Few works on the spread of Christianity fail to quote Tertullian`s Apologeticum 50. 13. The temptation to view the blood of the martyrs as the seed of the Church is great and the formula has enjoyed great renown among believers as well as scholars. Recent scholarship has reconsidered the role played by the martyr in constructing a Christian identity without nevertheless affecting its conversional allure. From considering it capable of exercising a positive influence (Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005) to picturing it as a cultural product destined to convert (Robin Darling Young, In Procession before the World: Martyrdom as Public Liturgy in Early Christianity, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2001), the martyr continues to be credited with an appealing aura. Drawing on the very texts that present the ‘blood as seed´, the present paper argues that not only martyrdom lacked such a potency but that it was meant to alienate the non-Christian audience.
The recurrence of the ´blood as seed´ metaphor in the works of almost every Christian writer of the first three centuries suggests, nevertheless, that there is more to the phenomenon than empty rhetoric. By addressing the structure of the audience as well as the image of martyrdom in contemporary sources we will argue that it was the category of the catechumens that the metaphor referred to. Corroborating proof will be brought to sustain the hypothesis, underlining the relation between this group and the Christian community as well as its implication in martyrdoms.
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