Legends of Martydom

Legends of Martyrdom

The vast majority of Christian martydoms have no independent historical confirmation. From a number of different clues it is clear that stories of martyrdom were fabricated - some in the first millennium, the vast majority in the High Middle Ages. These fabricated stories were custom made for their audience, and what went down best were stories of steadfast martyrs, entirely innocent and virginal, dreadfully abused by monstrous and vindictive pagans. These martyrs suffered a vast range of tortures. They survived long after any normal person would have died, suffering unspeakable agonies. Often God miraculously turned the tortures against the evil perpetrator, who usually died in front of his victim. A massively disproportionate number of these victims were nubile young women whose suffering included being stripped and humiliated. With the benefit of modern knowledge it is easy to identify sadomasochistic tendencies in these stories and associated art. As Marina Warner has pointed out:

In Christian hagiography, the sadomasochistic content of the paeans to male and female martyrs is startling, from the early documents like the Passion of saints Perpetua and Felicity into the high Middle Ages. But the particular focus on women's torn and broken flesh reveals the psychological obsession of the religion with sexual sin, and the tortures that pile up one upon the other with pornographic repetitiousness underline the identification of the female with the perils of sexual contact1

Many stories of tortured women martyrs were pure sadistic invention - many of them have no better authority than prurience and the Golden Legend. A good example is Saint Agatha. She was like so many others supposedly tortured for being a Christian in the third century. Among the imaginary tortures she underwent on the orders of Quintianus was the cutting off of her breasts. Fortunately an apparition of Saint Peter "cured" her. Quintianus, undeterred by this spectacular miracle, now sentenced her to death by being rolled naked on a bed of live coals - but she somehow survived. In Christian art her imaginary mutilation is far more popular than her imaginary roasting, for reasons that we can only guess at.