Judaism: Sanctifying the Name of God

The defensive position in which the Jewish people found themselves, in light of persecution by the Greek and Roman Empires, fostered the notion of martyrdom for God in the face of forced conversion or violation of the prohibitions of idolatry, incest, and murder. The death of Hannah and her seven sons during persecutions by the Greek ruler Antiochus of Syria in 167, and similar acts of self-sacrifice in the Bar-Kochba rebellion during persecutions by Hadrian in the province of Judaea in 132–135, became cornerstones in the historical ethos of Jewish martyrdom.² This was also true regarding the dramatic execution of Rabbi Akiva following the suppression of the Bar-Kokhba rebellion, as he persisted in reciting the prayer Shema Israel (“Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one”) while his executioners raked his flesh with iron combs. These accounts gained a place of honor in molding the concept of Jewish self-sacrifice – namely that the authority of the Caesar is temporary and is overpowered by the eternal power of God. Death is temporary and is accompanied by resurrection and eternal life in the Garden of Eden.³

The readiness of Jews to die rather than compromise their religion during this period was perceived as worthy and logical, nurtured by a religious world view of observing the commandments and worshipping God as providing meaning, order, dignity, and holiness to life. The neglect of these commandments, however, will lead to chaos and defilement. Moreover, persecution was perceived as the final drama before the redemption, with those who died in the defense of religion described as resurrected to life.⁴

Rabbinic Judaism spoke in terms of the sanctification of God vis-à-vis the defamation of God, rather than of martyrdom. A traditional legal and ideological tension exists in Judaism between the sanctification of life and risking one’s life. On the one hand, there is the duty to protect life, as the sages emphasized: “You shall keep my laws and my rules, by which one shall live” (Leviticus 18:5). On the other hand, major prohibitions against idolatry, incest, and homicide call for self-sacrifice rather than violating such taboos.

Certain rabbis added various restrictions to these prohibitions. For example, a Jew must never commit a sin in public to save his life. The Talmud sages also began to differentiate more definitively between suicide and fatalities resulting from oppression. In cases where the legal tradition ruled that a person should choose death rather than violate a major commandment, the rabbinical commentary was always worded passively, namely, “should be killed,” rather than implying a premeditated death.

The rabbinic prohibition against suicide, however, coalesced only gradually.⁵ Eventually, suicide was viewed as a serious crime in the Jewish tradition and as a clear and definitive religious and moral violation. Several reasons were given for this acute prohibition: the value of life is higher than all else, which dictates the duty to preserve life; man is not the master of his body and thus does not have the right to take his life or to harm it, for his body is given to him as a deposit by the Creator for the purpose of discharging his duties ethically according to the Torah; and suicide denies the Jewish principles of reward and punishment and the next world. A suicide cannot repent, and his death does not grant him absolution – in contrast to a murderer – according to a later legal ruling that a suicide has no place in the next world. Morally, therefore, there is strong opposition to suicide in the Jewish tradition and support for the sanctity of the value of life.

Sanctions that developed against suicide were aimed at minimizing burial rituals, eulogies, and mourning in such cases. Nevertheless, in extreme conditions, especially in the face of hopeless situations, suicide was considered a legitimate option, as can be learned from the attitude of Jewish law in cases of suicide in the Biblical period, for example, toward Avimelekh (Judges 9: 52–54), and Saul and his spear-bearer (Samuel I, 31: 3–6). These events were depicted as the acts of heroes who were vanquished in war and took their own lives rather than fall into their enemies’ hands alive. Such an act – choosing death with dignity over life, or over death in disgrace – was viewed as heroic. Similarly, during the Second Temple period (516 BC–AD 70) individuals, families, and whole groups committed suicide as a result of persecution by the Romans, and these acts were acceptable, recorded without censure or reservation.⁶

The appearance of suicide among Jews during the Second Temple period overlapped with similar acts in the surrounding gentile world. Conceivably, it might have been influenced by the widespread practice of suicide among the Greeks and Romans. The stoic philosophy supported suicide as an expression of free will and of complete control over one’s fate. It entitled the individual to decide when to respond to a sign by God that the time had come to depart from life, described as “self-removal from life.”⁷

