Preview: "Those Boots are made for Martyrdom": Blessed Everard Hanse

I know that's a pun that not even Scott Hahn should get away with, but in my defense, Father Henry Sebastian Bowden makes a pair of boots the center of his memento of Blessed Everard Hanse, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered on July 31, 1581 at Tyburn Tree. With the title, "Shod for the Gospel", and the verse, "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things!" (Romans 10:15) Father Bowden emphasizes that Hanse's foreign made boots led to his imprisonment, trial, and martyrdom.

So on Monday, July 31, we'll discuss the mementoes of Blessed Everard Hanse on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on the air at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!

Blessed Everard Hanse was born in an Anglican family in Northamptonshire, attended Cambridge University, and was ordained as a Church of England minister with a good living. His brother William had become a Catholic priest in Rheims and returned to England in 1579, hoping to bring Everard to the Catholic Church. As Father Bowden remarks, his brother's arguments weren't as persuasive as an illness Everard suffered: it "placed all things in a new light, and William had the consolation of receiving his brother into the Church." (p. 247)

Everard left England for Rheims, the seminary, and ordination and returned to England in 1581 as a missionary priest. Fatefully, only three months after returning to England, he visited some prisoners in the Marshalsea "when the jailer noticed the foreign make of his boots, and took him before a magistrate."

Father Hanse admitted that he was a Catholic priest and was imprisoned in Newgate. 

In 1581, it was not yet treasonous for an Englishman just to be a Catholic priest in England, so the authorities had to find him guilty of a serious crime to sentence him to death. They did so at his trial, interpreting his statements that the pope had spiritual supremacy over him in England (denying Queen Elizabeth I's spiritual authority over him) and that he wished "all believed the Catholic Faith, as he did himself" (seen as his intention to persuade others to deny the Queen's supremacy and authority in religion) as proof of his treason. So he was sentenced to death and suffered at Tyburn on July 31, 1581.

Father Bowden adds the detail that when Blessed Everard Hanse's heart, cut out of his chest, was cast into the fire, "it leapt repeatedly, as if marking God's approval of his constancy." Bishop Challoner notes that the martyr's last words were "O happy day!"

He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on December 29, 1886.

Blessed Everard Hanse, pray for us!

Image Credit (Stained glass from St Edmund's College Ware, used by permission).

Preview: A Welsh Martyr and His Companions in Prison

On Monday, July 24 on the Son Rise Morning Show we'll discuss the mementoes of Blessed William Davies, one of the Welsh martyrs beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987. I'll be on the air at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!

With the title "The Three Children in the Furnace" and the verse from the Book of Daniel describing Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnego as "they walked in the midst of the flame, praising God and blessing the Lord" (3:34), Father Henry Sebastian Bowden describes the way that Father Davies and his flock in prison prepared for his martyrdom with prayer and praise.

They were imprisoned in Beaumaris Castle, in Beaumaris, Angelesey, Wales, for about six months before his execution on July 27, 1593. Father Bowden explains that Blessed Williams Davies and the young men arrested and imprisoned with him were allowed great freedom in prison. Although they'd been arrested because of their Catholic faith, they were allowed practice it! Here is the daily Rule they followed:

• 4:00 a.m.: Meditation
• 5:00 a.m.: Mass, following by chanting O Sacrum Convivium/O Sacred Banquet:

O sacred banquet!

in which Christ is received,

the memory of his Passion is renewed,

the mind is filled with grace,

and a pledge of future glory to us is given.

Alleluia.

• Time for reading, study, prayer; with the Imitation of Christ read aloud after meals; Instructions from Father Davies; praying the Rosary, the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Litany of the Saints everyday.

• Confession twice a week and receiving Holy Communion at Sunday and Holy Day Masses.

Since the four young men were destined for seminary formation, he was preparing them, even though they'd been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Blessed William Davies had been ordained at Reims in April of 1585 and had returned to Wales as a missionary priest. Nearly seven years later, in March 1592, he was arrested with those four students he was sending to the English College in Valladolid, Spain and confessed that he was a priest. Catholics visited him in prison and Protestant ministers came to dispute with him. Once he was taken to a church for a debate, but the ministers began to celebrate an Anglican service and Father Davies recited Vespers in Latin!

One of things he is most famous for before his arrest and imprisonment is his book Y Drych Christianogawl (The Christian Mirror), the first book printed in Wales. According to The National Library of Wales:

"Y Drych Cristianogawl" is a work of importance as an example of an early Welsh Catholic book and also for the fact that it is the first book to have been printed on Welsh soil. Welsh books of the pre-1586/87 years came off London presses, the one exception being Morys Clynnog's Milan volume. Four copies only are extant, three of which are imperfect. It has all the appearances of a book printed in Britain rather than in France. The story of its printing is a romantic one and one of bravery in the face of danger. . . . 

