PALMA. — Martyrs, by their blood, merit from Christ the reward of eternal life and therefore, in the apocalyptic vision, they bear the palm (Apoc., VII, 9).
Tertullian sees them in the triumphal garment, palmata vestis (Apol., I); the palms and crowns passed into Christian iconography and epigraphy, and so Damasus will say of the martyrs Protus and Hyacinth: hic victor meruit palmam, prior ille coronam (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Città del Vaticano 1942, p. 192); Gordianus is called martire Christi quem palma coronat (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. Chr., II, Roma 1887, p. 64,15). Prudentius sings of Vincent: palmam tulisti (Peristephanon, V, 539). Just as in the games the palm was offered to the victor, so it would also be given to the Christian who in life had been victorious over the devil and the passions (s. Gregorio, Dial., III, 26). With this meaning it is found engraved in funerary inscriptions from the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 3rd. In many contorniate medallions, gaming boards, fragments of terra sigillata, clay lamps, and Christian inscriptions of the 4th–6th centuries, and even in a consular diptych, the monogram E, or also S, frequently occurs. It was interpreted by L. Bruzza and G. B. De Rossi as palma feliciter, and by P. Arcangeli as palma elea (Dell'interpretazione del monogramma E, Roma 1879). H. L. Marrou found the exact explanation, palma et laurus, while studying an inscription from the year 363, now in the Lateran Museum (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. Christ., I, Roma 1857–61, n. 159), in which this monogram is represented together with the crown and the signum Christi; it signifies the supreme reward: palma et laurus.