otherwise impermeable cultural barriers that divided the streets of Belfast.1 Estimates suggest that more than 250 children of Northern Ireland died violently between 1968 and 1998, innocent victims of the Troubles. But what scant research exists on the trauma of the Troubles suggests that a child’s life, too, was conditioned by a constant exposure to violence, terror, and death. Survey research suggests that the plurality of children who lived through the Troubles witnessed some combination of bombings, shootings, and riots. The majority reported feelings of constant anxiety and agitation, a general sense of precarity presiding even in the confines of the home.2 “Is there a life before death?” The question lingers over the memory of Annette McGavin, who was 14 years old when she was shot and killed during a riot in Derry in 1972. It shadows the story of James Kennedy, a 15-year-old boy shot and killed on February 5, 1992 while visiting a betting shop in south Belfast with his father. It haunts the date of August 15, 1998, when 31 people were killed by the blast of a car bomb in Omagh. Among the dead was 18-month-old Maura Monaghan and her mother Avril, eight months pregnant with twins at the time of her death. To the question asked by the walls of Belfast, these unborn twins could offer only silence. For those insulated from violence, conflict, and social turmoil, the question is innocuous. Life, in all of its mundane and day-to-day happenings, monopolizes existence. Death is that which occurs beyond life, and beyond common concern. But events like the Troubles, with their unsettling questions, tend to expose the frailty of these comfortable assumptions. For much of human history death has been present in daily life. The struggle of human experience, captured by the

158 Western martyrdom in a secularized age question asked by Belfast’s walls, has been to make meaning out of death and misery. How can one live, and live well, amongst suffering? It is a question which connects the inhabitants of a small corner of a small island in the Atlantic to a much wider spectrum of human experience. For the sociologist Peter Berger, it is also the question which gives birth to religion. Expanding upon earlier work in classical sociology, Berger suggests that religion is fundamentally a matter of theodicy: faced with a world of suffering and pain, humans have developed compelling systems of meaning to pacify fear and make sense of otherwise senseless violence.3 Elegant as it is, Berger’s theory must inevitably collide with secularization, the decline of traditional religion in the West. On the one hand, Western modernity has altered the experience and understanding of suffering for those who live within its boundaries. Whatever else might be said of it, the modern, Western nation-state has managed to insulate large segments of its population from daily brutality and violence. For these safely cushioned individuals, suffering endures, but largely in the congealed form of heart disease and depression. It is little wonder, then, that when Peter Berger published his classic book The Sacred Canopy in 1967, global secularization seemed inevitable. Berger was writing from a postwar America that seemed to have achieved all of the promises of modernity. The memory of recent evils was extinguished by the spirit of victory, and the most harrowing violence of postwar American domestic and foreign policy was then only in incubation. If religion was a response to suffering, then the mediocre contentment of the postwar era promised its end. But every year since 1967 has offered its own miserable form of falsification to Berger’s postwar optimism. It is not that the rate of violence has grown. Nor is it the case that traditional religion has experienced any particularly dramatic instance of revival. In the modern West, the overall rate of violent suffering, as well as measures of “religiosity”, have continued to plod along at the nether regions of charted social life, much as they did in 1967. What has changed, it would seem, is the impression made by violence and suffering. Once, the decline in rates of violence within the West might have been seen as a natural outcome of the civilization’s own enlightenment (rather than durable alliances, military supremacy, etc.). Peace, modern rationality, and secularization formed the trinity of Western modernity, all consubstantial, each contributing to postwar flourishing. In retrospect, the stability and peace of the postwar order was always precarious. Contemporary terrorist violence was preceded by the Algerian War of independence, by violent radical groups like the Red Brigades, and by sustained conflicts like the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But for much of the second half of the 20th century, observers could isolate these events as aberrations, temporary crises on an ever-expanding path of progress and prosperity. Not so with 21stcentury terrorism. With each instance of terrorist violence in the 21st century, the foundational assumptions of Western modernity were assaulted anew. What is it about 21stcentury terrorism that makes it so troubling? Why does this violence manage to

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challenge prevailing assumptions in a way that earlier, 20th-century conflicts had not? It certainly couldn’t be the scale: though 21st-century terrorism has seen the development of new tactics, these have not produced a perceptibly greater casualty rate. Could the potency of contemporary terrorism result from its seeming unfamiliarity? It is certainly true that 21st-century terrorism is often described as “foreign”, or “other”, even when that violence is rendered by a domestic agent. But terrorist violence will almost inevitably seem foreign; mid-century domestic terrorists like the Red Army Faction were weird and alien to most observers. Might it be because of modern terrorism’s association with religion? When contemporary Westerners speak of terrorism, they almost universally mean a particular type of terrorism: Islamist attacks on civilian targets within the West. To the extent that such attacks are religious (and that assumption remains contested), they certainly do present an empirical challenge to theories of progressive and inevitable rationality, peace, and secularization. But previous cases that were similarly charged with religious meaning, like the Troubles, never seemed a significant threat to the underlying assumptions of Western modernity. The challenge of contemporary Islamist terrorism is not its violence, nor its “otherness”, nor even its apparent religiosity. It is, rather, a challenge that strikes at the fundamental social realities conditioned by the sovereignty of the modern nation-state. Most sociologists who have considered the topic have come to this conclusion: that contemporary terrorism is symptomatic of a larger challenge, sometimes called the challenge of “risk” or of a “liquid modernity”, but most often diagnosed as simply the crisis induced by globalization.4 Here I would like to argue that the common sociological assessment of contemporary terrorist violence in the West is correct, but only by half. Such events are popularly understood as a crisis of the nation-state’s sovereign order. But this is not, I don’t think, merely a matter of globalization. Tensions between local communities and global processes precede the existence of the nation-state, and there does not seem to be anything more “global” about contemporary Islamist terrorist groups than, say, 20th-century domestic terror groups like the R.A.F. or the Weathermen (both of which were formed from a global identity, both of which were financed transnationally, both of which harnessed spectacle to generate allure). Globalization is not the cause of the crisis, but its carrier. Globalization conveys the message of sovereign crisis in rapid and flamboyant ways, through international organizations, massive migration, transnational solidarity networks, and new forms of media, but it is only a current which washes across the nation-state, exposing crises that were already there. These are crises that proceed naturally from the form of social life, commonly called modernity, which is induced by the rise of the sovereign nation-state. In effect, the empirical challenges of globalization, of which contemporary terrorism is one, expose more profound collective existential challenges which are original in Western modernity. If this crisis isn’t globalization itself, then what is it? Here one should turn to the same question posed by the walls of a war-torn Belfast. “Is there a life before death?” Such a question only becomes meaningful against a certain cultural

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landscape. Western modernity eroded inherited systems of theodicy, the comprehensive accounts of human suffering offered by traditional religion. In the place of this inheritance, the West constructed a new, tangled account of suffering and death. This secular theodicy was diverse, nearly inconsistent. But at its heart were certain assumptions about progress and rationality and the inevitable triumph of reason. Looming over the modern, secular theodicy is the sovereign nation-state. At times, this sovereign can look like the God of more traditional theodicies: it transcends individuals, it has an unprecedented capacity for power, can when necessary claim an intimate knowledge of its subjects. It even demands certain rituals for its maintenance. Much like a god found in traditional theodicies, the modern nation-state establishes the grammar by which humans give meaning to their suffering. If one removed the notion of God from traditional theodicies, then every other component of the system would be incomprehensible, from notions of evil to beliefs in an afterlife. So too with modern, Western notions of suffering and its opposites: without the sovereign nation-state, notions of social progress begin to lose both their coherence and (in the collective imagination) likelihood. That the sovereign nation-state is foundational to the modern, secular theodicy is clear enough in the canon: it unites an otherwise fractious group of thinkers, from Hobbes to Montesquieu and Rousseau to Hegel. For each of these men, modern social life is composed of individuals whose happiness is guaranteed by the sovereign state (of course, each thinker has unique understandings of the individual, happiness, and the state). Each also imagined a horrific scenario in which the legitimate state collapsed; in every instance it was imagined that this would lead to calamitous suffering. Thus, the sovereign nation-state is god-like: as an arbiter of happiness and defender against violence, it is not only at the center of modern societies, but also central to the popular understanding of suffering. But this analogy is imperfect. For all of its power and authority, the sovereign nation-state remains a human creation, prone to human error. Unlike the god of a traditional theodicy, sovereignty is vulnerable. This is true even in a society of unprecedented stability like the contemporary Western nation-state. This inherent weakness, built into any human institution, is uniquely problematic under the “sacred canopy” of Western modernity. Like a divine power, the sovereign nation-state assures happiness and safety. Unlike a divine power, the sovereign nation-state is brittle. When some act of violence punctures the serenity of civil life under this order, the violence appears doubly potent: not only a desecration of the norms of social life, but also a challenge to the basic order upon which those norms rest. This affect is rudely amplified in times of progress, peace, and prosperity. This is all just to say that the crisis of contemporary terrorism in the West is less a matter of security than of culture. Here again the concept of martyrdom can provide a useful perspective on the dilemmas posed by violence. This is not because martyrdom is representative of contemporary terrorist tactics (though it is often taken to be). Rather, martyrdom is a moment when communities make meaning out of violent death using the language of ultimate sacrifice.