When Blessed William Davies was found guilty of the crime of being a Catholic priest and sentenced to death, he chanted the Te Deum Laudamus! According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

At the summer assizes it was decided that the priest must die as a traitor, though he was offered his life if he would go but once to church. In spite of the then open opposition of the people, who honoured him as a saint, the cruel sentence was carried out and he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Beaumaris. As he put the rope round his neck, the martyr said: " Thy yoke, O Lord is sweet and Thy burden is light." His cassock stained with his blood was brought by his companions and preserved as a relic. They, though condemned to imprisonment for life, managed in time to escape, and the youngest found his way at last to Valladolid, where he recounted the whole story to Bishop Yepes, who wrote it in his "Historia particular de la Persecucion en Inglaterra".

Like the printing of his book, his life and death is a story of bravery in the face of danger and the romance of Faith!

Blessed William Davies, pray for us!

Image Source (Public Domain); Fiery furnace by Toros Roslin, Mashtots, 1266 (MS No. 2027, Fol. 14 V.) (Armenian art)

Preview: A Priest and Layman in Warwick

Our last two martyrs were among the first of the English Reformation era in our Son Rise Morning Show series (Saints John Fisher and Thomas More). With these two martyrs, Blesseds John Sugar and Robert Grissold (Venerables at the time of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's work) we skip ahead to the beginning of the Stuart Dynasty in England. They suffered martyrdom on July 16, 1604, in Warwick.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time on Monday, July 17: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!

With the title "The Continuity Theory" and the verse from Ephesians 2:19-20 ("You are fellow citizens with the saints . . . built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone"), Father Bowden sketches out Father Sugar's career before he became a Catholic missionary priest: he was born and raised in a Staffordshire County family, attended Merton College at the University of Oxford and left without taking a degree because he would not swear the Oath of Supremacy during Queen Elizabeth I's reign. Nevertheless, he served as a Church of England minister in his native Midland county, preaching against the Catholic Church and the Papacy.

But something changed his mind and he left England to study for the Catholic priesthood at Douai, returning to the Midlands of England in 1601 as a missionary priest. 

He and Blessed Robert Grissold, a layman, were arrested on July 8, 1603 in Warwick. Father Sugar was accused merely of being a Catholic priest present in England under the "Jesuits, etc. Act 1584", (27 Eliz. 1. c. 2) and he was found guilty after being held in prison for a year on July 14, 1604.

Father Bowden includes a couple of details from the day of Blessed John Sugar's martyrdom: he practiced some Catholic apologetics before being hanged, drawn, and quartered, asking the Church of England minister who had brought the Christian Faith to England. When the minister would not reply, he credited the successor of St. Peter, Pope Eleutherius, who sent missionaries Damianus and Fugatius to King Lucian, and said the religion practiced in England in their time "had crept in" during the reign of Henry VIII! Pope Saint Eleutherius reigned from around 174 to 189 A.D. and was one of the Greek Popes. The Venerable Bede mentions this story of an early mission to England.

Before he suffered--and he was conscious when he was disemboweled and beheaded--Blessed Father Sugar proclaimed "My true birth in this world began with the sign of the cross, and with that sign I leave it again."

Blessed Robert Grissold, or Griswold, was arrested by his cousin Clement while accompanying Father Sugar and accused of aiding a priest. He was offered clemency throughout his imprisonment from July of 1603 until July of 1604, if he would just attend a Church of England service, but he refused. Saint Catherine of Alexandria was his patron saint. 

On the day of their execution, Grissold was warned not to follow behind Father Sugar who was being dragged on a sledge through the mud. He replied "I have not thus far followed him to leave him for a little mire." Although he was usually afraid of seeing blood, he "gazed unmoved at the quartering of Ven. Sugar's body" and even dipped the noose of the rope with which he would be hanged  in the priest's blood. He gave thanks that he was to die with him.

Father Bowden titled his entry "Zeal for Martyrdom" and cited Acts 21:13 as the verse to accompany his mementoes: "For I am ready not only to be bound, but to die also in Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus."

Their martyrdoms must have been a remarkable scene in Warwick on July 16, 1604: a priest and a layman witnessing to the Faith so bravely and boldly. They were beatified in 1987 by Pope St. John Paul II.

Blessed John Sugar, pray for us!

Blessed Robert Grissold, pray for us!

Blessed John Sugar Image Source: shared under permission under a Creative Commons Attribution.

