Originally Posted by cornbread_r2

Here's an article by Joseph McCabe dealing with the exaggerations of the Christian martyrology. The relevant bits are about 3/4s of the way through the article.

Originally Posted by Joseph McCabe

I have spoken of lies and forgeries, and the reader may feel that this is intemperate language. Not in the least. The story of the condition of the Roman Church before the conversion of Constantine has been grossly and deliberately falsified, and the forgeries by means of which this was done begin about the period we have reached.

According to the Catholic writers, and even the official liturgy of their Church, the Roman community of the first three centuries was so decked and perfumed with saints and martyrs that it must have had a divine spirit in it. Now the far greater part, the overwhelmingly greater part, of the Acts of the Martyrs and Lives of the Saints on which this claim is based are impudent forgeries, perpetrated by Roman Christians from the fourth to the eighth century in order to give a divine halo to the very humble, and very human, history of their Church.

This is not merely a contention of "heretics and unbelievers." It is not even a new discovery. The legends of the martyrs are so gross that Catholic historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries frequently denounced them. Cardinal Baronius and Father Pagi repeatedly rejected them. The learned and pious Tillemont, in the fifth volume of his Mémoires, slays hundreds of them. Pope Benedict XIV, of the eighteenth century, a scholar who by some mischance was made a Pope, was so ashamed of the extent to which these forgeries permeate the official ritual of his Church that he entered upon a great reform; but the cardinals and monks obstructed his work, and the literature of the Church still teems with legends from these tainted sources. In fact, many of these forgeries were already notorious in the year 494, when Pope Gelasius timidly and haltingly condemned them.

These forgeries are so gross that one needs very little historical knowledge in order to detect them. Large numbers of Roman martyrs are, like the Pope Callistus whom I have mentioned, put in the reign of the friendly Emperor Alexander Severus, who certainly persecuted none. One of these Roman forgers, of the sixth Of seventh century. is bold enough to claim five thousand martyrs for Rome alone under the gentle Alexander Severus! Other large numbers of Roman martyrs are put in the reign of the Emperor Maximin; and Dr. Garres has shown that there were hardly any put to death in the whole Empire, least of all at Rome, under Maximin. [3] The semi-official catalogue of the Popes makes saints and martyrs of no less than thirteen of the Popes of the third century, when there were scarcely more than three or four.

No one questions that the Roman Church had a certain number of martyrs in the days of the genuine persecutions, but nine-tenths of the pretty stories which are popular in Catholic literature - the stories of St. Agnes and St. Cecilia, of St. Lucia and St. Catherine, of St. Lawrence and St. George and St. Sebastian, and so on - are pious romances. Even when the martyrdom may be genuine, the Catholic story of it is generally a late and unbridled fiction.

A short account of the havoc which modern scholars have made of the Acts of the Martyrs is given by a Catholic professor, Albert Ehrhard, of the Vienna University, and will cause any inquiring Catholic to shudder. [4] Dr. Ehrhard mentions a French work, L'Amphithèâtre Flavien, by Father Delehaye, a Jesuit, and calls it "an important contribution to the criticism of the Roman acts of the martyrs." It is a "criticism" of such a nature that it dissolves into fiction all the touching pictures (down to Mr. G. B. Shaw's Androcles and the Lion) of the "martyrs of the Coliseum." It proves that no Christians were ever martyred in the Amphitheatre (Coliseum). The English translation of Father Delehaye's Legends of the Saints (1907) gives an appalling account of these Roman forgeries.

Another scholar has, Professor Ehrhard admits (p. 555), shown that "a whole class" of these saints and martyrs are actually pagan myths which have been converted into Christian martyrs. The whole literature which this Catholic professor surveys is one mighty massacre of saints and martyrs, very few surviving the ordeal. These fictions are often leniently called "pious fancies" and "works of edification." Modern charity covers too many ancient sins.


These things were intended to deceive; they have deceived countless millions for fourteen centuries, and in the hands of priests they deceive millions to-day.

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Candida Moss has an article on the Daily Beast today.

The Death of Jesus and the Rise of the Christian Persecution Myth

Originally Posted by mountainman

How [TF] could Christians have "undoubtedly died" if not a word of the Decian Roman evidence refers to Christians? Eusebius?




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Decius issued an edict that everyone in the Empire had to make a sacrifice, in front of Roman officials, "for the good of the Roman Empire." He didn't mandate any particular god or pantheon. It didn't matter who they sacrificed TO, as long as it was FOR the Roman Empire. The penalty for non-compliance was execution.

The presumption here is that at least some Christians would have refused to comply, so Moss isn't saying they would have been killed for being Christians, per se, but for defying the edict.

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

The presumption here is that at least some Christians would have refused to comply, so Moss isn't saying they would have been killed for being Christians, per se, but for defying the edict.

Originally Posted by page 136

"the very remarkable attitude of those Christians who,
though persecuted by the Roman Empire, defended the notion
that the Roman Empire had been providentially created
to foster and support the Christian message."

Originally Posted by outhouse

They had a good TV show on the other night about martyrs and the edict in place.

Originally Posted by mountainman

..
One of the more thought provoking observations on the attitude of these statistically presumed early Christians is made by Momigliano in On Pagans, Jews and Christians (or via: amazon.co.uk), who emphasizes ....
Isn't this a paradox?

What sort of an attitude is this?