Dying for What? Secular Transformations of Martyrdom

Abstract

This article studies different forms of martyrdom in secular contexts, tracing their roots back to Western European Christian traditions. The article argues that distinct trajectories of martyrdom have emerged: (a) the more passive martyr, who refuses to acknowledge sovereign power and dies for a transcendent truth, and (b) the more assertive martyr, who sacrifices their life fighting for God and the sovereign. In secular contexts, this assertive martyr fights for secular ideals such as ‘freedom’ or ‘nation’ and represents the symbolic body of the sovereign. The historical distinction between divine truth and state falsehood has been turned into differentiations between democratic rule and threats like terrorism. To further study this transition, this article studies discourses following the deaths of Pim Fortuyn and Jaques Hamel, as both were strongly labeled as martyrs. This results in the final part of the article that examines the cult of commemoration surrounding soldiers in the US and the Netherlands. It argues that the assertive martyr has reached its fully secularized form in these contexts. The transcendent imagery of state sovereignty is evident in the sacrificial discourses around fallen soldiers. At this point of death, the state’s power is reinforced as a transcendent norm and reveals itself in those who ‘sacrifice’ their lives for the freedom of many.

1. Introduction

In many religious traditions, ‘martyrdom’ is a concept with deep historical roots. In a secular context, however, this term seems a bit strange at first sight. After all, there are no normative secular traditions with discussions about the conditions of martyrdom, as is the case, for example, in some Christian or Islamic traditions. Yet, sometimes the term is explicitly used for people who ‘gave’ their lives for their ideals, for soldiers who died at the frontline, or even for victims of political or terrorist violence. Sometimes the term ‘martyr’ is confused with ‘fallen hero’. Yet this does not mean that the term is freely floating in secular societies. When the term is used, it still echoes its religious roots.

The argument that I will unfold in this article relates to the transformations of Christian ideas about martyrdom in secular, especially Western European contexts. What is striking here is that in the course of history, the term ‘martyr’ has been increasingly associated with political ideals. While in the first centuries of Christianity, when the term gained popularity, a martyr was mainly understood as someone who was executed by representatives of the official (Roman) state because of their beliefs, in the course of history, the martyr has been increasingly associated with the political ideals of the state itself. As a result, several aspects that traditionally define the term, such as ‘testimony’ and ‘conflict’, remain intact, but a few elements that are still present in traditional, religious interpretations of martyrdom have been fading away, such as ‘death as a moment of transition’ and—especially—‘the sovereign state as an evil power’ that carries out the execution of the martyr under its own right. It is this relationship between the martyr and the state that I will trace in this article. The importance of this subject relates to the way in which modern secular states search for unity and meaning. In this article, I demonstrate how the modern, secular state uses the deaths of heroes and soldiers to affirm its transcendent norms. Transformations of the classical concept of Christian martyrdom play a role in this, to the extent that the transcendent power revealed in the death of the classic martyrs reappears in secular contexts in the transcendent norms of the state. Although belief in the resurrection of Jesus may no longer be considered worth dying for in many Western countries, the modern secular imageries of the sovereign state—like tolerance and freedom—certainly are. In this article, I will trace the genesis of the modern secular martyr. I will show how especially the martyr’s relationship with violence has shifted significantly during its history. While the classic Christian martyr and its later modalities emphasized passivity against the violent state (which does not mean that these martyrs were pacifists per se), gradually, violence became a possible characteristic of the martyr. Since the Middle Ages, warriors too could be commemorated as martyrs. This process parallelled the encapsulation of the concept of martyrdom by state powers. However, the ‘secular martyr’, who eventually emerged out of this process, is still characterized by the duality that once guided the Christian martyr. But now, the radical transcendence that was witnessed by the classical martyr has immigrated into the transcendent norms of the sovereign state while the defiled state that was witnessed by the classic martyr has been integrated into the threats of modern democracies and not seldom contains an Islamic element. This last feature has guided the assertive martyr at least since the Crusades. While secular martyrs sacrifice their lives for the foundational imageries of the secular state, the discourse of sacrifice that once shaped traditional martyrologies is now adopted by the state to honor those who have fallen while defending its ideological and geographical borders. Death remains the ultimate event that evokes meaning.

In the first section of this article, I will examine these shifts and contextualize them within their historical framework. In the second part, I discuss two cases where the term ‘martyr’ has been employed within a secular–political context. Finally, I examine the ritual remembrance discourse surrounding soldiers who died for their nation, and study to what extent this discourse can be understood as an echo of the warring martyr, a figure with whom European Christianity has become familiar at least since the Crusades. The context to which I limit myself is that of Western Europe. It should be noted here that the boundaries within which martyrdom is interpreted are fluid. Consequently, it is important to interpret the context in which one’s death is understood as martyrdom and to identify changes that affect the interpretation of this term. In this article, I am not concerned with the normative question of what martyrdom is, but with the question of when people are called martyrs and what historical shifts we can observe in the socio-political and religious contexts in which this term occurs.

Throughout this article, I will discuss academic literature relevant to my argument. Particular attention will be given to literature that explores the concept of the secular martyr. In discussing two cases—Pim Fortuyn and Jacques Hamel—I will draw on news reports, columns, and social media posts to analyze how martyrdom is constructed in relation to the sovereign state.

2. The Religious Origins of the Secular Martyr

Despite the lack of a secular martyrdom tradition, the term ‘martyr’ is regularly used in secular societies, predominantly for people who paid for their ideals with their lives. To understand the meaning of the term and how the religious roots of martyrdom are still present in secular perspectives, it is important to go through the history of the Western European martyr with some rough strokes to find both consistency and contingency in how the term has been used. It is precisely by paying attention to this that we can observe shifts that are mainly caused by tensions between ‘secular’ power (later: the nation-state) on the one hand and religious or ideological convictions on the other.

The term ‘martyrdom’ stems from the Greek μάρτυς, ‘witness’, and appeared in the first half of the second century within Christian contexts (Bremmer 2019). It has been argued that the term has its roots in the Greco-Roman conception of noble death. We also encounter the concept in the Hellenistic period in Jewish contexts. For example, in the Jewish First Book of the Maccabees (around the first century before Common Era), ‘dying for faith’ is played out but not uncontested (van Henten 2007; Avemarie et al. 2023, pp. 4–5). We find another example in interpretations of Flavius Josephus’ De Bello Judaico (between 75 and 79 Common Era). The Sicarii of Masada who Josephus describes are often regarded as martyrs in Jewish memory. Their rejection of any authority other than God, combined with their willingness to kill in pursuit of their political agenda, however, makes their status as martyrs disputed by some scholars who contrast this image with martyrdom described in the narratives of the Maccabees (see Klawans 2016, p. 292). In the Christian context of the early centuries, the term became associated with witnessing the Christian faith before Roman courts and in places of execution such as the Roman arenas. Eric Ottenheijm (2017, p. 223) describes several features of martyrdom and puts the martyr’s body central:

First, the body of the martyr is exposed to violence and thus becomes the locus of religious identity and religious integrity. It is in the tortured body that we actually see the refusal to accommodate to foreign powers or to curb one’s religious identity. Second, martyrological traditions attribute to martyrs visual experiences of the heavenly realm or a miraculous bodily experience. (…) Third, even if the body itself serves as a passive object of the tortures, there is an element of active choice involved in martyrdom, in which the person faces the consequences for his bodily existence and accepts these. Finally, martyrological texts refer to the transformation of the body, since it will be resurrected or assume a heavenly nature.

Related to this, a spirituality that was linked to martyrdom developed and expressed itself in terms of radical difference, witness, passivity, and transformation (Cohn 2005, pp. 13–15). These notions implicitly contained perspectives on the political authority of the Roman state and its power over whoever lived under its control. Despite the fact that scholars tend to describe features of martyrdom based on early Christian texts, in the first centuries, however, there was no unequivocal ecclesiastical perspective on martyrdom (King 2013, pp. 294–95). The way in which the concept was fleshed out and the way in which martyrdom was sometimes sought by some Christians were also disputed or even ridiculed by others (Chidester 2000, pp. 81–98). In response to wild developments in martyrdom practices, Christians started distinguishing between true and false martyrs. For example, Augustine (354–430) famously argued that the devil uses oppression to make false martyrs appear as true martyrs. Therefore, the spectacle of the execution did not determine whether someone was a martyr or not, but only the intention and aim of the martyr (Shaw 2011, pp. 611–13). With this, Augustine guided the attention away from the spectacle and physical to the intentional and spiritual. Such views have profoundly influenced the interpretations of martyrs and martyrdoms throughout Western history (Buc 2015, p. 17).

