The Christian Martyrs and Us, by Robert Royal
Speaking Directly to the Hearts of Women for 30 Years: Why John Paul II’s Message Still Matters Today, by Annette Bergeon
June 30, 2025
We Still Have An Imperial Judiciary, Yet Trump Continues To Exercise Extreme Restraint, by Margot Cleveland
June 30, 2025
The Martyrs of the Catacombs by Jules Eugene Lenepveu, 1856 [Louvre, Paris]
By Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, June 30, 2025
Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century, Columbus and the Crisis of the West , and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.
Note: We’ve got two days left and just a few thousand dollars to raise. There’s a whole second half of this year that needs your support. One last push, please – and we’ll be there. – Robert Royal
Today is the feast of the First Martyrs of Rome, the mostly unknown group of early Christians who were persecuted and died in 64 A.D. under the Emperor Nero. Some were wrapped in animal skins and torn apart by dogs in public spectacles, others were covered in tar and burned alive as human torches. It was the beginning of anti-Christian violence that, sadly, has cropped up periodically over the past 2000 years and continues even today.
The Roman historian Tacitus lamented the deaths of the early martyrs – but not because of the inhumanity and injustice:
to stop the rumor [that he had set Rome on fire], [Nero] falsely charged with guilt, and punished with the most fearful tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were [generally] hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius, but the pernicious superstition [prava superstitio] – repressed for a time, broke out yet again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, whither all things horrible and disgraceful flow from all quarters, as to a common receptacle. . .a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of “hatred of the human race.” ….
