Rowan Williams on the early martyrs

'The martyr stories often try...to make this holy power somehow visible or tangible: swords are blunted, animals are cowed, executioners bungle their work, there is an effusion of blood that quenches the fire (as in Polycarp's case); the divine presence does not rescue the martyr but makes itself felt. Legendary as this may be, it simply underlines what is thought to be happening. The relating of the stories of the martrs in this early literature, up to the mid third century, is an essential part of the Church's self-identification, part of the definition of the vocabulary of being an ekklesia of aliens, the citizens' assembly of the non-citizens, a people whose political legitimacy and loyalty lay outside the imperial system.' Why Study the Past? p. 36

I was just caught by his use of identity here, and in the collective sense. For the early church, this identification was as he says essential... On p.111 he comments that martyrdom was the way in which testimony was given to the fact that our lives are not our own to submit to some tyranny.