Blessed Robert Grissold Image Source (Public Domain).

There is a painting of Grissold standing behind Sugar on the sledge in the mud on this website. The artist is Rebecca Dulcibella Orpen (1830?-1923) aka Rebecca Dering, one of The Quartet at Baddlesley Clinton in Warwickshire. Baddlesley Clinton had been known as recusant household in the 1590's and the nineteenth century Quartet (Rebecca, her husband Marmion Edward Ferrers, Lady Georgiana Chatterton and her husband Sir William) were converts to Catholicism. 

Icons of Blesseds John Sugar and Robert Grissold are also included in the frieze behind the main altar in St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Baddlesley Clinton.

Preview: Mementoes of Saint Thomas More

July 7 was the Feast of the Translation of St. Thomas Becket at the time of St. Thomas More's execution. In 1220 the relics of Becket were moved (translated) from his tomb in the Cathedral Crypt to a new elaborate shrine in the Trinity Chapel. 

Canterbury Cathedral still remembers this date with Solemn Evensong and a Procession, even though Henry VIII had Becket's shrine destroyed and his remains desecrated in 1538. Henry VIII went even further than that, of course, in his Proclamation of November 17, 1538:

Therefore his Grace strayghtly chargeth and commandeth that from henseforth the sayde Thomas Becket shall not be estemed, named, reputed, nor called a sayncte, but bysshop Becket; and that his ymages and pictures, through the hole realme, shall be putte downe, and avoyded out of all churches, chapelles, and other places; and that from henseforthe, the dayes used to be festivall in his name shall not be observed, nor the service, office, antiphoners, colletes, and prayers, in his name redde, but rased and put out of all the bokes.”

But in 1535, that hadn't yet been decreed and St. Thomas More cited this feast of Becket in his last letter to his daughter Margaret, as he thought it appropriate for his execution to occur the day before it:

I cumber you, good Margaret, much, but I would be sorry, if it should be any longer than tomorrow, for it is Saint Thomas' Even and the Utas [Octave] of Saint Peter and therefore tomorrow long I to go to God, it were a day very meet and convenient for me. 

On Monday, July 10, we'll discuss the mementoes of St. Thomas More in Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's daily reflections on the English Martyrs and Confessors. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!

Father Bowden did not surround the date of More's execution with as many memories as he did Bishop Fisher's; he highlights More's behavior on the scaffold on July 6, which might provide an answer to the question: did More say "but God's servant first" or "and God's servant first"?

The account Bowden is basically chronicler Edward Hall's version: More was so weak that he had to ask for help up the scaffold: 'See me safe up,' he said to Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower. 'For my coming down I can shift for myself.' He had been asked not to speak much so he  asked those witnessing his execution for their prayers, and desired "them to bear witness for him that he died in the faith of the holy Catholic Church, and a faithful servant of God and the King."

Since there is no use of the word "but" and the Paris Newsletter, published on August 4 (less than a month later) the same year doesn't use the word "but" either, perhaps we should always the word "and":

He then besought them earnestly to pray to God to give the King good counsel, protesting that he died his faithful servant, and God's first.

He prayed the Miserere Psalm, thanked the executioner and then asked him to please aim true:

'Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive,' he said. 'Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short. Take heed therefore that thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty.'

More stopped the executioner briefly to move his beard off the block, saying it had done no treason. "So with great alacrity and spiritual joy he received the fatal blow." 

Edward Hall didn't know what to think about More's humor on the scaffold, with these jokes about his beard, his short neck, and his method of getting off the scaffold:

I cannot tell whether I should call him a foolish wiseman, or a wise foolishman, for undoubtedly he beside his learning, had a great wit, but it was so mingled with taunting and mocking, that it seemed to them that best knew him, that he thought nothing to be well spoken except he had ministered some mock in the communication . . .

Like Saint John Fisher, who demonstrated his faithful and resolute demeanor before his execution, I think More was just being himself, able to face death with good humor and even wit. He had prepared for his death by meditation on Our Lord's Passion and ready to face this more merciful execution (instead of being hanged, drawn, and quartered), but he still didn't want the headsman to miss!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Preview: NO Preview: An Independence Day Break

Just to let you know that I won't be on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, July 3rd! The hosts and producers of the program are taking the day off--and the Fourth of July, Independence Day too, and the rest of the week too--during a summer break!

We will be back to continue our series on Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors on Monday, July 10, with a segment on Saint Thomas More!

Also, today, June 30, is the 55th anniversary of Pope Saint Paul VI's issuance of his Moto Proprio on The Creed of the People of God:

According to this earlier issue of The Pilot from Boston:

In his apostolic letter (“Solemni Hac Liturgia”) accompanying the Credo, Pope Paul VI noted that the text “repeats in substance, with some developments called for by the spiritual condition of our time, the creed of Nicea, the creed of the immortal tradition of the holy Church of God.”

