hitherto generally escaped notice; only quite lately has it attracted some attention.[1]
It was no haphazard temporary piece of work, this "training for martyrdom," but as we shall see a veritable "school," a protracted education for an awful, for a not improbable contingency. At the end of the second and through the third century it was evidently a recognized and important Christian agency. When once we are aware of its existence we begin to find unmistakable proofs of it in the writings of important teachers like Tertullian and Cyprian.
In this once famous but now forgotten school of martyrdom the well-known simile of S. Paul was the basis of the theory which seems to have inspired the work—the simile which compared the Christian combatant in the world-arena to the athlete in the well-known and popular games of the amphitheatre. There the athlete, before entering the theatre of combat, was carefully educated to endure hardness: a long and careful training before such an one could hope to win the palm and the crown was absolutely necessary. He must go through many long, laborious, and painful exercises, abstinence, watchings, fastings, before his body was fit to endure the perils and sufferings of a trained combatant in the public arena.
In like manner must the Christian athlete who looked forward to a possible martyr's trial train himself. S. Cyprian, in the middle of the third century, thus definitely writes of what clearly had been the practice of the Church: "Ad agonem sæcularem, exercentur homines et parantur. . . . Armari et præparari nos beatus Apostolus docet." [2] ("For the combat with the world are men trained and prepared. . . . The blessed apostle teaches us to be all armed and ready.")
The prize of martyrdom was very great. The visions and dreams of the blessed sufferers were constantly read aloud in the congregation.
At the moment after death angels would bear them into
- ↑ De Boissier, the Academician, specially calls attention to it as a somewhat novel piece of very early ecclesiastical history, and he refers his readers to a comparatively little known study on this subject by M. Le Blant, a well-known scholar in early Christian lore; of this "Study" of Le Blant, De Boissier speaks with the highest praise.
- ↑ S. Cyprian, Epist. lxvi. ad Thibaritanos.
