Martyr

A martyr is a person who is put to death or endures suffering because of a belief, principle or cause. The death of a martyr or the value attributed to it is called martyrdom. In different belief systems, the criteria for being considered a martyr is different. In the Christian context, a martyr is an innocent person who, without seeking death, is murdered or put to death for his or her religious faith or convictions. An example is the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire. Christian martyrs sometimes decline to defend themselves at all, in what they see as an imitation of Jesus' willing sacrifice.

Islam accepts a much broader view of what constitutes a martyr, including anyone who dies in the struggle between those lands under Muslim government and those areas outside Muslim rule^{[citation needed]}. Generally, some seek to include suicide bombers as a "martyr" of Islam, however, this is widely disputed in the Muslim community.

Though often religious in nature, martyrdom can be applied to a secular context as well. The term is sometimes applied to those who use violence, such as those who die for a nation's glory during wartime (usually known under other names such as "fallen warriors"). It may also apply to nonviolent individuals who are killed or hurt in the struggle for independence, civil rights etc. Outside of an academic or religious context, the word "martyr" is used ironically in casual conversation to refer to someone who seeks attention or sympathy by exaggerating the impact upon themselves of some deprivation or work.

History

The word ' martyr' is derived from μάρτυς (martys), the Greek word for "witness". During the early Roman Empire, the independent cities of Asia Minor made efforts to reward benefactors for their services, and to promote further civic generosity by means of public acclamations, eulogistic honorific decrees were addressed to the Roman authorities and read in public places before an audience. Such commendations are usually referred to in epigraphic sources as martyriai. Christians adopted the phrase "martyrs" in the "testimonies" for the act, suffering and self-sacrifice of the persecuted.

The meaning that ' martyr' has today first appeared around 150 AD in Christian documents. The first instance is in the so called Martyrdom of Polycarp. Hugh Barlow^[1] argues that throughout written history, martyrdom arises in the context of lop-sided conflicts, and is both expressive and instrumental. The "active submission" of ancient Judaism and early Christianity represents the first stage of an evolutionary process that took two paths, one leading eventually to the suicide bombers of today. This path is a militant one, appearing first with the rise of Islam and the Muhammad's attempts to protect the fledgling community of believers (umma). These early warrior-martyrs sacrificed themselves in a struggle which resulted in war, guided by the Quran and the Hadith.

During the 200-year Crusades the warrior-martyrs of Islam found themselves confronted by warrior-martyrs of Christ fighting at the behest of Pope Urban II. Urban was responding to a plea from the Byzantine emperor Alexius, but he saw an opportunity to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim hands. Urban offered his knights immortality and forgiveness of sins. Those who died killing the enemy would gain "everlasting glory," as a "living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God."

Around the same time as the Crusades, the medieval Shiite Assassins introduced a new practice: sending warriors on murder missions that were almost certain to be suicidal; these suicide commandos (fedeyeen) would reappear seven centuries later. In the meantime, warrior-martyrdom became a defining trait and obligation of the Khalsa Sikhs in the Indian Punjab. So instinctive was their self-sacrifice in battle that enemies admired them as fearless, in the mold of Sikh hero and martyr Baba Deep Singh.

When the Japanese introduced the Kamikaze suicide squads into the Pacific Theater of World War II, they turned warrior-martyrs into martyr-warriors; martyrdom had become an organized strategy of warfare, with fighters specially recruited and trained to sacrifice themselves in airborne attacks on the advancing Allied navy. The kamikazes targeted enemy soldiers, not civilians.

Exemplified by the suicide-bomber, a new type of martyrdom appeared with the 1983 Hezbollah attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Barlow calls this type predatory martyrdom to emphasize the indiscriminate killing of civilians. The death and destruction wrought in the 9/11 al-Qaeda suicide attack on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon shocked the world. Suicide bombings have created hundreds of predatory martyrs during the ongoing conflict in Iraq.

In religion

Judaism

See also: Persecution of Jews

Martyrdom in Judaism is referred to by the Hebrew phrase Kiddush Hashem, meaning sanctification of God's name.

1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees recount numerous martyrdoms suffered by Jews resisting the Hellenizing of their Seleucid overlords, being executed for such crimes as observing the Sabbath, circumcising their children or refusing to eat pork or meat sacrificed to idols.

But not long after the king sent a certain old man of Antioch, to compel the Jews to depart from the laws of their fathers and of God:

And to defile the temple that was in Jerusalem, and to call it the temple of Jupiter Olympius: and that in Gazarim of Jupiter Hospitalis, according as they were that inhabited the place.

And very bad was this invasion of evils and grievous to all.

