Mary Dyer, American Martyr

Mary Barrett Dyer, Religious Dissident (executed 1 June 1660)

Note: A few days ago, for reasons that I do not understand, an earlier version of this post (published in 2016!!) was flagged for "violating community standards," and it was made to disappear from the blog. Since there was no explanation of what "community standard" had been "violated," I appealed, and the blog gods--without any explanation--reinstated it. So it's there once again, back where it was in 2016, but just because I am that kind of woman, I am re-posting it here too, so it now appears TWICE. I did take the opportunity to update the images on this version.

So many racists, homophobes, misogynists, and all-around assholes are comfortable using their "god-given" sense of "religious freedom" as justification for their "right" to bully, harass, humiliate, and persecute anyone who fails to conform to their idea of what is "godly" that it seems like a good time to remind ourselves about the long tradition of "religious freedom" in what would eventually become the United States of America. So here's just one example of how religious "freedom" usually means religious persecution.

Sculpture of Mary Dyer,
Massachusetts State House,
dedicated 9 June 1959
(photo in public domain)

Born in England probably about the year 1611, Mary Barrett married William Dyer in London in 1633. As Puritans, the Dyers left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In December 1635, the couple is noted among the members of the Boston Church.

Defending the notion of religious tolerance and difference, Dyer and her husband supported Anne Hutchinson and others like her whose religious views began to diverge from those of the dominant Puritan majority.

In the theological and very political fight that erupted in the colony, Anne Hutchinson, among others, was tried and convicted in 1637 for the crime of having "traduced" Boston ministers. She was banished from the colony. For his support of Anne Hutchinson, William Dyer was disenfranchised. When armed insurrection seemed about to erupt, colonial officials were empowered to confiscate "all such guns, pistols, swords, powder, shot, & match as they shall be owners of, or have in their custody, upon paine of ten pound[s] for every default" (so much for the "god-given" right to bear arms too, I guess . . . )

For her part, Mary Dyer had not been officially investigated, though her support for Hutchinson brought her to the attention of officials in 1638, when she committed the mistake of walking hand-in-hand with Anne Hutchinson after Hutchinson's excommunication.

For her act of friendship, Mary Dyer now became the subject of investigation--and in her case, her "sin" proved to be a doozy. It seems that Mary Dyer had given birth to a "monster" a few months earlier, in October 1637. This birth of this stillborn child became the subject of an intense investigation by the Puritan governor of the colony, John Winthrop.

Unfortunately for Dyer and Hutchinson, Hutchinson had been one of two midwives in attendance at the birth. Learning this, Winthrop, accompanied by "above a hundred persons," all of them, obviously, god-fearing defenders of religion, excavated the stillborn infant's grave, finding the remains not human "but a most hideous creature, a woman, a fish, a bird, & a beast all woven together." As Winthrop described the remains in his journal:

it was of ordinary bigness; it had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape's; it had no forehead, but over the eyes four horns, hard and sharp; two of them were above one inch long, the other two shorter; the eyes standing out, and the mouth also; the nose hooked upward; all over the breast and back full of sharp pricks and scales, like a thornback [i.e., a skate or ray], the navel and all the belly, with the distinction of the sex, were where the back should be, and the back and hips before, where the belly should have been; behind, between the shoulders, it had two mouths, and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as other children; but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons.

Winthrop concluded that the "monstrous birth" was an unequivocal sign of Dyer's sin for having religious views that diverged from those of the Puritan majority.

Forced to leave Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mary Dyer joined her husband (and the Hutchinsons, as well as others forced out by the Puritans) at a new settlement in the territory later known as Rhode Island. But religious conflicts between all of those in the new settlements--new arrivals as well as those fleeing Massachusetts--soon erupted.

The Dyers returned to England for several years, with William Dyer one of several men who were attempting to sort out the problems with those who had commissioned the Rhode Island settlers. In England, Mary Dyer converted to Quakerism. When she returned to New England in 1657, Mary Dyer settled once more in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, then actively involved in discovering, persecuting, and eliminating Quakers.

Dyer was imprisoned in Boston. Although her husband arranged for her release, ensuring the colonial authorities that she would not speak to any members of the colony and that she would immediately return home, Dyer refused to be silent.

She traveled throughout New England to share her faith. She was arrested in the New Haven Colony in 1658 and forced to leave. By October of 1658, persecution of Quakers had intensified. In Massachusetts Bay, being a Quaker became a capital offense. The punishment for Quakerism was banishment--and if the convicted were to be found within the colony after conviction, the punishment was death.

In June of 1659, learning of the arrest of Quakers in Massachusetts, Mary Dyer left her home in Newport and headed back to Boston. She was arrested and, along with two others, condemned to death. She was taken to her place of execution on 27 October, but after watching the executions of the two men convicted with her, she was reprieved.

Mary Dyer refused to accept the conditions of the reprieve, which meant denying her faith: "My life is not accepted, neither availeth me, in comparison with the lives and liberty of the Truth and Servants of the living God for which in the Bowels of Love and Meekness I sought you; yet nevertheless with wicked Hands have you put two of them to Death, which makes me to feel that the Mercies of the Wicked is cruelty; I rather chuse to Dye than to live, as from you, as Guilty of their Innocent Blood."

