Martyrdom and Martyr

MARTYRDOM AND MARTYR. - From the Greek μάρτυρ, witness; in Christian language it is the person who bore witness to Christ with his blood.

I. CONCEPT

Jesus in his great discourse for the mission of the Apostles (Mt. 10) says: "I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves" (v. 16) and foretells (v. 17): "Beware of men, for they will bring you before tribunals and scourge you in their synagogues" (v. 18) "and you will be led for my sake before governors and kings, to bear witness to me before them and before the gentiles." At the moment of trial they must not worry either about how to speak or about what to say, because the Spirit of the Father will speak in them (v. 20). The time in which all this will happen is the eschatological time, in which "brother will put brother to death and the father his son, and children will rise against their parents and put them to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake; but whoever perseveres to the end will be saved" (vv. 21, 22). The dissolution of all family ties is a characteristic sign for the time before the end (cf. Mk. 13:8 and 12; Henoch aeth., 100, 2; IV Esd. 6, 24; Sanhedhrin, 97a); it is characteristic of Jesus' preaching, which inserts the persecution of the disciples and the possibility of martyrdom into the traditional framework of eschatology. This eschatological background of the passion of the disciples distinguishes Christian martyrdom from the sufferings either of the "righteous" in the Jewish religion (persecuted prophets and the Maccabees) or of the Greek sages who defend moral truth against "tyrants."

The account of Christian martyrdom may be enriched with elements taken from Jewish or Greek tradition, but this does not change the fundamental fact that martyrdom in the eschatological time is intimately bound to Jesus himself. "For my sake you will be led before governors and kings," "for my name's sake you will be hated by all." "All" means, according to Jesus' clear words, Jews and gentiles, who from the beginning oppose Christian preaching. This hostility, which ends in acts of violence against the asserters of the evangelical truth, is in itself a revelation of what man is in the face of Jesus: it lays bare the most hostile sentiments of Jews and Greeks regarding the revelation of God himself. On the other hand, the testimony borne publicly by Jesus' disciples also reveals the presence of the Holy Spirit in them. Thus in the last times "men" will be made manifest in Jews and gentiles, and the Holy Spirit in the martyrs. Testimony is part of the concept of martyr, and this testimony must be public. Whoever has acknowledged Jesus before men will be acknowledged by the Son of Man before the angels of God (Lk. 12:8). Martyrdom is not exhausted in the fact that the martyr suffers for the cause of Christ. What distinguishes the death of the martyr from the death of the soldier is the fact that the latter suffers for a man (or a human cause), whereas the martyr suffers for the "Son of Man," who by his own death began the creation of a future world, transcending human causes. The martyr's testimony presupposes the testimony of him who was "born and came into the world to bear witness to the truth" (Jn. 18:37). The disciple suffers as the Master did, or rather still with the Master, because he finds himself in the same eschatological situation, in which the word "truth" means the revelation of God himself. "Baptized into the death of Jesus," "grafted into the likeness of him" (Rom. 6:3, 5) who compares his own death to a Baptism (Lk. 12:30, whence the term: Baptism of blood) and drinking the cup of the Lord's death, we have no other way out than to remember (I Cor. 11:26) the death of the Lord. One cannot belong to the Church without also having a share in the Passion of Jesus. Not all can become martyrs, because martyrdom is only one of the charisms in the Church, but all must follow the Lord in the Passion. It is not a chance analogy if the "saints," who have passed through mortifications and sufferings, are compared to the martyrs. The principle of every Christian ascesis is that of the mortificatio Christi "which we carry always about in our body" (II Cor. 4:10). To compare "holiness" and "ascesis" with martyrdom is therefore not arbitrary. In the discourse for the mission of the Apostles (Mt. 10) Jesus himself placed alongside the martyrs those who take up their cross and follow him (v. 38).

In the martyr the Holy Spirit is manifested in the last times, especially in the word of his testimony, which reaches its peak in the profession of the phrase christianus sum. This is the reason why the account of the martyrs has its center in the words uttered by the martyr during the judicial interrogation. But on the other hand the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the martyr also raises his body to a dignity that will make of it a sacred relic. Just as Jesus after his death did not remain on earth, but was raised to heaven, so too the martyr enjoys the privilege, which distinguishes him from the other faithful, of ascending directly to Paradise. It is understandable that the martyr thus becomes an intercessor for the faithful.

