March 30

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1282 The Sicilian Vespers

The kingdom of Sicily, consisting of Naples and southern Italy as well as the island, had been established by the Normans and later fell into the hands of the German imperial dynasty known as the Hohenstaufens. After Emperor Frederick II’s death it passed to his illegitimate son, Manfred. The papacy, determined to rid Italy of Hohenstaufen rule, bent all its energies to securing Manfred’s downfall. At length it offered the Sicilian crown to Charles of Anjou, a younger brother of King Louis IX of France (St. Louis). The intention was that the power of France be used to drive Manfred out of Italian kingdom. Charles of Anjou—dour, cruel, and ambitious—defeated Manfred in 1266 and established a new French dynasty on the throne of the kingdom.

The inhabitants of the realm, particularly those on the island of Sicily, had been accustomed to Hohenstaufen rule and resented Charles of Anjou. They looked on his French soldiers as an army of occupation. When, on Easter Monday, a French soldier molested a young married woman on her way to evening services in Palermo, he was struck down, and on all sides was raised the cry “Death to the French!” (Note in the melodramatic representation above, a knife-wielding figure topped by the Phrygian cap symbolizing Liberty.)

The incident resulted in a spontaneous uprising and a general massacre of Frenchmen, (some 13,000 dead) which spread swiftly throughout the island. When the French retaliated, the Sicilians offered the crown to Peter III of Aragon, Manfred’s son-in-law, who claimed the Hohenstaufen inheritance and led an expedition to Sicily.

There ensued a long, bloody, indecisive struggle known by the romantic name the “War of the Sicilian Vespers.” For twenty years Charles of Anjou and successors, backed by the French monarchy and the papacy, fought against Sicilians and Aragonese. In the end, southern Italy remained under Charles of Anjou’s heirs, who ruled it from Naples, while the island of Sicily passed under control of the kings of Aragon. The dispute between France and Aragon over southern Italy and Sicily persisted for generations and became an important in the politics of modern Europe.

The strife of the thirteenth century destroyed Sicilian prosperity. Once the wealthiest and best administered state in Italy, the kingdom of Sicily became pauperized and divided—a victim of international politics and of the ruthless struggle between papacy and Empire.

March 29

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1930

Farewell Constantinople, Hello Istanbul

One of the great cities of the world is located just south of the Black Sea and reaches across the Bosphorus Strait from Europe to Asia. It was founded as a Greek city, a colony of Megara, named Byzantion. When the site was chosen as the location of the new capital of the recently-Christianized Roman Empire, it was dubbed New Rome but became better known as Constantinople. Since 1930 it has been called Istanbul.

When the Ottoman Turks blew open the walls of Constantinople and killed the last Roman Emperor in 1453, the once-magnificent city was a ghostly shell of its former self: underpopulated, poverty-stricken, with vast areas inside its walls returned to nature. Mehmet the Conqueror was determined to revive the city and make it his capital; he encouraged the Christian population to stay on, compelled Turkish settlers to immigrate, and began an infrastructure and building campaign that his successors would continue until the glory of the city was restored. For almost 500 years under the Turkish empire the name Constantinople was retained, but when that empire was toppled a change was made.

Mehmet Pasha, aka Ataturk, was the founder of a new, secular Turkish republic in 1923 and he meant to drag his nation into the 20th century. He crushed the power of the Islamic clergy, abolished the Caliphate, banned Arabic and replaced it with Roman letters, discouraged the wearing of the turban (the fedora was now the headgear of choice), and moved the capital from cosmopolitan Constantinople to the provincial city of Angora in the interior. Ataturk wished to emphasize Turkishness, not the multi-national Ottoman regime. As a symbol of this, Angora became Ankara and Constantinople was renamed Istanbul, probably from a bastardization of the Greek phrase. “to the City”.

In 1953, in honour of the 500th anniversary of the fall of the city, the Canadian pop group The Four Lads recorded “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”, a humorous take on the name change written by Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon.  The lyrics proclaim:

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Oh Constantinople
Now it’s Turkish delight on a moonlit night.

