The plot outlines the story of the early Christian martyrs with a compendium of horrors such as maulings at the Colosseum, crucifixions, beheadings, savage hackings and burnings at the stake, burnings in the limepit, the spectacle of human torches in Nero's garden.

The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York travelled to New Zealand in 1901 to thank New Zealanders for their contribution to the Boer War. Only a short fragment remains of a much longer film.