Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: ‘secularity’
- I The crisis of identity
- II Kairoi: Christian times and the past
- 6 The last times
- 7 The martyrs and sacred time
- 8 Secular festivals in Christian times?
- 9 The christianisation of time
- III Topoi: space and community
- Sources referred to
- Secondary literature referred to
- Index
7 - The martyrs and sacred time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: ‘secularity’
- I The crisis of identity
- II Kairoi: Christian times and the past
- 6 The last times
- 7 The martyrs and sacred time
- 8 Secular festivals in Christian times?
- 9 The christianisation of time
- III Topoi: space and community
- Sources referred to
- Secondary literature referred to
- Index
Summary
‘There, in that heavenly City of Jerusalem’, Augustine wrote, ‘whence we are wandering, the angels await us wanderers.’ That vast community of angels and saints is there, expecting Christ's faithful on earth:
the body of that Head is the Church; not the Church which is in this place, but the Church which is here and in the whole world; nor the Church which is now, but that which is from Abel to those until the end of time who are still to be born and to believe in Christ: the whole people of the saints that belong to the one City, the City which is Christ's body and whose head is Christ. There the angels are our fellow citizens. We, wanderers, labour still; there, in that City, they await our arrival.
A faithful Christian's death is a triumphal entry – an adventus – to that City. In his funeral cortège its earthly members accompany him along the first stage of his triumphal procession, a celebration of a ‘cosmic Easter’.
Of this community that straddled heaven and earth the martyrs were honoured members. Greco-Roman paganism gave honour to the community's heroes; late Judaism recognised the claim of its martyrs to veneration, though without making their tombs places of public commemorative celebration.
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- Information
- The End of Ancient Christianity , pp. 97 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991