If you are a deeply committed Christian you will possibly know this word, but if you were just raised a Christian, as I was, you are less likely to.
3. Protomartyr. We can begin explaining this with another Christmas carol, which refers to an event that may or may not have taken place over 1000 years ago in the Czech Republic.
Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fuel
The story the carol relates is that King Wenceslas sees a peasant gathering wood. It’s the Feast of Stephen and the King decides that the lucky peasant deserves to have a decent St Stephen’s feast. So he sets his servants about preparing a feast, then takes one of them and trudges through the snow to find the poor man’s abode. He then invites his lucky subject to share in this impromptu feast. No doubt the following year, when Wenceslas looks out, he sees a whole landscape full of peasant gathering winter fuel.
But what, exactly, is the feast of Stephen? First of all, St Stephen was one of the apostles and, as any self respecting martyrologist will know, the first Christian to be martyred. This makes him the protomartyr of protomartyrs. Protomartyr literally means “the first martyr.”
However, protomartyrs are assigned to different geographical areas. So, for example, the British protomartyr was St Alban, who was beheaded for his faith on top of a hill near the Roman town of Verulamium (later to be called St Albans). It happened around AD 283, decades before Emperor Constantine made Christianity a lot more fashionable. According to reports, when St Alban was beheaded, his head rolled down the hill and where it came to rest, a spring sprang up, which later to become a local well. So the hill is now known as Holywell Hill.
The US protomartyr was and is Juan de Padilla, a Franciscan friar who accompanied Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in his search for the “Seven Golden Cities of Cibola.” They had been informed that these cities were somewhere in North America, so they traveled North from Mexico through New Mexico in search of them. It was a fruitless search, as far as golden cities were concerned, but the group did discover the Grand Canyon. De Padilla eventually left the explorers and decided to convert the Quiviran Indians of Kansas to Christianity. His reward was martyrdom.
As for St Stephen, he spread the Gospel in and around Jerusalem in the year (or years, but let’s not quibble) after Christ’s death. The Sanhedrin (the Jewish high priests) were deeply unimpressed by this. They tried him for blasphemy against God and Moses, and he was stoned to death. The crowd who stoned Stephen was incited to act by Saul, who held their coats while they threw stones. Saul later became St Paul, who had a vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, and who was also martyred.
And as we’re speaking of martyrs, we may as well note that King Wenceslas was martyred, and he’s quite possibly the protomartyr of Bohemia – or the Czech Republic as we now call it. A committed Christian, he became King of Bohemia (or possibly Duke, but let’s not quibble) at the tender age of 18 and was killed on the way to church ten years later, in a plot hatched by his younger brother Boleslav, who was hungry for power.
Miracles accompanied his death, including the healing of a blind and crippled woman and a lame man. So Wenceslas (or Vaclav as the Czechs would call him, but let’s not quibble) was canonized and his grave became a place of pilgrimage.
His name is writ large among the Czechs. He became their patron saint and legend has it that a huge army of knights sleeps inside the Blanik mountain in the Czech Republic, and should the nation be threatened the equestrian statue of King Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square in Prague will come to life, raise the army sleeping in Blanik and save the Motherland.
But why does this have anything to do with Christmas?
Well, the Feast of Stephen is on Boxing Day, the Day after Christmas and it is the day when servants/peasants are honored. Thus King Wenceslas gesture in feasting with his peasant subject is “in the spirit of Boxing Day.”
However, that Boxing Day tradition is not really Christian, it’s pagan – but hey, let’s not quibble.
The following are links to all the Xmas words: #1 Hwoelor-tid, #2 Brumalia, #3 Protomartyr, #4 Dulocracy, #5 Pohutukawa, #6 Hagiolatry, #7 Sinterklaas, #8 Prolicide, #9 Apophoret,#10 Kenosis,#11 Psilanthropy,#12 Parepochism
~ Mark Twain
