Persecution

This was related by Joseph Hall, witnessed while he was travelling through Europe. It has long been noted, and there are several likewise accounts in Foxes Book of Martyrs, how the methos of torture or cruelty the inquisitors wrought on God’s chosen people, God revenged their blood and suffering, by ironic and almost paradoxical turn of events in the tormenters own lives, often ending in their death, but the act they had commited just a short while before, to one of the martyrs, their own death so strikingly had resemblance to the act, yet it came directly from the hand of God, that one would have to be blind to deny God’s justice and revenge over the blood of the martyrs and the cruelty inflicted upon them. Joseph Hall’s account of a similar scenario that he witnessed:

a short but memorable story which the graphier of that town (though of a different religion) reported to more ears than ours. When the last inquisition tyrannized in those parts, and helped to spend the faggots of Ardenne, one of the rst, a confident confessor, being led far to his stake, sung psalms along the way, in a heavenly courage and victorious triumph. The cruel officer, envying his last mirth, and grieving to see him merrier than his tormenters, commanded him silence. He sings still, and desirous to improve his last breath to the best. The view of his approaching glory bred his joy; his joy breaks forth into a cheerful confession. The enraged sherriff causes his tongue to be cut off near the roots. Bloody wretch! It had been good music to have heard his shrieks; but to hear his music was torment. The poor martyr dies in silence, rests in peace. Not many months after, our butcherly officer hath a son born with his tongue hanging down upon his chin, like a deer after a long chase, which never could be gathered up within the bounds of his lips. O the Divine hand, full of justice, full of revenge. —Joseph Hall

This was related by Joseph Hall, witnessed while he was travelling through Europe.  It has long been noted, and    there are several likewise accounts in Foxes Book of Martyrs, how the methos of torture or cruelty the inquisitors wrought on God’s chosen people, God revenged their blood and suffering, by ironic and almost paradoxical turn of events in the tormenters own lives, often ending in their death, but the act they had commited just a short while before, to one of the martyrs,  their own death so strikingly had resemblance to the act, yet it came directly from the hand of God, that one would have to be blind to deny God’s justice and revenge over the blood of the martyrs and the cruelty inflicted upon them.

Joseph Hall’s account of a similar scenario that he witnessed:

a short but memorable story which the graphier of that town (though of a different religion) reported to more ears than ours. When the last inquisition tyrannized in those parts, and helped to spend the faggots of Ardenne, one of the rst, a confident confessor, being led far to his stake, sung psalms along the way, in a heavenly courage and victorious triumph. The cruel officer, envying his last mirth, and grieving to see him merrier than his tormenters, commanded him silence. He sings still, and desirous to improve his last breath to the best. The view of his approaching glory bred his joy; his joy breaks forth into a cheerful confession. The enraged sherriff causes his tongue to be cut off near the roots. Bloody wretch! It had been good music to have heard his shrieks; but to hear his music was torment. The poor martyr dies in silence, rests in peace. Not many months after, our butcherly officer hath a son born with his tongue hanging down upon his chin, like a deer after a long chase, which never could be gathered up within the bounds of his lips. O the Divine  hand, full of justice, full of revenge.
—Joseph Hall

I am using the term puritan here in a broad sense of the word,  and not in at least two cases in the true sense but  its an agreeable term to the content of this post:

They say that behind every great man, is a woman, and I can think of 3 great characters in Christian history that to a certain extent that was true. Though that is not to detract from their own skills and gifts, but the women they loved and married, made very difficult times easier.

John Calvin was to write of Idlette DuBurre at her death: “I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life, of one who, had it been so ordered, would not only have been the willing sharer of my indigence, but even of my death. During her life she was the faithful helper of my ministry.”

The second I can think of is Sarah Edwards, wife of Jonathan. They truly did have an uncommon union. A good book to read on that would be “Marriage to a Difficult man” if you can get past and dismiss the psyche references to when Sarah Edwards was brought low, and the pointing to Jonathan becoming almost her psychiatrist, get past that and yet see the relationship and true love and devotion that there was between them. In these days of so many marriages failing, its truly heart-warming.

And now I come to Richard and Margaret Baxter. She was around 20 years his junior, and though she had been in love with him for some time, he seemed to deny his feelings, because he beleived a preacher was best, single and celibate, that way he could give all of himself to his flock. It was not the popish nonsense about priests remaining single and celibate, merely for how a family may detract and distract from the calling of the ministry. But one thing about all the women named in this post, is they were all able help-meets to their husbands in their ministries.

Sarah Edwards kept the house running like clockwork. Took care of the children, and made sure her husband could have all the time he needed for his study and writing etc. Any burden from the home, was not part of his daily routine, though that’s not to say he neglected his children, just that his wife created a perfect domicile to fit around her husbands rather unusual needs and desires as far as time and not being disturbed so that he could pursue his ministry unabated. And what a legacy both he and Sarah have left behind them. As what we think of as the works of Jonathan Edwards, was made possible in many ways, by the loyalty, devotion, care, love, and running the home around her husbands needs, so that he could have the output he did, which otherwise just would not have happened.

Calvin never seemed bothered about marrying, until he was in Geneva. He felt he had the gift of contincy, and it was Bucer and Farel and perhaps one or two others who first tried to get him used to the idea of thinking about taking a wife. There are many of the calvin biographies that deal with this, and one in particular that deals with it at more length than some others is Williston Walkers’ biography of John Calvin.
Yet when Calvin came together with Idlette, it was a true love story, and almost love at first sight. When reading or hearing of the tender relationship that existed between she and her husband, one gets to see a completely different side to Calvin than we are used to, or is generally represented. He outlived her by 15 years, yet every single day of those 15 years, he felt her loss deeply. It is commonly told that they had one child that died in infancy, but it was actually three or four. And it was the grief of this that apparently contributed to her early death.

But now on to Richard and Margaret Baxter. I am again quoting from the Marcus Loane book, Makers of puritan history, writing on a very difficult and persecuted time period for the Baxters during the reign of Charles II.

