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This article analyses a still understudied figure that is present in martyrological accounts of the Early Modern Period: the child martyr which is an intriguing and important character in Catholic propaganda during the wars of religion that shook Europe. We will see how a Jesuit missionary uses this character in his account of the Christian mission in Japan. Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628), in his work L'Histoire des martyrs du Japon (The History of the Martyrs of Japan) takes up a long Christian martyrological tradition while anchoring it in a context of cultural exchanges between Europe and Japan. Using various biblical narratives (whether the Passions of Christ or the martyrdom of the Maccabees) as a point of comparison with these Japanese martyrs, Trigault places these Christians, so far removed from his target audience, in a Catholic community that extends over a long period of time and a vast geographical territory. In this use of the martyrological narrative, the death of the children proves to be a powerful argument. As exceptional figures of martyrdom, they act as witnesses to the level of faith of a community, the sacrifice of the children being the ultimate demonstration of its constancy. However, the figure of the martyred child also comes into conflict with the figure of the morally crippled child, testifying to the ambiguity that European culture and the Christian religion have with this period of life. These stories, later exported to Europe, are used to edify both the youngest children, urging them to imitate their Japanese counterparts, and the parents, presenting an ideal imagery of the Christian family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The essay outlines the author's personal approach to the meaning of martyrdom for the Franciscan Order. The book under discussion grew out of previous research on the Crusades and the ‘Frankish’ presence in the Near East. The author responds briefly to some of the criticisms made by the three readers, explaining why he favored narrative sources about martyrdoms carried out in Islamic lands. He concludes with the hope that the book will lead to new reflections on the connections between martyrdom, holiness, the Franciscan Order, evangelization and crusade in the final centuries of the Middle Ages.

This article aims to show a first approximation which allows a better understanding of the iconography of St Sebastian. Firstly, it will be considered what literary sources such as Passio refers about him. Secondly, this thesis will analyze the evolution of the iconography of this military saint until Contemporary art, taking into account some written sources. Finally, it will be given consideration to the influence of his iconographic model and his first martyrdom in audiovisual media.

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The application of a sentence after the death of the condemned person is rare in ancient Rome. However, when the actions of the criminal or traitor threaten the foundations of society, a memory sanction is implemented. This sanction is expressed in different ways and has both direct and indirect effects. Direct effects focus on the enemy’s body and consist of the humiliating death, the corpse abuse and the destruction of human remains. Indirect effects hit the deceased’s honor and try to ban them from the Roman history. They are reflected in the prohibition of funeral, the ban on burial and the destruction of the enemy’s portraits. This range of sanctions allows the community to express its violence before rebuilding itself.

An editorial is presented on diverse works share a common theme and reflecting a particular moment in historiography. Topics include focusing on a devotional site commemorating the martyrdom of a Portuguese Jesuit, João de Brito, in the late 17th century; and commemoration of a Jesuit martyr in India, the political and social significance of celebrations in Peru.

This paper presents a translation of Tertullian’s Ad Martyras into Lithuanian language and a brief introduction, which contains a short survey of Tertullian’s life, his audience, i.e., Christians of Africa, selection and motivation of provided examples in Ad Martyras.

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This paper analyses the meta-historical value of the martyrs’ biographies and their cult in Hispania from the 4th century to the Visigothic period. Instead of carrying on with the intense debate on the historical authenticity of the martyrs’ lives or their political instrumentalisation, my aim here is threefold. First, I describe martyrs’ relics not only as artefacts valued because of the biography of associated martyr, but also for their inherent capacity of unlimitedly adding new stories to the martyr’s narrative through the miracles attributed to his/her relic. Second, I focus on space and the symbolic significance of a landscape, in which an area ceases to be a mere geographical entity to become the scenario of the martyr’s alleged events. Finally, I explore how the memory of martyrs was used to conceptualise time at a local level and the implications of this. The new time framework made it possible to connect important contemporary experiences in an individual’s everyday life with transcendent historical time represented by the days commemorating martyrs.

The martyrs’ divisions in Tehran’s Behesht Zahra cemetery are a major political landmark in Iran, reflecting the violent political events undergone by Iranian society. These are sacrosanct public places attracting visits from ordinary citizens. They are also the private property of the martyrs’ families and a national heritage. Different policies have been implemented by various organizations concerned with updating the landscape. These decisions, which are increasingly a matter of rationalized state oversight, have tended toward greater standardization of the graves, a standardization which is opposed by the martyrs’ families. Employing ethnographic methods, we attempt to shed light on the individual and family links between the tomb and the martyr. We then review the different political uses made of these divisions, and the emergence of militant associations seeking to defend the martyrs’ true memory and the family’s right to this memory despite its various political uses.

