Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Greek glory and Christian martyrdom
The heroic death as a passage to immortality.
For the Hellenistic world, generates a perpetual memory, to be sung by all generations.
For the Christian world, produces eternal life in God's presence.
What's common between these views so different about death?
The answer could not be different, or more dramatic: the glory.
Discontent of man´s legitimate daughter,
born of the paradox between an earthly mortal and fragile being
and a permanent vocation of spiritual transcendence,
the Glory always seduced the human eye as a goddess tempting and irresistible,
carrying symbols of immortality,
whether they be military insignia,
or laurel wreaths,
or palms of martyrdom.
Effectively, the Glory is as old as man,
because it is what nesting in the core of your being,
breathes the spirit, encourages the commission of great deeds.
This desire for transcendence, for the Hellenic world,
came through the glory of arms.
The youth of ancient Greece dreamed die as heroes of struggle.
Every citizen of respect,
of politicians like Pericles
until poets like Sophocles,
participated in battles.
By do not believe in a supreme divinity creator of heaven and earth,
nor in an afterlife from which it would enjoy the pleasures and rewards,
the only way to perpetuate life was through fame,
doing heroics deeds to stay forever on history.
In this line of thought, the absolute value of life is the lesser role of eternal fame and extreme loyalty to the ideals made.
Transcending the barrier of the instinct of fear essentially the face of suffering and death,
on the full experience of an ideology or practice in the name of an exalted dignity or honor,
the warriors of the Western classical tradition stand as demigods, in the fullness of their greatness,
and as such survive and persist in the collective memory of their fellow citizens.
The origin of the glory of arms dates back to Homer in his Iliad.
The maxim "To die gloriously is so much more important to have a long and peaceful life"
is based on Book IX,
when Odysseus, Phoenix and Ajax
try convince the hero Achilles to continue in the Trojan War.
Achilles faces two destinations self-exclusive:
For my mother Thetis, the goddess of the silver feet tells me that
I carry two types of destination from the day of my death.
If I stay here and fight in the city of the Trojans,
My return to home will not be possible, but my glory will last forever;
But if I return to home the beloved land of my fathers,
The excellence of my glory will not be possible, but there will be a long life
For me, and my death will not come so quickly.
We can infer from the poem that the kleos,
glory or fame won in a heroic battle,
is incompatible with the nostos,
a long and happy life.
Achilles chose kleos, knowing that to take glory he shall to die.
This myth reflects very well the order of priorities of the Hellenic world.
But there is another kind of glory, that seems common to most cultures and religions:
the glory of religious martyrdom.
Since always the man realized that the core of the annihilation of the enemy
is the religious flame that sustains it.
This flame gives to him identity,
extending the horizon beyond the expectations of physical destruction
and have become the vital core of his ideological stance in the face of death and life.
This way to glory is governed by a rigid self-discipline,
on the constant struggle with himself, against the vices,
by the flowering of Virtues.
This rise is deeply spiritual and liberating,
completely unrelated to the sense of worldly vanity.
This is bragging, not the true ascent of man.
From this perspective, what do we can say of Christian martyrdom?
Christians believe in eternal life,
so do not worry to do great things to immortalize your life.
He believes that the name of Jesus must be magnified, not his own,
so do not search to be honored with songs and festivals posthumous like the Greeks.
The Christian is peaceful, not warlike,
so do not see the sense in die fighting for have fame.
But it is precisely for these reasons that martyrdom
found such fertile ground among Christians of the early centuries.
We speculate that, upon entering the Hellenic culture,
Christianity took over and subverted the concept of glory.
The oppressive system of Antiquity did not offer the simple people great outlook on life.
Letting go of the world, in this context, it was not so difficult.
Hence to risk their lives by faith, by an ideal higher than the everyday mediocrity,
it was almost a natural step.
The Christian does not give his life for the sake of his own fame:
he does to magnify the glory of God.
If prior to obtain glory was to die in war,
the Christian dies peacefully, forgiving their offenders.
Christian still prefer the kleos to nostos, like the Greeks,
but reframes the kleos:
no longer a heroic death in combat, but a peaceful death in defense of the faith.
Anyway, not wanting the same Greek glory,
the martyrs, in a sense, conquered it.
Their names were inscribed forever among the heroes of Christianity
and if we can not talk of posthumous songs and festivals,
they are still honored with prayers and festivities.
To die gloriously is better than to have a long and peaceful life.
Greek glory and Christian martyrdom, by João Paulo Veloso
Bibliography
Thanks to...