Late in February, an active-duty US Air Force airman set fire to himself outside of Israel’s embassy in Washington, DC; afterwards, some journalists rushed to try and provide historical context for the practice of “self-immolation.” Time magazine, for example, published a story on “The History of Self-Immolation as Political Protest,” tracing its roots back into antiquity. Unfortunately for Time, they got the history factually wrong. The subsequent chain of events, where online outcry prompted one band-aid of a revision after another, deserves to be traced and recorded.
At first, Time’s coverage gained unwanted attention when a screenshot of their article (as first published on February 26) began circulating with the following line highlighted: “Self-immolation was also seen as a sacrificial act committed by Christian devotees who chose to be burned alive when they were being persecuted for their religion by Roman emperor Diocletian around 300 A.D.” It was boosted by Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire, with the caption, “Does anyone know anything anymore?”
The widespread criticism was that Time had recast the martyrdom of Christians who were killed for refusing to recant their faith as a willful act of “self-immolation.” If that were the case, then that error would have had serious implications, from erasing the murderous actions of the Roman officials responsible to conflating a steadfast faith with a version of suicide. There is, after all, a profound difference between choosing to end one’s life and, on the other hand, being slain by someone with physical power because one refused to commit an immoral action.
It seems, though, that Time noticed the criticism, since by the end of February 27 their article was updated to include a hyperlink over that specific claim. The source they invoke tells a surprising story, linking to a New Yorker article from 2012 that explains the specific episode of church history that Time’s co-authors apparently had in mind:
However, from the historian Eusebios, we know with greater certainty of a more interesting instance of auto-cremation in antiquity: around 300 A.D., Christians persecuted by Diocletian set fire to his palace in Nicodemia and then threw themselves onto it—presumably, to express their objections to Roman policy and not to the emperor’s architectural taste.
This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, if Nicodemia doesn’t ring a bell, that’s because it doesn’t exist. The event in question related by “Eusebios”, which incidentally is typically anglicized as Eusebius (c. AD 260-339), reportedly happened in the city of Nicomedia, in what is now Turkey. “Nicodemia” was not an alternative name, was not the name used by Eusebius in his recounting the story, and was not the name of any other ancient city of record.
Citing as authoritative someone who couldn’t get the name of the city right is not a promising start. Indeed, backlash must have made its way to the New Yorker, since after a decade of public error the article now reads the correct “Nicomedia.”
What’s more interesting is the weight that, apparently for the sake of storytelling, this source places on Eusebius. Writes the New Yorker, “we know with greater certainty of a more interesting instance of auto-cremation in antiquity” (emphasis added). Now, there’s a problem here. As the Oxford Classical Dictionary informs us, Eusebius’ “integrity as a historian has often been challenged . . . and indeed the later part of his ten-book Ecclesiastical History [the particular history in question] . . . was successively extended and clumsily revised as immediate circumstances changed.”
Just because Eusebius says something doesn’t mean it should be believed. This is especially true when, in case this needs to be spelled out, the story being described is tantalizingly dramatic and outlandish. Again, this seems to have escaped the notice of the New Yorker.
All of this, though, is thrown into an entirely different light when Eusebius himself is consulted about the story, as at least one other writer recommended we do. Here it is in full. (And here it is in the original language itself.)
At this time Anthimus, who then presided over the church in Nicomedia, was beheaded for his testimony to Christ. A great multitude of martyrs were added to him, a conflagration having broken out in those very days in the palace at Nicomedia, I know not how, which through a false suspicion was laid to our people. Entire families of the pious in that place were put to death in masses at the royal command, some by the sword, and others by fire. It is reported that with a certain divine and indescribable eagerness men and women rushed into the fire. And the executioners bound a large number of others and put them on boats and threw them into the depths of the sea.
The New Yorker’s retelling has distorted the account beyond all recognition. First, citing only Eusebius as a source, the New Yorker blames the Christians for committing the arson against the government building. Eusebius, though, is clear that that was a “false suspicion,” a mere pretext to persecute people whom the government was, after all, already eager to kill. The New Yorker presents their guilt for the arson as out-of-the-question factual by its storytelling that said arsonists then threw themselves onto the burning palace—even though Eusebius is, again, abundantly clear that the executions by fire were a distinct event that happened after the fact and on the grounds that those being killed were to blame.
This example was dredged up from the history books to show a common thread between antiquity and the present day’s self-immolation, but every similarity seems to be nothing more than a hallucination on the part of the writer. The ending of the Roman Christians’ lives was not an act of political protest, but rather something they were sentenced to. The notion of willingness on their part is not only presented with a note of skepticism (“the report has it that . . .”) by the source, but it’s couched in the vague language of “some divine and indescribable eagerness,” i.e. something that is neither clearly explicable nor to be followed on one’s own initiative.
