Christian Martyrdom in the Reformation Era

November 6, 2025
Presenters: Prof. Brad Gregory (Notre Dame), Prof. Catherine Mooney (CSTM), Prof. Emanuele Colombo (Lynch School), Fr. Robert Carbonneau, C.P. (Ricci Institute)

This presentation offers a 25-year retrospective on Brad Gregory’s landmark work, Salvation at Stake, examining the phenomenon of early modern Christian martyrdom across Protestant, Anabaptist, and Catholic traditions. The panel highlights Gregory’s core methodological challenge to reductionist approaches to religion, arguing instead for a "hermeneutic of understanding" that prioritizes the question, "What did it mean to them?". Presenters explore the essential requirements for martyrdom: the existence of the concept in a culture, authorities willing to prosecute religious heterodoxy as a capital crime, and individuals willing to die to ensure their eternal salvation.

The discussion expands the book’s original European focus into global Jesuit missions, detailing the "geography of martyrs" in 16th- and 17th-century Japan, China, and Korea. Key topics include the Jesuit desire for martyrdom evidenced in the Litterae Indipetae, the Confucian ancestor rites controversy in China, and the distinction between "wet martyrs" and "dry martyrs" during 20th-century religious persecutions. The presentation concludes with reflections on how the religious intransigence of the Reformation era inadvertently contributed to modern secularization processes and continues to influence the perspectival character of martyr recognition in the contemporary world.

Sponsored by:
Société des Bollandistes https://bollandistes.org/
The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History
https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/centers/ricci.html
The Clough School of Theology and Ministry https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/stm