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But what sort of sacrifice might a commemorative community forge under the present circumstances? What does contemporary martyrdom mean, and what might its meanings tell us about the supposed crisis of sovereignty in a global age? At a moment when the coincidence of terrorist violence has produced serious turmoil and angst, understanding how people give meaning to violent death might allow new insights into contemporary calamities and possible futures of Western modernity and its peculiar form of sovereignty. Rather than attempt a comprehensive survey of contemporary cases of martyrdom, or develop a comparison of dissimilar cases, I will here limit myself to a single case. It would be difficult, and I think misleading, to attempt a representative sample of a phenomenon (the commemoration of terrorist violence in 21stcentury Western Europe) still currently in development. What’s more, an age so governed by spectacle seems to invite analysis of the singular case, one which reflects the current crisis even if it not a perfect representation. Of all possible cases, it is one of the more obscure chapters in the still-unfolding story of 21st-century terror that seems, in its barest details, most readily comparable to historical cases of European martyrdom. On the morning of July 26, 2016, an 85-year-old French priest named Jacques Hamel was murdered by Islamic State affiliates before a small audience of congregants in the Church of SaintÉtienne-du-Rouvray. This is a case which contains both substantive and coincidental ties to the history of martyrdom in the West. Coincidentally, the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray lies just south of the city of Rouen, famous as the site of Joan of Arc’s martyrdom, and is named after the “protomartyr” Saint Stephen. More substantively, the case of a priest murdered in his church bears the trace of historical martyrs like Thomas Becket. The murder of Jacques Hamel was followed by grief, shock, and commemoration. The priest was declared a martyr both by the popular press and Pope Francis. But what is a martyr in the 21st century? The rise and consolidation of secular nation-states in the West saw martyrdom subsumed by notions of popular and national sovereignty. Does the cultural content of martyrdom change in the time of globalization, which is sometimes seen as both a period of sovereign decline and religious revival? Before reflecting on such questions, it is worth briefly considering those other martyrs that emerge in cases of contemporary violent terror. Even as commemorative communities around the world were using the language of martyrdom to remember Jacques Hamel, his murderers were also being remembered in essentially the same language. It is necessary to consider these more malign commemorative efforts, especially given that contemporary terrorist groups like the Islamic State are so often taken to be distinct from, and indeed opposite to, the social settlement of the contemporary West. In contrast to Western states and actors, the Islamic State is often said to be an unambiguously religious entity.5 Also in contrast to Western states, the Islamic State is typically described as a species of the “global age”, unbound by notions of territory or national identity.6 What is most striking in reviewing the English-language commemoration of Islamic State martyrs is how misleading characterizations of the group as

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fundamentally religious and essentially global are. If anything might reflect a deep religious content, it is surely the commemoration of a martyr’s sacrifice, and the Islamic State’s publications are saturated in the language of martyrdom. For example, every issue of Dabiq, the group’s first foray into magazine-style publishing, bears a quote from the hadith Sahih Muslim, which foretells of an apocalyptic war between the “Romans” and Muslims, in which one third of the faithful will die and become martyrs. Yet most mentions of martyrdom in Dabiq and its successor Rafidah are commemorative in nature, celebrating the deaths of Islamic State fighters and their affiliates. What is it that makes these figures into martyrs? First, all have died in “martyrdom operations”, engagements on the battlefield or elsewhere against what the publications call kufr or kafr (editorial inconsistency is a signature of Islamic State propaganda). This term refers to unbelievers, and is used to encompass Westerners, Christians, Yazidis, soldiers, and most Muslims. Every martyr is made of two opposing forces: a violent enemy and some higher ideal. The martyrs celebrated by the Islamic State are made in part by a vague and almost universal enemy labeled kufr (or kafr, as the case may be). But what is the higher ideal for which they die? This is less clear. One would expect, given the group’s marketing and popular interpretation, that this higher good would consist of some consistent and thoroughly (if improperly) conceived vision of Islam. There is, as one might expect, much in every issue of Dabiq and Rafidah, about devotion to a pure and true faith. Yet there is also little theology or religious reflection on what this purified faith is, how it is distinguished from rival visions of Islam, or whereby its purveyors came upon it. Instead, Islamic State propaganda focuses on the worldly and outward reflections of the true faith. This is neither surprising nor ironic: world-rejecting faiths must always devote much of their attention to earthly conduct. What is surprising is just how modern the “higher goods” imagined by Islamic State propaganda are, far closer to 19th- and 20thcentury national revolutionaries than either the medieval or techno-futurist culture that contemporary terrorist groups are often said to represent. The thing for which Islamic State martyrs die, the thing which reflects the pure faith here on earth, is the Islamic State itself, commonly called the “Caliphate” and often symbolized in the literature by the legendary city of Dabiq, the last refuge of the faithful during the coming apocalyptic war. And what characterizes this contemporary caliphate? According to both Dabiq and Rafidah, the caliphate is a diverse, participatory and thriving bureaucratic state. Its fundamental operations consist not in “religious” activities, but in distributing welfare to its citizens, developing vast infrastructure projects, and instituting new social policies to eliminate crime and other social ills. Aspects of modern life that are condemned in others become cause for celebration once lodged in the territories of the Islamic State. For example, while democracy in the West is derided as decadent and heretical, the pages of Dabiq and Rafidah frequently allude to the participatory politics of life in the caliphate. Similarly, modern forms of identity are a frequent target for criticism in the

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group’s propaganda, but these same publications often celebrate the diverse identities that have found a home in the newly established caliphate. These contradictions suggest a poverty of imagination; while the Islamic State has formulated a consistent, if purposefully vague image of their enemy, they have failed to articulate any vision of a higher good that transcends the characteristics which they claim to oppose. Indeed, all efforts to forge such a vision end up only reflecting those same qualities of modern social life which the group typically targets for derision. Contrary to popular belief, the culture of the Islamic State is neither fundamentally religious nor especially global, but acutely territorial and bureaucratic. This may explain a surprising puzzle in the group’s propaganda: while the Islamic State frequently invokes the language of martyrdom, it seldom offers any extended commentary on its martyrs. While every issue of Dabiq and Rafidah lists newly created martyrs, these descriptions focus most of their attention on the damage caused by the deceased fighter, occluding biographical commemoration in favor of body counts. Far more attention is paid to the desecrative forces of the enemy than to the redemptive qualities of the martyr. This is most obviously the case in the issue of Dabiq which was published following the murder of the Catholic priest Jacques Hamel. While this issue was devoted to the topic of “Breaking the Cross”, scant attention is made to the July 26 attack in suburban Rouen. Much page space is given over to critiquing Pope Francis, and attempts are made to undermine Christianity generally, yet almost no mention is made of the murderers of Jacques Hamel, despite the fact that this was the most widely known attack on Christianity by the group up to that point. This noticeable lacuna does not indicate remorse or a fear of “bad P.R.” (this is the group that frequently broadcasted videos of the gruesome beheadings of innocents). Rather, what this suggests is that despite an obsession with the language of martyrdom, the group lacks the cultural qualities which are required to create martyrs. This is not because martyrdom is impossible in statist or modern or bureaucratic environments (the history of modern nationalist revolutionary groups demonstrates the opposite). Rather, the Islamic State lacks a clearly articulated, logical set of higher goods by which to commemorate martyrs. In contrast with the failed attempts of the Islamic State, the commemorative process surrounding Jacques Hamel in the aftermath of his murder demonstrates the endurance of martyrdom in the 21st century. The clamor of commemoration that occurred in the days after Hamel’s murder testifies not just to the persistence of martyrdom in the West, but to its enduring potency. But what sort of sacrifice can emerge from the circumstances of 21st-century Western modernity? The earliest efforts to commemorate Jacques Hamel as a martyr tended to place the priest on the much longer list of Western victim-martyrs killed by Islamist terrorists. This was unavoidable: Hamel’s murder occurred just days after a larger terrorist attack by I.S. affiliates in Nice, during which 86 people were killed and hundreds more injured, and was connected to a much longer trail of violence which extended to traumatic and widely mourned terror attacks in Paris the previous year.

