Last among her companions to consummate her martyrdom, the frail Blandina endured with unspeakable fortitude the most terrible torments. She conquered the final battle with heroism, and flew joyfully and with haste to Heaven.
Newsroom (07/06/2022 3:00PM, Gaudium Press) It was the year of Our Lord 177. With about forty thousand inhabitants, Lugdunum (present day Lyon) had already spread far beyond the hill of Fourvières, where it had been founded, to the banks of the Rhône and the Saône. Because of its economic and administrative importance, as early as the second century it could “claim the title of metropolis of the whole of Gaul”.
In the spring of that year, the persecution against the Christians had become quite violent, including interrogations such as below:
– What is your name?
– I am a Christian.
– Where were you born?
– I am a Christian.
– To what family do you belong?
– I am a Christian.
The Roman governor lost hope. This was not the first interrogation and the prisoner was still not answering any questions. All sorts of tortures had already been applied to the Holy Deacon of Vienne – in name and in fact! -In order to extract some imprudent word out of him, but everything had been in vain.
The executioners, moved by a furious hatred, inflamed by his persistence, used a new kind of torment: they heated metal plates in a furnace and applied them to various parts of the deacon’s body until they were reduced to a mass of swollen flesh. But the heroic defender of the Faith endured these atrocities with unwavering firmness, for love of Christ and his Church.
Sudden eruption of persecution
Alongside such events, the sweetness of the spring weather seemed to want to remind the Christian community that the beauties of this world are always intertwined with those of Heaven, our definitive homeland, for while beautiful flowers were blooming on earth, new martyrs were flowering towards Paradise.
Suddenly and violently, persecution broke out. It is not known for certain what the trigger of such a fierce outburst of hatred was, but it is only said that it began on the occasion of the annual solemnity which brought together, from the surrounding regions, “the legates of the three Gauls around the altar of Rome and Augustus”, in the famous sanctuary of Lugdunum, to pay them honour. Judging themselves offended by the Christian religion, the persecutors went in pursuit of those who practised it. Not only did they expel them from houses, squares and public places, but they forbade them to appear in any place, wherever the sun or moonlight shone.
The Christians of Vienne and Lyon describe the cruelty with which they were treated in a famous letter to their brothers in Asia and Phrygia: “The intensity of the oppression we have endured here, the magnitude of the anger of the pagans against the saints, and all that the blessed martyrs have endured, we are not able to convey accurately, nor is it possible, surely, to record in writing.”
Some slaves of Christian families were also arrested and, fearing the punishment they were threatened with, accused their masters of suspicious attitudes and nefarious crimes, such as cannibalistic suppers and immoral practices, increasing even more the hatred of the followers of Jesus Christ.
Watch and be prepared!
Until a few days before the “hurricane” of brutal persecution was unleashed, the Church in Gaul lived in relative tranquility. This Roman province had for several years been under the rule of Marcus Aurelius, who, although he had had points of friction with Christianity, was considered a benevolent emperor towards the new communities of the Religion of Christ.
In this context, two opposing attitudes could be adopted by the Gaulish Christians: that of the foolish virgins and that of the prudent ones, from the parable taught by the Divine Master (cf. Mt 25:1-13). And when difficulties came, many of them showed that they had made good use of the time of calm to unite themselves more closely to God and to progress in virtue, since they did not lack the “oil” necessary to face the trials.
This was the case, for example, with Vettius Epagatus, who “had reached the fullness of love of God and neighbour. His conduct was so perfect that, despite his youth, he merited the testimony of the elder Zacharias, because he had observed irreproachably all the commandments and precepts of the Lord: diligent in all service to his neighbour, he had a great zeal for God, burning with the Spirit”.
Together with some companions, he had been brought to trial in the public square, under insults, blows and stones from the furious people. The governor used such cruelty against one of them that Vettius, indignant, rose to his defence. Unable to refute his arguments, the tyrannical magistrate tried to beat him by torture. In this way he gave him the greatest of glories: the palm of martyrdom.
Double punishment for those who denied the Faith
However, others were unprepared for the tribulation, with their lamps blown out, for they lacked the “oil” of faith and courage when the “bridegroom” arrived: they denied the Divine Redeemer and burned incense to idols! If the faithful were subject to Christ’s promise: “Whoever testifies to me before men, I will also testify to him before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:32), the unrepentant deniers were subjected to the frightening sentence: “I will also deny them before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:33).
Events, however, showed that their choice had not been right, not even from the human point of view. “During the first imprisonment, those who had denied their Faith were locked up in the same prison and shared the same sufferings, because apostasy, on this occasion, had availed them nothing. While those who had confessed to be Christians were imprisoned as such, and no other charge weighed upon them, these apostates were imprisoned as murderers and profligates, and their punishment was twice as heavy.”