The aim of this paper is to explore the patterns and meanings to be found in the characters of Yugoslav national heroes who met a violent death in World War II. These are heroes who belong to the type of martyr heroes, and their sacrifice is highly rated in all patriotic mythologies. Created to denote the heroism of the chosen, they have sublimated the meaning and symbolism of one remembrance of the war. The death of these national heroes will be analyzed through their official biographies, which served to represent the characters of the National Heroes of Yugoslavia and keep the heroic symbol-names ever present in the collective group memory. Through their characters, a specific wartime experience and the martyr’s death of the national hero who died for the freedom of the Yugoslav peoples, as seen by the victors in this war drama, were transmitted to the citizens of Yugoslavia. Various patterns of wartime heroism (warrior, martyr, leader heroism) were represented as national patriotism, and the fighters and martyrs of the war of national liberation were named. The characteristics of the reputational entrepreneurship of these heroes’ characters are specifically explored, taking into account the characteristics of the discourse through which they were interpreted and presented. On the other hand, the limitations of this discourse provide an opportunity to deconstruct certain common traits of a certain hero type and discover the latent meanings conveyed by the characters of Yugoslav national heroes as actors of a historical-political myth.

The paper discusses some elements of the tradition of martyrdom among Muslims in northern Nigeria. It describes the basic frameworks of the concept of martyrdom in Islam with special reference to its contemporary usage. Then it discusses the shape of the idea of martyrdom during the times of Usman ɗan Fodio’s jihad. It further examines the concept of martyrdom as presented in the speeches of Muhammad Yusuf, the ideologue of the Boko Haram organisation, as well as its practical implementation in the times of the current rebellion in northern Nigeria.

This research aims to question the construction of the jihadist victim system, and to analyze how it is used to justify acts of violence, based on a digital corpus of radicalized social media profiles. The first section of the article explains the approach, the theoretical and methodological background, and proposes a thematic characterization of the corpus based on the notion of grievance. We then analyze the semio-discursive elements on which the construction of a victim identity specific to the phenomenon of jihadist radicalization draws. In the final section, we show to what extent the discourse of jihadist victimization aims to promote revenge through the construction of a figure of avenger. In this regard, we will examine the impossible performativity of the status of victim springing from resentment and study the process of "devictimisation" aimed at dehumanizing both the victims of terrorism, and the terrorists themselves.

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Copyright of Acta Universitatis Lodziensis: Folia Litteraria Romanica is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Bardo Museum in Tunis currently holds one of the very rare representations in mosaic of the prophet Daniel in the lions’ den. Discovered at Borj el Youdi (Furnos Minus) in 1898, and probably dating to the fifth century, this mosaic is highly distinct in its conception, standing apart from representations of Daniel which were very popular in North Africa in other media, especially ceramics. I argue that while the mosaic does draw on standard iconography of Daniel, it also explicitly refers to amphitheatre spectacle, and especially to damnatio ad bestias to which earlier Christians were subject. This mosaic much more graphically than other representations of the story shows Daniel as a Christian martyr, and in doing so reflects the fourth-fifth century north African context when the Church was split by sectarian strife between Catholics and Donatists, the latter of whom viewed themselves as the Church of the Martyrs.

This article critiques the erosion in the meaning of martyrdom through the attribution of diverse connotations to the word by different parties for diverse aims in the political context of Turkey. It seeks to question the normalization, and justifications that arrive with the construction of knowledge through discourses on martyrdom and critiques the irony between beyond earthly promises of martyrdom and the earthly decision of rewarding martyrdom.

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In Madīḥ al-karāhiya (The Praise of Hatred, 2006), Syrian novelist Khālid Khalīfa devotes his art to the literary representation of martyrdom. In this novel, the relationship between body, violence and identity is explored in order to represent and challenge any form of repression--be it political or religious--that ravaged Syria during the 1980s. The novel's female protagonist is a teenager from a Muslim family of Aleppo. Upset by the changes that are happening to her body--she is becoming a woman--her wish to escape sexual desire and to conceal the signs of her femininity brings her closer to a group of Muslim extremists who practice armed struggle. By focusing on this female character, Khālid Khalīfa questions the role of violence and religion in the process of the individual's subjectivation. The adolescent female body becomes the symbol of the individual's rejection of norms, a nonconformism that cannot be accepted by society. For the protagonist, martyrdom is the means to define her individual identity and to appropriate her body by imposing it on the public space and on her community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This ethnographic article explores the politics of Egypt’s Ultras football supporters. The Ultras have frequently been heralded as some of the Egyptian Revolution’s most prominent rebels, in particular, after the Port Said stadium massacre in February 2012, when 72 Ultras members were killed. However, this essay focuses on the earlier phase of violent clashes in central Cairo when the Ultras were highly ambivalent about the ongoing protests. As the article shows, the fan groups were hesitant to join the demonstrations, which at the time were heavily associated with “thuggery” (balṭaga). Only after the death of one of its members did the Ultras whole-heartedly take on their rebellious subjectivity.