164 Western martyrdom in a secularized age Given these circumstances, it is no surprise that the most audible voices in the early chorus of commemoration that followed Hamel’s murder came from French politicians. Some of this was the fulfillment of official duties, some the work of genuine grief, and much of the commemorative work done by politicians was undoubtedly a surreptitious act of campaigning. One might expect, as with any event that attracts the attention of rival parties, that the mourning of Hamel’s murder by politicians would inspire partisan struggles of interpretation. Yet the language of commemoration seemed almost compulsory. While France’s socialist leaders declared the attacks a “desecration” of democracy and an attack on French values, the rightwing heiress to the Front National dynasty, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen described the murder as the result of a wider struggle between French civilization and its enemies.7 Rival politicians tended to employ vague concepts in their commemoration of Jacques Hamel and the attack on Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, declaring that the events represented an assault on democracy, liberty, civilization, or similar abstractions. It may be that these phrases varied by ideology; preliminary review suggests, for example, that rightwing politicians were more likely to describe Hamel’s murder in terms of civilizational struggle, while leftwing politicians tended to evoke Enlightenment values like liberty and tolerance. But while commemorations may have varied in their references to abstract values, the political class always framed the murder in terms of the French people, the French nation, or the French state. This is noticeable in this case because of the nature of the murder victim. Jacques Hamel was a Catholic priest, and the murder took place during the celebration of the Mass within a Catholic church. These details were unavoidable, and required an interpretive decision on the part of national politicians. Should the death of Jacques Hamel be remembered as the murder of a priest, or the murder of a French citizen? For those whose commemorative efforts receive the most attention and carry the most powerful consequences—the political elite—the answer to this question was uniform. National politicians who mourned Hamel’s murder inevitably invoked his Catholicism, but also described that Catholicism as a special trait of French national identity. In popular discussions of contemporary Islamist terrorism, one can occasionally encounter a panicked hint of resentment, inspired by the perceived contrast between a unified culture and the fractured social world of Western societies. They are fixed firmly to a cause, while we bicker over even the vaguest of values and ideals. The fissuring of Western societies seems particularly rapid in the present moment, characterized by the polarization of political parties and the conscription of even the most trivial events into relentless culture wars. What is lost in this perspective is the way in which all of these domestic disputes, political and culture, are contained or confined within the nation-state and its language. Rival political parties, who martial conflicting abstractions in the wake of horrifying terrorist violence, will converge on the image of the nation, compressing often quite distinct cases of violence and suffering into the story of a sacred nation in peril. Even in the commemoration of a murdered priest, national

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politicians saw a sacrifice that was, for France, representative of French national identity, history, and beliefs. It would seem that at least in France the murder of Jacques Hamel was quickly and easily transformed into a story of patriotic sacrifice, the priest now a martyr to the French nation. But surely we live in a global age, in which the culture of commemoration is fundamentally cosmopolitan? It has often been argued that we are witnessing the decline of sovereign nation-states and its replacement by a new, global order. Given this, shouldn’t the commemoration of Father Hamel’s sacrifice also reflect the global realities of the 21st century? While the remembrance of Jacques Hamel by French politicians evoked the 19th- and 20th-century language of the nation-state, his transformation into a martyr did also featured a newer, more globalized form of commemoration. Even as politicians wrapped Hamel’s murder within the language of the French nationstate, people around the world were celebrating the man and commemorating his death on the internet, that most cosmopolitan of spaces. These digital acts of commemoration took many forms, from extended Facebook posts to the hastily fashioned iconography of Instagram. Posts on web-based applications and social networks like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are, by their organizational structure, cosmopolitan: they reach across borders to form transnational communities. Cosmopolitan digital spaces are sometimes assumed to be creative and participatory, their fissured heterogeneity and seemingly democratic formats appearing to cultivate spaces of eccentricity, irony, and imagination. Yet, as with the commemorations offered by French politicians, these seemingly diverse, global networks mourned Hamel’s death and celebrated his sacrifice in forms both rote and repetitive. Thus, the murder of Jacques Hamel was immediately absorbed into what might be called the “#JeSuis . . .” meme. After the 2015 attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, members of online communities had commemorated the victims of the attack with the ‘hashtag’ “#jesuischarlie”. Following Hamel’s murder, this same sentiment was echoed with the hashtag “jesuispretre” (or, “I am a priest”). This hashtag, which was composed thousands of times by users of various networks (most prominently Twitter), seems to focus on Hamel’s religious vocation. In contrast with the remembrances offered by French politicians, users of Twitter highlight Hamel’s priestly vocation and its primary importance in understanding his sacrifice. But if “jesuispretre” was truly meant to emphasize the religious nature of Hamel’s murder and sacrifice, then it was ultimately nonsensical. This is because, at least from the Catholic perspective, the priestly vocation is not an identity but a sacrament. To declare “I am a priest” is either to state the obvious (for those priests who borrowed the hashtag) or to strip Hamel’s vocation of its most essential and distinctive traits. But to focus on the supposed religious dimension of “#jesuispretre” is to miss what is most obvious: that the hashtag, in parroting an existing form of commemoration, absorbed Hamel’s murder into the recent travails of the French nation. This is most obvious when one considers that participants around the

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world translated their sentiments into a phrase which would express sympathy and solidarity with a specifically French audience. Furthermore, in borrowing from an existing phrase, online commemorative communities around the world fixed the murder and sacrifice of Jacques Hamel to the ongoing story of France’s struggle against terrorism. Of course, the viral mimicry of online spaces may have encouraged individuals around the world to mourn Hamel as a French martyr in a French struggle. Yet while the online commemoration of Hamel using the existing “Je suis . . .” hashtag was not in every case purposeful, it is still noteworthy. Even in the most cosmopolitanized spaces, in which individuals from around the world freely interact in a truly global space, the commemoration of Jacques Hamel remained fixated on France. That even digital, cosmopolitan spaces of commemoration slip into the language of the sovereign nation-state when creating stories of ultimate sacrifice is a testimony to the endurance of a political entity whose demise has been widely heralded. It also provides further evidence that the nation-state remains not only the primary source of protection and security, but also the only generalized purveyor of those “higher goods” that commemorative communities seek to articulate when telling stories of sacrifice. The sovereign nation-state is the primary referent in the commemoration of contemporary martyrs. This is an empirical argument, but one which invites moral and political consideration. A commemoration which builds a story of sacrifice out of only materials provided by the nation-state will suffer in two ways. First, where the commemoration of sacrifice would typically inspire resolve and a redoubling of commitment, contemporary cases seem to inspire only greater anxiety. This is because the “higher good” for which a contemporary martyr is said to have sacrificed—the sovereign nation-state—has had its weaknesses exposed by the same violence which necessitated the collective commemoration of the martyr. Historically, the higher good for which a martyr might have sacrificed contained at least the potential to transcend earthly violence. As the martyrdom of Jacques Hamel suggests, this is not the case in popular stories of ultimate sacrifice. Jacques Hamel was mourned in the abstract principles of French nationhood, but as artifacts of the sovereign nation-state, these same principles had already been exposed as fragile, even weak, by a seemingly random act of spectacular and gruesome violence. In failing to develop a story of sacrifice that escapes the social sphere of the state, contemporary cases of martyrdom give rise to a second concern. The commemoration of contemporary martyrs is often accompanied by states of emergency and similar added security measures. In this sense, contemporary martyrdom is not dissimilar from the revolutionary martyrs of the 19th and 20th century. The bloodied corpses of Jacobin martyrs inspired devotion, dread, and sweeping reforms to confront the unrelenting enemies of the people’s republic. So too in our own time, when the commemoration of victim martyrs becomes both a celebration of the abstract principles of the nation-state, but also often a call to arms. The domestication of ultimate sacrifice is not, then, merely a spiritual or cultural problem, but

