Message to the Martyrs

“Epistle to the Martyrs” is a short work (6 chapters) written by Tertullian in 197. The reason for its writing was the brutal persecution of Christians by the proconsul of Africa Vigelius Saturninus. The purpose of the work is to console and encourage Christians imprisoned during persecution for their confession of faith. Tertullian exhorts them to endure suffering with patience and firmness, considering any deviation from martyrdom unacceptable. Martyrs should look upon their torment as a preparation for the final struggle, after which they will receive unfading heavenly crowns. *The title of the essay in Latin is Ad martyras. Worthy confessors of Jesus Christ, destined for torment! While the Church, our common mother and mistress, is engaged in bringing you the food that you need to support your body, while your brothers visit you in prison to bring you a portion of the fruit from their labors, allow me, on the other hand, to assist you as much as I can, to the relief of your soul; for you know that a person feeds his flesh in vain when there is no food for his spirit, and if he cares about bodily infirmities, then all the more must he care about mental illnesses, which are much more dangerous than physical ones. But who am I to dare to give you teachings! Remember, however, that gladiators are sometimes aroused to courage not only by their bosses and leaders, but also by strangers who are not at all skilled: the people encourage them from afar, and whatever they are, their voice is often more valid than the voice of art connoisseurs. So, first of all, think about “not offending the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph 4.30), who accompanied you into prison, into which you would not have been imprisoned if He had not entered there with you. Act in such a way that He will always be with you, and that He will lead you from this sad place to the glory of God. I know that prison is often the fortress of the devil, into which his servants are usually thrown; but you, sacred athletes, entered it solely in order to triumph over this proud enemy in his very fortress, although you have already tormented him in other places. Let him not boast that you are in his claws, that he will exhaust you with hunger, boredom, and mutual disagreements; let him run away from you, let him hide in deep and shameful caves, and let him grovel there like a poisonous snake driven out through sorcery. May he not be so happy as to fight with you and defeat you at home: may he find you at all times ready and armed with the armor of love. Your peace constitutes a cruel war for him: a peace so longed for and precious that many believers are in the habit of coming to your prisons to beg you to ask them for this peace to enter into the communion of the church. You need to preserve this love and this peace among yourself, so that you can communicate them to others. I sincerely wish that all kinds of other worries of the mind accompany you only to the prison doors, just as that your relatives do not accompany you further. Here you are separated from the world: do not regret that you said goodbye to it. Knowing that the world itself is a true prison, you will understand that you, as it were, came out of your prison, and did not enter it. Indeed: is your prison dark? The world is even more covered with thick darkness, blinding the mind. Are you in chains? The world bears the heaviest prices that exhaust the soul. Is your home contagious? The world is full of harmful fumes, incomparably unbearable: these are the temptations and debaucheries of voluptuousness. Are you compared to criminals? The world contains much more guilty people, I want to say the entire human race. Does your life depend on the proconsul threatening you with his sentence? The world must be possessed with great fear in anticipation of God's terrible judgment. Agree, famous confessors, that you have only passed from prison to refuge. I confess that your home is gloomy; but you yourself are a living light. You are bound; but you are free in God. You breathe contagious air; but before God you exude fragrance. You are awaiting the judge's verdict; but the time will come when you will judge your own judges. Let other people, sighing for the pleasures of this age, indulge in sorrow. The Christian renounced this world before he left it; but in prison he must also renounce that which can only sweeten her bitterness. No matter where you are in this world, it doesn’t matter: you have already left the world; and if through this you were deprived of what pleasure in life: then what profitable bargain did you make, exchanging small things for great things? But let us not now talk about the rewards promised by God to the martyrs. Let us continue the comparison of the dwelling of the world with the dwelling of the prison, and see whether the soul gains in the latter more than how much the body can lose in it. Let’s say it better: the body does not lose anything here: it finds everything it needs through the care of the