From the first Christian centuries, martyrdom represented the most acute expression of suffering for the defence of faith in Jesus Christ. The violent death suffered by those who kept a firm faith in the sacred values they confessed marked the whole Christian world from East to West, and offered an example of infinite courage and above all an undeniable model of holiness. This paper is a research on different forms of martyrdom and the artistic expressions used in their visual representation in the Middle Ages, briefly recalling some of the most remarkable creations of Christian art.

In September 1939 in Działdowo the Nazis established a transit camp for the war prisoners of the Polish September Campaign of 1939 in the former barracks of the 32 infantry regiment on Grunwaldzka Street. At the turn of 1939 and 1940 the police and the SS authorities in Königsberg transformed the Działdowo camp into the transit camp „Durchgangslager“. Priests imprisoned in the Działdowo camp from autumn 1939 to autumn 1941 constituted a special group of political prisoners. The archbishop Antoni Julian Nowowiejski and the bishop Leon Wetmański, Płock bishop suffragan, were brought to the Działdowo camp in 1941. The Płock bishops quickly became spiritual guides and the support for the prisoners in difficult moments of camp life. In order to prevent their contacts with the prisoners, the bishops were put in a separate cell number 12. They were subjected to different kinds of moral and physical torture, including the attempt to profane the cross. Difficult living conditions in the camp soon led to the death of the Płock priests: the archbishop Antoni Julian Nowowiejski died on 28 May 1941 and the bishop Leon Wetmański died on 10 October 1941. Apart from them, 47 priests and 1 seminarian lost their lives in the Działdowo camp in 1939–1945.

The study entitled : La missione del sacerdote nel pensiero del beato don Jerzy Popiełuszko – un martire contemporaneo della Polonia ( “ The Mission of the Priest in the thought of Bl. Jerzy Popiełuszko, a modern priest-martyr from Poland ” ) explores the theology of priesthood in the light of the thought and example of Bl. Father Jerzy Popiełuszko. The essay covers the following issues: 1) Fr Jerzy Popiełuszko in the context of the times he lived in; 2) The mission of the priest is to be close to God and to people; 3) The mission of the priest is to proclaim the Good News; 4) The mission of the priest is to minister the Sacraments; 5) The mission of the priest is to nurture hope; 6) The mission of the priest is to die for the Faith. The Author concludes that the phenomenon of Fr Jerzy Popiełuszko, which came into its full force after his martyr’s death, allows us to see him as a clear model for modern priests. The blessed martyr from Warsaw reminds us that sanctity can be attained and lived in all historical contexts. Fr Jerzy also comes across as an exemplar of a very engaged shepherd of souls who walked the path to holiness whilst also working closely with many lay people who showed a special readiness to work with him and solicitude for the good of the Church in a world at war against God, the Church and its priests.

Zgodnie z teologią Nowego Testamentu śmierć chrześcijanina jest przejściem do życia wiecznego. Więcej, sam proces umierania, w myśl ewangelicznej dyna­miki obumierania ziarna, jest rodzeniem się do nowego życia. Autorzy wczesno­chrześcijańskiej literatury męczeńskiej mieli świadomość tego paradoksu. Już jej pobieżna lektura uzmysławia, jak wielką przykładali do niego wagę: nie tylko śmierć męczennika, ale także narzędzia kaźni, jakiej zostaje poddany, stają się już tu na ziemi objawieniem rzeczywistości zbawienia. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest wynotowanie i uporządkowanie tych miejsc z wczesnochrześcijańskiej litera­tury męczeńskiej, gdzie mamy do czynienia z owym paradoksalnym przewarto­ściowaniem (podział na: więzienie, venationes, spalenie na stosie) oraz zestawie­nie ich z odpowiadającymi im miejscami z Pisma Świętego.

