medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Fri, 20 Dec 2002 21:21:06 -0500
francine nicholson wrote (quoting Phyllis Jestice):
>>Nemesius of Alexandria (d. 250) Nemesius was a native of Egypt. Under
>>Diocletian, he was burned to death between two thieves.
>>
>>Timothy of Africa (d. c. 250) Timothy was a north African deacon. I
>>thought Nemesius' burning was an oddity, but Timothy was burned at the
>>stake also. An African habit?
>
>Could it be related to race?
It could be, but where's the evidence? If by "race" one means a social construction involving a number of physical and cultural traits, then it's quite possible that there was in antiquity a widespread understanding among north Africans that they were of an "African" race. On this supposition it's then possible that a peculiarly north African preference for a certain form of judicial punishment would be racially constituted and that north African pagans burning north African Christians or merely sitting in the stands enjoying the spectacle (or outsiders observing such events, for that matter) could consider this practice to be racially constituted. But I'm not aware that execution by burning was either peculiarly African or that many ancients thought it so (the martyrdom of Polycarp at Smyrna and the stories about such European martyrs as Laurence, Lucy, and Blandina suggest otherwise). Certainly there's no suggestion of an racial element in the earliest known account in!
Coptic of a martyrdom, that of the priest Stephanos in 305 CE, which does happen to have been by fire; see:
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/438article.html
Again, if (as the illustrative comment from the U.S. seems to imply) the suggestion here is that the condemnations of these martyrs to death by burning reflects a racial prejudice against them by officials who considered themselves racially distinct from these victims, one would need to establish first that such a hostile prejudice was widespread in Roman antiquity (the communis opinio, established chiefly by the work of Frank Snowden of Howard University in the 1950s and 1960s and now questioned by some, is that it was not).
Best,
John Dillon
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