On The Martyrdom Of Women - The One Year Women in Christian History Devotional

It’s remarkable how many of the early church’s martyrs were women. This is surprising on two counts. First, for most of Christian history, men have held the key roles in church leadership, so you might expect women to be overlooked in the writing of that history. In fact, some modern historians complain that this is indeed the case. But it doesn’t seem to be true with martyrdom. For every Polycarp there’s a Perpetua.

A second surprise has to do with Roman sensibilities. Compared with the Greek civilization that preceded it, Roman culture had a relatively high view of the value of women. If you trace the intrigues of the first-century imperial court, you find a number of prominent women wielding power. They were still the power behind the throne, but they held considerable sway. It was the power of matrons that held together the noble households of Rome.

So why were so many Christian women arrested and tortured for their faith? Why were they killed in public in the most humiliating ways? You would think that Roman gentility would go easy on the women. Not so.

We must not underestimate the simple bloodlust and mob mania of the Roman persecutors, but there are other factors as well. Women were prominent in the early church, both in numbers and in power. Slaves and working-class people of both genders were coming to Christianity, but also a number of noblewomen. We get a few examples of that in the book of Acts, and it continues through history. The Roman historian Tacitus told of a judge’s wife, Pomponia Graecina, who was accused of “foreign superstition” and handed over to her husband for trial. She was most likely a convert to Christianity.

Maybe the Romans felt threatened by this “liberation movement”—for slaves, for workers, for women. Maybe they thought the persecution of women would specifically discourage other women from converting.

If so, it backfired. The crowds in the arenas saw women of great strength and courage standing up for their faith against the most horrendous terrors. Perpetua, Blandina, and many others spoke out about their faith and acted it out in dramatic ways. In so doing, they became powerful examples for all Christ followers to come.

Women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do.

1 Timothy 2:10