In the course of history, a number of changes can be observed in the interpretation of the term, which often run parallel to political and religious shifts in power. Clayton Fordahl therefore calls martyrdom ‘enduring’ but also ‘elastic’, “shaping to the contours of particular historical contexts” (Fordahl 2020, p. 3). For example, martyrdom in the Middle Ages is mainly linked to the ecclesiastical structure of remembrance, in which the ‘true’ martyrs from the first centuries played a significant role. These were mainly martyrs from the elite. The vast majority of martyrs from the early days of Christianity had only left traces in the memory of their often limited local communities and were eventually forgotten (see Shaw 2011, p. 612). The famous martyrs of the early church such as Ignatius, Polycarp, Perpetua, Felicitas, and Pionius became part of the collective memory of Christian traditions. The church consolidated the characteristics of martyrdom with relics and anniversaries. This way, the stories and legends of martyrs remained popular for a long time.

Also, in the course of history, new meanings were added to martyrdom. The French historian Philippe Buc writes that at least during the time of the Crusades, and perhaps even earlier, from the seventh century on (see also Damon 2003), the concept of martyrdom slowly changed and contained yet another characteristic. As the objective of liberating Jerusalem from Muslim control was a driving force behind the Crusades, the spiritual dedication to the liberation of the sacred city was intertwined with notions of martyrdom (Buc 2015, p. 218). Since the Crusades, dying fighting as a martyr became a possibility (Buc 2015, p. 60). This opened an interpretation in which the passivity of the martyr was no longer the central characteristic. The martyr could also be a warrior who died with the sword in their hand to purify the holy land (Morris 1993). This popular line of martyrdom was also not shared by everyone (C. Smith 2003, pp. 189–96), which contributes to the notion that martyrdom has already been contested and reshaped from the very beginning.

Although the popularity of martyr legends had declined sharply on the eve of the Reformation, this changed dramatically in the sixteenth century. During the Protestant revolutions, testimony and individual steadfastness were central to Protestant and Catholic martyrs, who were otherwise ridiculed and contested (Womersley 2010, pp. 192–94). But in the Protestant context, stressing the brutality of Catholic persecution was almost as important as the witness itself. Although Protestants strongly disliked any veneration of saints and martyrs, their martyrs played a central role in the confessional conflict. Martyrs and stories surrounding their torture and deaths acquired a certain status in Protestant circles. John Foxe’s popular Book of Martyrs appeared in 1563 and provided dramatic accounts of the victims of the Marian persecutions (1553–1558) in England. Although the book was aimed at a literate elite, the stories were widely propagated. The many images in the book also contributed to a visual martyrdom culture in which suffering constructed part of the religious identity against the ‘cruel power’ of Catholic prelates. It was precisely in their death that the martyrs revealed the cruelty of their persecutors (Buc 2001, pp. 137–39). A year before Foxe’s book appeared, Het Offer des Heeren (the Sacrifice of the Lord) was published in the Netherlands with stories about Mennonite victims of the inquisition. This book became a living document as it was continuously supplemented with new narratives. It was reprinted many times and enjoyed great popularity—especially among the Anabaptists (de Vries 1982, p. 588). In Protestant traditions, the memory of the martyrs was largely cultivated by infusing historical calendars into the Psalters annually (Benedict 2013, p. 119).

Gradually, in modern times, the face of the martyr in Western Europe changed. Martyrdom no longer only combines a witness of a true, transcendent world and a cruel earthly power (the Roman state, the Saracens, the Roman Catholic Church, or the Protestant rebellion) but is more focused on earthly changes, transformations, and thus also on political goals. We see a striking illustration of this transformation in the visions of martyrdom that were celebrated during the French Revolution. The historian Antoine de Baecque contrasts the ‘new’ revolutionary martyrdom with the ‘old’ Christian martyrdom in his Corps de l’histoire:

More and more heroes took the form of martyrs. But a republican martyr was not the same as a Christian one. His tireless energy made him different. The republican was a ferocious defender of the new and entirely secular faith, and he was required not only to know how to suffer and die, but to carry on the armed fight until exhaustion. (…) The Christian martyr was entirely passive, his eyes on heaven alone, indifferent to his fellow citizens. The revolutionary martyr, by contrast, worked for the public good, for humanity and for this life, to bring about liberty, equality and fraternity for the happiness of all.

(Buc 2015, p. 243)

De Baecque’s description of Christian martyrdom does not provide a historically correct picture of the motives of pre-revolutionary Christian martyrs, but rather offers a secular perspective of French revolutionaries on a Christian past. Passivity and indifference are central to this interpretation. These elements are contrasted with the so-called worldly compassion of the revolutionaries. But this worldly compassion was still strongly articulated with martyrdom discourses that were taken from Christian traditions. For example, Maximilien Robespierre could speak emotionally about “the blood of the most virtuous citizens”. Analyzing Robespierre’s rhetoric, David Andress concludes that he “had done a great deal to construct revolutionary politics as a constant battle between the prospect of sacrifice, sanctified by the memory of martyrdom, and the reckoning with evil. The blood of martyrs cries out for vengeance and demands the demonization of those who martyred them” (Andress 2014). This view reveals changed interpretations of martyrdom, although many aspects of Christianity remained (see also Bell 2016, pp. 236, 264). During the 19th century, the heroic act and the significance of the martyr for the community became more important and eventually, they were above all a hero. Yet also the forms of martyrdom in the 19th and 20th centuries were not devoid of religious frames and a sharp antagonism remained active.

In the 19th century, we see secular motives gaining the upper hand, but without the religious dimensions disappearing. For example, the so-called ‘martyrs of Manchester’, three members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, were hanged before a crowd of thousands of spectators on 23 November 1867. They aspired to an independent Irish republic and were charged with the murder of officer Charles Brett. On the eve of their execution, a Catholic priest observes: “Throughout Manchester and Salford, silent congregations with tear-stained faces (…) assembled for a celebration of early Mass for the eternal welfare of the young Irishmen doomed to die a dreadful death that morning” (Rose 1970, p. 17). The ‘martyrs of Belfiori’ were another group that strived for independence during and after the First Italian War of Independence (1848–1849) against Austria. They were arrested and, after a series of convictions, publicly executed between 1850 and 1853. Among them were two priests. What both the martyrs of Manchester and those of Belfiori have in common is that they primarily pursued secular goals, but without losing the religious dimensions of their struggle. They were all commemorated as ‘martyrs’ in stories, murals, on anniversaries, or with statues. Their deaths were romanticized and imbued with a meaning that demonstrates a powerful dual-world interpretation emphasizing ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ as strong modern values against repression and power. Even among modern martyrs who do not die explicitly for religious beliefs, the dual world in which death is a moment of revelation of cruel injustice remains intact, a characteristic closely linked to the martyr’s trajectory in Latin Christianity and later in Catholic and Protestant contexts. The chosen death as self-sacrifice for the sake of belief, religion, political ideals, or community is ‘hardwired’ into the collective memory of Western culture, as Elizabeth Castelli writes in her book Martyrdom and Memory (Castelli 2004, p. 33).

3. Martyrs and Heroes

In this article, I understand martyrdom primarily as a social construct connected with contextual perspectives on what is important and worth dying for. Discourses on martyrs thus reflect contextual visions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood. In this way, martyrdom can be public, religious, and political. It indicates a social conflict that becomes public in the martyr’s ‘drama’. Martyrdom can be sought, longed for, and willed, but can also be added to someone’s death depending on the social context. Lacey Baldwin Smith writes in Fools, Martyrs, Traitors, The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World that Western history has seen an immense variety of martyrs. Who or what a martyr is depends on the community that associates itself with the martyr’s ‘message’ or ‘testimony’, which gives meaning and commemorates their death. However, while one community understands someone’s death as the ‘sacrifice’ of a martyr, another community understands this death as an incomprehensible suicide act (Asad 2007). This ambiguity, as I showed above, was already present from the late antique period, was played out strongly in the time of the European confessional conflicts, and resonates in current events. There is seldom consensus about who counts as a ‘real’ martyr, and so it is not uncommon that those who are remembered as martyrs in one community or historical context are despised in another as traitors, criminals, or psychopaths (Pollmann and Kuijpers 2013, p. 11). The term ‘martyr’ is therefore, Smith writes, “hopelessly overworked and abused” (L. Smith 1997, p. 4). Despite this, certain elements also seem consistent. Although martyrdom, and in particular secular martyrdom, is interpreted in very diverse ways, there are recurring characteristics that accompany these diverse interpretations. We have already seen, for example, that over time, the martyr’s trajectory in Western Europe exchanges transcendental truth for political goals, but without losing all religious features. Although the dual dimension of heaven and earth gives way to a horizontal duality of clashing socio-political and ideological views, this horizontal duality still has a number of religious characteristics, such as the witness of the martyr about the unjust (system), the culture of remembrance that arises after their death, and the assessment of good and evil.

Yet despite this consistency, we cannot easily ignore the skepticism of Smith and others about the use of the term martyr in secular contexts. After all, as already stated in the Introduction, there is no normative tradition of secular martyrdom and the question of who and what a martyr is, depends strongly on the context. That is why Smith doubts whether the term ‘martyr’ is still a recognizable term in a secular society. He thinks that a culture that puts the elimination of pain and suffering as its highest goal, as in his eyes ‘the Western culture’ does, is incapable of understanding people who knowingly and willingly ‘choose’ pain and suffering (L. Smith 1997, p. 12). In the secular West, it is therefore not the more passive Christian martyrs of the first centuries that are commemorated. Their surrender and spirituality seem difficult to recognize. However, the secular West is certainly not devoid of martyrs. The secular martyr assumes that they acquire a certain status in a secular social community and that their death is given specific meanings linked to the self-perspective of the memorial community. In a sense, the secular martyr reflects the secular self-image.

But what does this so-called secular self-image look like? In a secular context, martyrdom seems to have become more heroic than it has been in an explicitly Christian context. This is not surprising, as Christian theologies typically do not emphasize the idea of heroism as the kernel of martyrdom, but rather sacrifice. In a secular world that values a more—what Charles Taylor calls—‘immanent frame’, martyrdom has become an ultimate philanthropic act in which the ‘self’ is given up for a greater humanity, without any hope of a resurrection, a restoration, or a reward after death. In this context, martyrdom equates to absolute heroism (Taylor 2007, p. 702). Taylor’s assessment of a changing context in which the symbolism of transcendence is no longer decisive in giving meaning to a violent death leads to the ‘secular martyr’ becoming almost an anomaly. They are a buffered self who prefers death, and thus place the radical end of their ‘self’ above a betrayal of the world. The spirituality of the resurrection and the reward for the gift of the body are missing from this perspective, which makes the martyr as a martyr incomprehensible, according to Taylor. The modern martyr is rather a hero.

Did a hero eventually emerge from the martyr? In the popular discourse on martyrdom, the line between the hero and the martyr is sometimes blurred. Quentin Outram and Keith Laybourn note that in the second half of the 19th century, the emphasis is on ‘the hero’ rather than on ‘the martyr’, although both terms are sometimes used for one and the same person. The hero in the stories of the late 19th century is above all infused with martial virtues that are used for a noble purpose. Still, they see differences between the hero and the martyr that cannot be washed away easily. The hero can also die a peaceful death, the martyr by definition cannot. The martyr can be passive, the hero certainly not (Outram and Laybourn 2018, p. 13). Smith also identifies two elements which, despite the fusion that Outram and Laybourn notice, are recurrent in the use of the term martyr in the 19th and 20th centuries, and which he contrasts with ‘heroes’. While heroes are the product of a community’s social consensus about the quality and value of their actions, martyrs are the result of a society in conflict with itself. In addition, martyrs rarely commit violent crimes, but are convicted because their ‘crimes’ are directed against “the most revered and treasured abstractions that shape and create a society” (L. Smith 1997, p. 19). This means that the martyr’s death portrays a key moment of contestation of sovereign power. From the sovereign’s perspective, the martyr is a challenger or traitor: irrational and incomprehensible. The hero may defend the ideals of the sovereign state, but the martyr continues to refer to a higher political or religious cause.

4. Martyrdom and the Sovereign State

The position of authority or sovereignty in the interpretation of martyrdom is a key to understand the distinction between martyrdom as it has taken shape in Western Christianity and in secular societies. I will argue in this article that the secular martyr has been embraced by the sovereign state precisely because the concept of martyrdom contains elements of meaningful death and might be taken as a reference to ‘something bigger than life’. Martyrdom, so to say, has been incorporated at levels of heroism and selflessness by the secular state to affirm its legitimacy. However, this ‘secular’ martyr contains many aspects of the hero. Despite this, echoes of the classic martyr that positions itself opposite any state power still unsettle the modern sovereign.

The distinction between the classic martyr and the secular martyr has been drawn sharply in Eduardo Passos’ interpretation of Erik Peterson (1890–1960) and Carl Schmitt (1888–1985). Peterson was a German Christian theologian who, in 1937, when Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party had considerably tightened its grip on German society, published a text entitled Zeuge und Wahrheit (trans.: Witness and Truth, Peterson 1937). Schmitt, as is well known, was one of the leading jurists in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1936. He defended Hitler’s racial doctrine and the many extrajudicial executions. In his publication, Peterson places truth radically outside political reality. Passos contrasts Peterson’s view with that of Schmitt, whose 1922 book Politische Theologie (trans.: Political Theology) continues to influence philosophical thinking about sovereignty to this day. While for Schmitt, sovereignty is manifested in a legitimate claim to life by which sovereign power gives meaning to this life by being able to demand its death, Peterson, as a theologian, places this meaning sharply beyond the reach of any sovereign power. According to Schmitt, all modern concepts of state sovereignty are in fact secular theological concepts. This means that there is little distinction between a martyr who dies for their faith and a martyr or hero who dies for their political beliefs or for their country. Peterson, on the other hand, accuses Schmitt of using theological considerations to legitimize the sovereign state and instead argues for a radical difference between immanent power and transcendent truth. In fact, when the sovereign demands political and religious obedience, martyrdom might become even necessary, according to Peterson (Passos 2018, p. 490). According to him, the martyr is connected with Christ. Their suffering finds a certain simultaneity with the suffering of Christ, whereby this martyr, at a time when the sovereign is tightening his grip on society, expresses a place of truth in the immanent world of the sovereign and therefore becomes the “most human person” (Passos 2018, p. 505). According to Passos, Peterson’s martyr testifies before the “altar” of the rulers that their order does not have a final say on human life. With this, the martyr testifies that the rulers have lost their grip (Passos 2018, p. 506). Thus, the point of the martyr’s death becomes a moment of revelation. In Schmitt’s view, the martyr is subsumed by the logic of the state, where the soldier (much like the crusader of the past) can become a martyr. In contrast, Peterson sees the martyr as a symbol of light emanating from a different reality.

Although Peterson and Schmitt formulated their main thoughts on sovereignty in the 1920s and 1930s, Peterson’s theology of martyrdom is least recognizable in the secular martyr. The secular martyr is most recognizable from Schmitt’s perspective. Sociologist Clayton Fordahl also notes the aforementioned shift in the interpretation of the martyr in secular societies. While the ‘classical’ martyr is linked to a “counter-sovereign heritage” that rejects the order of the world, the secular martyr is more linked to the core values of the modern sovereign state itself (Fordahl 2018, p. 42), a transition we have discussed above in the context of the French Revolution. Fordahl describes how martyrdom has been transformed from a spirituality that rejects the world and its politico-religious order in Late Antiquity, through an identity aspect of Christian culture in the Middle Ages, to a heroic sacrifice for political ideals. In the past, the language used to commemorate martyrs often revolved around themes of purification and transformation. However, the secular martyr is now remembered in the context of human rights, with a focus not on heaven but on the earth. Fordahl points out that public reactions to violent death in Western contexts often do not go beyond the ideological terminology of the sovereign state. It turns out, he writes, that it is difficult to think about violence and suffering in a way that does not affirm the sovereignty of the nation-state (Fordahl 2018, p. 43). This means that the conflict that marks the martyr, and which is underlined as a fundamental aspect by Peterson, is no longer so much a conflict between an earthly power and a transcendent truth, but has rather become part of the state. The conflict now mainly takes place between the core values of the sovereign state such as freedom, equality, and tolerance and that which threatens these core values. The secular martyr brings this threat to light with their suffering and violent death. The ‘transcendental truth’, still fundamentally and qualitatively different compared to sovereign power according to Peterson in the days of Nazism, is now equivalent to ‘the nation’, ‘Western values’, ‘freedom’, or ‘democracy’ (Fordahl 2018, pp. 54–55). Peterson’s transcendent truth has been swallowed up by Taylor’s immanent world, which mainly reflects and benefits the ideals of the sovereign state.

