One of the most traumatic experiences of Late Antique Christians was the Great Persecution, begun by Emperor Diocletian and his Tetrarchic colleagues in 303 CE. Here Aaltje Hidding unites research of traditional memory studies with work done by cognitive scientists to examine how they remembered the Persecution. The resulting methodological framework, the ‘cognitive ecology’, systemically studies all what can be covered by this term - social surroundings, cognitive artefacts and the physical environment - and bridges the gap between individual and collective memory. The author analyses the remembrance of the Persecution in three different regions along the Nile river. In Oxyrhynchus, the thousands of papyrus fragments found at the city’s rubbish dump give a vivid image of the martyrs in the daily lives of the Oxyrhynchites. In Antinoopolis, known for the cult of the physician saint Colluthus, she zooms in on the rituals and practices at a martyr’s sanctuary. Finally, in Dandara, the rich hagiographical dossier of the anchorite Paphnutius shows how old memories of the Persecution became mixed with new monastic experiences. The Bohairic and Greek Passion of Paphnutius appear in their first complete English translations.

In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors. According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today. Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.

A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic era How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity, high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet, and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. Sahner argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. Christian Martyrs under Islam examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim-Christian relations in the centuries to come.

In an age of faithlessness, spin and cynicism, how many of us would be prepared to stand on a ladder, a rope around our neck, facing a gruesome death for no apparent crime, and choose not to recant and live but to die for our beliefs? How many of us, like Thomas Garnet, would say, 'I give my body to Caesar [James I] and my soul to God'? This compelling and finely researched compilation of the lives and state murders of Catholics from all walks of life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries demands our attention as a reinforcement of Christian commitment and an antidote to indifference. Malcolm Pullan's stated aim is to reach a general readership, and his text is full of historical background material and fascinating detail. He firmly believes that we should not consign England's Catholic martyrs to some obscure corner of our consciousness. Their Faith lives still; they were true to it till death. Surely they did not die in vain.

Between 850 and 859 (Christian Era), the Muslim government of Csrdoba ordered the execution of forty-eight Christians. With few exceptions, these Christians invited execution by committing capital offenses: some appeared before the Muslim authorities to denounce Mohammed; others, Christian children of mixed Islamic-Christian marriages, publicly proclaimed their Christianity. Coope investigates the origins of this "martyrs' movement" in Csrdoba, then flourishing as a center of Islamic culture. She cites the fears of radical Christians that conversions to Islam were on the increase and that still more Christians were being assimilated into Arab Muslim culture. These fears were well-founded, and the executions further divided Cordovan Christians: some believed the executed to be martyrs, others argued that these were not martyrs but fanatics and troublemakers. For their part, the Muslim authorities, disposed to be tolerant, would have preferred sectarian peace; the martyrs were given every opportunity to recant. Using Christian sources (particularly the hagiographies of St. Eulogius) and Arabic accounts to understand the complex tensions in Muslim Spain between and among the Muslim majority and Christian minority, Coope presents a valuable and fresh view of this society at the apogee of al-Andalus, Muslim Spain. Jessica A. Coope is an assistant professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In The Age of Martyrs; the famous Catholic historian Abbot Giuseppe Ricciotti records the epochal events of Roman history from the rise of Diocletian (284) to the death of Constantine the Great (337); a period which witnessed the last and greatest of the 10 persecutions of the Christians by the Roman government. Impr. 318 pgs; PB

"Magisterial. . . . A learned, brilliant and enjoyable study."—Géza Vermès, Times Literary Supplement In this exciting book, Paula Fredriksen explains the variety of New Testament images of Jesus by exploring the ways that the new Christian communities interpreted his mission and message in light of the delay of the Kingdom he had preached. This edition includes an introduction reviews the most recent scholarship on Jesus and its implications for both history and theology. "Brilliant and lucidly written, full of original and fascinating insights."—Reginald H. Fuller, Journal of the American Academy of Religion "This is a first-rate work of a first-rate historian."—James D. Tabor, Journal of Religion "Fredriksen confronts her documents—principally the writings of the New Testament—as an archaeologist would an especially rich complex site. With great care she distinguishes the literary images from historical fact. As she does so, she explains the images of Jesus in terms of the strategies and purposes of the writers Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."—Thomas D’Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor