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The Visual Atlas
Places, art and manuscripts across time. First era: the apostolic and early church, from Pentecost to the early fourth century.
Pergamum
Revelation calls it the place where Satan's seat is. Eusebius records three martyrs there, and a Pergamene Christian dies in the arena at Lyon.
- 39.1325
- 27.184167
The real question: what does it mean that the record of Pergamum's church is a handful of names and a hard phrase? A town's whole entry in an old newspaper is three names and one line about trouble there. That could be because little happened, or because little was written down. Which is it for Pergamum?
Revelation writes to the church in Pergamos, where Satan's seat is, and names Antipas a faithful martyr killed there (Revelation 2:12-13). Eusebius records that Carpus, Papylus and a woman named Agathonice suffered martyrdom at Pergamus (Church History 4.15.48). In the Lyon persecution, the letter from Gaul names Attalus, a native of Pergamos, among those sent to the beasts (5.1.17, 5.1.37).
Pergamum is not named in Acts. Its church appears in the New Testament in Revelation 1:11 and 2:12-17.
Eusebius knows records of the martyrdoms of Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice at Pergamus, a city of Asia (Church History 4.15.48). The churches of Vienne and Lyon describe Attalus of Pergamos as a pillar and foundation where he came from (5.1.17).
No manuscript in the sources read here is tied to Pergamum in this era.
What Satan's seat means in Revelation 2:13 is not settled by any source read here, and this entry does not pick a reading. Eusebius mentions the Pergamene martyrs right after Polycarp's martyrdom, but that placing is his arrangement, not a date. No public domain object from this era tied to Pergamum turned up in the museum search; the Art Institute's Pergamon coins are from before the era, so none is shown.
Not a catalogue of Pergamum's monuments. The entry follows the church, and the city's temples appear only through Revelation's phrase.
- Revelation 1:11
- Revelation 2:12-17
- Revelation, checked in the King James Version
- Eusebius, Church History, trans. McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1 (1890), 4.15.48, 5.1
- Pleiades gazetteer, place 550812, Pergamum, places.csv
