Christianity and Relics. Part Four: The Public Cult

Introduction In my previous entries I outlined the initial early church practice to bury its dead in a mode similar to the culture around it. In my second I looked at the growing prestige of the martyr, in life and death, in the church who came to be seen as a type of individual set …

Christianity and Relics. Part Two: Martyrdom

Introduction In my first entry on this series on relics I looked at several examples of how the early church treated its dead. Three of the four examples of burial I looked at were the aftermath of martyrdom. To be martyred was to be more than a confessor of the faith, it was a position …

Is the blood of the martyrs really the seed of the church?

The phrase attributed to Tertullian is one thrown about a fair bit during times we hear about the suffering of Christians around the world. In some ways its true, the church has always grown it seems and theres always been resistance to the church worked out in violence. Very truly I tell you, unless a …