Pannonian Early Christian Martyr Lawsuits and Their Political Aspects

Abstract

The most important Pannonian historical source groups for the greatest persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire are the hagiographic sources. Of these, the Passion Stories, the stories of sufferings of the Pannonian martyrs, are narratives that also describe court trials.These martyrdom lawsuit-descriptions cannot be considered accurate legal texts, they were created on average about 50-100 years after the events. From the point of view of the criminal law, they might be classified as political lawsuits if we assume that the defendants contradicted the imperial decrees of the existing and regaining political power and therefore received their death sentences. However, the opposition of the martyrs in the examined texts can be traced to reasons of conscience and not politics.