Once more returned to Rhode Island, Dyer refused to accept her situation--she decided to force the Puritans of Massachusetts to change their laws or to execute a woman.

Dyer returned to Boston in May of 1660. She was arrested once more and on 31 May was examined in front of the governor of the colony, now John Endicott. Although her husband once more hoped to gain her a reprieve, she was once more condemned.

Edward Burrough's 1661 pamphlet,
decrying the persecution of
Quakers in Massachusetts
(for the full text, click here)

This time, she was also executed. On 1 June 1660 she was taken to the gallows where she had watched her two fellow Quakers executed in October 1659. She refused an offer to save herself, saying, 

I came to keep bloodguiltiness from you, desiring you to repeal the unrighteous and unjust law of banishment upon pain of death, made against the innocent servants of the Lord, therefore my blood will be required at your hands who willfully do it; but for those that do is in the simplicity of their hearts, I do desire the Lord to forgive them. I came to do the will of my Father, and in obedience to his will I stand even to the death.

Mary Dyer was hanged that day, becoming one of the "Boston Martyrs." And one of many of those whose lives and death testify not so much to the long and glorious history of "religious freedom" in the U.S. but to religious intolerance, persecution, and blind ignorance.

St. Margaret Clitherow, "the Pearl of York"

Margaret Middleton Clitherow (canonized 25 October 1970)

I just recently moved from a home I'd lived in for forty years. While I was packing up, I ran across a card I had received many years ago (many years ago) from a friend who was spending a sabbatical year in England--I'd tossed it into my bill basket, where it remained. Every once in a while, when I "cleaned" out the basket, I'd come across it, but there it remained.

My Margaret Clitherow
"Local History Card"

The card told the story of Margaret Clitherow, also known as St. Margaret of York. Since the card itself is quite small, postcard-sized, and since half of it is taken up with an illustration, there isn't much text on it.

I'd always assumed that this was a postcard, in fact, but when I looked at it carefully this last July, trying to decide what to keep and what to toss after living four decades in the same space, I realized it wasn't a postcard after all. It was something called a "Local History Card." And this was card No. 575.

I decided not only to keep the card but, finally, to do something with it. And thus today's post.

Margaret Middleton was born in 1555 or 1556, the daughter of John Middleton, sheriff of York (1564-65), and his wife, Jane.

When Margaret was fourteen years old, her father died; the next year, in 1571, she married John Clitherow. Like her father, who had been a successful businessman (a chandler, or candlemaker), Clitherow was also a successful tradesman, a butcher. 

Also like her father, John Clitherow had a civic role, in his case as a chamberlain for the city, a kind of treasurer responsible for receiving rents and revenues--and he also had the responsibility of reporting the activities of Catholics to the Church of England parish authorities. 

Margaret and her husband lived in the Shambles, a street where butchers had their homes and shops--today, the Shambles preserves its overhanging, medieval timber-frame structures, making it a popular tourist site in the city of York.

At some point in the 1570s, perhaps in 1574, according to some accounts, Margaret converted to Catholicism. The Middleton family, whatever their religious faith before Elizabeth Tudor came to the throne, seems to have accepted the Protestant faith--John Middleton had become sheriff of the city of York in 1564, six years after Elizabeth's accession.

The Shambles,
York

John Clitherow, too, was Protestant, and during the first years of their marriage, his wife had worshipped with him, but after her conversion and profession of her faith, he did not abandon her. (His brother, William, was also an ordained Catholic priest.)

Margaret was fined for not attending church. Her husband paid her fines. Margaret raised their children as Catholics. Her husband did not object. Margaret opened her home to a priest who said the mass for her. Her husband turned a blind eye.

Margaret was first imprisoned for failure to attend church services (Church of England) in 1577 (the parish register notes that she is "great with child," and this may be when she gave birth to her third child, a boy named William, who is said to have been born when she was incarcerated). 

She was then arrested twice more, in 1580 (she was released from prison in 1581 in order to give birth) and 1583. As a result of this third arrest, she spent some twenty months in prison. It may have been during this last, extended imprisonment that she learned to read and to write.

(Margaret's three children followed her in their faith--her two sons, Henry, born in 1572, and the boy, William, born while she was imprisoned, became priests. Her daughter, Anne, born around the year 1575, became a nun at St. Ursula's in Louvain.)

But when she was arrested on 10 March 1586, it was for more than failure to attend church services. John Clitherow had been called before the Council of the North to explain the absence of his son Henry--whom Margaret had sent to the continent to be educated at the English College in Rheims. 

John Clitherow refused to provide any information about his son's whereabouts, and so the authorities searched his home. There, one of the frightened Clitherow servants revealed to authorities the existence of a priest hole, a secret room where Margaret had hidden priests. Although there were no men hiding there when the house was searched, authorities found ample evidence to arrest Margaret--there were vestments and bread left from the Mass.

Margaret Clitherow,
from an eighteenth-century woodcut

Margaret was arraigned four days later, on 14 March 1586, by the Council of the North at the York Assizes, charged with the crime of having "harbored and maintained Jesuits and seminary priests, traitors to the Queen's majesty and her laws." 

