Last Things Read online

  Fear of hell reenforced adherence to community rules, and in the Church of the martyrs no sympathy was extended to the slothful. Because one had free choice (which did not obviate the need for grace), evil was then deliberate perversion and obstinacy. The Lord had made known his law; no allowance could be conceded to laxity, for this indicated feeble intention. Cyprian believed those who recanted under torture had really failed in will and faith; such cowardice and ignorance were damnable, if not repented.103 In this universe of competent will and certain knowledge of the good, if fools chose evil, they were obviously responsible. Was that not just? Sinners obstinately rejected all that made Christians Christian: the call to reform and perfection, to die to the world and be reborn in Christ. Tertullian prescribed a strict reading of the law to meet these criteria of perfection: whatever was not expressly permitted was prohibited.104 One needed to be strict because forgiveness was not won easily.105 Such puritanical restrictions only reinforced Christians’ sense of who they were as “God’s people” and the duties they owed to preserve such intimacy with God.

  Moral choices reflected loyalties that determined social behavior. Christians were to be different in ways highly visible (and not infrequently annoying) to others. Nonconformity was a virtue. Christian women could not offend God with garish cosmetics, for this revived the odium of Eve, destroyer of God’s image.106 Men could not take oaths to competing secular powers, nor could the dead be ornamented with crowns, for these were reminiscent of pagan practices.107 Worldly entertainments and spectacles emulated the ancient ritual sacrifices to pagan gods.108 Mixed marriages were problematic, unless conversions resulted. Ptolemaeus suffered martyrdom because a repudiated spouse wanted revenge.109 Humility and chastity were proper individually; significantly, these behaviors strengthened social cohesion because the whole community was endangered if these directions of the Holy Spirit were ignored.110 Each Christian could recognize the other in the uniformity of their behavior.111

  Persecution had challenged Christians to choose between gods, and this defined sin on a deeper spiritual level. Sin was idolatry, a lèse-majesté, amounting to a disloyalty and dishonor that defied God.112 Sin was war, and sinners were traitors following the falsifier and deceiver rather than the creator and teacher.113 Morality became a contest of “corporate cultures.” To which body did one choose to belong, that of God or the devil? Entrance was mutually exclusive: standards of “the club” were inflexible, and infringements of the rules were visited harshly. In this agonistic world, honor, authority, and power could not be divided: the winner took all. To God “alone” belonged “all power and glory,” just as Christians belonged to Christ, having been ransomed from death and the devil by his sacrifice. More, as the chosen people engaged in a covenant with God, they could not dare to sin, for this was fornication betraying the purity and fidelity owed a spouse.114

  Sins amounted to flagrant actions threatening to undermine the cohesiveness and credibility of the community because they disregarded the doctrines that defined its character. The danger came from the laxist who could be coopted and assimilated; it came from the nonconformist heretic whose idiosyncratic behavior caused disruption. Sin had to be defined unambiguously, and consequently, bishops struggled to get control over the means of its expurgation. (A dead martyr was an asset, a live confessor a liability!).115 Two treatises (De lapsis, De eccelesiae catholicae unitate) address the disruption caused by penitential practices. The lapsed took advantage of privileges of penance given to confessors, and this undermined the power of the bishop. Centralization and monarchy ensured order and credibility. Only later when the Church reached accommodation with the world would sin become more mysterious, psychological, and complex.116 Later, the search would be undertaken for a secure penitence that might offer mercy and hope to the average and very fallible Christian for whom martyrdom would be a heroic legend.117 When external enemies retreated, internal enemies proliferated. New practices would then arise to address these new complications, whether they were from the monk who rejected the world or the bishop who was forced to live in it.

