\n\tToday we wouldn\u2019t burn a man alive for what he believes, but our ancestors did. And when you look at the pictures, see what their hands wrote, and look
\n\tinto the faces sleeping in stone and bronze above their bones, they don\u2019t appear much difference from us. Yet they extirpated dissent by burning, and it
\n\twas a devilish business that we do well to remember.<\/p>\n
\n\tFour centuries ago the 37-year-old Mary Tudor ascended her father\u2019s throne. For 20 years she had nursed feelings of bitterness at her mother\u2019s wrongs and
\n\ther own. Her father called her a bastard, and took woman after woman in her mother\u2019s place. Her brother kept her far from his court, neglected and brooding
\n\tin country manors far away. Her only comfort was the religion her mother gave her, and this she passionately believed to be the truth. Truth was destined
\n\tto triumph, and the new queen intended to help it along. To begin with, she moved slowly and followed the emperor\u2019s advice to cloak her doings in the
\n\tapparel of legality; the English have profound respect for law and order. Her first Parliament therefore restored Catholic doctrine as her father had had
\n\tit, and then went on to heal the breach he made with Rome by renewing the kingdom\u2019s allegiance to the pope. But it soon became clear that trouble was
\n\tbrewing: nearly a quarter of the clergy fled for their lives (including most of the 10 bishops against whom proceedings were opened up); riots broke out in
\n\tLondon; and on the last day of the Parliamentary session indignant but unidentified demonstrators seized a dog, gave him a tonsure, shaved his head, as
\n\tmonks do as part of their initiation, put a rope round his neck, and tied a note to his body saying that bishops and priests should be hung. Then they
\n\tflung him through an open window into the queen\u2019s presence chamber. Mary therefore began to feel that a few executions might have salutary effect and
\n\tperhaps save much persecution later. So the fires were kindled, even the dead were torn from the grave; either to burn or lie on the dunghill to rot.<\/p>\n
\n\tMary\u2019s most distinguished victims were an archbishop and two bishops. Nicholas Ridley, bishop of London, had during the brief reign of Jane Grey preached
\n\tin the open air outside his cathedral, warning Londoners what to expect if they did not hold to the Protestant Jane. His blunt speaking cost him dearly.
\n\tWhen he tendered his oath of allegiance to the new queen, she ordered him straight to the Tower. Hugh Latimer, once a zealous foe of reformation, had
\n\taccepted the new teaching from a young Cambridge reformer, Thomas Bilney, who had gained his ear by selecting him as his confessor. Henry Vlll had made
\n\tLatimer bishop of Worcester, and when the king died he had taken a leading part in the great reform that followed. He had been the most popular Protestant
\n\tpreacher of his day. So he knew what fate lay in store for him, but made no attempt to escape. Indeed, Mary wanted him to run like the rest, but he refused
\n\tto flee. If he scuttled, it would bring ill repute on his cause. So he went to London to seek his fate, and as he passed through Smithfield, where martyrs
\n\twere wont to die, he remarked with his usual wit that it had long been groaning for him.<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury there could be no mercy. He had been a prime mover of reform; he had suggested how to bring balm to Henry\u2019s conscience and
\n\ta new bride to his bed; he had given the church her English prayer book and communion for the ancient Mass. He had sundered the marriage of Mary\u2019s father
\n\tand mother and exposed her to the reproach of illegitimacy.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn April 1554 the three bishops left the Tower of London for Windsor and thence for Oxford, there to meet Catholic experts in a great public disputation.
