Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Of all the renaissances in late medieval and early modern Europe, few were as dramatic or divisive as the rebirth of Christian martyrdom. Few phenomena reveal so clearly the continuities and discontinuities between late medieval and Reformationera Christianity, or disclose so well the commitments of devout Christians in divergent traditions that were partly forged or sustained by martyrdom itself. Across western Europe, chiefly in the Low Countries, France, and England, some 5,000 men and women were judicially executed as either heretics or religious traitors between 1523 and the mid—seventeenth century, the large majority of them before 1600. Sympathizers memorialized them as genuine martyrs for Christian truth, however defined, whereas detractors denounced them as false martyrs, justly executed for their obstinate persistence in dangerous beliefs and practices. In either case, the recognition of martyrs and the definition of sanctity were inseparable from true doctrine and its social cognate, communities of belief, whether this connection was expressly articulated by learned theologians or merely intuited by common folk. The relevant sources from the Reformation era make clear that each of its main martyrological traditions — Protestant, Anabaptist, and Roman Catholic — belongs to a larger story that stretches from the late Middle Ages into the seventeenth century, despite longstanding ... log in or subscribe to read full text