HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY: FOUNDATION TO MATURITY 127devotees of Tanit, Isis, the cult of Mithras, Dea Syria, and the Christ.It was inevitable that Christianity would become an outlawed sect.Beginning with Trajan’s famous receipt to Pliny (Epis. 10, 96, 97),the official status of Christianity was to seesaw for two centuries fromoutright persecution to that of benign neglect. The most severe ofthese persecutions took place in the urban areas of the easternprovinces and North Africa. The repression of Christianity, however,appears to have been a local event dependent upon the will of thelocal community and the provincial leaders, until the time of theDecian persecutions 250–51. 29The Acts of the Martyrs are the first Christian biographies writtenafter the scriptures that record these persecutions. Under the generalrubric of Acta we also can place the Passiones, records that emphasizethe actual persecutions of the martyrs. For simplicity’s sake, Iwill use Acta here to designate both types of work, whether they weregenuine historical records, Acta sincera, or apocryphal fictions. 30 TheActa served the beleaguered communities in many ways. They showedthat Christians were powerful and could resist the barbarisms of thestate that they stigmatize; they were consolations, promising immortalityto the condemned; and they were used liturgically in memorialservices on a martyr’s anniversary. Of the many texts that survivethis early period—including those historic and those fiction—all usethe central strategy of mimesis to legitimate their authenticity andaccomplish this through narrative recursive structures that stimulatememory.The Trial and Structure of DebateWe shall narrate a selection from the life and actions of each and displaythrough the selection the character of the whole life. (Theodoretof Cyrrhus, Historia religiosa Prol. 8)Aside from the early depiction in Acts of Stephen—who is calledthe most perfect of martyrs in the Letter of the Churches of Lyons andVienne (St°fanow ı t°leiow mãrtuw)—the great majority of the ActaMartyrum narrate events of the second and third centuries. Although29Frend (1965), 406–07.30Delehaye (1962), 86–98.