There has been much discussion concerning the terminology: martyrdom and martyr. The terminology has undergone a historical evolution. It is very significant that the Jews do not know the category of martyrs; those among them who suffered for the customs of the Law are qualified as "righteous." The specific meaning connected with the word "to bear witness" is not explained by the general presuppositions of the Jewish religion, but by the eschatological situation, which makes of testimony not only an act of accusation against the persecutors (testimony for the prosecution), but also the revelation of a new reality. It is true that the words of the witness to the truth have an extraordinary importance, but to wish to limit the sense of martyrdom to the confessio alone means to close one's eyes before the reality that the new world is not brought about by words, even though they be words of the Holy Spirit, but through the death of Jesus and of those who followed him in the shedding of blood. It is not arbitrary if in the early Church the name of martyr became more and more the privileged title of those who died for Jesus, but this does not mean that the confessor remained without privileges. Confessor and martyr are the expression of the fact that the Church always finds herself in the eschatological situation that was begun by Jesus and that ends with the arrival of the "Son of Man," accompanied by the martyrs, at the Judgment. The Church is therefore, not only in the succession of its bishops, but also in the ever new vocation of confessors and martyrs, the apostolic Church.

Erik Peterson

II. CULT OF THE MARTYRDOM AND MARTYR AND ANCIENT ICONOGRAPHY

The esteem and veneration that the "witnesses of Christ" enjoyed during their lifetime among their contemporaries by virtue of the very lofty conception they had of martyrdom will be discussed under the entry PERSECUTION; here we deal only with the devotion of which they were the object after their heroic and glorious death.

1. Origins

For well over a century from the establishment of the Church, an era truly rich in distinguished martyrs (it suffices to recall the protomartyr Stephen [v.], the Apostles, the protomartyrs of Rome, the "ingens multitudo" sacrificed by Nero, Antipas martyr of Pergamum [v.], St. Ignatius of Antioch [v.], St. Justin the philosopher [v.]), it seems that nothing else was done but to provide an honorable burial and to pay to the confessors of the Faith those honors that were customarily paid to the deceased, whose cult was so alive in antiquity, both classical and Christian. However, while the pagans, to escape the memory of death, celebrated the birthday γενέθλιον or dies natalis of the deceased, the Christians, for whom death had a very different meaning, solemnized the anniversary recurrence of the passing, in memory of the deceased's birth into heaven, which marks the end of trial and sorrows and the beginning of true life in God (cf. the observations made on this subject by the Arianizing Anonymus in Job, book III: PG 17, 517). The first document that records the dies natalis of a martyr in the aforementioned sense is the Martyrium Polycarpi, written by the community of Smyrna probably in 177 (cf. H. Grégoire-P. Orgels, La véritable date du martyre de 12 Polycarpe [23 février 177] et le «corpus Polycarpianum», in Anal. Bolland., 69 [1951], pp. 1-38). This document takes care to establish in an unequivocal manner the honors to be paid to Christ and to the martyrs: to the former is due adoration "as to the Son of God," to his "witnesses" love, and therefore veneration, "because they are disciples and imitators of the Lord" (ch. 17; ed. R. Knopf, Ausgewählte Märtyrerakten, 3rd ed., Tübingen 1929, p. 6). This clear distinction removes any possibility of linking this cult to that of the gods and heroes, as Protestant or rationalist authors claimed, on the basis of analogies between pagan myths and customs and late hagiographic compositions and manifestations of popular cult in honor of certain thaumaturgic martyrs. Moreover, St. Jerome (Contra Vigil.: PL 23, 357-58) and St. Augustine already had to stigmatize this error (De Civitate Dei, XXII, 10). The cult of the martyrs is nothing other than the sublimation of the cult of the dead; to the tomb of both (for the ancients it constituted the most direct means of entering into communion with the deceased) the faithful went to commemorate them, but while they prayed for the dead and the rites they performed at the tomb retained their mournful aspect, recourse was had to the intercession of the martyrs and the rites in their honor took on a marked character of joy. Moreover, the remembrance of the martyrs served "as encouragement and preparation for those who were disposing themselves for the struggle" (Martyrium Polycarpi, 18; ed. cit., p. 6). The external manifestations of the cult of the martyrs and of the dead were still, at the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th, so similar as to induce St. Augustine to warn his faithful not to confuse the simple deceased with the martyrs (cf. Serm. 159, 1, 284, 5: PL 38, 868, 1291; In Ioan. Tractatus, 84, 1: ibid. 35, 1847; De Civitate Dei, XXII, 10).

