The Ambivalent Legacy of Violence and Victimhood: Using Early Christian Martyrs to Think With

This essay examines three twentieth-century examples drawn from literature, film, and photography where the figure of the early Christian martyr has served as a vehicle for making critical interventions into contemporary political situations. By exploring these three examples-Naomi Mitchison's 1939 novel, The Blood of the Martyrs; MGM's 1951 film version of Quo Vadis; and Carl Fischer's photograph of Muhammad Ali posed as Saint Sebastian, which appeared on the cover of Esquire magazine in April 1968—this essay considers the powerful (if, at times, ambivalent) rhetorical effects generated by such popular culture representations that "use early Christian martyrs to think with."