The Plague of Cyprian

Most of the martyrdom stories that scholars have claimed were written to inculcate a desire to suffer among the laity were written hundreds of years later in the late antique and medieval periods. The lack both of instances of martyrdom and of texts describing martyrdom, whether real or fictional, demonstrate that persecution was not a feature of the day-to-day lives of early Christians. While they were occasionally killed, it is impossible to attribute Christian interest in suffering and self-identification as sufferers to the direct consequence of external danger or political pressure. Even if Christians did not suffer and die in the quantities ecclesiastical tradition describes, some were executed. Perhaps those rare individual deaths deeply affected