The cult of martyrs

Mario Ferrero

POLIS Working Papers from Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS

Abstract: This paper suggests a rational explanation for extreme voluntary sacrifice in situations in which the state of the world when the decision must be made is observable only by the agent. Such explanation is the cult of martyrs, heroes, and saints. This cult may get out of control and fuel fanaticism, or excessive sacrifice from the standpoint of the sponsoring organization. A survey of the historical evidence of Christian martyrdom strongly suggests that martyrs were driven by the expectation of a cult in this world, not by otherworldly rewards. In particular, it is argued that the evidence of excess martyrdom in both Muslim Spain and the Roman Empire strongly speaks for the cult theory.

Keywords: martyrdom; cult; afterlife; economics of religion; principal-agent model; suicide terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 D82 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12h2Mh7b4G4tFb6eg0 ... mlB/view?usp=sharing (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Cult of Martyrs (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uca:ucapdv:145

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in POLIS Working Papers from Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucia Padovani ().