Mrs Baxter at length arranged to let the chapels in Oxenden Street and Swallow street so that constant preaching could be maintained…. But on August 24, 1682, ‘just that day twenty year’ since the Act of Uniformity, he preached for the last time at New Street and took leave of his public preaching ‘in a thankful congregation.’ Not long after, his books, his goods, even the bed on which he lay, were seized and sold, and his illness alone saved him from gao at a time when most of his friends were in prison. He was driven into months of pain and hiding such as he had never known, and compared with which, prison itself would have been a palace to him. At length, late in 1684, and again in January 1685, a fresh warrant was signed for his arrest, and six men stood outside the door of his study all night and kept him from both food and sleep. They brought him, ’scarce able to stand,’ before the court, and bound him by a four hundred pound bond. In December 1684, and again in January, 1685, he was forced in all his pain and weakness to come before the courts again, although he had to be carried because he was too ill to stand. A month later, Charles II died, and the reign of the Merry Monarch was at an end.
Romance and marriage, however, were to throw a mantle of consolation over his life which no man ever needed or valued more. Baxter had learned to know and love his wife while she was still greatly given to fear, and he may not have been prepared for the bright change which now transformed her state of mind. But she was no ordinary woman, and she was to become a wife in a thousand. She was timid and reserved by nature gentle and refined in spirit, yet she was to display a quiet courage in the face of adversity which was without its peer among women of the Restoration. John Howe rightly observed that by her marriage with Baxter, she ‘gave proof of the real greatness of her spirit’. Her old melancholy vanished and she found her soul in the loss of self. ‘Counsel did something to it, and contentment something, and being taken up with our household affairs did somewhat. All her natural gaity seemed to escape as if from a prison and poured out in pure and selfless service. All the generous affections of which her heart was the centre found an outlet and filled each hour of the day with glad and holy consecration. She stepped out with him to face the dark times at hand, and she never lost her heart or hope through all the years of trial which then ensued. Her tastes and haits, her plans and pleasures, were all cast in beautiful harmony with those of her husband, and their wedded life was one long summer day of mutual love and devotion. “These near nineteen years,” he wrote, “I know not that we ever had any breach in the point of love… save only that she somewhat grudged that I had persuaded her for my quietness to surrender so much of her estate to a disabling her from helping others so much as she earnestly desired.”
There was not one selfish wish in her love for him, and his daily routine of toil and study was cheered and relieved by true domestic happiness. Powicke observes that there was in her, a charm for others which was lacking in him, and he himself frankly declared that her “winning conversation” drew their hearts to goodness ina way that sermons never could do. Baxter indeed, went much further in his testimony into her insight. “Except in cases that required learning and skill in theological difficulties, she was better at resolving a case of conscience than most divines that I ever knew in my life…Insomuch, that in late years, I confess that I was used to put all but save secret cases to her…and she would give me a more exact resolution than I could do.”
She was at his side in sickness and fatigue; he was in her heart in sorrow and slander. Her cheerfulness brightened hsi hours of melancholy, and her gentleness softened his moods of asperity; her fortitude strengthened his hand in resolution, and her sympathy quicked his heart in benevolence. She shared his lot, now in danger, now in hiding, and was never so bright a companion to him as in prison.
But the intensity of her spirit was not without its price, for, “she… proved her sincerity by her costliest obedience” Perhaps the cost was the dearer because it was so quiet and so controlled, Baxter declared that the knife was too keen and cut the sheath. Hers was a mind keyed up to a higher level than is the case with most people; it was like the treble strings of a lute which have been strained to the utmost: “Sweet but in continual danger.” On 14th of June, 1681, on the twelfth day of a delirious illness she passed away, leaving a void in his heart which nothing could fill. It was her love alone which had made the dark world bright in his eyes, and the memory of her gentleness was to shine on his path as he followed to “the door of eternity.”

He could not recall her love for him without letting us see his love for her. The stern restraint, the austere severity of his single-minded pursuit of a heavenly character, is offset by this disclosure of his own most tender feelings as a man like unto ourselves. The lofty grandeur of Puritan abstraction from the world is seen in a more attractive light when we have felt the throb of his love and grief behind his self-complaint: “For though she oft said that before she married me she expected more sourness and unsuitableness than she found, yet I am sure that she found less zeal, holiness and strictness she expected.” Baxter’s love for her had grown like “a flower in the garden of the spirit”, and his only regret was that he had proved less worthy than she deserved. “My dear wife did look for more good in me than she found, especially lately in my weakness and decay. We are all like pictures that must not be looked upon too near. They that come near us, find more faults and badness in us than others at a distance know.” So he fancied, but what would have been her answer if she had lived to draw his portrait, as hehad drawn hers?

The book link above is to where the citation on Richard Baxters marriage is from.  And here are the books I recommend to read of the realtionship of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards:

And the Biography on John Cavin that I have read at least that deals most fully with his marriage and married life:

Shortly after, if not before, the publication of his great work, in March, 1536, Calvin, in company with Louis du Tillet, crossed the Alps to Italy, the classical soil of the literary and artistic Renaissance. He hoped to aid the cause of the religious Renaissance. He went to Italy as an evangelist, not as a monk, like Luther, who learned at Rome a practical lesson of the working of the papacy.

He spent a few months in Ferrara at the brilliant court of the Duchess Renée or Renata (1511–1575), the second daughter of Louis XII., of France, and made a deep and permanent impression on her. She had probably heard of him through Queen Marguerite and invited him to a visit. She was a small and deformed, but noble, pious, and highly accomplished lady, like her friends, Queen Marguerite and Vittoria Colonna. She gathered around her the brightest wits of the Renaissance, from Italy and France, but she sympathized still more with the spirit of the Reformation, and was fairly captivated by Calvin. She chose him as the guide of her conscience, and consulted him hereafter as a spiritual father as long as he lived.462462 Beza (xxi. 123): “Illam [Ferrariensem Ducissam]in vero pietatis studio confirmavit, ut eum postea vivum semper dilexerit, ac nunc quoque superstes gratae in defunctum memoriae specimen edat luculentum.” Colladon (53) speaks likewise of the high esteem in which the Duchess, then still living, held Calvin before and after his death. Bolsec in his libel (Ch. v. 30), mentions the visit to Ferrara, but suggests a mercenary, motive. “Calvin,” he says, “s’en alla vers Allemaigne et Itallie: cherchant son adventure, et passa par la ville de Ferrare, ou il receut quelque aumone de Madame la Duchesse.” He discharged this duty with the frankness and fidelity of a Christian pastor. Nothing can be more manly and honorable than his letters to her. Guizot affirms, from competent knowledge, that “the great Catholic bishops, who in the seventeenth century directed the consciences of the mightiest men in France, did not fulfil the difficult task with more Christian firmness, intelligent justice and knowledge of the world than Calvin displayed in his intercourse with the Duchess of Ferrara.”463463 St. Louis and Calvin, p. 207. He adds: “And the duchess was not the only, person towards whom he fulfilled this duty of a Christian pastor. His correspondence shows that he exercised a similar influence, in a spirit equally lofty and judicious, over the consciences of many Protestants.”