For the temple was full of the riot and revellings of the Gentiles: and of men lying with lewd women. And women thrust themselves of their accord into the holy places, and brought in things that were not lawful.

The altar also was filled with unlawful things, which were forbidden by the laws.

And neither were the sabbaths kept, nor the solemn days of the fathers observed, neither did any man plainly profess himself to be a Jew.

But they were led by bitter constraint on the king's birthday to the sacrifices: and when the feast of Bacchus was kept, they were compelled to go about crowned with ivy in honour of Bacchus.

And there went out a decree into the neighbouring cities of the Gentiles, by the suggestion of the Ptolemeans, that they also should act in like manner against the Jews, to oblige them to sacrifice:

And whosoever would not conform themselves to the ways of the Gentiles, should be put to death: then was misery to be seen.

For two women were accused to have circumcised their children: whom, when they had openly led about through the city with the infants hanging at their breasts, they threw down headlong from the walls.

And others that had met together in caves that were near, and were keeping the sabbath day privately, being discovered by Philip, were burnt with fire, because they made a conscience to help themselves with their hands, by reason of the religious observance of the day.

A historical account by Rabbi Ephraim ben Yaakov (1132 - AD. 1200) describes Crusaders' massacres of Jews, including the massacre at Blois, where approximately forty Jews were killed following an accusation of ritual murder:

"As they were led forth, they were told, 'You can save your lives if you will leave your religion and accept ours.' The Jews refused. They were beaten and tortured to make them accept the Christian religion, but still they refused. Rather, they encouraged each other to remain steadfast and die for the sanctification of God's Name." [1]

Christianity

See also: Persecution of Christians

Martyrs before the Constantinian shift

Other than Jesus and John the Baptist, Eastern and western liturgical Christians revere Saint Stephen as the first martyr, or protomartyr. This term is also applied, with an appropriate description, to the first martyr of a given region: Saint Alban as the protomartyr of England or St. Francis Ferdinand de Capillas as the protomartyr of China.

Christians in the first three centuries were crucified in the same manner as Roman political prisoners or fed to lions as a games spectacle, as recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History and in various Acts of the Martyrs. Some accounts describe these deaths as reenactments of mythological scenes; The First Epistle of Clement recounts how Christian women were martyred:

Through envy, those women, the Danaids and Dircae, being persecuted, after they had suffered terrible and unspeakable torments, finished the course of their faith with steadfastness, and though weak in body, received a noble reward.

The reenactment is clear for Dirce — she was killed by being tied to a wild bull. However, the Danaids' fate in Tartarus, of endlessly pouring water into a jug with holes, would not result in martyrdom. It has been suggested that the women, like the Danaids, were handed out to the victors in a footrace and therefore suffered rape prior to death.

Christians who were also Roman citizens were often beheaded; this was the fate of Saint Agnes and Saint Paul.

Although at all points Christians were in violation of the law for failure to worship the gods of the state, persecution was not consistent. In the Acts of Perpetua and Felicity, the raid to capture the Christians was not made to wipe out the Christians but explicitly to capture prisoners for a spectacle in the games; the capture of the patrician Perpetua was, in fact, an embarrassment, but her testimony made it impossible for the authorities to release her. Various Roman Emperors — Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian — ordered Christians to perform pagan sacrifices, but between the persecutions, Christians lived and worshipped unmolested. Orthodox Christian practice forbade the deliberate seeking out of martyrdom, but many Christians attempted to achieve martyrdom by turning themselves into the authorities, who did not always enforce the law.

Christians embraced their martyrdom:

"Allow me to be eaten by the beasts—that is how I can reach God; I am God's wheat and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread of Christ.... Pray to Christ for me, that by these means I may become a sacrifice." —Ignatius to the Romans, Ignatius of Antioch.

The degree to which martyrdom might be invited while skirting the sin of suicide became a matter of debate among theologians. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, for instance, carefully pointed out that Polycarp had not sought out martyrdom but been arrested; another man, Quintus, had voluntarily come forward and had apostatized, which the writer cites as a warning against seeking martyrdom.

With the Constantinian shift and the identification of the term Christianity with the Roman Empire, persecution ceased in the Roman Empire.

Theological significance of martyrs

Martyrs were recognized as such because they preferred to die than to renounce their faith (i.e.apostatize). The Christian writer Tertullian (AD. 200) asserted that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." The term martyr only slowly became identified with those who died for the faith; in the earlier centuries, it was often used for anyone persecuted, even those who survived, but in time, martyr came to indicate someone who died from persecution, whereas the term confessor was used for those whose sufferings had not been fatal.