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you’ve a date in Constantinople
She’ll be waiting in Istanbul.

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam;
Why they changed it I can’t say;
People just liked it better that way.

So, Take me back to Constantinople
No, you can’t go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Oh Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks

Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can’t say
People just liked it better that way

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Oh Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks

So, Take me back to Constantinople
No, you can’t go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Oh Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks

March 28

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The Feast of Pope Sixtus III

“May you live in interesting times” is supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse, part of a triplet of ill-wishes which includes “may you come to the attention of the authorities” and “may you achieve your desires.” Sixtus III (r. 432-40) lived in times that were full of interest and he played an important role in them.

Sixtus, one of 79 popes to be recognized as a saint, is probably best known for his building program of Roman churches and his attempts to repair the damage done to the city by the Visigoth sack of 410.  He refurbished the original St Peter’s basilica and the church of St John Lateran as well as dedicating new churches such as Santa Maria Maggiore and the basilica of Santa Sabina. The building of Santa Maria Maggiore reflects the intense devotion to the Virgin Mary which arose out of the Council of Ephesus which decided that Mary could be given the term “Theotokos” or “God Bearer.”

The mid-fifth century was a time of vigorous and rancorous theological debate. Originally a supporter of the British monk Pelagius, Sixtus eventually declared himself against the extreme free-will doctrines of Plagiarism and also waged ideological war against Nestorianism. Sixtus was succeeded by his deacon Leo, who became the first of only two popes to be called “the Great”.

March 27

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1836

The Goliad Massacre

In October 1835 American settlers in the province of Texas rebelled against the Mexican government of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. After a series of inconsequential battles, Santa Anna’s army began to rack up victories over the disorganized Texians, first at the Battle of the Alamo and then at Coleto. His policy was to follow up military successes with calculated atrocities, killing prisoners so as to deter any further flood of volunteers from the United States. A Mexican law passed in December 1835 declared that all armed foreigners taken in combat were to be treated as pirates and executed: no quarter was given at the Alamo and in March 1836, Santa Anna order the massacre of hundreds of American prisoners which had been gathered at Goliad.

Despite pleas for mercy from his junior officers, Santa Anna remained adamant. On Palm Sunday, 1836 nearly 500 prisoners were shot, bayoneted or bludgeoned to death. Some were able to escape and some were rescued due to the efforts of “The Angel of Goliad”, Franchita Alavez, the mistress of a Mexican officer. Rather than deterring American efforts, the massacre seems to have inspired the Texians to become more united and attract more support. In April a force of rebels encountered a larger body of Mexican troops at San Jacinto. With shouts of “Remember Goliad, Remember the Alamo!” the Texians defeated Santa Anna’s force and captured him the next day. In return for his freedom and a safe return to Mexico he acceded to the creation of an independent Republic of Texas.

March 26

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The Feast of St Dismas

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.”  The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.”  Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  He replied to him, “Amen I say to you today you will be with me in Paradise.” Luke 23: 39-43

For centuries it was the custom of Christian storytellers to fashion names and legends for the unnamed characters who appeared in the life of Jesus. The soldier who pierced the side of Jesus, for example, was identified as Longinus; the Bad Thief was Gestas and the Penitent Thief was Dismas. In medieval art, St Dismas is often depicted as accompanying Jesus in the Harrowing of Hell.

The California town of San Dimas (sacred to fans of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and the Church of the Good Thief, built by prisoners in Kingston, Ontario take their cue from Dismas, who, his devotees say, was the only saint directly canonized by Christ.

March 25

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1807

Britain Ends its Slave Trade

Slavery seems to be as old as human history and though its cruelties were often deplored, particularly by the religious who sought to mitigate its brutality, systematic attempts to eliminate the practice altogether did not take place until the eighteenth century. The most significant of these attempts took place in Great Britain where slavery had long been illegal on its own soil but whose empire owed much of its prosperity to slave-run economies. (The French had briefly abolished slavery during the 1790s but reinstituted it under Napoleon.)

