By Mark Owen - © 2010
Chapter 7 - A potted history of Christianity (part 4)
'Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as
false, and by rulers as useful.' - Seneca
The story has often been told of Nero's use of Christians as living torches, an action which Oscar Wilde thought was 'the only time in history when Christians have been known to give off any light.'
Nero was not the only emperor to persecute this sect but at this distance in time it is difficult to know what is fact and what fancy in the many horror stories that have come down to us concerning the sufferings of the martyrs; even the Nero story is of somewhat dubious nature. Undoubtedly tens of thousands of Christians in early times did suffer for their faith, especially in the era prior to Constantine. There can be no doubt as to these facts as many non-Christian Latin authors allude to the persecutions. But where fancy often takes flight is in the details of their torments. Indeed, reading some of the descriptions in the early martyrologies, one might be forgiven for thinking that one is reading salacious literature such that would be censored in many societies.
Clearly the stories of the martyrs, a vast literature, carry many elements of eroticism. Typical is the account penned by the Reverend A. J. O'Reilly produced in 1874, Martyrs of the Coliseum, based on the venerable Acts of the Martyrs. This book, it should be noted, carried a personal message and 'Apostolic Benediction' from no less a figure than the Pope himself, Pius 9th. The book is typical of the genre. Here we read how Saint Martina, probably, the writer thought, aged about 13 or 14, faced torture and death. When Martina refuses to sacrifice to the Roman gods, she is flogged, so that (as the writer lovingly puts it) 'her delicate and tender flesh was torn with whips loaded with iron.' Then she is 'suspended from the yoke, and her flesh . . . torn with irons hooks and other instruments of torture.' After several hours of such cruelties the 'tender virgin' (a favourite phrase) is left torn and bleeding. Following a further visit to the temples poor Martina has 'boiling oil and pitch poured over her lacerated body.'
When the teenager eventually faces death in the arena there is more than a strong hint that she is naked for 'her arms are crossed on her breast, and a blush of modesty has crimsoned her cheek, as she knows the rude crowd is gazing on her.' Ah, but Martina is not to be eaten by the lions. They come and fall beside her, one licking her feet. Now the Emperor, stung to fury, orders Martina to be burnt alive. But, wonder of wonders, the flames are ineffective! At length Martina is taken to one of the temples and there beheaded. Curious how GOD manages to save his child from certain death by every means except the sword! Martina now lies well and truly dead.
Such contradictions and absurdities are manifold in these improving and uplifting tales. At the end we are informed: 'The moment the fatal stroke had fallen on her neck, a voice was heard calling her to everlasting joy, and the whole city was shaken by an earthquake, so that many temples were ruined, and great numbers of people were converted.' This, clearly, is derived directly from Biblical passages where earthquakes are de rigueur (e.g. Matthew 28:2). Italy has its earthquakes, as we have seen in recent times, but It is highly unlikely that this convenient earthquake ever occurred at that moment in Rome!
The martyrs' stories were churned out by the thousand. Their persecutors are depicted as sadistic brutes; while the tale-tellers seem to delight in their task. There are some clever ideas conceived - whether by tormentor or tale-teller, who knows? Whipping was sometimes not sufficient punishment in the minds of their captors, even when the whip was a vicious one, but the bleeding, broken body must needs then be dragged across shards of broken pottery, to finish the victim off. One odd form of death involved using hollowed-out stones. The martyr was seated and his feet placed in the hollow. As he was held in place molten metal was poured in to seal his feet into the hole. Naturally the anguish and pain experienced during this operation usually resulted in a fairly speedy death. Then there were the delights of the red-hot bed, the offending saint being bound to an iron frame and a fire being lit beneath it. Among the churchmen reportedly dying thus were Laurence, Eleutherius, Olympiades, Maximus and Clement of Ancyra. Female saints suffered too. St Catherine reportedly died on one of the several forms of wheel that were used to torture people to death - which took the form of a large wide structure, the naked victim being bound around its circumference. The wheel was then rolled over spikes set in the ground. The spiral firework so popular with children, known as the Catherine Wheel, was named after St Catherine.
And the Catholic hagiography of pain was not the only one. In the mid-16th century Foxe's Book of Martyrs (actually a shortened form of the original title) appeared. It gave the Protestant view and recounted in great detail the sufferings of Protestant saints. And all the while artists of all persuasions found delight in depicting the bloodied and bruised bodies of the men and women who fell victim to religious bigotry.