The acts of the early Christian martyrs are important historical sources; for example, the Passio Sanctorum Scilitanorum is regarded as the oldest Christian text in Latin (text).

The names of martyrs were enrolled in martyrologies, and the Feast of All Saints originally commemorated specifically all martyrs. Christians also preserved the physical remains of martyrs as relics, and commemorated the specific days of their deaths; both these practices were noted in the death of St. Polycarp.

Martyrdom after 312 AD

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As Christianity spread beyond the area of the Roman Empire, and after the fall of the Roman Empire, the spread of Christianty meant the spread of martyrdom, among them:

• Rajden the First-Martyr, in the Persian empire, died 457,
• Saint Boniface in Frisia, died 752,
• Adalbert of Prague, the Baltic Prussians, died 997
• Thomas Becket, died 1170.
• Roque González de Santa Cruz, Paraguay, died 1628.
• Isaac Jogues and companions in North America, died 1642 - 1649,
• the Martyrs of Gorcum in the Netherlands, died in 1572,
• the Martyrs of Japan, died 1597
• Pedro Calungsod, Guam, died 1672
• the Martyrs of Korea, died 1839, 1846 and 1866, and
• the Martyrs of Uganda, died 1885 and 1887.

Martyrdom was suffered both by missionaries and by converts.

Martyrdom in the 20th century

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The 20th century again saw large numbers of Christians martyred by non-Christians, in persecutions by political authorities that have antipathy directed towards particular faiths, or religion in general. This has included the Turkish persecution of the Armenians during World War I, the Soviet Union and early People's Republic of China. The Russian Orthodox Church in post-Soviet times termed many of those who died for this faith "New Martyrs", meaning that it was the second greatest persecution of Christians since the early centuries of the Christian era. Many Christians died in southern Sudan, as a result of the Islam-dominated north. The Taliban regime had been known as well to mount another wave of persecutions, although this has received less international attention, given its scale.

Pope John Paul II canonized hundreds of martyrs of the Spanish Civil War, mostly priests and nuns shot by irregular leftist militias.

During the reign of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism in Germany, a large number of Christians were martyred. Among the most famous martyrs of that time are Maximilian Kolbe, Paul Schneider and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

A chapel of modern martyrs is maintained in the Corona at Canterbury Cathedral.

Many church historians believe that there were more Christian martyrs in the 20th century than in the first nineteen centuries combined. [2]

Persecution among Christians

Within, the tables were turned and pagans sometimes became martyrs if they refused the Roman Emperor when ordered to change their beliefs to the Roman Empire's version of Christianity.^{[citation needed]} It didn't take long before Augustine of Hippo authorized the use of force against heretics who refused to fall in line with orthodoxy.^{[citation needed]} Persecution of heretics and the martyrdom that sometimes went with it became institutionalised in the office of the inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church, and in the political systems of the State. John Calvin, taking power in Geneva, authorized the death of Michael Servetus and others. Henry VIII of England executed those who did not accept him as the head of the Church of England, including both the Catholic Thomas More, the Protestant William Tyndale, and Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. The English Queen Mary I (who became known as Bloody Mary), when she had nearly three hundred Protestants tortured and killed (recorded in Foxe's Book of Martyrs) for refusing to denounce their reformist beliefs and for refusing to revert to Roman Catholicism. Puritan Massachusetts imposed the death penalty on Quaker missionaries. Melichar Grodecki, Štefan Pongrác, Marek Križin were tried and executed by Protestants in 1619 in Košice, John Sarkander in 1620 in Olomouc.

Some Christian sects such as Anabaptists as well as non-Christian sects, trace their origins to widespread persecution and martyrdom at the hands of other Christians trying to suppress their break away sects. The Anabaptists have embraced this part of their heritage to such an extent that the book Martyrs Mirror, which describes the deaths of Anabaptist Martyrs in the 16th and 17th century, is still widely owned and read in Mennonite and Amish households (see Anabaptist persecution for more).

In Latter Day Saints belief, Joseph Smith, Jr and Hyrum Smith are martyrs.

Persecution of Roman Catholics has also occurred in recent history. The United Kingdom has been notorious for persecuting the Catholic population of Ireland as well as killing British and Scottish Catholics (i.e. Thomas More). There was also persecution in the United States during most of the 19th and early 20th Centuries by the majority Protestant US against the immigrant Irish, Hispanics, and Italians. Also, many intellectual Catholic priests and nuns were killed in the Holocaust of Nazi Germany as well as under other European dictatorships of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Communist Soviet Union during the 20th century.

