Lugdunum, modern Lyon, was a Roman city where the Rhône and Saône meet, and the site of the sanctuary of the Three Gauls. In 177, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, it had a Christian community that included easterners and Gauls. It was led by an elderly bishop called Pothinus. Among its members was a slave woman named Blandina.
The Horror
Almost everything we know comes from a single document: a letter from the churches of Vienne and Lyon to the churches of Asia and Phrygia, copied into Eusebius’s Church History roughly 150 years later. It is an account by the survivors, written by the faithful, so it should be read as a witness statement with a clear loyalty. Nothing independent confirms its detail. Historians generally accept the persecution itself, and Wikipedia notes that part of the narrative is disputed.
By the letter’s account, the trouble began with the crowd rather than the courts. Christians were driven from the baths, the markets and public places, then beaten, robbed and pelted. They were dragged to the forum and questioned, then held until the governor arrived. The rumours against them were the usual ones, cannibalism and incest. Under the threat of torture, the letter says, some pagan household slaves confirmed the charges. A young Christian called Vettius Epagathus asked to speak in the accused’s defence. The governor only asked whether he was a Christian himself. He said yes, and he joined the accused.
Pothinus, the letter says, was more than ninety years old. He was struck about the head and dragged before the tribunal, then thrown into prison, where he died two days later.
Blandina was the one the community feared for. Her earthly mistress worried that she was too frail to confess. The letter says that the torturers worked on her from morning until evening until they admitted they were beaten, and that her whole body was broken and torn. Her answer was always the same: “I am a Christian, and there is nothing vile done by us.” The letter gives a similar account of the deacon Sanctus, who would not even give his name or city, and answered every question with the same confession. It says red-hot brazen plates were laid on his body.
Then came the spectacle. The letter says a public festival drew crowds from all over Gaul, and the prisoners were brought into the arena. Blandina was tied to a stake and hung there as prey for the beasts. None of them touched her, and she was taken back to the cells. Attalus, a man of rank from Pergamum, was paraded round the arena with a tablet reading “This is Attalus the Christian”. When it emerged that he was a Roman citizen the governor sent him back to prison and wrote to Caesar. The letter says that the reply was to put the Christians to death, and to free any who denied Christ. Citizens were to be beheaded, and the rest thrown to the beasts. Attalus was later returned to the arena and died in the iron seat, a red-hot chair. The letter has him telling the crowd, “this is devouring men”. A physician named Alexander, a Phrygian who had lived in Gaul for years, was condemned to the beasts and, the letter says, neither groaned nor murmured.
On the last day Blandina was brought in with Ponticus, a boy of about fifteen. Both were pressed to swear by the pagan gods. Ponticus refused, and, the letter says, Blandina urged him on until he died under torture. Then she faced it herself. The letter lists the scourge, the beasts and the roasting seat, then a net in which she was tossed by a bull. By its account she no longer felt it, and was finally killed. The writers add that no woman among the pagans had endured so much. In the same letter she is described as “small and weak and despised, yet clothed with Christ the mighty and conquering Athlete”.
The dead were not left alone. Those who had died in the prison were thrown to the dogs. The remains of the others were guarded by soldiers for six days. Eventually they were burned, and the ashes were swept into the Rhône. The letter has the persecutors saying, “Now let us see if they will rise again”. Wikipedia, a secondary source, gives 48 victims at Lugdunum; the letter as consulted does not give that count. The same article says Irenaeus, then a presbyter, carried a letter from the imprisoned Christians to Pope Eleutherius in Rome.
The Modern Relic
The Amphitheatre of the Three Gauls sits at the foot of La Croix-Rousse hill. It began as part of the sanctuary of Rome and Augustus around AD 19 and was enlarged early in the second century to seat roughly 20,000. Only the support walls of half the structure survived, because the rest was lost to nineteenth-century building. They stand today in the Jardin des Plantes. In the middle of the arena a post commemorates the martyrs of 177. It also commemorates the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1986.
The letter does not say which arena was used, so linking the martyrs to this particular building is traditional. It is a reasonable inference, since it was the main amphitheatre of the provincial capital. The stake in the middle is a memorial put up in modern times and nothing like Blandina’s.
No grave or relic of Blandina can be offered here. The letter says the remains were burned and the ashes swept into the Rhône, so any tomb or relic claimed for the martyrs would be later tradition, which is unverified.