The official Church, ever willing to hurl the epithet 'heretic' at all who disagree with it, is itself a purveyor of the worst of heresies - against human nature itself: its unnatural view of man's moral and sexual nature. And one telling aspect of this is its jaundiced outlook on womanhood, only in very recent times being modified a little here and there. Many early societies did not denigrate women. Under the Code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon around BCE 1700, women were granted a legal status superior to their sisters in 'enlightened' Christian England before 1925. And in early Egypt women were treated as the equals of men, while among the Druids there were priestesses functioning alongside male priests. Even in Arabia, before the coming of Muhammad, Bedouin women were accorded a high status in society.
Naturally, not all was sweetness and light. In the otherwise enlightened society of ancient Greece women were under perpetual 'guardianship' - whether that of father, husband or some other man. The guardian could transfer his 'rights' in the woman to another at will. And when married the women were shut away in special quarters, only to go forth with the permission of their husbands. They were thus, in many regards, hardly better off than their own slaves. There is, however, conflicting evidence on this subject and many believe that Greek women actually experienced a great deal of freedom. Certainly, though, there was a basic patriarchal attitude to women in Greece.
Little wonder then that St Paul, strongly influenced by Greek ideas, held a low view of females. And his background as a Jewish man of letters meant he was well acquainted with the jaundiced outlook on women entertained by Hebrew men. A pious male Jew prayed each morning: 'Blessed be Yahweh, that he did not make me a woman!' In Genesis Eve is described as being formed from a rib of Adam and assigned the role of chief sinner, agent of the Fall of Man, dragging her husband down with her. Never mind that all this is pure myth; it reflects the attitudes of a patriarchal society. Thus there follows the terrible pronouncement against Woman by Yahweh: 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.' Henceforth not only had Woman sinned but was to suffer for her sin, and her children, 'conceived in sin,' were to suffer too and she would occupy an inferior place in Hebrew and Christian society. And the pain of childbirth, the 'sorrow' cursed upon her, was not to be relieved by medication, at least in the view of some rabid Christians. The misery of Christianity!
The Woman-as-Evil motif becomes more than myth; it becomes a deadly weapon to employ against the other gender, the Second Sex, as Simone de Beauvoir called her. The myth, first enshrined in the sacred writings of the Jews, is perpetuated in the theology of Paul. Now Paul implicitly believed the legends of Genesis; he expounds on them in his Epistles (if the Epistles were indeed his!). Eve was formed from man and thus man was pre-eminent, and Eve was the agent through whom the devil tempted Adam. Paul not only denigrated women but appeared to fear sex, an attitude taken to the extreme by many of the Fathers who followed him. Sex was considered 'dirty' (a notion still around today) and children were born of this unclean activity between men and women, a union of bodies 'between faeces and urine,' to quote those amazing and very revealing words of St Augustine, one of the Church's greatest figures.
This theme was enthusiastically taken up by other Fathers. Tertullian thundered: 'Woman! You are the gateway of the devil . . . because of you the Son of God had to die. You should always be dressed in mourning and rags.' No doubt barefoot and pregnant, too! Tertullian again: Woman is 'a temple built over a sewer.' And from another Father, St John Chrysostom: 'Among all savage beasts none is found so harmful as woman.' Again, from St Thomas: 'Man is above woman as Christ is above man. It is unchangeable that woman is destined to live under man's influence, and has no authority from her lord.' Thus woman naturally fell into a subservient role in the divine scheme of things. Second-class citizens, with few or no property rights, without vote or voice. And for a great part of the history of the Christian West women had only limited choices in marriage, many with no choice at all, being married off at a tender age in what can only described as Church-condoned child abuse (but then that wickedness is quite familiar to us in our own day!).
Females were frequently subject to assault, could be starved and beaten and even cast adrift without any succour. All too often both in Christendom and beyond, if a woman was taken in adultery she would suffer fearful punishment; whereas a man might escape with only a light penalty. A familiar story in the Muslim world, as well.
And if a low view was held of women, so too was it held of children. The Bible announced that children were actually conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5)! A remarkable statement but one that explains much. What irony that we find the New Testament claiming that Jesus laid his hands on children's heads and pronounced: 'Suffer the little children to come unto me; and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God' (Mark 10:14). They could hardly belong to the Kingdom of God if they were sunk in sin from birth. Doubtless we will be told that the little ones believed in him and were saved! There is always a glib answer on the lips of the Christian. More likely is it that the text reflects an ancient exorcism ritual. The holy man would supposedly remove evil from the child by the laying on of hands. This sort of superstitious mumbo-jumbo is still found today, hands being laid on both children and adults, to drive out the Devil or his minions. Incidentally, the ceremonial laying hands upon children evolved in time into a ritual knowing as 'beating the devil out of the child,' which was as good an excuse as any to give a lad or lass a thrashing. And every once in a while in modern times we hear of someone being beaten to death by some outlandish sect or other, in order to 'rid them of the Devil.'
