[1] Ibn Khatib, apud Dozy, ii. 210.

    [2] Yonge, p. 63.

Before relating what steps the latter took in conjunction with the Moslem authorities to put down the dangerous outbreak of fanaticism, it will be interesting to note what was the attitude of the different sections of the Church towards the misguided men who gave themselves up to death, and their claims to the crown of martyrdom.  Those who denied the validity of these claims, rested their contention on the grounds, that the so-called martyrs had compassed their own destruction, there being no persecution at the time; that they had worked no miracles in proof of their high claims; that they had been slain by men who believed in the true God; that they had suffered an easy and immediate death; and that their bodies had corrupted like those of other men.

It was an abuse of words, said the party of moderation, to call these suicides by the holy name of martyrs, when no violence in high places had forced them to deny their faith,[1] or interfered with their due observance of Christianity.  It was merely an act of ostentatious pride—­and pride was the root of all evil—­to court danger.  Such conduct had never been enjoined by Christ, and was quite alien from the meekness and humility of His character.[2]

They might have added that such voluntary martyrdoms had been expressly condemned,

(a.) By the circular letter of the Church of Smyrna to the other churches, describing Polycarp’s martyrdom, in the terms:  “We commend not those who offer themselves of their own accord, for that is not what the gospel teacheth us:"[3]

(b.) By St Cyprian,[4] who, when brought before the consul and questioned, said “our discipline forbiddeth that any should offer themselves of their own accord;” and in his last letter he says:  “Let none of you offer himself to the pagans, it is sufficient if he speak when apprehended:” 

(c.) By Clement of Alexandria:  “We also blame those who rush to death, for there are some, not of us, but only bearing the same name, who give themselves up:"[5]

(d.) Implicitly by the synod of Elvira, or Illiberis (circa 305), one of the canons of which forbade him to be ranked as a martyr, who was killed on the spot for breaking idols: 

(e.) By Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, who, when consulted on the question of reducing the immense lists of acknowledged martyrs, gave it as his opinion that those should be first excluded who had courted martyrdom.[6] One bishop alone, and he a late one, Benedict XIV. of Rome,[7] has ventured to approve what the Church has condemned.  Nor is this the only instance in which the Roman Church has set aside the decisions of an earlier Christendom.