Martyrs of Lyon

The account survives in a letter from “the servants of Christ residing at Vienne and Lyons” to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia, which Eusebius copied into his Ecclesiastical History (V.1). Many of the Christians of the two cities were Greeks from Asia Minor. Barred first from the baths, the market and other public places and harassed by crowds, they were arrested, questioned in the forum and jailed to await the governor; slaves threatened with torture accused them of “Thyestean banquets and Oedipean intercourse” — cannibalism and incest. The governor consulted Marcus Aurelius, who ruled that those who confessed should die and those who denied their faith should go free: Roman citizens were beheaded, the rest sent to the beasts in the amphitheatre during a public festival that drew crowds from many peoples. The bishop Pothinus, over ninety, died in prison after being beaten; the slave Blandina, whose endurance wore out her torturers, was the last to die, after Ponticus, a boy of about fifteen, the deacon Sanctus of Vienne, Attalus of Pergamon and Maturus. The bodies were burned and the ashes thrown into the Rhône. Tradition counts 48 martyrs; the names of 43 have survived.

The presbyter Irenaeus, who had carried a letter from the imprisoned confessors to Bishop Eleutherus of Rome, succeeded Pothinus as bishop and about 180 wrote Against Heresies. The persecution was a local one: until the reign of Decius (249–251) action against Christians depended on provincial governors and popular hostility. A stake in the arena of the Amphitheatre of the Three Gauls now commemorates the martyrs.