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The Apocalypse, Christ, and the Martyrs of Gaul
- University of Notre Dame Press
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11 1 The Apocalypse, Christ, and the Martyrs of Gaul D. Jeffrey Bingham In 43 B.C., Lucius Munatius Plancus, the governor of Further Gaul and a faithful servant of Julius Caesar in the Gallic wars, founded Roman Lugdunum, as the Senate had directed. He established the city on the hill of the Forum vetus, the old forum, or the fourvière hill, the origin of modern Lyons. Lugdunum, located at the intersection of the Rhone and Saône rivers, became the capital of the three Provinces of Gaul. On the hill the Romans built two theaters, which overlook the modern city. The larger, wondrously preserved Gallo-Roman theater could seat upwards of 10,000 spectators, while the smaller, enclosed Odéon seated only 2,500. Across the Saône to the north of the fourvière and dedicated to Augustus in 19 B.C. by the provincial priest C. Julius Rufus lay the “Amphitheater of the Three Gauls,” nestled on the slopes of the Croix-Rousse hill of Lyons. Modified later under Hadrian’s rule (A.D. 117–38), the amphitheater hosted the usual exhibitions, contests, games, and combats.1 Today, only meager, somewhat disappointing, portions of barely a third of the original amphitheater can be seen. This amphitheater is also the accepted location of the torture and execution 12 D. Jeffrey Bingham of the Christians from both Lyons and the neighboring city of Vienne, sixteen miles south of Lyons on the east bank of the Rhone. Our witness to this persecution is the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, a selection of which is preserved in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (5.1–3). The Letter is an account of the persecution that befell these churches in the summer of A.D. 177.2 Written by one or more of the survivors of the Gallic community—some have even argued that Irenaeus was its author—the Letter was sent to Asia and Phrygia.3 Attempts to demonstrate that the Letter was a later forgery and that the persecution took place in Galatia, not Gaul, have found little sympathy.4 The tragedy began, perhaps, on 2 June and lasted until 1 August, the feast of the Three Gauls, commemorating the day in 12 B.C. when the altar to Rome and Augustus had been established. On this date, each year, representatives of the sixty Gallic civitates gathered to celebrate the cult of Rome and Augustus in Lugdunum.5 The Letter tells of the social rejection, the abuse, the accusations, arrests, and imprisonment of the Gallic believers.6 It recounts the public trial, the familiar charges of incest and cannibalism, and the long-drawn-out attempts to secure denials of faith. Here we learn of the firmness in faith and martyrdom of Vettius Epagathus and the torture of Sanctus, Maturus, Blandina, and Attalus; of Biblis, who having once denied Christ, died for him; of the persecution of the Phrygian Christian physician Alexander, a Roman citizen; of the brutality experienced by Ponticus, a fifteen-year-old boy; and of the martyrdom of the bishop of Lyons, Pothinus, who died in the jail at the age of ninety. In this essay I investigate the apocalyptic motifs and role of John’s Apocalypse in the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne and explore , against this backdrop, the relationship between martyrdom and Christology. Apocalyptic Themes in the LETTER The apocalyptic themes in this Letter are particularly fascinating because of the way they shape the various accounts of martyrdom of Christians from Asia and Phrygia. These martyrdoms are repeatedly [44.203.58.132] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:45 GMT) The Apocalypse, Christ, and the Martyrs of Gaul 13 viewed as a composite, anticipatory experience of the endtime, and as an apocalyptic event of the persecution of God’s people by Satan and his assistants.7 Mary Hope Griffin has shown that there is a tendency for apocalyptically oriented communities like that of the Christians of Lyons to use military or battle imagery when depicting martyrdom. For these communities, martyrdom was clearly seen as combat with the Devil. “The Devil was incarnate in the state.”8 William C. Weinrich has referred to this as the “programmatic motif for the entire letter.” P. Lanaro sees the Letter as describing an episode in Satan’s great hostile combat against God. The persecution makes visible in the present, through human drama, the conflict which has its climax in eschatological catastrophe.9...