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The following essay is part of a larger project that seeks to restore a sense of critical potential to the practice of central Italian artists of the mid-sixteenth century, and to re-open the question of Mannerism as a reaction to historical tensions and predicaments. It will understand Mannerism as a practice that points to a cleavage between its own processes of making meaning, its own internal theoretical concerns, and the political and religious institutions it is designed to serve. While artists might affect a posture of courtly or academic subordination before tradition and authority, the self-consciousness that operates in their work might be regarded as an ‘other’ self, one that confronts the viewer with unauthorized meanings, and where alienation might have a critical potential.

This essay examines writing about and representations of pain and torture by looking specifically at two French Catholic martyr plays that appeared at the turn of the seventeenth century: Nicolas Soret's La Céciliade (1606) and Jean Boissin de Gallardon's Le Martyre de saincte Catherine (1618). It interprets these plays alongside Antonio Gallonio's Trattato degli instrumenti di martiro (1591; 1594) and Richard Verstegan's Théâtre des cruautez des Herectiques de nostre temps (1587; 1607). On the one hand, by analysing the representations of physical torture, this article investigates the relationship between religious violence in the real world and the significance of the martyr figure on stage in La Céciliade. On the other, it takes into account the crushing of the executioners' bodies in Boissin's play and in iconographical representations of St Catherine's wheel of torture, arguing that representations of the martyrs' and pagans' injured bodies not only serve to profess publicly the truth of the Catholic faith but also act as vehicles for the Catholic Church's politicization of martyrdom and conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The members of the Bhutto family, especially Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir Bhutto, presented themselves as martyrs of democracy and claimed many times they were ready to sacrifice their life for the rise of democracy in Pakistan. It appears however that the democratic transitions which took place during their rule ended in failure. The main reason is their unfitness or reluctance to institutionalize their party, the Pakistan people’s Party, which they relinquished so as strenghten their personal rule due to their obsession with the civil and military bureaucracy.

Charles le Brun painted two Mays, four years apart, for the Parisian goldsmiths’ confraternity, Sainte-Anne-Saint-Marcel. In the Marian fraternal tradition they were offered to Notre-Dame cathedral: The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew (1647) and The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1651). The two imposing paintings mark a break in the Mays series and influenced religious paintings during the seventeenth century. During the 1660s the goldsmiths’ Mays resume the powerful style and display of energy found in Charles Le Brun’s stagings, while leaving room for variations in interpretation. From the year 1670 onwards, the stylistic influence of Le Brun on the goldsmiths series was reduced, but his compositions evoking martyrdom and arousing passions were used by the Church as models for religious imagery. The Mays then achieved a wide ideological and political diffusion in the kingdom’s churches. These two types of complementary dissemination show how Le Brun’s language answered the Church of France’s need for images.

As leading figures in the history of the Church in the fourth century, monks find their place in Rufinus' Ecclesiastical History. An ascetic and a monk himself, he does not refer to his personal experience except to state that he had the privilege of meeting the most illustrious of the Egyptian anchorites. Champions of the Nicene orthodoxy, Rufinus records how they faced persecution and martyrdom. They possessed charisma that manifested the power of God acting through them, and reached the life of the angels reconciled with the animals of the wilderness. Their healing powers, or the gift of prophecy prove that they were 'men of God', 'apostles of our times' and images of Christ. In Cappadocia, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus intended to reach true philosophy through an intellectual and spiritual askesis. Basilian cenobitism joined divine cult and the service of the poor. According to their different styles, the ascetics and monks featured in Rufinus' Ecclesiastical History are exemplary figures that at the same time inform and edify the reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses ethnographic studies of violence in everyday life, with information on anthropological research on the role of pain in relationships and the interlocutory dimension of pain. Topics include social attitudes toward the body's physical vulnerability; the moral and ethical dimensions of regimes of historicity; and the use of ethnography to study social attitudes toward martyrdom in Palestinian refugee camps in Southern Lebanon. The work of anthropologists Talal Asad, Veena Dasa, and Elizabeth Povinelli on the history of violence, pain, and martyrdom in Islam is examined.

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Copyright of Cultures et Conflits is the property of Centre d'Etudes sur les Conflits, Revue Cultures & Conflits and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cultures et Conflits is the property of Centre d'Etudes sur les Conflits, Revue Cultures & Conflits and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cultures et Conflits is the property of Centre d'Etudes sur les Conflits, Revue Cultures & Conflits and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cultures et Conflits is the property of Centre d'Etudes sur les Conflits, Revue Cultures & Conflits and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)