Reconceptualizing Martyrdom in Late Antiquity: A Martyrial Lens and Living Martyrs

This essay was part of a panel at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature celebrating the work of Elizabeth Castelli. Read the full forum here. 

In Martrydom and Memory, Elizabeth Castelli fruitfully applied the theoretical framework of collective memory to ancient Christian martyrdom accounts, helping us understand how early Christian communities constructed and presented the past. She argued that the memory work done by early Christians on the historical experience of persecution and martyrdom was a form of culture-making, a pivotal idea within early Christian studies and for my own work.[1] In this paper, I draw on Prof. Castelli’s work, and I examine how some Christians, faced with the absence of physical persecution, grappled with the relevance of the martyrs. In the first centuries of Christianity’s formation, the martyred body’s ability to convey incorporeal truths about faithfulness and to attain glory through suffering was centrally important to Christians. Castelli’s Martyrdom and Memory enables me to ask how the concept of martyrdom—and the stories of the martyrs—transform in late antiquity. I will suggest that in the process of culture-making vis-à-vis Christian storytelling about their heroes, some late ancient Christians participated in cultivating a worldview that centered on martyrdom in new ways, even as the reality of martyrdom was quickly shifting into the distant past, a perspective that I will refer to as a “martyrial lens.” In the absence of physical martyrdom, Christians were adapting and expanding the definition of martyrdom, and in doing so, changed how Christians could emulate martyrs.

This paper will examine representative texts from John Chrysostom’s writings, briefly consider Augustine’s work, and analyze a series of fifth-century Roman ivory reliefs that depict a cycle of images, including one of impending violent martyrdom. Through the juxtaposition of literary and visual sources, I will show that across fourth-century Antioch and North Africa, and into fifth-century Rome, Christians were reimagining the role of martyrdom, and I will demonstrate how they may have conceived of martyrs as analogous to themselves through new definitions and representations of martyrdom. I will make the case that in the late antique period it is the idea of martyrdom, and not the fact of it, that is of central importance.

As Castelli has taught us, in the first three centuries after the death of Jesus, Christianity held persecution central to its self-understanding, and from the third century, martyrdom was increasingly mentioned in Christian literature. While scholars have established that persecution was mostly sporadic and restricted to specific geographic areas, the perceived threat of persecution was a potent force in the minds of Christians.[2] By the fourth century, official imperial persecution of Christians largely ceased, but persecution did not disappear altogether. Hostility towards Christians persisted, and new forms of repression emerged within Christian communities toward groups branded as heretical or schismatic. Though imperial persecution was no longer central to the group’s reality, it remained a crucial component of Christian identity.

In the late fourth century, John Chrysostom delivered a homily titled On Saint Barlaam, likely given at Barlaam’s martyrium, the site where his remains were venerated, and where Chrysostom’s congregation gathered to commemorate Barlaam’s martyrdom on the anniversary of his death. He wrote,

“How is it possible,” you ask, “for us to imitate martyrs now? After all, it isn’t a time of persecution.” Yes, I know. Yet while it isn’t a time of persecution, it is a time of martyrdom… A tyrant isn’t in persecution mode, but the Devil’s in persecution mode, crueler than any tyrant … They stood fast against unbearable pains; subvert the unnatural and wicked thoughts that swell in your heart. It’s in this way you will imitate martyrs.[3]

Chrysostom reflects on the shifting role of martyrdom in a time no longer marked by imperial persecution. He directs attention to the ongoing fight in which Christians are embroiled: that against the devil as persecutor. He writes, “We never have a cease-fire in this war, we never have a lull in hostilities throughout the present life; instead the struggle is constant, so that the crown might be magnificent too.”[4] Crowns, like the martyr’s crown, can still be won through the defeat of demons and the devil, and the martyrs’ perseverance in the face of torture provides a model for Christians undergoing present spiritual contests.

 In another sermon titled On the Holy Martyrs, composed around 390 CE, Chrysostom discusses the power of the martyrs’ suffering. He writes,

For while the martyrs suffer these terrible and unspeakable things in a brief moment of time, after their release from here they ascend into heaven, with angels escorting them in front and archangels as a guard of honor.[5]

Physical suffering is a crucial element of martyrdom which enables an ontological change and grants them immediate access to heaven, where they are welcomed by angels. In the same sermon though, Chrysostom acknowledges that Christians are living beyond a time of oppression that resulted in this physical suffering. He questions his listeners:

“Don’t you tremble in front of this martyrium? Don’t you now yearn for martyrdom? Aren’t you now sad that no opportunity for martyrdom is presently available? On the contrary, let us, too, train ourselves for an opportunity for martyrdom.”[6]