Renan wonders that such a stern moralist should have exercised a lasting influence over such a lady, and attributes it to the force of conviction. But the bond of union was deeper. She recognized in Calvin the man who could satisfy her spiritual nature and give her strength and comfort to fight the battle of life, to face the danger of the Inquisition, to suffer imprisonment, and after the death of her husband and her return to France (1559) openly to confess and to maintain the evangelical faith under most trying circumstances when her own son-in-law, the Duke of Guise, carried on a war of extermination against the Reformation. She continued to correspond with Calvin very freely, and his last letter in French, twenty-three days before his death, was directed to her. She was in Paris during the dreadful massacre of St. Bartholomew, and succeeded in saving the lives of some prominent Huguenots.464464 See the correspondence in the Letters by Bonnet, and in the Strassburg-Braunschweig edition. On Renée and her relation to Calvin see Henry, I. 159, 450-454; III. Beilage 142-153; in his smaller work, 62-69; 478-483; Stähelin, I. 94-108; Sophia W. Weitzel, Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara, New York, 1883; and Theod. Schott, in Herzog2, XII. 693-701.

Threatened by the Inquisition which then began its work of crushing out both the Renaissance and the Reformation, as two kindred serpents, Calvin bent his way, probably through Aosta (the birthplace of Anselm of Canterbury) and over the Great St. Bernard, to Switzerland.

An uncertain tradition connects with this journey a persecution and flight of Calvin in the valley of Aosta, which was commemorated five years later (1541) by a memorial cross with the inscription “Calvini Fuga.”465465 In the city of Aosta, near the Croix-de-Ville, stands a column eight feet high, surmounted by a cross of stone, with the following inscription:
Hanc
Calvini Fuga
erexit
Anno MDXLI
Religionis Constantia
Reparavit
Anno MDCCXLI.
The inscription was renewed again in 1841, with the following addition (according to Merle d’Aubigné, who saw it himself, vol. V. 531):
Civium Munificentia
Renovavit Et Adornavit.
Anno MDCCCXLI.
“Religionis constantia” must refer to the Roman faith which drove Calvin and his heresy away. Dr. Merle d’Aubigné accepts Calvin’s flight on the ground of this monumental testimony as a historical fact, but the silence of Calvin, Beza, and Colladon throws doubt on it. See J. Bonnet, Calvin au Val d’Aosta, 1861; A. Rilliet, Lettre àMr. Merle d’Aubignésur deux points obscure de la vie de Calvin, 1864; Stähelin, I. 110; Kampschulte, I. 280 (note); La France Prof., III. 520; Thomas M’Crie, The Early Years of Calvin pp. 95 and 104.
Fontana: Documenti del archivio vaticano e dell’ Estenso circa soggiorno di Calvino a Ferrara, 1885. Comba in “Rivista christiana,” 1885; Sandovini in Rivista stor. italiana,” 1887.

At Basel he parted from Du Tillet and paid a last visit to his native town to make a final settlement of family affairs.466466 This visit to Noyon is mentioned by Beza in the Latin Vita, who adds that he then brought his only surviving brother Antoine, with him to Geneva (XXI. 125). Colladon (58) agrees, and informs us that Calvin left Du Tillet at Basel, who from there went to Neuchâtel. In his French Life of C., Beza omits the journey to France: “A son retour d’Italie … il passa àla bonne heure par ceste ville de Genève.”

Then he left France, with his younger brother Antoine and his sister Marie, forever, hoping to settle down in Basel or Strassburg and to lead there the quiet life of a scholar and author. Owing to the disturbances of war between Charles V. and Francis I., which closed the direct route through Lorraine, he had to take a circuitous journey through Geneva.

The above is from Phillip Schaff’s history of the Christian Church. But there are some additions I want to make about this great French Hugeonot heroine. Calvin’s friendship had sowed such strength in her, that when she returned to France, after all her friends had been exiled out of Italy, and she was given an ultimatum to either convert to Rome or leave the country, she went back to her homeland for the first time in 30 years. Her castle became a refuge for French Hugeonot refugees. The castle was often rioted against by the Duke of Guise, a bigotted roman catholic and her son-in-law. The castle became known as the “Hotel of the Lord.” At one time at the castle she had 300 refugees at her table.
The Roman Church was of course incensed by her favour and mercy to the protestants. Her Son in law, the Duke of guise threatened that if she did not leave, that he would send his army to destroy the castle and all the preachers within it. When the Army general sent by the Duke of Guise to carry out his threat, accompanied by six company of soldiers, made the ultimatum to leave or else. This frail, prematurely aged woman, replied: “Malacorn, consider well what you do, for no man in the kingdom has a right to command me but the King. If you advance, I will put myself into the breach, and see whether you will have the audacity to kill a King’s daughter, whose death, heaven and earth will avenge on you, and your seed even to the children of the cradle.”

The General and his six company of soldiers, faced by this frail, woman, played the coward, and stepped down. God was with her. Another great heroine of the REformation.  Calvin’s last three French letters by the way, were addressed to this woman.

