Church History 81:3 (September 2012), 531–551.

© American Society of Church History, 2012

doi:10.1017/S0009640712001254

The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom:

Ancient and Modern
CANDIDA R. MOSS

While the social and intellectual basis of voluntary martyrdom is fiercely debated,
scholarship on Christian martyrdom has unanimously distinguished between
“martyrdom” and “voluntary martyrdom” as separate phenomena, practices, and
categories from the second century onward. Yet there is a startling dearth of evidence
for the existence of the category of the “voluntary martyr” prior to the writings of
Clement of Alexandria. This paper has two interrelated aims: to review the evidence
for the category of the voluntary martyr in ancient martyrological discourse and to
trace the emergence of the category of the voluntary martyr in modern scholarship
on martyrdom. It will argue both that the category began to emerge only in the third
century in the context of efforts to justify flight from persecution, and also that the
assumption of Clement’s taxonomy of approaches to martyrdom by scholars is rooted
in modern constructions of the natural.

I
the Acta proconsularia, the account of the trial of Cyprian, the third-
N
century bishop of Carthage, the protagonist is asked by the proconsul to
supply the names of other members of the Carthaginian Christian clergy.1
Cyprian declines, responding in the following way: “Since our discipline
forbids anyone to surrender voluntarily and since you strongly disapprove of
this as well, they [the presbyters] may not give themselves up. But if they
are sought out by you they will be found.”2 In modern histories of
martyrdom, Cyprian’s distinction has stuck: the practice of offering oneself
for martyrdom has been isolated from normative martyrdom as something

1
This article has grown out of and develops an argument raised in my book Ancient Christian
Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (Yale Anchor Reference Library;
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012). It was presented at colloquia at Duke
University, University of Heidelberg, and Yale Divinity School. I am grateful to the attendees of
these lectures, the anonymous readers for Church History, and Joel Baden, Jan Bremmer, and
Blake Leyerle for their comments and suggestions.
2
Cum disciplina prohibeat, ut quis se ultro offerat, et tuae quoque censurae hoc displiceat; nec
offerre se ipsi possunt: sed a te exquisiti invenientur (Ac. Procons. 1.5).

Candida R. Moss is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University
of Notre Dame.

531

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 532 CHURCH HISTORY

particular and different. This practice, variously termed “voluntary martyrdom”

or “provoked martyrdom,” is broadly defined as the bringing about of
martyrdom either by presenting oneself to authorities or by the unsolicited
disclosure of one’s Christian identity.
Those scholars who are uncomfortable with the use of the term “voluntary
martyrdom” object to its use primarily on the grounds that they think that
martyrdom is intrinsically voluntary. In his delicate discussion of rabbinic
martyrological discourse, for instance, Daniel Boyarin writes that “provoked
martyrdom is a better term in my opinion, than ‘voluntary martyrdom’—if
martyrdom is not voluntary it is not martyrdom.”3 If Boyarin raises a note of
caution about the use of the category “voluntary martyrdom,” he does so in the
service of protecting and preserving a specific notion of martyrdom, in which a
person must choose death in order to qualify as a martyr. He does not query the
existence of this separate practice per se. While the specifics of this terminology
are debated, there is a general agreement among scholars that voluntary or
provoked martyrdom was a discrete phenomenon in the ancient world.
The purpose of this paper is to trace the emergence of voluntary martyrdom
as a category distinct from “true” or “normative” martyrdom. Its interests lie in
the discursive production of voluntary martyrdom, not in the historical
evidence for prosecution and execution. For the purposes of this paper,
whether or not people offered themselves for martyrdom (according to
whatever definition of offering we might employ) is irrelevant. The paper is
interested in those ancient mentalities and taxonomies that would have
marked voluntary martyrdom as something discrete and different. In
inquisitive terms, then, the paper asks: when, in what contexts, and for what
purposes, is the concept of voluntary martyrdom produced? It will begin,
however, not with Clement, Tertullian, or even the much-maligned
Montanists, but with the emergence of the category “voluntary martyrdom”
in modern scholarship. From here we will work our way back to the
appearance of the concept of voluntary martyrdom in the ancient world.

I. THE EMERGENCE OF THE TERM “VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM”

The category of the voluntary martyr has grown out of scholarly discussions
about the solidification of the title “martyr” (martys) in ancient Christianity.4

3
Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 121. For a similar critique of the use of the
term “voluntary martyrdom,” see A. Wypustek, “Magic, Montanism, Perpetua, and the Severan
Persecution,” in Vigiliae Christianae 51 (1997): 281.
4
Without a hearty notion of the “martyr” the slight figure of the voluntary martyr is rendered
unnecessary. The precise manner in which martyrdom was delineated in the twentieth century,
along with the stalwart sense that martyrs are willing but not provocative gave momentum to the

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 533
Yet the easy way in which the term “voluntary martyr” is used obscures the fact
that it has no ancient philological counterpart. In the English language the
notion and terminology of voluntary martyrdom pre-dates scholarly
investigation of the early church. It emerges out of the religious reforms and
conflicts in seventeenth-century England, a period in which both Catholics
and non-conforming Protestants utilized the discourse of voluntary
martyrdom both in their self-presentation and in their narration of the history
of martyrdom. The primary way in which the term was used, however, was
to describe religious practices that were in some sense self-denying: self-
denying either because they pertained to the body or because they might
invite some punishment. The use of the notion of voluntary martyrdom in
the writings of nonconformist Protestants, such as Nicholas Billingsley, the
author of the tractate Brachy-Martyrologia, serves to cast volunteerism as
activism.5 In this work the King, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, condemns the
actions of the Maccabean martyrs for being “voluntary” and “active.”6 That
the villain of the piece exhorts the Maccabees to passivity encourages those
in the audience to shrug off the mantle of peaceful protest. The implicit
message is that volunteerism and active resistance are desirable and
encouraged. Billingsley used the concept of voluntary martyrdom to refer to
his refusal to wear his vestments correctly or use the hymns designated by
the service book.7
The idea of voluntary martyrdom passed from sermons into scholarship with
Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where the term is
used to describe ascetic lifestyle choices such as monasticism.8 Martyrdom

creation of this philologically unsubstantial category. It is out of the shadow of extended scholarly
discussions about definitions of martyrdom in general that the voluntary martyr has emerged. Very
much the runt of the taxonomic litter, the pale, anemic voluntary martyr perches uneasily between
suicide and martyrdom and is sustained only by a rigorous sense of what is and is not a martyr.
5
Nicholas Billingsley, Brachy-Martyrologica or A Breviary of all the Greatest Persecutions
which have befallen the Saints and People of God from the Creation to our present times
(London: Austin Rice, 1657).
6
“Not good, ‘tis not your voluntary act . . . Not actively but passively obey,” Brachy-
Martyrologica, 11.
7
This is not to say that all would agree. The rhetoric of suicide was employed in order to condemn
those martyrs deemed theological and doctrinally acceptable. In these instances the question of truth
wound its way to the forfront of the discussion. The criticism of martyrdom as suicide is arguably
best known from John Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr (London: William Stansby, 1610), which labels
Jesuits suicidal. The debate over true and false martyrs was a heated one in the early modern
period, yet volunteerism itself did not appear to carry a heavily negative connotation. For a
discussion of this phenomenon in the early modern period, see Susannah Brietz Monta,
Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 134–138.
8
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A New Edition in Four Volumes
(London: Gibbings, 1890).