The veneration paid to the martyrs consisted in: a) gathering with religious piety, when the tyrant did not deliberately scatter them, their sacred remains in order to bury them honorably. The Smyrnaeans gathered on the pyre the bones of St. Polycarp, "more precious than precious gems and more exalted than gold, and placed them in a suitable place" (Martyrium, cit., 18; ed. cit., p. 6); at Caesarea the Roman senator Astyrius, present at the martyrdom of the soldier Marinus, "placed the corpse upon his shoulders, wrapped it in a shining and precious garment, and with magnificent pomp laid it in a suitable tomb" (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VII, 16); at Carthage the body of St. Cyprian was "snatched by the Christians from the curiosity of the pagans and by night was accompanied amid wax tapers and torches with prayers in a solemn procession as far as the burial place of Macrobius Candidianus" (Acta Cypriani, 6; ed. Knopf, cit., p. 64). The honorable burial took place either in private burial places or in the cemeteries common to the other faithful, above ground or in subterranean corridors; often the interment was carried out without any distinction; even on the slabs that closed the loculi of the martyr popes Pontian, Fabian and Cornelius, in the cemetery of Callistus, nothing was read but their name; only at a later time was the appellation "martyr" added.

b) On the dies natalis of the martyrs, the faithful gathered near their tomb or, if this was impossible, elsewhere (cf. the case of the martyr Pionius, arrested in his house while celebrating the natal feast of St. Polycarp: Martyrium Pionii, 2-3, ed. Knopf, pp. 45-46), to commemorate them with the celebration of the Eucharist or even with the rite of the "refrigerium," as was customary moreover for the faithful departed. In the so-called "tricia Apostolorum" in catacumbus on the Appian Way one reads graffiti such as these: "Petro et Paulo Tomius Coelius refrigerium feci/ At Paulum et Petrum refrigeravi / XIII Kal. apriles refrigeravi Parthenius in Deo et nos in Deo omnes / Dalmatius botum is promisit refrigerium," which recall the funerary rite of the "refrigerium" or liturgical agape (cf. F. Grossi Gondi, Il rito funebre del « refrigerium » al sepolcro apostolico dell'Appia, in Dissertazioni Pont. accad. rom. archeol., 2nd series, 14 [1920], pp. 261-77). The celebration of the Eucharist and sacred hymns constituted the essential part of the assembly. Some have wished to see in the letter of St. Ignatius to the Romans (II, 2) an allusion to a liturgical synaxis that the Romans would have celebrated after the death of Ignatius, but the passage is not clear (cf. G. Jouassard, Aux origines du culte des martyrs dans le christianisme. St Ignace d'Antioche, Rom. II, 2, in Recherches de science religieuse, 39 [1951], pp. 362-67). Two texts of the 4th century allow us to imagine how a liturgical synaxis in honor of the martyrs unfolded: the Oratio ad Sanctorum coetum, attributed to Constantine (ch. 12: ed. I. A. Heikel, in CB, VII, Berlin 1903, p. 171) and the Constitutiones Apostolorum, VI, 30 (ed. F. X. Funk, I, Paderborn 1905, p. 381; one should also keep in mind a text of the abbot Shenoute, cited by Fr. H. Delehaye, in Anal. Bolland., 40 [1922], p. 37). It is probably in order to make these assemblies of the faithful more convenient on the occasion of the anniversaries of the martyrs or of the dead that Pope Fabian "multas fabricas per cimiteria fieri iussit" (Catalogo Liberiano: ed. L. Duchesne, Lib. Pont., I, p. 4). Likewise to the assemblies of worship must refer the prohibition made by Valerian to the Christians "ne in aliquibus locis conciliabula fiant, nec coemeteria ingrediantur" (Acta Cypriani, 1: ed. Knopf, cit., p. 62, cf. also Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VII, XI, 10; IX, II, 1).