In response to the charges read against her, Margaret reportedly said, "I know of no offense whereof I should confess myself guilty. Having made no offense, I need no trial."

Margaret refused to plead to the charges made against her, presumably because, if she had cooperated and then been brought to trial, her children would have been used as witnesses against her. 

Instead, she accepted the sentence of peine forte et dure, being pressed to death, the legal punishment meted out to a person who refused to make a plea and stand trial. On 15 March, Judge George Clinch read out her sentence:

You must return from whence you came, and there, in the lowest part of the prison, be stripped naked, laid down, your back on the ground, and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear, and so to continue for three days without meat or drink, and on the third day to be pressed to death, your hands and feet tied to posts, and a sharp stone under your back.

To this dreadful sentence, Margaret Clitherow reportedly replied, "God be thanked, I am not worthy of so good a death as this."

Perhaps in the hope that she would relent--she was believed to be pregnant again--ten days elapsed between the time she was sentenced and the day she was executed. 

Here is the account of her death--viewed as a martyrdom--printed in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Although she was probably with child, this horrible sentence was carried out on Lady Day, 1586 (Good Friday according to New Style). She had endured an agony of fear the previous night, but was now calm, joyous, and smiling. She walked barefooted to the tollbooth on Ousebridge, for she had sent her hose and shoes to her daughter Anne, in token that she should follow in her steps. She had been tormented by the ministers and even now was urged to confess her crimes. "No, no, Mr. Sheriff, I die for the love of my Lord Jesu," she answered. She was laid on the ground, a sharp stone beneath her back, her hands stretched out in the form of a cross and bound to two posts. Then a door was placed upon her, which was weighted down till she was crushed to death. Her last words during an agony of fifteen minutes, were "Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! have mercy on me!"

There is now a shrine for Margaret Clitherow, St. Margaret of York, in her former home, 35-36 Shambles. 

According to my Local History Card, "an altar service is held there every Saturday." 

The Margaret Clitherow Shrine,
the Shambles, York

For more details, you can access in full a fascinating account of Margaret Clitherow via Google Books, J. B. Milburn's 1900 A Martyr of Old York: Being a Narrative of the Life and Sufferings of the Venerable Margaret Clitheroe

Edith Cavell: "No Hatred Or Bitterness"

Edith Cavell, British Nurse (executed 12 October 1915)

Edith Cavell was a British nurse arrested in Brussels and tried by a German military court during the First World War. She was charged with having aided Allied soldiers escape from Belgium, convicted, and executed by firing squad on 12 October 1915.

I first learned about the life of Edith Cavell when I was a girl. I read a lot of biographies, then as now, and I don't remember much about the book I read or when I read it (unlike my very distinct memory of having read about the sad end of Jane Grey, the "nine days" queen of England). 

I am wondering, now, if I might have stumbled on Iris Vinton's The Story of Edith Cavell, a biography of Cavell written for children and published in 1959. The timing is certainly right--but, then again, I read widely beyond the shelves of children's books, and so who knows what I read, other than it had to be a book published before 1962 or so. 

(By the time I was in fifth grade, I considered myself an expert on the marital misadventures of Henry VIII and his six wives, so I know I was reading "adult" biographies. Also, that's the kind of insufferable child I was.)

Born on 4 December 1865, Edith Cavell began her life much as the central figure of a novel by Jane Austen, or maybe one of the Brontës. She was the eldest daughter of a provincial vicar who had fallen in love with and then married his housekeeper's daughter.

In the Norfolk village of Swardeston, the Reverend Frederick Cavell first occupied a Georgian farmhouse and then a vicarage built next to the the Church of St Mary the Virgin in 1865, the year of Edith's birth. (Although he was a "poor parson," the reverend had the church built at his own expense, and it "nearly ruined him.")

His eldest daughter, Edith, was educated first at home, then briefly at the Norwich High School, and finally, between 1881 and 1884, at a series of boarding schools, Edith eventually trained as a "pupil teacher" at Laurel Court (Peterborough), the last of the establishments she attended.

She took a series of posts as a governess, but while she was at Laurel Court, she had learned French well enough to be recommended for a post in Brussels in 1890.

For five years, from 1890 until 1895, she was a governess for the François family. In addition to improving her French and managing the lives of the family's four children, she also focused on developing her sketching, drawing, and painting. 

In 1895, Cavell returned to England to nurse her father, who was suffering from a serious illness. Once he had recovered, she was determined to become a nurse. In April 1896, she began training at the London Hospital (now the Royal London Hospital).

She served as a nurse during an outbreak of typhoid fever in Maidstone the next year, and by 1898 was working as a private nurse. By 1899 she took up the post as a night superintendent at St. Pancras Hospital, a Poor Law institution. By 1903, she had transferred to the workhouse infirmary at Shoreditch, where she became assistant matron in 1903.

She continued her career with a transfer to the Manchester and Salford Sick Poor and Private Nursing Institution, where she became a temporary matron. But by 1907 she was again in Brussels, where she had been offered a permanent position in the newly established L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées, known more simply as the "Clinique," serving as head of the institution,  which was dedicated to the training of nurses. 