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 534 CHURCH HISTORY

itself is in Gibbon’s estimation intrinsically provocative: he describes the

actions of those who sought martyrdom as “blind” and “rash.”9 Gibbon’s
negative appraisal of the phenomenon of martyrdom in general set the tone
for subsequent discussion, but it was in the nineteenth century, and under
pressure from scientific inquiry, that classical scholars began to distill the
category into an elemental form and offer an explanation of its occurrence.
In an essay on the idol-destroying late-third-century martyr Polyeuctus, for
example, the nineteenth-century French epigrapher and hagiographer
Edmond Le Blant contrasts the views of church leaders with those of the
laity, writing, “in the Christian camp . . . the crowd had its passions, and
sometimes too easily hailed as martyrs those whom the Church itself refused
to include among its saints.”10 For Le Blant, the acclamation of Polyeuctus
as a saint was the fault of the passionate, thoughtless crowd. Le Blant also
writes that “according to the strict rules and requirements in ancient times,
Polyeuctus would not be a martyr; the very act of violence which made his
memory famous would exclude him from all right to this title.” His
assumption is that ecclesiastical rules were enforced in ancient times but
were somehow overturned by the unruly, passionate rabble.11 Voluntary
martyrdom is situated within a certain social sphere. The people condone
this behavior; the Church, in Le Blant’s summary, is a hapless bystander.
Conceptually, Le Blant’s narrative pushes voluntary martyrdom outside of
orthodoxy. There is a certain irony here. In martyrdom accounts the
maddened crowd was often responsible for getting Christians martyred. In
Le Blant’s narrative it is now responsible for making executed Christians
martyrs. The apposition of a (as yet non-existent) thinking and well-
regulated Église and an unruly, passionate crowd invokes the binary of the
educated elite and the unthinking populace.12 That there were no such strict

9
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1.388, 18n51. Even in his correspondence
Gibbon reveals his commitment to the idea that Christians provoked their punishment. In a letter
to J. B. Holroyd, esq., written in November 1777, Gibbon describes himself as a martyr for
gout, saying, “I suffer like one of the first Martyrs, and possibly have provoked my punishment
as much,” Rowland E. Prothero, The Letters of Edward Gibbon (London: John Murray, 1896),
1.321.
10
E. Le Blant, “Polyeucte et le zèle térméraire,” in Mémoires de l’Institut Nationale de France,
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 28 (1876): 335–52: “Dans le camp des chrétiens . . . la
foule avait ses entraînements, et, trop facilement parfois, saluait comme des martyres des
personages que l’Église se refusait à inscrire au nombre de ses saints” (337). Translated in G. E.
M. De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church,” in Christian Persecution,
Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, ed. G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Michael Whitby, Joseph Streeter
(New York: Oxford, 2006), 156.
11
Le Blant, “Polyeucte,” 335: “Selon les rigoureuses lois de la discipline des anciens âges,
Polyeucte ne serait pas un martyr; l’acte même de violence qui a illustré sa mémoire l’exclurait
de tout droit à ce titre.” Translated in de Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrs,” 156n4.
12
Recent scholarship has leaned toward the idea that bishops, and thus “the Church” as an
institution, did not have much power or authority until the fourth century. For a recent

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 535
regulations in antiquity—indeed, Polyeuctus was a bishop—demonstrates the
extent to which “the Church” here is a cipher for Le Blant’s own well-
ordered perspective. The distinction between true and false martyrdom is
grounded in social status and class. Le Blant may not have the vocabulary to
discard certain forms of martyrdom as voluntary, but he has the ideals.
The concern to distinguish between voluntary martyrdom and true
martyrdom is common in secondary literature after the nineteenth century. In
his influential essays “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?” and
“Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church,” G. E. M. de Ste. Croix takes a
genealogical approach.13 He suggests that voluntary martyrdom was not an
exclusively Montanist practice and argues, albeit reservedly, that it was
likely to have begun much earlier, in the Maccabean period.14 He still insists
upon a genealogical thread, however, and traces voluntary martyrdom from
the Maccabees to the “abnormal mentality” of Ignatius of Antioch.15 This
genealogy serves to essentialize voluntary martyrdom, to constrain it as a
distinct and—to de Ste. Croix—less intelligent form of martyrdom, and to
account for its popularity in the third and fourth centuries. Like Le Blant, de
Ste Croix locates the source of this error in the “mass of simple believers”:

If the Church was prepared to forgive, and even applaud, all such infractions
of discipline, why did it condemn them without qualification beforehand?
Why did it not merely issue a warning against the dangers of volunteering
for martyrdom, both to the individuals concerned and to their church? The
answer, surely, is that in practically all cases of voluntary martyrdom the
mass of simple believers forced the hand of their more intelligent and
worldly-wise leaders and insisted on having the volunteers venerated just
like other martyrs.16

De Ste. Croix’s statement betrays two commitments: to a notion of a stable,

uniform, definitive Church that acted decisively and with conviction, and to
a polarization of “simple believers” and “intelligent,” “worldly-wise leaders.”
Even though he is prepared to describe the tension between martyrs and
non-martyrs more ambiguously as a “contradiction between theory and

reassessment, see Kim Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late
Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
13
G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?,” Past and Present 26
(1963): 6–38, reprinted in Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, 105–52 and
“Voluntary Martyrdom in the Early Church,” 153–200.
14
De Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?,” 132.
15
De Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?,” 133. This genealogical thread is
implicit in a number of studies, most notably A. R. Birley, “Voluntary Martyrs in the Early Christian
Church: Heroes or Heretics,” Cristianesimo nella Storia 27:1 (2006), 108–110.
16
De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 157.

