Citation

Fabre PA. Rivista Storica Italiana 2020; 132(3): 1032-1048.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

This contribution attempts to understand the meaning of the very nu¬merous accounts of martyrdom in the spiritual and apologetic literature of modern times, starting from the case of the Vocationes Illustres gathered by the Society of Jesus in a bundle of manuscripts studied elsewhere in this dossier. Looking more particularly at collective martyrdoms, very frequent in the context of evangelization missions, we can make the following hy¬pothesis: inasmuch as every martyrdom is the effect of a singular encoun¬ter with grace, every victim of martyrdom is also the first witness to the martyrdom of his companion of misfortune (and fortune "in heaven"). As a consequence, the story of martyrdom is closely related to martyrdom itself. Analyzing in detail the sequence of martyrdom narratives and the martyrdom of the writers of these narratives in the case of the "thirty-nine martyrs of Brazil" (1570), a founding event for Jesuit martyrology, the au¬thor of this contribution shows how witnessing can progressively substitute for martyrdom itself and how, finally, this literature can both apologize for martyrdom and dispense with it, an essential operation for a congregation which, in the whole of the modern age, has to face the shortage of religious on mission and to fight against a haunting which has pursued Christian history since its origins: that of suicide. © 2020 Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane SpA. All rights reserved.

Language: fr