Straw-Saint, Martyr, Most-Barbarous Archtraitor: Anti-Hagiographies of Henry Garnet in Seventeenth-Century London
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. “That Horrible Conspiracy”
3. Developing Protestant Anti-Hagiography
I saw the woman drunke, with the blood of Saints, and with the blood of the Martyrs of Iesus; and I admired when I saw her, with great admiration.Goe out of her my people, that you be not partakers of her Sinnes; nor receiue of her punishments.
Ye neuer see Iustice painted without a sword; when that sword glitters with vse, it is well with the publique; woe be to the Nation where it rusts. There can be no more acceptable sacrifice than the bloud of the flagitious. Immediately after Garnets execution, Father Dauid at Ypre, in a publike Sermon declared the miracles showne thereat; Amongst the rest, that a spring of oyle brake forth suddenly in the place where that Saint was martyred; In stead of a lie, let it be a parable; The bloud of Traitors shed by the sword of Iustice, is a well of oyle to fatten, and refresh the Common-wealth.
4. The Straw-Saint’s Enduring Legacy
Funding
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | For more on the enduring memory of Guy Fawkes, see (Sharpe 2005). |
2 | Fraser, Faith and Treason, 325–27. |
3 | In his often-cited history of London, antiquarian Walter Thornbury claims that only Garnet was executed at St. Paul’s. However, later seventeenth-century accounts of the Gunpowder Plot assert that Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John Grant, and Thomas Bates were also executed at St. Paul’s three months earlier. Walter Thornbury (1880, p. 263). Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1674, p. 15). |
4 | For more on print and cross-confessional conflict in the public sphere see: (Lake and Questier 2019; Lake and Questier 2002; Green 2000). |
5 | See Srilata Raman and John Tolan’s use of the term “anti-hagiography” in modern South Asian early medieval European contexts respectively. (Raman 2019; Tolan 1996). |
6 | Fraser, Faith and Treason, xv. |
7 | For an overview of the Plot’s development and foiling, see: (Hogge 2005; Nicholls 1991). |
8 | Dures, English Catholicism, 88. |
9 | Luther (1955). John Calvin also famously wrote against devotion to relics in 1543’s A Treatise on Relics. See (Calvin 1870). |
10 | Walsham, “Skeletons”, 136–37. |
11 | See (Eudaemon-Joannes 1610), containing an extended defense of the relic and its origins. |
12 | For more on students at English exile schools as potential martyrs, and the role of the exile network in constructing martyrdom, see (Dillon 2016). |
13 | For more on some of the debates and literature that emerged from the Gunpowder Plot and its aftermath, see: (Carrafiello 2009; James 2016; Wymer 2022). |
14 | Jenner, “London”, 294–95. |
15 | Rostenberg, “Nathaniel Butter”, 24. |
16 | Questier, Catholics and Treason, 376–78. |
17 | Sheldon, The motiues, 8v. |
18 | Sheldon, The motiues, 123. |
19 | Sheldon, A suruey, 94. |
20 | Regarding St. Catherine he writes, “…I doe call this a fable, because it is not supported with any sufficient witnesse, and seemeth to haue been scraped (though cunningly) out of her old idle Legend-life and Martyrdome…” Sheldon, A suruey, 150. |
21 | Sheldon, A suruey, 173. |
22 | For more on Protestant and Catholic conceptions of divine works, see Walsham, Providence. |
23 | Hall, Christian moderation, 145–46. |
24 | Hall, Christian moderation, 178. |
25 | See note 2. |
26 | For more on the process and politics of post-Tridentine canonization, see: (Burke 1999). |
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Barraco, C.K. Straw-Saint, Martyr, Most-Barbarous Archtraitor: Anti-Hagiographies of Henry Garnet in Seventeenth-Century London. Religions 2024, 15, 990. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15080990
Barraco CK. Straw-Saint, Martyr, Most-Barbarous Archtraitor: Anti-Hagiographies of Henry Garnet in Seventeenth-Century London. Religions. 2024; 15(8):990. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15080990
Chicago/Turabian StyleBarraco, Caroline K. 2024. "Straw-Saint, Martyr, Most-Barbarous Archtraitor: Anti-Hagiographies of Henry Garnet in Seventeenth-Century London" Religions 15, no. 8: 990. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15080990