The story here is so false and inaccurate that it’s hard to know how or where it came from. The New Yorker offers nothing more than Eusebius’ name as a source, although it’s hard to believe that someone who consulted Eusebius firsthand could jeopardize their reputation by getting every detail of the story, macro and micro, so totally wrong. Time’s mistake is more evident: a complete lack of due diligence and incuriosity. They probably suppose that they “showed” their critics by adding the hyperlink, when in reality they confirmed that they’d committed a much less debatable and less excusable kind of an error.
This distortion of the truth must have reached editors’ notice, because, finally, Time magazine and the New Yorker have quietly edited their pieces.
The New Yorker now reads, “However, from the historian Eusebios, we know with greater certainty of a more interesting instance of auto-cremation in antiquity: around 300 A.D., Christians sentenced to be burned alive following a case of suspected arson at the imperial palace in Nicomedia threw themselves into the flames—presumably, to express their objections to Roman policy and not to the emperor’s architectural taste.” They also include the retraction note at the bottom, “An earlier version of this article included an incorrect summary of the historical events at Nicomedia, as well as various spelling errors.”
This is a minimal improvement that suggests the New Yorker hasn’t really learned much. To be sure, they now include the essential detail that these practitioners of “self-immolation” had in fact been sentenced to execution, they softened the accusation of arson, and they fixed the name of the city.
On the other hand, they preserved the snark about “architectural taste” even though, given the false nature of the arson accusation, their story as written no longer makes any sense. They preserve the language of the ancient Christians “throwing themselves into” the flames—a relic from their earlier, sensational, made-up story of them “throwing themselves onto” the burning palace—which you would never derive just from reading Eusebius. The most big-picture error is that they cling to the idea that “Eusebios” is a reliable source himself who transmitted this account with the most “certainty” he could vouch for, rather than including his own caveat.
For its part, about a week after their piece first ran, Time changed the story to read, as it does at the time of writing: “Self-immolation was also committed by a group of Christians around 300 A.D., acting before authorities could carry out a sentence from the Roman emperor Diocletian that they should be burned alive.” They now include a correction note of their own, “A previous version of this story mischaracterized the action of Christians in 300 A.D. They threw themselves into a fire after they were sentenced to being burned alive; they didn't choose independently to do so.”
At this point, Time magazine should be embarrassed enough to accept the loss and strike the passage altogether. There remains a significant gap between the primary evidence (Eusebius’ account) and the story they’re trying to spin (“Christians did this too!”), not just because of Eusebius’ own unreliability and the uncertainty in which he himself couches this story, but because their wording of “acting before authorities could” makes it sound like the ancient Christians’ setting themselves on fire was some event totally separate from their execution.
They make it sound like a “cheating the hangman” story. Instead, the picture Eusebius actually paints describes “like a lamb that is led to slaughter” behavior in which they had been sentenced to execution, had been brought to tools of death provided by the authorities at the time and place dictated by the authorities, and just seemed to conduct themselves with a supernatural willingness. Even their note of correction includes the invention that they “threw themselves into a fire,” a creative insertion that originated in the New Yorker’s account that they “threw themselves onto it,” i.e. the burning palace. There’s cognitive dissonance in noting at the end of the story that “they didn't choose independently” to be burned alive, but in the body to characterize the actions as “self-immolation.”
It seems clear that if Time had done due diligence and been aware of what Eusebius said, they would not have bothered including this story in the first place. It contributes nothing to their subject, a historical context of self-immolation as a form of political protest. That it remains at all is, like the vestigial word choices fossilized in the New Yorker article, a testament to the power of inertia.
This piece’s co-authors never should have taken the New Yorker’s secondhand word on Eusebius when consulting him directly was as effortless as it was. For that matter, the story being recounted could not have passed the “sniff test” of any serious writer: even someone with a deeply unflattering view of Christians must have found it odd for Eusebius, the “founder of the Christian genres of Church history and chronicle,” to preserve that alleged story of political arson and self-immolation, every detail of it being so out of step with the Christian ethos. Then again, perhaps “Eusebios” wasn’t a name that meant anything to Time’s writers—in which case their incuriosity over their ancient source is, again, astounding.
While correcting it was necessary (and to some degree still is), issuing a retraction would have been far more appropriate. If Time magazine was willing to take the New Yorker as an authority on Eusebius without checking the source, how many others have formed wrong ideas about the past because of their carelessness? Something this false should never have been published in the first place.