\n\tIf the bishops could be brought to agree that priestly consecration made bread and wine into Christ\u2019s natural body, that nothing of bread remained
\n\tthereafter, and that the Mass atoned for the sins of quick and dead, they might live. If they couldn\u2019t, they would burn.<\/p>\n
\n\tThree of Oxford\u2019s most beautiful and historic buildings provided the setting for the mingled splendor and sadism of the ensuing drama: Christ Church,
\n\tWolsey\u2019s unfinished college, Oxford\u2019s greatest and grandest—its chapel is a cathedral; the ancient university church of St. Mary, its graceful spire
\n\timposing bewitching beauty on the wide sweep of the arterial High and its twisted capillaries of medieval alleys; and the lordly fourteenth century
\n\tfan-vaulted Divinity School nearby. To hide the ugliness of intolerance, pomp and ceremony invested disputation, trial, and execution with all the
\n\ttrappings of a solemn sacrifice to the Most High.<\/p>\n
\n\tThey began at daybreak on April 14, 1554, with Requiem Mass in Lincoln College—and they were all there: Hugh Weston, college rector and prolocutor, one of
\n\tthe most brilliant controversialists of the day, and experts from Oxford and Cambridge. Immediately after, they heard the choristers of Christ Church sing
\n\tthe Mass of the Holy Ghost in St. Mary\u2019s, and then they signed agreement with the articles under debate. Archbishop Cranmer came in first under guard by
\n\t\u201crusty bill men.\u201d He refused to sign articles that were \u201cfalse and contrary to Holy Scripture.\u201d So too with \u201csharp, witty, and very earnest answers\u201d did
\n\tBishop Ridley. Last the aged Latimer, with kerchief and two or three caps on his head to shield him from an English spring, protested that he had seven
\n\ttimes read through the New Testament (the only book they permitted him) without finding a single Mass within. When a beadle, an usher in charge of keeping
\n\torder, collapsed because of the press, the formalities ended. They ordered the accused to prepare (all bookless as they were) to debate with the commission
\n\tin one day\u2019s time. The experts were determined to confound them by foul means if not by fair.<\/p>\n
\n\tAt the appointed time they began, this time in the Divinity School. First the archbishop, who held them at bay from 8:00 in the morning till nearly 2:00 in
\n\tthe afternoon. They overbore him in the end with an exasperated cry of \u201cVicit Veritas.\u201d It was his truth that was winning and not theirs. They disposed of
\n\tRidley and Latimer on the succeeding days in like fashion. After this they dropped public proceedings against the bishops for almost a year and a half and
\n\tworked on them privately, hoping to wear them down into recantation.<\/p>\n
\n\tMatters at length came to a head when new laws against heresy came into force. Cardinal Pole, the papal legate, then set up an episcopal commission to
\n\texamine and absolve or degrade and hand the bishops over to the secular authorities. So on the last day of September 1555 Ridley and Latimer were back
\n\tagain in the Divinity School for the preliminary hearing. Next day they stood their trial, which ended almost as a matter of course with their
\n\texcommunication. On October 15 the bishop of Gloucester and the vice chancellor of Oxford degraded Ridley from his holy orders, and the next day the two
\n\tmen were to go to the stake.<\/p>\n
\n\tThey drove the stake deep and safe into the bottom of the ditch that lay between the city wall and Balliol College; the queen had a strong military force
\n\tstanding by. At the appointed hour the mayor and bailiffs of Oxford produced the prisoners. First Ridley in bishop\u2019s black-furred gown, velvet-furred
\n\ttippet and cornered cap, walking between mayor and alderman. Further behind, aged Latimer in poor threadbare frock, kerchief on head, and a new funeral
\n\tshroud around his body. As they passed Bocardo, Cranmer\u2019s jail, they looked up to bid him farewell, but zealous Spanish friars had him busy within, still
\n\ttrying to break him down with disputation. At the stake Ridley ran to Latimer and embraced and kissed him with the words: \u201cBe of good cheer, brother, for
\n\tGod will either assuage the fury of the flame or else strengthen us to abide it.\u201d Little did he know the strength he was to need for what he was to abide
\n\tthat day.<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore the torches were applied they inflicted one more spiritual torment on the martyrs. Dr. Richard Smith, a recanted divine, delivered that last word
\n\tfrom a makeshift pulpit before the stake. \u201c\u2018Though I give my body to be burned\u2019\u201d, he preached, \u201c\u2018and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.\u2019\u201d Then he
\n\tasked them to recant, but the bailiffs rushed on Ridley to shut his mouth before he could reply. They feared the effect of his response. The order to burn
\n\trang out, and Ridley removed his clothes, giving the best to the householder whose home had been his prison. What was left he shared among the bystanders,
\n\twho grasped eagerly for every relic. Meanwhile the executioners stripped Latimer down to his shroud, and soon the smith was chaining them to the stake. As
\n\tthe torches flared among gorse and fagots at his feet the old man\u2019s voice rose above the crackle: \u201cBe of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We
\n\tshall this day light such a candle by God\u2019s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDeath with swift mercy ended the old bishop\u2019s ordeal; he seemed to embrace the flame, bathe his hands in it, and stroke his face with its heat. But
\n\tRidley\u2019s sufferings were terrible. They had built the fire badly; heavy solid wood pressed down on the gorse where he stood and prevented the flames from
\n\tascending. They smoldered and sulked about his feet and lower legs until they had scorched them to cinder. He writhed like slowly melting plastic in his
\n\tagony, begging bystanders for Christ\u2019s sake to let the fire rise and do its work. His late keeper, his own brother-in-law, in frenzied distress threw more
\n\tfagots around him till they hid the struggling martyr from view. Finally, a bill-man had sense enough to drag the fagots clear so as to let the fire burn