While the transformation identified by Fordahl is certainly important for studying secular forms of martyrdom, I will argue that this does not mean that the Christian elements of martyrdom have completely disappeared from secular interpretations. On the contrary, secular martyrdom relies heavily on religious interpretations that articulate and empower the truth the martyr represents. The complex tradition of martyrdom is therefore both consistent and contingent. The consistency lies not only in recurring descriptions and elements but also in the way discourses build on one another, such as the French Jacobins, who could not have employed the terminology of martyrdom without a Christian tradition. At the same time, martyrdom remains a consistent theme because it is used and discussed by religious institutional actors. However, as the context changes, so too does the meaning of this terminology, as well as the effect of using martyrdom terminology on interpretations of what is good and what is not, and what is just and what is not. As secular martyrdom lacks a normative tradition in which the use of the term can be debated, the contingent use of the term therefore means that it is released into the wild. However, as I will show, it is taken up and transformed by the secular, sovereign state. This does not mean that a new tradition of martyrdom has emerged. Rather, the use of the term ‘martyr’ has expanded, which in turn leads to debates about who is considered a martyr and who is not, and what a martyr should be. In the following paragraphs, I discuss two cases in which martyrdom forms a contextual bricolage of religious and secular elements: the rightist liberal Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn (1948–2002) and the French priest Jaques Hamel (1930–2016). Fortuyn and Hamel were both labeled as ‘martyrs’ following their murders. Their deaths were given political significance in tense socio-political situations and marked a dualism between just and unjust and between truth and falsehood. Both Fortuyn and Hamel show different profiles of secular martyrdom in which the traces of Christian interpretations are still clearly recognizable.

5. “This Messiah Also Died”: The Martyrdom of Pim Fortuyn

On 6 May 2002, the Dutch right-wing liberal politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered by animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf. The immensely popular Fortuyn had just given an interview for a Dutch television program and was a rising star in Dutch politics. On 15 May, the Netherlands would choose a new parliament and many saw Fortuyn as a new president. Although his party, the Lijst Pim Fortuyn, would probably not become the largest party during the parliamentary elections, his party would certainly become a serious player in a new political landscape. Although Fortuyn had been a social democrat for some years, he became increasingly concerned about immigration and warned against the ‘Islamization’ of Dutch culture due to mass immigration. In 1997, he published a book Tegen de islamisering van onze cultuur (Against the Islamization of Our Culture) in which he warned that the Dutch, and predominantly Dutch leftist politicians, have become blind to the serious threat posed by the increase in Muslims. Due to ongoing individualization, people do not recognize the norms and values on which the country was built anymore and have become such a tolerant nation. This tolerance has now reached its limits, Fortuyn claimed (Fortuyn 2016). He gained much popularity, especially among those who felt unrepresented, and became a popular guest on talk shows. When speaking about his “vocation”, Fortuyn often used Christian vocabulary. For example, he saw himself as a “shepherd” and ascribed messianic characteristics to himself (Fortuyn 2002, p. 18). He presented his political vision as a vista, the “promised land” to which he would lead his flock. The Amsterdam ethnologist Peter Margry writes, “No one would succeed in taking him from ‘the assigned’ task. He was not afraid to end up as a martyr” (Margry 2003b, p. 118). Fortuyn himself regularly alluded to this. He said he was not afraid to die as a martyr (Margry 2003a, p. 2). In 2000, writer Joost Zwagerman cynically called him a “self-proclaimed martyr of free speech” (Zwagerman 2000).

In 2002, Fortuyn was killed. His funeral in his hometown Rotterdam was described as a religious mass gathering. Martin van Bruinessen recounts how mourners attempted to touch and kiss the limousine carrying Fortuyn’s body through the streets of Rotterdam, while chanting, “Thank you, thank you, Pim”. Among the banners, one read “This Messiah also died”. An icon of Christ awaiting crucifixion was seen among the crowd. Dutch and foreign newspapers reported on a “wild devotion” to the “holy Pim” (Trouw), and The Guardian spoke of a large altar where the Dutch honored their martyr (van Bruinessen 2006). Supporters also carried an erotic image of the tortured Saint Sebastian (Columbijn 2007, p. 83). The term ‘martyr’ was frequently used, alongside references to Fortuyn as a Messiah, prophet, and savior. Public responses on the internet and in the media portrayed Fortuyn as having been killed for his beliefs and for what he represented (Margry 2003a, p. 7). Media coverage played a significant role in shaping this martyr narrative. For example, Leonard Ornstein, political editor of the Buitenhof program on national television, wrote, ‘Due to his death, the Netherlands has another political martyr for centuries’ (Ornstein 2023). Elsewhere, too, Fortuyn was portrayed as a ‘martyr of free speech’ dying in a ‘war against political correctness’ (Ayalew 2010, p. 7; Dreher 2002). Sylvain Ephimenco wrote in Trouw on 31 December 2002 that the year had been an ‘annus horribilis’ with ‘the blood of an unannounced martyr’. Fortuyn had, he writes, the indisputable status of being a Martyr of the Free Word (Ephimenco 2002). However, in the NRC of 11 May 2002, Johan Olie wrote the following:

But let’s not forget that it is a confused man who shot Pim Fortuyn. (…) It was not a real political assassination, not a conspiracy. And Pim Fortuyn himself was not an exalted man, not a saint who would never harm another: his political ideas were selfish and directed against many democratic, idealistic principles of our Netherlands. (…) Don’t make him a martyr.

(Olie 2002)

Olie reacted strongly to the way Fortuyn was commemorated after his death by downplaying both the person of Fortuyn himself and that of his murderer Volkert van de Graaf, thus standing in a long tradition of attempts to weaken the belief through which martyrdom is constructed.

Whether or not Fortuyn was truly a martyr is beside the point. What matters is that the community attributed this meaning to his death. This was clearly the case with Fortuyn, even though the media, which played a significant role in shaping this perception, often used the term with some cynicism. This raises the question of how his death aligns with the anti-sovereign trajectory of martyrdom in the Christian West, as discussed by Fordahl and others. What is clear is that many people attributed a certain sanctity to Fortuyn, especially after his death. His supporters firmly believed that he paid for his ideas with his life. These beliefs show an interesting mixture of religious notions. As a Catholic saint, Fortuyn was close to ‘the people’ opposing a massive, anonymous administrative system that would not give him any space, which was deaf to his message and blind to the abuses in society he exposed. This was mainly blamed on ‘the left-wing church’, which downplayed migration issues and did not consider Islam a ‘backward religion’. Many people saw the tension in the relationship between a blind and corrupt ‘left-wing church’ constructed by Fortuyn on the one hand and ‘the truth’ that Fortuyn represented on the other. The brand new LPF chairman Peter Langendam said a few days after Fortuyn’s death that the bullet that killed Fortuyn came from the left and not from the right (ANP 2002). Thus, Fortuyn became a martyr for free speech, standing against what his supporters perceived as an indifferent left-wing establishment—many of whom had previously voted for the social democrats. Volkert van der Graaf’s motives were interpreted by many within Fortuyn’s circle as part of a larger left-wing conspiracy, aiming to undermine Dutch culture, promote open borders, and even Islamize society. The social dynamics following Fortuyn’s death illustrate how sovereignty was constructed in response to a political truth. However, although he was portrayed as a martyr, his testimony was linked to social transformation. He did acknowledge the Dutch political system and wanted change from the inside out. This way, his spirituality illustrates the shift in the interpretation of martyrdom described by Buc and Fordahl: from a dualistic spiritual–physical struggle to a social struggle in which ideas of transcendence shift from a perspective on an afterlife to a perspective on freedom or—in Fortuyn’s case—‘free speech’.

