Preview: Blessed John Slade and "The Voice of the People"

We'll return to our weekly discussion of an English martyr on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, October 30. I'll be on at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, the last segment in the second national hour on EWTN Radio. Please listen live here and/or catch the podcast later here.

Monday's martyr from Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day in the Year was hanged, drawn, and quartered on October 30, 1583. Blessed John Slade, a layman, had been founded guilty of denying Queen Elizabeth's spiritual authority over the Church in England and thus had committed High Treason.

John Slade was born in Dorsetshire and left England after being expelled from New College in Oxford for his recusancy/Catholicism to study Civil and Canon Law at the English College at Douai. As Bishop Richard Challoner describes his return to England, where he worked as a schoolmaster, he was "so zealous in maintaining the old religion" that he was "apprehended on that account."

When he and John Bodey, another Canon and Civil lawyer trained at Douai, were tried for their zealous Catholicism, the main charge against them was that they would not recognize Queen Elizabeth as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, with spiritual authority. Thus they were violating the Act of Supremacy of 1558. They were imprisoned together at Winchester, tried and convicted together, but were not executed together. Blessed John Bodey suffered the execution of a traitor on November 2, 1583. Both Slade and Bodey were beatified by Pope Pius XI on December 15, 1929, among a large group of priests and laity (136).

As John Hungerford Pollen, who gathered the information about the English martyrs beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI, recounts, when John Slade was drawn to the gallows in Winchester on October 30. 1583, he was questioned again about Papal Supremacy and why he denied the religious supremacy of Elizabeth I.

He replied "the Supremacy hath and doth belong to the Pope by right from Peter, and the Pope hath received it as by divine providence. Therefore, we must not give those things belonging to God to any other than him alone. And because I will not do otherwise, I may say with the three children in the fiery oven, and the first of the widow's seven sons in the Maccabees: "Paraii sumus mori magis quam pairias Dei leges pravaricari." [we are ready to die rather than to transgress the laws of God, received from our fathers." 2 Macc 7:2]

Asked about Pope Pius V's excommunication of Elizabeth I, Slade replied with similar boldness:

"Sir," answered Slade, " you are very busy in words: if the Pope hath done so, I think he hath done no more than he may, and than he ought to do. I will acknowledge no other head of the Church, but only the Pope: and her Majesty hath no authority in temporal causes likewise, but only what he shall think good to allow her." At these words the people cried, "Away with the traitor. Hang him. Hang him."

Father Bowden quotes these replies in his entry for Blessed John Slade, citing the verse from the Gospel according to St. Luke: "But they cried again, saying: Crucify him, crucify him." (23:21) as the "Voice of the People" who urged his bloody execution.

It's rather unusual for a layman to be convicted of High Treason for his religion, but after Pope Pius V had excommunicated Elizabeth I and declared that Catholics were not bound to be loyal to her religious or temporal supremacy--and in the midst of the investigation of the Throckmorton Plot to rescue Mary, Queen of Scots and place her on the throne of England--this was an essential issue for Elizabethan authorities. 

We may also be astonished that Blessed John Slade invoked the pope granting permission to Elizabeth I to rule England as Queen in the temporal sense, but the combination of temporal and religious authority in the monarch created the tension of loyalties for her Catholic subjects. I wonder how many in the Church of England--until the Tractarian Movement of the 1830's in Oxford--ever thought that perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior Church of England cleric, should have the spiritual authority, and that the Church of England should not be an Erastian church with the monarch having such control over worship, doctrine, and other ecclesiastical matters. (Note that of Henry VIII's heirs, only Mary I did not claim that authority, leaving it to the Pope and his representative in England, the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole.) 

Not many, or at least not many would speak such thoughts out loud. T'would be Treason!

Blessed John Slade, pray for us!

A Lay Martyr's Last Words: "Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus".

"Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus": Jesus, Jesus, be to me a Savior.

