The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom is a 2013 book by Candida Moss, an award-winning historian and professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame.

The traditional idea of the “Age of Martyrdom”, when Christians suffered persecution from the Roman authorities and lived in fear of being thrown to the lions, is largely fictional.

There was never sustained, targeted persecution of Christians by Imperial Roman authorities. Official persecution of Christians by order of the Roman Emperor lasted for at most twelve years of the first three hundred of the Church’s history.

Most of the stories of individual martyrs amassed by the early modern period are pure inventions.