In 2009, Fortuyn’s furnishings were auctioned. Beforehand, auctioneer Richard Hesselink spoke to a journalist who asked him what the value was that the items represented. Hesselink replied, “what is it all worth? I do not know. What is the value of a splinter from the cross of Jesus?” (van Alem 2009).

6. “Desecration of Democracy”: Jacques Hamel, the Devil, and the French Nation

On 26 July 2016, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, both 19 years of age, entered the Église St.-Étienne du-Rouvray where 85-year-old priest Jacques Hamel was celebrating Mass. The two teenagers were armed with knives and a fake gun. The small congregation consisted primarily of elderly residents from the surrounding area. Kermiche and Petitjean forced Guy Coponet, a churchgoer, also in his eighties, to operate a video camera and record what was about to happen. After that, they approached the elderly priest, forced him to kneel, and, while he resisted, stabbed him in the throat (Willsher 2016). He died on the spot. After the young people had performed what would later be described by those present as a ‘sort of Arab ritual’, they took over the video from Coponet again. A short quarrel followed, after which this old man was also stabbed. By now, Sister Danielle had managed to flee the church and alert the police. A special counter-terrorist unit was on the scene at lightning speed. Kermiche and Petitjean tried to get away by using the other churchgoers as shields. However, they were shot dead by the police snipers.

Islamic State claimed the murder and declared the two attackers ‘martyrs’ (Jamieson and Ing 2016). The attack came at a time when tensions in French society were running high. The attack on editors of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (7 January 2015) and the terror attack in Nice on la Fête nationale (14 July 2016) in the same year were still fresh. The reactions to Hamel’s death showed different perspectives on Jacques Hamel: as a priest, as a French citizen and as a member of the Roman Catholic Church. On 30 July, in solidarity with the French priest, Muslims attended Catholic Eucharistic celebrations all over France (Alfred 2016). However, that same day, several Qurans were also found in the multi-faith room of the Mater Dei hospital in Malta in which pieces of pork had been placed. A photo of Jacques Hamel was also found with the caption—in English—‘victim of Islam’ (Times of Malta 2016).

Pope Francis responded immediately and integrated Hamel’s death into the classic Catholic martyrology tradition as he declared Hamel a ‘blessed one’ and a ‘martyr’. Before the audience gathered at the papal residence on Santa Marta, where the Archbishop of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, was also present, the Pope spoke: ‘killing in the name of God is satanic’. Jacques Hamel died ‘for us by not denying Jesus’. The Pope placed Hamel in the ‘long chain of martyrs’, which runs ‘from the first century’ to the present. The early Christians also paid ‘with their lives’ for their testimony of Jesus Christ and refused to sacrifice to the gods of their days. This story, Pope Francis continued, is now repeating itself in our time. ‘Today’, there are more Christian martyrs than in the early days of Christianity, he claims: ‘Christians are murdered, tortured, imprisoned, their throats slit for refusing to deny Jesus Christ’ (Borodoni 2016).1 The horror revealed by their martyrdom is, according to Pope Francis, ‘satanic’ (O’Connell 2016). After all, when he saw the perpetrators coming towards him, Hamel was reported shouting, ‘Go away, Satan’! Philippe Buc writes that in the long history of the martyr, the difference between oppressor and oppressed maintains a duality that fosters the belief that something ‘satanic’ is at work here (Buc 2015, p. 15). The struggle that becomes manifest in the death of the martyr therefore has a spiritual dimension as well as a physical side. The political or religious powers responsible for the martyr’s death are also transcendent to the physical drama. In a Christian frame, these are identified as ‘satanic’ as in Hamel’s case. The question now is whether this transcendent dimension is also present in secular interpretations. To understand these, we focus on the secular reactions to Hamel’s murder.

While Hamel was called a martyr by Pope Francis, which led to the popularity of the formerly unknown priest also outside of France (de Volder 2017), in the secular frames that were triggered by his death, Hamel died as a priest, as a Frenchman, as a European, as a defender of human rights, and as a pacifist. The ‘satanic’ to which Francis refers in this frame is translated into a different, more diffuse way as a threat to the secular democratic constitutional state, namely as anti-Western brutality, indifference to human life, and the barbarity of the attackers. In this act, the victim’s context is ‘cleansed’ from that of the perpetrators and a sharp moral distinction is created. French media spoke of an attack on the French state. Then-President François Hollande spoke of the ‘desecration of democracy’ and stated that the entire French nation is harmed when a priest is attacked (Fordahl 2017, p. 45). He pointed out that ‘we are facing a group, Daesh, who has declared war on us. We must fight this war in all manners with respect for the law, which makes us a democracy’ (L’Indépendant 2016). Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister at the time, tweeted, ‘All of France and all Catholics are tormented here. We will stand strong together’. Hamel’s body was symbolically related to the transcendent body of ‘all France and all Catholics’ that had already been tormented in Paris and Nice. In an open letter in the Journal du Dimanche, Valls warned French Muslims that if ‘Islam’ fails to help the French republic fight those who question ‘our public liberties’, it will become more difficult for the republic to guarantee and defend the freedom of religion (Marlowe 2016). Former President Sarkozy of Les Républicains responded, ‘We must be ruthless (impitoyable)’ towards these terrorists. This logic could be found in more media. Others, however, went further. On the right side of French politics, French MP Marion Maréchal-Le Pen spoke of a ‘shot’ in a global religious war. Marine Le Pen, leader of the then Front National, said the following in a press release on 26 July, the day of Hamel’s death:

The consternation is total. The barbarians who claim this murderous ideology have taken a step by attacking a place of worship of the Catholic Church and perpetrating such atrocities against men and women of peace. It is now the heart of our nation’s cultural identity that has been deliberately hit.

(Le Pen 2016)

Le Pen makes an explicit connection between a religious space (un lieu de culte de l’Eglise catholique) and the heart of cultural identity (le cœur de l’identité culturelle). The Catholic holy site of Hamel’s death is where—in Hollande’s words—democracy is desecrated, or the very heart of France’s cultural identity is touched. This identity, in Le Pen’s interpretation, is carried by ‘men and women of peace’. Hamel’s death reveals a ‘murderous ideology’ toward these ‘men and women of peace.’ This duality, as we have seen, is always present in situations where martyrdom is constructed. Hamel’s death became a revelation of the values of the French nation. His murder created the opportunity to charge French identity with peace contrary to the violent religious extremism of his murderers, evoking a strong inside/outside duality, played out along the lines of religion as a duality between a peaceful Christianity and a barbarian Islam. In this discourse, migration is understood as the outside coming inside which marks the French nation with nothing but violence.

Exactly one year after Hamel’s murder, on 26 July 2017, another Mass was celebrated in the Église St.-Étienne du-Rouvray, this time by Dominique Lebrun, Archbishop of Rouen. The memorial Mass for Jacques Hamel was attended by President Emmanuel Macron. At the end of the Mass, a ‘Republican Stele for Peace and Brotherhood’ was unveiled outside the church in memory of Hamel. In his speech, Macron emphatically focused on the core values of French society: ‘The Republic does not have to fight against or replace a religion’, he said. ‘But at the heart of our laws and of our codes, forged by history, is a part that is non-negotiable (il est une part qui ne se négocie pas), that we will not let ourselves be taken away, a part, and I dare to use the word, which is holy (j’ose le mot, sacrée). This part is the lives of others’. The words ‘fraternity and charity’ that have gathered the imam, the pastor and the rabbi around the ‘tortured body of a priest’ are ‘the strength of our nation,’ the French president said, reclaiming France as an inclusive nation gathered around the ideals of the sovereign republic (Bureau de Presse 2017).

Every year, there is a commemoration service in the local church. In 2024, a movie was released about Jaques Hamel and his killer, Adel Kermiche: Que Notre Joie Demeure. In the movie, Hamel is visually and discursively contrasted with his killer. While Kermiche is portrayed as chaotic, skeptical, angry, conflictual, and desperate, Hamel is portrayed as strong, loving, tolerant, and—most importantly—a life directed towards others and the sacred. Chaos is contrasted with faith and unrooted identity with serenity.