According to the pope, the Credo was issued due to concerns about “the disquiet which agitates certain modern quarters with regard to the faith,” “the influence of a world being profoundly changed, in which so many certainties are being disputed or discussed,” “even Catholics allowing themselves to be seized by a kind of passion for change and novelty,” and “disturbance and perplexity in many faithful souls.”

Jacques Maritain drafted the Credo at the Pope's request. 

Image Credit (Public Domain): Originally entitled Yankee Doodle, this is one of several versions of a scene painted by A. M. Willard that came to be known as The Spirit of '76. Often imitated or parodied, it is a familiar symbol of American patriotism

Three Books of Hours and a Roman Missal in the News

It seems lately that announcements about prayer books and their owners and provenance are attempting to inform us more about their owners and their significance. The fact that Queen Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn owned and prayed with copies of the same edition of the Book of Hours published in Paris circa 1527 by printer Germain Hardouyn has been the centerpiece of an exhibition at Hever Castle (Queen Catherine's copy was on loan from the Morgan Library in New York City).

More recently there was the news that Thomas Cromwell owned a copy of the same Book of Hours that's included in Holbein's portrait, as the Smithsonian Magazine reported:

Through her research, McCaffrey [Kate McCaffrey, who identified and researched the provenance of the two queens' books] learned of the existence of a third copy of the Book of Hours—one donated to Cambridge by Dame Anne Sadleir in August 1660. When Hever’s curatorial team viewed the copy, Palmer pointed out its resemblance to the volume lying on a green tablecloth in the famous portrait, which Holbein painted between 1532 and 1533.

Palmer, Emmerson and McCaffrey began searching for more evidence to confirm the connection. They looked into the Cambridge book’s provenance, tracing its ownership from Cromwell to Sadleir, whose husband was the grandson of Cromwell’s secretary Ralph Sadleir (also spelled Sadler). The trio then shared their research with leading experts like Borman, who examined their findings and came to the same conclusion.

Previously, researchers had paid little attention to the Cambridge copy, which was known as the Hardouyn Hours after its printer. As Emmerson tells Artnet’s Richard Whiddington, scholars studying this era tend to focus more on handwritten texts than printed books. Additionally, the book “has remained uncleaned for many decades, with dirt and tarnish masking the finer details of the silver-gilt binding.”

I wonder about the attempts to use the fact that two of Henry VIII's queens and Thomas Cromwell used the same edition of a prayer book as an insight into their relationships, as the same article from the Smithsonian website quotes two of the specialists involved:

“This book of devotional prayers is remarkable for its unusually grand binding, covered with velvet, jewels and highly decorated silver gilt borders, all of which date from the time it was printed and illuminated,” says Nicolas Bell, a librarian at Cambridge’s Trinity College, in the statement. “It has been enormously exciting to position this luxurious creation in the very center of the court of Henry VIII, where we know that both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn owned copies of the very same edition.” . . .

The newly identified prayer book “gives us a little window into” the everyday lives of three giants of Tudor history, Emmerson tells the Times. “We often see them as adversaries, but they were also in each other’s company. They had to get along for propriety’s sake. It’s a surprising connection between these otherwise warring individuals.”

I don't think it's that surprising at all: the Book of Hours was the prayer book used at the time by pious laity. Why would the three of them praying with the same book mean they were getting "along for propriety's sake"? Do the curators imagine them meeting in a chapel and praying an hour antiphonally? How common was ownership of this particular printed edition? Has that been considered while highlighting these connections? As the MET in New York City notes:

A century later, the invention and adoption of printing made books of hours even more accessible to a wider audience, and a press like that of the Hardouyn family (89.27.4, fols. 5v–6r) made copies by the dozen or more. However numerous and easy to produce, the widespread printed books of hours never attained the appeal of the finest handmade manuscript copies, each one not only a functional prayer book but a unique work of art.

More on mass-produced Books of Hours here.

Besides, as the Smithsonian story comments, the inclusion of Cromwell's Book of Hours may have a different, non-religious or devotional purpose: "The book’s inclusion in the Holbein portrait may allude to Cromwell’s recent appointment as Master of the Jewels [in April 1532]". And as the Tower of London website notes:

It was almost certainly to celebrate his appointment as Master of the Jewels that Cromwell commissioned Hans Holbein, the most celebrated artist of the age, to paint his portrait in around 1532-33.