Later in the sermon, he urges Christians who visit the saints’ martyria to reflect on the martyrs’ lives and to cling to their tombs in order that they might learn from the martyrs. He writes that though they cannot undergo the same martyrdom, their tears can mimic the martyrs’ flowing blood. They are to undertake a thought exercise in which they hold up their sins just as the martyrs were presented to the public before execution. Invoking the punishments of the martyrs, the Christian is to punish their desires. The martyrs, as Chrysostom presents them, from their graves and even at their graves, are teaching Christians how to be Christian(s). For Chrysostom, the martyrs are still important because they are models of virtue.[7]

This focus on martyrdom and use of martyrs as models was not limited to the eastern Mediterranean, in Chrysostom’s Antioch. In late fourth-century North Africa, Augustine is also thinking more capaciously about martyrs, and he takes this further to expand the definition of martyrs.[8] Especially important is the context in which he does this––in intense rivalry with Donatist opponents, who, as schismatics, could be persecuted and martyred by mainstream Catholics.[9] Augustine’s martyrology emphasizes that voluntary death and suicide are not grounds for martyrdom. In sermon 306E, one of the “newly discovered sermons,” Augustine writes the following:

The martyrs, on the other hand, did wrestle to the point of shedding their blood. It wasn’t, however, against the man persecuting them that they wrestled, but against the devil laying traps for them, and—if you want the whole truth—against their own weakness. It’s within oneself, when all is said and done, that the great contest takes place, where the theatre of conscience is located, and where, moreover, the chief spectator is the inspector of conscience.[10]

As Chrysostom discussed the current contest between the devil and Christians, Augustine reframes the martyr’s contest as a fight against the devil and their own weakness.[11] Augustine’s martyrology takes a step beyond Chrysostom’s in order to present the martyr as having undergone a spiritual battle. He de-emphasizes the bodily tortures and focuses on the inward wrestling. Further on in the sermon, Augustine expands the definition of martyrs to incorporate those who do not die. He writes: “What’s required is the spirit of the martyr, because God, after all, does not delight in the shedding of blood. He has many hidden martyrs.”[12] No longer do martyrs need to have the traditional marks of martyrdom in the form of the tortured body. The physical evisceration of the martyr has been de-centered through Augustine’s broadening of the category of martyrdom. He exhorts his audience to emulate martyr-saints in other ways in order to be counted amongst those “hidden martyrs.” Ellen Muehlberger writes about the shifting Christian conceptions of martyrdom post-Constantine:

[This is] the central paradox of late ancient Christianity: long after the conditions that first created the concept of a Christian martyr had disappeared, Christians persisted in thinking about themselves, their positions in culture, and the futures that awaited them through the lens of martyrdom.

Augustine is utilizing this lens even as he reframes it.

Elena Martin, writing on Augustine’s depictions of the martyrs, contends that Augustine contributes to a new way of understanding the martyr and martyrdom more broadly through shifting focus away from the details of the martyr’s suffering body and death to an emphasis on the spiritual message the martyr communicates. Martin argues that Augustine’s descriptions of the martyrs are distinctive in five ways: he removes narrative structure from his accounts; he avoids descriptions of the suffering body; he censors female nudity; he deletes the martyrs’ words; and he abstracts the martyrs’ names. These shifts enable Augustine to emphasize not just the “single moment of the martyr’s death” but “to reveal the eternal truths that are expressed by martyrdom.” The historical narrative is less important than the cosmic narrative that is being crafted about martyrdom.

Augustine, like Chrysostom, exhorts Christians to emulate the martyrs and reinscribes martyrdom for Christians no longer facing the threat of death, so they could still actively participate in martyrdom, albeit an adapted form of martyrdom. Now I will shift discussion to a late antique visual representation of martyrdom to make the case that such an image might have worked in analogous ways to abstract and reframe martyrdom, to present to its viewers an expanded conception of martyrdom, and to encourage its viewers to think about faith through a martyrial lens.

Four ivory reliefs were carved between 400 and 430 CE in Rome (Image 1). Three of the surviving ivory panels are figural, depict narrative scenes, and are framed with a leaf border. The ivories’ exact function and original number are unknown; these four panels survive, but it is possible that others were lost. Given their stylistic and structural parallels with contemporary ivories, scholars suggest these panels once adorned the sides of a small, easily portable box. Ivory was an expensive medium and was used in both political and religious art in late antiquity. Ivory boxes produced during this period for Christian use could have served various purposes, such as holding a relic, a fragment of the True Cross, or the consecrated host. The panels’ small size would have necessitated close inspection and engagement in order to see and interpret their images. Viewing it would require turning the box in hand or walking around it on a table. This sort of intimate engagement centered on the individual’s experience of and interaction with the object and images. Just as a Christian listening to Chrysostom’s or Augustine’s sermons would have actively reflected on the applicability of the message to their life, the individual Christian who was looking at or holding the box could have reflected on the pictorial program in a similar way.