Hamel is a good example of a martyr with a modern dual face. He is claimed by both the Catholic Church as a typical example standing in a long tradition of persecution, and by the national state as an example of a French Catholic. For Pope Francis, the assassination of Hamel was imposed by ‘satanic’ powers, while for many French politicians and writers, ‘barbarian’ powers were at work here. According to Pope Francis, Hamel died ‘for us’ by not denying Jesus, while in secular perspectives, Hamel died for democracy, the nation-state that had been hit in the heart. The classic characteristic of martyrdom as an action against the sovereign of which Fordahl speaks fades in secular interpretations of Hamel’s death. Contrary to classic imageries of martyrdom, his death underlines the sovereignty of ‘sacred’ French values that he symbolizes as a Catholic priest in his life directed towards ‘others’, which is framed by the Republic’s ideal of fraternity and charity. Fordahl sees Hamel’s case as an example of how the martyr in Western culture has been adopted by the secular state. His death, Fordahl argues on the basis of the responses in French society, is understood as a ‘sacrifice’ with a higher good. At the rhetorical level, this ‘higher good’ is termed in different vocabulary depending on political affiliation or religious tradition, but in the end, Fordahl argues, all the things to be defended—democracy, Western values, Christianity, civilization—are merely by-products of French sovereignty (Fordahl 2018, p. 50). In a secular context, he sharply judges, the common, higher, or transcendent ‘good’ can only be conceived of in terms of the politically dominant paradigm with terms such as freedom, tolerance, and democracy (Fordahl 2018, p. 51). The ‘sacrifice’ of the modern martyr, he writes elsewhere, is no longer oriented so much to a God who is transcendent to the world, but to a system of transcendent rights that is present on earth as an almost natural order and which is mediated and monitored by the sovereign nation-state (Fordahl 2017). As a result, the state as such is no longer the ‘satanic’ power whose cruelty is revealed in the death of the martyr, but the satanic power has been transformed into cruel individuals representing a ‘barbarian’ power that opposes the core values of the sovereign state. Hamel’s ‘afterlife’ continually emphasizes this life towards others putting central fraternity and tolerance as the core values of the democratic French state.

7. Two Martyrs and Heroes

Jaques Hamel was a priest murdered in a very tense French context by two 19-year-old youths Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State. Religious and political articulations of identity were dominant in the interpretation of his death. There was no way the legitimacy of Hamel’s murder could be recognized within a Catholic or political frame in France. Kermiche and Petitjean could in no way be identified as ‘fighting martyrs’ within these frames. Their martyrdom was only recognized by the Islamic State. According to the Pope, they represented the ‘satanic powers’ that the Christian Church had always fought against, and for some French politicians, they represented the anti-democratic barbaric (Islamic) mindset from which France must be protected. The meaning given to Fortuyn’s assassination goes a different way and signifies a different aspect of secular martyrdom. The dominant Dutch politics of the time could hardly incorporate Fortuyn as a martyr. After all, the right–liberal politician had strongly opposed—what he called—‘the leftist church’ and harshly criticized the ‘lazy’ politicians in the Dutch government. Commemorations showed a transcendent frame in which Fortuyn was presented as a ‘savior’ and a ‘martyr’. Hagiographies appeared in the secular press in which Fortuyn’s assassin Volkert van der Graaf stood for the leftist power that, through lack of knowledge about ‘common people’ and because of ‘misplaced’ solidarity with immigrants, allowed the Netherlands to become increasingly and firmly in the grip of a foreign power, a ‘primitive’ power with which Fortuyn wanted to wage a ‘cold war’ on the basis of free speech (Fortuyn 2016): Islam, which he had framed as a ‘backward culture’. Fortuyn’s death is also a key point of revelation in which the ‘free word’ was especially juxtaposed against politicians who ‘opened’ the borders of the Netherlands to immigrants while posing a direct threat to this free word. For many, Fortuyn’s death proved that he was right. What is interesting about the Fortuyn case is that in addition to being called a Messiah and martyr, he was also called a prophet. This was mainly the result of the fact that, according to many, he bravely told ‘the truth’ and defended the ‘free word’ that was being trapped and would be increasingly oppressed in the near future due to mass immigration and incapable politicians. For Hamel, I have not found the characteristic of a prophet as clear as in the case of Fortuyn. However, the responses to Fortuyn’s death are comparable with those to Hamel’s death. After both murders, the foundations of ‘Western values’ that had come under pressure were sharply emphasized. But unlike Hamel, who barely had a public profile in France that allowed reactions to connect him as a priest to French culture without difficulty, Fortuyn was a public figure so that his martyrdom, to which he had already alluded, was given meaning based on his own speeches, interviews, and publications by his supporters. Hamel’s martyrdom marked a key point in the tensions in French society. He had worked for peaceful relations at a local level, including with his Muslim neighbors who actively participated in the gatherings organized in Hamel’s memory. But while these gestures did not go unnoticed, Hamel’s death became part of a grand drama in which Christianity and democracy were threatened. These responses were also present during Fortuyn’s commemorations. For his sympathizers, his death meant that the core value of democracy, encapsulated in free speech, was threatened. His death demonstrates the seriousness of this threat, the principled conflict in Dutch society between those who see and those who are blind. The so-called Fortuyn-revolte was the first step towards an increasing rightist electorate in the Netherlands that would grow steadily by combining anti-migration sentiments with feelings of being ‘unseen’ and underrepresented at the levels of decision-making.

What is striking about these two cases is that they involve a conflict in which physical violence is the visible expression of a much deeper, ‘spiritual’ struggle. This is a characteristic inherent to martyrdom that recurs in ever-changing forms throughout history. The Christian martyrs of the first century experienced their witness as radically different in the face of Roman power (Buc 2015, p. 175; Cohn 2005, p. 13). In Holy War, Martyrdom and Terror, Buc discusses how perspectives on spiritual and physical struggle influenced the European context of Christianity and later so-called secular societies. A spiritual dimension continually accompanied the physical battle (Buc 2015, p. 90). In the first centuries, Satanic powers were constantly lurking. These powers remained at a structural level although their faces changed over time. Just as the devil tempted Donastists to embrace a ‘wrong’ version of martyrdom in the 4th century, Catholics and Protestants accused each other of wrong, demonic influences during the denominational conflicts in the 16th century. This line, according to the French historian, can be extended through the French Revolution to today’s fight against terror, the fear of radicalization as the result of an outside ‘influence’ and the demonizing or ridiculing of Islam. This fear of influence—demonic, satanic, barbaric, radical, religious—is culturally and historically linked to the perspective on the influence of powers operating outside one’s sphere of influence, according to Buc (Buc 2015, p. 109). In commemorating Hamel’s death, Pope Francis deliberately placed his martyrdom in this tradition by calling the attack ‘satanic’ while Hamel would have suffered ‘for us’. But this classic antagonism could also be recognized in the responses of politicians in which Hamel represented democracy and freedom versus external barbarity. The Pope’s perspective is thus culturally and historically closely linked to that of French politicians. According to Fortuyn’s supporters, the ‘left’ fired the bullet that killed him. His martyrology also shows a deep distrust towards not always clearly visible powers that are already among us, and agendas aimed at destabilizing society and abolishing free speech in the name of protecting a ‘backward’ religion. Physical violence is paralleled by a spiritual dimension that explains the larger connection. Death is ultimately a moment of revelation in which this dimension is articulated.

