Blandina and Pothinus martyrs of Lyon

In 177, under Marcus Aurelius, the Christian community of Lyon was handed over to the crowd and then to the beasts. A letter sent to the churches of Asia, copied out by the historian Eusebius, tells the story: it is the oldest Christian text to come from Gaul, and it names its dead. Pothinus, the town's first bishop, more than ninety years old, died in prison after being dragged before the tribunal. Blandina, a slave whom her companions thought too frail to hold out, wore out her executioners: hung on a post, exposed to beasts that would not touch her, brought back into the amphitheatre day after day until the last, she was finally wrapped in a net and thrown to a bull. The letter dwells on that reversal — the least of them all proved the strongest.