RLG203 WEEK 5: CHRISTIANITY IN CONFRONTATION: MARTYRDOM AND THE BODY

Why would early Christians celebrate Perpetua’s death?

- Watch the clips to answer it well, read the sources

- Discuss the change and the Christian understanding of dead bodies, all coming from
Peter Browns chapter, the change, and the Christian understanding versus the Jewish
and roman conceptions
- Why martyrdom was held as an ideal, as an imitation of Jesus’ death and as suffering as
necessary calling, as a necessary requirement for Christians
- why early Christians would have celebrated Perpetua’s death, and, insofar as you can fit
it in, how the cult of the saints (as Brown describes) broke down the barrier between
heaven and earth. 

Why is the “body” so important in Christianity?

How did Christian ideas about death and the body challenge prevailing non-Christian ideas in
the Roman Empire?

How do we distinguish between “noble death” (martyrdom) and “suicide”?

Martyr- a Greek word meaning witness; someone who gives a testimony, martyrs are made, it
requires people to pass on the story that holds them as a martyr, makes you seem like a martyr,
you need the memory to hold the story, as a witness, as the story passes on martyrdom is
remembered
- To be a follower of Jesus means to suffer
- Early Christians understanding the death of Christ as something they can imitate

Pliny the Younger

- Friend of the Emperor Trajan, extremely respected Roman official
- His duties were to maintain order
- Pliny can’t figure out who they are and why they’re there, the Christians
- Christian’s refusal to make public sacrifice to the emperor and the Gods that made them
seem anti-social
- When Christians become more prominent in the social arena of Greeks, the Greeks take
note of Christians absence during their Pagan festival days, and unwillingness to
participate in certain sacrifices
- Christians were outlanders in their own town, and are used as an explanatory device
whenever there are natural insults of human existence like plague, earthquake, flood,
it’s because Christians as Gentiles who are not doing their duty to heaven, why should
the Gods do anything for the city then
- It was becoming a crime to be a Christian, Christians were charged and faced a terrible
choice
- Turtullian, Apology
 - Prison diary of a young woman who was martyred in the year 202-203 as part of a civics
celebration her name was Perpetua
- Gives birth before dying, give her child away at the moment she’s about to give her life
away
- The Diary of Perpetua, a hero tale
- Thousands of people admiring the people that are getting martyred
- It’s a very important milestone in the development of Christianity, the story tells us
about the perception of Christians at that time
- At the time of Pliny, Christians are an unknown commodity, so even when Pliny
executes them, he doesn’t really know what to make of them
- Within 200 years, when Perpetua meets her death as a martyr, Christianity becomes has
become a recognizable commodity
- The story of Perpetua is a story of a very significant change in the status of Christianity,
it had become to be a part of the Roman world
- Now that Christianity has emerged as a church, and not Judaism, the question that
Christians now confronted is “What is Christianity?”
- The second age was the age of Christian definition, where Christians themselves and the
church were trying to figure out what the new message is
- The physical act goes beyond yourself, it doesn’t qualify as sacrifice

Lecture
- The story of Perpetua and Felicitas in Africa, imprisoned, trialed
- Noble woman who has a lot to lose, gives up her family, her son, her father, erases her
worldly obligations to her father
- At the end when she’s killed, she took the sword of the gladiator and guided to her
sword, she becomes the man the one who is acting here, she took power

The Holy and the Grave, Peter Brown reading

- "The Holy and the Grave," focuses on the rise and function of the medieval cult of saints
in Western Christianity.
- The author explores the concept of sainthood in the medieval period, including the
beliefs and practices surrounding it, as well as the role of saints as intermediaries
between the living and the divine.
- The chapter also covers the development of shrines and relics as well as the cult of
saints in different regions of Western Europe.
- Throughout the chapter, the author argues that the cult of saints played a vital role in
the formation of Western Christendom, serving as a means of expressing the religious
aspirations and anxieties of the medieval people.
- The cult of saints was seen as a means of attaining salvation and avoiding damnation
and was therefore a central aspect of medieval religious life.
- In conclusion, "The Holy and the Grave" provides a comprehensive and insightful
overview of the medieval cult of saints and its significance in Western Christianity during
the medieval period.