‘In Procession Before the World’: Spectacles of Faith Outside the Walls of the Church

Abstract

The phrase “ in procession before the world ” is undoubtedly familiar to many. It is drawn from Origen ’ s Exhortation to Martyrdom, written in 235, and describes the public witness of Christians to the glory of God through their willingness to be condemned to death for their faith. The verbal and visual image of this ‘ procession before the world ’ was re-introduced with the 2001 monograph publication of Robin Darling Young ’ s lecture at Marquette University, entitled In procession before the world: martyrdom as public liturgy in early Christianity . In borrowing Origen ’ s phrase and focus on martyrdom as witness to faith, Darling Young stressed the public nature of martyrdom as a type of public liturgical sacri fi ce in which the word of Jesus and his kingdom was confessed and acted out, and an offering made that repeated his own. If the Eucharist of the early Christians was a kind of substitute sacri fi ce, then the martyr was an imitative one. When the eucharist was still private, not open to non-Christian view, the martyrs ’ sacri fi ce was public and dramatic. 1