Edith Cavell with some of her
nurses-in-training,
Brussels, Belgium

Cavell was still working in Brussels in August 1914, though she was actually visiting her widowed mother in Norfolk when she heard the German declaration of war--she returned to the city immediately, arriving by 4 August, the day the Germans invaded neutral Belgium.

With soldiers of all nationalities in the city, the Brussels clinic was established as a Red Cross hospital, dedicated to treating all wounded, regardless of their national origins. After the fall of Brussels (21-22 August) the Germans took over the clinic for their own soldiers, sending home some sixty British nurses, though Cavell and her assistant, Elizabeth Wilkins, remained in the city.

By autumn, Brussels was completely isolated--and Cavell found herself faced by a moral dilemma. As a "protected" Red Cross nurse, she was supposed to remain neutral. But as a human being, she felt compelled to aid the British and Allied soldiers and civilians who found their way to her, seeking shelter and assistance. 

And so she offered her assistance. She helped wounded British and French soldiers escape to The Netherlands, and she sheltered Belgian and French civilians, especially those of military age, until they could be provided with false identification papers and guided to safety. 

Within a year, by August 1915, Cavell and the clinic had fallen under suspicion--and then she was betrayed by a French collaborator, George Gaston Quien. In exchange for his own safety, he had disguised himself as an Allied soldier, sought aid at the clinic, and received it.

Cavell and some thirty-five men and women associated with the clinic were arrested on 5 August 1915 and held in the St. Gilles prison. Over the next ten weeks, she was interrogated on three separate occasions--8, 18, and 22 August. Presented by signed depositions that, she was told, fully outlined the activities of those at the clinic (the documents were written in German and only described to her in French), she freely and fully admitted to her own role in protecting men and helping them escape.

According to Cavell's own deposition, she had helped some 60 British and French soldiers to safety and had sheltered a hundred Belgian and French citizens of military age escape. Her two-day trial before a military tribunal began on 7 October; along with those who had been arrested with her, she was charged with "conducting soldiers to the enemy," helping them return to their home countries so that they could rejoin the fighting.

While she admitted helping men escape Brussels, Cavell was clear in her own testimony that her aid had been limited and that her goal had not been to help men return to battle. In response to the charge, she clarified her role: "My preoccupation has not been to aid the enemy but to help the men who applied to me to reach the frontier. Once across the frontier they were free."

An international effort was being made on her behalf, with appeals for clemency being made by Hugh S. Gibson, the first secretary of the U. S. legation in Brussels; by Rodrigo de Saavedra and Vinent, the marquis de Villalobar, the Spanish ambassador; and by Maurits Van Vollenhoven, the Dutch ambassador, Maurits Van Vollenhoven. 

The British government could do nothing to save her, or at least thought it could not help her. Sir Horace Rowland, the top official of the Foreign Office, wrote, "I am afraid that it is likely to go hard with Miss Cavell," adding that in the matter the British were "powerless."

Another member of the Foreign office agreed: "I am afraid that Miss Cavell will get a heavy sentence. There seems nothing to do." The sentiment was shared by Lord Robert Cecil. The Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs believed that British help would hurt Cavell rather than help her: "Any representation by us, will do her more harm than good. (For The Guardian's analysis of "How British Diplomats Failed Cavell," click here.)

Cavell and five others were sentenced on 11 October, and although appeals were made on their behalf, there was to be no reprieve. Cavell herself, when informed of her impending execution, was calm:

The Edith Cavell memorial,
Westminster, London

I have no fear or shrinking. I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me. This time of rest has been a great mercy. Everyone here has been very kind. This I would say standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

Cavell was executed by firing squad early on the morning on 12 October. She recorded her own death in her diary: "Died at 07h on 12th October 1915."

Although she herself wished to be remembered as a simple person who did her duty, Cavell and her "martyrdom" were quickly seized on by Allied propagandists, her death serving as a recruiting tool for the military. 

She was buried hurriedly in a field next to the St. Gilles prison. Her body was exhumed after the war and returned to England. In 1919, following a memorial at Westminster abbey, she was interred in Norwich Cathedral. 

After the war, too, she was posthumously awarded the Cross of the Order of Leopold by Albert I, king of the Belgians, the government itself awarding her the Croix Civique. In France, she was recognized with the Légion d'Honneur.

A 2016 memorial service, dedicating the new grave of
Edith Cavell, begun in 2015 on the centenary
of her death

The best place to start your further reading is the website dedicated to her, which you can access by clicking here. In addition to a thorough biographical introduction, there you will find discussions of newly recovered documentary evidence as well as further links and reading. 

You might also enjoy the website of the Belgian Edith Cavell Commemoration Group, created for the occasion of the centenary of Cavell's death. You can also read about one of the more enduring monuments to Cavell, the Edith Cavell Clinic, which began operation in 1915.

Mary Dyer and the Boston Martyrs

Mary Barrett Dyer (executed 1 June 1660)

So many racists, homophobes, misogynists, and all-around assholes have been using their "god-given" sense of "religious freedom" as justification for their "right" to bully, harass, humiliate, and persecute anyone who fails to conform to their idea of what is "godly" that it seems like a good time to remind ourselves about the long tradition of "religious freedom" in what would eventually become the United States of America. So here's just one example of how how religious "freedom" usually means religious persecution.