Image 2.Two floral fragments belonging to the ivory in image 1; c. 430 CE; Each panel= 4.3 x 9.8cm.; Source: The British Museum, inventory no. 1856,0623.8-12, from the Maskell Collection. 

The three panels each show scenes pertaining to the lives of the apostles Peter and Paul, evincing the popularity of these figures and the apostolic legacy in Rome. One of the ivory panels depicts Peter striking the rock in the Mamertime prison with Roman soldiers drinking from the flowing waters, a scene of conversion and traditionally interpreted as one of baptism. Another of the ivory reliefs depicts a rare scene of Peter’s raising of Tabitha. The third figural relief includes additional episodes from Paul’s life, drawn from multiple sources. This panel is of special interest for my paper (Image 3). 

Image 3. A close-up of the bottom section of the ivory plaque found in Image 1, with a scene from Paul’s life.

The ivory depicts two scenes: In the first we see a representation of Thecla leaning out of a building, enthralled by Paul’s teaching, evocative of her conversion in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, a text that circulated widely at the end of the second century. In the story, Paul travels to Iconium where he preaches on virginity. Thecla, a betrothed woman, sits in a window listening to Paul’s preaching for three days and nights. The text tells us that “she did not look away from the window, but was led on by faith, rejoicing exceedingly.” The artisan who carved this ivory panel presents Thecla’s deep engagement with Paul’s teachings and her dedication to him as a teacher through posture and gaze.

The next scene contains a relatively rare image of Paul, cowering and protecting himself as an assailant prepares to hurl a large stone, with the figures spilling into the frame, evocative of their movement. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Paul is punished for proselytizing, but his punishment, namely scourging, is not pictured here. Paul is eventually executed, but traditionally he is said to have been beheaded. So why is Paul shown being stoned on this ivory? In an account in Acts 14:19–20, Paul is stoned, dragged outside the city and left for dead, but he does not die. The ivory is a curious image of this account of Paul’s pseudo-martyrdom.

It is possible that the image of stoning was a practical choice over showing Paul’s martyrdom via beheading since at the time violent and graphic imagery, such as beheading, was very rare, but images of stoning were also rare at the time of the carving of this ivory, and even rarer are scenes of Paul’s stoning. A few examples of stoning scenes do survive in Rome’s material record, appearing within funerary contexts on fourth-century stone sarcophagi and on an even larger scale, in fifth-century monumental art from Santa Maria Maggiore. Viewer engagement with the ivory panel would have been significantly different from that experienced when looking at the other extant images of stoning. The ivory’s image of the stoning of Paul would have been examined closely, perhaps in the viewer’s palm, maybe even manipulated under candlelight. The question of why this scene remains unresolved. Why was a scene of scourging—an image for which artistic precedents and visual models already existed—not selected instead? The choice of this image cannot be explained solely by the availability of visual precedent. I propose that the choice to include this image might instead suggest something about the reconceptualization of martyrdom at the time of its carving in the early fifth century. Thinking more about the overall visual program from the surviving ivory panels might help elucidate this panel’s imagery.

The scene of Peter’s conversion and the potential baptism of his jailors allude both to their new lives as Christians and to Peter’s impending martyrdom. When considered alongside the carving of Peter’s resurrection of Tabitha, a cohesive theme of new life—spiritual renewal emerging from faith and sacrifice—comes to the forefront of the visual program. The image of Thecla further contributes to this emphasis. The scene evokes her choice to cast away her former life and to follow Paul even to attempted execution. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Thecla is ordered to be burned, but God saves her from the flames by a torrential downpour. After a brief reunion with Paul, she is once again condemned, this time to the beasts. On the appointed day, she baptizes herself in a pool within the arena, and the beasts do not attack, even upon prompting. Thecla is not martyred, but instead she lives a long life in which she spreads the word of God and ultimately falls into a “glorious sleep.” Despite not having died, Thecla was hailed as a martyr by late antique writers, and her burial place became a site of pilgrimage. Castelli writes that “The Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla offers compelling testimony to the role of collective memory in generating a useable past for Christians out of a story that incorporates compelling episodes of innocent suffering and eventual vindication.” On this ivory, which would have required intimate, close looking, I suggest that the viewer might have thought about the stories being evoked by the imagery. They might have reflected on Thecla as an inspirational model of faith, which set the context for interpreting the image of Paul’s pseudo-martyrdom. The image of Thecla primes the viewer to see the image of Paul’s impending stoning through her example–– her social death and her status as a martyr despite not having died a martyr. Thecla and Paul lived beyond martyrdom attempts, with Thecla living a full life and Paul only later dying under imperial execution. Their power was constructed through their role as faithful martyrs, not necessarily in their deaths. The images emphasize their faithfulness up to death, not death itself.