Among the Orthodox, Patriarch Nikon's attempts to reform the Russian Orthodox Church led to the schism between it and the Old Believers, whose persecutions included execution. On January 24 1874, a Russian army unit killed 13 Eastern Catholics (Uniates).

Islam

Main article: Martyr (shahid)

See also: Persecution of Muslims

In Arabic, a martyr is termed "shaheed" (literally, "witness"). The concept of the shaheed is discussed in the Hadith, the sayings of Muhammad; the term does not appear in the Qur'an in the technical sense, but the later exegetical tradition has read it to mean martyr in the few passages that it does appear in. The first martyr in Islam was the old woman Sumayyah bint Khabbab[3], the first Muslim to die at the hands of the polytheists of Mecca (specifically, Abu Jahl). A famous person widely regarded as a martyr - indeed, an archetypal martyr for the Shia - is Husayn bin Ali, who died at the hands of the forces of the second Umayyad caliph Yazid I at Karbala. The Shia commemorate this event each year at Aashurah.

Muslims who die in a legitimate jihad bis saif (struggle with the sword, or Islamic holy war) are typically considered shahid. This usage became controversial in the late 20th century (due to the Islamic strictures against suicide), when it began to be applied to suicide bombers by various groups. There a huge controversy about the meaning of jihad in Islam, since Muhammad never claimed that suicide is equal to jihad; Jihad is an act of fighting for the Dar al Islam, either to defend it against an aggressor or to bring about its expansion. Where Muhammad explained, in hadith, that those who commit suicide are forbidden to even smell heaven. Some contend that these murders are contrary to the spirit of Islam, while many other Muslims argue they are fighters who "kill and are killed" in Jihad bis saif, the victims being legitimate targets. The concept of heroic martyrdom is termed "Istish-haad".

Bahá'í Faith

Main article: Persecution of Bahá'ís

In the Bahá'í Faith, a martyr is one who sacrifices his or her life in the service of humanity in the name of God.^[2] However, Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, discouraged the literal meaning of sacrificing one's life, and instead explained that martyrdom is devoting oneself to service to humanity.^[2] `Abdu'l-Bahá, Bahá'u'lláh's son and appointed interpreter, explained that the truest form of martyrdom is a life-long sacrifice to serve humanity in the name of God.^[2] While the Bahá'í Faith exalts the station of its martyrs, martyrdom is not something that Bahá'ís are encouraged to pursue; instead one is urged to protect one's life.^[3]

During the history of the Bahá'í Faith there are many who are considered martyrs. The Bahá'í Faith grew out of a separate religion, Bábism, which Bahá'ís see as part of their own history. In Bábism, martyrdom had the literal meaning of sacrificing one's life and was seen as a public declaration of sincerity.^[4] During the 1840s and 1850s the Báb claimed that he was the return of the Mahdi and gained a strong following.^[5] The Persian clergy tried to stop the spread of the Bábí movement by denouncing the Bábís as apostates; these denouncements led to public executions of the Bábís, troop engagements against the Bábís, and an extensive pogrom where thousands of Bábís were killed.^[5] In addition, the Báb himself was publicly executed in 1850.^[5] The Bábís that were killed during these times are seen as martyrs by Bahá'ís, and the date of execution of the Báb, who Bahá'ís see as a Manifestation of God equal to that of Bahá'u'lláh, is considered a holy day in the Bahá'í calendar, as the Martyrdom of the Báb.^[4][6] Also among the Bábí executions was the poetess Táhirih, who Bahá'ís consider the first woman suffrage martyr.^[7]

After Bahá'u'lláh abstracted the meaning of martyrdom, gave it a new meaning, and abolished holy war, the Bábís who became Bahá'ís stopped seeking martyrdom as a public declaration of sincerity.^[2] However, Bahá'ís continue to be persecuted in predominantly Muslim countries, especially in Iran where over 200 Bahá'ís were executed between 1978 and 1998.^[8] Among these executions include two sets of nine people who were part of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Iran, the national governing body of the Bahá'ís, who were arrested and killed only for their religious beliefs.^[9] The people who are killed just because they are Bahá'ís are also considered martyrs.^[10][11]

Notes

References

• Catholic Encyclopedia "Martyrs"
• Foster, Claude R. jr.: Paul Schneider, the Buchenwald apostle : a Christian martyr in Nazi Germany ; a sourcebook on the German Church struggle; Westchester, Pennsylvania: SSI Bookstore, West Chester University, 1995; ISBN 1-887732-01-2

See also

• Christian anarchism
• Martyrs of Moody Bible Institute
• History of Christianity - Andrew & Peter (brothers & Disciples), Stephen, Paul, et al.
• Religious persecution

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