It wasn't to show Cromwell's sentimental attachment to that Book of Hours, as Owen Emmerson avers: it was to announce that he was moving up at Court--he's not looking that jeweled book, he's displaying it!

Now comes the news that Father John Huddleston's Roman Missal has been identified and obtained for Moseley Old Hall in Staffordshire, stressing its connection to the relationship between the Benedictine priest who sheltered the then King of Scotland after defeat at the Battle of Worcester and King Charles II's deathbed conversion in 1685:

Father John Huddleston was a Benedictine priest who resided at Moseley Old Hall during the time that Charles II sought refuge here in 1651.

When Charles arrived at Moseley on 8th September 1651, Father Huddleston gave him shelter in his own first-floor bedroom and it is believed that during his time here, Charles consulted a collection of Father Huddleston's books, with the missal likely to have been one of them.

When Charles II returned to England as king in 1660, he made Father Huddleston chaplain to his mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, and then later to his wife, Catherine of Braganza. Father Huddleston was held in high regard by the king, so much so that in 1685, as King Charles II lay dying in Whitehall Palace in London, Father Huddleston was summoned to his bedside to hear the king’s confession, administer the Eucharist and receive him into the Catholic Church.

Whether or not King Charles II of Scotland was likely to have read or prayed with Father Huddleston's Roman Missal in 1651 seems uncertain to me. If Father Huddleston was using the Roman Missal for daily Mass, etc., it might not have been available to Charles to consult, unless he was attending the Masses. Father Huddleston might indeed have had this Roman Missal with him when he received Charles into the Church, but that detail/provenance is not mentioned.

As for Father Huddleston after that famous deathbed conversion, the old Catholic Encyclopedia has these details:

On the accession of James II, Huddleston continued to reside with the Queen Dowager at Somerset House. Shortly before his death his mind failed and he was placed in the charge of "the Popish Lord Feversham", one of the few persons present at Charles II's reconciliation to the Church, who managed his affairs as trustee. To this arrangement is probably due the unusual circumstance that the probate of his will was obtained the day before his funeral. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary le Strand (Parish Register, MS.). 

Image Credit (public domain) Holbein's portrait of Thomas Cromwell

Image Credit (public domain): Portrait of Dom John Huddleston O.S.B. (1608-98), after a portrait by Jacob Huysmans

Preview: Saint John Fisher on the Son Rise Morning Show

As might be expected, Father Henry Sebastian Bowden dedicates more than one day to the memory of Saint John Fisher, Cardinal Bishop of England in his book Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors. Around the date of his June 22, 1535 beheading Father Bowden includes five:

June 22: Ascending the Steps

June 23: Learning for Life

June 24: The Wedding Garment

June 25: A Martyr's Sleep, and

June 26: The Bones of Elias

On Monday, June 26 on the Son Rise Morning Show, we'll reflect on the memory of Saint John Fisher stopping on the way from the Tower to Tower Hill to open his New Testament and pray for a suitable verse to sustain him before his execution. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!

We should remember that Bishop John Fisher was a brilliant scholarly and a holy man, renowned for both among his peers in England and on the Continent. As the old Dictionary of National Biography explains:

In 1501 he was elected vice-chancellor of [Cambridge] university. We learn from his own statements, as well as from other sources, that the whole academic community was at that time in a singularly lifeless and impoverished state. To rescue it from this condition, by infusing new life into its studies and gaining for it the help of the wealthy, was one of the chief services which Fisher rendered to his age. In 1503 he was appointed by the Countess of Richmond [Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother and Henry VIII's grandmother] to fill the newly founded chair of divinity, which she had instituted for the purpose of providing gratuitous theological instruction in the university; and it appears to have been mainly by his advice that about the same time the countess also founded the Lady Margaret preachership, designed for supplying evangelical instruction of the laity in the surrounding county and elsewhere. The preaching was to be in the vernacular, which had at that period almost fallen into disuse in the pulpit. . . .

Fisher's genuine attachment to learning is shown by the sympathy which he evinced with the new spirit of biblical criticism which had accompanied the Renaissance. It was mainly through his influence that Erasmus was induced to visit Cambridge, and the latter expressly attributes it to his powerful protection that the study of Greek was allowed to go on in the university without active molestation of the kind which it had to encounter at Oxford (Epist. vi. 2). Notwithstanding his advanced years, Fisher himself aspired to become a Greek scholar, and appears to have made some attainments in the language.

Yet as he goes to his death, so weak that he has to carried in a chair, he stops, stands up, leans against a wall and opens his small New Testament book at random, praying:

"O Lord, this is the last time that ever I shall open this book. Let some comfortable place now chance unto me--" and he opens it to John 17:3-4:

"This is everlasting life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on earth, I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do."

