‘There, in that heavenly City of Jerusalem’, Augustine wrote, ‘whence we are wandering, the angels await us wanderers.’ That vast community of angels and saints is there, expecting Christ's faithful on earth:

A faithful Christian's death is a triumphal entry – an adventus – to that City. In his funeral cortège its earthly members accompany him along the first stage of his triumphal procession, a celebration of a ‘cosmic Easter’.

Of this community that straddled heaven and earth the martyrs were honoured members. Greco-Roman paganism gave honour to the community's heroes; late Judaism recognised the claim of its martyrs to veneration, though without making their tombs places of public commemorative celebration.