MARTYN, WILLIAM CARLOS: Presbyterian; b. in New York City Dec. 15, 1841. He was educated at Union Theological Seminary, from which he was graduated in 1869. He was ordained to the ministry of his denomination in the same year, and held successive pastorates at the Pilgrim Church, St. Louis, Mo. (1869-71), Portsmouth, N. H. (1871-1876), Thirty-fourth Street Reformed Dutch Church, New York City (1876,83); Bloomingdale Reformed Dutch Church, New York City (1883-90); First Reformed Dutch Church, Newark, N. J. (1890-92); and Sixth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Ill. (1892-1894). Since 1894 he has been engaged in literature and lecturing, and from 1897 to 1903 was director of the Abbey Press, New York City. In addition to editing The American Reformers Series (New York, 1890-96), he has written John Milton (New York, 1866); Life of Martin Luther (1866); History of the English Puritans (1867); History of the Huguenots (1868); The Dutch Reformation. (1869); The Pilgrim Fathers of New England (1870); Wendell Phillips (1890); William E. Dodge (1891); John. B. Gough, the Apostle of Cold Water (1893); Christian Citizenship (1897); and Sour Saints and Sweet Sinners (1898).
MARTYRARIUS: The cleric who had charge of a martyrium, that is a church containing the grave of a martyr. Deacons, presbyters, and even abbots have been martyrarii. During the Middle Ages there were such clerics in various countries; at Rome they were tatted custodes martyrum; the name martymrius occurs, as far as is known, only in France.
MARTYRIANS. See Messalians.
MARTYRS AND CONFESSORS: Names applied
in the early Church to those who gave up their lives
for their Christian faith, or underwent
great sufferings short of death for the same cause. The name
"martyr" (Gk.
martyr, " witness")
is applied in the
New Testament both to those who were eye-witnesses of the life and resurrection of Jesus and to
those who sealed their
testimony with their blood
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When, with the proclamation of Christianity as the State religion, martyrdom became a thing of the past, and at the same time the influence of pagan superstition was felt in the Church, the honor paid to the martyrs increased greatly. Prudentius and Fortunatus celebrated their deeds in verse; altars were erected over their places of sepulture, and great confidence was placed in their intercession with God-though even now a Jovinian was found to protest against exaggerated devotion to them and a Vigilantius to oppose the veneration of their relics (Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum, II., xx.; Adversus Vigilantium, i.).
Martyrs were not lacking, however, in the later ages of the Church. In Persia, Armenia, Arabia, and elsewhere the Christians were the objects of pagan persecution shortly after Constantine's con version, and later in other parts of the world they suffered at the hands of the Arian Germans and of the followers of Mohammed, while the dominant Church learned to apply the same treatment to heretics. The Donatists had already used this as a proof that the Catholic was not the true Church. The persecuting spirit pervades the Middle Ages and marks with blood the story of the Waldenses, the strict Franciscans, the Apostolic Brethren, the Lollards, and the disciples of the martyred Huss. After the Reformation Luther soon had occasion to write hymns in celebration of its martyrs, and the Anabaptists have left us a number of theirs to attest the joy with which they endured persecution. The Reformed Church of France was a martyr-church. In the mission fields, especially in Japan and China, many Christians of the Roman obedience sealed their testimony with their blood; and on the Evangelical side the blood of the martyrs has proved, in Tertullian's phrase, " the seed of the Church " in Madagascar and more recently in Uganda, China, and elsewhere. The Evangelical church canonizes no martyrs, and believes it to be as great a thing to live for Christ as to die for him; but it, too, cherishes the examples of those who have been, in the literal sense, "faithful unto death."Bibliography: Quite adequate literature is given under Acta Martyrum, Acta Sanctorum; Saints, and the Veneration of Saints. The customs and early literature are well indicated in Bingham, Origines, XIII., iii. 2-3, ix. 5, XIV., iii. 14, XVI., iii. 4, XVIII., iv. 10, XX., vii. Consult further: Analecta BoUandiana, Paris, Brussels, and Geneva, 1882 sqq.; Gass, in ZHT, 1859; H. Delehaye, L'AmphitUStre Plaoien et ass environs dans lee textes hagiographiquea, Brussels, 1897; E. Am_linesu, Lee Actea des martyrea de l'4!gliae copte, Paris, 1900; H. Aehelie, in Abhandlungen der Göttinger Gesellschaft, 1900; F.Kattenbusch, in ZNTW, iv (1903), 111 sqq.; F. Augar, in TU, xxvui (1905); A. Linsenmayer, Die Bekampfung des Christentums durch den römischen Stoat, Munich, 1905.
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