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Martyrs

A martyr — from the Greek μαρτυς, witness — is one who bears witness to Christ with their death, killed for the faith rather than renouncing it. The word is the New Testament’s own: it is used of Stephen (Acts 22:20) and of Antipas, the ‘faithful witness’ of Pergamum (Revelation 2:13), and over time it narrowed from anyone who testified to those who sealed that testimony in blood. This page follows that line of witnesses from the first stoning outside Jerusalem to the present day — who they were, when and where they died, how they were killed, and why.

On scope and on the sources. The full number cannot be tabulated — the martyrs run to many millions, most of them unnamed, and more Christians are thought to have died for the faith in the twentieth century than in all the centuries before it. What follows is therefore representative rather than complete: it aims to touch every era from the New Testament to now, with the figures who are remembered by name and the mass martyrdoms that mark each age. The earliest accounts are also of mixed reliability. A few deaths are recorded in scripture itself; many of the apostles’ ends, and much of the lore of the early-Roman martyrs, come from later tradition (Eusebius, the acta of the martyrs, the medieval legends) and cannot be confirmed — these are flagged by tradition. Treat the table as a map of the memory of martyrdom, not a coroner’s ledger.

The one apostle the tradition does not count a martyr is John, who by the old accounts survived an attempt on his life and died of old age at Ephesus — the exception that frames the rest.

The New Testament — c. AD 29–95

The first witnesses, and the deaths recorded in scripture or remembered from the apostolic generation itself — the forerunner, the first martyr of the church, and the leaders of the Jerusalem community.

Recorded in scripture

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
John the Baptist	c. AD 29, Machaerus (Galilee/Perea)	Beheaded	The forerunner of Jesus; executed by Herod Antipas after he condemned Antipas’ marriage to Herodias, and Salome asked for his head (Mark 6:14–29).
Stephen	c. AD 34, Jerusalem	Stoned	A deacon and the first Christian martyr; charged with blasphemy by the Sanhedrin after his speech, and stoned as Saul looked on (Acts 6–7).
James, son of Zebedee	c. AD 44, Jerusalem	Beheaded (by sword)	One of the Twelve and the first apostle to die; killed by Herod Agrippa I to please the people who opposed the church (Acts 12:1–2).
James the Just	c. AD 62, Jerusalem	Thrown down & clubbed	The brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church; condemned by the high priest Ananus during a gap in Roman rule. Josephus says he was stoned; Hegesippus, that he was cast from the Temple pinnacle and beaten with a club.
Antipas of Pergamum	c. AD 92, Pergamum	By tradition, roasted in a bronze bull	Named by Christ himself as ‘my faithful witness’, killed ‘where Satan dwells’ (Revelation 2:13); later tradition has him roasted alive inside a brazen bull for refusing to sacrifice.

The apostles — by tradition

Beyond the two deaths Acts records, the ends of the apostles come almost wholly from later tradition and vary between sources; the manner and place below are the most commonly received.

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Peter	c. AD 64–68, Rome	Crucified (head-down)	Leader of the apostles; martyred in Nero’s persecution after the fire of Rome. By tradition he asked to be crucified upside down, unworthy to die as his Lord did.
Paul	c. AD 64–67, Rome	Beheaded	Apostle to the Gentiles; as a Roman citizen he was beheaded rather than crucified, under Nero, on the road to Ostia.
Andrew	c. AD 60, Patras (Greece)	Crucified	Brother of Peter; crucified for his preaching. The X-shaped ‘saltire’ cross is a later medieval addition to the story.
Thomas	c. AD 72, Mylapore (India)	Speared	By tradition carried the gospel to India and was run through with a lance near Madras; the Saint Thomas Christians trace their origin to him.
Philip	1st c., Hierapolis (Asia Minor)	Crucified / hanged	Martyred at Hierapolis in Phrygia for his preaching, by tradition crucified or hanged upside down.
Bartholomew	1st c., Armenia	Flayed alive, then beheaded	By tradition evangelised Armenia and was skinned alive and beheaded; for this he is shown in art holding his own skin.
Matthew	1st c., Ethiopia or Persia	Slain (sword/spear)	The tax-collector evangelist; traditions place his martyrdom in Ethiopia or Persia, killed by the sword while at prayer.
James, son of Alphaeus	1st c.	By tradition stoned or clubbed	One of the Twelve; traditions have him stoned and then clubbed to death, or crucified, for preaching Christ.
Simon the Zealot	1st c., Persia or Armenia	By tradition sawn in two / crucified	Traditions differ widely; the eastern accounts have him martyred in Persia, by sawing or crucifixion.
Jude (Thaddaeus)	1st c., Persia/Mesopotamia	Clubbed / axed	Often paired with Simon; by tradition the two were martyred together for their mission in Persia.
Matthias	1st c.	By tradition stoned then beheaded	Chosen to replace Judas (Acts 1); traditions have him martyred in Judea or Colchis, stoned and beheaded, or crucified.
Mark the Evangelist	c. AD 68, Alexandria	Dragged to death	By tradition founder of the church of Alexandria; dragged through the streets by a rope around his neck until he died.
Luke the Evangelist	1st c., Greece	By tradition hanged	Author of the third Gospel and Acts; an old tradition has him hanged from an olive tree in Boeotia, though others hold he died naturally.