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also a policy concern, as commemoration efforts are used to support the escalation of conflict and control. Is there no means by which to mourn the dead and commemorate the sacrifice of victims of terrorist violence without succumbing to the language of the state? Has sovereignty so completely absorbed social and cultural life that the state is all that is left when confronted by suffering and death? Faced with horrors that silence or stupefy, we ought to turn back to history and its great chorus of the dead. The ultimate sacrifice of martyrdom has not always been associated with terror and total war. The case of early Christian martyrdom offers an interesting contrast. The suffering of early Christian martyrdom stories can seem quite contemporary: a spectacular conflict often ending in grotesque spectacle, it is little wonder these stories have been so frequently adapted in history. Yet for all their gore, the early Christian martyrdom stories tell a decidedly different story about violent sacrifice than equivalent forms of contemporary commemoration. In the early Christian imagination, physical suffering and violence were an inevitable feature of creaturely life. It was not their suffering that made the early Christian martyrs unique and worthy sacrifices, but their commitment to a higher order which transcended earthly violence. The creation of a martyr in the contemporary West will tend to see commemorative communities emphasize the extraordinary nature of the martyr’s sacrifice. If a martyr is produced by an extraordinary act of violence, then it follows that extraordinary (even exceptional) state action must occur for the crisis to be resolved. This is in contrast with the martyrs of medieval Christendom, who did not inspire “states of exception”, but rather served to return the body politic to its natural equilibrium. Of course, a relic pulled out of time will often seem inadequate to contemporary needs. Can the ancient martyrs really speak to the horrors of contemporary, globalized violence? Lest that question obstruct all hope, we can turn to cases from the much more recent past. Consider those instances of sustained violence and suffering within contemporary Western history itself. Not long ago, these cases seemed like grotesque exceptions. Now, they might come to serve as models of how to endure in the face of horrible violence. In the late 20th century the people of Northern Ireland were daily accompanied by the specter of violence, even in the midst of modernity. This unseemly cohabitation between what looked like quite old forms of human unpleasantness and quite new forms social life could bring one to question the fundamental meanings and purpose of life. What did life mean if it could be erased without warning, in the course of the mundane triviality of daily routine? Gnawing questions about the value of life and death hovered over Northern Ireland for decades. Often enough they were answered with an escalation of violence, as if more bloodshed might wash away the suffering. Just as often, a numbness: “With no peace after the deluge/no ease after the storm;/we learn to live inside ruin/like a second home.”8 For the poet John Montague the violence of the Troubles, and the basic doubts let loose by such violence, could only be answered with grief.

168 Western martyrdom in a secularized age But even in the darkest passages of grief, the people of Northern Ireland managed to build meaningful and sustaining interpretations of their suffering and sadness. The Omagh bombing of August 15, 1998, killed 29 people, among them the 18-month-old Maura Monaghan and her mother, who was then eight months pregnant with twins. A funeral for Maura and her mother was four days later, attended by 2,000 people. At the pulpit, the Bishop of Clogher Joseph Duffy said that the “whole future” depended on how the community would remember the dead. James Grimes, the funeral’s officiating priest and a great-uncle to Maura, asked that the dead might guide the community toward forgiveness. The family released a statement asking that politicians refrain from invoking the memory of the dead, and observing that their relatives would have wished their deaths be greeted with a positive and optimistic vision.9 One week after the bombing, tens of thousands gathered in Omagh to commemorate the dead. The event was multilingual and ecumenical; it featured prayers led by representatives from a range of local churches, song, and a reading of the names of the deceased. It closed with the crowd practicing the Sign of Peace, tens of thousands of people turning to the stranger beside them and wishing them peace.10 At the funeral and later at the day of reflection, mourners converged to confront suffering, their own and that of the departed, with a meaningful response. At such moments, the concept of martyrdom returns to its ancient etymological origins, the Greek work martys, meaning to witness. The bereaved create a story of sacrifice which is witness to horrible violence. But that sacrifice endures, it serves as a witness also to the behavior of the living, who must respond in a manner that honors the legacy of the dead. Such instances of commemoration, in which a community looks beyond the violence of earthly life and catches a glimpse of some higher good are rare and fleeting under the conditions of Western modernity. The commemoration of the Omagh bombing is an exemplary case. But similar gestures are visible, if only faintly, even in the responses to contemporary terrorism. When memorializing Jacques Hamel, the Archbishop of Rouen declared that the priest had sacrificed on behalf of a community that “had no other arms than prayer and fraternity among men.” It was a sacrifice on behalf of a “civilization of love”.11 What are the conditions which allow for a commemorative community to imagine a sacrifice outside of the logic of sovereignty, to imagine a sacrifice made on behalf of a civilization of love? Here it is time to return to the work of Giorgio Agamben, whose writings on sovereignty and violence offered some of the motivating force for the present study. While the history traced in the preceding pages presents some challenges to Agamben’s critical studies of sovereignty, I believe that they also demonstrate the necessity of his philosophical efforts to think beyond the limits of the sovereign. Agamben’s theory of a trans-historical sovereignty, a sovereign essence which has inhabited Western politics since the Roman Empire, focuses on the juridical abilities of a sovereign figure to decide between life and death. For Agamben, the

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sovereign is best understood by examining its opposite, an obscure figure plucked from Roman law known as homo sacer. This “sacred man” was created out of a sovereign ban, a form of punishment whereby the convicted could be killed but not sacrificed. Here is the essence of sovereignty as Agamben understands it: the sovereign controls the distinction between life and death, and this control implicates all other social categories, including even profound ideals like the sacred. The history of martyrdom in the West suggests that cultural commemoration could, at least in some times and places, be used to counter, undermine, or otherwise destabilize sovereign power by reclaiming the dead and revivifying a corpse through the ennobling language of ultimate sacrifice. Yet the further one travels from the antique world that produced homo sacer, the closer social life comes to resembling Agamben’s dreary vision. Ours is a world in which sovereign nationstates have achieved both the institutional capability and cultural legitimacy to police and patrol the sacred boundaries between life and death. That the domestication of the sacred by the sovereign is a historical contingency, rather than an inevitable feature of sovereign power, should serve as some consolation to those who lament the rise of the state, the decline of traditional religion, or both. To say that modern sovereignty is a product of human history, rather than an essential feature of Western life, is also to say that it is fundamentally fragile. The fragility of the sovereign nation-state is displayed daily, and vividly so in those moments of crisis when people grasp for the consolation of the sacred. Reading Agamben on sovereignty can induce a sense of claustrophobia, the omnipotent sovereign ever-looming over the framework of social life. Yet at times the Italian philosopher has sought to develop a form of politics that might cultivate a flourishing community in the midst of sovereign violence. At these moments, Agamben’s philosophy seems to converge with the hopeful commemorative work offered by the community of Omagh or the Archbishop of Rouen. So it is that Agamben writes of a “coming singularity” defined by “whatever being”. In this vision, Agamben foresees a person who is neither slotted into the confines of personal identity (e.g., nationality, race, etc.) nor flattened by universalisms (e.g., claims of a “human nature” or “human rights”). In other words, the “whatever being” is that which exists outside of the logic of sovereign categorization, in the affirmation of being “such as it is”.12 Searching for an example of what this might look like, Agamben describes the act of love: “Love is never directed toward this or that property of the loved one . . . but neither does it reject the properties in favor of an insipid generality. . . . The lover wants the loved one with all of its predicates.”13 Searching for solace from a violent world, Agamben locates a resource in something like love. Sacrificial love may seem a quaint resource in the modern world, a limp cudgel when compared with the forces of real violence which stalk the world today. Yet the sociologist Pitrim Sorokin suggested that it is under just such conditions where sacrificial love is most likely to appear. Contemporary society, wrote Sorokin, is “full of boredom and loneliness . . . and the official agencies fail to remedy this ‘vacuum’ in our lives.”14 By contrast, the “love energy” of saints and

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martyrs is “infinitely greater and more lasting” than any power that might reside in the organs of bureaucracy.15 The type of love described by Sorokin or Agamben is not so dissimilar from those contemporary communities who have crafted stories of ultimate sacrifice which omit identity and forego vague abstractions in favor of firm commitment to a love which defies the shape of contemporary politics. While such efforts may seem too rare and too fleeting, there are hints of a new liveliness. Recent years have seen a concerted and growing effort to establish a new Benedictine Christianity, dedicated to the sort of convictions and ethical commitments that are fostered by world-rejecting asceticism.16 At the same time, there has been a blooming of intentional and autonomist collectives, frequently motivated by the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. These may seem like opposed tendencies, but each cultivates the conditions which enable their practitioners to understand the basic categories of life and death in terms that defy and transcend the logic of sovereignty. It is in these few and fragile communities that the power of ultimate sacrifice might once again slip from sovereign dominion, freed to return to forms often seen before. That the ingredients for a revived and redemptive martyrdom should be found in small collectives of orthodox Christians or anarchists may seem unlikely. But the long history of martyrdom is a story of small and unlikely parties who, by clear and principled attachments to transcendent higher goods, transform weakness and suffering into strength.

