Following the current focus in intellectual history on the production and uses of literature rather than positivist historical reconstruction, Candida Moss situates martyr texts within the broader, diverse streams of Christian self-understanding that were emerging over the course of the second and third centuries. Informed by the recent scholarship of Daniel Boyarin, Jan Bremmer, Virginia Burrus, Elizabeth Castelli, Gillian Clark, Stephanie Cobb, Kate Cooper, Lucy Grig, Karen King, Johan Leemans, Judith Perkins, Thomas Sizgorich, and Robin Darling Young, Moss rejects the view that martyrdom literature represents a monolithic Christian tradition along with that view's genealogical and philological methodology. Instead, the author revisits the “set of values or the concept we call martyrdom [that] existed before the advent of Christianity and independently of the martys word group” (4) as well as the “threads of linguistic, literary, ideological, intellectual, and cultural history” (6) that informed Christian ideas about martyrdom. This approach frames the first chapter, “Cultural Contexts: The Good Death and the Self-Conscious Sufferer,” in which Moss surveys pre-Christian Greco-Roman and Jewish literature on dying well and for a noble cause. Moss also argues for regional distinctiveness in the construction and social functions of martyr texts, an approach which shapes the remainder of the book's organization into chapters on Asia Minor (chapter 2), Rome (chapter 3), Gaul (chapter 4), Roman North Africa (chapter 5), and Alexandria (chapter 6). Throughout her discussions, Moss ably weaves together textual critical analyses and close textual readings of martyr narratives to historically contextualize their production and to reveal the type of “rhetorical and theological work” they do (18).
Asia Minor texts use the sacrificial function of Christ's passion narrative to teach “church order and unity” (57). Here martyrdom is both “a communal event firmly grounded in eucharistic practices” (55) and a way for individuals to prove their Christian discipleship. In a careful but not overly technical discussion that redates the Martyrdom of Polycarp from the second to the third century, Moss shows how the text's parallel to the passion of Christ as sacrificial death is strategically constructed to teach its audience about the proper veneration of martyr relics and the appropriate stance toward their own martyrdom, should the situation present itself.
Martyr narratives emerging from the city of Rome, however, deploy “the category of the martyr . . . to patrol the borders of the related category of Christian,” and portray martyrdom as constitutive of Christian identity (85). Here Moss uses critical text analysis to detect different editorial motives; in particular, “the editor of recension B [of the Acts of Justin and His Companions] amplifies the rhetorical force of the confessional formula ‘I am Christian’ so that it negates other forms of social identification” (93). By using martyrdom to validate the truth of Christianity, Roman traditions transform martyrs into apologists.
In Gaul, hagiography is intertwined with heresiology. As in Asia Minor, Gallic martyr texts denounce Montanism and sectarian strife (105). In Gaul, the martyr's contest in the arena extends beyond the kind of personal salvation found in Rome, “serv[ing] as a microcosm of the cosmic battle” (107). Not only do martyrs imitate Christ, they become vessels for him, which enables them to transcend the pain of their suffering. Salvation is thereby linked to eschatology: “the presence of Christ in the bodies of the martyrs is a sign that victory over Satan has been won” (115). Gallic martyr traditions also perform ecclesial functions: Eusebius reworks them to give “the illusion that leadership and structure have always been a part of the universal church” (116) and the protomartyr Stephen in Irenaeus's Against the Heresies “serves as a model for orthodoxy and good conduct” (117).
In contrast with Asia Minor, Roman North African martyr narratives do not use “sacrificial language and imagery”; nevertheless, ideas about martyrdom were “enthusiastic and apocalyptic” (125). Like the Gallic texts, the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas employs athletic imagery and “endows Perpetua's actions with a cosmic significance” (137). Like the narratives from Rome, the North African texts portray martyrdom as quintessentially Christian: by rejecting other identities and resisting Roman social norms, martyrs perform their Christianness. Here, too, Moss shows how different stages of redaction and manuscript traditions reveal varied communal contexts of textual production. For example, redactors of the Perpetua traditions augment the role of prophecy, shift gender markers, endorse female administration of baptism, and heighten the oppositional character of Christian identity in order to teach their various audiences how to be Christian.
Alexandrian martyr narratives take this type of pedagogy to a whole new level. Moss, following Young, suggests that these texts were used in a kind of askesis, or training, of potential martyrs (147). By extending the martyr's virtue beyond the situation of martyrdom to represent the paradigm for Christian gnosis more generally, Clement simultaneously distinguishes true from false martyrs and true from false Christians. By denouncing “voluntary martyrdom,” he constructs a boundary between orthodoxy and heresy; a construction, Moss notes, that has too often been mistaken by scholars for uniformity. As an alternative explanation for the genesis of “voluntary martyrdom” Moss suggests that it “serves to explain initial flight from persecution” (155). Rather than appear cowardly, unmanly, or disobedient (to Christ), Clement can justify his evasion of martyrdom as a rejection of a heretical practice. Moss further shows that attitudes toward martyrdom were just as diverse as the varieties of Christianity that produced them, and that specific ideologies of martyrdom should not be considered coterminous with particular sects by examining the martyr narratives contained in the so-called Gnostic Tchacos Codex.
Despite the book's focus on each region's unique values and treatment of martyr narratives, Moss also pays close attention to possible interregional textual influences and more explicit intertextual quotations from other sources. Similarities are described as “family resemblances” (98) and attributed to “a common rhetorical vocabulary and martyrological grammar” (160). For all of its openness to textual permeability and diverse interpretations, however, the book occasionally lapses into singularity around historical explanations. For example, it seems equally likely that Irenaeus's opponents were like Perpetua's father (in Cooper's interpretation), that is opposed to martyrdom on Christian grounds, as they were “those who presume that the Lord was not actually crucified,” or Docetists (119). Also, if “the use of the Acts of Paul and Thecla in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas was a self-conscious device intended to support particular baptismal practices” (143), namely female administration of baptism, then Tertullian's condemnation of using the former text to justify the practice would have presumably elicited a similar indictment of the Passion, yet it did not. Perpetua's power is not sacramental but intercessory, derived from her status as a confessor and soon-to-be-martyr. Unlike Thecla, she does not perform any baptism but merely prays for her brother to be saved. Her intercession, rather than being “a clear allusion to baptism” (142), more probably alludes to the Carthaginian controversy over confessors. Confessors awaiting martyrdom in prison were granting certificates of reconciliation to those who had lapsed under the pressure of persecution. Once they arrived in heaven, the confessors would attain salvation for these sinners (Cyprian, de laps, 20).
Moss's study is an innovative and insightful addition to the growing body of scholarship on ancient Christian martyrdom. The scope of her conclusions extends well beyond the topic itself; she ties her own project together with disparate threads of the most recent research on ancient Christianity to produce a work that is more comprehensive than her title would suggest. Although this book is accessible to graduate students and non-specialists in the field, it is most useful for readers familiar with other scholarship on martyrdom.
