The Oxford Martyrs
THE 18TH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
When I was a younger man (I was young once), I left the United States to pursue classical theatrical training in England, mostly in London, but sometimes at Oxford as well. From Paddington Station, Oxford is about an hour's train ride away. As the train breaks free from the city, you emerge into beautiful, open, pastoral landscapes with fewer machines and more flowers. Oxford, England, is a wonderful place to wander; the narrow cobblestone lanes lead through the centuries as you cross old stone bridges and pass some of the most famous landmarks in Britain. But not all the cobblestone streets in Oxford lead to places of romance and beauty, and one leads to a place of execution and death.
The small area of cobblestones forming a cross in the center of Broad Street beside one of Oxford's most famous colleges marks the site where three men were led and publicly executed. It was right here that the Oxford martyrs were tied to a stake, wood piled up around them, bags of gunpowder placed around their necks, and burnt alive. Today might be the first time you have heard the names Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, or perhaps you are familiar with them. Perhaps you have never heard of the Oxford Martyrs. Who were these men, and why did they die? Why, on this day, September 16th, does the Church commemorate these martyrs of the English Church, the "Oxford Martyrs."
The word "martyr" comes originally from the ancient Greek legal term (μάρτυς, mártys) for a "witness," someone who gives testimony or evidence in a court of law. A good witness, or martyr, makes a good confession; his testimony is sure and true. So how did this commonplace word solidly become a Christian idea for all intents and purposes? The answer is quite simple: Jesus. From the very beginning, the martyr ideal flows from Jesus' supreme offering of love, his once-for-all sacrifice, consummated on the cross so sinners like us may have eternal life. Jesus says, "I have come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly" (Jn 10:10).
Jesus is the archetypal Martyr. Christ is the suffering servant who gave himself a ransom for many (Mt 10:28). He himself is "the grain of wheat" which came from God, the divine grain that lets itself fall to the ground, lets itself sink into the earth and broken down in death, and by doing so germinates and bears fruit in the immensity of the world. He proclaimed the good news that he, Son of Man and Son of God, had come to redeem sinners. The eternal Son descended from heaven to "proclaim good news to the poor... to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Lk 4:18-19). Jesus came into the world and said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:16). Jesus made the good confession about himself that he was the Son of God sent to redeem sinners. His witness never wavered, nor was his testimony discredited.
The early Church understood martyrdom as an imitation of Christ, who declared that his servants would not fight because his kingdom was not of this world (Jn 18:36). St. Stephen, James the greater, the Apostles, and so many others were as "gold, silver, and precious stones" offered for the building of Christ's kingdom. Eusebius, the great church historian, wrote of these early Christians that "They were so eager to imitate Christ ... they gladly yielded the title of martyr to Christ, the true Martyr and Firstborn from the dead" (Eusebius, Church History 5.1.2). They followed Jesus into death, horrific, terrible deaths; he was the martyris exemplar, the great example worthy of imitation, worthy of sacrificing their very lives.
The beginning of the English Church, as it was in the book of Acts, was built upon the blood of martyrs. The Venerable Bede, in his masterwork, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, was written around AD 731. He begins with the story of St. Alban, who was a pagan, and a soldier in the Roman Army. One day he gave shelter to a Christian priest who was fleeing from arrest, for the emperor of Rome was actively persecuting and killing Christians in those days. Over the next several days, Alban, the priest, talked at length, and through these discussions, Alban became a Christian. Bede writes, "and being gradually instructed by [the priests] wholesome admonitions, [Alban] cast off the darkness of idolatry, and became a Christian in all sincerity of heart."
When officers came in search of the priest, Alban met them, dressed in the priest's cloak. Mistaking him for the priest, they arrested him. He refused to renounce his new faith and was beheaded. Thus, he became the first Christian martyr in Britain. But the story doesn't end with Alban's martyrdom. The second martyr in English Church history was the executioner who was given the task of beheading Alban, but hearing Alban's testimony on the eve of his death was so impressed that he became a Christian on the spot and refused to kill Alban. The third was the priest, who, when he learned that Alban had been arrested in his place, hurried to the court in the hope of saving Alban by turning himself in. Both the executioner and the priest, following the example of Alban, remained steadfast in the face of death and were martyred in the name of Christ and for the proliferation of the Gospel in Britain. If Alban’s martyrdom was the seed from which the Gospel began to flourish among the Brits, then the Oxford Martyrs are the gardeners who died protecting the Faith to which men and women like Alban gave their lives.
The Tudor period was an era of religious turmoil prompted by Henry VIII's break from the Catholic Church. Henry's son, Edward I, continued his father's Protestant policies, but when Edward died in 1553, his half-sister Mary came to the throne. During her short and bloody reign, large numbers of high-profile Protestants were put to death for refusing to renounce their beliefs. Three of the most prominent were Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, Nicholas Ridley, Archbishop of London, and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who we remember today as The Oxford Martyrs.
Hugh Latimer was born around 1487, educated at the University of Cambridge, and ordained a priest in 1515. Being persuaded by reformation causes, he began to preach in favor of an English translation of the Bible. For this, he was called to explain himself before Archbishop Wolsey. When Wolsey died and was replaced by Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, Latimer was unleashed to preach in favor of religious reform fervently, and in 1535 he was named Bishop of Worcester and continued his open opposition to medieval innovations which had crept into the church. But, when Mary took the throne, it was only a matter of time before Latimer's Protestant preaching would catch up with him.
