(μάρτυς) signifies properly a witness, and is applied in the New Testament—1. To judicial witnesses (Matt. xviii. 16; xxvi. 65, &c.). 2. To one who has testified, or can testify, to the truth of what he has seen, heard, or known. This is a frequent sense in the New Testament, as in Luke xxiv. 48; Acts i. 8, 22, &c. 3. The meaning of the word which has now become the most usual is that in which it occurs most rarely in the Scripture, i.e., one who by his death bears witness to the truth. In this sense we only find it in Acts xxii. 20; Rev. ii. 13; xvii. 6. This now exclusive sense of the word was brought into general use by the early ecclesiastical writers, who applied it to every one who suffered in the Christian cause. (See Suicer, Thesaurus Eccles. sub voc.) Stephen was in this sense the first martyr; and the spiritual honours of his death tended in no small degree to raise to the most extravagant estimation, in the early church, the value of the testimony of blood. Eventually a martyr's death was supposed, on the alleged authority of the under-named texts, to cancel all the sins of the past life (Luke xii. 50; Mark x. 39); to supply the place of baptism (Matt. x. 39); and at once to secure admittance to the presence of the Lord in Paradise (Matt. v. 10-12). In imitation of the family custom of annually commemorating at the grave the death of deceased members, the churches celebrated the deaths of their martyrs by prayer at their graves, and by love-feasts. From this high estimation of the martyrs, Christians were sometimes led to deliver themselves up voluntarily to the public authorities—thus justifying the charge of fanaticism brought against them by the heathen. For the most part, however, this practice was discomfited, the words of Christ himself being brought against it; Matt. x. 23. (See Gieseler, Eccles. Hist., I., p. 463.)

Peter, a famous reformer, whose family name was Vermigli, was born at Florence in 1500. At the age of sixteen he became an Augustinian monk of the monastery of Fiesole, and was afterwards employed in teaching philosophy, theology, and Greek at Padua, and in preaching in the principal cities of Italy. He was led to renounce the Romish creed through a perusal of the writings of Luther and Zwingli, and was accordingly, in 1542, forced to flee before the persecuting zeal of his brother-priests. After sojourning successively at Zurich and Basle he became professor of divinity at Strasburg. Invited to England in 1549 by Archbishop Cranmer, he was appointed in the same year to a theological chair at Oxford. The accession of Mary, however, in 1553, obliged him to resign his appointment, and to return to his former chair at Strasbourg. Soon after his departure from England, the remains of his deceased wife were disinterred at Oxford, and buried under a dunghill. In 1556 Martyr was translated from Strasbourg to a theological professorship at Zurich. He died there in 1562. Of Peter Martyr's numerous theological treatises, his Loci Communes, published at Geneva in 1624, is best known.