St. Cyprian wanted account to be kept of the day of the death of the glorious confessors of the faith "ut inter memorias martyrum celebrare possimus" (Epist. 12: ed. G. Hartel, in CSEL, III, II, p. 503; cf. also Epist. 39: ibid., p. 583). Unfortunately many communities, not excluding that of Rome, for the 1st and 2nd centuries, did not have the foresight to register the dates of the dies natalis of their martyrs, so that of most of them only the name is known, and often not even this has been preserved, as for the protomartyrs of Rome. This should not cause surprise, since the first Christian communities were above all taken up with the thought of rendering liturgical worship to Christ, the Son of God.

2. Cult of the martyrs after the Constantinian peace

With the peace of Constantine, everywhere, as Eusebius of Caesarea attests in book X of his Hist. eccl., the external manifestations of Christian worship took on grandiose proportions, and everywhere buildings of worship arose, dedicated with solemn rites never seen until then. Every community made it a duty to honor the memory of its ancient and recent heroes, as many literary, epigraphic and monumental testimonies bear witness. For this purpose their tombs were identified and were embellished with railings, marbles, paintings and poems, or else were included in sumptuous basilicas or in graceful oratories with an altar placed on the tomb or beside it; lamps of various shapes placed on the "mensae oleorum" or hanging, and candles of various sizes burned there continuously; on the occasion of anniversaries, flowers and perfumes were lavishly strewn there. The names of the martyrs were transcribed in the diptychs; the dates of their anniversaries were sought out in order to inscribe them in the calendar and, in doubtful cases, official recognition was proceeded with, on the part of the auto-

ity, of the reality or otherwise of the martyrdom (v. VINDICATIO), as happened especially in Africa at the time of Donatism, which boasted of having true martyrs. Meanwhile the faithful asked as a supreme favor to be buried near the tombs of the martyrs, as many inscriptions attest (cf. F. Grossi Gondi, Trattato di epigrafia cristiana latina e greca, Rome 1920, pp. 256-57) and St. Augustine, who explains what value should be attributed to burial near a martyr (De cura pro mortuis gerenda: PL 40, 609-10). The martyrs were invoked as advocates of the dead; here is a characteristic inscription found in the cemetery of Pamphilus: « Martures Sancti Boni Benedicti boni atiuate Quiracu » (E. Josi, Il cimit. di Panfilo, in Riv. di arch. crist., 1 [1924], p. 63).

This general enthusiasm for the heroes of the faith led communities to exchange the anniversaries of the most celebrated martyrs. Rome, for example, welcomed the anniversaries of Sts. Perpetua and Felicity and of St. Cyprian, the latter celebrated in the cemetery of Callistus, on the tomb of St. Cornelius (cf. Depositio Martyrum: ed. R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Il codice topografico della Città di Roma, II, Rome 1942, p. 26), and in their turn Carthage and the African Churches celebrated the anniversaries of the best-known Roman martyrs, as is evident from the sermons of St. Augustine (cf. C. Lambot, Les sermons de st Augustin pour les fêtes des Martyrs, in Anal. Bolland., 67 [1949], pp. 244-66) and from the Calendar of Carthage. The Egyptian Churches did the same for various Eastern martyrs (cf. H. Delehaye, Les Martyrs d'Égypte, ibid., 40 [1922], pp. 1-154, 207-364; even in chronology Egypt manifested its love for the martyrs: the era of the martyrs, a transformation of the Diocletianic era, remained in use there until the 8th century). However, the factor that more than any other contributed to spreading the cult of particular martyrs was the translation and diffusion of their relics. This practice began in the East, and the first known translation is that of St. Babylas of Antioch by Caesar Gallus (351-54), followed by the more famous ones of 356 and 357 which enriched the new capital of the Empire, Constantinople, with the relics of Sts. Timothy, Andrew and Luke. Thereafter the translations and the parceling out of holy bodies can no longer be counted. Some communities distributed the relics of their martyrs with great generosity, for the pleasure of seeing them known and honored in other lands. St. John Chrysostom attests, for example, that the Egyptians distributed relics with the same generosity with which they gave away the grain that was superfluous to them (cf. Laudatio Martyrum Aegyptiorum: PG 50, 693-94). This practice also passed to the West, but it was not accepted by Rome before the late 7th century and in the 8th, when it was forced for reasons of safety to transport within the walls the sacred remains preserved in the suburban cemeteries. The relics of the martyrs, taken from their tombs, were placed beneath the altars and were often enclosed in precious reliquaries (v.).

