Martyrdom, Rhetoric, and the Politics of Procedure

Abstract

This article uses the evidence of the early Christian martyr acts to argue for the existence of a broader, provincial discourse on the importance of legal procedure in criminal trials in the Roman Empire. By focusing on moments of criminal confrontations, these texts not only attempted to explain and glorify the deaths of martyrs, but also sought to make sense of a process that was designed by the Roman state to be arbitrary and terrifying. In the course of their narratives, the martyr acts articulate a distinctly provincial understanding of imperial judicial procedures. They politicize this understanding in ways consequential for current scholarly models of the relations between the imperial government and provincial society more broadly.

The Effects of Political Martyrdom on Election Results: The Assassination of Abe

“…The failure was partly attributed to the private nature of local deaths for the bereaved and strong local politics that overshadowed that of the state. In a similar manner, in the Roman Empire, provincial understandings eclipsed that of the imperial government, resulting in lasting effects of the provincial-imperial relations that have remained in today's scholarly models [Bryen, 2014]. In the case of Abe, this may not be as significant of an obstacle, due to Abe has been a major public figure and a former representative of the state.…”

The Provincial Contexts of Paul’s Imprisonments: Law Enforcement and Criminal Procedure in the Roman East

“…29. The Greek technical equivalent (οἱ στρατηγοί) of the title of their office is deliberately used in [35][36][37][38] This focus on legal issues -which, for the long judicial sequence in Judea, might imply the author's use of trial transcripts or at least of accounts produced by the various local Christ-groups (Weiss 2013) -and these critiques of the infringement of criminal procedure by local and Roman officials are typical of Christian apologists of the second and third centuries (Bryen 2014). The Martyrdom of Pionios, for instance, includes a scene, very similar to the episodes in Acts discussed in this article, where the ability of the civic officials of Smyrna to conduct a preliminary investigation was challenged by Pionios, who required the intervention of the provincial governor of Asia as part of a formal criminal procedure.…”

Review Symposium: Interdisciplinary Readings of Ari Bryen's Violence in Roman Egypt—Author's Reflections

“… 1 I make a similar argument about some of these “others” in a recent article on the way early Christian martyr acts reveal the provincial interest in the legitimacy of imperial judicial procedures (Bryen 2014). I suspect that the question of whether an intimate mode domination like slavery can or should be “rule based” lurks at the center of the (probably second century AD) Life of Aesop , recently treated in the remarkable work of Leslie Kurke (2011, 2–237). …”