Nicholas Ridley, born in 1500, was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and upon graduating, was ordained a priest in 1537. He became one of Archbishop Cranmer's chaplains and ultimately became Bishop of Rochester in 1547. When Edward VI died, Ridley supported the claims to the throne of Lady Jane Grey, and his signature appeared on the letters supporting the offering of the throne to Grey. Ridley then affirmed publicly that Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth were illegitimate. When Grey was overthrown, and Mary took the throne, it was only a matter of time before she would turn her anger on Ridley.
In 1489, Thomas Cranmer was born the second son of a modest gentry family. At the age of just 14, he embarked on a career in the church and was sent to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he remained for 11 years. He was ordained a priest in 1520 and a Doctor of Divinity in 1526. In 1527 he was one of several scholars called upon by Cardinal Wolsey to argue for the annulment of Henry VIII's marriage with Catherine of Aragon and was named Archbishop of Canterbury in late 1532 when he orchestrated the legal process by which Henry's marriage to Catherine was declared null.
In 1549 Cranmer introduced the first Book of Common Prayer, a controversial document that laid out a reforming vision for the reforming English church. Surely Cranmer knew that when Mary took the throne in 1553, he would be in danger, but unlike many religious reformers, he chose to stay in England. But on September 14, 1553, he was sent to the Tower of London to await trial for treason, where he was found guilty and sentenced to death. On March 8th, 1554, the Privy Council ordered Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer to be taken to prison in Oxford to await trial for heresy; they waited in the prison for 17 months. Then, Cranmer was tried first, while Ridley and Latimer were tried together. In the case of Ridley and Latimer, the verdicts were very quick.
On October 16, 1555, Bishops Latimer and Ridley were burned at the stake while Cranmer was forced to watch from the prison tower window. The two men stood back-to-back at the stake, and the very last words uttered by Bishop Latimer were these: 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.' Then the pyre was lit. Ridley's brother-in-law was said to have placed extra kindling on the fire in the hope of speeding Ridley's death, but the extra wood only prolonged it. Ridley reportedly wore a bag of gunpowder around this neck but was forced to thrust his face into the flames to ignite it and bring his ordeal to an end finally.
Cranmer witnessed the horrific martyrdom of his friends from the prison tower but, unlike them, was afforded an opportunity to leave with the possibility of appeal. Mary ceased on this and charged him to recant his protestant views. In the face of great political pressure and under threat of his very life, Cranmer wavered; he recanted his protestant views, not once but three times. Finally, Cranmer was brought to St Mary's Church, where he was told he could make one last final recantation. Stepping up to the pulpit, with a written speech in hand, prepared to recant his former protestant positions once again, he cast it aside and vehemently affirmed his Protestant faith and renounced his former recantations. This is what he said,
And now forsomuch as I am come to the last end of my life, whereupon hangeth all my life passed, and my life to come, either to live with my Savior Christ in heaven, in joy, or else to be in pain ever with wicked devils in hell; and I see before mine eyes presently either heaven ready to receive me, or hell ready to swallow me up; I shall therefore declare unto you my very faith, how I believe, without color or dissimulation. For now is no time to dissemble, whatsoever I have written in times past.
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… here now I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and writ for fear of death, and to save my life, if it might be… 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.
He was immediately taken to Broad Street, the same place he had watched Bishops Latimer and Ridley die from his prison tower. The fire being put to him, he stretched out his right hand, and thrust it into the flame, and held it there a good while before the fire came to any other part of his body; everyone present could see his hand burning. He, crying with a loud voice, said, “This hand hath offended.” Soon the fire raged, and being consumed in the flames, he died, never stirring or crying all the while.[1]
The Oxford Martyrs understood the word protestant to be a verb, not a noun. They were pro (for/promoting) testators (witnesses) testifying to the true unadulterated Gospel as found in the Scriptures, the Apostolic Fathers, and historic Creeds. Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer weren't simply trying to reform the innovations and abuses of medieval Christianity; no, they were testifying to the historic catholic faith of the undivided church, the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, as Alban and Stephen before them. These men died making the good confession, and the gospel candle lit by their deaths some 460 years ago still burns, though somewhat dimly in the secular west; the darkness has not overtaken the light, light throughout the course of history fueled by the blood of martyrs.
Beloved, we most likely will not receive the high calling unto martyrdom. However, none of us are excluded from the divine call to holiness and embracing the martyr ideal of taking up our daily cross. In an age where selfishness and individualism so easily prevail, we must take upon ourselves the responsibility and commitment to die to sins and live unto God. This is what martyrdom looks like in the daily Christian life: living for God, loving him, and loving our neighbor sacrificially, selflessly, and joyfully. By these, we, as the martyrs have always done, witness a strong and unwavering commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
With Cranmer, let us thrust whatever is causing us to waver into the fire. And with Ridley and Latimer, we pray for God to set our hearts ablaze with a Gospel zeal, enkindling within our hearts a greater love for one another and those around us. Because, my friends, in the end, Christian martyrdom is that great act of love in response to God's sacrificial love.
Let us pray: Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servants Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever. Amen+
[1]Todd, Henry John. The Life of Archbishop Cranmer, Vol II. London: Gilber and Rivington, 1831. 499-504.