Besides the translations of relics, the cult of particular martyrs was spread by the panegyrics of the great orators of the 4th and 5th centuries, the Passiones, the libelli of miracles, the poetic works of Prudentius and of Paulinus of Nola, as well as by the thaumaturgic fame of some of them, such as St. Lawrence at Rome, St. Menas in Lower Egypt, St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist after the discovery of their relics, St. Euphemia at Chalcedon, St. Theodore at Euchaita, St. Sergius at Rusafah on the limes of Syria, St. Demetrius at Thessalonica, St. Maurice at Agaunum, etc. The tombs of these martyrs soon became goals of pilgrimages, and crowds of pious devotees thronged the grandiose basilicas erected ad corpus by the munificence of emperors, popes, bishops or generous faithful; the pilgrims brought there as a sign of gratitude rich gifts and ex-votos, and returned to their lands of origin with relics, brandea, various eulogiae, which naturally helped to spread their cult. However, the popular manifestations in honor of the martyrs were not always edifying, as is evident, for example, from the rebukes of the abbot Shenoute (d. 466) against incubatio and the manner of celebrating the feasts of the martyrs (Delehaye, art. cit., pp. 37-39) or those of Bishop Pisentius of Qeft, late 6th century (cf. W. E. Crum, Discours de Pisentius sur st Omophrus, in Rev. de l'Orient chrétien, 2nd series, 10 [1915-17], pp. 38-67; Anal. Bolland., 38 [1920], p. 415).

To put it briefly, the cult of the martyrs in the course of the 4th and 5th centuries lost day by day more of its local character to assume that universal one which would remain definitively assured to it with the acceptance by the various Churches of particular types of liturgical books. In the West, for example, the triumph of liturgical books of the Roman type, favored by the action of Charlemagne and his liturgists, would assure a universal cult to all the martyrs listed in them.

3. Ancient iconography

Before the Constantinian peace, no certain representations of martyrs could be identified, with the exception of the Princes of the Apostles; they become frequent instead with the multiplication of new sacred buildings adorned with paintings, mosaics and sculptures and with the works of embellishment of their tombs. The martyrs are then represented in the attire of a person of high rank, that is, with tunic, pallium and sandals, generally white, if a man; with tunic and chlamys (replaced in some cases by the pallium), if a soldier; with stola, dalmatic and palla, if a woman.