A nineteenth-century depiction of Mary Dyer,
on her way to her execution,
artist unknown

Born in England probably about the year 1611, Mary Barrett married William Dyer in London in 1633. As Puritans, the Dyers left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In December 1635, the couple is noted among the members of the Boston Church.

Defending the notion of religious tolerance and difference, Dyer and her husband supported Anne Hutchinson and others like her whose religious views began to diverge from those of the dominant Puritan majority. 

In the theological and very political fight that erupted in the colony, Anne Hutchinson, among others, was tried and convicted in 1637 for the crime of having "traduced" Boston ministers. She was banished from the colony. For his support of Hutchinson, William Dyer was disenfranchised. When armed insurrection seemed about to erupt, colonial officials were empowered to confiscate  "all such guns, pistols, swords, powder, shot, & match as they shall be owners of, or have in their custody, upon paine of ten pound[s] for every default" (so much for the "god-given" right to bear arms too, I guess . . . )

For her part, Mary Dyer had not been officially investigated, though her support for Hutchinson brought her to the attention of officials in 1638, when she committed the mistake of walking hand-in-hand with Anne Hutchinson after Hutchinson's excommunication. 

For her act of friendship, Mary  Dyer now became the subject of investigation--and in her case, her "sin" proved to be a doozy. It seems that Mary Dyer had given birth to a "monster" a few months earlier, in October 1637. This birth of this stillborn child became the subject of an intense investigation by the Puritan governor of the colony, John Winthrop.

Unfortunately for Dyer and Hutchinson, Hutchinson had been one of two midwives in attendance at the birth. Learning this, Winthrop, accompanied by "above a hundred persons," all of them, obviously, god-fearing defenders of religion, excavated the stillborn infant's grave, finding the remains not human "but a most hideous creature, a woman, a fish, a bird, & a beast all woven together." As Winthrop described the remains in his journal:

it was of ordinary bigness; it had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape's; it had no forehead, but over the eyes four horns, hard and sharp; two of them were above one inch long, the other two shorter; the eyes standing out, and the mouth also; the nose hooked upward; all over the breast and back full of sharp pricks and scales, like a thornback [i.e., a skate or ray], the navel and all the belly, with the distinction of the sex, were where the back should be, and the back and hips before, where the belly should have been; behind, between the shoulders, it had two mouths, and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as other children; but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons. 

Winthrop concluded that the "monstrous birth" was an unequivocal sign of Dyer's sin for having religious views that diverged from those of the Puritan majority. 

Forced to leave Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mary Dyer joined her husband (and the Hutchinsons, as well as others forced out by the Puritans) at a new settlement in the territory later known as Rhode Island. But religious conflicts between all of those in the new settlements--new arrivals as well as those fleeing Massachusetts--soon erupted. 

The Dyers returned to England for several years, with William Dyer one of several men who were attempting to sort out the problems with those who had commissioned the Rhode Island settlers. In England, Mary Dyer converted to Quakerism. When she returned to New England in 1657, Mary Dyer settled once more in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, then actively involved in discovering, persecuting, and eliminating Quakers.

Dyer was imprisoned in Boston. Although her husband arranged for her release, ensuring the colonial authorities that she would not speak to any members of the colony and that she would immediately return home, Dyer refused to be silent.

Edward Burrough's 1661 pamphlet, 
decrying the persecution of
Quakers in Massachusetts
(for the full text, click here)

She traveled throughout New England to share her faith. She was arrested in the New Haven Colony in 1658 and forced to leave. By October of 1658, persecution of Quakers had intensified. In Massachusetts Bay, being a Quaker became a capital offense. The punishment for Quakerism was banishment--and if the convicted were to be found within the colony after conviction, the punishment was death.

In June of 1659, learning of the arrest of Quakers in Massachusetts, Mary Dyer left her home in Newport and headed back to Boston. She was arrested and, along with two others, condemned to death. She was taken to her place of execution on 27 October, but after watching the executions of the two men convicted with her, she was reprieved.

Mary Dyer refused to accept the conditions of the reprieve, which meant denying her faith: "My life is not accepted, neither availeth me, in comparison with the lives and liberty of the Truth and Servants of the living God for which in the Bowels of Love and Meekness I sought you; yet nevertheless with wicked Hands have you put two of them to Death, which makes me to feel that the Mercies of the Wicked is cruelty; I rather chuse to Dye than to live, as from you, as Guilty of their Innocent Blood."

Once more returned to Rhode Island, Dyer refused to accept her situation--she decided to force the Puritans of Massachusetts to change their laws or to execute a woman.

Dyer returned to Boston in May of 1660. She was arrested once more and on 31 May was examined in front of the governor of the colony, now John Endicott. Although her husband once more hoped to gain her a reprieve, she was once more condemned.