Greater is the cross of those whom God loves most
All men must drink in this life the bitter taste of pain, from which true glory is born. In speaking of suffering, Monsignor João Scognamiglio Clá Dias states that “there have been those who have dared to approximate it to the Sacraments, perhaps an ‘eighth sacrament‘ – adding, in an analogous way, a new component to the definitive seven Sacraments that Catholic doctrine teaches us.”
Now to those whom Our Lord loves most He reserves a greater portion of His Cross, so that they may also be worthy of greater glory. The principal martyrs of the persecution of Lyon may be considered among the most beloved, for if the torments endured by the others were cruel, we do not know how to qualify the torments inflicted on the Holy Deacon, on the newly baptized Maturus, on the noble fighter Attalus, or on the young Blandina.
We cannot forget, moreover, the holy Bishop Pothinus, guide and head of these chosen ones. In his youth he had been a disciple of St. Polycarp, from whom he learned not only orthodoxy of doctrine but also irreproachability of morals. And in the hour of the storm he did not abandon his sheep; on the contrary, he went ahead to open the way for them.
Pothinus was more than ninety years old, and if the decades had consumed the vigor of his body, an incandescent love animated him, leading him to appear before the governor with admirable intrepidity. On seeing him, the governor asked who the God of the Christians was. Without hesitation, the old man replied with haughtiness: “You will know Him if you become worthy of Him.”
Dragged out of the city, his body bruised by the blows of the hateful pagan mob, who did not even respect his age, he was thrown back into prison, where he gave his soul to God a few days later.
God often chooses the weak to make them models of fortitude. Among all these, special admiration and pity is aroused for Blessed Blandina, who belonged to the class of slaves and yet possessed a soul full of nobility. A frail woman, she faced her torments with manly fearlessness. “Soft” in name, she demonstrated a rigorous and persistent will in defending her Faith.
Her witness shows us how God often chooses what the world considers weak, not only to confound the powerful, as St. Paul says (cf. 1 Cor 1:27), but above all to serve as a model of what can be achieved when one places oneself with total flexibility in the hands of the Creator. The fact that she had been chosen by Providence did not exempt her from undergoing terrible and prolonged torture. Blandina was martyred little by little, becoming a tower of fortitude, a point of reference for all those who, weak as she was, would undergo tremendous and lasting suffering for the Holy Church.
In addition to the physical torments, a moral torment even more difficult to bear weighed upon her: that of the thwarted instinct of sociability. To see her brothers in the Faith departing for eternity, one by one, while she remained alive, increasingly isolated and without collateral support, was cruel! Nevertheless, she remained persevering, patiently accepting yet another test sent by God. With her eyes turned towards the future and certain of the victory of the immortal Church, at no time did she give in to discouragement or insecurity.
The executioners subjected her body to so much torture that her companions feared, not without reason, that she would not have the strength to be faithful. For many days she was tortured from sunrise to sunset, to the point that her body was one single wound. Nevertheless, “like a generous athlete, she was rejuvenated by her confession; it was a renewal of her strength for her, a rest and an end to her endured sufferings to say: ‘I am a Christian and there is nothing evil between us.’
They took her, Maturus and the Holy Deacon to a stadium to be thrown to the beasts in a public spectacle. The executioners lashed the two men with iron lashes; their blood soaked the arena, and the spectators, far from being moved by such a merciless scene, howled in the stands, eager for more. They were both then thrown to the beasts and forced to fight against them, to amuse the audience. After that, they were placed on hot iron chairs, from which emanated the smell of burning flesh, which intoxicated the audience. Finally, they killed them.
Like a link between earth and Paradise
And Blandina? A no less severe torment was in store for her: she was hung from a tree where she was exposed to the beasts. “Seeing her thus bound in the form of a cross and hearing her pray aloud gave the athletes great courage: in that combat, with bodily eyes they seemed to see, in their sister, the One who was crucified for them. Contemplating her and the other martyrs, many Christian renegades repented and received strength to proclaim the Faith, giving their lives for Christ.
With her body raised to Heaven and suffering with a serene and confident face, Blandina appeared to the others as a link between earth and Paradise, because she seemed to be already living in it. As the beasts did not touch her, they took her back to prison, where she remained awaiting new battles and greater victories.
More than forty martyrdoms having been consummated, on the last day of gladiatorial fights they sent Blandina again to the beasts, in the company of Pontus, a fifteen year old youth. Our heroine faced yet another cycle of torture, in the midst of which she comforted Pontus and encouraged him, by her words and bravery, to bravely face pain and death.
After submitting her to floggings and other tortures, the torturers wrapped her in a net raised above the ground, exposing her for a long time to the fury of a bull, which threw her into the air. “Blessed Blandina remained, the last of them all, like a noble mother who has just exhorted her children and sent them victorious to the King; then she again goes through the whole series of their battles and runs to them, full of joy and gladness at this departure”:12 at last she was beheaded, flying hurriedly to Heaven.
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