In the 4th and 5th centuries it is sometimes difficult to distinguish a martyr from a sacred or high-ranking person for lack of iconographic characteristics; one would not know, for example, that they are the martyrs Sixtus and Hippolytus (sarcophagus of Apt, see illustration at the entry IPPOLITO, santo) or the martyrs Nabor and Felix (chapel of S. Vittore in S. Ambrogio in Milan), having no other distinctive sign than the scroll or the book, held also by simple deceased persons, if the artist had not inscribed their respective names beside them. Soon, however, the martyr would have his iconographic characteristics that would distinguish him from common persons: the crown and the palm, symbols of victory; the crown is preferred in ancient art, the palm and the instrument of martyrdom were instead normally used in medieval and modern art. The crown began by being made of branches and flowers (v. baptistery of Naples, 4th century), then around the middle of the 5th century it was transformed into a true diadem studded with gems (in the cemetery of Ponziano Christ places a gemmed crown on the head of Sts. Abdon and Sennen, 6th century). The crown encircles the martyr's head rather rarely (St. Agnes [v. related illustration] in the conch of her Basilica); ordinarily it is placed on hands covered by the edge of the pallium, the chlamys, or the palla; at other times it is supported by a single covered hand, while the other, uncovered, approaches it delicately. The circular nimbus is found around the martyr's head toward the end of the 5th century, and the first examples of it are in the frescoes of the cemetery of Ponziano (Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 255). As for the martyr's attitude, it should be noted that it can be: 1) hieratic — the martyr stands upright with the crown in hand (v., for example, the row of martyrs in S. Apollinare Nuovo, 6th century, or that of the chapel of S. Venanzio next to the Lateran Baptistery, late 7th century); 2) one of reverent and solicitous homage, in apse compositions, to Christ or to the Most Holy Mary, who occupy the place of honor: the martyr, somewhat bowed, with the crown in hand, approaches the central figure with hurried step (for example, in the church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in Rome, 526-30, in the Euphrasian Basilica at Parenzo, ca. 530-60); 3) one of orant: St. Menas (v. related ill.) is thus represented between two camels, St. Cecilia (v. related ill.) in the crypt of the same name in S. Callisto, St. Januarius (v. related ill.) in an arcosolium of his cemetery in Naples, St. Apollinaris (v. related ill.) in the church of the same name in Classe at Ravenna. Martyrs belonging to the clergy — deacons, bishops, etc. — clothed in sacred vestments hold in hand the open book of the Gospels, or the Cross and the book of the Gospels (St. Stephen, St. Lawrence in the mosaic of S. Lorenzo fuori le mura: v. Lorenzo, saint, related ill.), or even a closed volume richly bound, the lex Christi (Sts. Sixtus II, Cornelius, Cyprian and Ottatus in S. Callisto, 6th century: Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 256). Very rare is the scene of a martyr in glory beside Christ such as is frescoed in the cemetery Inter duas Lauros (v. related ill.) on the Labicana.

Sometimes the martyr is represented in his function as "advocatus" before Christ: "S. Martyres apud Deum et Christum erunt advocati" we read in an inscription of the Agro Verano (cf. E. Josi, art. cit., p. 63). St. Petronilla, for example, stands beside the deceased Veneranda in Domitilla (after 356: Wilpert, pl. 231); the martyr Adautus in the cemetery of Commodilla lays his hand on the shoulder of the deceased Tortora, who approaches the throne of Mary (v. COMMODILLA, related ill.).

The oldest surviving depiction of a martyr with the instrument of martyrdom is that of St. Lawrence in the so-called mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (v. Lorenzo, saint). It is known, however, from St. Basil (Homilia XVII in Barlaam martyrem: PG 31, 490), St. Gregory of Nyssa (Oratio sancti m. Theodori: PG 46, 738), St. Asterius bishop of Amasea (Enarratio in martyrium m. Euphemiae: PG 40, 338), and from the inscription placed by Sixtus III (432-40) on the inner part of the entrance of S. Maria Maggiore (G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae, II, Rome 1888, p. 71), that the custom prevailed of representing in churches scenes of martyrdom or martyrs with their instruments of death. Extremely interesting in this regard are the miniatures of the Menologion of Basil II (976-1025, ed. Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri, text and phototype reproductions, Turin 1907). Still useful for consultation on the aforementioned instruments is A. Gallonio, Trattato degli instrumenti di martirio, Rome 1591, French version, Paris 1904.