  The world of the martyrs was more direct, if equally mysterious. The community of the martyrs was already living in the next world, having rejected the world wholly to participate in the transcendent life of Christ. Christ’s defeat of death and sin had inaugurated his kingdom already inwardly and spiritually in the hearts of Christians; this is the message of Paul. “The promises of the future have been given to us in the resurrection of Christ,” Clement of Rome wrote.118 “We look to the heavens and see Christ glorified. By him the eyes of our heart are open and we have a taste of immortal knowledge.”119 Christians awaited only death, the beginning of that true life when body and soul would be joined to Christ in heaven. Martyrdom was that passage to heaven, for it guaranteed one entrance to that holy sanctuary, having been washed clean of sins by a second baptism of blood.120 Eschatology was realized with the martyrs. Martyrdom was resurrection, a triumph won, a goal achieved. Just as suffering and death could be demonstrated and so taken as proving the truth, Christians extended their argument to assert that the successful agon documented the achievement of the goal itself. “ ‘Today we are martyrs in heaven. Thanks be to God!’ ” Nartzalus exulted.121 Torture was “endured not as a day of martyrdom but of resurrection,”122 and witnesses were “happy” that martyrs were “going to such great glory,”123 being “restored to heaven and to their hopes.”124 Pionius states, “I am hurrying [to martyrdom] that I may awake all the more quickly, manifesting the resurrection from the dead.”125 But what did this “resurrection” of martyrdom really mean?

  Fittingly, the passibility of the flesh was to be transformed into impassibility. Tertullian argued that the resurrected flesh would be a “reformation of our condition, not our nature, by removing all sufferings from it and bestowing protections on it.” Christians would still have flesh, but it would be impassible: “Thus our flesh will remain even after the resurrection—so far indeed susceptible of suffering, as it is the flesh, and the same flesh too; but at the same time impassible, inasmuch as it has been liberated by the Lord for the very end and purpose of being no longer capable of enduring suffering.”126

  As Christ had united divinity and humanity in his Incarnation and removed death and suffering through his redemptive sacrifice, the glorified body of the Christian would also be quite unlike the normal human body, suffering neither the pain of the martyrs’ agonies nor the distressing mutability all bodies qua bodies endure. To live like angels was to be free of any bodily necessity—eating, drinking, childbearing, death.127 Justin Martyr saw the end of life as freedom from feeling 128 Christians were to be “immortalized” or “deified” 129 “God is spirit,” Tertullian asserted, “and he requires that his worshippers be of the same nature.”130 The idea of a perfected body so fascinated early writers that Origen was even thought to have posited that the resurrected body would be a circle, the perfect shape.131 Glorified flesh would be changed and purged from the damages of sin, and this implied that “normal” flesh was in need of much remediation. The burden of sin was crushing, and radical reversals were needed to restore the flesh. As the first Adam had sinned in the flesh, so the second brought redemption of the flesh through the bruises of his body.132 If humanity fell through temptations and sins of the flesh, so the discipline of the flesh could compensate for its sins. “Since by man came death, by man came the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. 15: 21).133

  The body was the battered vehicle of a marvelous transformation, for torture and physical suffering conveyed martyrs across the boundary between this world and the next.134 The body was elevated to the sublime role of uniting humanity to God and to other human beings; it was also the agent of the Christian’s transformation to glory: martyrdom was both the moral injunction to imitate Christ and the telos of all life: “to attain God” to reach “perfection in Christ” in Ignatius’s words.135 In Tertullian’s words, “The man who is afraid to suffer cannot belong to him w
ho suffered for us. But the one who does not fear suffering, he will be perfect in love.”136 Spiritually and psychologically, Christians were bound in something of a mystical union with Christ. They “bore in their own bodies the sufferings of Christ’s flesh.”137 How then could they ever be separated?

  As members of Christ’s body, Christians would share Christ’s triumph, as they shared his suffering. Sufferers would be bound in a kind of mystical union to Christ and to one another. The members of Christ shared his achievements because they imitated, that is, reenacted suffering and death. Action was literal and physical, not merely metaphoric. Therefore martyrs could be said to “share Christ’s cup” and “participate” in his sufferings. “Now since it is through the flesh that we suffer with Christ, for it is the property of the flesh to be worn away by suffering, to the same this belongs the recompense which is promised for suffering with Christ,” Tertullian wrote.138 Ignatius explained, “If I shall suffer, then I am a freed-man, delivered by Jesus Christ; and I shall be reborn in him, free.”139 To be glorified in return was perhaps the greatest blessing of martyrdom. Christ was sacrificed; martyrs repaid that sacrifice and through participation gained what Christ had won. Here the language of reciprocity and exchange was especially strong. We are the heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we “suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (cf. Rom. 8: 16–17).140 In Tertullian’s outspoken Montanist economics: “We pay out the very things whose benefit we pay to gain, the very things are expended which become profits, the price and the commodity are the same.”141

  Suffering purified the body from sin so that it might be resurrected in perfection; in it debts were discharged. For this reason, Christians embraced the healing medicine of suffering. By the grace of God, the second trial of Sanctus proved to be “not a torture, but rather a cure.”142 For Tertullian, suffering was necessary to open heaven.143 The body’s very vulnerability had changed from a liability to an asset.

