RELG245

(Faithful to the Very End: Martyrdom in Early Christianity) Looking at early Christian teachers and narrative accounts of martyrs' deaths, this course examines the underlying logic and hopes encouraging these martyrs to make the ultimate sacrifice. Perhaps as early as Saint Steven, only a few years after the death of Jesus and continuing for centuries thereafter, remarkable Christians willingly underwent profound humiliation and excruciating pain in stubborn refusal to compromise their faith in a crucified messiah. The course focuses on the first three centuries of Christian history, tracing the political circumstances leading to the martyrs' deaths, and the ways in which they planted the seeds to become themselves objects of veneration in later periods through the present day. No prerequisites.