Notes 1 Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966–1996 (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998), 125. 2 Orla T. Muldoon, “Children of the Troubles: The Impact of Political Violence in Northern Ireland,” Journal of Social Issues 60, no. 3 (2004): 453–68. 3 Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Press, 1967). 4 Michael Kimmel, “Globalization and Its Mal(e)contents: The Gendered Moral and Political Economy of Terrorism,” International Sociology 18, no. 3 (2003): 603–20; Ulrich Beck, World at Risk (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008); Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013). 5 Graeme Wood, The Way of Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State (New York: Random House, 2016). 6 Sheila Croucher, Globalization and Belonging: The Politics of Identity in a Changing World, Second Edition (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 23. 7 Andrew Hussey, “France Church Attack: Even If You Are Not Catholic, This Feels Like a New and Deeper Wound,” The Guardian, July 30, 2016, www.theguardian. com/world/2016/jul/30/france-suffers-deep-wounds-and-finds-no-answers; Adam Nossiter, Alissa J. Rubin and Benoit Morenne, “ISIS Says It’s ‘Soldiers’ Attacked Church in France, Killing Priest,” The New York Times, July 27, 2016, www.nytimes. com/2016/07/27/world/europe/normandy-france-church-attack.html; Kim Wilsher and Julian Borger, “Isis Attackers Forced French Priest to Kneel before He Was Murdered, Hostage Says,” The Guardian, July 26, 2016, www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ jul/26/men-hostages-french-church-police-normandy-saint-etienne-du-rouvray. 8 John Montague, Collected Poems (County Meath, IR: The Gallery Press, 1995).

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9 Frank McNally, “2,000 Mourners Attend Mother and Daughter’s Funeral in South Tyrone,” The Irish Times, August 19, 1998, www.irishtimes.com/news/2-000-mournersattend-mother-and-daughter-s-funeralin-south-tyrone-1.184373. 10 Susan McKay, Bear in Mind These Bodies (London: Faber and Faber, 2008), 348. 11 Jon Henley, “Father Jacques Hamel: ‘A Good Priest . . . Who Did His Job to the Very End’,” The Guardian, July 26, 2016, www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/26/fatherjacques-hamel-normandy-france-a-good-priest-who-did-his-job-to-the-very-end. 12 Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, translated by Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 1. 13 Ibid., 2. 14 Pitrim Sorokin, Altruistic Love: A Study of Good Neighbors and Christain Saints (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), 197. 15 Ibid., 213. 16 Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinal, 2017).

Index

absolutism 104, 120, 129 Africa, Roman imperial province of 1, 49, 59; see also Carthage; North Africa Agamben, Giorgio 31, 36–8, 136, 152–3, 168–70 Alaric 76 al-Asaad, Khaled Mohamad 19; as martyr of Palmyra 19 Alexander III, Pope 81, 83–4, 86 Ali, Ben 2 Al Naqbi, Saif Issa Obaid 19 Angevin dynasty 92–3, 104 Angevin monarchy 80–1, 84–5 Anselm of Canterbury 97 anti-clericalism 137 Antoninus Pious 57 apostasy 88 Aquinas, Thomas 96, 98 Arab Spring 2, 23 asceticism 45–7, 49, 53–6, 64–72; Christian 46–7, 55, 57, 65, 69; innerworldly 45–6; other-worldly 46; pagan 46–7, 53; Stoic 54–5, 60, 65, 69; worldaffirming/embracing 56, 61, 66, 69; world-rejecting/renouncing 46, 56, 66, 68–71, 119, 170 Asia Minor 61, 64 Askew, Anne 27 asymmetrical warfare 5 atonement, theology of 97 Augustine 76–8, 95, 99n1, 102, 130; Civitas Dei (The City of God) 76–8 authority: absolute 52, 140; bureaucratic 36; charismatic 51, 67, 69, 81; over the dead 26; divine 115; of emperor 52; God’s 73; hieratic 34; imperial 1, 66, 69–70; legal 9, 128; legitimate 52, 138; monarchal 81; monopolization of 125–6; papal 113, 128; parcelized 80; rational 51, 67, 69; Roman 1; royal 88, 111, 113,

129; sacral 128, 130; sovereign 39, 115, 122; spiritual 96, 144; state 16; systems of 104; temporal 70, 92, 96; traditional 9, 51–2, 67, 69, 81 Aztecs 30; New Fire ceremony 30 Bellah, Robert 134–5 Benedict XV, Pope 145–6 Benjamin, Walter 31–2, 42n31, 68 Berger, Peter 158 bin Laden, Osama 25–6 biopolitics 38 blasphemy 88 Bodin, Jean 102, 122–3, 129 body politic 111, 116, 122–3, 130, 152, 167; suffering body and 76–99 Boleyn, Anne 107, 110 Bouazizi, Mohamed 2–4, 6, 23, 32 34 Bourdieu, Pierre 20, 123–5 Britain 83 British Empire 144 Burke, Edmund 137 Caesar, Julius 1, 51, 58–9; as Divius Julius 51 caliphate, the 162–3 Calvin 42n32, 118–19 Canterbury, England 21, 79–86, 91, 97, 107, 112 Canterbury Tales, The 80 capitalism 33, 45, 123; rational 45 Caracalla, Emperor 50 Carolingian dynasty 80 Carthage 1–3, 62 Catherine of Siena 98 Catholic Church 106, 147, 149, 164; see also Catholicism Catholicism 108, 112, 114, 117–18, 127, 142, 145–6, 164 Catholic League 118

Index Cato the Younger 58–9, 61, 64, 72 Cauchon, Pierre 94–5 Celsus 52 centralization 49–51, 92, 105, 125–6, 128, 130; political 49 “centralization thesis” 125–6 Chalier 139 Champs de Mars Massacre 138 charisma 10, 16, 46, 51–2, 67–9, 71, 80–1, 84, 86, 96, 104, 143 Charles VII 80, 87–93 Charlie Hebdo 5, 165 Christ 44, 46, 55–7, 62, 67, 72, 84–6, 89, 96–8, 126, 152; passion of 111 Christendom 78–80, 83–4, 86–9, 92–3, 95–9, 102, 104–5, 107–8, 110, 112, 126–7, 130, 152–3, 167 Christian Fathers 55 Christian history 110, 120; early 48; post12; see also Christendom Christianity 3, 12, 15–16, 34, 45–8, 55, 57, 63–4, 66, 70–1, 76–80, 93, 95, 110–11, 115, 124–5, 127, 130, 136–7, 141–2, 144, 152, 163; Benedictine 170; medieval 150; politicization of 136; see also Christendom; Christian history; Christianity, early; Christians, early; culture; theology Christianity, early 21, 30, 44, 46–9, 55–7, 70, 72, 78; asceticism of 68–70; political dimensions of 56–7 Christian martyrdom stories 45, 47, 49, 58, 61, 64–73, 76–7, 96, 167; Acts of Justin and His Companions 63–4, 67; Martyrdom of Polycarp, The 61–3, 66; Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, The 58, 62–3; sacrificial language in 27, 64–70; see also martyrologies Christians 1–3, 21, 27, 46, 48, 56–8, 62–3, 65–6, 69–70, 73, 76–8, 84, 89, 94–6, 98, 129, 162; medieval 122, 130; orthodox 170; see also Christians, early Christians, early 3, 15, 44–9, 55–8, 63, 65–6, 68–73, 86, 111, 115, 119, 130, 153; asceticism of 55 church, the 13, 81–2, 85, 87, 146 Church, the 16, 27, 57, 83, 91, 94, 110–11, 145, 147 Cicero 111 citizenship 16, 38, 50, 133, 135 civil disobedience 34, 67 civil religion 51, 67, 134–5, 151; American 135; Roman 15, 51, 53–4, 67–9 Clarendon, Constitutions of 85

