Biography
Blandina lived in the second century in the city of Lyons, in Roman Gaul, which is now France. The church in that city was made up largely of Greek-speaking people from Asia Minor and a number of native Gauls. It was a community of ordinary people, including merchants, slaves and tradesmen. In the year AD 177, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a wave of persecution came upon the Christians of Lyons and the neighboring city of Vienne.
What we know of the events comes from a letter written by the surviving believers of the two cities to their brothers in Asia Minor. The historian Eusebius copied much of it into his history of the church, and so it was preserved. The letter tells how the Christians were first driven from public places, then attacked by mobs, and then arrested and brought before the governor. Under pressure, some slaves belonging to Christian masters said that the believers practiced shameful things, which was a lie. The charges led to torture and death.
Among those arrested was a slave girl named Blandina. She was small and weak, and her mistress, who was also arrested, feared that she would not be able to stand the pain and would deny her faith. The letter says that Blandina was filled with such strength that her torturers, who worked on her from morning till evening, gave up in exhaustion. They said they were amazed that she was still breathing. She had only to say that she was a Christian, and each time she said it, she seemed to gain new strength.
She was kept in prison for some days and then brought out to the arena with others. She was hung on a post in the shape of a cross, to be torn by wild beasts. The animals did not touch her. She was taken back to prison. As the days passed, she watched others suffer and encouraged them to stand firm. She was brought to the arena again with a boy of fifteen named Ponticus, who was forced to watch her tortures. She comforted him and urged him to hold fast, and he died bravely.
In the end she was scourged, set on a grid, thrown into a net and tossed by a bull. At last she was killed by the sword. The letter says that even the pagans acknowledged that no woman among them had endured such sufferings.
She was a young woman of no social standing, a slave, and yet the church held her up as a model. The letter notes that she, the least of them, put on Christ, the great and invincible athlete, and overcame the adversary. The believers saw in her an answer to the world's contempt for the weak. Her memory is honored in the church as one of the great martyrs.
One must be careful not to add to what the old letter tells. Many details of her life before her arrest are unknown. What remains is enough. She stood firm when she had every reason to give way, and she strengthened others while she was being broken. The courage of a slave girl in the arena at Lyons has been remembered for nearly two thousand years.