John Bodey or Body (as Challoner names him) was executed on All Souls Day, November 2, 1583 for being a Catholic and not accepting Elizabeth I's Royal Supremacy over the Christian Church in England. As the Catholic Encyclopedia tells his story:

Martyr, b. at Wells, Somerset: 1549; d. at Andover, Wilts., 2 November, 1583. He studied at Winchester and New College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow in 1568. In June, 1576, he was deprived, with seven other Fellows, by the Visitor, Horne, Protestant Bishop of Winchester. Next year he went to Douay College to study civil law, returned to England in February, 1578, and probably married. Arrested in 1580, he was kept in iron shackles in Winchester gaol, and was condemned in April, 1583, together with John Slade, a schoolmaster, for maintaining the old religion and denying the Royal Supremacy. There was apparently a feeling that this sentence was unjust and illegal, and they were actually tried and condemned again at Andover, 19 August, 1583, on the same indictment. Bodey had a controversy with Humphreys, Dean of Winchester, on the Nicene Council, and the martyr's notes from Eusebius still exist. After his second trial, he wrote from prison to Dr. Humphrey Ely, "We consider that iron for this cause borne on earth shall surmount gold and, precious stones in Heaven. That is our mark, that is our desire. In the mean season we are threatened daily, and do look still when the hurdle shall be brought to the door. I beseech you, for God's sake, that we want not the good prayers of you all for our strength, our joy, and our perseverance unto the end. . . . From our school of patience the 16th September, 1583."

At his martyrdom, Bodey kissed the halter, saying, "O blessed chain, the sweetest chain and richest that ever came about any man's neck", and when told he died for treason, exclaimed, "You may make the hearing of a blessed Mass treason, or the saying of an Ave Maria treason . . . but I have committed no treason, although, indeed, I suffer the punishment due to treason". He exhorted the people to obey Queen Elizabeth and died saying, "Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus". His mother made a great feast upon the occasion of her son's happy death, to which she invited her neighbours, rejoicing at his death as his marriage by which his soul was happily and eternally espoused to the Lamb.

Dr. Humphrey Ely was a professor at Douai in civil and canon law. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, he was ordained a priest in 1582 after almost suffering Bodey's fate as a layman in 1580; he was traveling with Blessed Thomas Cottam:

brother of William Ely [q. v.], president of St. John's College, Oxford, was a native of Herefordshire. After studying for some time at Brasenose College, Oxford, he was elected a scholar of St. John's College in 1566, but on account of his attachment to the catholic faith he left the university without a degree, and proceeding to the English college at Douay was there made a licentiate in the canon and civil laws. He appears to have been subsequently created LL.D. In July 1577 he and other students of law formed a community in the town of Douay, and resided together in a hired house (Douay Diaries, p. 125). This establishment was soon broken up by the troubles attributed to the machinations of the queen of England's emissaries, who had probably excited the passions of the Calvinist faction. Ely was hooted as a traitor in the streets of Douay, and the members of his community and of the English college were subjected to frequent domiciliary visits which satisfied the municipal authorities but not the populace. In consequence Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Allen found it necessary to remove the college from Douay to Rheims in 1578. After studying divinity at Rheims Ely accompanied Allen to Rome in August 1579, when the dissensions had occurred in the English college there, but he returned with him to Rheims in the following spring. During his stay in Rome Allen employed him in revising several controversial books (Knox, Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, hist. introd. p. lii seq.; Douay Diaries, pp. 130, 136).