The Roman persecutions — c. AD 64–313

For two and a half centuries, in waves rather than continuously, the church was an illegal sect in the empire; refusal to offer sacrifice to the emperor or the gods was treated as treason. The persecutions ran from Nero’s local pogrom to the empire-wide edicts of Decius, Valerian and Diocletian, and ended only with Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313.

The early martyrs — 1st–2nd century

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Ignatius of Antioch	c. AD 108, Rome	Devoured by beasts	Bishop of Antioch; sent in chains to Rome under Trajan and thrown to the lions in the arena. His letters on the way begged the church not to prevent his ‘becoming wheat ground by the teeth of beasts’.
Symeon of Jerusalem	c. AD 107, Jerusalem	Crucified	A kinsman of Jesus and second bishop of Jerusalem; crucified in old age under Trajan.
Polycarp of Smyrna	c. AD 155, Smyrna	Burned, then stabbed	Disciple of the apostle John; when told to curse Christ he answered, ‘Eighty-six years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong.’ The fire would not consume him, so he was run through. His is the earliest detailed martyrdom account outside scripture.
Justin Martyr	c. AD 165, Rome	Scourged & beheaded	The first great Christian philosopher and apologist; tried with six companions under Marcus Aurelius and beheaded for refusing to sacrifice.
Blandina & the martyrs of Lyon	AD 177, Lyon (Gaul)	Tortured; thrown to beasts	A wave of mob and judicial violence; the slave-girl Blandina endured prolonged torture and the arena, and the aged bishop Pothinus died of his beating, under Marcus Aurelius.

The third-century persecutions — c. AD 200–260

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Perpetua & Felicity	AD 203, Carthage	Mauled by beasts, then sword	A young noblewoman and her slave, both new mothers; killed in the games under Septimius Severus for refusing to recant. Perpetua’s prison diary is one of the earliest writings by a Christian woman.
Fabian, bishop of Rome	AD 250, Rome	Died in prison / executed	One of the first to fall in the empire-wide persecution of Decius, which required everyone to sacrifice and produce a certificate.
Agatha of Sicily	c. AD 251, Catania	Tortured to death	A virgin martyr of the Decian persecution; tortured (her breasts cut off, by tradition) for refusing both a suitor and the gods.
Lawrence of Rome	AD 258, Rome	Roasted on a gridiron	A deacon ordered to surrender the church’s treasure; he presented the poor instead and was grilled alive under Valerian. By tradition he quipped, ‘Turn me over — this side is done.’
Sixtus II & companions	AD 258, Rome	Beheaded	The bishop of Rome and his deacons, seized and executed while celebrating the liturgy in the catacombs under Valerian’s edict against the clergy.
Cyprian of Carthage	AD 258, Carthage	Beheaded	The great bishop and theologian of North Africa; tried under Valerian and beheaded for refusing to sacrifice, having first been exiled.

The Great Persecution — AD 303–313

The last and fiercest, launched by Diocletian: churches were demolished, scriptures burned, clergy imprisoned and all required to sacrifice. Many of the most famous ‘name’ martyrs belong here, though their legends grew in the telling.

