Characteristics of martyrdom
What are the most important characteristics of martyrdom, compared to other forms of religious violence?
Martyrdom is a form of sacrifice, specifically, self-sacrifice; the martyr suffers the violence of others but s/he also causes violence to them self. How is this different from suicide? This is a perfectly legitimate question which brings us to the profound ambiguity of the choice and the act. Of course martyrs are generally the victims of reprisals, considered unjust by themselves and their community. They are ‘martyred' by persecutors, without whom, moreover, they would not exist as witnesses to the 'truth'. In effect, if one commits suicide all alone, one cannot offer one's life as a martyr to a just cause, because of the absence of a powerful adversary.
This does not mean that the boundary between suicide and martyrdom has not always been blurred to a point that has troubled theologians. Many a martyr has sought arrest and execution, desiring it and provoking it, with the aim of sacrificing their life and, above all, their death, through this ultimate self-sacrifice. There is a thin line between refusing to flee persecution in order to survive and behaviour which more or less consciously and deliberately invites the risk of provoking or hastening a tragic outcome. The theological justification for this form of self-sacrifice ,which might distinguish it from suicide, a desperate and gratuitous act, is fragile indeed.
The dual nature of martyrdom must be emphasised; it is at once an individual act born of profound personal choice, and an exemplum invested with a powerful communal force. Here we return to the etymology of the term ‘martyrdom,' from the Greek marturia/marturion which means “witness”. In short, each martyr is an example for his/her community, a model to follow, or at least to represent an ideal. Martyrs also, and principally, bear witness to the ‘truth' of their religion for the sake of its other followers, present and future. Beyond any aim for external conversion, the martyr always fulfils the aim of consolidating the faith of those within the persecuted group. In doing so, s/he reignites and strengthens the will of the community to produce more self-sacrifice.
Thus martyrs contribute by their extreme acts to consolidate the group they belong to. The Church Father Tertullian[1] observed, in the second century, that “blood is the seed of Christians”. For a person to be designated as a martyr is in its essence praiseworthy; a person killed for their ideas is never recognised as a martyr by those who have condemned them, on the contrary, they can only obtain this recognition from their own camp. This observation raises the delicate question of the relationship to “martyrs of the other”, generally seen as ‘impious', as ‘heretics', or as ‘rebels' unworthy of sympathy. That which cements the collective identity is, above all, the discourse constructed by the community seeking cohesion and legitimacy through their own martyrs, while denying or minimising the existence of those of others.
Martyrdom works principally through the reflection and echoes, more or less distant, that it gives rise to and which assure that its message is spread. Its effectiveness depends largely on its setting and on the continuing memory of it. Thus martyrs have sometimes become objects of veritable cults of commemoration. In the early centuries of Christianity those same cults were the origin of the veneration of saints. In a more general way, over the centuries the celebration of the lives and exemplary deaths of martyrs became genuine exercises in propaganda. The promulgation of martyrdom is an indispensable condition of its mission of religious conversion (in the broad sense of the term), and in the reinforcement of a common identity. This is a difficult fit with the requirement for discretion which Catholic theology has made an important characteristic of Christian martyrdom.
