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When, at the close of the day, they are returning home on the arm of a young brother or a little sister, if the child says: "It was a very fine day!" the other answers: "I could notice that it was fine. Loulou wouldn't keep quiet." I knew one of these men whose life was one of the most cruel martyrdoms that could possibly be conceived. He was a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer.
The martyrdoms of the early Christians were public not only by the caprice of the oppressor, but by the whole desire and conception of the victims. The mere grammatical meaning of the word 'martyr' breaks into pieces at a blow the whole notion of the privacy of goodness. The Christian martyrdoms were more than demonstrations: they were advertisements.
It as a martyrdom across which one can but draw a curtain, and stand "eyes front". Look this way, look that, what answer is there, what reason, what explanation, of the hidden martyrdoms of the work-a-day world, which the blank wall of heaven seems to regard with utter unconcern? Mankind to-day is less disposed than ever of yore to calmly fold the hands and say, "It is the will of God."
One of his enemies a Roman on this occasion destroyed what was left of Domenichino's work in Naples. The painter's fate was a miserable one, and by a coincidence between his fortune and his taste in subjects, he has identified his name with terrible representations of martyrdoms. Domenichino is accredited with more taste than fancy.
The joyfulness of festivals, the pomp of processions, the sublimity of great martyrdoms, the sorrow of defeats, the peace of holiness, the innocence and sweetness of childhood, the hope of manhood, and the retrospection of old age, when represented upon the canvas, find in her forms and colors endless refrain of response.
When we read of the horrible cruelties practised on the Waldenses and Albigenses, the followers of Huss in Bohemia, the true Protestants of all ages down to the time of Luther, the detestable system of the Inquisition, the treatment of the inhabitants of the Netherlands by Alva and the Spaniards, when whole hecatombs of victims were put to death at the instigation of the pope and his cardinals, the destruction of thousands and tens of thousands of Huguenots in France, the martyrdoms of the noble Protestants of Spain, the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and the fires of Smithfield all these diabolical acts performed with the concurrence and approval of the papal power can we for a moment hesitate to believe that that power owes its origin, not to the Divine Head of the Church, but to that spirit of evil, Satan, the deadly foe of the human race?
Here, however, the record of these martyrdoms apparently comes to an end, and the force of the folly seems to have spent itself. The Mohammedans were growing more strict all the time in their treatment of the Christians, but the futility of such self-sought martyrdom was finally becoming apparent.
The beginning of all systems of religion, the coming of the Nazarene, the rise and growth of Christianity, the martyrdoms of the early church, the invasion of the truth by false doctrine, the abuses of the Church, the Reformation, the martyrdom of the Huguenots for the return to the early principles of Christianity, the "search for the old paths," he set forth in a tone generous but not fiery, presently powerful and searching, yet not declamatory.
The old self bids him follow the line of least resistance and go on as he has begun; the newly awakened self bids him stop at once, check the momentum of other days, take this last chance, and be a man. His better nature wins. Markheim finds that though his deeds have been uniformly evil, he can still "conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms."
It is an important element of progress, and a mark of dignity and moral greatness. Shall we seek a connection between their martyrdoms and civilization? They bore witness to a religion which is the source of all true progress upon earth; they attested to its divine truth amid protracted agonies; they were illustrious examples for all ages to contemplate.
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