The status of kiddush hashem – the sanctification of God’s name – differed from suicide. This practice was well illuminated by the Essenes, who viewed themselves as chosen by God and as children of light. The notion of suffering and death as a positive religious attribute played an important role for the Essenes. During the Roman wars they were known to have accepted death with joy, prepared to die for the sanctification of God’s name. They adopted the idea of the happiness of the righteous after death and the grant of everlasting life, as was written in the Talmud: “And the righteous wear crowns on their heads and enjoy the divine splendor of the revelation.”⁸ The motif of celestial attire appears in other sources of Jewish literature as well.⁹

A large body of commentary about death and the sanctification of God’s name appeared at the time of the edicts issued by Antiochus. This material also relates to death as an act of atonement, such as the death of the righteous at the hands of gentiles, which serves as absolution for the sins of Israel. Such literature reveals a Jewish influence on early Christianity and on the interpretation of Jesus’ self-sacrifice as atonement for mankind.¹⁰

Although the principle of the sanctification of God was more fully realized at a later stage in the wake of persecutions that demanded practical decisions regarding life and death, ultimately this concept was institutionalized as an obligatory command. Some of the sages discerned that a person’s merit could be judged by exemplary behavior during his entire life, or even by a single act – the sanctification of God. Jewish history is replete with martyrs for the sanctification of God who perceived their death as a form of spiritual resistance.

Mass self-sacrifice occurred at Masada in 73, three years after the destruction of the Second Temple, replicated by similar acts at Yodfat and Gamla during the same period. Approximately a thousand years later, in 1096, mass self-sacrifice occurred in the Rhine Valley during the First Crusade, when the Jewish communities in Mainz and Worms were forced to choose between baptism or death, marking the first and most significant anti-Jewish acts of violence in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages. Many Jews chose death in the sanctification of God, taking the lives of their families and themselves rather than submitting to slavery, torture, forced conversion, or slaughter by the enemy. They preferred a spiritual existence to a physical one. Some also chose baptism and life, as shown in research by Jeremy Cohen, but the martyrdom paradigm of the events of 1096 was enshrined in Ashkenazi Jewish culture for generations to come, preserving its distinctive heritage as reflected in liturgical poetry (piyyut) and later chronicles.¹¹

During those persecutions Jews killed themselves by their own hand, which ignited rabbinical debate. Although choosing death by the enemy to prevent the violation of the three commandments against idolatry, incest, and murder was commended, taking one’s own life was another matter entirely. The Torah and the Holy Scriptures explicitly forbid and deplore suicide even in the name of the sanctification of God. Modern scholars have approached this issue from two points of view. One focuses on the importance that Ashkenazi Jews attributed to legendary history, including the suicides at Masada, stressing these accounts as shaping Jewish tradition and legal norms. Rabbinic traditions commemorating Jewish martyrdom in the Land of Israel reinforced this legacy. The other approach in explaining the choice of death during the events of 1096 focuses on the ideological climate of the first Crusades, namely the fanaticism of the Christians to the point of rejecting bribes that were offered so that the only choice left to the Jews was death or conversion. Many Jews chose suicide as a more meaningful alternative, taking the initiative themselves and controlling their fate rather than leaving it to the enemy. The Jews thereby challenged the threatening ideology of the Crusades, fortifying Jewish communal identity by choosing self-martyrdom.¹²

Accounts in the chronicles leave no doubt that these acts were performed with complete awareness and with the intent to bear witness to the truth of the faith held by the Jews and the lie of Christianity in whose name they were forced to sacrifice their lives. Christianity was perceived by the Jews in Germany and France in the eleventh century as a sworn enemy of God and as a force that blocked the revelation of His kingdom on Earth. The chronicles echo the perception of the Jews that Christianity’s conception of the holy trinity was nothing but idol worship in disguise. Statements by the sanctifiers of God emphasize the total distinctiveness of God and the gap between Jewish monotheism and Christian polytheism. The recitation of Shema Israel, proclaiming the unity of God, was the last utterance of the sanctifiers of God. By contrast, the church sacraments were foreign to the Jews and were viewed as paganism. Their animosity toward Christianity thus served as a factor that spurred the acts of martyrdom by the Jews of the Rhineland. Ashkenazi martyrdom literature shows that a status of honor was accorded to those born in the image of God and who were expected, therefore, to meet higher demands.¹³

