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We have to do here with a letter purportedly written by an anonyomous Christian in Lyons to churches in Phrygia describing recent persecutions and martyrdoms experienced in the cities of Lyons and Vienne, in which "myriads were distinguished by marttyrdom" (Eusebius, EH, 5.1.1).

See W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom in the Early Church, 1-22.
To demonstrate that this letter is spurious about all one has to do is listen to what Frend tells us.

Evidence

Eusebius: Letter from the Martyrs at Lyons (EH 5.1-3)
Eusebius's comments concerning Pothinus and Irenaeus (e.e., EH 5.4.1)
Irenaeus himself mentions neither his residence in Gaul (let alone his bishopric) nor the persecution in Lyons.

Comments

Two problems arise immediately.

First of all, the question is why people in Gaul would send such a letter to churches so far away in Asia and Phrygia (EH 5.1.2). Why Phrygia? What special connection did Christians in Gaul have with Christians in Phrygia? If Eusebius knew the answers to such questions, why did he withhold them? Clearly, he was not writing here as a historian, but as a church apologist. And Frend has just as little interest in such questions.

Frend observes, "As we have seen, there were many links between the Churches in Gaul and those in Asia Minor in those years" (16), but it is unclear where we saw this.

Frend tries to show that the people in Gaul were very sophisticated. He cites Irenaeus AH 3.4.2 and 4.24.2 to the effect that he "used Celtic to spread the Gospel in Gaul"" (3, n. 23). (These texts say no such thing.) And as evidence for the wealth of people in Gaul, Frend cites "the Italian merchants who settled in Cirta (in Egypt) in the second century B.C. and perhaps in London in the first century, or the Syrians in the Rhinland and elsewhere in the fourth century." (4f)

We are told that Christians "had prospered, some had begun to learn Latin and taken firm roots in Lyons; they had begun to be influential--and one way or another they had aroused the deep-seated of the mass of the population." (5) In which way or another?

A second problem has to do with the relationship between the churches in Lyons and Vienne. Eusebius relates that Christians from "both churches" (Lyons and Vienne) were sought out and persecuted (EH 5.1.13). Frend observes (6), "How this happened is not at all certain -- since the churches were located in different provinces with different governors" (cf. n. 47).

The Basis for the Persecution

Frend observes: "How the trouble started we do not know. Neither the authors of the massacre nor the immediate pretext are mentioned." (5) Why would these items have been omitted? We don't know why the letter was written. If one purpose of the letter, however, was to help others avoid such persecution, these would have been important items.

Frend tells us, "They were accused, and after confessing to being Christians, flung into prison to await the governor's return." (6) The text simply says that they "were accused and confessed" (anakrithentes kai homologêsantes). (EH 5.1.8) The case of Epagathus that follows is more precise: He is asked by the governor whether he is a Christian, to which he "confesses in clear tones," and is "taken into the ranks of the martyrs." (EH 5.1.10). Frend observes (n. 44) that Mart. Pionii relates a "similar procedure." But the basic question here again is how (and whether) one could legally be condemned to death simply for being a Christian?

Frend: "The examinations went on. "...admission of being a Christian was sufficient to convict..."" (7) Convict of what? Being a Christian? Elsewhere Frend explains: "There was no doubt that Christianity was a crime. It is explicitly stated in the survivors' letter that confessors faced no other charge while they persisted... " (12) That something is "explicitly stated," however, does not make it true. Such statements require critical evaluation - especially since, as Frend himself observes (12) the governor "did not follow the practice usual in Pliny's time and take steps to send the Roman citizens among the Christians to Rome to stand trial there."

We are told that the animals refused to touch Blandina. (EH 5.1.40) Frend evidently doesn't find this dfficult to believe (8).

In a similar way we are told (EH 5.1.24) that after many tortures, Sanctus not only said nothing wrong, but that "beyond all human expectation, he raised himself up and his body straightened in the subsequent tortures, and he regained his former appearance and the use of his limbs, so that through the grace of Christ the second torturing became not the torment but the cure." This is also beyond all human belief, and has to be Christian legend.

As reason for persecution, Frend tells us (9): "As always in the second and early third centuries, there is popular hatred, the prime mover of anti-Christian outbreaks... The intense fury of the people and their fear that somehow or other the Christians might triumph over their gods, stands out on every page of the confessors' story... There seems to be little doubt that fear of the violation of the tutelary gods through execrable and revolutionary rites provided the final emotional impulse towards persecution. The condign punishment of the Christians was regarded as a necessary vindication of the gods and indeed, a form of human sacrifice to them." (9f)

Nowhere in the actual letter, however, do we find any reference to pagan fear that the Christians "might triumph over their gods" as a reason for their "fury" (cf., e.g., EH 5.17). It is true that in 5.1.31 it is said that the pagans "thought that in this way they would vindicate their gods," but Frend's elaboration goes far beyond this -- and to evaluate even this statement we must begin with the recognition that it is a Christian interpretation of what the pagans supposedly did.

