Martirio e testimonianza : l’ambivalenza del concetto cristiano di “martirio”

This contribution aims at exploring the problem of the semantic ambivalence of the early Christian concept of “martyrdom” through a historical investigation of the meaning of the first appearances of this concept in early Christian literature. Taking the cue from a recent historical controversy, I compare Bowersock’s (1995) Martyrdom and Rome, with a recent paper of Rizzi (2005) Da testimoni a martiri. Pratiche di martirio e forme di leadership nella città antica in order to demonstrate the presence of an ambivalent meaning of the word in early Christian records. The word “martyrdom” (gr. μαρτυρία), which literally means “testimony”, acquires the meaning of “dying for something” in the early records written by Christian communities in memory of those who had died in order to witness their faith and Christian identity in front of the Roman institutions. The Protochristian martyr is an apocalyptic figure, reinterpreted and neutralized in its revolutionary potential by the ecclesiological tradition, which proposed an institutionalized cult of early Christian martyrs as first Saints of the Church. The results of this contribution show that the ambivalence of the word “μαρτυρία” depends, on one hand, on its etymological derivation and, on the other, on the phenomenological fact that martyrs are at the same time 1) passive victims of violent acts and 2) active witnesses of their faith.