A Catholic model of martyrdom in the Post-Reformation era: the Bishop in Seventeenth-Century France

Abstract

By the seventeenth century, episcopal martyrdom was an established reality and ideal throughout the Catholic church. Bishops could pay homage to the celebrated prelates of the early church who had gone bravely to their deaths at the hands of their persecutors. Equally, they had access to the white martyrs who had lived their lives as ‘spiritual athletes,’ martyring themselves through extraordinary sufferings for Christ. French bishops shared in this legacy, and their church had its own tradition of episcopal martyrology.2 Of course, no French bishop need expect to die a martyr’s death by 1600, but he faced his own challenges in an ancien régime that expected its bishops to be ecclesiastical leaders, political agents and prominent members of the social establishment.