Christian Martyrs

The common modern notion that starved carnivores feasted on and wholly ingested human victims in the amphitheater derives from Christian and literary images. As Jonah was swallowed whole by the beastly whale, only to be saved, Christian martyrs were said to be 'swallowed' by devilish beasts, thus securing the crown of heaven. Before his death at Rome in AD 107 or 109 St Ignatius of Antioch wrote that he eagerly longed for death: 'Suffer me to be eaten by the beasts, through whom I can attain to God.'

Peter Hughes has remarked that in Foxe the Marian martyrs are 'transformed' into biblical figures, using scripture as the blueprint and script for their own lives, sufferings, responses and deaths. This Protestant tradition was consciously adopted by both Charles and Archbishop Laud as they approached their own deaths, by claiming that the purity of the primitive church had been restored in the Church of England and the Book off Common Prayer. Thus did they attempt to vindicate themselves against Milton's contention that no martyr ever died for a church which was established by showing that, established or not, the primitive doctrine and practice of the Church of England consisted of the same `truths' for which the early Christian martyrs died.

The appropriation of the Maccabees as 'Christian' martyrs is of particular relevance to the situation at Antioch , where there was a prominent Jewish community with synagogues in the city quarter known as the Kerateion and in the suburb of Daphne. Daphne was also the site of a Jewish shrine, the Cave of Matrona , which most probably contained relics of the mother of the Macabees, if not also her sons, and which was widely used for incubation by the inhabitants of Antioch, Christians and Jews alike, because of the relics' alleged healing properties (Vinson 1994: 183-4). Vinson's careful argument regarding the genesis of the Christian cult of the Maccabees at Antioch in the reign of Julian is of point here.

Rome went to ritual lengths to claim and lead away these noxious souls because they were dealing with the undesirable and disquieted souls of men killed horribly and involuntarily (except for Christian martyrs) - reluctant damnati, not willing gladiators. As infernal and psychopompic gods, Dis Pater and Mercury, the coroner and priest of the arena, confirmed the deaths publicly by fire and hammers, and claimed and took away the hostile souls of Rome's victims. Getting the bodies and souls out of the arena, however, just began the process of disposal.

In a sense all Christian martyrdom is imitatio Christi, as it depends upon the achievement of spiritual victory through suffering, the overcoming of worldly strength through apparent weakness, the reversal of earthly values, the conscious setting of one's face towards `the truth', and following through the implications of that commitment with fortitude. Yet if Christ's Passion prefigures the experience of most Christian martyrs, the explicit identification of Charles with Christ is virtually unique in the annals of martyrology and illustrates the unique situation of a Protestant martyr who was also a reigning monarch.

Henry Vaughan emphasised the theme of repentance in three devotional manuals published in the 1650s which combined traditional Anglican piety with poetic meditations on the ruin of the church and the desolation of God's people. He notes that these are particularly useful at a time when `the people are fallen under the harrows and saws of impertinent and ignorant preachers, who think all religion is a sermon and all sermons ought to be libels against truth and old governors'. Part of Vaughan 's intention in these manuals was to prepare his readers to follow in the footsteps of Charles and the early Christian martyrs.