Vol: 5 Issue: 9
Tute 1728 / Sept 2011
Martyrs for the sake of Chastity By: Bishop Youanis Two eminent phenomena distinguished the Christians of the early generations of Christianity, these are the desire for martyrdom and the love of chastity and virginity. We find the dominance of these two phenomena over the believers an ordinary matter which keeps pace with the deep spirituality they enjoyed and the wonderful sublimity they attained by scorning the flesh and whatever was material. Where there is martyrdom, there should be chastity. There is no martyrdom with spiritual dissolution, moral deterioration and man's bondage to the lust of the flesh. The history of martyrs is full of marvelous examples of the heroes of purity and chastity who preferred facing death to defiling their bodies. Idolaters and their governors were overwhelmed by filthy lust in a shameful manner. They were astonished at the chastity of Christians specially the females who “could not even listen to the threat of pagan governors to rape them. So they bore all kinds of torture and deadly punishment.” Eusebius, the historian who lived amidst persecutions says: “Women were no less brave than men in defending the teachings of the Divine Word as they participated in the struggle with men and obtained an equal share of crowns for the sake of virtue. When they took them for immoral purposes, they preferred surrendering their life to death to surrendering their body to immorality”. Hence, it was clear to the pagan governors that falling into sin was worse than death for Christians. Hence, they imposed it as punishment especially on virgins, women and some youths. A Chaste youth: During the persecution raised by Emperor Decius (249-251), when one of the pagan governors failed to divert a Christian youth from his faith, he delivered him to a prostitute to make him fall into sin. The woman could not find any means to achieve her purpose, so they tied the