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Maurice & the Theban Legion	c. AD 286, Agaunum (Alps)	Put to the sword	By tradition a whole legion of Christian soldiers executed for refusing to attack fellow Christians or to sacrifice before battle.
Sebastian	c. AD 288, Rome	Shot with arrows, then clubbed	An officer of the Praetorian Guard; shot full of arrows for his faith, and when he survived was beaten to death under Diocletian.
Alban	c. AD 304 (or 209), Verulamium (Britain)	Beheaded	The first British martyr; a pagan who sheltered and then changed places with a fleeing priest, and was executed in his stead.
George	c. AD 303, Lydda (Palestine)	Tortured & beheaded	A Roman soldier who confessed Christ and tore up the edict of persecution; beheaded under Diocletian. The dragon is a much later legend.
Agnes of Rome	c. AD 304, Rome	Stabbed / beheaded	A girl of twelve or thirteen who refused marriage for the sake of Christ and was killed in the persecution; a model of the virgin martyrs.
Lucy of Syracuse	AD 304, Syracuse	Stabbed (by tradition eyes put out)	A virgin martyr who gave her dowry to the poor; denounced as a Christian and executed under Diocletian.
Vincent of Saragossa	AD 304, Valencia (Spain)	Tortured to death	A deacon racked and burned on a gridiron for refusing to give up the scriptures to be burned.
Catherine of Alexandria	c. AD 305, Alexandria	By tradition the wheel, then beheaded	A learned noblewoman who, by legend, confounded the emperor’s philosophers; the spiked wheel broke at her touch, so she was beheaded.

Beyond the empire — 4th–11th century

After Constantine, martyrdom moved to the frontiers of the Christian world — the Persian empire, Arabia, and the still-pagan north — where to be a Christian could again mean death.

Persia, Arabia and the missionary north

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Simeon bar Sabba’e & the Persian martyrs	from AD 344, Sassanid Persia	Beheaded; many killed	The catholicos of the Persian church and, with him, great numbers of clergy and laity slain in the ‘forty-year persecution’ of Shapur II, who treated Christians as agents of Christian Rome.
The martyrs of Najran	AD 523, Najran (Arabia)	Burned alive	A whole Christian community, with their leader Arethas (al-Harith), massacred and burned in a trench by the Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas.
Boris and Gleb	AD 1015, Kievan Rus’	Killed by assassins	Princes who chose not to resist their murdering brother; honoured as ‘passion-bearers’, killed in innocence in imitation of Christ.

The medieval church — 8th–15th century

In Christendom, martyrdom came chiefly to two kinds: missionaries killed carrying the faith to pagan lands, and churchmen killed in the clash of church and state — with, at the close, the reformers burned as heretics by the church itself.

Missionaries and the church’s frontiers

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Boniface	AD 754, Dokkum (Frisia)	Cut down by the sword	The ‘apostle of Germany’; killed with his companions by armed pagans while waiting to confirm new converts, holding up a Gospel-book against the blow.
Adalbert of Prague	AD 997, Prussia	Speared	A missionary bishop killed by pagan Prussians as he tried to bring them the gospel.
The martyrs of Córdoba	AD 850–859, Córdoba	Beheaded	Some four dozen Christians (among them the priest Eulogius) executed under Muslim rule for publicly confessing Christ and denouncing Islam.

Church and state

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Stanislaus of Kraków	AD 1079, Kraków	Slain at the altar	A bishop killed on the order of (or by) King Bolesław II, whom he had rebuked and excommunicated.
Thomas Becket	AD 1170, Canterbury	Cut down in the cathedral	The archbishop of Canterbury, murdered at the altar by four knights of Henry II after a long quarrel over the church’s independence from the crown.
Peter of Verona	AD 1252, near Milan	Cleaver to the head	A Dominican inquisitor killed on the road by assassins hired by those he preached against.

Reformers before the Reformation

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Jan Hus	AD 1415, Constance	Burned at the stake	The Bohemian reformer condemned by the Council of Constance — despite a safe-conduct — for teaching against indulgences and church corruption, anticipating Luther by a century.
Jerome of Prague	AD 1416, Constance	Burned at the stake	Hus’s friend and fellow reformer, burned by the same council the following year.
Girolamo Savonarola	AD 1498, Florence	Hanged, then burned	The fiery Dominican preacher of repentance and reform; hanged and his body burned after falling foul of the pope and the Florentine authorities.

The Reformation era — 16th–17th century

The bloodiest age of Christians killing Christians. Protestants burned by Catholic rulers, Catholics executed by Protestant ones, and the radicals of the ‘left wing’ drowned and burned by both — each side keeping its own martyrology, from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs to the Anabaptist Martyrs Mirror.