173

clash of civilizations 5 class struggle 103 collective commemoration 12, 16, 80, 136, 166 collectives, intentional and autonomist 170 commemorative communities 5, 12, 40, 42n31, 80, 84, 86, 93–6, 98, 105–7, 111, 115–17, 124–8, 138, 140, 150, 152–4, 161, 166–8; early modern 116, 126; medieval 126 communion 28–32, 95, 97 concepts 8–11, 15, 20, 27, 33, 72, 138, 147, 153, 164 Condorcet, Nicholas de (Marquis de) 134, 137 Connolly, James 146–147 conscience 106, 109, 111, 113–16, 119–22, 127–30, 140, 152; martyrdom of 111; sacrificial 102–30; see also conviction Conspiracy of Amboise 118, 132n43 Constantine: conversion of 61–2 conviction 2–4, 21–3, 58, 61, 63, 67, 70, 73, 170 Counter-Reformation 16 Cranmer, Thomas 110–15, 117, 120 Crespin, Jean 117, 119 cross-dressing 88 Crusades 79 Cúchulainn 153 cultural rationalization 123, 134 culture: of Christendom 80, 92–3, 97, 107; Christian 48, 76, 78, 81, 83, 86, 93, 96, 130, 136–7; of commemoration 165; French 138; Greco-Roman 55; of the individual 104; Islamic State 163; medieval 83; modern 135; pagan 55; political 52, 80, 137; religious 80, 93, 126; Roman 51; of the state 124, 138 culture wars 19, 164 Dabiq 162–3 d’Aubigné, Theodore Agrippa 118–22, 126, 128; Les Tragiques 119–22 David, Jacques-Louis 139 Davis, Kim 19 dead, the: authority over 25–7, 70; commemoration of 39, 136, 145–7, 167–9; legacy of 79, 168; as martyrs 4, 6, 126; as social actors 32 death: contested 27, 32, 39, 48; glorious 139; martyr’s 40, 93, 96, 110, 126; meaningless 6; noble 58, 61, 97; pious 97; sacrificial 39; Stoic 65, 68; violent 58, 61–2, 64–6, 69, 153, 160–1

174

Index

deism 135 democracy 72, 162, 164 de Valera, Eamon 153 disenchantment 16, 135, 154 divine, the 32, 53–5, 65, 77, 86, 90, 96, 130, 144, 149 divine/absolute right of kings 121, 129–30, 133 divine will 65, 116, 130, 144 Donne, John 129–30; Pseudo-martyr 129 Dubai, Emir of 19, 27 Durkheim, Emile 20, 34, 133–5, 137, 154 Easter Rising (1916) 141–51, 153–4 ecclesiastical immunity 81 Edict of Nantes 118 Edicts of Toleration 45 Edward VI 113 egalitarianism 51 elitism 49–51 Elizabeth I 106, 108, 112, 115 emperor (Roman): authority of 52; centrality of 52; deification of 51; divinity of 51; power of 68; sovereignty of 51, 66, 68; supremacy of 67 enemy of the people 140–1, 166 England 80–3, 85, 89, 94, 105–13, 116–17, 129, 145; see also Britain; British Empire; Canterbury Enlightenment 55, 117, 137, 164 Epictetus 54, 60–1; Discourses 60–1 equality 139–41, 153 Ethiopia 23 Eurocentrism 11–12 Europe 8, 13, 15–16, 34, 49, 103, 126–7, 129–30, 135, 147; Christian 11; medieval 9; see also Western Europe European history 12, 38–9, 78 European nationalism 16 excommunication 82 exempla 57–61, 64–6, 68–9, 71–3 Facebook 165 faith 4–5, 15, 21, 34, 47, 57, 62, 64, 66, 72–3, 109–10, 114, 118, 129, 149, 151, 162; Christian 21, 64, 80, 90, 96; privatization of 14; world-rejecting 66, 73, 78 feudalism 80, 86, 103, 128 Foucault, Michel 7, 33, 36, 46–7, 53, 55, 65, 70–2, 123–4 Foxe, John 27, 105, 112–15, 117, 119, 128; The Acts and Monuments 112–14

France 23, 80–1, 84, 90–1, 105, 108, 116–20, 128–9, 132n43, 137–8, 141, 146, 148, 165–6; Normandy 85, 88, 90, 94; Orleans 88–9, 91, 118; Paris 5, 88–91, 94, 108, 118, 139–40, 163; revolutionary 137, 148; Rouen 88–91, 161, 163, 168–9 Francis I, Pope 161, 163 Francis of Assisi 98 freedom: to hold political office 118; individual 144; national 144; natural 144; to worship 118 free speech 5 free will 55 French Empire 103 French Inquisition 88, 91, 94 French Revolution 137, 140–3, 147, 149, 151–2; General Will 140; National Convention 138–9, 141, 153; the Terror 138, 140 fundamentalism 4, 34 Gaddafi, Muammar 2 Gandhi 22 Gerson, Jean 89–91 Girard, Rene 28–30 global age 161, 165 globalization 159, 161 Global War on Terror 4, 29, 34 Glorious Revolution 105, 129 God 27, 53, 55, 57, 66, 73, 77–8, 81–2, 84, 87, 90, 95, 97–9, 108–9, 111, 113–15, 121, 127, 129, 144, 147, 150, 152, 160 good, the 16, 24, 28, 31–2, 39, 47, 72, 90, 98, 127 Goths 76 “Great Man” theories of history 122 Greco-Roman world 45, 55 Hamel, Jacques 161, 163–6, 168 Harpsfield, Nicholas 108, 110–12, 114–15, 126 Hauerwas, Stanley 21 Heaney, Seamus 157 Hegel 160 Helvidius Priscus 58, 60–1, 64, 70, 72 Henry II 80–1, 84–6, 92–5, 107 Henry III 85, 118 Henry of Navarre/Henry IV 118–19 Henry VIII 105–8, 110–13 heresy 34, 88–9, 97, 106, 108, 110–12, 114–16, 119–22, 126, 128–30, 140, 152 Herod Antipater 67

Index historians 5–6, 20–1, 23, 25, 44, 48, 58, 85–6, 104, 106, 123, 135 historical particularism 22 historical sociology 7–9, 11, 13, 19, 45; of martyrdom 7, 9, 11, 19 Hobbes, Thomas 13, 102, 122–3, 129, 136, 160 homo sacer 37, 169 Horace 50 Huguenots 118, 126, 132n43 humanism 106, 117; proto- 128 humanities 4, 6–7, 33, 36 human rights 34, 169 Hundred Years War 87, 90, 93 hunger strikes 6, 23 hunger-strikers 4 iconography 12, 148, 165 Iliad, The 26 immanent frame 137, 152 individualism 126–7; see also methodological individualism Instagram 165 instrumental rationality 14 interpretive historical sociology 7–9, 13 Ireland 142–4, 146–7, 149, 152–3; Dublin 142, 145–7, 150, 153; independence 142; see also Northern Ireland Irish Citizen Army 142 Irish Free State 142 Irish Republican Brotherhood 142 Irish republicanism 146 Islam 5, 34, 162 Islamic State 19, 161–3 Islamist militants 4–5 Islamist terrorism 159, 164 Jacobins 140, 144 Jesus Christ see Christ Jesus movement 71 Joan of Arc 79–80, 86–99, 109, 127, 161 John of Salisbury 83–4, 96, 122–3; Policraticus 96 Jupiter 50, 68 just, the 32, 39, 72 Justin 57, 63–8, 86 Last Judgement/Judgement Day 77 Le Peletier, Louis-Michel 138–41, 147–51, 153–4 liberalism 5, 126 liberty 5, 80–1, 83, 85, 93, 97, 139–41, 153, 164 localism 49–50