8. Sacrifices and the Modern State

As noted above, Philippe Buc writes that, at least since the early Crusades, the martyr has undergone an important transformation, losing its previously passive identity and assuming a more assertive and occasionally even violent stance (see also Damon 2003). This does not mean that the tradition of the passive martyr came to an end, as the case of—for example—Hamel shows. After all, what is striking in this example is that religious and political interpretations stress Hamel’s peacefulness and tranquility opposite aggression and violence (which is played out along the lines of religion: Christianity versus Islam(ic terrorism)). In the Roman Catholic Church, martyrs can still count on Rome’s attention and still leave courageous narratives that are deeply inscribed into the Catholic archive. In the history of modern martyrdom, from the French Revolution to the Spanish Revolution, and onwards to cases such as that of Jaques Hamel, passivity and violent death are celebrated and might lead to a place in the Catholic martyrium (see, for example, the culturally dramatized commemoration of the Martyrs of Compiègne, or the commemoration of Spanish martyrs (Bunk 2007, pp. 34–60)). In a similar vein, the current appreciation of martyrs in secular Western Europe also appears to primarily honor their passivity and peacefulness, as evidenced by popular(ized) figures called ‘martyrs’ such as Martin Luther King, Steve Biko, and, indeed, Pim Fortuyn. But the non-passive, assertive martyr who does not shy away from using violence is no stranger in modern contexts, although these ‘martyrs’ are often not typically recognized and commemorated as such. Still, the sacrificial language used to add meaning to their deaths reminds us of the martyrdom discourses from the European Christian archive. I am pointing to commemorations of the deaths of those who have chosen a career in which they are prepared for whatever reason to place their lives at risk in the service of their nation. Such individuals must be prepared to kill and be killed if necessary, while their deaths become meaningful within the larger political frames of secular societies.

This final section will study the extent to which soldiers who have ‘given’ their lives for their homeland exhibit some characteristics of the assertive martyr. It is however difficult to argue that martyrdom features have survived in modern-day soldiership. Therefore, we will study some discourses around those who sacrifice their lives for the sake of the nation. In this version of martyrdom, the sovereign is no longer challenged by the testimony of the martyr. Instead, this martyrdom recognizes death as a symbol of heroism, commitment, and loyalty to the values and norms of the (secular) state. Thus, the core ideological values of the sovereign are presented as transcendent ideals for the waring martyr. In this process, Peterson’s radical distinction appears to have been completely lost.

It is worthwhile to briefly dive a bit more deeply into the historical roots of this concept of martyrdom that includes violence as a feature of the martyr in the service of the state. In his work, The Myth of Religious Violence, William Cavanaugh (2009) contends that the advent of nation-states in the seventeenth century brought about a shift in the causes for which individuals were willing to die. To understand this shift, he cites German historian Ernst Kantorowicz, who, in his classic study The King’s Two Bodies (1957), describes how, again as early as the late Middle Ages, the mystical ‘body of Christ’ was appropriated by the emerging nation-state, resulting in a theory of the two bodies of ‘the king’, one mortal and one immortal. Kantorowicz illustrates how this concept of martyrdom subsequently shifted from the ecclesiastical to the secular domain. The secular state became a corpus mysticus to die for, incorporating theological models of following Christ that had consisted as the main frame for martyrdom. This process persisted into the following centuries. As an example, John Foxe’s previously mentioned Book of Martyrs from the sixteenth century not only described the histories of Protestant martyrs but also underscored England as a nation for ‘pure Christianity’ (Buc 2015, p. 244). Cavanaugh expands on this argument, asserting that the state’s ability to appropriate martyrdom depended on its capacity to integrate the church’s liturgical symbolism. When successful, the state could position itself as the source of charity and togetherness. As a result, the idea of martyrdom for the faith was transformed to include martyrdom for the nation (Cavanaugh 2009, pp. 175–76). At this point, we will pay attention to martyrdom as a concept that has been fully incorporated by the state but also study what happens if a meaningful death is not acknowledged by the state. We first turn to the trajectory of modern revolutionary martyrs.

9. Revolutionary Martyrdom

The revolutionary martyr is essential in shaping the symbolic relation between the ideals of sovereign power and the individual. In this context, the state acknowledges, incorporates, and memorializes its revolutionary martyrs, honoring them through secular liturgies that position them as foundational to the state’s identity. This way, the state exercises control over the remembrance of these martyrs. Such individuals are memorialized as those who ‘gave their lives’ for the political ideas on which the state is built. These martyrs can be celebrated as constructive ‘sacrifices’ made to facilitate the emergence of a new societal order. For example, the partisans who fought against the National Socialists and the Ustaše were commemorated with monuments and days of remembrance in Josip Tito’s Yugoslavia. But we can also think of those who perished during the Russian revolutions and were buried as ‘revolutionary martyrs’ during the ‘red funerals’ and subsequently venerated as martyrs in the Soviet Union under communist rule (Merridale 2008, pp. 179–80). Such political strategies, which honor the ‘blood of the martyrs’ and thereby legitimize one’s own power through the commemorations of victims, are not typically European but can also be recognized in contexts with different religious and political paths, including China (Hung 2008) and Iran (de Bellaigue 2004). However, when those who died during revolutionary struggles are not recognized as martyrs ‘giving their lives’ for true ideals, and a culture of remembrance does not emerge, in short, when the revolution fails, is repulsed, or is not supported by a group becoming dominant, the meaning of the revolutionary martyr approaches the meaning of the terrorist. Buc illustrates how members of the Baader-Meinhof group (Rote Armee Fraktion or RAF) who initiated attacks on representatives of ‘fascist capitalism and imperialism’ in the early 1970s in West Germany showed a dual spirituality parallel to the structure observed in the trajectory of the European martyr. They engaged in armed conflict against a dominant sovereign entity that represented a malevolent power, obfuscated the truth, and persecuted its representatives. Members of the RAF were convinced that the use of violence would enable them to lift the veil from the world’s surface and reveal the truth. Three prominent members of the group, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Ulrike Meinhof, all perished by suicide in German police custody (Aust 1985). While allusions to martyrdom are present in this case (see Saltzman 2005), their ‘blood’ did not serve as a foundational element for a large movement and did not result in the creation of a culture of remembrance with secular rituals driven by the state. Therefore, their violence was not a justified response to a cruel, satanic, or barbaric sovereign who would eventually be broken. This lack of recognition resulted in their portrayal as terrorists rather than martyrs. However, where cultures of remembrance are organized around revolutionary martyrs (such as communist martyrs), the ideology of the sovereign is primarily represented in the strength and heroism of the martyrs. The fact that they ‘gave their lives for the people’ or ‘for the country’ empowers the message for which they died. Their death is a formative sacrifice and thus reinforces the legitimacy and sovereignty of the political power that memorializes them.

Violent death, and more so the ideological, national, or religious narratives and interpretations that may evoke a frame of martyrdom, remains a major concern for the state. After all, the state needs to integrate their deaths into the larger ideological and national narrative. In order to neutralize possible excessive meanings given to violent deaths, the state bolsters these as a reference to the symbolic body of the state. A sharpening of this analysis offers the American philosopher of law Paul W. Kahn. Kahn writes about the legitimacy of the rule of law. Like Cavanaugh, Kahn seeks the core element of the rule of law in the ‘togetherness’ of a national society and the loyalty of its citizens. This loyalty must be guaranteed by a shared idea of what is ‘sacred’ (see also the quote from French President Macron above). The term ‘sacred’ can here be understood in the sense of Émile Durkheim: as a social self-projection of the concrete group in terms of experience and meaning, compressed into symbols. But Kahn goes beyond that. Indeed, the sacred, according to him, involves above all a connection of the finitude of life with a transcendent meaning of life in a larger context. Kahn does not speak of a ‘representation’ of the sacred in the everyday, but rather of a ‘transubstantiation’ of the sacred into the ‘flesh’ of the individual through which a body as a material thing loses its finite character and becomes the place where the sacred manifests itself (Kahn 2007, p. 197). The sacred marks the social, cultural, and political meaning of individual bodies; through death, it carves itself as meaning into the flesh of the individual. Meaning has become larger than one’s own life. The finiteness of a human body is thus meaningless if it does not function as an instrument through which the sacred can assert itself (Kahn 2008, p. 32). In this context, Kahn speaks of a ‘sacrifice’. According to him, sacrifice is the central sign of loyalty to the sacred. Kahn does not reserve this word for religious contexts as he does not distinguish between religion and secularity as two separately existing spaces. His assessment of the ideological power of the sovereign state is partly based on Carl Schmitt’s analysis of political theology, which is Erik Peterson’s theological nightmare. Sacrifice here marks pure loyalty to the state.

