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Women, Death, and the Law during the Christian Persecutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Chris Jones
Chris Jones*
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Oxford
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Extract

Blessed, too, are the women who are there with you as partners in your glorious confession … by displaying valour above their sex, by their steadfastness they have set an example to the rest of womankind as well (Cyprian, Letter 6.iii.1).

Indeed there are virgins to be found in this company: to their yield of sixtyfold the reward of a hundredfold has now been added, and they have gone forward to receive their crowns thanks to this twofold glory of theirs (Cyprian, Letter 76.vi.1).

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 30: Martyrs and Martyrologies , 1993 , pp. 23 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1993

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References

1 See, for example, Gardner, Jane F., Women in Roman Law and Society (London, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Garnsey, Peter, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1970), p. 245.Google Scholar

3 Codex Theodosianus, ed. and tr. Pharr, Clyde, The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions (Princeton, 1952)Google Scholar [hereafter CTheod], IX, vi, 1 (376); IX. vi, 3 (397).

4 The Digest of Justinian, ed. T. Mommsen and P. Krüger, tr. A. Watson (Philadelphia, 1985) [hereafter Digest], XLVIII, xviii, 7, and xix, 8, 3. See also Garnsey, Social Status, p. 149.

5 Garnsey, Social Status, p. 141; CTheod. IX, xl, 1 and 10 (treason); IX, xv, 4–9 (magic).

6 MacMullen, Ramsey, ‘Judicial savagery in the Roman Empire’, Chiron, 16 (1986), pp. 147–66 Google Scholar. See also Garnsey, Social Status, p. 152.

7 Digest, XLVIII, x, 22.

8 Ibid., XLVIII, xviii, 10.1.

9 Ibid., XLVIII, v, 39, 4 [Quaestiones, bk 34).

10 Ibid., XLVII.xviii, 15.1.

11 Ibid., XLVIII, xix, 16.3 (de poenis paganorum, sole bk).

12 Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, tr. G. A. Williamson, Eusebius, The History of the Church (Harmondsworth, 1965), VI.xli, 19.

13 The Martyrdom of Saints Agape, Chione and Irene at Saloniki [hereafter Agape], ed. and tr. Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972) [hereafter Musurillo], iv, 4, pp. 280–93.

14 Ibid., vii, 2.

15 Gardner, Women in Roman Law, pp. 5–31.

16 Joёlle Beauchamp, ‘Le Vocabulaire de la faiblesse féminine dans les textes juridiques de IHe au Vie siècles’, Revue historique du droit français et étranger, 54 (1976), pp. 485–508.

17 Digest, XLVIII, xix, 3.

18 The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas [hereafter Perpetua], xv, 2–7, in Musurillo, pp. 280–93.

19 Agape, iii, 7.

20 Digest, XLVIII, viii, 8.

21 Ibid., XLVIII, xix, 9.

22 Ibid., XLVIII.xix, 8.8.

23 It should be remembered that, unlike modern historians, the governors, lawyers, and judges of fourth-century Roman courts did not have an edition of all the laws issued in the Empire, as the Theodosian Code in the fifth century was the first attempt at collation on such an all-embracing scale.

24 Cyprian, Ep. LXXX, i, 2, in The Letters of St Cyprian of Carthage, ed. and tr. G. W. Clarke, 4 vols (New York, 1984–9).

25 Digest, XXVIII, xix, 39.2.

26 Ibid., 39.2 and 7.

27 Ibid., XXVIII, xix, 11.

28 The Martyrdom of Saints Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonice [hereafter Agathonice], I, 1 (in Musurillo, pp. 22–37); Eusebius, Hist. ecc., V, xxi, 1.

29 Eusebius, Hist. ecc., V, i, 5; Agape, ii, 1.

30 The Martyrdom of Pionius the Presbyter and his Companions [hereafter Pionius], ii, 1 (in Musurillo, pp. 136–67); The Martyrdom of Saints Montanas and Lucius, ii, I (in Musurillo, pp. 214–39).

31 The Acts of Thecla, ed. Ross Kraemer, Maenads Martyrs Matrons Monastics (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 280–9 (hereafter Thecla] sect. 14.

32 The Acts of Saint Cyprian, iii, 2–3 (in Musurillo, pp. 168–75); Jerome, Ep. I, 3, in Jerome, Select Letters, ed. and tr. F. A. Wright, LCL (1954).

33 The Martyrdom of Saint Conon, iv, 3 (in Musurillo, pp. 186–93); The Martyrdom of Bishop Frucluosus and his Deacons, Augurius and Eulogius, ii, 3 (in Musurillo, pp. 176–85).