Having read that he said, "Here is even learning enough for me to my life's end." 

Father Bowden chose Psalm 138:6 for this daily entry: "Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me."

His calmness and readiness for his martyrdom is also demonstrated in his final preparations for his execution: Awakened early the morning of June 22, 1535, he asked to be allowed to sleep a few more hours until 9:00 a.m., the time set for him to die ("A Martyr's Sleep"), and he dressed warmly before he left his cell ("The Wedding Garment"). He was asked not to make any speech on the scaffold and he was content with that.

On the scaffold ("Ascending the Steps"), Father Bowden provides the detail that Saint John Fisher recited another Psalm (33:6): "Come ye to Him and be enlightened, and your faces shall be confounded." He forgave the executioner and removed his gown and tippet (like a stole over his shoulders) and the crowd there to witness his execution was shocked at how emaciated he was because his face was "a mere death's head". His body was left on the scaffold but his head was prepared for exhibition on London Bridge, where it stopped the traffic because his face seemed to look more lifelike! ("The Bones of Elias") Finally his head was dumped into the Thames and replaced by St. Thomas More's.

Speaking of St. Thomas More's head, which was retrieved by his daughter Margaret Roper before it could be dumped into the Thames, there are fears that his skull, a major relic, is deteriorating in the vaults of St. Dunstan's Anglican church in Canterbury. It is buried in the church because the Roper family vault is there and Margaret's husband Will Roper, kept the relic after her death.

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Fisher and More Religious Freedom Week Thoughts

As Anna Mitchell pointed out during our discussion of Henry VIII's prison visit to Blessed Sebastian Newdigate Monday morning on the Son Rise Morning Show, the USCCB's Religious Freedom Week begins today, June 22, the feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More. The portraits above laud them as "England's Most Glorious Martyrs" (note that the clipping dates from before their canonization in 1935, 400 years after their executions).

On the day of their feast, the USCCB asks us to reflect on "Respect for Sacred Spaces":

In a pluralistic society such as ours, respect for sacred spaces is especially vital for the sake of civil peace, which is part of the common good. In recent years, a wave of vandalism and arson has hit Catholic churches and statues. That wave rose following the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision, and it crested after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to regulate abortion. June and July of 2022 saw a huge spike in anti-Christian and anti-life attacks on churches. There have been over 250 attacks so far, and that number steadily continues to grow. [well, it certainly can't diminish!]

Before Fisher and More were executed in 1535, sacred spaces in England seemed to be safe: chantry chapels, parish churches, abbey churches, cathedrals, pilgrimage sites, friaries, priories, convents, and monasteries. All their shrines, stained glass, statues, altars, libraries, chalices, patens, pixes, and reliquaries also seemed safe. But with the Dissolution of the Monasteries during Henry VIII's reign, and the greater destruction of the religious fabric of sacred spaces during Edward VI's reign and the Elizabethan iconoclasm after the brief restoration of Catholic worship under Mary I, the pattern of destruction began. We could say that it started, however, in 1536, with the first wave of dissolutions or suppressions, and continued with the larger houses and the campaign against monastic life in general with the Visitations of the larger monasteries and the establishment of the Court of Augmentations to dispose of the sacred spaces of the monasteries with the conversion of some abbey churches into parish churches or cathedrals.

Of course, sixteenth century England did not have any idea of religious freedom: this meme from the beginning of the USCCB's attention to matters of religious freedom in the USA with the "Fortnight for Freedom" in reaction to the HHS/ACA contraception mandates and the Little Sisters of the Poor battles against them reminds us of that!

I'd previously shared this article from The Historical Journal (2022) by Martin Heale, "Thomas More and the Defense of the Religious Orders in Henry VIII's England", and draw your attention to it again with a couple of excerpts. In the course of the article, Heale comments more than once about St. Thomas More's admiration for the Observant Friars at Greenwich, the Carthusians at the London Charterhouse, and the Bridgettines of the House of Syon. On page 936 of the journal, he begins to explore More's defense of monasticism in general:

Alongside his unfettered praise for strictly observant religious orders, More’s polemical writings echoed his ‘Letter to a monk’ by repeatedly emphasizing the inherent value of the monastic way of life. In his ‘Letter to Bugenhagen’, More expressed a very high estimation of the monastic calling: ‘Religious orders have produced a great many men of extraordinary sanctity…[while] the purest segment of the Christian people have always been found in religious orders.’ Their way of life was also certified by the great holiness of their original founders. Monastic living, More added, with its austerities and self-denial, followed Christ’s teaching and example far more faithfully than the pampered and indulgent lives of its evangelical critics.75 The supplication of souls set out a robust defence of the friars’ practice of begging and the endowments held by monastic houses.76 And in the Apology, More denied that the professed religious life was in any way inferior to the calling of secular priests, and asserted that Christian people were bound to show honour towards religious persons on account of their ‘holy profession of their godly state of living’. 77 

You'll need to access the article for the end note links.