The act of the sanctification of God had various aspects, such as demonstrating the highest degree of the love of God or bearing witness to the true religiosity of the martyr, but above all it reflected the belief in the eternity of the life of the spirit following physical life. Similarly, increased asceticism and mysticism following the expulsion from Spain in 1492 laid special emphasis on love of God and cleaving to His Torah. However, although the rabbis of the time preached the absolute sanctification of God, clearly, a significant proportion of the Jews did not meet this demand. Many of the forced converts during the early Middle Ages, especially in Portugal, did remain loyal to Judaism to a certain degree but not all of them. They created a new kind of Jewish theology to justify their dubious position. They permitted idolatry, when threatening edicts were issued, to stay alive, relying on Torah verses and sayings of the sages regarding the importance of preserving life. Their position regarding religion and martyrdom was thus distant from that of Ashkenazi Jewry. They were loyal to Judaism but on their own terms.¹⁴

Jews in the Islamic countries also perceived the sanctification of God differently from the Ashkenazi Jews. Although in northern Europe many Ashkenazi Jews killed their families and themselves rather than be forced by the Christians to convert, this practice did not take hold in the Islamic countries at that time. A relatively small number of deaths for the sanctification of God are known to have occurred in the Islamic lands as compared to the Ashkenazi communities. When forced to decide between conversion and death, Sephardi Jews during the Middle Ages mainly chose conversion. Many Sephardi Jews became Muslims, including learned scholars and community leaders as well as ordinary people, for example, during the middle of the twelfth century under the rule of al-Muwahhidun in North Africa. The reason is linked mainly to the religious ideals of the non-Jewish environment where the Jews lived and worked, as well as their own attitude toward the Christian and Muslim creeds.

In Christianity, death for the sanctification of God was viewed as a lofty value, and formative Christianity generated many martyrs, thereby influencing Jewish thought. Islam was more restrained in this respect. Moreover, Christianity was perceived as idolatrous, with its belief in the holy trinity and in such rituals as the bread of communion interpreted as pagan. Islam, by comparison, was perceived as monotheistic; Maimonides himself ruled that Islam was not pagan. The practical significance was that conversion to Christianity was tantamount to paganism, whereas conversion to Islam was not. Clearly, Maimonides’ ruling applied only to someone who faced a choice between conversion and death. However, he sought to restrict the inclination toward martyrdom and reinforce the prohibition against suicide by ruling that choosing martyrdom when the circumstances do not necessitate it is tantamount to suicide. Additionally, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities developed a deep antipathy for Christianity and its symbols in light of systematic attempts to force them to convert. Lastly, the Jews in Islamic lands were open to Muslim culture, especially in Muslim Spain, whereas the Ashkenazi Jews had a distant and meager acquaintance with Christian culture.¹⁵

In modern times, with the appearance of the Zionist movement and the establishment of the State of Israel, the traditional significance of the sanctification of God and of the readiness of Jews to die for their religion in an atmosphere of persecution changed, replaced by an activist approach to self-sacrifice for national revival.¹⁶ In the early days of Zionism, death for the sanctification of God was perceived as a reflection of helpless Diaspora passivity. Instead, Zionism encouraged Jews to take action once again, as in biblical times, and not wait for the redemption. This activist stance also constituted the moral justification for demanding sacrifice on behalf of the nation. The change introduced by Zionism mandated a rejection of any resemblance between death for the sanctification of God and death for the cause of the territorial nation. It posited a readiness for sacrifice aimed at national sovereignty, a choice made by individuals in a community with a secular moral character.¹⁷