First of all I apologize for the length of this blog post; it’s a story in history that is very dear to me; Queen Joanna you can find lots of websites telling you of her apparent “madness.” Yet this poor, perfectly sane woman, spent 50 of her 76 years on earth, imprisoned, because the men who should have most protected her, Father, husband, son, all conspired against her, because she had such revulstion at the barbaric and cruel atrocities being perpetrated by the Roman Church. She was tortured, and never swayed from the truth. And was kept in a dungeon, with only a candle, with her own filth never being cleared up, her body covered in tumours towards the end of her life, after being on the rack and other forms of barbarism, ordered by her own family, because she rejected the Roman Catholic church. And she seems a figure that time has either forgotten, or the truth has become so distorted she is viewed as a crazy women, who needed to be protected from herself. But the truth is a very different story. As Merle D’aubigne tells in his History of the Reformation in the times of Calvin, book 14, the last chapter tells.

(BORN 1479; DIED 1555.)

AMONG the victims immolated in Spain, in the Netherlands, and elsewhere, by the fanaticism of Charles the Fifth and his subordinates, there was one, the most illustrious of all, whose history had been long hidden by a mysterious veil. This was his mother, Queen Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. The veil has been partly lifted in our days by the discovery of some documents in the archives of Simancas. Although the information is not yet complete, and perhaps may never be so, it is nevertheless possible now to get some glimpses of the mysterious drama which darkened the life of this unfortunate princess. Few histories are more astonishing than the history of this woman, whom we see by some tragic destiny connected with three executioners — her father, her husband, and her son. These three men, king Ferdinand, the archduke Philip, and the emperor Charles the Fifth, whom she never ceased to love, and whom God had given her for protectors, deprived her of her kingdoms, cast her into prison, and had the strappado inflicted on her.’ f193a To complete their infamy, they circulated a report that she was mad. She displayed remarkable intelligence, and in this respect she would have taken high rank among princes, far above her father and her husband, if not above her son. The latter derived from her, certainly not from his father, his great abilities. Some celebrated physicians having been summoned by the Comuneros to inquire whether the alleged madness existed, and having interrogated the officers and servants who were about her, cardinal — afterwards Pope — Adrian, one of her gaolers, gave the emperor an account of the inquiry in these words: ‘Almost all the officers and servants of the queen assert that she has been oppressed and forcibly detained in this castle for fourteen years, under pretense of madness, while in fact she has always been as sound in mind and as rational as at the time of her marriage.’ f194 The desire to possess themselves of the supreme power incited these three unworthy princes to deprive Joanna and to keep her in shameful captivity.

It was to her, and not to her father Ferdinand, that the kingdom of Castile belonged after the death of Isabella. It was to her, and not to her husband Philip, nor afterwards to her son Charles, that the Spains, Naples, Sicily, and other dominions belonged. She was deprived of all by these traitorous princes, and received in exchange a narrow prison.

Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, was born in 1479, and was brought up in Spain under the care of her mother.

Although it was not in those days the custom of the court, as it was in the time of Philip II, to attend the auto-de-fe, the whipping and the torture of heretics, these exploits of fanaticism done to the honor of Jesus Christ and his holy mother were nevertheless at this epoch the favorite subject of conversation of that devout court. The prison, the whip, the real and the stake, were the commonplaces of their intercourse. The compassionate heart, the sound understanding, and all the good instincts of the young girl rebelled against these excesses of the Roman faith and it was soon discovered that there was in her mind an opposition to the favorite notions of her mother, and a deep feeling against these punishments. It was a great grief to Isabella to see her own daughter wantonly ruining herself; for was it not her eyes ruin to doubt of the holiness of the proceedings of the Inquisition? She, therefore attempted to stifle the first germs of disobedience, She did not shrink from extreme measures to bring Joanna to a better mind. The marquis of Denia, chief gaoler of the unhappy prisoner, wrote to Charles the Fifth, on January 26, 1522, as follows: ‘If your Majesty would employ torture against her, it would be in many respects rendering service to God and at the same time doing a good work towards the queen herself. This course is necessary with persons of her disposition; and the queen, your grandmother punished and treated in this way her daughter the queen, our sovereign lady.’

When Joanna had attained the age of seventeen her father and mother began to think about a marriage alliance for her; and it is easy to understand that she was eager to accept the hand of the archduke of Burgundy, one of the handsomest knights of his age. The prince was to conduct her to the Netherlands, of which he had been sovereign since 1482, and thus he would withdraw her from the teaching of her mother.

Joanna’s readiness was very natural under the circumstances.

Soon after her arrival in the Netherlands it was observed that feelings to which the cruelty of the Inquisition had given birth in her noble heart were developing themselves — indignation against the persecutors, and love for the persecuted. It is known that in these parts were to be found some of the Vaudois, the Lollards, and the Brethren of the Common Life, all alike inspired with a true religious spirit. The fresh information which Joanna now received strengthened her previous impressions of hostility to Roman superstition. The Catholic Isabella, alarmed at the reports which reached her, sent to Brussels the sub-prior of Santa Cruz, Thomas de Matienzo, to see what the facts were, and to arrest the evil. The princess, who tenderly loved her mother, was cast down on hearing of her displeasure, and tears started to her eyes. But her resolution did not give way. The sub-prior took all possible pains to draw from Joanna some answer to the questions which Isabella had charged him to ask. He was very coldly received; and on Assumption Day, when two of the confessors of the princess presented themselves for the purpose of receiving her confession, she declined their services in the very presence of her mother’s envoy. Her former tutor, Friar Andrew, who felt much anxiety for the soul of his pupil, entreated he to dismiss certain Parisian theologians, who seem to have been more enlightened than the majority of the priests, but whom Friar Andrew called drunkards. At the same time he begged the princess to supply their place by taking for her confessor a good Spanish monk. But all his entreaties were fruitless. Nothing could overcome the repugnance which she felt towards the Roman religion. On several occasions she refused its rites, but she did not advance nor take any active steps. Her strength was passive only.

On February 24, 1500, Joanna gave birth to a son, who was to become the emperor Charles the Fifth. Conspicuous amongst the magnificent presents offered to the young prince was the gift of the ecclesiastics of Flanders, who laid before him the New Testament, splendidly bound, and bearing the inscription in letters of gold — Search the Scriptures.

