Sacrifice and Martyrdom in the Roman Empire

By Guy Stroumsa

Archivio di filosofia / Archives of Philosophy, Vol.76:1-2 (2008)

Introduction: In religions of the ancient world, sacrifice, and in particular blood sacrifice, stood at the very center of cultic activity. This is true in all religions around the Mediterranean as well as in the Near East. Indeed, Greek sacrifices, for instance, show some striking parallels with West Semitic practices. According to Walter Burkert’s assessment, this might be explained through influences via Cyprus. Following Karl Meuli, Burkert claims that sacrifice stems from a feeling of guilt on the part of the hunters for having killed their game. It is not necessary to follow him here to recognize that blood sacrifices represented much more than ritual slaughter. To a great extent, sacrifice was constitutive of the community, as it “stood at the center of a complex set of cultural, social and political institutions.” In ancient religions, indeed, sacrifice was the most obvious way of crossing the boundary between the human and the super-natural world. It is the offering of blood, or life, to the gods, that gave sacrifice its efficacy.

In the ancient world, however, animal sacrifices were not the only blood sacrifices. Human sacrifices, although they were rarely practiced, remained present in people’s consciousness until a rather late date in the Roman Empire. To be sure, for both pagans and Christians, human sacrifice remained as a kind of spiritual limes, delimiting the border between civilization and barbarism. For a philosopher such as Porphyry, animal sacrifice was considered to be a kind of historic compromise between human sacrifice and a vegetarian ideal in which sacrifice would be unnecessary. As long as Christianity remained religio illicita, the Christians constituted an alternative community of sorts, functioning in quasi-secrecy, and whose values and behavior were strikingly different from those of society at large. In such conditions, it comes as no surprise that various accusations circulated against allegedly repulsive Christian rituals, including human sacrifices or even cannibalism. Enemies of the Jews had already accused them of similar behavior. In the case of Christians, however, accusations could be much more direct and violent. The Christians, on their side, viewed pagan blood sacrifices as a cult offered to demons, polluting those who took part in it. In expressing his horror of sacrifices (as well as of gladiator fights), Constantine showed a Christian sensitivity – which does not mean, of course, that sacrifices would immediately be discontinued.

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