Led by Quakers, Anglicans and evangelical Protestants, a movement to abolish the trade in human beings gained momentum in the 1780s and 1790s but faced resistance from those who believed that slavery was a natural condition and those who saw the economic benefit to Britain from its colonial sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco plantations. William Wilberforce, M.P., had persuaded many of his fellow parliamentarians of the justice of the cause but it took him 20 years before his efforts met with the passage of the 1807 “An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade”.

Just as importantly, Britain used its diplomatic muscle and Royal Navy to persuade other countries to follow suit. Their West Africa Squadron captured slave ships and freed 150,000 captives; treaties were made with African states to persuade them to cease selling their prisoners to the Atlantic slavers; and other European countries were pressured to get out of the business. It would, however, not be until 1833 that Britain abolished slavery itself in its overseas holdings.

And two cheers for us. In 1793, Upper Canada’s Act Against Slavery banned the importation of slaves and ordered that children born to female slaves would be freed upon reaching the age of 25.

March 24

An eventful date in church history

  • 1603 James VI of Scotland (1566-1625) succeeds Queen Elizabeth as ruler of England. Despite hopes by English Catholics that James, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, would relax laws against their religion the new king maintained that legislation, prompting young Catholic conspirators to plan his assassination in the Gunpowder Plot. He similarly disappointed the Puritan element who hoped that James, raised a Calvinist, would favour them and abolish the episcopacy. Perhaps the greatest achievement of his reign was the 1611 production of the Authorized (or “King James”) Version of the English Bible.
  • 1820 Birth of Fanny Crosby (1820-1915), prolific hymn writer. Though blind since shortly after birth Crosby wrote 8,000 songs under 200 different pseudonyms. Among her compositions were “Blessed Assurance”, “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour”, “To God Be the Glory” and “Saved By Grace.”
  • 1829 The Roman Catholic Relief Act is passed by the British Parliament part of a series of legal moves allowing Catholics to vote, serve in Parliament, attend university and enter the professions. These restrictions dated from the 17th century and were particularly important in suppressing the majority aspirations in Ireland.
  • 1832 Mormon leader Joseph Smith (1805-44) is tarred and feathered by a mob in Hiram, Ohio. Smith’s decision to establish a new religion and community in Ohio outraged local residents who responded violently. Eventually Smith would be murdered and his followers would migrate to the West and settle in great numbers in Utah.
  • 1980 Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917-80) is gunned down while celebrating Mass in San Salvador. Though a theological conservative, Romero spoke out repeatedly against the human rights abuses of the military government earning him the hatred of the ruling classes. While no one has ever been convicted of his murder, it is universally attributed to a military death squad sanctioned by the authorities of the time. In 2018 he was canonized by Pope Francis, thus recognizing him as a saint.

March 23

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1540

Waltham Abbey, the last English monastery, is dissolved

The English Reformation was a piecemeal process, directed from the top and often taking sinister turns. One such regrettable misstep was the epic looting known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Though Henry VIII had begun the process of creating a Protestant England by removing the national church from the pope’s control, he still fancied himself a good Catholic theologically. Nonetheless, his chief adviser and evil genius Thomas Cromwell advanced the reform of religion by sanctioning an English translation of the Bible, arranging a (disastrous) Protestant marriage partner for Henry, and persuading the king that the monastic system which had endured in England for a thousand years be abolished.

Cromwell sent out commissioners to catalogue the wealth of the monasteries, priories, chantries and nunneries as well as investigators to take the spiritual temperature of the religious houses. Unsurprisingly, they reported to their master what he wanted to hear — that the monasteries were very rich and corrupt: indolent, sexually incontinent and parasites on the realm. The Henrician regime then embarked on a policy of suppressing this ancient system by buying out the abbots and priors with handsome pensions, booting the vast majority of the monks and nuns on to the street with little compensation, and judicially murdering those who opposed these acts. What resulted was one of the biggest involuntary transfers of wealth in history, on a par with the sack of Constantinople in 1204, the looting of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, and the British destruction of the Chinese Summer Palace in 1860.

