Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – The Story of Blandina, Lyons AD 177 – Child Martyr

Thomas E Kresal December 26, 2019

“She was a poor slave-girl, 15 years of age, who was put to every torture, that her Christian mistress might be implicated. She was kept in a loathsome dungeon, and brought into the amphitheater every day to see the agonies of her companions as they were roasted in the iron chair, or torn to pieces by lions. Her spirit was clothed with superhuman endurance, for although racked from morning till night, so that her tormentors were obliged to relieve each other for rest, her constancy vanquished their patience, her only answer being: “I am a Christian, no wickedness is done by us.” Then they took her into the circus and suspended her on a cross, within reach of the wild beasts, to frighten her fellow-confessors. The multitude howled for her life and a lion was let loose upon the poor child, but not a quiver passed over her frame. She looked into its mouth and smiled like a queen, and the monster did not touch her.

Only a century before this, the first slave-girl was converted to Christ, at Philippi, and now her ennobled sister cast holy defiance at the empire, and serenely looked Europe in the face. Her calm soul told His great Power, that at last the weak were endowed with the omnipotence of the Gospel. Her intrepid spirit showed, for the first time, how Jesus could lift a worm into the empire of a human conscience; and could rebuke cruelty in the mute eloquence of love. The brightest page in the history of Rome was written that day, in the beams of that child’s hope.

Taken down from the cross she was removed to her dungeon, but finally brought back into the arena for execution. Her slender frame was a rare victim for the savage populace, and they gloated on her. But she flinched not, more than the angel in Gethsemane before the swords and staves of the Passover mob. She stepped as lightly as if she were going to a banquet. She was first scourged, then scorched in the hot chair, and at last cast before a furious bull, which tossed her madly. Even then a sharp blade was needful to take the lingering throb of life; and when her body burnt to ashes it was cast into the hone. From that day, this harmless child-slave has been with her redeeming Master in Paradise.”

Thomas E. Kresal from History of the Baptists by Thomas Armitage, First Edition 1886, Page 168-170