Abstract
In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the accounts of early Christian martyrs. Previous scholarship was most concerned to plot dates, legal procedures (or their lack), and provocation, or to distinguish between “authentic” accounts, written close to the events, and inauthentic ones, written many decades or centuries later, and of little “historical” value. While the extent and spread of organized persecution continue to be debated, more recent study turned to the idea of martyrdom, to the sets of ideas and assumptions that shaped the characteristic Christian interpretation of those deaths “for the sake of the name,” to antecedents in Jewish and in Greco-Roman thought, as evidence of influence and dependency, or as markers of shared or of distinctive elements. More recently, attention has focused on the literary forms and strategies of the “Martyr Acts,” on the world or worlds constructed in the telling, and on the complex play of ideas of gender, of the values of the city or Empire, and of an overarching worldview encompassing the cosmic as well as the terrestrial spheres. On one level Candida Moss's elegant study belongs to that last stage, offering a history of the ideologies of martyrdom in the first and second centuries” (p. 166). It agrees that (accounts of) martyrdoms do not represent just one element in early Christian experience, for many never actually experienced at all, but shaped communal self-understandings, provided mechanisms for negotiating status or authority, and influenced or legitimated ways of living as well as of thinking theologically. However, Moss brings a distinctive voice, drawing on her own earlier specialised studies, but also directing attention back to the questions of date, literary sources and development, and to geographical variation, that the move to a more “cultural-studies” approach has relegated to the sidelines.
The first chapter sets the cultural context, arguing more for an intersection of ideas, literary forms and tropes, than for setting Christian ideas of such deaths over against or in close dependency on other contemporary approaches. The remaining chapters move through different geographical regions, arguing that different ways of telling the stories, different literary forms, different ideologies, approbation or caution, appeals to different resources of imagery and language, are not to be harmonized or constrained within a model of development, but reflect genuine cultural variation.
First comes Asia Minor, represented by the letters of Ignatius and by the Martyrdom of Polycarp, whose primary themes, in particular the imitation of Christ and a polemic against the reckless search for martyrdom, are explored through a vigorous challenge to the conventional dating close to the actual events.
For Rome the main witness is Justin, namely references to persecution and martyrdom in his Apology and Dialogue, and the accounts of martyrdom in the Second Apology and in the Acts of Justin; these are marked by philosophical themes, perhaps showing Stoic influence, by ideas of a life lived well and sealed by perseverance, confession and death. Traditions regarding Paul complement but do not challenge this model.
The next chapter focuses on Gaul and the Letters of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons. Again adopting a more skeptical position regarding the date and literary sources of the account, Moss here highlights the fixation on torture, on the resistance exhibited by the victims and the ferocious barbarity displayed by their opponents. Biblical imagery is deployed, but chiefly to serve the sense that what is being played out is a struggle of ultimate significance between Christ and the devil. Moss notes how these themes are also to be found in Irenaeus, who in addition draws martyrdom into the discourse of orthodoxy.
For North Africa, alongside the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas again poses serious problems of text and dating, not least in view of the attention often given to supposed notes of autobiographical authenticity. Alongside problematizing this, Moss is more interested in drawing out the distinctive outlook of the text, in particular the apocalyptic imagery and the interplay with arena and spectacle, and with resistance to social norms. Moss recognises that this text in particular is deeply ambiguous, not least in its attitude to Perpetua's gendered body.
The final port of call is Alexandria, where we have to rely on discussion by Clement of Alexandria, provoking in particular consideration of attitudes to “voluntary martyrdom,” and the uneven hints in the Nag Hammadi texts of a “gnostic” approach, an epithet Clement would also claim.
A confident voice and light touch never obscures the wealth of detailed study of texts and secondary literature that lies behind this study. Readers will not find as general and broad ranging an introduction to the field as some might expect from a volume within the Anchor Bible Reference Library; however, undermining synthetic depictions of “the world view of the Martyr Acts” is not only valuable in itself but likely to send readers back to the narratives themselves, even if some will wonder whether the evidence can sustain a geographical explanation of diversity for which there is limited local cultural justification. Similarly, the author's careful probing of questions of date and literary development is timely, but likely to be demanding for non-specialists, who may not grasp what is at stake or the problems posed by the alternatives. Yet this is a stimulating book worthy of a place on many bookshelves.