The Martyrs

“The blood of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church.” -Tertullian the Scholar

I was recently talking with a Protestant acquaintance of mine and asked him if he knew about the Martyrs. He referred to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (which is a Protestant Reformation era book about the early reformers). Then I told him that the martyrs I was talking about are about a thousand years older than the martyrs mentioned in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. However when I said really old, he mentioned St. Polycarp (who was a disciple of St. John the Apostle), who as I was told, was actually mentioned by Fox. This made me think that the martyrs are not really that well known in the West, even more so in the Protestant Church.

The Martyrs, however, were of extreme significance in the early church up until even after the Protestant Reformation. The fact that a book like Foxes Book of Martyrs was written bears witness to this.

The word “Martyr” comes from a Greek word which originally meant “Witness.” This is because the Martyrs are those who bore witness to Christ, even giving up their lives for that witness. Jesus called us His friends in the Gospel of John, and right after that He said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). Just as Jesus laid down His life for all of us, we lay down our lives for Him. It is the mutual love that causes us to do this. And just as He rose again by dying for us, we will rise again by dying for Him. This sort of language of the mutual death can be seen in the Epistle to the Romans applied to Baptism. But the interesting thing is that the early fathers saw Martyrdom as also a Baptism in itself. In Orthodoxy, Baptism is essential to Salvation, for without it one cannot put on Christ and become a member of the Church. But there were those who were catechumens (those coming to the faith and about to be baptized) that were killed. So what happened to them? The early church had this doctrine of “The Baptism of Blood.” This doctrine said that if one was killed as a Martyr for Christ, this was counted as Baptism. This doctrine actually goes back to the Bible, and we see Jesus referring to it when he says to the Apostles (11 of which became Martyrs), “‘Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ They said to Him, ‘We are able’” (Matthew 20:22).

Martyrdom also has a paradox that is even though Christians are killed for their faith, the number of Christians increases afterward. This is what is meant by Tertullian the Scholar when he says, “The blood of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

The most severe ancient persecution of Christians came under the reign of Diocletian the Emperor, who ruled beginning in 284 A.D. up until about 303 A.D. The longest list of ancient Martyrs comes from this period.

Some examples of these Martyrs are Saints like St. Maurice and the Theban Legion. Saint Maurice was the leader of a Legion of soldiers from Thebes in Egypt. He and his Legion were very successful in military campaigns and they were summoned by the Roman Emperor to go to Switzerland to fight off the Empire’s enemies. They succeeded, so the Emperor asked them to offer up sacrifices to the idols in celebration of the victory. They refused saying that even though they were loyal to the emperor and would obey him, they would not obey him concerning something that was against their faith. Following the example of St. Peter and the other Apostles, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). The emperor then began decimating the Legion, who numbered at 6600 to try to intimidate them and cause some of them to offer up the idols. But they remained steadfast, and all of them ended up being martyred for their faith in Christ.

Another example of these Martyrs is Saint Demiana and the Forty Virgins. This young lady was of a noble family, with her father being the governor of a city called El-Borollos in Northern Egypt. She told her father that she wanted to dedicate her life to Christ, so he built her a palace. St. Demiana might have been a sort of proto-nun, because essentially what she established was a convent for her and her forty companions. One day the Emperor called her father to come and offer sacrifices to idols with him. Her father weakened and did. St. Demiana heard about and went to her father and rebuked him. So her father went back confessed his faith in Christ and was martyred. The emperor who happened to be infuriated sent soldiers to St. Demiana and her companions, tortured them, and killed them because of their confession of Christ.

One more example of is St. Hripsime the Armenian. St. Hripsime’s story is a little bit similar to St. Demiana. St. Hripsime was also a sort of proto-nun who lived in Rome. The emperor Diocletian sent painters all over the empire to paint the most beautiful women so he could see them and choose to marry one. That one ended up being St. Hripsime who had dedicated her life to Christ. When she heard this, she fled to Armenia with some of her companions and hid in a beat up garden. However, some reports arrived to Diocletian and the king of Armenia, Tiridates found out that she was hiding and the emperor wanted her. But when he saw her, he decided that he wanted her too. So he brought her before himself and asked her to marry him and she refused saying that she had dedicated her life to Christ. He asked her again and again, and the answer was always the same. So he tortured her in the most gruesome ways along with her companion and finally killed her and they threw her body and her companions in some heap. The king afterward was upset and was advised to go hunt so he could get over this episode. While he was hunting he became possessed by some demon. One of the ladies in Tiridates’ court, maybe his sister, I don’t remember clearly, prayed to God, and she remembered something after her prayer. Fourteen years earlier, Tiridates had thrown a Christian bishop who was evangelizing Armenia into a pit. This lady told some of the people in the king’s court to go to the pit, so they threw a rope and the rope tugged, and the bishop, St. Gregory the Illuminator, came out. Shortly after he was thrown into the pit, a woman living nearby was warned by an angel to throw a loaf of bread everyday into the pit. She did this for fourteen years. They brought St. Gregory to the king, and he told the king if he was to pray for him, he would stop persecuting the Christians and would convert, the king agreed, and St. Gregory exorcised him. St. Gregory then went to find the bodies of St. Hripsime and her companions and gave them a proper burial and a church was later built over their bodies. This church is one of the holiest churches in Armenian Orthodoxy. Tiridates declared Christianity as the official religion of Armenia in 303 A.D., and is now known as Tiridates the Great.

All these examples of martyrs come from the period of Diocletian’s reign, however St. Maurice was killed by Diocletian’s companion emperoror, Maximian.

The Martyrs gives us the greatest example of the love of Christ because as He said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). They also give us the greatest example of showing us that the Christian life CAN be lived. Let us learn from them and always keep their life stories in front of us.

May their prayers be with us and glory be to God both now and ever and unto the age of all ages. Amen.