Martyrs, Fanaticism and Empire Defended

Abstract

The need for the Curia to defend the medieval status quo required orthodox polemicists to parry several of the Protestant polemical thrusts, including the development of Protestant martyrologies. Orthodox propagandists such as Rezka developed a new Catholic martyrology, constructed from the names of those who had suffered at the hands of the Protestant heretics. Rezka included a martyrology in his De Atheismus et phalarismus evangelicorum (1596), the title of which refers to the legendary cruelty of Phalaris, a Sicilian tyrant, intended as a byword for Protestant cruelty. Even in the eighteenth century, Vincenzo Gotti could include a martyrology in his Veritas religionis Christianae (1735–40).¹ But if the intention of Rezka and others had been to rival the work of the influential Protestant martyrologist John Foxe, they were to be disappointed. The innovation of a specifically Protestant martyrology fulfilled the religious needs of Protestants in a manner which new additions to the already long list of Catholic martyrs could not. Zealous Protestant martyrologists were also equipped with the weighty historical evidence and intermeshing contemporary reality of the supposed apostasy of Rome, something which — in propaganda terms — was very difficult for pro-curial propagandists to equal.