  Martyrdom demonstrated various changes to come already in this life, not only in the spiritual regeneration of everyday life brought by Christ’s resurrection, but even in the more spectacular manifestations of the life beyond. In a remarkable division, martyrs were in heaven enjoying glory even though their physical bodies remained on earth. Contemporary African bishops wrote Cyprian that they had even gazed upon the triumphant and glorious martyrs abiding with the angels.144 With a foot in both worlds, martyrs “imitated here what they would be there.”145 “About to reign with God, [martyrs] were already reigning in mind and heart.”146 They took on “the image of God’s glory” and became “immortal with him, sharing eternal life through the Word.”147 Their ontological status changed as well. Martyrs were “no longer men but angels.”148 Once God’s “servants” (servi), they now become his “friends” (amici).149 Most happily, martyrs were offered a glimpse of heavenly secrets while still on earth, reassuring Christians of the truth of Christian doctrine and the value of their own sacrifices.

  Martyrdom itself was a winnowing process, for it served to separate the soul from the body. This proved the soul’s immortality and its life with Christ in heaven, a triumph demonstrated by Christians’ contempt of death.150 Christians could “despise” death because of their conviction, or rather, their “certain knowledge” of the afterlife.151 As was typical, the way martyrs faced death and suffering was taken to prove these transcendent truths.152 Christians argued that willing deaths proved Christ’s divinity and triumph over death. “Christ taught us to despise the penalty of death . . . to be convinced that there will be a judgment after death and a reward given by God after the resurrection,” Apollonius announced.153 To die a beautiful death was certain proof that life did not end and God was in charge. As Apollonius explained: because it is “through God that we are what we are,” “we make every attempt not to die a coward’s death.”154 Pionius died “peacefully and painlessly,” giving his soul “in trust to the Father, who had promised to protect all blood and every spirit that has been unjustly condemned.”155 Despising death and torture could be inverted and transformed to enthusiasm for them because death led to glory. Martyrs who embraced death eagerly and joyfully were the rule in the passions.156 Punishments were not afflictions but sources of joy.157

  Being “already in heaven” allowed martyrs to dissociate themselves from bodily suffering. When the heart is in God, the body feels no pain. “Where your heart is, there your treasure lies,” Tertullian quoted Matthew 6: 21.158 Simply being indwelt by God meant God would answer for martyrs in their distress; therefore they need not fear arrests or inquisitions.159 Facing torture, martyrs like Perpetua were “in ecstasy,” such that they had no recollection of their grisly ordeals.160 God would help martyrs bear their pain. Blandina had no fear of suffering in the arena, though she had agonized giving birth. “Now I suffer what I suffer. However, then there will be another in me who will suffer for me, since I will also suffer for him.”161 Again, the balance, the “justice” of this world organizes experience into reciprocal exchanges.

  In dying, the martyrs revealed hints of the brilliant transformation to come. Christ took over, indwelling the martyrs so that they miraculously shared Christ’s impassibility in their own ordeals. Often the martyrs’ bodies glowed or shone with dazzling white light, just as Christ’s body in his Transfiguration (Mark 9: 2–3 and Matt. 17: 2–3).162 The garments of Successus “glowed,” he “dazzled” bodily eyes with his “angelic brilliance.”163 Suddenly “Christ shone on the face of a brother” “by the grace of the suffering that was to come.” Pagans recognized his “election” and dispatched him.164 Marian and James also “flashed from the approaching passion,”165 while the Trinity was visible in Fructuosus’s face.166