Henry VIII did not really benefit from the seizure of these rich properties; most lands went to his supporters and vast sums were wasted on wars with France. The charities and schools that the monasteries had supported were often ignored by the lords who seized the revenues and the north of the country rose in a rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The remains of these once-great institutions are evoked by Shakespeare who spoke of the “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang”.

March 22

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1930 Birth of Pat Robertson

The son of a Democratic United States senator from Virginia, Pat Robertson turned from a career in the law to one in religion and made himself one of the most influential and enigmatic leaders of the so-called Christian Right during the Reagan era of the 1980s and beyond. As president of the Christian Coalition, which he founded, from 1989 to 1997, Robertson helped galvanize millions of evangelical Christians toward greater participation in the political process, and has himself considered running for the White House.

Raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, Robertson graduated magna cum laude from Washington and Lee University in 1950. After serving as a Marine Corps officer during the Korean conflict he returned to his education, receiving a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1955. Failures in an early business venture, and his attempts to pass the New York bar exam helped steer him back toward his religious roots. He attended a theological seminary, graduating with a B.Div., and worked for a time with the mostly black inner-city poor in Brooklyn before returning to Virginia where he was ordained a Southern Baptist minister in 1960.

Robertson demonstrated the intensely entrepreneurial side of his character in 1961 when he started operating WYAH, a television station in Virginia that became the first in the nation devoted to primarily religious programming. From this single station Robertson launched what would become a veritable communications empire: the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), offshoots of which grew to include a relief agency, cable television holdings, the American Center for Law and Justice, which specializes in First Amendment cases, and Regent University, which came to call itself “America’s premier Christian graduate school.”

The flagship program of his network was The 700 Club, which Robertson hosted from 1966. His success both behind and before the camera led many conservative Christians to promote Robertson’s involvement in U.S. politics. Though he at first thought political organizing was inconsistent with his clerical calling, he had a change of heart by the 1980s, when he began to organize mobilization efforts such as a 1980 “Washington for Jesus” rally and his own Freedom Council (1981-86). In 1984 he changed his party affiliation to Republican. When presented in 1987 with what was purported to be a petition of some 3.3 million names urging him to run for office, he resigned his church offices and launched a campaign for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. Despite early successes in some primaries, Robertson’s candidacy had been decisively rejected by “Super Tuesday” in March of that year, even by many members of conservative Christian churches.

Undaunted by his electoral failure Robertson returned to the idea of grassroots organizing. In 1989 he founded and became the first president of the Christian Coalition, an organization whose mission was to represent evangelical opinion to government bodies, protest anti-Christian bias in public life, train leaders, and develop policies–all while being careful not to lose its tax-exempt status by supporting partisan candidates. The Christian Coalition proved very successful in enunciating the social agenda of the religious right in the United States. With a national membership well in excess of a million, the group raised the political profile of a hitherto-marginalized section of the population. Mirroring the Republican Party’s “Contract with America,” the Coalition advanced its “Contract with the American Family,” which was trumpeted as “A Bold Plan to Strengthen the Family and Restore Common-Sense Values.” Many attributed the G.O.P’s triumphs in 1996 Congressional races to the efforts of Robertson and his branch of the religious right.

Robertson astonished the media world in 1997 when, on the same day he resigned the presidency of the Christian Coalition, he sold his International Family Entertainment corporation to Rupert Murdoch, a media mogul whose television and newspaper holdings had often been criticized for taking the low moral road. Robertson tried to assuage criticism by promising that the hundreds of millions of dollars the sale had generated would go toward a new global television evangelism campaign as well as to enhance the endowment of Regent University. Part of the deal with Murdoch’s Fox Kids Worldwide Inc. was that The 700 Club would continue to be aired by the new entity and that CBN itself would remain independent.

