Martyrs and Martyrdom in England, c. 1400-1700 (review)

Thomas S. Freeman describes Martyrs and Martyrdom in England, c. 1400–1700 as an initial step in a scholarly venture yet to be realized —a full account of the development of concepts of martyrdom and their "cultural, social and political influence in Reformation England" (34). While not providing a chronology of English martyrdom, the essays in this collection are wide-ranging, attending to concepts of martyrdom that shaped and were shaped by significant moments in English history: the Reformation, the Civil War, the Restoration, and the "Glorious Revolution." In the opening essay Freeman discusses the Christocentric conception of English martyrdom in which verification of a martyr's sanctity was measured by his or her mimetic conformity to the passion of Christ. Freeman suggests that John Foxe's graphic physical representations of the bodies of his martyrs as mirrors of Christ's mutilated body served to convince his readers of the victims' spiritual credentials.

Freeman's essay not only establishes the model for English martyrdom but argues for its historical transformation: the politicization of martyrdom by which the sanctity of those who suffered for religious causes was transferred to political figures who died for secular ideas. This theme is developed in two later essays, Andrew Lacey's study of Charles I and John Coffey's discussion of Sir Henry Vane the younger. Both essays examine the way in which political supporters used texts to invest the deaths of traitors with an ideological significance that would shape public opinion and advance a political cause. King Charles's story is made to conform to the passion of a Christ, while the Restoration's millenarian, Sir Henry Vane, who presented himself as a biblical apocalyptic witness, is fashioned by his supporters as a martyr for liberty. While never entirely emptied of Christian connotations, martyrdom, Coffey argues, underwent a secularization; as early as the Restoration dying for one's faith had come to include dying for a political cause.

While some essays in this collection follow Freeman's in explicating English formulations of martyrdom, others focus more narrowly on the career and afterlife of a particular martyr, inferentially drawing conclusions about the conceptualization and changing face of martyrdom. Alec Ryrie, for example, discusses the reputation of the Henrician martyr Robert Barnes, concluding that his death was useful in constructing the notion of the papist villain and scapegoat played by Stephen Gardiner in Barnes's story and in successive Foxean accounts of the persecution of English Protestants. Examining the theology of two martyrs who represent opposing confessions —the Catholic Thomas More and the Protestant William Tyndale —and explicating a biblical conception of martyrdom, Brad Gregory's seminal essay neatly combines both strategies. He describes the Reformation contention over who in fact should be regarded as a true martyrs as a corollary in a more fundamental doctrinal debate over Christian identity. Disputes over the sanctity of martyrs rehearsed competing claims regarding the content of Christian truth: "what God had revealed and what it meant for men and women to be Christian" (108). While More and Tyndale shared a conception of Christian suffering and consolation grounded on biblical authority, as evidenced by their citations of many of the same New Testament verses, they disagreed on who the faithful were, how the Bible should be interpreted, and "who had the authority to interpret it" (124). The theme of confessional conflict is pursued in several essays which discuss the writings of Catholic polemicists like Miles Hogarde and Robert Persons, who challenged Foxe's calendar of Protestant martyrs. These studies examine both the polemical strategies of texts reviling Protestant pseudo-martyrs and the educational program of Marian and post-Reformation writers who labored to reclaim a Protestant nation of English apostates by teaching a Catholic ecclesiology. Emphasizing the Catholic Church's universality and its spiritual power as the locus of salvation, they reaffirmed its martyrs...