  Suffering proved that the body transformed could negate physical laws, the most ominous being death itself. Perpetua could rout death, but instead willed it for Christ. “It was as though so great a woman, feared as she was by the unclean spirit, could not be killed unless she herself willed it.”167 Other passions reveal the supernatural resilience and fortitude of the martyrs’ bodies in their defiance of death. Papylus exhausted three teams of exactors,168 while Sanctus “withstood all. . . with extraordinary, superhuman strength.”169 Bodies regained their integrity; indeed, they are augmented and glorified through torture, like Pionius, who retained his purity and dignity,170 or Sanctulus, who grew straight after being broken with torture.171 Polycarp’s immolation was a Eucharistic sacrifice.172 In all ways martyrs were magnified through suffering, like Marian, who “through his faith in God, grew as great in body as well as soul.”173 Martyrs demonstrated how very different the physics of the supernatural world were from those of ordinary reality.

  The care tendered the deceased bodies of the martyrs further proved their sanctification and connectedness with the world beyond. Their remains became especially important to the Christian community in their battle against critics and skeptics. The persecutors of Lyon cremated the martyrs’ bodies and threw them in the Rhône, challenging the Christian God to rescue and resurrect them.174 Consequently, the essays that dwell on the fragmentation of the body would serve to vindicate God’s omnipotence by insisting that every last particle of flesh would be collected for the resurrection. Such arguments would console Christians: the omnipotent God would restore them. Whatever horrors demons and human beings might devise, they were incapable of outmaneuvering the Creator of heaven and earth.

  The bodies that remained served useful purposes for the community. Fortunately, Polycarp’s body was only cremated, so his ashes could be collected and his anniversary celebrated as a “memorial to those who have already fought the contest and for the training and preparation of those who some day will do the same.”175 The body of Cyprian was exposed to the curiosity of pagans but was secretly rescued by Christians. His blood was caught by napkins, presumably to be used as relics.176 Fructuosus’s ashes shed miracles to increase the faith of believers and set examples for the young. Those who t
ried to hide them as private possessions were chastened by a vision of the saint himself, who demanded their return to the church.177 Charity and community must prevail.

  Martyrdom taught Christians about the body’s perfectibility through passion, and writers exhorted Christians not only to face persecution with fortitude, but also to bear the adversities of everyday life patiently.178 Such may not have been the most cheerful lessons Christians gained from martyrologies. More joyous were the fresh glimpses of heaven. Martyrs gained spiritual sight; prisons and blindfolds were ineffective to martyrs, for “no darkness [could] impede the vision of a soul that is free (libera).”179 Visions also documented the power of the martyr as mediator between these two worlds. Sometimes martyrs simply fell into trances or saw visions (uisio; ). They might prophesy the future, discern souls, see glimpses of the world beyond, or simply behave eccentrically. Nevertheless, all their activities testified to the truth of Christian teaching about the world beyond, underscoring the reward of the just and the punishment of the profane.

  Some brief examples may be given. Perpetua’s intimacy with the Lord was enviable, and she was unabashedly ambitious. She could “chat with the Lord” (fabulari cum Domino) and request visions.180 The Lord, moreover, was quite obliging in answering her with visions predicting her victorious passion181 and her successful intercession for a brother in the underworld. Polycarp foresaw his own immolation in a vision of flaming pillows182 and amazed the crowd when he faced East and prayed for two hours “full of divine grace.”183 Broader in scope was Marian’s prophecy of vengeance: earthquakes, famines, a plague of poisonous flies.184

  Many of these visions moderns might term “near-death” experiences whose purpose is reassurance and consolation. Illumination was characteristic: heaven was a world of light, and light was life. Victor’s vision before his passion is telling: a child “whose face shone with a brilliance beyond description” consoled him with the words, “Have confidence, for I am with you.”185 Facing their passions, some martyrs were encouraged by old friends: Potamiaena appears to Basilides,186 Agapius visited James,187 Successus entered Flavian’s house in a glowing gown.188 Some martyrs even had round-trip tickets to shuttle back and forth to earth: Cyprian logged many miles visiting Flavian, Marian, and Montanus to advise them how to tolerate suffering.189 Polycarp himself appeared to Pionius, the redactor of his passion. (Perhaps the saint could not forbear editorial comments.)190 Such return visits served to reassure the community of life after death: a protector had preceded them and would show them the way. These divine emissaries could steel confessors for their approaching passion. The impulse of all these visitations from the other world is decidedly activist.