Isabella was deeply distressed to see her daughter thus drifting away from Spanish orthodoxy. It was not a complete rebellion; Joanna did not openly profess all the doctrines called in Spain heretical. But the queen had ordered hundreds of her subjects to be burnt for slighter opposition than that of the princess. Would Isabella’s devotion to the Virgin go so far as to sacrifice to it her daughter? Even had she desired it, it would not have been easy; for Joanna as the wife of a foreign prince, was emancipated from her mother’s control. Besides, it must well be believed that Isabella would not have committed such a crime. Still, the question arises, would she allow a heretic to ascend the throne of Castile?

Would she expose the Inquisition, an institution so dear to her, to the risk of being suppressed by the princess who was to succeed her? Never. Her whole being revoked against such a thought. The priestly party rejoiced to see these scruples of the queen, and endeavored to increase them. King Ferdinand himself, Joanna’s father, but not a tender-hearted father, felt that it was for his own interest to embitter more and more the feeling of her mother.

As early as 1502 Isabella’s plan was formed. She would keep the heretic Joanna from the throne which belonged to her after her own death. On the meeting of the Cortes, at Toledo, in 1502, and at Madrid and Alcala de Henares, in 1503, the queen caused to be laid before them a project of law by virtue of which the government of Castile should belong after her death to Ferdinand, in case of Joanna’s absence, or of her unwillingness or inability personally to exercise the rights which belonged to her. This resolution was voted by the Cortes, and was inserted by Isabella in her will, in which she set forth the conditions which she had at first laid down.

The pope confirmed the arrangement. Thus was Joanna to be set aside from succession to the throne which belonged to her on account of her opposition to the Inquisition and to other Roman practices. But Isabella took care not to state this, because she perceived that such an avowal would be dangerous. The priesthood and the holy office were almost universally detested, and, therefore, it, was necessary to avoid asserting that they were the cause of the exclusion of Joanna, for this would have rallied to her cause the majority of the nation. Some pretext must, however, be found. It should be reported that she was mad. This is nothing but the truth. thought the priests. Is it possible that anyone not mad would reject Rome and her decrees, and put in their place some other senseless doctrines?

In 1504 Isabella died. Ferdinand publicly announced to the people, assembled in front of the palace of Medina del Campo, that although the crown belonged to his daughter he should continue to govern during his lifetime. Joanna and Philip, her husband, were still in the Netherlands. It appeared that Joanna bore with meekness this robbery of the crown by her father; but it was otherwise with her husband. Philip energetically protested against this act of spoliation. ‘Ferdinand,’ he said, ‘has put into circulation a false report of the madness of his daughter and other absurdities of the like kind solely with a view to furnish himself with a pretext for seizing her crown.’ It has generally been stated that it was Philip’s mother who had caused the madness of his widow. But this report, it is evident, was already in circulation at a time when she had, without contradiction, the full possession of her reason. We have seen from what source the report came, and the interest which her father had in causing it to be believed.

In 1506 Philip, accompanied by Joanna, arrived in Spain for the purpose of assuming himself the power which his father-in-law had usurped. The majority of the people soon declared themselves on the side of Joanna; and Ferdinand, in a fit of anger was on the point of encountering his son-in-law with capa y spada, intending to plunge his sword into his bosom. But he observed ere long that a party was forming, and was becoming more and more numerous, at the head of which was the constable of Castile, whose object was to set aside both Philip and Ferdinand, and to place the legitimate queen on the throne. Ferdinand was perplexed, finding that he had two rivals, his son-in-law and his daughter. It was clear to him that Joanna, as Infanta and lawful heiress, would easily win all the hearts of the people, and that Philip, as a foreigner and usurper, would find it hard to gain acceptance. He resolved, therefore, to unite with Philip against his own daughter. He gave him an appointment to meet him at Villafafila, on June 26 (1506). The king determined to assume an appearance of amiability. He took with him only a small number of attendants, dressed himself plainly, mounted an ass, and thus arrived in the presence of his son-in-law with the air of a gallant country gentleman, an amiable smile upon his lips, and saying that he came ‘with love in his heart and peace in his hands.’ Philip received him attended by a considerable number of grandees of the Netherlands and of Spain, besides a large body of men-at- arms. Philip himself, who was surnamed the Handsome, was in the pride of his youth and strength. Ferdinand having dismounted from his ass and saluted his son-in-law, begged him to follow him alone into the church. All the members of their suite were forbidden to accompany the two princes, and guards were stationed at the entrance to prevent anyone from penetrating into the church. There, at the foot of the altar, these two traitorous men were about to conspire to ruin, the spoliation, and we might saw the death of their innocent victim, daughter of one of them and wife of the other. The interview began. The sentinels were able occasionally to catch glimpses of the two princes, and even to hear their voices, but they could not understand what they said. Ferdinand spoke much and with animation; Philip made only short answers and at times seemed to be embarrassed. The father-in-law pointed out to his son-in-law that Joanna was on the point of being placed on the throne by the people, and that both of them would thus be deprived of it; that they ought to exclude her, and that they would assign as their motive that she was incapacitated for reigning by reason of ‘here malady,’ which propriety did not permit them to name. It is evident that the reference was to the alleged madness. Whether Philip, who lived with Joanna, and knew her real state, had also protested against this false accusation, gave way at once, we cannot tell. However this may be, Ferdinand, who for a long time had not seen his daughter, succeeded in persuading his son-in-law to adopt this pretext. It likewise appears that there was already some talk about imprisoning the queen. While Ferdinand thus sacrificed his daughter, he felt no scruple about deceiving his son-in-law. An agreement was concluded between the two conspirators that the government of Castile should belong to Philip; and in the instrument signed the same day it was alleged that Joanna refused to accept it herself. Meanwhile the courtiers were awaiting the two princes; and the guards having reported the visible animation and eloquence of the father-in-law, it was expected that he would come away triumphant. Great, therefore, was the astonishment when it became known that he had yielded everything to his son-in-law.

Thus the story of the madness of Joanna, first invented in the interest of Rome, was confirmed by her father, by her husband, and afterwards by her son Charles the Fifth, in their own interest, and with a view to despoil her of the crown of Spain, of Naples, Sicily, and her other dominions.