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 536 CHURCH HISTORY

practice,” his dichotomy unwittingly reinforces Le Blant’s classism and

stereotypes.17
De Ste. Croix’s picture of ancient martyrdom is more complex than a mere
binary of true and voluntary martyrs. In his typology de Ste. Croix includes
both “voluntary martyrs” and “quasi-volunteers,” and also—somewhat
separately—“religious suicide.” The first rather more familiar category he
populates with those who:
(a) explicitly demanded the privilege of martyrdom; or (b) came forward of
their own accord in times of persecution and made a public confession of
Christianity which was bound to lead to instant execution; or (c) by some
deliberate act—destroying images, for example, or assaulting a provincial
governor while he was sacrificing—clearly invited arrest and execution.18
Between the poles of these volunteers and “the ordinary martyrs,” de Ste. Croix
slips in a third group he terms “quasi-volunteers”:
I. Those in whom we cannot demonstrate a conscious desire for martyrdom
for its own sake, but who were rigorists of one kind or another, going beyond
the general practice of the Church in their opposition to some aspects of
pagan society—for example, Christian pacifists who refused military
service; II. Those who without, as far as we know, actually demanding or
inviting martyrdom, deliberately and unnecessarily attracted attention to
themselves, for example by ministering openly to arrested confessors, and
hence brought about their own arrest; III. Martyrs who are not recorded to
have been directly responsible for their own arrest, but who after being
arrested behaved with deliberate contumacy at their trial.19
De Ste. Croix’s neatly and carefully delineated taxonomy runs into problems as
he begins to amass his evidence. He cites the martyrdom of the virgin
Potamiaena as an instance of quasi-voluntary martyrdom, type III, because
when threatened with rape, the emboldened maiden “made some abusive
reply, for which she was immediately put to death.”20 This categorization,
however, is colored by de Ste. Croix’s understanding of what forms of
behavior are unreasonable, rigorous, or provocative. Potamiaena’s desire to
avoid sexual violation even at the expense of her life is not out of keeping
with the values of wider society. Take, for example, Lucretia, Livy’s chaste
heroine who commits suicide after rape. Roman women were implicitly

17
De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 157. It is surprising to find de Ste. Croix in this role.
His monumental Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab
Conquests (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998) is a triumph of enlightenment Marxist
ideology read against early Christian history.
18
De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 153.
19
De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 154.
20
De Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” 169.

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 537
encouraged to commit suicide rather than risk their chastity. For this kind of
death they were explicitly praised.21 De Ste. Croix’s assessment of
Potamiaena fails to consider that in an ancient context her behavior was not
only admired it was exemplary.
For a classicist, de Ste. Croix has a remarkably modern way of evaluating what
values are worth dying for. His classification system speaks more about the ideals
of his own cultural context than that in which ancient authors found themselves.
It should go without saying that the category quasi-voluntary martyr did not exist
in the ancient world; rather, the classification is grounded in de Ste. Croix’s
assessment of the good death and his criteria for reasonable behavior.
The retrojection of modern ideals is not limited to those who, like de Ste.
Croix and Gibbon, were critical of martyrdom. Even in the writings of self-
consciously pro-suicide scholars who come closest to a reappraisal of the
evidence, there has been a tendency to import modern conceptions of agency
and suicide into ancient depictions of martyrdom. The most notable of these
works, Arthur Droge and James Tabor’s revisionist book A Noble Death, has
muddied the waters by showing how “orthodox” martyrs “provoked” their
deaths.22 Yet rather than questioning the terms of the discussion, they merely
reverse the ideological binary and use the modern categorization “suicide” to
classify ancient sources.23

II. VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM AND THE NEW PROPHECY

In recent scholarship, voluntary martyrdom has been most frequently associated
with heretical groups—the Montanists and the Donatists. Since Clement,
ecclesiastical and scholarly analyses of this subject have maintained that in
the pre-Decian period it was adherents of the New Prophecy movement—or,
as they are more libelously known, the Montanists—who incorrectly and
foolishly sought to become voluntary martyrs. Some scholars, such as

21
De Ste. Croix’s complicated taxonomy also includes “religious suicide,” instances in which a
young woman threatened with rape commits suicide rather than give up her chastity. For this
terminology and conceptual category de Ste. Croix draws upon Augustine’s discussion of
suicide in the City of God (1.16–28). There appears to be something of a tension, however,
between this ambiguous category of “religious suicide” and the definition of the “quasi-
voluntary martyr.” Moreover, we should note that Augustine’s writings on suicide in the fifth
century mark a new direction in Christian perspectives to martyrdom and are, in part, generated
by his encounter with the Donatists. See Alan Dearn, “Voluntary Martyrdom and the Donatist
Schism,” Studia Patristica 39 (2006): 27–32.
22
Arthur J. Droge and James A. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among
Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992) and Arthur J. Droge,
“The Crown of Immortality: Toward a Redescription of Christian Martyrdo?” in Death, Ecstasy,
and Other Worldly Journeys, ed. John J. Collins and Michael A. Fishbane (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1995), 155–70.
23
Droge, “Crown of Immortality,” 155–67.

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 538 CHURCH HISTORY

Ronald Knox and Timothy Barnes, have even argued that voluntary martyrdom
was so essential to the New Prophecy that it was the feature that distinguished
adherents of the New Prophecy from other Christians; that voluntary
martyrdom was the essential defining characteristic of the New Prophecy
movement.24
The assumption that adherents of the New Prophecy were enthusiastic
supporters of voluntary martyrdom has shaped the way in which martyrdom
and Christian identity are narrated. As William Tabbernee notes, some early
Christian martyrs have been identified as Montanists merely on the basis that
their conduct is deemed by a modern reader to be in some way antagonistic,
or provoking the judge.25 An example of this is found in the case of Vettius
Epagathus, a lawyer mentioned in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and
Lyons. Vettius protests the ill treatment of the Christians and demands that
he be allowed to offer a speech in their defense. His request is denied, he is
asked if he is Christian, and answers in the clearest tones that he is. On the
basis of Epagathus’s supposedly unnecessary intervention in affairs Craft,
Barns, and Carrington have identified him as a Montanist.26 There is nothing
else in this narrative, other than a very banal reference to the Spirit, that
marks Vettius Epagathus as a Montanist.
Implicit in this system of categorization is not only the assumption that
Montanists were voluntary martyrs but also the notion that catholics (that
is, those who are distinguished and distinguished themselves as non-
Montanists) were not voluntary martyrs. Not only has voluntary martyrdom
become an essential feature of the New Prophecy, the New Prophecy has
become the sole proprietor of voluntary martyrdom.
In a succession of important publications, William Tabbernee has deftly
demonstrated that adherents of the New Prophecy were no more prone to
voluntary martyrdom than the catholics.27 Christine Trevett has followed

24
See, for example, Timothy D. Barnes, Tertullian (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985),
177–78; Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religions (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1950), 49; Birley, “Persecutors and Martyrs in Tertullian’s Africa,” in The Later Roman
Empire Today, ed. Dido Clark (London: Institute of Archaeology, 1993), 47 and discussion in
William Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments, Supplements to Vigiliae
Christianae 84 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007), 201.
25
On the martyrs of Lyons as adherents of the New Prophecy, see Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy,
219–24.
26
T. Barns, “The Catholic Epistle of Themiso: A Study of 1 and 2 Peter,” Expositor 6.8 (1903),
44; Heinz Kraft “Die altkirchliche Prophetie und die Entstehung des Montanismus,” Theologische
Zeitschrift 11 (1955): 249–71 [269]; Philip Carringotn, The Early Christian Church, 2 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge Universirty Press, 1957), 2.244.
27
Tabbernee’s work in this area cannot be highly enough recommended. See, particularly,
“Christian Inscriptions from Phrygia,” in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, ed.
G. H. R. Horsley and S. R. Llewelyn (Grands Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978), 3.128–39;
“Early Montanism and Voluntary Martyrdom,” Colloquium 17 (1985): 33–44; and Tabbernee,
Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments, 201–42.

