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4 - Forgetting Persecution

Memory and Anti-martyrdom in the Babylonian Talmud

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2024

Simcha Gross
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

Following attacks by Syriac Orthodox Christians around 792, a group of Maronite monks in northern Syria appealed to Timothy I, the Catholicos of the Church of the East, to intervene on their behalf with the Caliph, with whom the Catholicos was believed to have a close relationship. In his response, Timothy encouraged the Maronites to join his own church, noting that its many martyrs established its theological purity:

For if anyone says that the soil of the east is the soil of holy martyrs, he is never far from the truth. For [during a period of] about four hundred years of Persians [rule], violence and murder did not cease from the Church of the East (ʿedtā d-madnḥā). And in all this time and duration of killing and persecution, Satan could never pillage the riches of their confession, nor make any addition or diminution [therefrom].1

Timothy also urged the Maronites to read “the books of Martyrdoms, that is, from the acts of the martyrs who suffered martyrdom in the East” and to witness his followers’ veneration of the “bones of the holy martyrs.”2 Timothy’s remarks invoke the East Syriac Church’s longstanding glorification of martyrdom, particularly in defiance of the Sasanian Empire, reflected in its copious martyrological literature and in the many martyr shrines that dotted the East Syriac landscape, which served as sites of annual commemorations and pilgrimage.3

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Forgetting Persecution
  • Simcha Gross, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity
  • Online publication: 04 April 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009280549.005
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  • Forgetting Persecution
  • Simcha Gross, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity
  • Online publication: 04 April 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009280549.005
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Forgetting Persecution
  • Simcha Gross, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity
  • Online publication: 04 April 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009280549.005
Available formats
×