Christianity: “Your Cruelty Is Our Glory”

Christianity, like premodern Judaism, experienced persecution, but the early Christian martyrs died a passive death at the hands of their captors and oppressors rather than self-inflicted death. Martyrdom and persecution were constants during the early centuries of Christianity, called the “era of martyrs.” The model establishing Jesus as the sacrificial lamb who thereby atones for the people’s sins nurtured the willingness for passive death by persecuted believers in the Roman Empire over the first four centuries AC.¹⁸

An apt explanation for the acceptance of martyrdom as a key for salvation was provided by Quintus Tertullian of Carthage (d. 225), often depicted as “the father of Latin Christianity,” who explained to a Roman governor: “Your cruelty is our glory.” Tertullian thereby signified that the vocation of the Christian is to suffer, with his execution harboring his victory.¹⁹ Thus, victory is the result not of defeating the enemy on the battlefield but of cleaving to faith in the presence of the enemy’s violence. For Tertullian, martyrdom was primarily an ethical exercise in obeying God’s will. God’s will tests the resilience of the Christians’ faith and loyalty by persecution and execution. Satan, therefore, is not the rival of Christianity; he is an agent of God by which Christian loyalty is tested. On the opposite side, both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are celestial messengers of support who help the Christian remain loyal.²⁰

Martyrdom is thus a definitive link in the eschatological struggle between God and Satan. The martyr is resilient to pain, functions in Jesus’ name, and rises above physical weakness by his determined spirit. Moreover, the martyr personifies the Church in microcosm and thereby performs the work of the Church. This identification goes hand in hand with another statement by Tertullian, namely “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”²¹

Tertullian’s observations explain the readiness of many Christians in the Roman Empire to sacrifice their lives and, in fact, to seek opportunities to do so. Viewing eternal salvation as a higher value than physical survival, the Christian martyrs were prepared to undergo barbaric torments. The higher the number of martyrs reached throughout the empire, the more widespread the public commemorations of them became. Commemorative martyr literature (acta martyrum) became the most popular literary genre during the formative period of the Church. Churches and ritual sites became destinations for pilgrimages. Touching a grave or nighttime prayers in monasteries to restore health or induce holy visions were widespread. Another practice reflecting the power attributed to martyrs was the burial of the faithful close to a martyr’s grave so that they would be resurrected to life together with him. High points were commemorative festivals and public processions in memory of a martyr, ending in gatherings in a monastery, shrine, or at a ritual site associated with the martyr. Not only did the martyr acquire honor but so did his family and even their town. Potential martyrs who withstood torture and lived on were granted prestigious positions and high status.

The oath of belief in Christianity – “I am a Christian” (paralleled by Judaism’s “Hear O Israel”) – became the central component in the accounts of martyrdom and was perceived as a “second baptism,” this time of blood, which promised purification from all sins and immediate entry into paradise. Self-sacrifice was an act of great significance both in Judaism and Christianity. If suffering were involved in the act, this had a higher purpose. Each religion provided a different justification for such suffering. In Judaism, the answer to Job’s questioning of the suffering of a righteous man is the limitations of human understanding of revelation. In Christianity, suffering reveals the limitless love, compassion, and atonement for the sins of humanity that are bound up with self-sacrifice, as demonstrated by Jesus on the cross.²²

In essence, early Christian martyrdom constituted a passive protest against the use of violence, thereby challenging the power structure of the oppressor. Its guiding principle was that there is an authority higher than human authority, for which death is worthwhile. Acting on behalf of this higher authority places the individual beyond good and evil and determines one’s fate. Although some Christians had served in the Roman army, thereafter they refused to use violence to protect themselves or their fate. The execution of Christians became a theatrical event, and their acts became widely known, functioning for their admirers as symbols of struggle by “athletes of God.”²³ A significant number of martyrs were women. They played a subordinate role (they were listed separately in the compilations of martyrs) but still a heroic one; their achievements were perceived as elevating them to the status of their male counterparts. Women who were subject to cruel treatment by the courts and were condemned to execution gained attention and empathy.²⁴