I will give two short examples of how the violent death of soldiers is incorporated by the state to affirm its power. In the United States, the power of the sovereign has its origin in the oath (the pledge of allegiance). This oath, which swears allegiance to the flag of the United States as a symbol of ‘one Nation under God’, is ‘collected’ in the sacrifice. The place where this sacrifice is made is at the borders of sovereign power, according to Kahn (Kahn 2008, p. 144), where civilians have turned into soldiers. Thus, the soldier defending the freedom of their people is the sacrificial symbol of the state. The soldier is required to be willing to give their life for the meaning the state gives to the togetherness of its individual members as a unifying force. During commemorations, soldiers are remembered as warriors who ‘gave’ their lives for their homeland or for freedom and democracy. They made a ‘sacrifice’. What is at stake now in war is not the life or death of the individual, but, Kahn says, the existence of the sovereign or a socially imagined reality with transcendent value. The death of the soldier transcends the frame of the state and thus becomes a sacrifice that underscores the sovereignty of the state as an idea. Although the sacrifice signifies the finality of individual life, it underscores the infinite significance of sovereign power. Here, we seem to meet the remnants of the classic martyr. The soldier dies for values that are transcendentally opposed to others. These values are far greater than their physical body, and deemed more important than their immediate social connections. The testimony of this ‘martyr’ is then the willingness to connect the value of their life to the ideals of the nation. Fallen servicemen and servicewomen become the center of the cult of remembrance of the modern state. Their deaths are a ‘gift’ to many, brought at the frontiers for the freedom of the nation. We could therefore—cautiously and with reservations—call the soldier the modern heir of the fighting martyr of the Middle Ages. They give their lives for God, the nation, and the people. When they die, they do not receive a martyr’s crown but a hero’s crown. They transform through the organized memory of the sovereign state into heroes. Their death constitutes the sacrifice through which the sovereign nation continually renews its legitimacy and marks its conviction that the freedom of the nation is continually contested and potentially under attack. The values of the sovereign nation are affirmed as eternal values in the sacrifice of these fallen soldiers. In 2013, Barack Obama said on Memorial Day (last Monday in May) at Arlington National Cemetery that while most Americans are unaffected by war, not all Americans fully understand the depth of sacrifice, the ‘enormous cost’ incurred in our name, ‘right now, as we speak, every day’ (Jackson 2013).

The second example comes from the Netherlands. The sacrificial language on which Kahn and Cavanaugh reflect is less prevalent in the Netherlands. Religion is also less public compared to the US, which makes this an interesting example because it shows how the sovereign state transcends itself by engaging secular social imaginaries that relate the citizens of the democratic state to the state’s body. May 4 is the national ‘commemoration of the fallen’ (nationale dodenherdenking) on Dam Square in Amsterdam. This commemoration focuses on the Dutch victims—soldiers and citizens—who fell or were killed during the Second World War and on military missions elsewhere in the world. In earlier commemorations, a discursive duality between occupation, repression, and murder on the one, and freedom on the other, established a perspective that framed the celebration of freedom as ‘our’ most cherished value with the Nazi regime as its dark opposite. However, as the war slowly fades away from the memory of new generations, the commemoration becomes more symbolic and draws new lines between what is non-negotiable or ‘sacred’, while what threatens this becomes more abstract. One such line is that freedom is never self-evident and should always be defended, making freedom and derivates such as freedom of speech and tolerance the core features of the state’s symbolic body. For example, former president Mark Rutte extended the commemoration in his 2015 speech. He spoke of ‘men and women’ who ‘fought and are fighting for freedom, peace and democracy,’ who fought and are fighting against ‘unfreedom and injustice that must always and everywhere be fought’ or who died in ‘the fight for good’ (Rutte 2015). These words are at the very least peculiar, given the fact that soldiers who fell during the colonial war in the Dutch East Indies (1945–1949) are also commemorated, while war crimes were committed and tens of thousands of Indonesians were killed. The nation-state is highly invested in maintaining the duality of good and evil in such a way that social cohesion in society is ensured and citizens can identify with the clean-washed side of the history of their nation. It sounded somewhat different two years earlier, in 2013, on Dam Square when Peter van Uhm, former commander of the armed forces whose son had died in Afghanistan, spoke that his son died for ‘another people, in another country’ (van Uhm 2013). But he too connected the fight for these other people with larger ideas such as ‘freedom, equality and justice, a better world’ that you make ‘together’ by serving, i.e., dedicating your life (as a soldier) for all. In this example, we see how secular ideals are presented as greater than individual life. Is this an echo of the fighting martyr? In commemorative discourses, the autonomy of the fighter is consistently emphasized: giving one’s life is portrayed as an active performance, through which the sovereign state is able to transcend its own ideals as greater than individual life. The fighter’s autonomous will is exercised in complete freedom and directed toward the freedom of all. This allows the state to ‘transubstantiate’ the concept of freedom into the slain flesh of the fighter as the fighter itself is killed out of ‘free choice’.

When the sovereign state interprets its violence—which Kahn refers to as ‘sacred violence’—the conflict assumes the form of a ‘spiritual conflict’. In this context, the other appears in opposition to one’s own values and norms. The other is perceived as vain and as serving false gods, as well as exhibiting characteristics such as repression, intolerance, and a disregard for the value and freedom of human life. In the context of the sovereign, secular state, the concept of the fighting martyr has been transformed into that of the fighting soldier, who, willingly and consciously, defends the nation, society, and the core values of society with its life at the borders of civilization.

10. Conclusions

This article studied different forms of martyrdom in secular contexts. Leading up to the different cases, I have emphasized the trajectory of martyrdom in—especially—Western European Christianies. This showed that some elements of Christian martyr traditions remain present in secular contexts. In Late Antiquity, the testimony of a transcendent truth that will ultimately judge earthly sovereign power is important. But at least from the Crusades onward, this route splits and two trajectories of martyrdom emerge; the passive one in which the Late Antique tradition is still recognizable, and the fighting martyr who gives his life for his God and sovereign. The passive martyr refuses to acknowledge the sovereign, testifies to a different truth, and is killed for this reason. The assertive martyr, on the other hand, fights for God and the sovereign and dies on the frontier or in distant, especially Eastern, places. The cult of the latter martyr tradition seems to have been transformed into commemorative traditions in which the sacrifices of soldiers form the formative basis of sovereignty.

In secular societies, both trajectories of martyrdom encounter each other, albeit sometimes appearing radically opposed. The classic martyr is still characterized by the fact that in the face of sovereign power, they do not recognize that power and reveal the cruel face of the sovereign. The assertive martyr still dies for God and sovereign, though these are merged into ‘freedom’, ‘people’, or ‘nation’. In secular contexts, the line of radical difference between the truth of God and the lie of the state that marked the late antique martyr and that continued later on in denominational conflicts has faded in the West. Although this concept of martyrdom is not entirely gone, as shown by, for example, Peterson and Pope Francis’ response to Hamel’s death, in secular contexts, the truth of God and the lie of the state have been transformed into the horizontal differentiations between the democratic rule of law and Islamist threats or violent ideologies. This is also evident in the cases discussed. Interpretations of the deaths of Hamel and Fortuyn are often hybrid but show a consistent duality between different powers. Their deaths are a core issue in the struggle for good. Religious martyrdom discourses were intensified after their deaths. Their deaths created a cult of remembrance complete with relics, memorial books, memorial sites, and images. Hamel’s death was sharply theologized by Pope Francis, while French politicians used the terms of the Republic to give his death meaning. In both cases, the autonomy of the priest was stressed. The rituals and language used after Fortuyn’s death brought together, even more sharply than with Hamel’s death, a right-wing liberal discourse with a religious one. Fortuyn’s death was seen as a revelation about the truth of his message. Hamel and Fortuyn were seen as passive martyrs who were attacked by evil powers. Both cases show a certain persistence of the trajectory of this martyrdom concept in the West: a dualism between good and evil, just and unjust, truth and falsehood; death is a moment of revelation in which the wickedness of the evil power is exposed, and ultimately a cult of remembrance based on the suffering of the witness. Finally, commemorations of ‘fallen soldiers’ mark a cult of assertive, active martyrs who ‘sacrifice’ their lives for the nation, its freedom and values. This secular martyr echoes a long religious tradition but is also an example of how the sovereign’s political body is inscribed onto its individual members.