Tertullian on Martyrs

"The blood of Christians is seed," wrote Tertullian, a North African Christian, in about 197. "[It is] the bait that wins men to our school. We multiply whenever we are mown down by you."

Tertullian, of course, wrote with rhetorical exaggeration. Pagans hardly flocked to the church after witnessing the death of Christians. Martyrdom eventually made a large-scale impact on pagans but not before two centuries of sacrifice.

Ordinary citizens in Tertullian's day were not impressed with Christian deaths. In fact, they seemed to take pleasure in the persecution of Christians.

"Faggot-fellows" and "half-axle men" were nicknames of contempt for people who allowed themselves to be tied to a half-axle post or have faggots (wood chips) heaped around them in preparation for being burnt. Christians were viewed as only a sect or school that opposed the established order, dabbled in black magic and practiced incest and ritual child-murder. The Romans saw them as a dangerous cult, disliked and despised.

"Through trusting [in resurrection], they have brought in this strange and new worship and despised terrors, going readily and with joy to death," mocked one ancient. "Now let us see if they will rise again, and if their god be able to help them and take them out of our hands...."

From Tertullian's time, many Christians became "evangelists to the death." Only in the fourth century did martyrdom become a serious factor in the church's growth. So long as the empire flourished and the values of Roman civilization prevailed, Christians were seen as an illegal and disloyal minority. Martyrs merely displayed their zeal to a largely hostile or indifferent populace.

The Great Persecution seems to have flipped the scales. After the conversion of Constantine, martyrs became part of a "Golden Legend." In Rome, for example, the Spanish poet, Prudentius (d. 402) embellished the story of the martyrs with miraculous details of their legendary heroism against pagan governors.

So Tertullian was right after all, though his statements took time to become fulfilled. For him, the martyrdom of Christians was the supreme influence that drew people (himself among them) to Christianity: "For who that beholds [martyrdom] is not stirred to inquire what lies indeed within it?"

 

-William H.C. Frend, "Evangelists to the Death: It took centuries for Christian martyrs to impact pagan society," Christian History, September 23, 1998, www.christianity.net