Nevertheless, Heale emphasizes that More, the Christian humanist and Catholic apologist, balanced that "very high estimation of the monastic calling" with an acknowledgement of problems among the monastic houses in England, and a rather tepid defense of those houses. While he regretted the dissolution of monasteries in Lutheran Germany (p. 940) More did not mount a defense of the monastic orders or houses. Heale concludes:

It is improbable that Thomas More himself, through his polemical writings, could have impeded the Henrician regime’s plans to embark upon a significant programme of monastic suppression in the mid-1530s. After all, More . . .  had issued stark warnings about the likely negative social and economic consequences of dissolving religious houses: a viewpoint that came to be quite widely shared within a few years of the suppressions. 113 He was, moreover, by no means unique among English humanists in his predilection for strictly observant forms of monastic life, and a concomitant lack of enthusiasm for ‘unreformed’ religious houses.

Tomorrow I'll post my preview for on Monday, June 26 discussion of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's mementoes of Saint John Fisher on the Son Rise Morning Show!

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

From "First Things": A Consideration of the 'Anglican Reset'

Hans Boersma, Gerald McDermott, and Greg Peters collectively ask: "Is the Anglican "Reset" Truly Anglican?" in First Things, posted on June 9 of this year:

The Kigali Commitment of April 21, 2023, was a shot heard around the world. Thirteen hundred Anglican leaders, dominated by bishops and clergy from the Global South, gathered in Kigali, Rwanda, to declare that they no longer recognized the Archbishop of Canterbury as their leader. Representing 85 percent of the Anglican Communion, they pronounced their determination to “reset the Communion on its biblical foundations.”  

The boldness of this statement is striking. Not only does it signal the end of English domination of the Communion, but it also demonstrates counter-cultural courage. The leaders of the Global Anglican Fellowship Conference (GAFCON) and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) have defied Global North elite opinion and financial coercion by denouncing the Church of England’s February 2023 decision to bless same-sex couples. . .

The question they ask, while commending the one thousand, three hundred leaders for taking a stand, is if they've taken their stand on the right foundation:

The Kigali Commitment repeatedly appeals to the authority of the Bible alone and fails to mention either the authority of the Church or the role of tradition, describing the Bible as “the rule of our lives” and the “final authority in the church” without mentioning that Scripture functions within the context of tradition—in particular, the common liturgy of the Church and the Book of Common Prayer—and the Church’s teaching authority.

They cite Bishop John Jewell (1552-1571), Richard Hooker (1554-1600), and Bishop Francis White (1564-1638), and more recently, the 2002 statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together to demonstrate that Anglicans and even some Evangelicals have acknowledged "there is no such thing as Scripture without tradition, that every person reads Scripture through the lens of some tradition or other, whether he realizes it or not", attributing that sentiment to Hooker. This is in contrast to the Kigali Commitment's reliance on the "clarity" of the Biblical text as Boersma, McDermott, and Peters see it.

That reminded me that Catholic World Report recently featured an interview with Casey Chalk about his new book  The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity (Emmaus Road, 2023). Chalk also refers to this hermeneutic of interpretation as "perspicuity", citing the Westminster Confession of Faith, paragraph 7:

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

Chalk's comment:

The above statement requires a little bit of unpacking. The Westminster divines are not saying that all of Scripture is equally clear, but that enough of it is that both learned and unlearned Christians, relying on the Holy Spirit in prayer and leveraging things like biblical preaching or good commentaries, that they should be able to understand what is necessary for salvation.

So, anytime you talk to a Protestant and he or she says something like “the Bible clearly teaches X,” they are making recourse to the doctrine of clarity. Of course, a lot of times that person may be going well beyond what the Westminster divines had in mind, given their narrow understanding of perspicuity. But the basic premise is that Scripture is clear enough on what’s necessary for salvation, or the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, that any well-meaning Christian should be able to read his or her Bible and find precisely that.

Be that as it may, when I read the text of the Kigali Commitment, I did note that the signers of this document did appeal to Anglican tradition and the teaching authority of the Church of England, specifically to the Lambeth Conference of 1998:

Public statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders of the Church of England in support of same-sex blessings are a betrayal of their ordination and consecration vows to banish error and to uphold and defend the truth taught in Scripture.

