Early Christians and Martyrdom

Multiple O’Connor stories refer to early Christians and martyrdom. “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” refer to general martyrdom, with that latter specifically mentioning the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Other notable early Christians who were not martyrs are also referred to, including Saint Antony of Egypt in “The Comforts of Home” and Saint Jerome in “Why Do the Heathen Rage?.”

According to Christian tradition, Jesus Christ, the Messiah was born around 5 B.C.E. in Bethlehem, a town in Nazareth. Christians believe in the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ, where he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born to his mother, Mary, a virgin. He was raised from infancy by Mary and her husband, Joseph, and Jesus began his religious ministry as an adult. Around 30 or 33 C.E., Jesus was crucified by the Roman Empire and was resurrected three days later, according to the Gospel writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. After ascending into Heaven following his resurrection, Jesus’s followers continued his ministry by teaching others throughout Judea and other parts of the Roman Empire, thus marking the start of the religion of Christianity, particularly as detailed in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.

Christianity spread very quickly throughout the Mediterranean region following Jesus's ascension into Heaven. Although Christianity became the Roman Empire’s official religion by the end of the 300s C.E., early Christians struggled and faced persecution during the first three centuries. Some of the most extreme examples of persecution of early Christians resulted in martyrdom, both of leaders of the religious movement as well as common followers. One of the most famous historical accounts is of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, two Christian women executed along with four Christian men in the arena at Carthage on March 7, 203 C.E. Historian Carolinne White relays that "Perpetua came from a well-to-do family and converted to Christianity. Her father was probably a pagan for he tried to dissuade her from refusing to make the sacrifice required by the Roman emperor" (4). Felicitas was Perpetua’s slave, who gave birth while in prison with Perpetua. Both imprisoned for a period of time leading up to their executions, Perpetua kept a vivid diary of their experiences, thus making her and Felicitas’s martyrdoms some of the most memorable. And, like other martyrs who were first imprisoned, Perpetua and Felicitas were killed in an arena in front of an audience who viewed their death as an entertaining spectacle.

Those outside the new religion viewed Christians as part of a deliberately unreasonable and deviant cult, with much hatred stemming from Christians’ refusals to worship or sacrifice to the Greco-Roman gods. However, while early Christians dying for their faith produced extreme and graphic depictions of Christian persecution, martyrdom was not common, and extreme persecution only occurred sporadically during the first centuries of the Christian church. According to Angela Russell Christman in The Blackwell Companion to Catholicism, "[I]t is likely that the total number of Christians martyred during this period was fewer than 1,000" (Buckley et al. 37).

Several instances of persecution and martyrdom are recorded in the Bible in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which documents events of the first several decades following Jesus’s resurrection. For example, the martyrdom of the disciple Stephen is recorded in Acts 6:8-8:3. The killing of James, one of the original twelve disciples and the brother of John, another disciple and the author of the Gospel of John, and the arrest of Simon Peter, also one of the original twelve disciples, are recorded in Acts 12:1-5. Acts 16:16-40 records the beating and imprisonment of Paul and Silas, Paul being one of the most influential teachers in the early Christian church. The plot of a group of Jews to kill Paul is recorded in Acts 23:12-22. And, although they are not recorded in the Bible, historical evidence shows that both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome between 64 and 67 A.D.

Three of O’Connor’s stories each mention a specific early Christian: Antony of Egypt, Jerome, and Sebastian. Antony of Egypt was an ascetic Christian who lived sometime between roughly 251-356 C.E. Scholar Dan Graves chronicles that, "when he was about eighteen or twenty, [Antony's] father and mother died, leaving him alone with one little sister, and responsible for their home," but that, about six months later, Antony received his call to faith. He carried out an ascetic life in the harsh Egyptian desert, subjecting himself to rigorous solitude and self-denial, spending long periods of time in prayer. His strictly ascetic life continued for nearly two decades until he began to heal and give spiritual guidance to people who visited him. Similarly, Jerome lived from 340-420 C.E. and spent his life writing. He is best known as the translator and author of the Latin Vulgate Bible, the standard version of the Bible still used by Roman Catholics today, demonstrating Jerome’s years of devoted study to the Hebrew language. He also developed other translations of the Bible and wrote essays and letters on controversial topics in Christian theology. For instance, Jerome wrote extensively about his extreme views favoring virginity over marriage. Unlike Antony of Egypt and Jerome, Sebastian, whose story is rooted in legend, is best known for being a martyr of the Christian faith. According to his legend, Sebastian was condemned to death for his Christian affiliation when he "was tied to a tree, shot with arrows, and left for dead. He not only recovered, but returned to preaching Christianity" ("San Sebastián"). As punishment for surviving, Diocletian, Roman emperor, ordered that Sebastian be beaten to death.

Works Cited

Buckley, James J., et al., editors. The Blackwell Companion to Catholicism. Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Graves, Dan, editor. "Antony of Egypt." Christian History Institute, https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/study/module/antony.

O'Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.

"San Sebastián." National Museum of American History, Smithsonian, https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_602073.

White, Carolinne. Lives of Roman Christian Women. London, Penguin Books, 2010.