But what is to be thought of Ferdinand’s concession? It was a mere piece of acting. His ass, his modest suite, his plain unarmed arrival, had been nothing but a comedy, the object of which was to put him in a position to allege that he had fallen into the hands of his son-in-law, and that the latter had compelled him to sign the agreement. He immediately prepared a secret protest, in which he declared that Joanna was kept prisoner by Philip on false pretenses, and that he considered it his duty to deliver her and to place her on the throne. He then set out for Naples, delegating as his representative with Philip his well-beloved Master Louis Ferrer, who enjoyed his entire confidence, desiring him to look after his interests. He had hardly set out when, after an illness of three or four days, Philip died.

The current rumor was that he had been poisoned. Some persons declared that they knew he had received a dose of poison in his food (bocado.) But the scandal of a trial was dreaded, and the matter was hushed up. The guilty Ferdinand remained master of the situation. Joanna had been placed in confinement by her husband immediately after the interview of Villafafila, After the death of Philip, Ferrer took possession of her. Several princes, particularly Henry VII of England, aspired to the hand of this widow, heiress of several kingdoms; but Ferdinand hastened to write in all directions that to ‘his great vexation’ his daughter could not possibly think of a second marriage. This gradually gave wider currency to the fable of her madness.

The queen was then at Burgos, and it was determined to remove her thence to Tordesillas, where they intended to keep her in confinement. Philip had died at Burgos, and his body was to be transferred to Granada, to be there interred in the sepulchre of the kings. This involved a journey from the north to the middle of Spain, and Tordesillas lay on the road. The scheme was to have the queen set out at the same time as the body of her husband.

One and the same escort would thus serve for both. It has been supposed that there might be financial reasons for this arrangement. In our days, it has been said, no one would ever think of such economy. But at that time the want of money was incessantly obtruding itself, and people might be well pleased to save a thousand scudos. This conjecture is admissible, but there were other reasons. The journey was made slowly. On two or three occasions the queen was removed from one place to another by night. But it is of little moment whether the journey from Burgos to Tordesillas was made by night or by day. In any case it was a strange spectacle, the grand funeral car, with its dismal but splendid accompaniments, and after these the carriages of the captive queen, about whom the most extraordinary reports were already in circulation. It been stated that the death of Philip had cost Joanna the loss of her reason; it has been said that had so much affection for her husband that she to have his body always near her, as if it were still living; that she was jealous even of her husband, and would not allow her women approach his corpse? f198a It was rumored at the time that the queen, watching for the moment of his return to life, refused to be separated from the lifeless; and this very journey was referred to as an proof of her madness. But these allegations are belied by facts. As the tomb at Granada as not yet ready, the body of Philip remained for years in the convent of St. Clara at Tordesillas and the queen did not once go to see it nor did she even express a wish to do so.

She used to of Philip as any faithful wife would speak of her deceased husband. Her excessive tenderness for Philip, who had behaved infamously towards her, her resolution never to be separated from his corpse — these are fables of modern history, invented by those were determined to deprive her of her rights to thrust themselves into her place.

Joanna arrived at Tordesillas under the guardianship of Ferrer, the man who, it was believed, had poisoned her husband. The palace was a plain house, situated in a barren country; the climate was scorching in summer and very severe in winter. Joanna was confined here in a narrow chamber, without windows, and lighted only by a candle; she was not allowed to walk, even for a few minutes, in a corridor which looked out upon the river. She was thus refused a liberty accorded even to murderers. She was there, without money, attended by two female keepers, and unable to communicate with the outer world.

The mother of Charles V continued to show in the prison of Tordesillas her dislike to the Roman ceremonies. She refused to hear mass; and the main business of her keepers was to get her to attend it. The cruel marquis of Denia, count of Lerma, who succeeded Ferrer, endeavored to compel the queer to practices which she abhorred. ‘There is not a day passes,’ he wrote, ‘on which we are not taken up with the affair of the mass.’ f198b At length the queen consented to attend mass, at the end of the corridor either from fear of the scourge, the pain of which she knew, or perhaps in order not to sunder herself from the religion of Spain, of which she constantly hoped to be acknowledged as queen. But when they brought her the pax, the paten which the priest offers to great persons to kiss, she refused it, and commanded it to be presented to the Infanta her daughter, whom they had not yet taken away from her.

At Christmas 1521 matins were being sung in the chapel which had been fitted up at the end of the corridor. The Infanta alone was present.

Suddenly Joanna appeared, wretchedly attired for a queen. She did not attend the mass herself, and even wished to prevent her daughter from attending it. She interrupted the service, ordered with a voice that reechoed from the walls that the altar should be taken away and everything else that was used in the religious ceremonies, and then laying hold of her daughter she dragged her away from the place. Nothing could at this time bend her; she resolutely refused to attend mass or any other Catholic services. In vain did the marquis of Denia entreat her to conform to the Roman practices; she would not hear of such a thing. ‘In truth,’ wrote the marquis to Charles V, ‘if your majesty would apply the torture (premia), it would be doing service to God and to her highness.’ f199 The mother of Charles V was plunged into the deepest melancholy by the treatment to which she was subjected. Her days were a constant succession of sorrows. Her passage through life was from one suffering to another. All her desire was to get out of that horrible prison; and in striving to attain this object she displayed much good sense, earnestness, and perseverance. She begged the marquis of Denia to allow her to quit Tordesillas, at least for a time. She wished to go to Valladolid. She alleged as a reason the bad air she breathed and the acute sufferings it caused her.

Her health required a change of air, and she must at least undertake a journey. Her deep feeling moved her barbarous gaoler himself. For a moment pity touched that heart of stone. ‘Her language is so touching,’ wrote Denia to the emperor, ‘that it becomes difficult for the marchioness and myself to withstand her appeals. It is impossible for me to let anyone go near her, for not a man in the world could resist her persuasion. Her complaints awaken in me deep compassion, and her utterances might move stones.’ This is not how Denia would have written to Charles if he had been speaking of a mad woman. Moreover he requested him to destroy his letters. At times she remained silent; and we know that the grief which does not utter itself is only the more fatal to the sufferer. At other times her distress broke forth. One day (April 1525) she contrived to find access to the corridor and filled it with her sighs and moanings, shedding the while floods of tears. Denia gave orders immediately that she should be taken into her narrow chamber, so that she might not be heard. At the same time he wrote to Charles V: ‘I have always thought that in her highness’s state of indisposition, nothing would do her more good than the rack; and after this that some good and loyal servant of your majesty should speak to her. It is necessary to see whether she will not make any progress in the things which your majesty desires.’ By these things he means confession, the mass, and other Roman rites.

