A martyr is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In colloquial usage, the term can also refer to any person who suffers a significant consequence in protest or support of a cause.
Peter Robert Lamont Brown is an Irish historian. He is the Rollins Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. Brown is credited with having brought coherence to the field of Late Antiquity, and is often regarded as the inventor of said field. His work has concerned, in particular, the religious culture of the later Roman Empire and early medieval Europe, and the relation between religion and society.
In Christianity, a martyr is a person who was killed for their testimony for Jesus or faith in Jesus. In the years of the early church, stories depict this often occurring through death by sawing, stoning, crucifixion, burning at the stake, or other forms of torture and capital punishment. The word martyr comes from the Koine word μάρτυς, mártys, which means "witness" or "testimony".
Dame Winifred Mary Beard, is an English classicist specialising in Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of classics at the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.
Victoria Louise "Vicky" Beeching is a British musician and religious commentator. She is best known for her work in the American contemporary worship music genre, and has been described by The Guardian as "arguably the most influential Christian of her generation" due to her Twitter following and appearances on BBC's Thought for the Day.
Dame Professor Averil Millicent Cameron, often cited as A. M. Cameron, is a British historian. She writes on Late Antiquity, Classics, and Byzantine Studies. She was Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History at the University of Oxford, and the Warden of Keble College, Oxford, between 1994 and 2010.
The growth of Christianity from its obscure origin c. 40 AD, with fewer than 1,000 followers, to being the majority religion of the entire Roman Empire by AD 400, has been examined through a wide variety of historiographical approaches.
Elaine Storkey is a British philosopher, sociologist, and theologian. She is known for her lecturing, writing and broadcasting.
Dame Janet Laughland Nelson, also known as Jinty Nelson, is a British historian. She is Emerita Professor of Medieval History at King's College London.
Christians were persecuted throughout the Roman Empire, beginning in the 1st century AD and ending in the 4th century. Originally a polytheistic empire in the traditions of Roman paganism and the Hellenistic religion, as Christianity spread through the empire, it came into ideological conflict with the imperial cult of ancient Rome. Pagan practices such as making sacrifices to the deified emperors or other gods were abhorrent to Christians as their beliefs prohibited idolatry. The state and other members of civic society punished Christians for treason, various rumored crimes, illegal assembly, and for introducing an alien cult that led to Roman apostasy. The first, localized Neronian persecution occurred under Emperor Nero in Rome. A number of mostly localized persecutions occurred during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. After a lull, persecution resumed under Emperors Decius and Trebonianus Gallus. The Decian persecution was particularly extensive. The persecution of Emperor Valerian ceased with his notable capture by the Sasanian Empire's Shapur I at the Battle of Edessa during the Roman–Persian Wars. His successor, Gallienus, halted the persecutions.
Saint Domnina and her daughters Berenice and Prosdoce are venerated as Christian martyrs by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. St. Domnina is not to be confused with Domnina of Syria, a 5th century figure.
Candida R. Moss is an English public intellectual, journalist, New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity, and as of 2017, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. A graduate of Oxford and Yale universities, Moss specialises in the study of the New Testament, with a focus on the subject of martyrdom in early Christianity, as well as other topics from the New Testament and early Church History. She is the winner of a number of awards for her research and writing and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Meredith J. C. Warren is a Senior Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield. She is known for her views on the New Testament and early Judaism as well as for her media appearances for such outlets as The Washington Post, and BBC radio. She is a Metis citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation.
Edith Gillian Clark is a British historian, who is Professor Emerita of Ancient History at the University of Bristol. She retired from the University of Bristol in 2010. Clark is known for her work on the history, literature, and religion of late antiquity.
Virginia Burrus is an American scholar of Late Antiquity and expert on gender, sexuality and religion. She is currently the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion and director of graduate studies at Syracuse University.
Susanna K. Elm is a German historian and classicist. She is the Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of European History at the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include the history of the later Roman Empire, late Antiquity and early Christianity. She is Associate Editor of the journals Church History and Studies in Late Antiquity, and she is a member of the editorial board for Classical Antiquity.
Morwenna Ann Ludlow is a British historian, theologian, and Anglican priest, specialising in historical theology. She is Professor of Christian History and Theology at the University of Exeter. She is known in particular for her work on Gregory of Nyssa.
Julia Hillner is Professor for Dependency and Slavery Studies at the University of Bonn. She was previously Professor of Medieval History at the University of Sheffield. She is an expert on late antiquity, applying digital methods of social network analysis to large data sets drawn from a wide variety of late antique and early medieval sources.
Nicola Denzey Lewis is a Canadian academic of lived religion, early Christians, material culture of late antique Roman Empire, and women studies. She is a professor at Claremont Graduate University as the Margo L. Goldsmith Chair in Women's Studies in Religion.