175

Louis VII 84 Louis VIII 118 Louis XIV 129 Louis XVI 138–41 Lucan 58 Luther, Martin 42n32, 112, 116, 127–8 MacDermott, Sean 147 Mac Diarmada, Seán 27, 146 Marat 139 Marcus Aurelius 54, 55–6, 63 martyrdom: acts of 3, 5, 24, 27; ancient 114; cases of 4, 7, 12, 14–15, 21–2, 24, 27, 34–5, 38–41, 45, 78–9, 102, 105, 128, 136, 138, 140, 148, 150, 153, 161, 166; Catholic 129; Christian 16, 61, 68, 86; concept of 3, 14, 25, 29, 32, 34, 47, 160, 168; conceptual confusion about 20–5; of conscience 111; contemporary 161, 166; as contested death 25–7; and corpses 25–26; definition 21; early Christian 6, 32, 44–9, 57–8, 61, 64–73, 76–7, 79, 86, 96, 167; early modern 121, 126–8, 130, 133, 140; in early modern England 105–16; in early modern France 116–22; endurance of 8, 15, 163; etymology of 20–1; forms of 44, 129; historical sociology of 7, 9, 11, 19; history of 13, 15–16, 161, 169–70; language of 4–5, 161–3; meaning of 5, 24; medieval 91–9, 109, 114, 127–8, 140; modern 140, 151, 153; nature of 20, 92, 124, 127–8, 130; “operations” 162; origins of 44; Reformation 120; religious 147; religious vs. political 33–5; revolutionary 138; and sacrifice 30, 64–70, 115; and secularization 36–9, 79; and secular revolution 137–41; sociological conception of 10–11, 20, 24; and sovereignty 36–9, 79, 124; stories of 15, 44–5, 47–9, 58, 61–2, 64–73, 76–7, 96, 109, 126–8, 130, 133, 147, 167; studies of 5–8, 24, 35, 38–40, 44; theory of 19–41; as ultimate sacrifice 27–33, 167; Western 109, 157–70; see also individual martyrs; martyrologies; martyrs martyrologies 16, 27, 105, 111–12, 114–16, 119–20; early modern 115–16, 119, 121–2, 126–30; English 111, 117, 125, 129; French 117 martyrs: ancient 167; Catholic 151; Christian 110, 112, 114, 147, 167; collective commemoration of 16, 136,

176

Index

150; to conscience 115; contemporary 14, 153, 166; creation of 24–5, 27, 40, 90, 124, 128, 152; early Christian 48, 65–8, 70, 76, 96, 119–20, 167; early modern 105, 127; early modern English 117, 120; of the Easter Rising 141–9, 151, 153–4; of the French Revolution 141, 143, 152; of the Islamic State 162–3; Jacobin 166; medieval 98–9, 109, 111, 116; modern 16, 149, 151, 153; nationalist 21, 148–51; Protestant 121; revolutionary 138, 141, 151–4, 166; social power of 136; state 161; stories of 72, 109; victim- 163, 166; see also individual martyrs; martyrologies Marx, Karl 102–3, 123, 133; The Manifesto of the Communist Party 103 Marxism 8 Massacre of Vassy 118, 132n43 Matthew, Gospel of 56, 67 medievalism 104 meritocracy 50 methodological individualism 20, 22–4 Middle Ages 15, 79–80, 87, 91, 93, 97, 103, 105, 152 mimetic theory 29 mimetic violence, theory of 28 miracles 83–5, 88, 96–9, 116, 127 modernity 2, 10, 13–15, 17, 36–9, 45, 47, 102–4, 130, 133–6, 148, 150–2, 154, 158–9, 167; capitalist 46, 103; early 21, 33, 102–7, 112, 123, 126–8, 133, 140, 152; liquid 159; Western 11, 14–15, 38–40, 45–6, 123, 134–6, 149–52, 154, 158–61, 163, 168 modernization 13–14, 37–8, 126, 134, 151; democratic 104; Western 103 modernization theory 134, 152 monotheism 72 Montague, John 167 Montesquieu 160 More, Thomas 106–13, 115, 117, 127, 129 Muslim Brotherhood 134 mysticism: inner-worldly 46; worldrejecting 46 nationalism 147; European 16; religious 136; republican 146; revolutionary 136; secular 136; sectarian 146 nation-state 16, 36–8, 129, 133–4, 136, 148–54, 158–61, 164–6, 169 natural order 54–6, 58, 60–1, 64, 69, 127 Nero 59–60, 120

Nietzsche, Friedrich 3 nominalism 127–8 North Africa 1, 62, 64, 76 Northern Ireland 157–8, 167–8; Belfast 157–9 Obama, Barack 25 obedience, ethic of 47 objectivity 23–4 offering, ritual/sacrificial 28–30, 32, 50–1, 66, 68 Omagh bombing 157, 168–9 Origen 27, 52 origin stories 44 Ovid 50 paganism 45–6, 50, 54 Pakistan 25 pantheism 53 papacy 15, 85, 90, 92–3, 96, 107, 113 papal authority 113, 128 papal supremacy 112, 114 Parliament 106–7, 109; House of Commons 108 parliamentarianism 129, 144 parrhesia 70 path dependency 7, 45 Paul, St 27, 55, 57, 76; Romans 55, 57; Epistle to the Ephesians 57 Pearse, Patrick 143–5, 147; “The Sovereign People” 144 periodization 21, 106 Perpetua 1–2, 58, 62–3, 65–8, 86, 115 Phoenician Empire 1 Pisan, Christine de 89–90; Ditié de Jeanne d’Arc 89–90 pluralism 49, 52 politicization 136 politicized religion 134–6, 141, 143–4, 148, 151–2, 154; theory of 136, 148, 151–2 politics 4, 12–14, 33–40, 45, 47, 49, 51–3, 56, 61, 72–3, 76–9, 84, 87, 91–3, 95–6, 106, 134–8, 141, 146, 148–51, 162, 168–70; earthly 76–7, 96, 137; medieval 93; modern 36–7, 84; religion and 4, 12–13, 35–7, 39–40, 45, 49, 72–3, 78–9, 87, 91, 106, 135–6, 148; revolutionary 34, 137, 149; Roman 61; sacral 136, 141, 144; sacralized 135; Western 168 Polycarp 61–3, 65–8, 86, 115 Pontius Pilate 56 postcolonialism 10–11 postmodernism 10

Index postsecularism 10–11 power: absolute 52; central/centralized 126, 130; charismatic 16, 51, 71, 84; colonial 10; cultural 141; divine 31, 86, 130, 160; earthly 12, 57, 68–71, 77–8, 95, 109, 126, 140; centralization of 126, 130; divine 31, 86, 130, 160; of heresy 115, 119; higher 34, 57, 65–6, 71, 77, 86, 116, 152–3; imperial 32, 49, 58, 69; institutional 37, 83; legitimate/ legitimacy of 32, 52; of martyrs 68, 136; miraculous 85, 88–9, 96–7; modern 13–14, 104, 123; monarchal 81; omnipotent 15; otherworldly 70; pastoral 47; political 104; posthumous 84, 86, 98; redemptive 65, 90, 98; relations 13–14, 37, 47; royal 98–9, 111, 120; sacral 129–30; of sacrifice 141; Satanic 128; of secularization 16; social 136; sovereign 14–15, 38, 40, 122, 169; structures of 53; struggles 36, 38–40, 78, 80, 83, 90, 92, 104; supernatural 51; symbolic 59; systems of 70; temporal 44, 47, 78, 95–6, 98–9, 120–1, 124; theory of 56, 61; total 140; totemic 151; transcendent 73, 152; violent 119; warmaking 125; world-rejecting 68 profane, the 11, 154 Protestant ethic 33, 45, 123 Protestantism 45, 116, 118–19, 128; English 114; French 118 public piety 51–2, 54, 62, 66–7, 70 Rafidah 162–3 rational-choice theory 23 rationality: bureaucratic 135 rationalization 14, 45–6, 125–8, 130, 134–5; cultural 123, 134; see also “rationalization-secularization” thesis “rationalization-secularization” thesis 125 Reason, divine 65–6, 69 Reformation 16, 21, 27, 30, 34, 104–5, 107, 109, 111–13, 116–17, 119–20, 126–8; pre- 46; see also CounterReformation relativism 34 religion: Catholic 147; consumer-oriented 135; contemplative 34; decline of 36, 134; functions of 36, 134; individualist theories of 73; nature of 10–11, 34; otherworldly 57; pagan 53; politics and 4, 12–13, 35–7, 39–40, 45, 49, 72–3, 78–9, 87, 91, 106, 135–6, 148; politicized 134–6, 141, 143–4, 148,