In 1530, despairing of seeing the queen confess, ‘I cannot believe,’ he wrote, ‘that so fortunate a thing can happen. However I will use all needful endeavors.’

The officers of Charles V, and the monks who had incessantly labored for the conversion of Joanna to Romanism, multiplied their efforts as her death approached. She withstood their pressing entreaties to receive the rites, the symbols of the papacy, and people heard the cries which she uttered while they put her to torture. She would have neither confession nor extreme unction.

Had Joanna become acquainted with the Reformation and the writings of the Reformers, and with the doctrines which they professed? This has been doubted; but it seems improbable that she should have been ignorant of them. Joanna was a Lutheran, says one of the learned writers who have devoted most attention to this subject. This statement is perhaps too definite. But the evangelical doctrines were penetrating everywhere; and they must have reached the prison of Joanna. It has been asserted that Luther at this time had more numerous adherents in Spain than in Germany itself. The keepers of the prison perhaps prevented evangelical works from reaching the queen. There is, however, a light which no hand of man can intercept. The theologian de Soto celebrated for his acquirements, as well as for his piety, came to her on the morning of her death; and he appears to have thought her a Christian, but not a Roman Catholic. He said: ‘Blessed be the Lord, her highness told me things which have consoled me.’ Here is the Christian. He adds: ‘Nevertheless, she is not disposed to the sacrament of the Eucharist.’ Here is the enlightened woman who rejects the rites of Rome. ‘She committed her soul to God,’ said the princess Joanna, granddaughter of the queen, ‘and gave thanks to Him that at length He delivered her from all her sorrows.’ Her last words were: ‘Jesus Christ crucified, be with me .’ She breathed her last on April 12, 1555, between five and six o’clock in the morning.

Thus died the mother of Charles V at the age of seventy-six years. She had been at various times kept in prison by her husband, Philip of Austria; for ten years by her father, Ferdinand the Catholic; and for thirty-nine years by her son, the emperor Charles V. She is a unique example of the greatest misfortunes, and her dark destiny surpasses all the stories of ancient times. The heiress of so many famous kingdoms, treated as the most wretched of women, was in her last year strictly confined in her dungeon, and lay in the midst of filth which was never removed. Covered as she was with tumors, in anguish and solitude, can we wonder that strange and terrifying images were sometimes produced in her brain by her isolation, melancholy, and fear? But while she was the victim of the gloomiest fanaticism ever met with in the world, she was consoled in the midst of all these horrors, as her latest words prove, by her God and Father in heaven.

The time has come for posterity to render to her memory the compassion and the honor which are her due.

I had planned for a blog post tonite on the doctrine of election, but after a bolt out of the blue tonite, I have decided to post this instead.
I have long felt perplexed, confusion, even anger, at those Professors of Christ who when I was already dealing with more than enough for anyone to cope with at one time, continued to pile me up in additional afflictions so that at times, I have felt I knew not how to stand. Being sick unto death would be enough to cope with for most people, to die alone, estrange from and abandoned by the church you once loved, and forsaken of humanity in such dreadful illness is another matter entirely, and a cross of great magnitude. Yet for all those who have used their hands against me, I can only think now, forgive them Father, for they know not what they do. They were the instruments to pile me up so high, yet the first cause of anything is always the God of heaven and earth, and by these crosses, whether directly from God of men being used as the instruments to pile them up, through them, I have gained by the grace of God much sanctification, and ultimately, true conversion. Sometimes I have felt like Alexander Peden, the prophet of the Covenant when he said he felt the visible church was trying to shut him out of heaven. in his case however, he was not talking of his covenanting brethren or those of like mind, but of enemies of God and true religion. But God is the first cause of everything that befalls us–good, bad, or indifferent. When men are used as the tools which strike us or afflict us, we must see the affliction as ultimately from the hand of God. The same was true of Herod and pontus Pilate, and like Christ with his persecutors and murderers, the only dignified thing to say is Father forgive them, they know not what they do, whether they are true believers are false professors that remains true.
Sometimes you think things are fine, and out of the blue you get a shock or some insult or sleight, and you feel knocked down. But you will only stay down if you choose to. It is said of William Wilberforce the politician and abolitionist, that the thing that made him notable, was no matter how many times he got knocked down, he always got back up, and stronger. I think affliction works that in you. That you get knocked down so often, you don’t know how not to get back up, because if you do not, you have lost it all. Christ said do not fear those who can kill the body, but those who can kill the soul. We will only lose our souls if we let them be taken or give our consent. When your soul is one of the few things one has left of any worth to you, and you have lost everything and everyone that once mattered to you, as well as your health and freedom, then you are not going to give consent for your souls eternal welfare to be snatched from you, or killed, but we will commit to the Lord for safe keeping, knowing that we are unable to keep it, just as we cannot do a thing in our own strength, but we have a Saviour, and Advocate, an Intercessor who is more than able and more than willing.

1 Peter 4:19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

I will close this blog post with a prayer of George Wishart, whose surely was as his name suggests, wise of heart.

‘O Thou Savior of the World, have mercy upon me! Father of
Heaven, I commend my spirit into Thy holy hands.’ Then he
turned to the people and said: ‘I beseech you, Christian Brethren
and Sisters, be not offended at the Word of God, for the affliction
and torments which ye see prepared for me. But I exhort you, love
the Word of God and suffer patiently, and with a comfortable
heart, for the Word’s sake, which is your undoubted salvation and
everlasting comfort. Moreover, I pray you, show my brethren and
sisters, which have heard me oft, that they cease not to learn the
Word of God which I taught unto them, for no persecutions in this
world, which lasteth not. Show them that my doctrine was no
wives’ fables, after the constitutions made by men. If I had taught
men’s doctrine, I had gotten greater thanks by men. But for the
true Evangel, which was given to me by the Grace of God, I suffer
this day by men, not sorrowfully, but with a glad heart and mind.
For this cause I was sent, that I should suffer this fire for Christ’s
sake. Consider and behold my visage. Ye shall not see me change
my color! This grim fire I fear not: and so I pray you to do, if any
persecution come unto you for the Word’s sake; and not to fear
them that slay the body, and afterward have no power to slay the
soul. Some have said I taught that the soul of man should sleep
until the Last Day; but I know surely that my soul shall sup with
my Savior this night, ere it be six hours, for whom I suffer this.’