I would like to suggest that an image of pseudo-martyrdom might have resonated with a viewer in an even more powerful way than an image of actual martyrdom. In a world where the physical evisceration central to the martyrs’ stories of the past was becoming increasingly abstracted, and the notion of martyrdom was expanding to encompass those who did not die—"living martyrs,” as Diane Fruchtman has termed them—we might understand this image as part of the reconceptualization of martyrdom taking place in late antiquity. If we treat images as vehicles of culture-making in analogous ways to texts, we can think about images of martyrs functioning beyond the narrative depiction of the event. It is the idea of martyrdom, and not the fact of it, that is crucially important in this visual program. Just as early Christian communities saw the stories of the martyrs as central to their identity, so too did late antique Christians, engendering a need to cultivate novel ways of connecting to the martyrs. The ivory panels, like Chrysostom’s and Augustine’s writings, reveal a reconceptualization of martyrdom in the late antique world.

By way of conclusion, I return to Dr. Castelli’s Martyrdom and Memory. She presents early Christian collective memory of martyrdom as part of a generative impulse to record and remember stories that Christian communities held central to their self-understanding, and she has demonstrated “how dimensions of Christians’ usable past came to be mobilized in the ongoing generation and generativity of collective memory.” Christians crafted their heroes through story-telling. The golden-mouthed preacher told stories at the tomb that would resonate with his audience, Augustine redefined martyrdom in a community fraught with controversy over who could be counted as a martyr, and I propose that at roughly the same time patrons of objects such as the small ivory box were thinking deeply about visually conveying the importance of faithful models while decentering their deaths. Castelli writes, “The history of martyrdom and memory resides here, a history that oscillates and adapts itself over time, sacrificing none of its authority in its changing focus, its amplification of details, and its transformation of its object.” In the absence of physical martyrdom, late antique Christians were reimagining the concept of martyrdom, emphasizing the role of living martyrs, and cultivating new ways of relating to martyr stories in a changing world.

Julia Nations-Quiroz is a doctoral candidate at Yale University, studying ancient Christianities, with a particular focus on the intersections of material, visual, and textual cultures.

[1] Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 4.

[2] G.E.M. de Ste. Croix discusses persecution as having happened in three stages: the first was before the great fire of Rome in 64, the second began after the fire and continued until 250, and the third began with the Decian persecution of 250–251 and lasted until either 313 when Constantine became sole emperor or until 324 when Constantine ultimately defeated Licinius. See Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, & Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 106. There is general scholarly consensus that there was no imperial persecution before 64 and that, between then and 250, persecutions were isolated and local. Those imperial persecutions that took place after 250 were relatively short-lived, with the Decian persecution lasting only about a year; Valerian’s lasting from 257–259; and the final, general persecution under Diocletian continuing for only a couple of years in the West, though it continued on longer in the East. De Ste. Croix writes, “In the intervals between these general persecutions the situation, in my opinion, remained very much what it had been earlier, except that on the whole the position of the Church was distinctly better: there were several local persecutions, but there were also quite long periods during which the Christians enjoyed something like complete peace over most of the empire; and in addition the capacity of the Christian churches to own property was recognized, at least under some emperors” (107). Candida Moss’s monographs have significantly reshaped the study of early Christian martyrdom by challenging long-standing assumptions about persecution and historical violence. In Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), Moss contends that martyrdom texts should be read as reflections about martyrs rather than as records of historical events. Moss’s The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (New York: HarperOne, 2013) dismantles the narrative of continuous and widespread persecution, demonstrating how later Christians constructed martyrdom as a theological, political, and identity-forming discourse. For more on imperial persecution, see Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire, Transformation of the Classical Heritage (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005); Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); James Corke-Webster, “By Whom Were Early Christians Persecuted?” Past & Present, 261, no. 1 (2023): 3–46.; W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967). 

[3] John Chrysostom, On Saint Barlaam (PG 50:677); Translation from The Cult of the Saints: Select Homilies and Letters, trans. Wendy Mayer and Bronwen Neil, Popular Patristics 31 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 180. 