Robertson remains a figure who defies easy characterization. For many on the political left, Robertson is, as described by Robert Boston, “the most dangerous man in America” due to his stances on social issues like homosexuality and the role of women. Those who valued the country’s multicultural heritage reacted with horror to Robertson’s suggestion that only devout Christians and Jews were fit to hold public office. Other liberals decried his proposals to abolish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts. Robertson’s hopes of restoring prayer to public schools and re-establishing the United States as a “Christian nation” seemed an affront to the constitutional separation of church and state and drew the ire of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

His capacity for stirring outrage continues to attract media attention. He seemed to attribute the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as divine retribution against Americans for their permissive lifestyles; he blamed the 2010 Haiti earthquakes on a 1791 pact with the devil. He offended many fellow Christians with the suggestion that it was morally permissible to divorce a spouse with Alzheimer’s Disease and with revelations of financial dealings with African dictator Charles Taylor of Liberia. His frequent predictions of cataclysmic events that never ensue have grown tiresome.

Robertson is neither a backwoods fundamentalist nor a one-dimensional Elmer Gantry. He is well educated, well off, and well connected, with two American presidents on his family tree, and his pragmatism has made him an enormously successful businessman. His particular brand of charismatic theology, moreover, is opposed by many right-wing Christians who are uneasy about his claim to receiving divinely inspired “words of knowledge” and his belief that even the faithful will suffer from a pre-millennial period of tribulation before the final coming of Christ. During the 1988 primaries, for example, Robertson’s bid for the Republican nomination drew less support from members attending conservative Baptist churches than it did from other white voters. Despite the criticism he has received from some American Jewish groups, he is a leading defender of the state of Israel, which he sees in the context of Biblical end-times prophecies. Robertson, for a time, resumed the presidency of the Christian Coalition after the departure of Ralph Reed, and presided over the reorganization of the group into two entities–Christian Coalition International and Christian Coalition of America–in the wake of a 1999 IRS ruling that revoked its tax-exempt status. A supporter of Donald Trump, he continues to be active in business, media and social advocacy of issues favoured by the Christian right.

 

March 21

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The Emperor Heraclius returns the True Cross to Jerusalem

The cross on which Jesus was crucified was for almost a thousand years the most valued of all Christian relics. It had been lost to history until being rediscovered by St Helena in 326 and enshrined in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. During an invasion of the Byzantine empire in 614, the Cross was looted and taken to Persia. After Heraclius had defeated the Sassanid armies at the Battle of Nineveh, the relic was returned to Christian control, first in Constantinople and then, on this date in 630, to Jerusalem. Though fragments of the Cross are claimed to be held in numerous churches the major part of it was lost after the Battle of Hattin in 1187 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem was defeated by the Turks.

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1556 The execution of Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) was the leading Protestant churchman of the English Reformation and a brilliant prose stylist whose writings have deeply influenced the language. As Archbishop of Canterbury he helped engineer the divorce of Henry VIII from Katherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Cranmer was foremost in the king’s decision to wrench the Church of England from its obedience to the Pope but revealed himself to be a hotter sort of gospeller under Edward VI where he supervised the writing of two Books of Common Prayer and led the Church toward a unique kind of Protestantism that would be known as Anglicanism. He was arrested by Queen Mary following her accession and, in order to save his life, attempted to shape his beliefs to her resurgent Catholicism, writing recantations of his Protestantism.

This would have been a splendid propaganda coup for the Marian regime but the Queen who hated him for his part in the treatment of her mother Katharine insisted that he be executed despite his paper conversion. Learning he was to die anyway, Cranmer recanted his recantations and went to the stake in a brave way that moved even a Catholic bystander:

I would not at this time have written to you the unfortunate end, and doubtful tragedy, of Thomas Cranmer late bishop of Canterbury: because I little pleasure take in beholding of such heavy sights. And, when they are once overpassed, I like not to rehearse them again; being but a renewing of my woe, and doubling my grief. For although his former, and wretched end, deserves a greater misery, (if any greater might have chanced than chanced unto him), yet, setting aside his offenses to God and his country, and beholding the man without his faults, I think there was none that pitied not his case, and bewailed not his fortune, and feared not his own chance, to see so noble a prelate, so grave a counsellor, of so long continued honour, after so many dignities, in his old years to be deprived of his estate, adjudged to die, and in so painful a death to end his life. I have no delight to increase it. Alas, it is too much of itself, that ever so heavy a case should betide to man, and man to deserve it.

