Suplício, martírio e poder no Baixo Império Romano : as representações pagã e cristã sobre o corpo sentenciado

Abstract

Between 235 and 284, the Roman Empire lives a period of serious crisis known as Military Anarchy. In this period, besides successive usurpations, the Empire has to face transportation difficulties, interminable conflagrations with the “Barbarians” and Persians, corruption of civil servants, lack of workforce for the army and peasant and urban uprisings, which demand restructuring the State in order to overcome the effects generated by this crisis. Subsequently, in 284, Diocletian rises and opens a set of reforms aiming at ensuring the Empire’s governability. In a context of serious political crisis such as this, the Roman authorities also deflagrate an ostensive religious persecution in the name of polytheistic traditions, whose opponent, Christianity, starts to conquer popular visibility and to threaten the mos maiorum. New relations with power and new representations among the groups involved are then established, which marks the society of that time significantly. Taking this into account, this dissertation analyzes the pagan and Christian representations of the Christian body that suffered with the persecutions by Decius, Valerian and Diocletian. From the struggle between the Christian monotheism defenders and the protectors of Roman traditions, Christian martyrs rise, i.e. individuals who, before the refusal of giving up their faith, have their bodies tortured in several ways by the imperial power, in a way that their bodies represent, to us today, records that can reveal indications of the fight of representations between pagans and Christians at the time.