Notably, early Christian martyrdom was a largely urban phenomenon in the Roman Empire. The locations of acts of martyrdom in prisons and in central plazas before large crowds of spectators afforded publicity and elicited discussion, thereby serving the interests of the Christian Church while exposing the Roman administration to a measure of consternation.²⁵ Apparently, acts of martyrdom served as an opportunity for pagans to be exposed to Christianity during the first and second centuries AD. The zeal of the early Christians to die at the hands of their oppressors gave pause to the pagans. This voluntary willingness for death was closely related to suicide carried out with the help of an outside agent, yet it was clearly hastened by the victim him/herself, a reflection of the elevated value of suicide in Roman society (and, notably, its prohibition for slaves).

The Christians’ zeal in fact evoked dispute in early Christian theology. Although the personal redemption of the martyr and his path to paradise were always viewed as assured, the particular search for spiritual security by drastic means was not always supported by the Church, which reasoned that true martyrdom must result from God’s will, not man’s. This dispute was led by Clement of Alexandria (d. 215), who argued that martyrdom in the true etymological sense of the term means “bearing witness,” constituting a confession of faith in God. Every person who believes in God and obeys his laws is a martyr, whether in words or deeds. Martyrdom thus does not necessarily obligate death. Moreover, forced martyrdom by the Romans, he held, is only one way, but not necessarily the optimal way, of attaining martyrdom. Bearing witness could be achieved by confessing the faith in a far less sanguinary manner.

Clement was thus influenced by Greek philosophy in which a violent death was perceived as suicide. In this respect his viewpoint was identical to that of Judaism, which preceded him, and Islam, which came after his time. It was only under the leadership of Augustine (d. 430) that the Church consolidated a clear and firm position opposing suicide. Augustine’s purposefulness in adopting this position suggests that the controversy over suicide was still ongoing, especially in the Latin West. He ruled that a person who kills him/herself has committed murder, a condemnation of suicide reflecting the Greco-Jewish ethic. This ended the practice of voluntary martyrdom, and from then on the ritual of confession represented the aspiration for martyrdom without spilling blood.²⁶

The martyrdom ritual remained an important component of Christian religious life in the late ancient era during the second half of the fourth century. Sermons about martyrs were a main means of re-contextualization to the present and future. Historical accuracy was not the primary interest of the audience listening to the sermons, nor were eulogies, but rather adherence to the belief in the very act of sacrifice. The historical core was blended with hagiography, which sought to present the martyr as both holy and human, whose behavior embodied the highest Christian virtues. History was turned into hagiography adorned with stylistic elements and quotations from holy texts.

In evaluating the historic significance of martyrdom, the martyrological literature is more interesting than the main actors in the drama. The blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church, as Tertullian argued, describing how the seed was planted, watered, and nurtured by a supportive pedagogic system. Sometimes it was not even important whether the martyrs existed, and so they were invented to provide the Church with status or to strengthen the identity of the congregation.

Not surprisingly, then, Roman Catholicism developed a certified martyrology, namely, a well-organized list of martyrs with dates of birth and brief biographies – a kind of martyrological lexicon. Thus, a consciousness of the blood tie between Christians of the present and those who suffered and gave up their lives for the holy kingdom was officially preserved.²⁷ Written and unwritten testimonies in the hagiographic tradition, liturgical passions, miracle books, sermons, poems, plays, paintings, sculptures, and letters reinforced this memory. Similarly, the bodily relics and garments of martyrs who were perceived as miracle workers were preserved. An additional impetus to the hagiographic discourse was provided by rituals surrounding saints and their often elaborately constructed graves from the second century onward. As shown by Peter Brown, martyrs’ tombs were viewed as public property, accessible to all and the focus of rituals attended by the entire community.²⁸ Above and beyond commemorating the martyr in words, images, and ritual, hagiographic literature aimed at presenting him/her as hagio – holy. The accounts of the martyrs became larger than life, whereas grains of authentic historic information about them shrank or disappeared.²⁹