This time, she was also executed. On 1 June 1660 she was taken to the gallows where she had watched her two fellow Quakers executed in October 1659. She refused an offer to save herself, saying, "I came to keep bloodguiltiness from you, desiring you to repeal the unrighteous and unjust law of banishment upon pain of death, made against the innocent servants of the Lord, therefore my blood will be required at your hands who willfully do it; but for those that do is in the simplicity of their hearts, I do desire the Lord to forgive them. I came to do the will of my Father, and in obedience to his will I stand even to the death."

Mary Dyer was hanged that day, becoming one of the "Boston Martyrs." And one of many of those whose lives and death testify not so much to the long and glorious history of "religious freedom" in the U.S. but to religious intolerance, persecution, and blind ignorance. 

A bronze sculpture of Mary Dyer,
by American sculptor (and Quaker)
Sylvia Shaw Judson

Saint Barbara, Virgin Martyr

Saint Barbara (feast day, 4 December)

Today is the feast day for the Christian saint and martyr revered as Saint Barbara.

Saint Barbara, attrributed to
the "Italian School,"
Sheffield Museum, England

Although references to her make their earliest appearances in the seventh century, Barbara's martyrdom was dated to the late third or early fourth century.

The site of her martyrdom is also disputed--she is variously said to have lived in the ancient city of Nicomedia (Turkey) or Heliopolis (Lebanon).

But the legends agree in the broad outlines of her story: she was the daughter of Dioscorus, a wealthy man who kept her enclosed in a tower. Although his aim was to protect her from the dangers of the outside world, she somehow converted to Christianity.

Barbara not only rejected the husband her father had commanded she marry, but she revealed to him her new faith. Dragged in front of the Roman prefect, Martinianus, Barbara was tortured, presumably so that she would renounce her faith, and then condemned to death by beheading--a sentence to be carried out by her father.

Dioscorus did strike off his daughter's head--but he was struck by lightning afterwards. Barbara's tomb became a place where miracles occurred--those who prayed at her grave found consolation and, if they were ill, their health was restored.

There is a great deal of very beautiful art that depicts Saint Barbara--you're spoiled for choice when it comes to paintings and sculptures, really. 

Jan van Eyck's 1437
drawing of Saint Barbara

In Ghirlandaio's 1471 Saint Barbara,
she's standing on her father's body!

Lucas Cranach the Elder's Saint Barbara,
c. 1510

Saint Barbara,
Hans Holbein the Younger, 1516

Emily Wilding Davison, Activist, Suffragist, and Martyr?

Emily Wilding Davison (born 11 October 1872)

The most well-known aspect of Emily Davison's life may be her death--on 4 June 1913, she stepped onto the track at the Epsom Derby, perhaps in an attempt to disrupt the race by reaching for the bridle of King George V's horse, Anmer. She collided with the horse, was trampled underfoot, and died four days later, on 8 June.

Emily Wilding Davison

Her act was controversial--or, rather, her intentions were unclear--and we'll come back to that in a bit. But, first, the life.

Born in London, Emily Davison attended Royal Holloway College, a women's college opened in 1886 (it would later become part of the University of London), but was forced to leave without a degree after a year because her father's death put the fees beyond her reach, despite the monetary award she had been granted upon acceptance.

After earning money, first as a governess and then as a teacher, she returned to her education, this time attending St. Hughes College, Oxford (the college was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth, a descendant of the poet William Wordsworth, expressly for women who found "even the most moderate" of colleges "beyond their means"). Although she finished her program with first-class honors, Oxford University did not award degrees to women.*

In 1906, Davison joined Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union; by 1909, she had given up her teaching job and devoted herself to the suffrage campaign. She was arrested and imprisoned nine times for acts ranging from making a public disturbance to burning mailboxes. In 1909, for example, in Manchester, she was sentenced to one month of hard labor in Strangeways Prison for throwing rocks at David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. She attempted a hunger strike, but after she barricaded herself into her cell, it was flooded by guards. "I had to hold on like grim death. The power of the water seemed terrific, and it was cold as ice," she later wrote.

In 1912, during a six-month sentence in Holloway Prison, she and the other suffragist prisoners again went on a hunger strike. They were brutally force fed, and as an act of protest, Davison threw herself down a staircase, intending, she said, to call attention to the women's plight by her actions.

She survived her prison term. But a year later, her life ended. 

What were her intentions when she stepped out onto the race track? And what were the implications of her death for the suffrage cause?

As Germaine Greer notes, "The suffragettes made great theatre of Davison's funeral. The coffin was brought back to Victoria Station and taken in procession through streets lined with people to St George's, Bloomsbury." Some 6,000 women attended the service, while the streets were lined with people paying their respects. 

A scene from Davison's funeral procession

When she stepped out onto the race track, was Davison trying to bring down the horse, hoping to attach a suffragist sash to the horse, or just aiming to cross the track, intending to avoid the horses altogether?

Was Davison's death an act of heroic martyrdom? Was it a deliberate self-sacrifice for the suffragist cause? Or was her vision of the race course obscured, her death a terrible accident?  

Was she a political activist or a social anarchist? 

Whatever her intentions, Davison's death did not result in a change in the suffrage laws. In August 1914, after the start of the first world war, both moderate and militant suffrage groups set aside their campaigns and worked toward the war effort. The vote would have to wait.