\n\tup. A bag of gunpowder tied about the victims by friends as an act of mercy then took fire, and Ridley fell over his chain at the feet of his companion\u2019s
\n\tcharred remains. It is an ugly thing to see men burning to death. Cranmer saw it all from his tower and indignantly protested to his keeper. Perhaps what
\n\the saw unnerved him more than the verbal grilling that still went on and on. Behind him lay defiance of a papal commission sitting in St. Mary\u2019s, before
\n\thim lay five more months of spiritual struggle. Then the pope\u2019s condemnation came through and on February 14, 1556, the pope\u2019s delegates, the bishops of
\n\tLondon and Ely, summoned him to Christ Church.<\/p>\n
\n\tThey read their commission to him in the church and then led him out into Wolsey\u2019s spacious quadrangle for public degradation. One of the bishops was a
\n\tpersonal friend, the other an inveterate foe. Both owed him much for their advancement. First they put on him the garments of subdeacon and deacon, then
\n\tthe vestments of a priest, over that the bishop\u2019s robes. But the vesting was done with canvas and old rags. Finally they put on him the primate\u2019s pallium,
\n\ta canvas ma\u00eetre on his head, and thrust a crude archiepiscopal staff into his hand. The mock vesting complete, they reviled him as brutal soldiery had
\n\treviled his Master. \u201cThis is the man,\u201d proclaimed his foe, the bishop of London, \u201cthat despised the pope, that condemned the sacrament of the altar, that
\n\tlike Lucifer sat in the place of Christ upon an altar.\u201d After this degradation: order by order they stripped off the vestments and at the last set a barber
\n\tto clip the hair from his head. They even scraped the tips of his fingers to remove the virtue of the holy oil with which he had been anointed. Then they
\n\tcovered his shorn head with a townsman\u2019s cap and put a beadle\u2019s worn-out gown about his unfrocked body crying out: \u201cNow you are lord no more.\u201d Afterward
\n\tthey paraded him through the crowded streets to Bocardo.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut the end was not yet. There came a change of tactics. They translated him from the squalor of Bocardo to the luxury of the deanery at Christ Church. Now
\n\the fed on the best of food, he took walks, he played bowls with his persecutors. After this a resumption of the breaking-down process and papers brought
\n\tfor him to sign. He was growing confused now, and he signed them one by one. He accepted the authority and teaching of the church, even on the sacraments.
\n\tWhen he had signed four statements, they told him that he was going to burn after all. For the good of his soul he must sign a yet ampler profession of
\n\tfaith. He did, and in so doing repudiated Luther and Zwingli and appealed to all heretics to return to the bosom of the church. In distress he asked for a
\n\trespite, and Cardinal Pole granted him 11 more days to submit like the penitent thief. On the eve of his execution, the provost of Eton, who was to preach
\n\tto him before the stake, came down to satisfy himself that he would not at the last moment frustrate them with a retraction.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn the morning of his death the Spanish friar who had disputed with him so tirelessly made him copy and sign yet another recantation to read to the crowds
\n\tgathering to see him burn. Outside it was too wet and stormy for the stakeside sermon, so they took him into St. Mary\u2019s. They led him in with friars
\n\tchanting the Nunc dimittis and put him on a hastily erected platform before the pulpit. Once more he heard that he should die like the penitent thief. They
\n\tcalled on him to address the tightly packed church.<\/p>\n
\n\tAt first he did what they expected of him. He knelt and prayed with the people; he told them to renounce the world and serve God and his anointed queen. He
\n\trecited the creed, and confessed belief in the catholic faith of Christ and His apostles. Here, however, he paused: there was, he confessed, one great
\n\tburden on his conscience: he had signed with his hand what his heart had condemned. \u201cAnd forasmuch,\u201d said he, \u201cas my hand offended, writing contrary to my
\n\theart, my hand shall first be punished therefor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFor a moment there was shock, then confusion. They shouted at him to remember his recantation; the Spanish friars told him to stick to it; the provost
\n\tshouted above the commotion: \u201cStop the heretic\u2019s mouth and take him away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThey dragged him off the platform; indeed, he ran before them to the stake. As the fire burned up he thrust his right arm into it, holding it in the flames
\n\tuntil it burned away, crying only, \u201cThis unworthy right arm.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tNo; it\u2019s not pleasant to burn men alive like that, and we would never light a fire for religion today. Let a man believe what he will about pope and altar;
\n\twe have learned to be civilized and tolerant. But it\u2019s just as ugly to behold men rotting in concentration camps and queuing for the gas chamber, to sicken
\n\tat bodies scorched with napalm or ripped with machine-gun bursts, to shudder at potbellied children with staring eyes dying in front of the world\u2019s
\n\ttelevision cameras. What precisely is the difference between forcing political belief or practice on the unwilling and persuading to religious conformity
\n\twith disputation and fire? And when the wheel of fashion turns again, who can be sure that some new frustrated Mary might not make a better job of
\n\treligious coercion than ever her forbear did with antique fagots and ax?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today we wouldn\u2019t burn a man alive for what he believes, but our ancestors did. And when you look at the pictures, see what their hands wrote, and look into the faces sleeping in stone and bronze above their bones, they don\u2019t appear much difference from us. Yet they extirpated dissent by burning, and it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[306],"tags":[138],"class_list":["post-6306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-june-2015","tag-may-june-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}