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 539
Tabernee, noting that “catholics sanctioned behavior, which was, or was little
short of, voluntary martyrdom.”28 Tabbernee was not the first to note this, but
his work has been instrumental in exposing the extent to which the New
Prophecy movement has been mischaracterized and how notions of orthodoxy
and heresy have been bound up in characterizations of martyrdom. His
analysis has brought to the fore the extent to which the alignment of orthodoxy
and heresy with specific forms of martyrdom is a rhetorical construction.
Implicit in Tabbernee’s and Trevett’s work, however, as in other scholarship,
is the assumption that voluntary martyrdom exists as a separate, identifiable
category and practice. Tabbernee debates the exclusive alignment of the New
Prophecy with voluntary martyrdom, but he does not contest the existence of
voluntary martyrdom as a separate ideological construct. The situation is not
markedly improved in the work of those who seek to revise traditional
valuations of martyrdom and suicide by demonstrating that suicide and
voluntary martyrdom were common and largely acceptable in the ancient
world. The same criticism can be leveled against Droge and Tabor who insist
that “from the second century on, voluntary martyrdom was practiced and
idealized by both ‘orthodox’ and ‘heretic.’”29 Even here, in a work interested
in deconstructing assessments of martyrdom, the same distinction between
voluntary martyrdom and martyrdom is preserved.
It is worth noting that there was no Greek or Latin term for a voluntary
martyr. The lack of terminology is interesting, not because technical terms
are a prerequisite for something’s existence (they are not), but because the
use of the term martys has played such an instrumental role in scholarly
discussions of the emergence of martyrdom. If we think of studies on the
emergence of martyrdom by Norbert Brox, Theofried Baumeister, and Glen
Bowersock, we are immediately struck by the prominent role that the
linguistic term martys plays in the genesis of martyrdom.30 Yet, with
voluntary martyrdom, where there are no linguistic terms to serve as guides,
scholars feel free to work with assumptions and highly personal taxonomies
about what makes a martyrdom provoked or voluntary.
The dearth of terminology is matched by the homogenous treatment of
voluntary and normative martyrs. When Christians were executed, whatever
their communal affiliation or the role they played in their own arrest, they

28
Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 157.
29
Droge and Tabor, A Noble Death, 152.
30
Norbert Brox, Zeuge und Märtyrer: Untersuchungen zur frühchristlichen Zeugnis-
Terminologie, Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 5 (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1961);
Theofried Baumeister, Die Anfang der Theologie des Martyriums, Münsterische Beiträge zur
Theologie 45 (Münster, Aschendorff, 1980); Glen W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 19.

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 540 CHURCH HISTORY

were either memorialized as martyrs or excised from history. In second-century

martyrdom accounts those martyrs identified by scholars as “voluntary
martyrs” are labeled, treated, and memorialized no differently than those
termed simply “martyrs.”31

III. ANCIENT DISCUSSIONS OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM

It is worth stepping back and asking whether or not volunteerism was singled
out as distinct from other martyrological practices in ancient discourse. Would
an ancient Christian necessarily have viewed self-offering or voluntary
martyrdom as something different from martyrdom? Instead of looking
at instances of execution that we might judge voluntary or provocative,
we should first ask when it was that early Christian authors started
distinguishing between different kinds of martyrdom.32
Before turning to ancient evidence it is fitting to offer two caveats: first, there
are discussions in antiquity that can be said to parallel or inform the provoked/
unprovoked martyrdom binary. Despite Droge and Tabor’s insistence that
suicide was accepted before Christianity, not everyone was accepting of self-
killing. To the explicit nuanced discussions of suicide in Epictetus we could
add the ambiguous characterization of Sophocles’s Antigone. Of course, even
in these cases we could argue about the finer details of these author’s
approaches to death. The point is this: while there are discussions about self-
offering in antiquity that could illuminate our understanding of voluntary
martyrdom, it would be a mistake to prematurely import these conversations
into a discussion of martyrdom in order to give substance to voluntary
martyrdom. Rather than assuming that certain distinctions between provoked
and unprovoked martyrdom are necessary and instinctive, it is more
appropriate to begin with early Christian discourse about martyrdom itself.
Second, and on a related note, the condemnation by Roman contemporaries
of Christian efforts to achieve martyrdom is not evidence for the existence of
“voluntary martyrdom.” To be sure, some Roman intellectuals like Celsus
characterized Christians as being “out of their mind” for rushing forward to
death, but Celsus’s condemnations were leveled against all Christians, not
some special group. Celsus is not distinguishing between different forms of

31
For example, Lucius in the Acts of Ptolemaeus and Lucius (Justin Martyr, 2 Apology 2). Of
course, this argument is somewhat circular. One has to hold a definition of a “voluntary martyr”
in order to demonstrate that these voluntary martyrs were treated no differently in early
Christianity literature. Nonetheless it is worth pointing out that those individuals identified by
scholars as voluntary martyrs receive the same literary treatment as those categorized as martyrs.
32
For lists and discussions of events that scholars have designated as voluntary or provoked
martyrdom, see Ste. Croix, “Voluntary Martyrs” and Arthur J. Droge, “The Crown of
Immortality,” 155–70; Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 201–42.