Frend tells us (10) that "few (pagans) seem to have had any doubt that the Christians were in fact cannibals." A sweeping statement for which he provides no evidence.

Frend observes that there was a variety of pagan cults, "whose rites could be offensive to public order and morals," whose practice "went on unhindered." This presents a real problem for Frend, who speculates that Gnostic practices of magic and orgiastic vice in Lyons (supposedly documented by Irenaeus) "incensed the mob against the Christians" -- even though he admits that the Gnostics themselves do not seem to have shared the fate of their more orthodox brethern. (11)

Frend observes that "the persecution was directed purely against individuals:

So persecution is here today and gone tomorrow, and no one knows whence it comes or whither it goes. All this makes the story sound fictional. The point of such stories -- like the story of Paul's persecution of the church in Acts -- is precisely that such deeds have no rational (or legal) basis.

"It is time to speak about the victims themselves. Their constancy and steadfast devotion were truly amazing. No passage of time, no change of circumstances can dim their glory. Blandina is to be numbered among the world's heroines." (13) The myth is perpetuated!

Frend observes that "even in the Lyons community's rudimentary state of development, the martyrs were already regarded as a class apart - i.e., as those assigned the klêros tôn marturwn ("lot/destiny/fate of the martyrs") (EH 5.1.26, 48, 55) "The sense in all these passages is not so much the normal sense of 'inheritance,' but of an actual group, a portion, set apart."... "Behind their action lies the whole theology of martyrdom in the early Church. They were seeking by their death to attain to the closest possible imitation of Christ's pasion and death. This was the heart of their attitude." (15)

If the "whole theology of martyrdom in the early Church" is presupposed, this is another indication that we probably have to do here with later martyrological legend - as the following comment indicates

"Many of these ideas were being expressed in other Acta of this period. Indeed, they seem to be part and parcel of Christian teaching especially among the Churches in Asia" (16)

If this were the case, why did the church in distant Gaul have to send a letter to the churches in Asia instructing them about such things?

Frend persuasively argues that many features ascribed to the martyrs in Gaul are also very characteristic of Montanists in Phrygia (16f). For Frend this indicates a close relationship between the churches in Lyons and in Phrygia. But it might also indicate the region where this legend actually originated -- in spite the supposed differences Frend then calls attention to.

Link with Judaism (18f)

Frend observes: "A number of similarities in ideas, style and vocabulary have been established between the letter and the Maccabean works. The most obvious point of contact between the two is the identification of the heroic mother of the Maccabean youths and the slave Blandina... One can point to other resemblances." (19) "Looking at the evidence as it is, it would be difficult to deny that the writer of the Lyons letter was saturated in Maccabean literature." (20)

Frend explains, however: "This does not mean that the events he described have been exagerated.

Frend suggests that the persecution of Christians in Lyons was a form of anti-semitism, and that "the problem which Christians posed to the Empire was fundamentally the same as that posed by Judaism, namely the reconciliation of the claims of a theocracy with those of a world empire." (22)

This is interesting. Sometimes Frend blames the Jews, and other times he identifies Christians with the Jews as victims of persecution.

G.E.M. de Ste. Croix
"Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?," Past and Present 26 (1963), 6-38.

Ste. Croix regards it as improbable that there was ever a "general law" specifically proscribing Christianity, "a notion which, as far as I am aware, no specialist in Roman public law and administration has ever been willing to entertain, popular as it has been among ecclesiastical historians." (p. 14)

With regard to process, Ste. Croix observes:

"It is important to remember that the standard procedure in punishing Christians was 'accusatory' and not 'inquistorial.': a governor would not normally take action until a formal denunciation (delatio nominis) was issued by a delator, a man who was prepared not merely to inform but actually to conduct the prosecution in person, and to take the risk of being himself arraigned on a charge of calumnia, malicious persecution, if he failed to make out a sufficient case.""(15)

Ste. Croix observes, however, that "this principle, however, could be and sometimes was disregarded," and the example he gives is that at Lyons and Vienne in 177, "when the governor did order a search to be made for Christians..."

Ste. Croix's further discussion makes clear that the procedures portrayed in this account of these martyrdoms were so exceptional -- even a Roman citizen was condemned to the beasts -- that it takes on the appearance of Christian fiction. But the same is true for many of the Christian Martyr Acts.

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