DYING TO MAKE A POINT
Theodore K. Rabb
1,195 words
3 August 1997
The Washington Post
FINAL
X06
English
Copyright 1997, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved
FOOLS, MARTYRS, TRAITORS
The Story of Martyrdom in the
Western World
By Lacey Baldwin Smith
Knopf. 429 pp. $30
Unless we are their devoted followers, martyrs tend to make
us uncomfortable. Are their sacrifices worth the agonies they
cause? Can we make sense of their indifference to suffering,
both their own and that of their families? Should we admire
their fierce resolve? Condemn their blinkered obstinacy? Treat
them merely as fools or traitors? Even after 400 pages, Lacey
Baldwin Smith is not sure. He makes it clear why he believes
a broad and disparate range of those who died for their beliefs,
from Socrates to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, from the Maccabees
to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, deserve to be seen as martyrs; but
he also suggests that it is impossible to answer many of the
troubling questions these difficult and determined people
raise, both for their contemporaries and for posterity.
None of the many figures who populate his book wins Smith's
unquestioned admiration. He finds shortcomings of character
and achievement in all his subjects, starting with Socrates,
whom he considers the inventor of the very concept of martyrdom,
and ending with Kurt Gerstein, the tortured model for the
character of the same name in Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy.
The reservations come easily with arrogant and destructive
men like Thomas Becket and John Brown, but they also arise
in the case of the saintly and gentle Thomas More, whose harshness
toward others' heresy and coldness at the last toward his
own family Smith rightly emphasizes. Even the least wavering
example in this book, the third century Christian martyr Vibia
Perpetua, became almost inhuman in her icy rejection of her
father and her indifference to her own child once the discomfort
following the sudden end of breast-feeding passed. That nearly
all martyrs at some point questioned their own motives helps,
of course, in establishing the ambiguityof their cause.
Can one remove the taint of supreme egoism from the aura of
selflessness the martyr seeks to project? It is a question
that, in one form or another, Smith poses and leaves unanswered
in every case. In some instances, such as the Maccabees or
Jesus, the difficulties are compounded by fragmentary evidence;
but even massive documentation -- for example, on the Rosenbergs
-- does not allow him to reach firm conclusions. The specific
causes the martyrs advocate may vary widely. For Socrates,
it was his own autonomy and concept of virtue; for Becket,
the institution of the Church; for Charles I, the inviolability
of monarchy; for Bonhoeffer, an ideal of both religious and
national pride. But the underlying dilemma never changes.
Is this self-promotion or is it suffering for truth?
The problem is intensified by one particular factor that is
essential to martyrdom: If martyrs are to serve their purposes,
they require maximum publicity. Without the attention he received,
Gandhi would have fasted in vain. Without the high drama of
the journey to Jerusalem, the public gauntlet thrown before
authority, and the climactic execution, the story of Jesus
could not have been transformed into the story of Christ.
Letters, diaries and books have to carry the message -- whether
the biblical account for the Maccabees or Foxe's Book of Martyrs
for the victims of Bloody Mary's wrath. In the 20th century
the media have expanded: plays for More and Gerstein, radio
and newspapers for the Rosenbergs, and one might even add
television for the followers of David Koresh. Whatever the
mechanism, however, it has been crucial for the martyrs that
their tales be told, and preferably oft told.
For that reason, such qualities and skills as stoic self-discipline,
a sense of timing, effective image-making, and the ability
to capture and control center stage have been indispensable
to the martyr. Public executions make their task much easier
-- More's "I die the king's good servant, but God's first"
has resonated far more widely than the Dialogue of Comfort
that he wrote in the Tower. But even a death hidden from view,
like Bonhoeffer's, can inspire accounts, embellished by the
words of the victim, that add the necessary final touch of
idealism and virtue triumphing over cruelty and sin. To make
the case, however, is to glorify the central character, and
thus the charge of ambition (or at least self-delusion) hovers
above every one of the subjects of this book.
The exemplars that serve Smith's purposes -- to define martyrdom,
and to demonstrate how difficult it is for the historian to
give a fair and reasoned assessment of its occurrences --
are on the whole well chosen. The Maccabees do not work very
well, because they are one-dimensional; a better case from
Jewish tradition might have been Akiba ben Joseph and the
other rabbis executed by the Romans during the Bar Kokba revolt.
And the long chapter on Gandhi loses focus as it wrestles
with the meaning of Satyagraha (which went beyond civil disobedience)
and Gandhi's own self-examinations and explanations. Here
the definition of martyrdom becomes blurred, partly because
Smith moves back and forth within his subject's life and thus
gives up his great strength, which is a strong narrative line.
In the other chapters, after setting the scene he tells powerful
and moving stories that give substance to his themes. Except
in the case of Gandhi, where the propulsive force dissipates,
it is the succession of events itself that gives poignancy
and power to martyrs who, until the very end, often seem unsympathetic
and even distasteful.
There are a few judgments that fellow historians will challenge.
While admitting that martyrs' deaths are usually not the reason
their causes triumph, Smith makes an exception for Charles
I, whose admirable demeanor at his trial and scaffold, he
believes, helped save England's monarchy. Given the attempt
to crown Cromwell, and, across the North Sea, the Dutch quest
for a king even after a century of republican rule, it is
hard to see any practical consequences of Charles' execution,
except among romanticand diehard believers in divine right.
In addition, Henry VIII is allowed more of a conscience than
he probably had, and Smith's concentration on England from
the middle ages to the 19th century keeps him from continental
martyrs who could have enriched his account: Jan Hus, Michael
Servetus, William the Silent, Giordano Bruno.
Still, there are more than enough episodes, probing analyses,
and insoluble perplexities in this book to raise the central
issues that revolve around the fierce and awesome figure of
the martyr. Anyone who would like to try to understand what
justifies human beings in the possibly suicidal impulse that
drives them to accept no compromise; to assert high moral
principle in the face of accusations of idiocy, barbarism,
ingratitude and mere treason; and finally to die for a cause;
can begin at no better place than Fools, Martyrs, Traitors.
Theodore K. Rabb is professor of history at Princeton University.
His "Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629"
will be published later this year.
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