Although there are many Christ like Christians today, sadly, there are some who claim to be on the side of Christ and speak words that sound like angels, while becoming the persecutors of the brethren in different ways to days of old, through not caring about our brothers and sisters’ in Christ as we should, neither body or soul, and only our immediate family mattering to us, and the mystical family is degraded into non-importance. Christ said there is no greater love for a man to lay down his life for his brother, and Christ did that for all us unworthy sinners, he loved us when we didn’t love him.  The covenanters in Scotland and the puritans in England risked life and limb to help and assist each other too. When they were turned out of their livings and manses it was not just them, but their wives, children, any other dependants with them, and yet, for the crown of Christ, and those who upheld his name, no cost was too great for Christ or the brethren, sadly, this is not the case in all cases today, as self takes much more precedence over Christ or Christ’s body.

But I loved this  included in John Foxes Acts and monumuments, its referred to as a fable, but I’m not sure how to interpret that, originally written I believe by Clement.

Hear a fable, and yet not a fable, but a true report which was told
us of John the apostle, and has been ever since kept in our
remembrance. After the death of the tyrant, when John was
returned to Ephesus from the isle of Patmos, he was requested to
resort to the places bordering near unto him, partly to constitute
bishops, partly to dispose the causes and matters of the church,
partly to ordain to the clerical office such as the Holy Ghost
should elect. Whereupon, when he was come to a certain city not
far off, (the name of which also some do mention) f927 and had
comforted the brethren as usual, he beheld a young man robust in
body, and of a beautiful countenance, and of a fervent mind, when,
looking earnestly at the newly-appointed bishop: “I most solemnly
commend this man (saith he) to thee, in presence here of Christ and
of the church.”
When the bishop had received of him this charge, and had promised
his faithful diligence therein, again the second time John spake unto
him, and charged him with like manner and contestation as before.
This done, John returned again to Ephesus. The bishop, receiving
the young man commended and committed to his charge, brought
him home, kept him, and nourished him, and at length also did
illuminate, that is, baptized him; and after that, he gradually relaxed
his care and oversight of him, trusting that he had given him the
best safeguard possible in putting the Lord’s seal upon him. The
young man thus having his liberty more, it chanced that certain of
his old companions and acquaintances, being idle, dissolute, and
hardened in wickedness, did join in company with him, who first
invited him to sumptuous and riotous banquets; then enticed him
to go forth with them in the night to rob and steal; after that he was
allured by them unto greater mischief and wickedness. Wherein, by
custom of time, and by little and little, he becoming more expert,
and being of a good wit, and a stout courage, like unto a wild or
unbroken horse, leaving the right way and running at large without
bridle, was carried headlong to the profundity of all misorder and
outrage. And thus, being past all hope of grace, utterly forgetting
and rejecting the wholesome doctrine of salvation which he had
learned before, he began to set his mind upon no small matters.
And forasmuch as he was entered so far in the way of perdition, he
cared not how much further he proceeded in the same. And so,
associating unto him a band of companions and fellow thieves, he
took upon himself to be as head and captain among them, in
committing all kind of murder and felony.
In the mean time it chanced that of necessity John was sent for to
those quarters again, and came. The causes being decided and his
business ended for the which he came, by the way meeting with the
bishop afore specified, he requireth of him the pledge, which, in the
presence of Christ and of the congregation then present, he left in
his hands to keep. The bishop, something amazed at the words of
John, supposing he had meant them of some money committed to
his custody, which he had not received (and yet durst not mistrust
John, nor contrary his words), could not tell what to answer. Then
John, perceiving his perplexity, and uttering his meaning more
plainly: “The young man,” saith he, “and the soul of our brother
committed to your custody, I do require.” Then the bishop, with a
loud voice sorrowing and weeping, said, “He is dead.” To whom
John said, “How, and by what death?” The other said, “He is dead
to God, for he became an evil and abandoned man, and at length a
robber. And now he doth frequent the mountain instead of the
church, with a company of villains and thieves, like unto himself.”
Here the apostle rent his garments, and, with a great lamentation,
said, “A fine keeper of his brother’s soul I left here! get me a horse,
and let me have a guide with me:” which being done, his horse and
man procured, he hasted from the church as much as he could, and
coming to the place, was taken of thieves that lay on the watch.
But he, neither flying nor refusing, said, “I came hither for the
purpose: lead me,” said he, “to your captain.” So he being brought,
the captain all armed fiercely began to look upon him; and eftsoons
coming to the knowledge of him, was stricken with confusion and
shame, and began to fly. But the old man followed him as much as
he might, forgetting his age, and crying, “My son, why dost thou
fly from thy father? an armed man from one naked, a young man
from an old man? Have pity on me, my son, and fear not, for there
is yet hope of salvation. I will make answer for thee unto Christ; I
will die for thee, if need be; as Christ hath died for us, I will give
my life for thee; believe me, Christ hath sent me.” He, hearing these
things, first, as in a maze, stood still, and therewith his courage was
abated. After that he had cast down his weapons, by and by he
trembled, yea, and wept bitterly; and, coming to the old man,
embraced him, and spake unto him with weeping (as well as he
could), being even then baptized afresh with tears, only his right
hand being hid and covered. Then the apostle, after that he had
promised and firmly ascertained him that he should obtain
remission of our Savior, and also prayed, falling down upon his
knees, and kissing his murderous right hand (which for shame he
durst not show before) as now purged through repentance, he
brought him back to the church. And when he had prayed for him
with continual prayer and daily fastings, and had comforted and
confirmed his mind with many sentences, he left him not (as the
author reporteth) before he had restored him to the church again;
and made him a great example of sincere penitence and proof of
regeneration, and a trophy of the future  resurrection.
—John Foxe, “Acts and Monuments” Volume 1