Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze

This paper uses a range of early (100-400 C.E .) martyrological narratives, in association with novels and apocalyptic discourses of the same era, to show the appeal of such narratives to early Christian audiences' prurience into sadoerotic violence. The sado-erotic voyeurism invited can be placed in historical and performative continuity with the Roman spectacle, literary ambivalence over female chastity, and both geographical and heresiographical fantasies about the sexual and cultural predilections of the Other. The spectacle of sado-erotic violence allows the enjoyment of erotic display at the same time as the disavowal of that enjoyment, which is projected onto the violently punitive actions of Roman authorities, heathen mobs, or (in eschatology) angels of hell. It also allows masochistic identification with victims' eroticized brutalization and dissolution.