In | Martyrdom as a Christian Witness

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of martyrdom for early Christians. The word “martyr” is actually Greek for “witness.” When the Church was an underground community with secretive rituals and gatherings, the most public displays of Christian faith were often the deaths of believers by persecution. It may be hard for us to comprehend today, but many outsiders would have known Christian faith primarily through the way members died for Christ. 

When Christianity was legalized, believers began gathering publicly in cemeteries, near the graves of those believers who had died for their faith. Graveyard chapels were so important to early Christianity that “the original name for Christian churches was ‘martyries.’” First Peter speaks directly to this trajectory of martyrdom in early Christianity in its focus on righteous and redemptive suffering.  

Quote in second paragraph from: Jon Davies, Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity, 1999, p. 193.