I martyr’s studies. Alcune considerazioni storiografiche sullo studio del martirio nel mondo contemporaneo

During the past decades, fractures in the previous methodologies occupying the academic discourse on history and a new attention pertaining to the phenomenology of political martyrdom have led to a flourishing of new studies devoted to martyrs in the history of religions and political cultures. Given an analytical framework related to the mythopoetic nature of martyrdom, based on theology, sociology as well as anthropology, the image of the martyr comes to light, mutating according to the social dialectic generating it, as a keystone actor questioning the relationship between thoseholding power and those who lack it, expressing in its symbolism and its sacrificial logica contentious arena between the politics of memory and the struggle of both conservatismand contestation at the same time, in all of their forms. The object of this paper aims to coalesce the majority of the material produced in the last 25 years focusedon martyrdom together with a new methodological approach by positing the existence of a new field of study called «martyr’s studies», capable of channeling future research endeavors alongside intuitions s cattered among the multidisciplinary efforts of today