[4] John Chrysostom, On Saint Barlaam (PG 50:675a; Mayer and Neil, Cult of the Saints, 180).

[5] John Chrysostom, On the Holy Martyrs (PG 50:710; Mayer and Neil, Cult of the Saints, 223).

[6] John Chrysostom, On the Holy Martyrs (PG 50:710; Mayer and Neil, Cult of the Saints, 224).

[7] Wendy Mayer suggest that Chrysostom wrote this homily on August 2 of either 386, 390–91, or 396–97 on the basis of the liturgical calendar. “John Chrysostom,” in “Let Us Die That We May Live”: Greek Homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor, Palestine and Syria c.350-c.450 AD, ed. Johann Leemans et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003), 115.

[8] On Augustine’s martyrology, see Diane Fruchtman, Living Martyrs in Late Antiquity and Beyond: Surviving Martyrdom (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2023). Especially relevant for this paper is her chapter, “Augustine and the Life of Martyrdom” (214-248), in which she discusses Augustine’s reconfiguration of martyrdom towards a model of interior martyrdom which enables a life of martyrdom.

[9] On the relation between Augustine’s martyrology and the struggle between Donatists and North African Catholics, see Adam Ployd, “Non poena sed causa: Augustine’s Anti-Donatist Rhetoric of Martyrdom,” Augustinian Studies, 49.1 (2018): 25-44 and Annemaré Kotzé, “Augustine and the Remaking of Martyrdom,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, ed. Paul Middleton (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), 135-50. 

[10] Aug., Serm. 306E (Dolbeau, 211); trans. Hill, 275. 

[11] Aug., Serm. 306E (Dolbeau, 211); trans. Hill, 275.

[12] Aug., Serm. 306E (Dolbeau, 214); trans. Hill, 277.

[13] Ellen Muehlberger, “Salvage: Macrina and the Christian Project of Cultural Reclamation,” Church History 81, no. 2 (2012): 281. 

[14] Elena Martin, “Commemoration, Representation, and Interpretation: Augustine of Hippo’s Depictions of the Martyrs,” Studies in Church History 47 (2011): 32. 

[15] Martin, “Commemoration, Representation, and Interpretation,” 32.

[16] Martin, “Commemoration, Representation, and Interpretation,” 32.

[17] I am indebted to Diane Fruchtman’s scholarship which discusses the development of late antique Christian worldviews. Her article, “Modeling a Martyrial Worldview: Prudentius’ Pedagogical Ekphrasis and Christianization,” Journal of Late Antiquity 7 (2014) demonstrates how Prudentius in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, cultivates a specific Christian worldview in his readers through the “lens of Christ-imitation and martyrdom” (131). Fruchtman’s book, Living Martyrs in Late Antiquity and Beyond, discusses the construction of new worldviews that center on martyrs and martyrdom in new ways, a “martyrial worldview.” 

[18] On late ancient ivory boxes, Niamh Bhalla, “Christian Ivories: Containment, Manipulation, and the Creation of Meaning,” in The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art, ed. Mark Ellison and Robin Jensen (New York: Routledge, 2018), 207–20.

[19] On late ancient ivories, see Richard Delbrueck, Die Consulardiptychen Und Verwandte Denkmäler (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1929); Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeitender Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters (Mainz: Von Zabern, 1976); Anthony Cutler, “Five Lessons in Late Roman Ivory,” Journal of Roman Archaeology, 6 (1993): 167-192. Anthony Cutler, The Craft of Ivory: Sources, Techniques, and Uses in the Mediterranean World, AD 200-1400, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection Publications, 8 (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1985). 

[20] Acts of Paul and Thecla, 7. Translation from J. Keith Elliot, “The Acts of Paul and Thecla,” in The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 365, based on Lipsius and Bonnet’s critical edition Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, 1:104–17, 1:XCIV–CVI.

[21] Acts of Paul and Thecla, 22 (Elliot, Apocryphal New Testament, 368). 

[22] Acts of Paul and Thecla, 43 (Elliot, Apocryphal New Testament, 372). 

[23] Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 24.10 (PG 35:1180D–1181A).

[24] Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 135. 

[25] See Diane Fruchtman, Living Martyrs in Late Antiquity and Beyond, especially the Introduction, “Rethinking Martyrdom.” Fruchtman suggests that living martyrs were present in late antique Christian martyrologies and that understanding the role of living martyrs can help us understand spirituality and “the value of martyrdom in Late Antiquity” (5).   

[26] Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 69. 

[27] Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 137.