Thursday, April 20, 2023

It is the 20th of April 2023 Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

Saint or Charlatan? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before- a woman claiming divine revelation condemns one faction of the church and state, thus becoming a hero to one side and a villain to the other.

This familiar trope from Medieval and Early Modern Europe is seen again in the brief life of Elizabeth Barton- the Maid of Kent. It’s a curious story, and it takes place with a likely familiar background.

Elizabeth Barton was born in Kent sometime in 1509, by her own recollection. She had no formal education and became a servant in the home of a farm manager to William Warham. Why does this matter? Warham had been made Archbishop of Canterbury on request from Pope Julius II. Warham was involved in marrying Catherine of Aragon to Prince Arthur. Soon after Prince Arthur died, Warham would crown his brother,  Henry VIII, the new King of England, and marry him to Arthur’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. Put a bookmark here.

When Elizabeth was 19, she started falling ill and into trances from which she would often prophesy- either about things she couldn’t have known (secrets known only to those in her presence) or prophesied coming deaths (apparently with some precision such that she became a national story).

Hear one biographer tell the story of some of her other trances: “During her death-like trances, she made various pronouncements on matters of religion, such as the seven deadly sins, the ten commandments, and the nature of heaven, hell, and purgatory. She spoke about the importance of the mass, pilgrimage, confession to priests and prayer to the Virgin and the saints.”

This is 1525. What’s happening? The Reformation and the English are divided on the extent to which they might make parallel reforms to Luther’s on the Continent.

Being that Elizabeth lived and worked on the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury (who was pro-Rome and the Pope at the time), her ecstatic visions about the truth of the Catholic faith made her famous-, she would enter the Nunnery at St. Sepulcher and attracted the attention of all the King’s men, from Wolsey to Cranmer and More.

Under the influence of some monks and other theologians, she became a little more precise in her prophetic utterances. The Archbishop wrote to Cardinal Wolsey that Barton had a word for him and for the king.

Upon visiting King Henry VIII she told him that he should burn all English translations of the Bible and that should he divorce Catherine in favor of the young Anne Boleyn (something rumored at the time) he would surely die. It is possible that the delaying of his divorce and remarriage came from this visit with Barton. She would visit the king again and once again warn him against the divorce. Anne Boleyn’s pregnancy, however, necessitated a quick marriage and this did not lead to Henry’s death as Elizabeth had prophesied.

Elizabeth’s confessor, a monk named Bocking, would publish a book containing Barton’s utterances while she would regularly prophecy (or perform, or preach- it’s tricky) in front of 1000’s that would gather outside her nunnery. This would become a problem for a country and king that would be embracing a kind of anti-Catholic Reformation.

The book Bocking produced would be suppressed and destroyed (alas, we have no copies today), and both he and Barton would be examined by the new Archbishop, who would have them both sent to the Tower (which isn’t a tower, but a castle filled with towers and prisons, torture devices and the like). She, along with her alleged conspirators, would confess (some perhaps under torture- we are unsure if Barton was tortured or not) and be found guilty of treason.

It was on this, the 20th of April in 1534, that she would be led to the scaffold and would declare that she had indeed been making things up to please her fellow Catholics- and “because the things which I feigned was profitable unto them, therefore they much praised me... And then I, being puffed up with their praises, fell into a certain pride and foolish fantasy with myself.”

Elizabeth Barton, the maid of Kent- a saint or charlatan (or perhaps something else, the victim of religion and politics in Early Modern England) would be hanged and die. Born in 1506, she was around 28 years old.

  

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary- From 1 Peter:

10 The prophets, who long ago foretold the grace that you’ve received, searched and explored, inquiring carefully about this salvation. 11 They wondered what the Spirit of Christ within them was saying when he bore witness beforehand about the suffering that would happen to Christ and the glory that would follow. They wondered what sort of person or what sort of time they were speaking about. 12 It was revealed to them that in their search they were not serving themselves but you. These things, which even angels long to examine, have now been proclaimed to you by those who brought you the good news. They did this in the power of the Holy Spirit, who was sent from heaven.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 20th of April 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite Nuns include Sally Field’s Flying Nun, Father Dowling’s Sister Steve, and Jenny Lee from Call the Midwife- He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose favorite Nunn was Freddie Joe Nunn, linebacker for the Cardinals and Colts out of Ole Miss- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.