Protestant martyrs

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Patrick Hamilton	AD 1528, St Andrews	Burned at the stake	The first martyr of the Scottish Reformation, burned for preaching Lutheran doctrine.
William Tyndale	AD 1536, Vilvoorde (near Brussels)	Strangled, then burned	The translator who first put the Bible into English from the original tongues; betrayed, condemned for heresy, and executed. His last prayer: ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.’
Anne Askew	AD 1546, London (Smithfield)	Racked, then burned	A gentlewoman tortured on the rack — uniquely for a woman — to make her implicate others, then burned for denying transubstantiation.
George Wishart	AD 1546, St Andrews	Burned at the stake	A Scottish reformer and mentor of John Knox, burned for heresy by Cardinal Beaton.
The Marian martyrs	AD 1555–1558, England	Burned at the stake	Nearly three hundred Protestants — men and women, clergy and lay — burned under Mary I in the drive to restore Catholicism; chronicled by John Foxe.
Latimer & Ridley	AD 1555, Oxford	Burned at the stake	Two bishops burned back to back. Latimer’s words to Ridley became famous: ‘Be of good comfort… we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’
Thomas Cranmer	AD 1556, Oxford	Burned at the stake	The archbishop of Canterbury and architect of the English Prayer Book; he recanted under pressure, then repudiated his recantations at the stake and thrust the offending right hand first into the flames.

Catholic martyrs

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
John Fisher	AD 1535, London	Beheaded	The bishop of Rochester, executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII as supreme head of the church in England.
Thomas More	AD 1535, London	Beheaded	The former Lord Chancellor, executed for the same refusal; ‘the King’s good servant, but God’s first.’
The London Carthusians	from AD 1535, London	Hanged, drawn & quartered	Monks who would not swear the Oath of Supremacy; the first were dragged to Tyburn and butchered alive.
Edmund Campion	AD 1581, London	Hanged, drawn & quartered	A Jesuit priest who returned secretly to minister to England’s Catholics under Elizabeth I; tortured and executed as a traitor.
Margaret Clitherow	AD 1586, York	Pressed to death	A laywoman crushed under weights for harbouring priests; she refused to plead, to spare her children being made to testify.

Radicals and the wars of religion

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Felix Manz	AD 1527, Zürich	Drowned	A leader of the Swiss Anabaptists, drowned in the Limmat by the Protestant city council — a grim parody of his belief in adult baptism. The first Anabaptist martyr at Protestant hands.
Michael Sattler	AD 1527, Rottenburg	Tortured, then burned	An Anabaptist leader; his tongue cut out and his flesh torn with hot tongs before he was burned, for rebaptism and refusing the sword and the oath.
Michael Servetus	AD 1553, Geneva	Burned at the stake	An antitrinitarian physician burned in Calvin’s Geneva for heresy — a martyrdom at Protestant hands that became a byword in the later argument for toleration.
The Huguenots of St Bartholomew’s Day	AD 1572, Paris & France	Massacred	Thousands of French Protestants killed in a wave of mob and royal violence that began on the night of 23–24 August and spread across the country.

The age of missions — 16th–19th century

As the gospel spread along the new sea routes, the mission fields produced their own martyrs in large numbers — in Japan, the Americas, Korea, Vietnam, China and Africa — native converts far more often than foreign missionaries.

Japan

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Nagasaki	AD 1597, Nagasaki	Crucified & speared	Six friars and twenty Japanese converts (among them the Jesuit Paul Miki and three boys) crucified together as the shogunate moved to stamp out Christianity.
The martyrs of the Great Genna	AD 1622, Nagasaki	Burned & beheaded	Fifty-five Christians executed together in one of the mass killings of the long persecution that drove the faith underground for two centuries.

The Americas

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
The North American Martyrs	AD 1642–1649, New France	Tortured to death	Eight French Jesuits and lay helpers — Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf, Gabriel Lalemant and others — killed amid the wars between the Huron, among whom they worked, and the Iroquois.

Asia

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Andrew Kim Taegŏn & the Korean Martyrs	AD 1839–1866, Korea	Beheaded	The first Korean-born priest and some ten thousand others killed in successive purges of the foreign ‘Western learning’; 103 are canonised.
Andrew Dũng-Lạc & the Vietnamese Martyrs	17th–19th c., Vietnam	Beheaded, strangled, tortured	Tens of thousands of Vietnamese Christians and missionaries killed under successive emperors; 117 are canonised.
The martyrs of the Boxer Rising	AD 1900, China	Killed in the uprising	Tens of thousands of Chinese Christians, with foreign missionaries, killed by the anti-foreign Boxers and their backers; commemorated across the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches.

Africa and Oceania

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
The Uganda Martyrs	AD 1885–1887, Namugongo	Burned alive	Charles Lwanga and his companions — both Catholic and Anglican pages of the royal court — burned by the Kabaka Mwanga II for refusing his demands and clinging to the new faith.
James Hannington	AD 1885, Uganda	Speared	An Anglican bishop killed on Mwanga’s order as he tried to enter Buganda from the east.
John Coleridge Patteson	AD 1871, Nukapu (Melanesia)	Clubbed	An Anglican missionary bishop killed by islanders in reprisal for the kidnappings of the ‘blackbirding’ labour trade carried out by other white men.

