This blog takes a broad view of martyrdom, but for martyrs of the classically pious cast, nobody fills the cemeteries like Holy Mother Church.

Heck, Rome has been using this blog’s concept since way before Movable Type. No, I mean way before movable type.

Say what you will about the official martyrology and those that populate it — like all martyrs, they have something to tell us about their world and ours.

CC image of a Notre Dame gargoyle from Brian Jeffery Beggerly

Join Executed Today over the next four days as we listen to some martyrs’ stories of the violently negotiated boundaries — geographical, temporal, political, and spiritual — of Church authority and identity as against the communities that disputed it.

• Mar. 8: St. Philemon the Actor
• Mar. 9: St. Bruno of Querfurt
• Mar. 10: St. John Ogilvie
• Mar. 11: St. Eulogius of Cordoba

On this day..

• 1945: Theo van Gogh, famous name
• 1988: Elina Zlatanova, the last woman executed in Bulgaria
• 2000: Hu Changqing, Jiangxi deputy governor
• 1693: Five at Tyburn
• 1734: Judith Defour, in the Gin Craze
• 1715: Lips Tullian, outlaw and comic hero
• 1782: The Gnadenhutten Massacre
• 1945: Karl Hulten, for the Cleft Chin Murder
• 1862: Martin Dumollard, l'assassin des bonnes
• 1916: Three in the Mexican Revolution
• 1951: The Lonely Hearts killers, tortured by love
• 305: Feast Day of St. Philemon the Actor
• 1845: An Italian highwayman, as witnessed by Dickens