In June 1580 he paid a visit to England, disguised as a merchant, travelling under the name of Havard or Howard. There sailed in the same vessel with him three priests, Edward Rishton, Thomas Cottam [q. v.], and John Hart. On their landing at Dover the searchers arrested Cottam and Hart, and the mayor, supposing that Ely was a military man, requested him to convey Cottam to London, and hand him over to Lord Cobham, governor of the Cinque ports. When they were out of the town, Ely allowed his prisoner to go at large, but Cottam, entertaining scruples about the danger which his friend might incur, insisted upon delivering himself up, and was afterwards executed. Ely was committed to prison, but soon obtained his release, probably on account of his not being a priest (Foley, Records, ii. 150 seq.). On 23 April 1581 he arrived at Rheims, out of Spain, and in the following month visited Paris, in company with Allen. He was ordained subdeacon at Laon on 8 March 1581–2, deacon at Châlons-sur-Marne on the 31st of the same month, and priest on 14 April 1582. On 22 July 1586 he left Rheims for Pont-à-Mousson, where he had been appointed by the Duke of Lorraine to the professorship of the canon and civil laws, and he occupied that chair till his death on 15 March 1603–4. He was buried in the church of the nuns of the order of St. Clare.

Dodd says Ely ‘was a person of great candour and remarkable hospitality; and as he had a substance, he parted with it chearfully; especially to his countrymen, who never failed of a hearty welcome, as their necessities obliged them to make use of his house. He was also of a charitable and reconciling temper; and took no small pains to make up the differences that happened among the missioners upon account of the archpriest's jurisdiction.’

John Bodey and John Slade (executed on October 30, 1583) were included in the beatifications of 1929. They are included in the list of the Martyrs of Douai, which was celebrated on October 29 in the Archdiocese of Westminster. The Douai Seminary recently celebrated its 450th anniversary!

Blesseds John Slade and Bodey, Lay Martyrs

John Slade was executed on October 30 and John Bodey or Body (as Challoner names him) executed on All Souls Day, November 2, 1583 for being Catholics and not accepting Elizabeth I's Royal Supremacy over the Christian Church in England. The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on their martyrdoms focuses on Blessed John Bodey:

Martyr, b. at Wells, Somerset: 1549; d. at Andover, Wilts., 2 November, 1583. He studied at Winchester and New College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow in 1568. In June, 1576, he was deprived, with seven other Fellows, by the Visitor, Horne, Protestant Bishop of Winchester. Next year he went to Douay College to study civil law, returned to England in February, 1578, and probably married. Arrested in 1580, he was kept in iron shackles in Winchester gaol, and was condemned in April, 1583, together with John Slade, a schoolmaster, for maintaining the old religion and denying the Royal Supremacy. There was apparently a feeling that this sentence was unjust and illegal, and they were actually tried and condemned again at Andover, 19 August, 1583, on the same indictment. Bodey had a controversy with Humphreys, Dean of Winchester, on the Nicene Council, and the martyr's notes from Eusebius still exist. After his second trial, he wrote from prison to Dr. Humphrey Ely, "We consider that iron for this cause borne on earth shall surmount gold and, precious stones in Heaven. That is our mark, that is our desire. In the mean season we are threatened daily, and do look still when the hurdle shall be brought to the door. I beseech you, for God's sake, that we want not the good prayers of you all for our strength, our joy, and our perseverance unto the end. . . . From our school of patience the 16th September, 1583."

At his martyrdom, Bodey kissed the halter, saying, "O blessed chain, the sweetest chain and richest that ever came about any man's neck", and when told he died for treason, exclaimed, "You may make the hearing of a blessed Mass treason, or the saying of an Ave Maria treason . . . but I have committed no treason, although, indeed, I suffer the punishment due to treason". He exhorted the people to obey Queen Elizabeth and died saying, "Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus". His mother made a great feast upon the occasion of her son's happy death, to which she invited her neighbours, rejoicing at his death as his marriage by which his soul was happily and eternally espoused to the Lamb.

In his Memoirs of the Missionary Priests, Bishop Richard Challoner provides more background on John Slade, who had also traveled to Douai to study both civil and canon law, having been born in Dorsetshire. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered in Winchester.

John Bodey and John Slade were included in the beatifications of 1929. They are included in the list of the Martyrs of Douai, which was celebrated on October 29 in the Archdiocese of Westminster.