But to come to the matter: on Saturday last, being 21 of March, was his day appointed to die. And because the morning was much rainy, the sermon appointed by Mr Dr Cole to be made at the stake, was made in St Mary’s church: whither Dr Cranmer was brought by the mayor and aldermen, and my lord Williams: with whom came divers gentlemen of the shire, sir T A Bridges, sir John Browne, and others. Where was prepared, over against the pulpit, a high place for him, that all the people might see him. And, when he had ascended it, he kneeled him down and prayed, weeping tenderly: which moved a great number to tears, that had conceived an assured hope of his conversion and repentance….

When praying was done, he stood up, and, having leave to speak, said, ‘Good people, I had intended indeed to desire you to pray for me; which because Mr Doctor hath desired, and you have done already, I thank you most heartily for it. And now will I pray for myself, as I could best devise for mine own comfort, and say the prayer, word for word, as I have here written it.’ And he read it standing: and after kneeled down, and said the Lord’s Prayer; and all the people on their knees devoutly praying with him….

And then rising, he said, ‘Every man desireth, good people, at the time of their deaths, to give some good exhortation, that other may remember after their deaths, and be the better thereby. So I beseech God grant me grace, that I may speak something, at this my departing, whereby God may be glorified, and you edified….

And now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life: and that is, the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth. Which here now I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand, contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life, if it might be: and that is, all such bills, which I have written or signed with mine own hand since my degradation: wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished: for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and antichrist, with all his false doctrine.

And here, being admonished of his recantation and dissembling, he said, ‘Alas, my lord, I have been a man that all my life loved plainness, and never dissembled till now against the truth; which I am most sorry for it.’ He added hereunto, that, for the sacrament, he believed as he had taught in his book against the bishop of Winchester. And here he was suffered to speak no more….

Then was he carried away; and a great number, that did run to see him go so wickedly to his death, ran after him, exhorting him, while time was, to remember himself. And one Friar John, a godly and well learned man, all the way traveled with him to reduce him. But it would not be. What they said in particular I cannot tell, but the effect appeared in the end: for at the stake he professed, that he died in all such opinions as he had taught, and oft repented him of his recantation.

Coming to the stake with a cheerful countenance and willing mind, he put off his garments with haste, and stood upright in his shirt: and bachelor of divinity, named Elye, of Brazen-nose college, labored to convert him to his former recantation, with the two Spanish friars. And when the friars saw his constancy, they said in Latin to one another ‘Let us go from him: we ought not to be nigh him: for the devil is with him.’ But the bachelor of divinity was more earnest with him: unto whom he answered, that, as concerning his recantation, he repented it right sore, because he knew it was against the truth; with other words more. Whereby the Lord Williams cried, ‘Make short, make short.’ Then the bishop took certain of his friends by the hand. But the bachelor of divinity refused to take him by the hand, and blamed all the others that so did, and said, he was sorry that ever he came in his company. And yet again he required him to agree to his former recantation. And the bishop answered, (showing his hand), ‘This was the hand that wrote it, and therefore shall it suffer first punishment.’

Fire being now put to him, he stretched out his right hand, and thrust it into the flame, and held it there a good space, before the fire came to any other part of his body; where his hand was seen of every man sensibly burning, crying with a loud voice, ‘This hand hath offended.’ As soon as the fire got up, he was very soon dead, never stirring or crying all the while.

His patience in the torment, his courage in dying, if it had been taken either for the glory of God, the wealth of his country, or the testimony of truth, as it was for a pernicious error, and subversion of true religion, I could worthily have commended the example, and matched it with the fame of any father of ancient time: but, seeing that not the death, but cause and quarrel thereof, commendeth the sufferer, I cannot but much dispraise his obstinate stubbornness and sturdiness in dying, and specially in so evil a cause. Surely his death much grieved every man; but not after one sort. Some pitied to see his body so tormented with the fire raging upon the silly carcass, that counted not of the folly. Other that passed not much of the body, lamented to see him spill his soul, wretchedly, without redemption, to be plagued for ever. His friends sorrowed for love; his enemies for pity; strangers for a common kind of humanity, whereby we are bound one to another.