church and the love of believers, while the soul receives all the help needed to maintain faith. Here, at least, you do not see idols of false gods, do not meet their images, are not obliged to attend pagan festivals, are not infected by sacrilegious fumes, are not deafened by the insane exclamations of the theater and circus, are not witnesses to the frantic cruelty of a gladiator and the shameful movements of a comedian. Your eyes do not turn to these damned places dedicated to debauchery: you are safe from temptations, temptations, bad thoughts, and even from persecution itself. Prison provides a means for a Christian to find in it the same benefits that the prophets once found in the desert. Jesus Christ often sought solitude in order to have more freedom to pray and escape from the worries of this age. He showed His very glory to the disciples also in a solitary place (Matthew 12.1). Let us stop calling the place where you are a prison. Let's call it a refuge. Although your body is contained in it; but the soul is always free. You can stretch your spirit there as far as you wish, imagining not gloomy passages or long porticoes, but a reliable path leading straight to God. You will always be outside the prison as soon as you begin to walk this divine path in this way. The body does not feel the burden of its shackles when the soul is in heaven: it takes the whole person with it and transfers it wherever it wants. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6.21). Let us strive to act in such a way that our heart is always located where we want to find true good. However, let the prison be troublesome for Christians. But have we not been recruited into the army of Jesus Christ since baptism qualified us for this? A warrior should not expect that war will be carried out on fields full of pleasures. To enter into battle, he needs not to get up from a soft and calm bed, but to leave the camp, where the hardness of the earth, the harshness of the air and the coarseness of the food have already accustomed his body to labor. Even during times of peace, warriors engage in military exercises. They walk only covered with weapons; run around, pretending to attack the enemy; make trenches; have seizures; covered with sweat and dust during these activities in order to accustom the body to fatigue and be inspired by courage. They easily move from shade to sun, from good times to rainy times, from silence to noise, from noise to alarm: they throw off their tunic to put on their armor. Thus, famous servants of Jesus Christ (I am speaking also to you), no matter how cruel the inconveniences of prison may seem to you, you should consider them for yourself as an exercise to test the strength of your body and soul. What a happy battle you have to fight! God will be your rewarder and the Holy Spirit your guide. Your laurels will be an immortal crown, your price will be the happiness of being worthy of being fellow citizens of the Angels in heaven, glorified in all ages. It is for this reason that Jesus Christ, your divine Teacher, led you to this path, having first anointed you with His Spirit, and leading you through these difficulties before the day of battle to greatly strengthen your courage. This is how athletes often become accustomed to the strictest discipline, so that their bodies absorb new strength. They are forced to observe abstinence; they are forbidden to eat tender meat and sweet wine; they are disturbed, tired, tormented. The more they are strengthened by these trials, the more confident they are of victory. “To receive a perishable crown,” as the Apostle says (1 Cor 9.25). We, Christians, expecting an incorruptible crown, must honor prison as a place of tribulation, from where we need to rush and show signs of our courage in order to stand with glory before the judgment of God. In general, virtue is supported by work, and weakened by idleness. The Lord teaches us that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26.41). We don’t need to delude ourselves here. The flesh is weak, says God Himself. By declaring that the spirit is cheerful, He lets us know who should submit to whom. The flesh must obey the spirit, the weakest to the strongest, in order to be strengthened. Let spirit and body support themselves mutually for their salvation, let them look with lonely fearlessness not only at the inconvenience of prison, but also at the cruelty of battle. The flesh will, of course, fear the edge of the sword, the reproach of the cross, the ferocity of wild animals, the unbearable torment of fire, and all the most terrible things that the barbarity of the executioner can come up with in executions; but let the spirit rush to her aid, and let her be inspired by the fact that all these things, no matter how cruel they may seem, were patiently endured and even desired by people who had only honor and vanity in mind. Such were not only the men, but also the wives, to whom you, my dear sisters in Christ, should not yield in courage. I would expand a lot if I began to