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 541
martyrdom, one of which he labels headstrong. Celsus thinks all Christian
martyrs, and thus all Christians, are headstrong and insane. Moreover, there
is no evidence to suggest that Celsus’s Christian interlocutors agreed with
him. While some, like Bowersock, have used Celsus to posit an early
Christian distinction between voluntary and normative martyrdom in the
early church, this presupposes that the Roman sources have a better
understanding of Christian theologies of martyrdom than extant Christian
literature. The tendency to use Roman perspectives on Christian martyrdom
to construct a history of the spread, shape, and nature of martyrdom as it
“really was” is widespread, yet nonetheless fraught with problems.33
When we turn to extant material from the second century, however, the task
becomes more difficult. Evidence for voluntary martyrdom as a category and a
part of early Christian discourse can be amassed only from texts that distinguish
between specific forms of or attitudes towards martyrdom, and these
distinctions are never neutral. Within second-century Christianity, we need to
look hard for a text that delineates different forms of martyrdom. The
demarcation of different kinds of martyrdom and the rhetorical formation of
the true martyr began in earnest with the late second- and early third-century
Christian philosopher Clement of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 C.E.). Alexandria,
the home of Clement until his flight from persecution in the early years of
the third century, was a bustling city second in size only to Rome. Clement
wrote neither martyr acts nor apologies. His ideas about martyrdom appear
mostly as part of larger discussions of virtue in his voluminous work
Stromata. If there were early accounts of the deaths of martyrs, such as the
execution of Potamiaena and Basilides, who died in Alexandria ca. 205 C.E.,
Clement does not appear familiar with them, nor does he supply much
information about persecution in the region during this period.34 His
occasional references to martyrdom highlight the training and composure of
the martyrs; it was, he says, “fear that derives from the law” that “trained
[the martyrs] to show piety even with their blood” (Strom. 2.125.2–3).35
Clement’s interest is not in the sources of persecution but the foundations of
perseverance; his interpretation of historical instances of martyrdom tied that

33
The extent to which historiography has used a Roman script to narrate the history of martyrdom
goes further than merely voluntary martyrdom. Tacitus and Pliny have become the narrators of the
history of Christian martyrdom.
34
The Martyrdom of Potamiaena and Basilides is relayed in Eusebius, Hist. eccl.6.5 and
Palladius, Lausiac History 3. The date of the account is contested. Eusebius places the events
during the prefectship of Aquila (ca. 205–210), in which case Clement may have left Alexandria
before their occurrence. Although scholars assume that Clement deliberately avoids referring to
or utilizing this literature, we need to consider the possibility that he was simply unfamiliar with it.
35
The specifics of the persecution in Alexandria are largely unknown. They may have been the
result of heightened violence under Septimius Severus who, Eusebius tells us, stirred up violence
everywhere (Hist. eccl. 6.1).

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 542 CHURCH HISTORY

martyrdom to discipline, training, and the exercise of piety. As one of the first
theologians to discuss martyrdom at any length, Clement is often assumed to be
innately pro-martyrdom and neutrally descriptive, rather than cautiously
supportive and largely constructive. Where he differs from his proto-
orthodox contemporaries, he is treated as offering merely a “reflective
approach” on martyrdom.36 The characterization of Clement as thoughtful is
fascinating. It is certainly the case that Clement was a philosopher, but the
function of this characterization is to normalize Clement’s perspective. Any
hesitancy or reluctance on Clement’s part to endorse certain forms of
martyrdom is constructed as the logical consequences of giving the subject
due consideration. A thoughtful person, the argument seems to go, would
agree with Clement.
Glen Bowersock goes further and argues that Clement’s use of the term
martyr returns it to its original meaning: “Clement’s analysis of martyrdom
returned prudently to the original sense of the word” and, elsewhere: “He is
trying to turn the very word back into its original sense of ‘bearing
witness.’”37 It seems that Bowersock is captive to Clement’s rhetoric.
Clement is not returning to some Platonic form of martyrdom or describing
things as they actually exist; he is creating meaning. The notion that there is
some true meaning embedded in the characters that make up a word removes
Clement from his historical and rhetorical context.
Clement narrows the practice of “true” martyrdom. He discursively carves
out an image of the true martyr that is distinct from the foolhardy self-
exposure of those who rushed to death and from the reluctance of heretics to
consider martyrdom. In articulating the landscape of martyrdom in this way,
Clement positions himself as the via media between these two extremes:

Now some of the heretics who have misunderstood the Lord, have at once an
impious and cowardly love of life; saying that the true martyrdom is the
knowledge of the only true God (which we also admit), and that the man
is a self-murderer and a suicide who makes confession by death; and
adducing other similar sophisms of cowardice. To these we shall reply at
the proper time; for they differ with us in regard to first principles. Now
we, too, say that those who have rushed on death (for there are some, not
belonging to us, but sharing the name merely, who are in haste to give

36
This term is borrowed from Annewies van den Hoek, “Clement of Alexandria on Martyrdom,”
in Studia Patristica 26, ed. E. A. Livingstone (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 327. Many scholars have
been charmed by the quiet moderation of Clement’s approach. The intellectualism of moderation
is a pervasive theme both in Clement’s rhetoric and in modern commentary on moderate
approaches to martyrdom. Van den Hoek further differentiates Clement’s approach from the
martyr acts and argues, based on Theofried Baumeister’s work, that it can be traced back to Daniel.
37
Glen W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
67.

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 543
themselves up, the poor wretches dying through hatred to the Creator)—
these, we say, banish themselves without being martyrs, even though they
are punished publicly. For they do not preserve the characteristic mark of
believing martyrdom, inasmuch as they have not known the only true
God, but give themselves up to a vain death, as the Gymnosophists of the
Indians to useless fire. (Strom. 4.16–17)

On the one hand, Clement condemns those who have charged forward to
martyrdom. These enthusiasts are aligned with the exotic and antiquated
practices of the Gymnosophists, practices that had cultural value in
Clement’s day, but a value that Clement rejects.38 Clement rhetorically
expels them from his community and debases and negates the significance of
their offering. They are not, he says, true martyrs; they are without witness
(amartyros). The practice of this supposed group is not only rendered
barbaric and exotic but is elsewhere interpreted by Clement as simplistic. In
his exegesis of Matt 19:29, Clement distinguishes between simple
martyrdom (death) and true, gnostic martyrdom. The latter, writes Clement,
entails a life lived purely, in knowledge of God, without passion, and in
obedience to God. This life involves perpetual witness to death, but that
death can be either natural or unnatural. In this way, Clement subtly
denigrates the accomplishments of simple bodily martyrdom.
On the other hand, Clement also deplores the stance of the heretics who
avoid martyrdom altogether out of impiety and cowardice. The heretics (the
ones who think that salvation comes through knowledge of the true God) are
understood by many to be the Gnostics.39 Given the synonymy of
masculinity and courage, Clement’s description of this group as cowardly is
emasculating.40 It subtly feminizes its members and elides the rational basis

38
Discussions of the Gymnosophists in antiquity refer to them with great respect (Plutarch, Life of
Alexander 64; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 9.61, 63). Philo describes them as
virtuous philosophers (Every Good Man is Free 74, 92–93). Clement himself describes them as
philosophers in Stromata 1.15.71.
39
The interest in knowledge of the true God is a pervasive theme in literature from Nag
Hammadi. See, for example, Apocryphon of John and Gospel of Truth. For Gnosticism in
general, see David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011). The characterization of the martyrs as anti-
martyrdom is based as much on ancient stereotype as modern scholarly analysis. For recent
reappraisals of this issue, see Karen King, “Martyrdom and Its Discontents in the Tchacos
Codex,” in Codex Judas Papers: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Tchacos
Codex Held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13–16, 2008, ed. April D. DeConick,
Nag Hammadi and Manichean Studies 71 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2009), 23–42 and Moss,
Ancient Christian Martyrdom, chapter 6.
40
The association of masculinity and courage is philological as well as conceptual and is often
remarked upon by scholars of early Christian martyrdom. For a recent discussion, see L.
Stephanie Cobb, Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts,
Gender, Theory and Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

