I have now, having started and then stopped for some months, finished the book, although I have to admit to a certain amount of skimming. Not much good as a novel, but it does give one some idea of how things might have been in Carthage around 200 years after Christ.
The Christians did have a point. Slavery was bad anyway and made worse by the sexual abuse of some women slaves - of whom S. Felicitas was one. The crudity and cruelty of daily life was bad. The use of criminals - including here the Christian martyrs - in various blood sports was very bad. The various excesses of the rich were very bad.
We are shown how things might have been when, against this background, the numbers of Christians, many of them poor if not slaves, were growing, a significant minority, but also when being a Christian was a capital offence. One might be denounced by a disaffected servant or slave or by a neighbour with whom one had a boundary dispute. One might be hunted down by a zealous official or soldier either for sport or for promotion. And if one made a display of one's Christianity, one might brings one's friends and family down too, down to the same grisly death. While, at the same time, a public profession of faith was very much part of what it meant to be a Christian.
But could one be sure that one's motives for going for martyr were good ones? That one one not just showing off, albeit in a perverse way? That there were not better ways to serve the Lord? On the evidence of this book at least, the church elders were well on top of subtleties of this sort.
There is lots of sweetness and light at the Christian gatherings, a lot of them quite small and usually held in peoples' houses. Much hugging and much love, both within and going beyond the immediate group. Ecstasy even. Much belief in the heavenly life with Jesus to come - and one can see how this prospect might have attracted more then, when daily life might easily have been pretty grim, than now. I can see how, in such a charged environment, one might almost talk oneself into being a martyr and I am reminded of the cults about which there was much worrying here a few years back - and the silly scares about satanic cults, most if not all of which, as I recall, evaporated on closer inspection. On the other hand, there are clearly plenty of young people out there now who are prepared to give their life for their Lord, preferably taking plenty of others with them, which is not quite the same as what we have here, but it is evidence of what charged-up people can do.
We are also shown how, even in the early church, that it was not all sweetness and light. Even then, there were ecclesiastical squabbles between the priests and such like. I guess that as long as one admits a church with formal membership, with written doctrines and with priests, one is going to admit such squabbles. There will be office politics.
There are occasional mentions of both tea and tobacco, neither, I would have thought, available at this place at this time. But this is not a serious offence. Slightly more irritating is the sprinkling of Latin words to spice up the text bit, although I guess the author might say that she does this when the obvious English translation does not really capture the sense of whatever it was, for example cena for a midday meal.
But, all in all, I do feel I have got a little closer to why a young mother - S. Perpetua - with a rich husband might choose to be a martyr, but perhaps I should go back to M. Visser and S. Agnes for a different take. See January 4th 2012 in the other place.
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