These statements are also a repudiation of Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which declared that ‘homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture,’ and advised against the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions’. 

This occurred despite the Archbishop of Canterbury having affirmed that ‘the validity of the resolution passed at the Lambeth Conference 1998, I.10 is not in doubt and that whole resolution is still in existence’. (page 2)

I thought of what Saint John Henry Newman might say about this putative schism in the Anglican Communion. Or rather, what he did say to those in "the Religious Movement of 1833" who had remained in the Church of England as he referred to them in his lectures on Anglican Difficulties.

In the first lecture "On the Relation of the National Church to the Nation" he warned them:

I have said all this, my brethren, not in declamation, but to bring out clearly to you, why I cannot feel interest of any kind in the National Church, nor put any trust in it at all from its past history, as if it were, in however narrow a sense, a guardian of orthodoxy. It is as little bound by what it said or did formerly, as this morning's newspaper by its former numbers, except as it is bound by the Law; and while it is upheld by the Law, it will not be weakened by the subtraction of individuals, nor fortified by their continuance. Its life is an Act of Parliament. It will not be able to resist the Arian, Sabellian, or Unitarian heresies now, because Bull or Waterland resisted them a century or two before; nor on the other hand would it be unable to resist them, though its more orthodox theologians were presently to leave it. It will be able to resist them while the State gives the word; it would be unable, when the State forbids it. Elizabeth boasted that she "tuned her pulpits;" Charles forbade discussions on predestination; George on the Holy Trinity; Victoria allows differences on Holy Baptism. While the nation wishes an Establishment, it will remain, whatever individuals are for it or against it; and that which determines its existence will determine its voice. Of course {9} the presence or departure of individuals will be one out of various disturbing causes, which may delay or accelerate by a certain number of years a change in its teaching: but, after all, the change itself depends on events broader and deeper than these; it depends on changes in the nation. As the nation changes its political, so may it change its religious views; the causes which carried the Reform Bill and Free Trade may make short work with orthodoxy.

We'll have to wait and see how the Archbishop of Canterbury, et al, respond to the Kigali Commitment, but Newman predicted the direction the Church of England would go: following the Nation, the Parliament, and the zeitgeist of the age.

Preview: King Henry VIII Visits an Old Friend in Prison

On Monday, June 19, we'll discuss Henry VIII's visits to his old friend/courtier, Blessed Sebastian Newdigate, held in prison on the king's orders because he would not swear the Oath of Supremacy. It's very appropriate that we remember these events because Monday is the anniversary of Newdigate's martyrdom, along with Humphrey Middlemore and William Exmew on June 19, 1535.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!

Arrested on May 25, they had been imprisoned in Marshalsea for about a fortnight before their trial at Westminster on June 11. The three were taken before the Privy Council before their trial, refused again to swear Henry's oaths and were condemned to death. While in prison, they were chained at the neck and hand and foot against pillars, unable to move. 

While his former courtier, now a Catholic priest, was in Marshalsea, Henry VIII visited him to try to persuade to swear the oath. It's interesting that according Father Bowden, the king's method of persuasion, other than imprisonment and confinement, is similar to the line of questioning often used in this period, when the issue was the monarch's Supremacy over the Church in England: Why can't you just go along with everyone else? Why do you have a problem with the king being the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England? What makes you so special? Do you think you're better, holier, than everyone else?

As Bowden quotes the exchange: after hearing the Henry's bribes and threats, Father Newdigate replied:

In court I served your Majesty loyally and faithfully, and so continue still your humble servant, although kept in this prison and bonds. But in matters that belong to the doctrine of the Catholic Church and the salvation of my poor soul, Your Majesty must excuse me.

Then Henry VIII asked:

Art thou wiser and holier than all the ecclesiastics and seculars of my kingdom?

Father Newdigate's reply:

I may not judge of others, nor do I esteem myself wise or holy, being far short in either; only this: I assure myself that the Faith and doctrine I profess is no new thing, but always among the faithful held for Christians and Catholics. We must obey God rather than men.

Thinking of why Father Bowden assembled these Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors in 1910: it was because he knew Catholics in England then--as Catholics all over the world today--face the same question Henry VIII asked: why do you have to be different from everyone else? 

And Blessed Sebastian Newdigate answered, basing his steadfastness not on himself, but on the Truth he believed in: We must obey God rather than men, quoting the Acts of Apostles (5:29)

Father Bowden titles this memento: "The Whims of a King" with the Psalm verse: "Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation." (Psalm 145:2-3)

Blessed Sebastian Newdigate, pray for us!

Blessed Humphrey Middlemore, pray for us!

Blessed William Exmew, pray for us!