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Discipline and Diet: Feeding the Martyrs in Roman Carthage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2004

Andrew McGowan
Affiliation:
Trinity College, University of Melbourne

Extract

Although few Christians were likely to suffer the most violent consequences of persecution under the Roman Empire, the experiences of those imprisoned, tortured, or killed were significant far beyond the lives of the individuals concerned. These living martyrs took on a significance that was important for the whole of Christian identity, becoming spiritual patrons dispensing grace, or exemplars of an alternative mode of life.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This paper was written for the Brown University Seminar on Culture and Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean in April 2002. My thanks to Susan Ashbrook Harvey for that invitation, and to participants there and at two further presentations in 2002 (the North American Patristics Society Annual Meeting in May, and a colloquium at the United Faculty of Theology, Melbourne, in August) for critical and encouraging comments. I am particularly grateful for close readings by Lawrence Wills and Joan Branham, and for the substantial responses from two anonymous readers for HTR (particularly the first reader).