34 Agape, iii, 1; Eusebius, The Martyrs of Palestine [hereafter Mart. Pal.], viii, 6–8, in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and tr. H. J. Lawlor and J. E. L. Oulton (London, 1927), pp. 327–402.

35 Thecla, sect. 20; The Martyrdom of Polycarp [hereafter Polycarp], iv, 1 (in Musurillo, pp. 2–21).

36 Eusebius, Hist. ecc., V, i, 28; Cyprian, Epp. XXXIX, ii, 2; LXXVI, i, 2.

37 Perpetua, iii, 1–9; Pionius, xii, 1–2.

38 Agape, v, 1–2; The Martyrdom of Saint Irenaeus Bishop of Sirmium, iii, 4–5 (in Musurillo, pp. 294–301).

39 Eusebius, Hist. ecc., V, xxi; Polycarp, xi, 1–2.

40 Agape, v, 8; The Martyrdom of Saint Justin and Companions [hereafter Justin], iv, 5–6; (in Musurillo, pp. 42–61); The Martyrdom of Saint Crispina [hereafter Crispina], iv, 1 (in Musurillo, pp. 302–9).

41 The Martyrdom of Saints Marian and James, v, 4–7 (in Musurillo, pp. 194–213); Agathonice, iii, 2.

42 Euscbius, Hist. ecc., VI, xli, 19; Jerome, Ep. 1, 6.

43 Pionius, xviii, 3; Thecla sect. 20.

44 On the role and effect of the crowd at executions in the later Roman Empire, see David Potter, ‘Martyrdom as spectacle’ (unpublished paper, Dept. of Classical Studies, University of Michigan). For a more general view of the interaction between authorities and crowds at executions, and the thin line between pity and enjoyment, see Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison [tr. Alan Sheridan, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth, 1991)], esp. pt 1, pp. 3–69.

45 Agape, vii, 1–2; Crispina, iv, 2.

46 Perpetua, vi, 7–8; Eusebius, Hist. ecc., V, iii, 37.

47 Thecla, sect. 37.

48 See Jacques le Goff, La Naissance du purgatoire (Paris, 1981), p. 67. Fire has three functions: punitive, purative, and as a reminder of the flames of hell and purgatory.

49 The symbolism can be seen further in CTheod, IX, vi, 2, where the slave who has accused his master was to be burnt along with a copy of the written accusation.

50 Eusebius, Hist ecc., V, i, 51.

51 Ibid., VIII, xiv, 13; VI, v, 4; Cyprian, Ep. VI, iii, 1; Mart. Pal., viii, 5.

52 Agathonice, iv, 5.

53 Justin, 1–2.

54 The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, 16 (in Musurillo, pp. 86–9).

55 Eusebius, Hist. ecc., VI, v, 4–5.

56 Agape, iv, 4; vii, 2.

57 Crispina, iii, 1.

58 Perpetua, xxi, 9.

59 Eusebius, Hist. ecc., VI, xli, 7.

60 Ibid., VI, xli, 18–19.

61 Ibid., VIII, ix, 1–2.

62 Mart. Pal, viii, 5–6.

63 Jerome, Ep. I, 3–7.

64 Eusebius, Hist. ecc., VI, v, 2.

65 Pionius, vii, 6.

66 Agape, iv, 4; vii, 2.

67 Mart. Pal., v, 3.

68 Ibid., viii, 5–8.

69 Agathonice, vi, 4–5.

70 Thecla, sect. 34.

71 Perpetua, xx, 2.

72 Crispina, m, i.

73 Jerome, Ep. I, 12.

74 Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, ed. and tr. J. L. Creed (Oxford, 1984), XL, 5.

75 Eusebius, Hist. ecc., V, i, 54; VI, v, i.

76 Cyprian, Ep. VI, iii, 1.

77 The Martyrdom of Tarbo, ed. Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrock Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley, 1987), 259, p. 76.

78 Jerome, Ep. 1, 4.

79 Eusebius, Hist. ecc., VI, xli, 18–19.

80 For example, Scriptures historiae Augustae Commodus, tr. D. Magie, LCL, 3 vols (1922-32), xviii, Ioff.; Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, tr. J. R. Rolfe, LCL, 3 vols (1971-2), XXIX, ix, 5; XXXI, vi, 7; Procopius, Wars, bk ii, tr. H. B. Dewing, Procopius, Complete Works, LCL, 7 vols, 1 (1961), viii, 35; ix, 9–10.

81 For example, Pliny, Ep. IV, xi, tr. Betty Radice, The Letters of the Younger Pliny (Harmonds-worth, 1963), on the execution of the Vestal Virgin Cornelia; or Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, XXVIII, i, 28 and 45–56, on the conduct of women during the trials at Rome in 371.