177

151–2, 154; privatized 39; public 51–3; ritualistic 34; Roman 51–2; secular 151; sociology of 10, 13, 133; state 46; study of 36; terrorism and 159; traditional 134–7, 142–5, 147–52, 158, 160, 169; world-rejecting 69, 72–3; see also civil religion; politicized religion religious, the 11, 35, 78 religious nationalism 136 Renaissance 55 renunciation 21, 27–8, 65–6, 88; self- 2 republicanism 138, 146 resistance 47, 59, 62, 68–71, 78, 89, 115, 130; ethic of 47; political 57; violent 59 revolutionary nationalism 136 revolutionary politics 34, 137, 149 Robespierre 137, 139, 141 Roman Catholicism see Catholicism Roman civil religion 15, 51, 53–4, 69 Roman Empire 1, 44–6, 49–53, 56–7, 64, 66, 69–71, 77–9, 98, 130, 168; citizenship 50; emperors of 50–52, 62; fall of 78, 130; religion of 50–51; rise of 45; social life 52; see also Africa, Roman imperial province of; authority; Christians, early; civil religion; culture; emperor (Roman); Greco-Roman world; politics; religion; Roman civil religion Roman Republic 46, 58, 111; first triumvirate 58; Senate 57–8, 60 Roper, William 108–10, 114 Rousseau 144, 160 Rusticus, Q. Iunus 63–4, 67 sacralization 36, 134–8, 141, 148–52, 154 sacralization theory 136, 151 sacralized politics 135 sacred, the 11, 34–5, 37, 43n37, 51, 96, 154, 169 sacrifice: acts of 23, 27–8, 43n37, 66; blood 27, 68, 143; Christian 2, 15, 80; Christ’s 66; citizen 37; commemoration of 39, 80, 130, 141, 144, 166–7; contested 136; definition of 27–28; of the early Christians 77–8; to the emperor 62, 66; forms of 29–32, 66, 69, 126; to the gods 63–4, 68; heroic 138; human 30–1; Jewish traditions of 48; language of 27, 32, 38–9, 66, 153; living 27, 83, 129; martyr’s 11, 15–16, 28, 30–4, 40, 42n31, 66, 68, 70–1, 73, 80, 83, 86, 102, 119, 127, 130, 140, 148, 152–4, 162, 167; narratives of 13, 39–40, 96, 98, 128, 145, 149–50, 152;

178

Index

object of 28, 30–1; pagan 15; patriotic 165; power of 141; public 68; religious 143; ritual 32, 51; social dimensions of 28; social scripts of 12; and sovereignty 64–70, 111; stories of 40, 83, 98, 125, 136, 138, 148, 151, 166, 168; theories of 28; violent 28–9, 121, 124, 126, 138, 143, 167; see also individual martyrs; scapegoat; self-immolation; selfsacrifice; ultimate sacrifice sacrificial conscience 102–30 Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre 105, 116, 118 sainthood 1, 107 saints 83, 169; cult of 16 scapegoat 28–32, 69 schism 88, 90, 94, 110 Schmitt, Carl 36, 152–3 Scottus, Sedulius 96; De Rectoribus Christianis 96 Second Coming 56 sectarianism 16 secular, the 11 secularism 137, 143, 148–50; post- 10–11 secularity 12 secularization 13–16, 36–41, 72, 79–80, 125, 133–4, 137, 143, 148–52, 154, 158–9; de- 134 secularization theory 13–16, 38, 151–2 secularized age, Western martyrdom in 157–70 secular nationalism 136 self-immolation 2, 4, 6, 23, 34 self-sacrifice 15, 22 Seneca 33, 53–6, 58–60, 64, 68; Epistles 54, 59 Shakespeare, William 102 Shaw, George Bernard 145 Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum 19, 27 sin 29, 55, 65, 90, 94–5, 97, 116, 129 social atomization 134 social media 3, 12 social sciences 4, 6–7, 30, 33, 36, 42n32, 45, 133 social scientists 5–7, 20, 22–3, 25, 28, 33–5, 40, 122, 124, 133 sociology 10–11, 45, 133, 137; classical 11, 135, 158; political 10; of religion 10, 13, 133; see also historical sociology; interpretive historical sociology Socrates 22 Sorokin, Pitrim 169–70

sovereignty: absolute 122; centralized 119; corrupted/corrupting 115–16; divine 109; early modern 105, 128; earthly 15–16, 73, 86, 92, 116, 128, 152; enlightened 115; God’s 68, 81; governmental 122; imperial 52, 66–73, 76; institutionalized 37; martyrdom and 36–9, 79, 124; medieval 87; modern 149–51, 153, 169; monarchical 83, 85–6, 92, 96, 111, 121, 123, 140–1, 152; national 16, 144, 152, 161; of the nation-state 152, 154, 159; parcelized 86, 98, 122; people’s 150, 154; political 98; popular 133, 140–1, 144, 149, 151, 161; royal 113, 117; sacralized 141, 150; and sacrifice 64–70, 111; secularization and 13, 15, 37–9; state 103, 125, 130; studies of 13, 16, 36–7, 168; temporal 15, 80; theories of 15, 38, 41, 136; transcendent 140; trans-historical 168; Western 149; see also emperor (Roman) Spanish Empire 103 state, the 9, 13, 15–16, 21, 26, 31, 36–8, 103, 105, 122–6, 130, 133, 135–7, 151, 153, 160, 166–7, 169 Stephen, St. 161 Stoicism 46, 53–7, 60, 64, 69; political dimensions of 56–7; see also Stoics Stoics 45, 54–61, 64–6, 68–71; asceticism of 54–5, 60, 65, 69; personae 56 Stoic tradition 45, 54, 56, 58–9, 64 suffering: bodily 69, 98; Christ’s 72, 97–98; commemorations of 98; human 13, 160; internal 129; passive 3; physical 167; redemptive powers of 65, 98; uses of 11; violent 158; virtues of 98 suffering body: and body politic 76–99 suicide 27, 59, 129, 133 suicide bombers 4, 24, 27 suicide bombing 6, 22–23 Sulla 58 Tacitus 49, 58–9, 68; Annals 59 Taiwan (Republic of China) 27; National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine 27 Tawney, R. H. 33, 42n32 terrorism 3, 158–60, 166, 168; Islamist 159, 164 Tertullian 57 theodicy 158, 160; secular 160 theologians 5–6, 16, 21, 23, 25, 78, 88, 96, 98, 109, 118, 127 theology: Christian 20

Index Thomas à Kempis 98; The Imitation of Christ 98 Thomas Becket 79–87, 91–9, 106–7, 109, 111, 116, 127, 161; canonization of 83 Tocqueville, Alexis de 7, 102, 137–8 Tone, Wolfe 142, 144 transubstantiation 112, 114, 128 Troubles, the 157–9, 167 truth, the 47, 54, 70, 115 truth: Christian 70, 73; crafted 57; individual 46–7, 57; other-worldly 57, 71; received 57; revealed 54, 57 Tudor, Mary 108, 111–13, 115, 126 Tunisia 2, 23–4, 32; Sidi Bouzid 2–3; Tunis 2 Tunisian revolution 2 Twitter 165 tyranny 2, 96, 120–1 Ukraine’s Maidan Square 4 ultimate sacrifice 4, 6–7, 12, 14, 48, 105, 113, 124, 166–7, 170; language of 3, 5, 160, 169 UNESCO 2 United States 25 universalizing impulse 29 Valois monarchy/dynasty 92–3, 118 value-relevance 25 Vespasian 60 violence: debasing 97; desecrating 15–16, 31, 70, 94–6, 114, 116, 138, 140, 146; divine 31, 68; earthly 166–7; enactment of 42n31; globalized 167; of heresy 119, 121; imperial 1, 70; legitimacy of

179

11; legitimate 33, 79, 102, 125; mass 116; mimetic 28; mythic 31, 68; of persecution 115–16; physical 42n31, 88; popular 105, 117; prosecutorial 105, 117–18; random 157; redeeming/ redemptive 15, 31; religious 15, 28, 116; republican 145; revolutionary 142; royal 111, 122; sexual 88; sovereign 15, 70, 78, 121–2, 140, 153, 169; state 21, 124; symbolic 124–5; terrorist 4, 7, 158–9, 161, 164, 167; tyrannical 120; unjust 95, 116 Virgil 50; Aeneid 50 Wallerstein, Immanuel 103–4 Wars of Religion 105, 117 Weber, Max 7–8, 13, 24, 33–5, 45–7, 55, 65, 71, 102–4, 123–5, 133–5, 137, 154; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 33, 45 West, the 4–5, 12–13, 15–16, 36, 46, 49, 76–7, 79, 83, 133, 135–7, 148, 153, 158–63, 169 Western Europe 78, 86, 103, 105, 130, 143, 161 Western history 11–12, 35, 37–40, 45–6, 167 William of Okham 127 Williams, Rowan 21 witchcraft 88 Wolsey, Cardinal 110 Yemen 19 Zeno 56 Zwingli, Huldrych 127