Particular mention deserves the depictions of cephalophoric martyrs, that is, of those martyrs who are said to have gathered up and carried with their own hands the head severed from the body. The episode, told of more than a hundred martyrs, is purely legendary, and the oldest hagiographic text containing it is the Passio anonyma of St. Dionysius of Paris (Acta SS. Octobris, IV, Brussels 1780, p. 794), which dates back to the first decades of the 9th century, whose author manipulated a phrase from his source, the Passio s. Dionysii of Pseudo-Fortunatus (ibid., p. 927), which says something quite different. Given the great diffusion of the Passio anonyma, translated also in Greek (BHG, 554) and of its subsequent reworking by the abbot Hilduin, St. Dionysius of Paris became in the Middle Ages the cephalophorous saint par excellence. It is not established that the metaphor used by St. John Chrysostom to extol the intercession of the martyrs, according to which they show God their severed heads as soldiers show their wounds to an earthly sovereign (Homilia in Sanctus mm. Iuventinum et Maximinum: PG 50, 576), influenced the creation of this episode, which is of Frankish origin. The East received cephalophory from the West and employed it with great discretion. It has also been thought that the idea of cephalophory was born from figures of martyrs holding their severed head with their own hands to indicate that death by decapitation had occurred (cf. Acta SS. Octobris, VII, II, Paris 1869, p. 819), but if this may be true for some of the many cephalophores created in the Middle Ages, it is not true for St. Dionysius. The cephalophorous martyr is also represented as a normal man carrying another head in his hand. - See plate XIX.

Mélanges offerts au R. P. F. Cavallera, Toulouse 1948, pp. 215-30; R. Loenertz, Un prétendu sanctuaire romain de st Denys de Paris, in Anal. Bolland, 66 (1948), pp. 118-23; id., Le panégyrique de st Denys l'Aréopagite par st Michel le Syncelle, ibid., 68 (1950), pp. 94-107; id., La légende parisienne de st Denys l'Aréopagite. Sa genèse et son premier témoin, ibid., 69 (1951), pp. 217-37.

A. Pietro Frutaz

III. MARTYRDOM IN THE CAUSES OF BEATIFICATION AND CANONIZATION

Notwithstanding the broader meaning that the term martyr had in antiquity and the subsequent analogous meanings it assumed in the ascetical field, the Church, with the perfecting of the process of beatification, increasingly sought to define the figure of the martyr and restricted the concept down to the present-day definition, in which four historical-juridical elements are clearly distinguished.

The first element today is the duly proven fact of the violent death suffered by the hero. It is not enough that it was merely threatened or decreed by the persecutor and intentionally accepted by the persecuted person, if in fact it did not come about for any reason whatever; likewise, even the cruelest sufferings endured for the faith are considered insufficient if they did not lead to death. Besides this material element of martyrdom there is the personal element, no less important nor less juridically necessary, which requires that the death have depended on an extrinsic responsible causality distinct from the victim. The latter cannot seek it under the impulse of mere subjective and environmental suggestions, but must heroically undergo it insofar as it is imposed by a persecutor. The third element to be ascertained is the causal or finalistic one, which is the most formal and discriminating, since it substantially specifies and distinguishes the Christian holocaust from every other sacrifice, making evident its supernatural meaning and its meritorious value. It is required, therefore, that the true martyr be put to death for a motive of faith or of moral virtue referable and referred to God. The motive of death can thus be fidelity to revealed dogma or to the Church as teacher of divine truth; or fidelity to a moral precept, natural or positive, insofar as it is sanctioned by the authority of God. Although other ends and other motives may coexist, whether in the victim or in the persecutor, they cannot obscure the essential religious and moral meaning of the sacrifice, the Augustinian saying always holding good: "martyres non facit poena sed causa." There is finally a moral or psychological element that completes the figure of the martyr and reveals him as a perfect imitator of Christ. Death must be consciously accepted for the aforesaid end, and undergone with particular spiritual dispositions, which are constant fortitude and serene gentleness, inspired by principles of a supernatural order.

The causes of martyrs are considered by the Church with particular favor, both because the complementary proof of miracles is more easily dispensed with when the case is most evident (can. 2116 § 2), and because they do not require a judgment on the heroic virtues possibly exercised in life by the victim. Nevertheless the proofs must extend to all the individual elements mentioned above and must consist of direct testimonies, or, in so-called historical causes, of authentic and exhaustive contemporary documents (can. 2020). They are collected and discussed under the critical supervision of the promoter general of the faith (v.), examined in threefold session, and finally submitted to the supreme judgment of the pontiff. The causes of martyrs cannot be combined except in the case of one and the same persecution that struck several of them in the same place (can. 2001 § 1), but even in that case the proofs remain distinct for the respective subjects. For canonization there are no special requirements; beatification must always precede it, and the required miracles must first be approved (v. MIRACOLO).

Salvatore Indelicato