"Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze" (2009) (original) (raw)
Related papers
As is etymologically inferred, the ‘martyr’ is always also the ‘witness’. Testifying in the death and defamation of her body, through her body, to a faith that survives and surpasses the limits of human pain and suffering, the martyr attains a sacred or surhumanity. More modern narratives of atrocity recount a similar pattern of corporeal degradation working in the opposite direction: for the perpetrator, victim and - very often - the bystander(s) of atrocity, narratives of torture and the intense physical and psychological suffering it inflicts are read and heard as narratives of subjective destitution leading not to sanctification but to de- or sub- humanisation. The monstrosity of the abject suffering body of the victim is rejected as witness precisely because of its perceived non-humanity, its destabilising immediacy: the unspeakable has no voice. This paper explores (un)ethical reactions to witnessing suffering bodies in 20th and 21st century representations of dehumanising atrocity, in the light of and drawing on a literary analysis of Early Modern hagiographic narratives of sanctifying torture.
Narrating the Body in Early Christian Martyrology
Adamantius 25, 2019
This paper takes into view texts from the roughly two hundred years of early Christian history, when martyrs were established as powerful agents. My observations follow the textual constructions of martyr’s bodies that allow weak, old and vulnerable bodies to be in focus. The single narratives are differentiated according to their specific communicative strategies of presenting suffering martyr bodies and the connected social constructs. The actual violability of an individual confessor’s body is contrasted with his or her self mastery of that vulnerable body and the tendency of eschatological negligence of feeling pain. However, a bias in the presentation of Christian and non-Christian slave bodies as well as in the textual exposure and narration of male and female bodies can be observed.
A Bad Romance: Late Ancient Fantasy, Violence, and Christian Hagiography
Journal of Late Antiquity, 2023
In Gerontius's labor of love, the Life of Melania the Younger, the hagiographer makes it clear that this is an intentional exercise in memory-making as well as a performance of personal piety. To craft his hagiographical fantasy, Gerontius imports romantic themes from Greek romance novels and ancient dream theory to evaluate Melania's pre-saintly life. Here, I explore the framing of the vita as a genre-bending (bad) romance and resituate this text within a larger discourse of constructed male fantasies of gender-based violence. To accomplish this goal, I examine overlapping themes in Christian and non-Christian Greek novels to emphasize references to sexual violence in the Life of Melania the Younger. Then, I show how the use of ancient dream theory frames the hagiographical project and produces what I identify as a male fantasy. Finally, I conclude that the hagiographical project-the intentional act of writing holiness-produced a troubling vision of sanctioned domestic violence.
" Ego Christianus Sum " : Cultural Appropriation and the Discourse of Early Christian Martyrdom
The Martyr Acts are captivating, dramatic and emotive texts that document the trials and executions of Christian confessors during the Roman imperial period. Amidst a backdrop of sporadic persecution and intolerance, a new literary genre emerged that would aid in the promotion of suffering as a characteristic unique to the identity of Christians. However, the idea that Roman government officials deliberately sought out Christians for the purpose of execution only serves to amplify the false dichotomy that exists between ‘Christians’ and ‘Romans.’ The purpose of this study is to examine the function of martyrologies in the development of early Christian identity, as well as assess the extent to which the authors of the Martyr Acts appropriate and reinterpret Roman cultural practices and ideologies throughout these texts. This will be achieved through the analysis of three distinct narratives that emerge from the wider collection of Martyr Acts: the trial narrative, the agonistic narrative and the soldier for Christ narrative. Corresponding with these narratives, the Roman legal system, public spectacles and military ideologies serve to form the basis for assimilation by the authors of the Martyr Acts. As such, this thesis will illustrate that Christians were not a separate entity to the Roman Empire; they existed within the realms of the Empire and consequently forged a unique identity with distinctly Roman attributes at its core.
The Eschatological Arena: Reinscribing Roman Violence in Fantasies of the End Times
2009
Eschatological fantasies of divine judgment and retribution constitute a common feature of sacred literature and often serve to legitimate violence, both physical and rhetorical, against others. is paper examines allusions to Roman spectacles of violence-which operated part and parcel of imperialist strategies to dominate and intimidate subject populations-in descriptions of final judgment. It argues that these references constitute forms of colonial mimicry, which ambivalently appropriate Roman symbols of power for their own self fashioning. is process, however, is not uniform, but serves different purposes and strategies in different texts and contexts. is article explores examples of such mimicry and asks what it means for visions of the final judgment to reinscribe the very methods of domination that these fantasies seek to displace. Additionally, it considers the role of voyeurism implicit in public disciplinary displays and the implications that imagining eschatological justice as a blood spectacle has for theological conceptions of divine surveillance and control.
Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse: Text and Context
Paper 1 in the 'When Did We See You Naked?' Series, 2018
Open Access. This republication of David Tombs, ‘Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 53 (Autumn 1999), pp. 89-109, has a new Preface (2018) and a critical reflection by Fernando F Segovia on 'Jesus as Victim of State Terror: A Critical Reflection Twenty Years Later' (2018). It is also available at OUR archive http://hdl.handle.net/10523/8558\. The original article is at http://hdl.handle.net/10523/6067\. Abstract: A key principle in the work of Latin American liberation theologians has been a willingness to take their Latin American social context seriously as an aid for understanding biblical texts. This paper is intended to illustrate the value of this principle by focussing on some disturbing points in the gospel accounts of crucifixion in the light of recent accounts of torture and terror in Latin America. It argues that documentation of torture and abuse in Latin American military regimes can illuminate neglected aspects of Jesus’ passion presented in the gospels. Most importantly this involves recognition that crucifixion was a form of torture that served a wider purpose than execution and was used to demonstrate the state’s power and terrorise those who might oppose it. Within this framework, one issue in the horror of Jesus' torture and crucifixion which has been completely neglected in Christian tradition—the degree of sexual abuse that it involved—can be addressed honestly and openly. The central contention is that crucifixion in the ancient world carried a strongly sexual element and should be understood as a form of sexual abuse. The gospels indicate that Jesus was subjected to a high degree of sexual humiliation and was possibly a victim of sexual assault. The final part of this paper suggests the constructive purposes that the acknowledgement of this sexual abuse might serve.