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 544 CHURCH HISTORY

for their position. It seems that Boyarin is correct when he describes Clement’s
approach to martyrdom as “ambivalent.”41
The distinctions between Clement’s position and those of his gnostic
interlocutors are hardly the radical breaks in thought that his rhetoric leads
us to believe. In pushing the heretics to the margins, Clement acquires
power. In creating and claiming the middle position, he also assumes the
rhetorical high ground that the Aristotelian mean affords him. His own
perspective, grounded as it is in a philosophy of love, emerges as a middle
course and thus as the default position on martyrdom. Much has been made
of the ways in which Clement is influenced by the positions of his
opponents and takes a reasonable middle position between them.42 Much
more should be made, however, of the ways in which Clement creates this
middle position and sets himself firmly on it. Scholars have tended to treat
Clement’s categories of true martyrdom, enthusiasm, and anti-martyrdom as
an adequate description of the various positions on martyrdom in his day;
yet perhaps he is more constructive than descriptive. Unclear, for instance, is
the extent to which ancient Christians before Clement saw rushing forward
to martyrdom as a practice distinct from other forms of martyrdom. We must
look beyond Clement’s rhetoric to the ways in which the true martyr was
shaped in the early church.
After Clement, the earliest evidence for distinct forms of martyrdom comes
in the third-century Martyrdom of Polycarp.43 In a textually difficult passage
toward the beginning of the account, the author describe the actions of a
certain Phrygian named Quintus:

But there was a person named Quintus, a Phrygian, who had recently come
from Phrygia, who was overcome with cowardice once he saw the wild
beasts. This is the one who compelled both himself and several others to

41
Boyarin, Dying for God, 62.
42
For a discussion of gnostic texts in Clement, see Walter Völker, Quellen zur Geschichte der
Gnosis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1932); Franco Bolgiani, “La polemica di Clemente
Alessandrino contro gli gnostici libertini,” Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 38 (1967):
86–136; van den Hoek, “Clement of Alexandria, 329–35.
43
The importance of this account for the development of martyrdom has meant that the dating of
the Martyrdom of Polycarp is hotly debated. I follow here the arguments of H. Grégoire and
P. Orgels, “La veritable date du Martyre de S. Polycarpe (23 février 177) et le “Corpus
Polycarpianum,” Analecta Bollandiana 69 (1951): 1–38 and Candida R. Moss, “On the Dating
of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,”
Early Christianity 4 (2010): 539–574, where I argue that the account was composed in the
beginning of the third century. Even if these theories are incorrect, the integrity of MPol 4 and
the reference to Quintus is shrouded in suspicion. For the argument that MPol 4 is a secondary
interpolation, see the classic argument of Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen, “Bearbeitungen und
Interpolationen des Polycarpmartyrium,” reprinted in Aus der Frühzeit des Christentums. Studien
zur Kirchengeschichte des ersten und zweiten Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1963),
253–301.

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 545
turn themselves in. But the insistent pleas of the proconsul convinced him to
take the oath and offer sacrifice. Because of this, brothers, we do not praise
those who hand themselves over, since this is not what the gospel teaches.
The author counterposes the conduct of Polycarp and that of Quintus: whereas
Polycarp sought refuge outside of the city, Quintus offered himself for
execution; whereas Polycarp went through with his martyrdom, Quintus
recanted at the last moment (Mart. Pol. 4). Polycarp’s reticence is twice
described in biblical terms, as a martyrdom “according to the gospel”: first
in the opening to the letter in 1.1 and later in 22.1. Polycarp’s prudent self-
withdrawal, cast as patience, serves an exemplary function, for “just as the
Lord did, he too waited that he might be given up” (Mart. Pol. 1.2). The
scripturally and mimetically framed contrast between these two figures
nudges the reader toward the example set by Polycarp and away from
Quintus’s rash and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to seek martyrdom. The
two extremes on Clement of Alexandria’s spectrum are combined in a single
apostasizing figure. The rhetorical alignment of self-offering and refusal
of martyrdom in the figure of Quintus is a particularly clever denunciation of
voluntary martyrdom. We should note again, however, that the model of
martyrdom offered by Polycarp involves an initial step of withdrawing
oneself from persecution.
Further evidence for the emergence of voluntary martyrdom as a discrete
practice is found in the translation and editing of the Greek Martyrdom
of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike.44 In the original Greek account,
Agathonike is a bystander from Pergamum who immolates herself on the
pyre of the two primary martyrs (Mart. Carp. A 44):
There was a woman named Agathonike standing there who saw the glory of
the Lord, as Carpus said he had seen it; realizing that this was a call from
heaven, she raised up her voice at once: “Here is a meal that has been
prepared for me. I must partake and eat of this glorious repast!” . . . And
taking off her cloak she threw herself joyfully upon the stake.
Although Agathonike has been adjudged a Montanist, more recent scholarship
has tended to suggest that she was merely influenced by Montanism.45 There is

44
It should be noted that there is scant manuscript evidence for the Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and
Agathonike (BHL 1662m). This means that we must leave open the possibility that the account was
edited by the compiler of the manuscript rather than a posited third-century redactor.
45
For the view that Agathonike is Montanist, see John Chapman, “Montanists,” Catholic
Encyclopedia 10:523. For the view that she was merely influenced by Montanism, see Hans
Lietzmann, “Die älteste Gestalt der Passio SS. Carpi, Papylae et Agathonices,” in Kleine
Schriften I: Studien zur spätantiken Religionsgeschichte, TU, NS 67 (Berlin: Akademie, 1958):
239–50. For the view that Agathonike’s death paralleled Montanism, see Frend, Martyrdom and
Persecution, 272. In all these cases her actions are related to Montanism although nothing other
than the fact that she is viewed as a voluntary martyr would suggest this.