The modern era — 20th–21st century

By most counts more Christians have died for the faith in the last hundred years than in all the centuries before — in the genocides of the First World War, under the great totalitarian regimes, in civil wars, and at the hands of militant movements down to the present.

Genocide and totalitarian persecution

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
The Armenian & Assyrian Christians	AD 1915–1923, Ottoman Empire	Massacred; death marches	Around a million and a half Armenians, with hundreds of thousands of Assyrian and Greek Christians, killed or driven to their deaths — targeted as a Christian people of the empire.
The New Martyrs of Russia	from AD 1917, Soviet Union	Shot; died in the camps	Tens of thousands of bishops, priests, monks, nuns and laity killed under Soviet atheism — among them Grand Duchess Elizabeth, thrown alive down a mineshaft in 1918, and Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, shot in 1922.
Miguel Pro	AD 1927, Mexico City	Shot by firing squad	A Jesuit priest executed during the anti-clerical Cristero persecution; he faced the rifles with arms outstretched, crying ‘Viva Cristo Rey’ — Long live Christ the King.
The martyrs of the Spanish Civil War	AD 1936–1939, Spain	Shot; killed in reprisals	Nearly seven thousand bishops, priests, religious and lay Catholics killed in the anti-clerical violence of the Republican zone; many have since been beatified.

The Nazi era

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Maximilian Kolbe	AD 1941, Auschwitz	Starvation, then lethal injection	A Polish Franciscan friar who volunteered to take the place of a married prisoner condemned to the starvation bunker; when he outlived the others he was killed with an injection of carbolic acid.
Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)	AD 1942, Auschwitz	Gassed	A Jewish philosopher turned Carmelite nun, arrested and murdered in the Holocaust in reprisal for the Dutch bishops’ protest against the deportations.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer	AD 1945, Flossenbürg	Hanged	A Lutheran pastor and theologian hanged for his part in the resistance to Hitler, days before the camp was liberated.
Franz Jägerstätter	AD 1943, Berlin	Beheaded	An Austrian farmer beheaded for refusing, as a matter of conscience, to swear the military oath and fight for the Nazi regime.

The mission field and the late twentieth century

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Jim Elliot & companions	AD 1956, Ecuador	Speared	Five young American missionaries — Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming and Roger Youderian — killed on a sandbar by the people they had come to reach, the Waorani (then called Auca).
Wang Zhiming	AD 1973, Yunnan (China)	Executed publicly	A Chinese pastor put to death before a crowd during the Cultural Revolution for his Christian leadership.
Janani Luwum	AD 1977, Uganda	Shot	The Anglican archbishop of Uganda, murdered after protesting the atrocities of Idi Amin’s regime.
Óscar Romero	AD 1980, San Salvador	Shot at the altar	The archbishop of San Salvador, gunned down while saying Mass the day after he called on soldiers to stop killing their own people.

The twenty-first century

Name	When & where	How	Why they died
Ragheed Ganni	AD 2007, Mosul (Iraq)	Shot	A Chaldean Catholic priest killed with three companions outside his church for refusing to close it amid the persecution of Iraq’s Christians.
Shahbaz Bhatti	AD 2011, Islamabad	Shot	Pakistan’s only Christian cabinet minister, assassinated for opposing the blasphemy laws used against religious minorities.
The 21 Coptic Christians of Libya	AD 2015, Libyan coast	Beheaded	Twenty Egyptian Copts and one Ghanaian, migrant workers seized and beheaded on a beach by ISIS; several were heard calling on the name of Jesus.
Jacques Hamel	AD 2016, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray (France)	Throat cut	An eighty-six-year-old priest murdered by two ISIS adherents at the altar as he celebrated morning Mass.

The line of witnesses runs unbroken from the stones thrown at Stephen to the knife on a Libyan beach. It is this fruit of the cross — that people will die rather than deny it — that the New Testament’s account of Jesus’ death tries to explain; for that, see The Cross. For the wider cast of scripture, see the Bible characters, and for the span of events behind it, the Bible timeline.

The names, dates and details in the tables on this page were compiled with the help of AI tools and may contain errors. Many early martyrdoms are known only from later tradition and cannot be verified, and dates and circumstances vary between sources; these entries are offered in good faith as a rough guide only, and should be checked against scripture and reliable historical scholarship before you rely on them.