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Choosing Death? Experiences of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Europe*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Miri Rubin
Miri Rubin*
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Oxford
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Extract

Probably one of the most emotive words in our ethical and religious languages, ‘martyrdom’ poses the historian with a complex array of powerful images and awesome actions. Its very naturalness, as a grounding moment through which religions and radical movements are substantiated and made public, raises serious problems of perspective, empathy, judgement: studying martyrdom brings us in touch with some of the most admirable and some of the most repugnant and saddening aspects in human behaviour. Religions, parties, and nations claim martyrs as unambiguous signs of virtue, truth, and moral justification, and thus render martyrdom seemingly obvious. Painful, yes, but admirable; chilling, but satisfying, since in it men and women turn into gods, become myth-makers, and lend legitimation to whoever may claim them. So martyrdom—its discussion, definition, the claim to its virtue and beauty—is always open to appropriation, to competition, to contestation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 30: Martyrs and Martyrologies , 1993 , pp. 153 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1993

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Helen Phillips, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Shulamit Shahar, André Vauchez, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne for some stimulating conversations while I was thinking about this paper.

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