Martyrdom has traditionally been understood as an act of self-sacrifice. Within Christianity, self-sacrificial martyrdom is described as imitation of Christ and upheld as a model of Christian behavior. This presents two problems. First, it subsumes all martyrdoms under this logic of sacrifice, thus effacing the potential difference of the martyr. Second and more importantly, it fails to explain why most Christians have not been martyrs. To challenge this understanding, I examine martyrdom as an act of self-formation.

First, I suggest the obvious but overlooked point that the martyr's death is the only measurable qualitative difference between the martyr and those who remain and provides the impetus for post-mortem appropriation. Using the language of existential theory, I represent the martyr as autothanatos, a term that emphasizes the volitional, autonomous death as the foundational component of the martyr's self-identification. Second, I examine the chronological development of early Christian martyrdom through the autothanatos to suggest that martyrdom could only contribute to the "triumph" of Christianity through an appropriation of the martyr's autonomy for the burgeoning Christian institution. The act of the martyr could not, as Tertullian suggested, be "the seed of the Church" without modification. I represent that modification as an historical shift in relationship to the martyr (and Christ) from imitatio to veneratio. This alteration, as I contend in the third part of this work, established a relationship to violence and death that is still operative. The authoritative, selective identification of violence in the present obscures this intimate relationship, facilitating the individual's denial of death and the institution's justification of violence.

Through connecting ancient understandings of martyrdom and modern acts of violence, particularly in a religious context, I provide an alternative understanding of the importance of martyrdom to Christianity and the Western tradition. Further, by showing its continued functionality, I indicate the ubiquity of violence in our political calculation and suggest frank realization of this ubiquity as a necessary component for egalitarian religious dialogue.