count in detail the people who, following feelings of imaginary generosity, voluntarily exposed themselves to death. "Mucius" burns his hand on the altar in order to force people to talk about himself. "Regulus", the Roman leader, having been captured by the Carthaginians, so as not to violate the rights of his fatherland, prefers to be locked in some kind of box, in which he is repeatedly pierced by the edge of a sword, and suffers as many deaths as he receives wounds. The philosopher “(Heraclitus)” boldly throws himself into the fire. Another philosopher “(Empedocles)” plunges into the mouth of Mount Etna. Recently, a certain “Peregrin” ended his days on a blazing fire. But not only philosophers, women also showed contempt for the sword and fire. “Lucrezia”, in order to restore her violated honor, pierces herself through with a sword in the presence of her relatives. Dido, forced against her will into a second marriage after the death of her dear husband, places herself in a coffin at the stake. The wife of “Azdrubal”, seeing her husband in the power of “Scipio” and the whole of Carthage on fire, decides with her children to surrender to the flames that are devouring her fatherland, in order to avoid the shame that threatens “Azdrubal” to ask for mercy from his enemy. This sex, weak as it was, sometimes mocked the ferocity of such animals, which are more terrible than the bear and the lion. The famous “Cleopatra” agreed to die from the sting of an asp rather than be subjected to the power of “Augustus”. You can say, if you like, that the fear of death makes less impressions than the fear of torment. But don’t you know with what fearlessness one Athenian woman acted when she was accused of knowing a conspiracy made in secret? In vain they subjected her to the most cruel punishments: she not only did not reveal the conspirators, but, having bitten off her tongue with her teeth, spat it out into the eyes of her judge, as if she wanted to say that no matter how much he tormented her, he would not force her to speak. You also know what kind of scourgings are still taking place among the Lacedaemonians: this is, as it were, a sacrifice to which young people are doomed. They scourge themselves until they bleed in the presence of all their relatives, who encourage and exhort them to endure courageously to the end. They consider it their glory to die from torment rather than not endure it. If vanity gives so much strength and courage that people become capable of despising the sword, fire, crosses, executions, the ferocity of animals: then we cannot help but admit that our sufferings are still quite light when we compare with them the glory of the reward promised to us for them in heaven. Alas! We struggle so much for false gold: what should we do to acquire true gold? Who would refuse to give as much for a real thing as others pay for a ghost? I come in the silence of the urge to worldly glory. People, possessed by passion or some kind of mental illness, now consider all kinds of cruelty and fury in which they practice as a toy. How many parasites take up the gladiator's craft out of vanity? The desire to become famous makes them go out against fierce beasts, and they imagine that from this they will acquire as many excellent signs of beauty as they will receive remorse and wounds on their faces. Others undertake to run a fairly long distance with a burning shirt on their body. Others finally walk with importance through the cloud of belt blows applied to their shoulders non-stop. It is not in vain, venerable confessors, that God allows such examples of imaginary generosity into the world: they should encourage us in the present, and lead us into confusion in the next century. Woe to us if the love of truth does not force us to endure more for our salvation than what vanity forces others to endure for their destruction! But let us leave aside these miracles of constancy produced by ambition alone. Let us take a better look at the sad state of our nature, so that through things that usually happen contrary to our expectations, we may be inspired to withstand the battle that we may soon have to enter. And in fact, how many living people sometimes burn out during a fire? How many people have been torn to pieces by wild animals in forests and other places? How many were killed by robbers, how many were hanged on the cross by the enemy after suffering many insults, torments and torments? How many people do we see every day who, out of love for man, willingly endure what we find it difficult to endure out of love for God? The present tense serves as solemn evidence of this. How many persons, and persons of the most noble family, die such a death that they should not be subjected to either because of their fame, or because of their dignity, or because of their age, or because of the advantages of their body? And they endure all this for man. He will execute them if they take the side of his opponents; if they pester him, then his opponents will put them to death. You might be interested in: