Word Finder - martyr

definition

One who willingly accepts being put to death for adhering openly to one's religious beliefs; notably, saints canonized after martyrdom.

example

Saint Stephen was the first Christian martyr.

definition

(by extension) One who sacrifices his or her life, station, or something of great personal value, for the sake of principle or to sustain a cause.

definition

(with a prepositional phrase of cause) One who suffers greatly and/or constantly, even involuntarily.

example

Stan is a martyr to arthritis, Chris a martyr to Stan's endless moaning about it.

definition

To make someone into a martyr by putting him or her to death for adhering to, or acting in accordance with, some belief, especially religious; to sacrifice on account of faith or profession.

definition

To persecute.

example

Some religious and other minorities were martyred until extinction.

definition

To torment; to torture.

example

The lovely Amoret, whose gentle heart

John Penry, the Puritan martyr, was born at Cefn-brith in this parish.

Stephen became a martyr in August 257.

He was represented as a warrior performing superhuman feats, as a ruler dispensing perfect justice, and even as a martyr suffering for the faith.

The fraternity of White Penitents buried the body with great ceremony, and performed a solemn service for the deceased as a martyr; the Franciscans followed their example; and these formalities led to the popular belief in the guilt of the unhappy family.

The Terrorists paid a veritable worship to his memory, as to a martyr of Liberty.

She started to refuse, but he insisted, Don't be a martyr.

As long as the Christian Church was itself persecuted by the pagan empire, it advocated freedom of conscience, and insisted that religion could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion (Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius); but almost immediately after Christianity was adopted as the religion of the Roman empire the persecution of men for religious opinions began.

Ever since he has been venerated as a martyr.

He was beheaded on the 14th of September 258, the first African bishop to obtain the martyr's crown.

But be this as it may, he had no sooner adopted his new creed than he resolved to profess it; " a momentary glow of enthusiasm " had raised him above all temporal considerations, and accordingly, on June 8, 1753, he records that having " privately abjured the heresies" of his childhood before a Catholic priest of the name of Baker, a Jesuit, in London, he announced the same to his father in an elaborate controversial epistle which his spiritual adviser much approved, and which he himself afterwards described to Lord Sheffield as having been " written with all the pomp, the dignity, and self-satisfaction of a martyr."

In the year 202 a persecution arose, in which the father of Origen became a martyr, and the family lost their livelihood.

Ardent spirits craved the martyr's crown, and to confess Christ in persecution was to attain a glory inferior only to that won by those who actually died.

Another motive for multiplying the number of graves operated when the cubiculum contained the remains of any noted saint or martyr.

They consisted in a gathering at the martyr's tomb on the anniversary of his death.

But a martyr's death in itself was enough.

He was murdered, which led to his veneration as a martyr.

The headsman's axe proved more fatal, and the martyr's body was borne by angels to Mount Sinai, where Justinian I.

The year 1498, in which Savonarola was to die a martyr's death, opened amid seemingly favourable auspices.

It has monuments to Patrick Hamilton, the martyr, and Thomas Hog (1628-1692), the Scottish divine, for some time a prisoner on the Bass.

Martyr inflicted another heavy defeat on the mutineers at Mruli.

Colonel Martyr at the close of the year (1899) undertook an expedition up the Nile, and extended the limits of the protectorate in that direction.

The custom of delivering expositions or comments more or less extemporaneous on the lessons of the day at all events passed over soon and readily into the Christian Church, as may be gathered from the first Apology (c. 67) of Justin Martyr, where we read that, in connexion with the practice of reading portions from the collected writings of the prophets and from the memoirs of the apostles, it had by that time become usual for the presiding minister to deliver a discourse in which "he admonishes the people, stirring them up to an imitation of the good works which have been brought before their notice."

The most important feature of the town is the great shrine of Hosain, containing the tomb of the martyr, with its golden dome and triple minarets, two of which are gilded.

This temple owes its preservation to its use as a church of St Barbara, a local martyr, also claimed by the Egyptian Heliopolis.

Justin Martyr (163-167) certainly uses the Gospel; but his conception of Jesus' life is so strictly Synoptic that he can hardly have accepted it as from an apostolic eyewitness.

It may be noted also that the same view of the origin of the Gospel of Mark appears to have been held by a contemporary of Papias, Justin Martyr.

With the middle of the century we reach a considerable writer in Justin Martyr.

The poet Prudentius describes how, on the day of the martyr's death, an innumerable multitude of pilgrims flocked round the site.

The caution of Gelasius was not long preserved; Gregory of Tours, for example, asserts that the saint's relics actually existed in the French village of Le Maine, where many miracles were wrought by means of them; and Bede, while still explaining that the Gesta Georgii are reckoned apocryphal, commits himself to the statement that the martyr was beheaded under Dacian, king of Persia, whose wife Alexandra, however, adhered to the Christian faith.

Marco (now converted into a national museum), a series of frescoes, beginning towards 1443; in the first cloister is the Crucifixion with St Dominic kneeling; and the same treatment recurs on a wall near the dormitory; in the chapterhouse is a third Crucifixion, with the Virgin swooning, a composition of twenty life-sized figures - the red background, which has a strange and harsh effect, is the misdoing of some restorer; an "Annunciation," the figures of about three-fourths of life-size, in a dormitory; in the adjoining passage, the "Virgin enthroned," with four saints; on the wall of a cell, the "Coronation of the Virgin," with Saints Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Benedict, Dominic, Francis and Peter Martyr; two Dominicans welcoming Jesus, habited as a pilgrim; an "Adoration of the Magi"; the "Marys at the Sepulchre."

Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here about 633, which in 903 became the burial place of King Edmund, who was slain by the Danes about 870, and owed most of its early celebrity to the reputed miracles performed at the shrine of the martyr king.

When he did emigrate in 1792 he found himself regarded as a martyr to the church and the king, and was at once named archbishop in partibus, and extra nuncio to the diet at Frankfort, and in 1794 cardinal.

He is commemorated as a martyr by the Greek Church on the 16th of November, and by the Roman on the 21st of September, the scene of his martyrdom being placed in Ethiopia.

In 1275 Amicia, countess of Devon, claimed to hold fairs at Tiverton at the feasts of St Andrew and St Giles, and at the translation of St Thomas the Martyr.

Theodore Beza from Geneva and Peter Martyr Vermigli from Zurich appeared at the colloquy; the German theologians to whom invitations had been despatched only arrived in Paris after the discussion was broken off.

Royalist authors have made of Cottereau a hero and martyr, titles to which his claim is not established.

Amongst them may be mentioned a history of the dispute with Palamas; biographies of his uncle and early instructor John, metropolitan of Heraclea, and of the martyr Codratus of Antioch; funeral orations for Theodore Metochita, and the two emperors Andronicus; commentaries on the wanderings of Odysseus and on Synesius's treatise on dreams; tracts on orthography and on words of doubtful meaning; a philosophical dialogue called Florentius or Concerning Wisdom; astronomical treatises on the date of Easter and the preparation of the astrolabe; and an extensive correspondence.

The Apostolic Fathers say nothing about Simon Magus, but with Justin Martyr we get startling developments.

This discovery has led many to suspect that Justin Martyr has somehow been hoaxed.

But Justin Martyr was decidedly weak in history, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that he may have confused the Simon of Acts with a heretical leader of the same name who lived much nearer to his own time, especially as this other Simon also had a great reputation for magic. A full century must have elapsed between the conversion of Simon Magus to Christianity and the earliest date possible (which is the one that we have adopted) for the composition of Justin Martyr's First Apology.

Justin Martyr could not have been mistaken as to the fact that the bulk of his countrymen were followers of a religious leader named Simon, whose disciple Menander he seems to speak of as an elder contemporary of his own.

The circumstances of Lull's death caused him to be regarded as a martyr, local patriotism helped to magnify his merits, and his fantastic doctrines found many enthusiastic partisans.

At Oxford he first adhered to the conservative side, and defended the doctrines of the church against Hooper; but his confidence was somewhat shaken by another public disputation which he had with Peter Martyr.

Stanton in 1887, where he is styled " a martyr whose cause is deferred for future investigation."

He has been claimed as a martyr, and as such his name is given in the Roman calendar and elsewhere, but his title to this honour is by no means proved, and he has been probably confused with another bishop of the same name.

His merit lies in the fact that he was the first to deal systematically with the question of Church and State, and the position thus taken up by him, and the manner in which that position was assumed, gave rise to a lifelong conflict between Giannone and the Church; and in spite of his retractation in prison at Turin, he deserves the palm--as he certainly endured the sufferings - of a confessor and martyr in the cause of what he deemed historical truth.

Two years later biographical studies of Theodore Beza and Peter Martyr Vermili (Leben des Theodor de Beza and des Peter Martyr Vermili, Heidelberg, 1809) revealed more genuine scholarship. In 1812 appeared his History of the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East (Geschichte der bilderstiirmenden Kaiser des ostromischen Reichs), in which he controverted some points in Gibbon and sought to avoid painting the past in present-day colours.

There is, however, a certain coolness about the hero's affection for his wife which somewhat detracts from the merit of his sacrifice; while the Christian part of the matter is scarcely so well treated as in the Saint Genest of Rotrou or the Virgin Martyr of Massinger.

A virgin martyr who is threatened with loss of honour as a bitterer punishment than loss of life offers points as powerful as they are perilous.

Our earliest detailed accounts of baptism are in the Teaching of the Apostles (c.90-120) and in Justin Martyr.