For an excellent article on the recent "high-tech analysis" of the film of the 1913 race, see Vanessa Thorpe's "The Truth Behind the Death of Suffragist Emily Davison." For a nuanced analysis of the event itself, I recommend Germaine Greer's meditation, published on the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of Davison's death: "Emily Davison: Was She Really a Suffragette Martyr?" 

For more information, there is a wonderful online exhibition posted by the London School of Economics, which you can access by clicking here. You may also be interested in Carolyn P. Collette's In the Thick of the Fight: The Writing of Emily Wilding Davison, Militant Suffragette; it refocuses attention on Davison's life and work rather than celebrating or mythologizing her death.

*According to the Oxford University Archives, 

From the late 1870s, women had attended lectures, taken examinations, and had gained honours in those examinations. They were, however, unable to receive the degree to which, had they been men, their examinations would have entitled them.

The new University statute of 1920 which admitted women to full membership of the University, and which came into effect from October that year, enabled women who had previously taken and gained honours in University examinations to return to matriculate (ie go through the formal ceremony of admission to the University) and have the degree to which they were now entitled conferred on them (again, at a formal ceremony). Consequently, at the very first ceremony at which women were able to graduate more than forty women did so.

Update, February 2018: In honor of the centenary of some British women at last gaining the right to vote (the 1918 Representation of the People Act, 6 February 1918), the BBC's History Extra podcast has produced two excellent shows: "The Suffragettes" and "The Pankhursts." Enjoy!

Saint Sabina, Martyr

Sabina of Rome (feast day 29 August)

St. Sabina, detail of a fifteenth-century altarpiece

showing the life of Saint Sabina,

Antonio Vivarini,

Church of Saint Zaccaria, Venice

Probably born late in the first century CE, Sabina of Rome is said to have been the daughter of a man named Herod Metallarius and the widow of a Roman senator named Valentinus. 

She was converted to Christianity by her slave, Serapia--who has her own complicated story.

Sabina's slave, Serapia of Syria, was born in Antioch and had come to Rome with her parents--after their death, she had given everything she owned to the poor and then had sold herself into slavery, thus entering Sabina's household.

Stories about the circumstances of Serapia's martyrdom vary--she had either been denounced and executed as a witch, or she was arrested after she had refused to honor the Roman gods, 

The Vivarini altarpiece,

Church of Saint Zaccaria, Venice

After Serapia's martyrdom in 119 Sabina retrieved her remains and buried them in her family's tomb. 

Sabina of Rome was denounced as a criminal and accused of being a Christian. She was executed in 125 and later canonized as a saint. In 430, Sabina's remains were transferred to a basilica on the Aventine Hill, built on the site of her house in Rome. 

Basilica of Saint Sabina at the Aventine,
Rome

Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician, Philosopher, Martyr

Hypatia of Alexandria (martyred 8 [?] March, 415/16)

Although biographical information about Hypatia of Alexandria is scarce, several sources indicate the date of her death as 8 March. Whether this is entirely accurate is not the point--but this date offers us the chance to juxtapose Hypatia's martyrdom to Perpetua's, which was noted yesterday, 7 March.

Hypatia of Alexandria,
detail from Raphael's
School of Athens

Since beginning a daily blog posting on notable women in January, I have recorded quite a few entries for Christian saints and martyrs--although I am not myself a believer, history has recorded the names and accomplishments of many Christian women, and as a medievalist, I've long been interested in the stories of these women. The "pagan" Hypatia's death--or her "assassination," as one source calls it--offers us a bit of a counternarrative to the focus on Christian saints and martyrs. 

Hypatia of Alexandria was a mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer. I've often quoted the Encyclopedia Britannica in these blog posts for its persistent tendency to discount women's achievements, but in Hypatia's case, the assessment of her accomplishments is notable: "She was, in her time, the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer, the only woman for whom such claim can be made. She was also a popular teacher and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-specialist nature, attracting many loyal students and large audiences."

Hypatia's martyrdom--or assassination or murder--was at the hands of a Christian mob. After a period of relative tolerance, the religious climate changed in fifth-century Alexandria after the accession of Cyril to the bishopric. The new bishop was zealous in his pursuit of orthodoxy, and it was under Cyril that Hypatia was dragged from her carriage one day, beaten to death, her body torn apart by a group of Christians and burned.

There are brief accounts of Hypatia's life and accomplishments in several online sources, but I'm including one from the Smithsonian website here.

There are several good books available on Hypatia, but I recommend Maria Dzielska's Hypatia of Alexandria. For a sense of the influence of Hypatia's story on generations of women, see Linda Lopez McAlister's anthology Hypatia's Daughters: Fifteen Hundred Years of Women Philosophers.

Raphael's The School of Athens,
1509-11, Vatican

Saint Perpetua of Carthage: Martyr and Writer

Perpetua of Carthage (martyred 7 March 203)

Perpetua of Carthage,
mosaic from Ravenna, Italy

One of the most intriguing figures of early Christianity, Perpetua of Carthage is notable not only for the story of her conversion and martyrdom, but for the remarkable series of visions preserved in The Passion of Perpetua, which purports to be a prison diary recording her experiences in the last days before her death.

