Christian martyr
[1] In the years of the early church, stories depict this often occurring through death by sawing, stoning, crucifixion, burning at the stake, or other forms of torture and capital punishment.
It is in this sense that the term first appears in the Book of Acts, in reference to the Apostles as "witnesses" of all that they had observed in the public life of Christ.
Thus, within the lifetime of the Apostles, the term martyrs came to be used in the sense of a witness who at any time might be called upon to deny what he testified to, under penalty of death.
From this stage the transition was easy to the ordinary meaning of the term, as used ever since in Christian literature: a martyr, or witness of Christ, is a person who suffers death rather than deny his faith.
It is believed that the concept of voluntary death for God developed out of the conflict between King Antiochus Epiphanes IV and the Jewish people.
there was a living pagan tradition of self-sacrifice for a cause, a preparedness if necessary to defy an unjust ruler, that existed alongside the developing Christian concept of martyrdom inherited from Judaism.
[8] Boyarin points out that, despite their apparent opposition to each other, both of these arguments are based on the assumption that Judaism and Christianity were already two separate and distinct religions.
[13] The Catholic Church calls Jesus the "King of Martyrs" because, as a man, he refused to commit sin unto the point of shedding blood.
For evangelicals who read the New Testament as an inerrant history of the primitive church, the understanding that to be a Christian is to be persecuted is obvious, if not inescapable.
[21] The martyr homilies were written in ancient Greek by authors such as Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Asterius of Amasea, John Chrysostom, and Hesychius of Jerusalem.
[28] While not specifying his Christianity as involved in the cause of death, the Jewish historian Josephus reports that James, whom he referred to as a brother of Jesus, was stoned by Jewish authorities under the charge of law breaking, which is similar to the Christian perception of Stephen's martyrdom as being a result of stoning for the penalty of law breaking.
Numerous crypts and chapels in the Roman catacombs bear witness to the early veneration for those champions of freedom of conscience.
Special commemoration services, at which the holy Sacrifice were offered over their tombs gave rise to the time honoured custom of consecrating altars by enclosing in them the relics of martyrs.
However, some scholars, such as Morton Smith, point out that other sects, such as the Jews and Samaritans, also refused to worship other gods, but were not generally persecuted.
[22]: 4 Michael Gaddis writes that "[t]he Christian experience of violence during the pagan persecutions shaped the ideologies and practices that drove further religious conflicts over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries".
Pauper responds that the English were creating many new martyrs sparing "neither their own king nor their own bishops, no dignity, no rank, no status, no degree".
Piroyansky notes that although these men were never formally canonized as saints, they were venerated as miracle-working martyrs and their tombs were turned into shrines following their violent and untimely deaths.
[40]: 3 Some Roman Catholic writers (such as Thomas Cahill) continue to use a system of degrees of martyrdom that was developed in early Christianity.
These degrees were mentioned by Pope Gregory I in Homilia in Evangelia; in it he wrote of "three modes of martyrdom, designated by the colors, red, blue (or green), and white".
[42] Blue (or green) martyrdom "involves the denial of desires, as through fasting and penitent labors without necessarily implying a journey or complete withdrawal from life".
Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, later referred to this number in a radio address to the 23rd session of the Human Rights Council.
The Vatican reporter and author of The Global War on Christians John L. Allen Jr. said: "I think it would be good to have reliable figures on this issue, but I don't think it ultimately matters in terms of the point of my book, which is to break through the narrative that tends to dominate discussion in the West – that Christians can't be persecuted because they belong to the world's most powerful church.
