We know about some of these incidents: the execution of bishop Polycarp by fire early in the second century, the beheading of Justin Martyr and his companions in Rome in mid second century, the cruel mistreatment of a group of martyrs in Lyons in Gaul several decades later, the “passion” (suffering) of two women—Perpetua, a young mother, and her pregnant slave Felicity—in Carthage early in the third century.
