• 
• 
• 
• 

[Above: Martyrdom of Rasalama from Madagascar and its Martyrs, 1842 (public domain).]

IN 1824 the London Missionary Society set up schools in Madagascar. Seven years later, in May 1831, they held their first baptismal service for new Christians. The following month, on this day 5 June 1831, the Christian converts celebrated the Lord’s Supper for the first time. 

Among those who participated in the solemn rite held in the Ambatonakanga church was a young woman named Rafaravavy Rasalama. Six years later she would become one of the most famous names among Madagascar’s nineteenth-century Christian minority. 

In 1837 Queen Ranavalona I took the throne. Fearful of foreign influence, she outlawed Christianity. Learning of Rasalama’s faith, she arrested her. Officers tricked Rasalama into revealing the names of seven other Christians, pretending to double-check her account against others to see how truthful she was. When a relative expressed surprise that Rasalama had betrayed her friends, she was horrified to learn that her innocent statement had led to their arrest. However, for herself she had no fear. “I have hope of life in heaven,” she said. 

Onlookers attributed her firmness to the influence of secret missionary witchcraft. Her words of faith and hymn-singing aroused the anger of her captors. They bound and beat her and then fastened her overnight in irons by her feet, hands, knees, and neck in a position that caused excruciating pain. This torment was called “omby fohy,” meaning “the shortened bullock,” because it was similar to the way an animal’s fore and hind legs were bound for slaughter. The next day she was taken out to die at Ambohipotsy. When she passed the chapel in which she had been baptized, she exclaimed, “There I heard the words of the Savior.”

She walked the last distance to the place of execution, singing hymns and praying. There she requested permission to kneel and pray and, surprisingly, it was granted. Soldiers speared her in the hips, a practice that often resulted in a slow, painful death. But in Rasalama’s case, death came quickly. She was the first of many Malagasy martyrs. The soldiers expressed perplexity at her fearlessness and concluded some charm in the religion of the whites must take away the dread of death.

After the persecution ended, Christians built a church in Rasalama’s honor at the site of her execution. Her bravery also garnered international respect. English admirers placed a plaque in her memory in Brunswick Chapel, Bristol, England. And in 1937 filmmaker Philippe Raberojo (known as Raberono) filmed the commemoration of the centenary of her death, and in 1947 produced La Mort de Rasalama (The Death of Rasalama).

—Dan Graves