The Role of the Political Theology of Martyrdom in the Formation of Proto-National Patriotism in Medieval Europe

The article is devoted to the historical and philosophical study of the origin and formation of the prerequisites of national patriotism in medieval Europe in the optics of the political theology of martyrdom. It is argued that the figure of a national hero-patriot, sacrificing his own life in the name of the fatherland (pro patria mori), has a certain martyrological content derived from the Christian cult of martyrs. The willingness to die for their beliefs and faith, which gives the phenomenon of martyrdom a politically motivated character, allows us to talk about the possibility of building a political martyrology, within the boundaries of which a Christian martyr as a citizen of the heavenly city (civitas coelestis) appears as a defender of his fatherland (defensor patriae paradisi), sacrificing his own life. Since Christianity acquired the status of the state religion, the heavenly city has been involved in the historical context of the Late Roman Empire, with the prospects of which the fate of Christianity itself is actually identified. The need to protect the empire from barbaric invasions forces theologians to develop the concepts of just war (bellum iustum) and holy war (bellum sacrum), which led to the secularization of the idea of the army of Christ (militia Christi) that initially implied participation in the battle with the forces of evil only on the rights of a spiritual army. The combination of two axiological systems (Christ army and secular army) was carried out through the glorification and militarization of the figure of the martyr, on the one hand, and the functional-figurative comparison of the figure of the warrior with the figure of the martyr, on the other. The protection of the Holy Land (Terra Sancta) in the era of the Crusades served as a model on the basis of which the idea of the heavenly homeland began to function in the secular register. As a result of the further evolution of the monarchical state in the paradigm of the “political body” (corpus politicum), the religious imperative of self-sacrifice of a Christian for the sake of the heavenly fatherland acquired the form of a public-legal requirement of civil self-sacrifice for the benefit of the earthly fatherland, which later took shape as a national state.

Keywords: political theology, martyrology, martyrdom, martyr, Christianity, Middle Ages, patriotism, patriot, nation