Briefly, Perpetua is a young, well-educated noblewoman, the mother of a baby boy, while her companion, Felicity, is a pregnant slave. Along with several male companions, the women are arrested for their religious convictions. Refusing to make the ritual gestures expected of them, they are condemned and executed.

There are, of course, controversies about the exact year of Perpetua's death, about the orthodoxy of the text's religious views, even about its authorship. Nevertheless, the passion of Perpetua and her companion, Felicity, remains a powerful story, and the Passion is one of the earliest surviving Christian texts.

Perpetua's companion, Felicity,
mosaic from Ravenna, Italy

You can read the Passion online by clicking here. For placing Perpetua and her passio in context, and for its careful close readings of the text, I recommend Joyce E. Salisbury's Perpetua's Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman.

Roman amphitheatre in Carthage (now in Tunis)
site of the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity

Saint Eudocia of Heliopolis, First-Century Martyr

Eudocia of Heliopolis (martyred 1 March 100)

A Samaritan woman living in the Phoenician city of Heliopolis, Eudocia was variously described as having lived a "dissolute life," a "profligate life," a life of "debauchery" and "harlotry." She was a young woman of "blinding beauty" who led many into sin and amassed a "huge fortune" (obviously bad because she was a beautiful woman!). Some accounts describe her as a courtesan.

Her life was transformed, however, after her encounter with a monk--she converted to Christianity, gave her wealth to the Church, and retired into a convent, where she lived a life of penitence for more than fifty years. 

Her example influenced many to convert to Christianity, and those conversions drew the attention of authorities to her. During the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan, she was martyred by beheading.

Her feast day is celebrated today, 1 March.

Juliana of Nicomedia, Virgin Martyr

Juliana of Nicomedia (martyred 16 February 304)

First mentioned in a fifth-century martyrology attributed to St. Jerome, Juliana of Nicomedia is the daughter of a pagan father, Africanus. Juliana was martyred during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. Her father had arranged for her marriage to an influential senator, a marriage Juliana resisted because she had secretly converted to Christianity and wished to remain a virgin. Juliana was arrested, tortured, and finally beheaded.

Circumstantial details in the accounts of Juliana's martyrdom vary. In some accounts, Juliana refuses to marry unless her new husband will convert to Christianity, which he refuses to do. Her martyrdom is also at times said to have occurred not under Diocletian but under the Emperor Galerius Maximianus. 

And accounts about where her remains are also vary--her body is said to have been removed from Nicomedia by a noblewoman and taken to Italy--either to Campania or to Pozzuoli, a town near Naples, then moved to Cumae (also near Naples). A letter from the sixth-century Pope Gregory the Great about Juliana's remains suggests that they were--or that he believed them to be--in Naples. 

However, a thirteenth century document survives that purports to be an eyewitness account of the removal of her remains from Naples. According to another tradition, Juliana is buried now in the north of Spain, in Santillana del Mar ("Santillana is a contraction of Santa-Juliana"), in an abbey that is a thousand years old.

A tomb that is said to be St. Juliana's,
in Santillana del Mar

The Old English poet known as Cynewulf (c. 8th-9th century) composed a 731-line narrative poem telling the story of Juliana's martyrdom, which introduces Juliana this way:

There was a certain wealthy man of noble kind,
a mighty count. He ruled over guard-cities, ever defending
that ground and holding hoarded treasure in the city of Nicomedia.
Often he earnestly and by duty sought an idol, heathen-worship
over the word of God. His name was ascribed as Eleusius
and he had a great and renowned authority.
When his mind began to yearn after the virgin Juliana
curiosity broke him. She bore in her soul the holy troth,
eagerly intending that her maidenhood would be preserved
for the love of Christ, pure from any sin.

To read the entire poem in a modern English translation, click here.

Agnes of Rome: Saint and Martyr

Agnes of Rome (martyred 21 January 304)

Born about the year 291 in Rome, Agnes is revered as a saint and martyr. The date of her martyrdom is conventionally given as 21 January 304.

The tomb of Saint Agnes,
Chiesa Sant'Agnese fuori la mura, Rome

According to tradition, Agnes of Rome lived at the time of the Emperor Diocletian. Dedicating herself to chastity and refusing all suitors, Agnes was arrested and condemned after one of the disappointed young men she rejected reported her to Roman authorities. 

Accounts of her life and martyrdom vary: she may have been dragged naked through the streets or forced into a brothel as ways of humiliating her for her dedication to virginity. Men who tried to rape her went blind, or they were struck dead--whether blind or dead, they were restored to life after her prayers.  

Once she had been sentenced, Agnes was led to a stake to be burned, but the wood refused to burn. Ultimately, an executioner drew his blade, either beheading her or stabbing her in the throat--again, stories differ. 

Today, you can visit the tomb of St. Agnes at the church of Saint Agnes Outside the Wall (Chiesa Sant'Agnese fuori la mura). A second shrine, preserving her skull, is in the church of St. Agnes in Agony (Sant'Agnese in Agone) in Rome's Piazza Navona. 

Sant'Agnese in Agone,
Piazza Navone, Rome