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.Footnote ⁴ 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.Footnote ⁵ In this work the King, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, condemns the actions of the Maccabean martyrs for being “voluntary” and “active.”Footnote 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.Footnote 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.Footnote ⁸ Martyrdom itself is in Gibbon's estimation intrinsically provocative: he describes the actions of those who sought martyrdom as “blind” and “rash.”Footnote 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.”Footnote 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.Footnote 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.Footnote ¹² That there were no such strict 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.Footnote 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.Footnote ¹⁴ He still insists upon a genealogical thread, however, and traces voluntary martyrdom from the Maccabees to the “abnormal mentality” of Ignatius of Antioch.Footnote 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”:

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 practice,” his dichotomy unwittingly reinforces Le Blant's classism and stereotypes.Footnote 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:

Between the poles of these volunteers and “the ordinary martyrs,” de Ste. Croix slips in a third group he terms “quasi-volunteers”:

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.”Footnote 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 encouraged to commit suicide rather than risk their chastity. For this kind of death they were explicitly praised.Footnote 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.Footnote 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.Footnote 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 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.Footnote 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.Footnote 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.Footnote 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.Footnote ²⁷ Christine Trevett has followed Tabernee, noting that “catholics sanctioned behavior, which was, or was little short of, voluntary martyrdom.”Footnote 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.’”Footnote 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.Footnote 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 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.”Footnote 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.Footnote 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 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.Footnote 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.Footnote 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).Footnote 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 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.Footnote 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.’”Footnote 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:

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.Footnote 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.Footnote ³⁹ Given the synonymy of masculinity and courage, Clement's description of this group as cowardly is emasculating.Footnote ⁴⁰ It subtly feminizes its members and elides the rational basis for their position. It seems that Boyarin is correct when he describes Clement's approach to martyrdom as “ambivalent.”Footnote 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.Footnote 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.Footnote ⁴³ In a textually difficult passage toward the beginning of the account, the author describe the actions of a certain Phrygian named Quintus:

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.Footnote 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):

Although Agathonike has been adjudged a Montanist, more recent scholarship has tended to suggest that she was merely influenced by Montanism.Footnote ⁴⁵ There is 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.Footnote 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.Footnote 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 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.Footnote 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 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.”Footnote 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.Footnote 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.”Footnote 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.Footnote ⁵² Even as they respect their subjects, both Erasmus and More see martyrdom as unnatural and the fearful reluctance of Christ as natural.

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.”Footnote 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.Footnote 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.”Footnote 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.Footnote 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 Donald W. Riddle, who sees martyrdom as a form of brainwashing-induced insanity.Footnote ⁵⁷ As is often noted, Ignatius is diagnosed by modern scholars who have called him “abnormal,” “pathological,” “bordering on mania.”Footnote 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.Footnote 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.”Footnote 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.