What were the aims of the martyr narratives, in light of the secondary importance accorded to historical veracity? The first aim was to transform the martyr into a living memory rather than a dim figure from the distant past, so as to induce the faithful to follow in his/her footsteps. The second aim was the construction of the Christian identity.³⁰ The martyr embodied the Christian virtues worthy of imbuing. Moreover, the hagiography was fashioned by the congregation itself, thereby contributing to the coalescence of its own identity, reinforcing theological or legal themes to which the members of the congregation adhered. At the same time, martyrdom provided Christians with ammunition for disputation in their relationships with other religions or with other sects within Christianity itself. Sometimes, one Christian group would justify its persecution of a rival Christian group by claiming that the rival’s martyrs were not true martyrs but merely desperate fanatics who committed suicide by sacrificing themselves to their enemies.³¹

While the two traditional foundations of the martyr’s testimony – faith and a stoic disregard of pain – continued to mold Christian thought, the categories of martyrdom widened to include asceticism and holiness attributed to persons who spread the gospel or who led the Church in a spirit of asceticism. Heroic attributes such as piety, pilgrimage, and miracles proliferated, while martyrdom in the old, more brutal pattern became rare.³² The image of desert ascetics such as St. Anthony (d. 356), St. Athanasius (d. 373), and St. Martin (d. 397) provided the model for centuries of hagiography to come. St. Anthony was the classic ascetic who pushed the devil to the edge with ability to bear self-abnegation, profuse prayer and fasting. The ascetics were said to have undergone “white” martyrdom through their lives of mortification, in contrast to those who underwent the “red” martyrdom of death through the shedding of their blood.³³

The cult of saints penetrated the social fabric and dominated the calendar of the masses, featuring such attributes as healing, mediation with God, and ensurance of fertility. Saints and their names were adopted by churches, schools, and colleges; pilgrimages were made to their graves; children were named after them as a guarantee of safekeeping; paintings and sculptures of their images were displayed; and hagiographic literature was written about them, all aimed to stimulate faithfulness and provide models of asceticism. The saints were depicted as sharing a part of Jesus’ greatness, portrayed as seated on royal thrones and wearing crowns.³⁴

Not only was the formative Christian concept of martyrdom devaluated, thereby paving the way for other forms of devotion, but also it underwent a weakening of the boldness that had typified it. In the Latin West, while authorizing Christian doctrine, with its aim of reforming evil and restoring harmony to the world, as a justification for war, St. Augustine, as discussed earlier, and other theologists, nevertheless warned against a lust for violence. They emphasized that not every wrongdoing constituted a reason for war, and the ruler had a duty to try to correct wrongdoing in other ways. This warning against the use of force was reflected as well in Christian missionary activity, when, in the early medieval period, the Church abstained from converting Muslims. Instead of seeking martyrdom, Catholic missionaries – as well as Nestorians and Byzantines – were purposely sent out to preach to the pagans of the north, where the danger of conflict with Muslims was minimal and the chances of conversion high.³⁵

Nevertheless, some Catholic figures did challenge the restrained position of the fathers of the early Church regarding warfare and the use of violence and sanctioned the death of martyrs. In 853, Pope Leo IV expressed the hope for a heavenly reward and eternal life for Christians who fell in the struggle against the Saracens.³⁶ This concept also emerged in Muslim Spain during the ninth century when Christians sought death as martyrs at the hands of the Muslim enemy as a way to publicly demonstrate their opposition to Islam. The city of Cordoba was prominent in this respect, experiencing a brief period of widespread public martyrdom and suicides on the part of the Christian community, which, additionally, elicited a wave of eschatological literature in Andalusia. Typically, a Christian would convert to Islam and then publicly renounce his new religion, whereupon the qadi would try – unsuccessfully – to change the convert’s mind, ending in the execution of the convert.³⁷

A sociopsychological analysis shows that most of the martyrs in Cordoba in that period had divided identities – some as offspring of mixed Muslim-Christian marriages, and others as only partially integrated in the Muslim-dominated mainstream.³⁸ Some historians described the atmosphere as one of spiritual anxiety combined with spontaneous martyrdom. The Christian martyrs identified Islam with the secular world, which they rejected, and developed anxiety as to their personal salvation.³⁹ Responding to their defiant acts, the Muslim emir demanded that the local archbishop put an end to the martyrdom phenomenon in Cordoba and declare it to be false martyrdom. Indeed, some Christian priests viewed their executed coreligionists as suicides unworthy of salvation, and who, by their acts, exposed the community to suspicion and danger from the Muslims. These priests argued that the Muslims were monotheists, not pagans, and that there was no general persecution of Christianity in Cordoba that could justify acts of martyrdom.⁴⁰

Similar events occurred in Palestine and Syria during that period, evoking a critical discourse in the Christian communities that led to an end to the martyrdom phenomenon. Ultimately, the Christian communities under Islamic rule realized that such rule would remain indefinitely, and many eventually converted to Islam.⁴¹

A more activist death in the name of faith emerged in Christianity during the Crusades in the eleventh century, when slain Crusaders began to be viewed as martyrs, because, as an incentive to join, a promise had been given by the Church that their sins would be forgiven. The First Crusade was thus an important episode in the history of martyrdom. It introduced the notion in Western Europe of a new path to martyrdom, namely death in the war against infidels and for Jesus and his community. However, the notion of martyrdom penetrated the consciousness of the Crusaders only gradually. The actual term martyr was not used, although the promise of a place with the saints and heavenly salvation was made to those who died in the Crusades. Chronicles and letters of the time reflected the beginning of the acceptance of the notion of fighting and dying for a holy cause, yet the first steps were still hesitant. There was no clear promise by the Church regarding the status of the martyr. Moreover, certain circles criticized the Crusaders as motivated essentially by crude material and commercial interests, or a desire for earthly glory.⁴²

In the East, by comparison, the Orthodox Christians in the Byzantine Empire, who were in the forefront of the struggle against Islam, developed an activist perception of death, with the vigorous encouragement of the emperors, especially Nicephorus II Phocas (r. 963–969). The reality of defending the territory of the empire, side by side with the important role played by militarism in Byzantine culture, led to a rejection of Christ’s injunction to turn the other cheek and an openness to the notion of a cult of warrior saints. Those who fell in battle were regarded as chosen by God in the struggle against the enemies of the faith and were commemorated by iconography and monuments in the public space.⁴³

By the end of the Middle Ages, the early Christian perception of martyrdom in Europe had become outdated, although the phenomenon of martyrdom continued in various new forms, especially with growing schisms in the Church that generated religious wars and the torture and burning of martyrs. Catholics, Anabaptists, and Protestants all had their own martyrs, most of whom were executed by local authorities. These martyrs were memorialized in hagiographic anthologies published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Martyrologists such as the Anglican John Foxe of England, the Calvinist Jean Crespin of France, and the Lutheran Ludwig Rabus of Germany, who saved martyrs’ documents and letters from the pit of oblivion, published these materials with alterations that emphasized the martyrs’ extreme heroism, testifying to the righteousness of the church to which they had belonged.⁴⁴

The large number of editions of martyrs’ books that were published seems to indicate that Christian martyrdom was a popular aspect of the culture of this period. All streams of Christianity celebrated their heroes, creating martyrological traditions that became part of their collective identity. Martyrdom also evoked dissonance and separate identities even when Christians from different streams lived as good neighbors.⁴⁵

Besides describing the martyr’s execution, the martyrs’ books included letters written from prison, poems, and declarations of faith. These materials were edited to improve their quality and heighten their universal appeal. A survey of the letters shows that they reflected not only personal feelings but also an opportunity for the prisoners to urge their colleagues and the readership at large to display loyalty to their faith and to sacrifice their lives joyously. Their preachings were phrased in scriptural terminology imbued with religious fervor to legitimize and promote their views and rise above their personal problems. They put their trust in God and Jesus, viewing them as the core of their being, so that their martyrdom was not a journey to the unknown.⁴⁶