ABSTRACT
Martyrium comes to Danish from its cognate in Latin, and from the Greek μαρτύριον. In Greek the term simply meant “testimony,” and the word μάρτυς, “martyr,” meant “witness” (a fact that carries some interest for us below) but came to be applied to those Christians who suffered and died for their faith. In Danish, the word martyr itself carries this latter meaning as its primary one. A secondary meaning of martyrium is to be persecuted and suffer, but perhaps not finally to die directly for one’s religious conviction (as in the old Christian term “confessor”), or indeed for a less religious reason (for example a “political martyr”).1
