sacred subterranean burial grounds were the germ that sprouted the Eternal City. The catacombs of St. Domitilla, the largest and most impressive of the networks of underground tunnels, greet the visitor with a tone of reverence and wonder for the sacred relics it contains of the early martyrs who were buried there after painful tortures and brutal deaths. Lining the walls of the catacombs are images of Christ, representations from the Old and New Testaments, and of martyrs with their respective instruments of torture and death, which they proudly hold in testimony of their fidelity to death.These catacombs are a monument to the memory of those martyrs who passed to their throne of glory in the city of Rome, but the martyrs of other empires and places of persecution must not be forgotten though many do not have a memorial or tombstone. One only has to read their accounts to marvel at such faith and constancy. Their desire for mercy from their crucified Lord overcame the offer of mercy at the hands of their persecutors. If Sebastian didn't die from the flint and fire of Romans than it would have been from his ardent love of God consuming his soldier spirit to conquer at all costs. This confessor of the Faith is a gleaming facet of the jewel of self-immolation for the love of God.
The first instance of imperial edict of persecution occurred after the great fire in Rome in 64 A.D. when the Emperor Nero accused the Christians of involvement in the tragedy, thus igniting a relentless persecution of Christians ending in 312 with the Edict of Milan. There were many torments which the enemies of Christ conjured up to try and compel these “impious” members of their society to reject their God. There was no scrupulous attitude to old or young, male or female and many
young virgins suffered disgrace and death while children were slaughtered like the innocents of Bethlehem. Some of the popular methods of torture included scourging, iron combing, racking, and dismemberment and methods of execution ranged from feeding to wild animals to beheading. Eusebius the historian goes into further detail of the various methods of torture describing how sharp reeds were driven under the fingernails, eyes were gouged out, legs cut off, and how lead was melted down and poured onto different parts of the body inflicting excruciating pain. He reports a particular horrendous treatment suffered by the martyrs of Thebais in which the stronger boughs of a tree were brought together by certain machines and after the legs of the Christian were fastened the branches were released causing a sudden separation of the limbs. Many suffered in this manner including women and children. An extraordinary example of virgin courage would be St. Febronia, who underwent many cruel trials. This 18-year old spouse of Christ was first roasted over a slow fire while soldiers scourged her body causing the blood to run in great amounts and sputter into the flames. After her refusal to recant the exe
cutioner ordered her to be suspended by stakes and the soldiers applied iron combs raking her sides. When she did not cease praising God her teeth were brutally extracted and she expired while her wounds were being cauterized her last words being, “My God, see what I am suffering and receive my soul into Thy hands.”Another astounding insight on the methods of torture and execution would be the martyrdom of Apphianus. He was a native of Gagae in Lycia, twenty years old and a Christian. Angered at seeing the governor offer pagan sacrifices, he exhorted him to cease honoring demons and convert to Christianity. The royal bodyguards immediately apprehended him while raining blows and beating his body until he bled. That night in prison his legs were dislocated and he was brought out the next morning to renounce his Faith. Upon his refusal he was strung up while metal combs flayed his flesh until his intestines hung from his body. Still professing Christ, his face was scourged beyond recognition and then he was hung up by his hands with his body wrapped in oil soaked cloths and then set alight. His flesh, “melted and flowed like wax as the fire penetrated to the bones as if they were dry reeds.” Though he survived that ordeal he was sent back to prison only to be carried back the next day praising God; his body now a scorched, deformed piece of flesh. Seeing this lacerated young Christian who couldn't be convinced to worship marble and stone the governor had weights tied to him and thrown into the Mediterranean Sea.
Christians weren't always executed one by one. The Roman Martyrology commemorates an ext
raordinary mass martyrdom on March 18 in which a staggering number of ten thousand Christians were put to the sword within two days in Nicomedia. The story of the 40 Martyrs, accounted by St. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, reports that 40 soldiers under the persecution of Licinius were prompted to sacrifice to idols. When they held firm, they were ordered to strip themselves and condemned to freeze to death on a frozen pond near Sebaste. All forty suffered incredibly and at one point one of them, urged by winter winds and his icy bed, apostatized and hurried back to the chilled shore where steaming, hot tubs of water were prepared for the Judas. Upon seeing such a departure from the astounding group of determined sufferers, one of the executioners, struck by a heavenly light, promptly removed his clothes and joined his new brethren, who were content to burn with the love of God rather than refrigerate in the icy waters of faithlessness.The torments and executions presented above are not an exhausted list. Many persons suffered death by crucifixion, drowning, dissection by being sawed in half, mutilation, or having burning pitch slowly poured over the body from the toes to the head. Sometimes those being crucified would have a pyre built around them and lit, burning like a beacon to the Roman world, but to no avail as the wreck of paganism was dashed against the rocks. Christians also ran the gauntlet, were torn by wild beasts, or were burned by hot plates applied to different parts of the body or fastened to a hot iron chair. Other Christians were condemned to a prolonged death for the profession of Christ. Many were condemned to the salt mines while others were sold into slavery, being stripped of all honors, riches, possessions, family, and friends. Everything, but the love of a God, who had died for them.
The year 313 brought the Edict of Milan drawn up the new Emperor Constantine, who saw the sign of Christ in the sky, finally relaxing an almost steady persecution of two and a half centuries. This Edict gave Christianity imperial approval, finally attained by those Popes, Bishops, virgins, and confessors, who stood firm in the early, overcast days of the Church. One can only stand in awe of the mounds of bodies hacked and burned, tortured and lacerated, but all unified as a witness to an inborn principle of the human soul: the yearning for something higher than itself. Something higher than cruel emperors, marble statues, gory tortures, and ghastly deaths that only would be revealed by sacrifice. The conviction of a child a God is to die to live and live to die. This Divine paradox was loved, lived, and attested to the fullest by the Christian martyr, who became an overflowing vessel of grace fostering the Church into a healthy youth. This would not be the last time that rack and ruin would seek to separate creature from Creator. The Church would live on to see more terrible tortures and would not hesitate to declare with Tertullian,“Go on! Rack us, torture us, grind us to powder. Our numbers increase in proportion as you mow us down. The blood of Christians is the seed of the Church.”
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