Il martirio interiore: segni e testi del sacrificio di sé nel primo Cattolicesimo moderno

In early modernity, Catholicism continues to represent martyrs and martyrdom, for they voice a central theological tenet of Christianity: those who are defeated in this life, will triumph in the next one if they follow Jesus, who first set the model for this existential pattern. Rhetorically, moreover, the Christian narrative of martyrdom subverts the ‘pagan’ heroic tale and extols suffering heroes, thus encouraging empathy and identification. At the same time, the early modern representation of martyrs changes: tales of saintly immolation are either retrieved from a remote past (early Christianity) or projected in faraway missionary lands. In the hic et nunc of early modern Roman Catholicism, instead, martyrdom turns from external to internal, from physical to spiritual, from originated by hostile heathens to caused by the enemy that everyone has inside. The article explains this change in relation to the rise of modern science and subjectivity, and exemplifies it thought the semiotic analysis of a series of early modern hagiographic both verbal and visual texts.