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 546 CHURCH HISTORY

no evidence, however, to identify her as anything other than Christian. If

Agathonike is characterized in any way, however, it is as philosopher. The
act of throwing of her cloak (the dress of a philosopher) and willingly
ascending the pyre is reminiscent of the practices of male gymnosophistic
philosophers. In scholarship on this point the fact that she provokes her own
martyrdom has been considered sufficient proof that she is a Montanist.
More importantly, however, there is nothing in the Greek text to suggest that
her martyrdom is viewed to be of a different type than that of the other
martyrs.46
Working some time after the events, at the earliest in the Decian period, the
Latin translator altered the account so that Agathonike is arrested with the
other martyrs (Mart. Carp. B 1.1) and receives a thorough separate trial in
front of the proconsul.47 The emendation of the text firmly demonstrates
that her death was problematic for the translator of the Latin version,
who seems to have balked at the notion of a martyr throwing herself into
the flames by her own volition. There is now no confusion about the
circumstances of her death. By explicitly noting her arrest at the beginning
of the account the translator renders her death acceptable to an audience that
would not have been comfortable with this kind of martyrdom. In other
words, we can assume on the part of the translator and his audience a
cultural distaste for volunteerism. We must assume that Agathonike’s self-
immolation was unproblematic for the Greek author, but that during the
period between the original composition and the editing of the work in the
middle of the third century a sense that this kind of death was undesirable
had developed. That the Latin translator goes to such lengths to reshape the
account of her death is firm evidence that early Christian authors wanted to
render the actions of their protagonists safe for imitation and theologically
unproblematic.
In De Corona Militis, written around 211, Tertullian relates a story of a
young soldier executed for refusing to wear a wreath at the distribution of a
donative. Apparently some members of the Christian community at Carthage
had decried his actions as headstrong, rash, and too eager to die. Tertullian’s
language here is no less polemical and rhetorically charged than that of
Clement, but it is noteworthy that he seems unaware of the category of the
voluntary martyr. The pragmatic concern of others in the Carthaginian

46
The same point can be made with respect to other early figures deemed “voluntary martyrs.” In
the case of Lucius in Justin’s Second Apology, Alexander, Attalus, and Vettius Epagathus in the
Martyrs of Lyons, Paeon in the Acts of Justin and Proclus in the Acts of Firmus and Rusticus,
there is nothing in these narratives that marks their deaths as different from those of the other
martyrs in their respective accounts.
47
On the date of the Latin version of the account, see Barnes, “Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum,” 514.

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 547
community, Tertullian tells us, was that the man’s actions would threaten peace.
It seems that from the third century on there was a concern about disrupting
civic affairs.
The discursive production of voluntary martyrdom as a practice distinct from
true martyrdom begins in the early third century with Clement; whether his
Christian predecessors or contemporaries shared his distinction is not at all
clear. We can, however, note different lines of tension in the work of his
contemporaries. For the Carthaginian Tertullian, the line between forms of
martyrdom cuts not between voluntary martyrdom and normative martyrdom
but between those who flee from persecution and those who are martyred.
While Tertullian is willing to accept flight from persecution in preference to
apostasy (To His Wife 1.3.4), he is generally disapproving of the practice,
which he sometimes views as apostasy itself (On Flight in Persecution 5.1).
That the Spirit “encourages martyrdom rather than flight” (On Flight in
Persecution 9.4) creates a dichotomy between the two possibilities, but there
is no discernible difference in his writings between voluntary martyrdom and
martyrdom—voluntary martyrdom is martyrdom.
By contrast, for Clement, who is reported to have fled the Severan
persecution in Alexandria in 202 C.E. (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.11.6; 6.14.9),
and for the author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, who justifies Polycarp’s
flight to the countryside, the condemnation of voluntary martyrdom as a
distinct phenomenon serves to justify initial flight from persecution. Unlike
Cyprian of Carthage, Clement never returns to face death.48 It would be
reasonable to suppose that for Clement the point at which martyrdom
becomes necessary is the point at which one is forced to confess or deny Christ.
The discursive production and condemnation of voluntary martyrdom serve
to shape flight from persecution as patience. Where voluntary martyrdom is
parsed as passionate foolishness and excluded from true martyrdom, initial
flight followed by execution is presented as true martyrdom or martyrdom in
accordance with gospel (Martyrdom of Polycarp 1–4). Martyrdom and flight
define one another. Clement’s strategy has been remarkably effective, for the
terms of the debate have shifted from the defense of flight in times of
persecution to an attack on enthusiasm, and the accusation of volunteerism
has been added to the lexicon of early Christian polemic.
Yet the lines of tradition do not run straight from Clement until the
present day; there are many historical moments in which “eager martyrs”
have been praised and valorized—not only because the actions of one’s own

48
For the importance of flight in Clement’s position on martyrdom, see Droge, “Crown of
Immortality,” 166; Droge and Tabor, A Noble Death, 143–144; A. M. Ritter, “Clement of
Alexandria and the Problem of Christian Norms,” Studia Patristica 18 (1989): 421–39; Boyarin,
Dying for God, 63.

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 548 CHURCH HISTORY

martyrs are always good but because volunteering has sometimes been
idealized. Even after Clement and Origen, the binary is by no means set. It is
worth reflecting, therefore, about how and why it is that historical study of
martyrdom has so readily taken up Clement’s so-called moderate position on
martyrdom.

IV. THE MODERN ASSUMPTION OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM

Whether voluntary martyrdom is inextricably bound to Montanism or not,
modern studies of early Christian martyrdom assume the existence of
voluntary martyrdom as an ancient category of analysis. Beneath the surface
of these nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories of martyrdom, which
insist on divorcing voluntary martyrdom from normative martyrdom, lies a
commitment to a particular characterization of natural human desire. This
interest in natural human desire began much earlier; early modern
discussions of what was then termed “eager martyrdom” viewed it as
unnatural. In his debate with John Colet on the passion of Jesus, published
in 1503 as the Short Debate Concerning the Distress, Alarm, and Sorrow of
Jesus, Erasmus argues that Jesus’ overcoming of fear in the garden of
Gethsemane is exemplary as “he [Jesus] does not expect us to go against
nature and show eager joy amid great torments.”49 This interest in the
naturalness of fearful martyrdom is developed by Thomas More, who treats
the Gethsemane agony as exemplary for Christians martyrs such as
himself.50 While More sees martyrdom as the product of grace, he, like
Erasmus, sees martyrdom as antithetical to human nature. “Nature,” writes
More, “is disposed to resist,” and thus the Gethsemane agony serves as an
example for those “of such a delicate constitution that they would be
convulsed with terror at any danger of being tortured.”51 More regards both
“eager” and “fearful” martyrs as exemplary, but by identifying eager martyrs
with the “high-spirited” martyrs of the early church and the timid martyrs
with the superior example of Christ, he elevates the fearful martyrs above
the eager ones.52 Even as they respect their subjects, both Erasmus and More
see martyrdom as unnatural and the fearful reluctance of Christ as natural.

49
Erasmus, Disputatiuncula de taedio, pavore, tristicia Iesu, trans. Michael J. Heath, in Collected
Works of Erasmus, ed. John W. O’Malley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 65.
50
On the relationship between More and Erasmus, see Katherine Gardiner Rogers, “The Lessons
of Gethsemane: De Tristitia Christi,” in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More, ed. George
M. Logan (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2011), 252.
51
Thomas More, De Tristitia Christi, volume 14 of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976) reprinted as The Sadness of Christ (New York: Scepter,
1993), 15–16.
52
More, De Tristitia Christi, 16.

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 549
This development in the production of voluntary martyrdom did not take
place in a vacuum. Voluntary martyrdom was inserted into and part of a
larger discourse about what counted as “natural” and “unnatural” in self-
preservation that built upon Aristotelian and Thomist discussions of natural
law. It is the discourse of natural law that shaped suicide and, consequently,
voluntary martyrdom as “unnatural.”53 It was Aquinas’s basic proposition
that God implanted the desire (or inclination) for self-preservation and
flourishing in the human being that fashioned the cultural terrain for
Erasmus and More. By the early modern period fully-fledged understandings
of natural law as it related to death, volition, and suicide had recast issues of
martyrdom in terms of self-preservation and the pursuit of Truth.54
The discourse of the natural is inherited by later generations of scholars.
Gibbon uses the same language in his assessment of Ignatius of Antioch’s
letters. He writes that Ignatius’s letters are “repugnant to the ordinary
feelings of human nature.”55 It is not by chance that Gibbon selects Ignatius
here, for Ignatius has a tendency to bring out the worst in historians; a
veritable pantheon of scholars have taken turns policing the divide between
voluntary martyrdom and involuntary martyrdom and condemning Ignatius’s
use of language of deviation and perversion. In the study of Ignatius, some
have translated pathologized volunteerism into historical events. John
Malalas’s Chronographia states that Ignatius provoked his own martyrdom
by insulting the emperor at Antioch.56 While Ignatius is eager for
martyrdom, the suggestion that he insulted the emperor deliberately in order
to bring about his death is completely without evidence. The invention of
Ignatian apocryphal acts seems grounded in nothing other than a caricature
that constructs history on the foundations of modern notions of normality.
The pathologizing of martyrdom is particularly evident in the writings of

53
In his On Martyrdom Aquinas himself recognized the tension between the biological goods of
self-preservation and truth (the human good). He subtly redefines martyrdom so that only death for
“Truth” rather than some vague religious principle can be properly described as martyrdom. For an
analysis of Aquinas’s views of martyrdom and suicide in the context of the history of ideas, see
Carlo Leget, “Authority and Plausibility: Aquinas on Suicide,” in Aquinas as Authority, eds.
Paul van Geest, Harm Goris, Carlo Leget (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 277–94.
54
For a further discussion of this issue at it pertains to the construction of martyrdom in the
medieval and early modern periods, see Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian
Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 50–
62, 97–138.
55
Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 406.
56
John Malalas, Chronographia (Bonn: Weber, 1831), 275–276. Malalas is not the only scholar
to treat Ignatius as a voluntary martyr. In deconstructing the doctrinal divide between orthodox
martyrs and Montanist voluntary martyrs, Christine Trevett also argues that Ignatius handed
himself over (Christine Trevett, A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria and Asia [Lewiston:
Queenston and Lampeter, 1992], 61). Trevett cites Smyrn. 4.2 in support of her argument.

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 550 CHURCH HISTORY

Donald W. Riddle, who sees martyrdom as a form of brainwashing-induced

insanity.57 As is often noted, Ignatius is diagnosed by modern scholars who
have called him “abnormal,” “pathological,” “bordering on mania.”58 The
post-Freudian diagnosis of the martyr’s desire as dementia is more than an
inappropriately pejorative judgment that breaches the early twentieth-century
historian’s self-professed code of impartiality. It betrays a commitment to a
particular construction of normality, to an assumption that it is natural to
want to live and that to desire otherwise is an aberration, a sign of mental
dysfunction.
The desire to diagnose and alienate the other is part of an assumption of self-
normalcy. This normalizing impulse extends even to language itself; to return
to Gibbon, he calls the transformation of the term martys in the early church a
“strange distortion” of its original sense.59 According to Gibbon, even language
is susceptible to the distortive effects of martyrdom: the ideological disease.
The pervasive understanding that the desire to die is unnatural and perhaps
also insane informs our understanding of why scholars have insisted that
voluntary martyrdom was something different and distinct.
We might contrast the modern view of martyrdom as unnatural with the
opinion of the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, that “it is natural for all
Jews, from birth onwards to revere the holy scriptures . . . and, if necessary,
voluntarily to die for them.”60 Josephus is but one ancient historian and his
views are not indicative of those of Clement or many others. The salient
point is that modern discourse about voluntary martyrdom does not
reproduce ancient discourse even in those cases where modern scholar and
ancient writer agree that voluntary martyrdom is a bad thing. The
representation of voluntary martyrdom in the early modern period as
“unnatural” and in the twentieth century as “insane” is not the same as the
characterization of self-offering as rash, headstrong, cowardly, or feminine.
They may both be negative but they are not identical. It is not even the case,
then, that modern scholarship has reproduced one marginal position in an
ancient debate, essentialized it, and retrojected it into the second century;
modern scholarship on voluntary martyrdom has failed to reproduce any
ancient positions at all.

57
Donald W. Riddle, Martyrs: A Study in Social Control (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1932).
58
See discussion in Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the
Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 33.
59
Gibbon remarks of Sigismund’s epithets saint and martyr, “A martyr! How strangely that word
has been distorted from its original sense of a common witness.” Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire, (Paris: Baudry, 1840), 4:121 cited in Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, 6.
60
Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.8.

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 THE DISCOURSE OF VOLUNTARY MARTYRDOM 551

V. CONCLUSION
There is startlingly little evidence for the existence of the category “voluntary
martyr” in second-century martyrological discourse. Early Christian
hagiographers did not treat the deaths of those individuals (whether benignly
catholic or ambiguously Montanist) identified by scholars as “voluntary” any
differently than they treated the deaths of normative martyrs. Early Christian
authors appear to have become interested in delineating volunteerism from
normative martyrdom only in the context of defending self-withdrawal. The
invention of true martyrdom by Clement has been ingrained in modern
scholarship on martyrdom, yet it is by no means clear that Clement was
paradigmatic for ancient Christians. Nor has Clement set the tone and
agenda for subsequent generations of Christians. Just as Clement’s position
was influenced by his historical and intellectual context, so too the discourse
of voluntary martyrdom in the early modern period as unnatural and in the
modern period as insane was influenced by the rise of natural law and the
birth of psychiatry, respectively.
In calling for a revision of the application of these categories in the ancient
world, it is not necessary to reduce martyrdom to a singular phenomenon,
ideology, or practice. It is not the case that all instances of unnatural death
were the same in antiquity. There are tensions between different ideologies
of martyrdom and there are differences in the way that ancient Christians
understood the significance of death for Christ. Yet if the agenda of the
modern scholar is to describe the landscape of early Christian martyrdom
then ancient principles, rather than modern instincts, should govern the
construction of scholarly categories and taxonomies.

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