The Beguines of Breda

A relief on the chapel wall. 

What does a woman want? Family, Career, Independence, Relationships, Power? Freud asked a version of this question in the late 19th century and concluded he was unable to answer it. Prior to the modern period, asking a woman what she wanted from life was largely seen as unimportant. A woman's life was mostly determined by family and social station. Options were often few and those with more power determined if and who one married, if education was possible, and how one's time and life energies would be spent. Yet history is always varied and sprinkled with fascinating social experiments.

From the porter's gate. The Beginage of Breda.

In the later part of the middle ages an rising number of women chose lives devoted to prayer and service. Rather than withdrawing to a windswept monastery to take vows and live by an established rule of life, lay women began gathering in consecrated communities to live together in populated areas, mostly market towns. A papal dispensation of 1215 permitted women to live together encouraging each other in lives of virtue. This new urbanized way of life was neither monastic nor family-centered.

This was something between.

Some of the women had been married and were widowed. Some had grown children. Many were from peasant families, although noble women appear as founders or benefactors. All who joined chose to be chaste while living in the community but were free to leave or marry at any time. This was a provisional community. They sought to live as the apostles mandated in the book of Acts: Live simply. Devote yourself to prayer and service. Break bread together. Live in awe of God's presence. Work for the common good. Each woman was required to have an income.They owned no private property but lived side-by-side in independent rooms cooking and caring for themselves.

Textile work and bookmaking were two common occupations. Some members offered rudimentary nursing to the young, old or sick. Most offered some type of religious instruction and education for girls. These were early "working women". Most communities had the approval and patronage of local nobles or leading families. Who wouldn't want a group of devout women offering service to the larger community for a simple fee that would allow the women to live independently?

By the year 1320, documents indicate more than 200 such communities existed in the Low Countries of Europe--today's Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg. Large communities numbering 2,000 members existed in Louvain, Brussels and Strausbourg, (once in Germany now, France). As many as 600 communities dotted greater Europe and many lasted until the 16th century when the Reformation's antipathy for anything resembling monasticism challenged their existence.

Comparing their days? Telling secrets. Who knows? 

Most of these communities were locally focused and run. Collectively they were referred to by various names but often are considered together under the moniker of the Beguines. (Male communities are known as Beghards.) There are several theories of the origin of the name. Some say it is a derivative of "mumbling" which detractors said the Beguines did as they recited Psalms or other prayers as they went about their lives outside of the community in the larger village. Others say it comes from a Latin word for women who burn with pious idealism.  Existing texts written by Beatrix of Nazareth, Marguerite Porete, Mechtild of Magdeburg, and Hadjewich offer a mystical theology written in the emerging vernacular languages of the people that stands alongside scholastic writings in Latin to give a wider-angled view of actual belief and practice. In the 13th century women were often identified with the human (suffering) nature of Jesus and men, the divine (rational) nature.  Hadewich wrote to her female community members, "With the humanity of God you shall live here in suffering and exile, and with the powerful eternal God you shall love and jubilate inwardly with a sweet confidence the the truth of these both is a single delighting. (Letter 6, Hart trans.).

Organizational structures for the communities varied. In the one I visited, a "mistress" of the community was elected by the community for a three year term. She lived in a separate house and granted permission for members to come and go. A female gatekeeper lived in the the gatehouse to supervise coming and going. A sextoness was responsible for the chapel and sacristy. She prepared the daily mass and six daily services and oversaw preparations for marriage and burial ceremonies that could be held by there for a small fee. Other members of the community sang in the choir, played the organ or other instruments. A male priest, selected by the community, would come and go to officiate while all ministries of the community were quite self-directed.

I mapped out travel to several Beguinages but then settled on Breda, an hour train ride east of Rotterdam. This Beguinage dates from 1267 when Hendrick, the local Lord, granted the community a title to a plot of land. The community relocated a short distance from the original site in 1531, and the convent house is now is a short walk from the train station.  We arrived from Rotterdam, tried to pronounce Beguinage in an understandable way but only the woman at the tourist information desk could understand what we wanted to see. She pointed us in the right direction. The brick U-shaped cloister was restored in the 20th century. It is easy to imagine the women walking down the cobblestone streets to tend to the sick or carry in another basket of cloth to bleach. At the small museum, the words that echoed through the video presentation were independent, devout, working, women.

St. Catharine's was narrow. We could not
enter so photos of the windows were
not possible. Trust me they were great.

St. Catharine's Church occupies the center of the Beguinage at Breda  On the left is a stained glass window celebrating St Begga, a 7th century lowlands saint, the daughter of a noble who was widowed as a young woman and set off on pilgrimage to Rome. She returned to found seven chapels and a nunnery on the River Maas. This river region is often considered the birthplace of medieval women's religious communities.

Some says the Beguines take their names from this local saint. On the right of Breda's chapel, is a window to St. Catharine of Alexandria, a 4th century martyr. The legends that surround her suggest she was a young, noble convert who saw a vision of the Madonna and child that convinced her of the veracity of Christianity. She is said to have been a scholar, and one version of her story says she was set up by the emperor Maximin to debate the leading court philosphers in hopes she would be discredited and recant. Her performance, however, had the opposite effect and convinced several to convert (perhaps even the emperor's wife). Catharine was sentenced to death by torture on a spiked wheel that broke when she was placed upon it. She was then beheaded. In the 6th century, the first monastery of the still undivided church was established in Sinai. It still exists. (See the monastery!) In the 15th century, Joan of Arc, said St. Catharine visited her in a vision giving her counsel on how to self-govern her life in virtue.

The Witch's orb. It's my husband
waving, not the devil. 

A herb garden of medicinal herbs fills the the cloister's center at Breda. A witch's orb, a reflective globe on a metal stand is there to remind that these communities existed in a pre-scientific world. The orb was thought to deter demons, diseases, and adversity. The Beguines were the "brides of Christ" and thought to be of great temptation to evil spirits or the devil. If he flew by or crept near he would see his own distorted image in the mirror and flee in fear.

The Beguines of Breda ran a textile repair and bleaching business. A great lawn remains where the spread church linens and laundry to dry. In the earliest centuries, they also prayed for the souls of the departed for a small fee. Grieving families would pay the women to remember the dead through intercession. Perhaps this aided them in grief and lessened their fears that their loved ones would get stuck in purgatory.

I pretended to talk to one of the last Beguines of Breda
depicted in a hologram in the museum.  

Cornelia Catherine Frijters, the last Beguine of Breda, died in 1990. Now 750 years after is founding, the 29 small brick row houses are rented to single women. Small gardens or outdoor sitting areas show individuality. A peek in the window reveals simple living in these medieval tiny houses. One can cross the main room with a couple of paces. This  remains a community of women who go about their business each day and return to the comaraderie of a cloister. In a new era they continue to live as independent, self-supporting women who do much good in the world.

Ann Griffith--God-seeker, poet, hymn writer (1776-1805)

In a Celtic Christianity course seventeen years ago in Wales A.M. “Donald” Allchin, noted theologian, mentioned Ann Griffiths, a young hymn writer from mid-Wales. He called her a Methodist-Calvinist poet. I was curious. How did she join these two different theological streams? Why was she remembered?  While the French and American revolutions were raging, she sought strength from her faith. Those in her community worried Napolean would push through England and Wales. She had little education but profound thoughts. She really  intrigued me.  I tucked my page of notes away and turned my attention to the rest of my Celtic course. We traveled to holy wells, monastic ruins and hill forts to see sacred Celtic sites. We boarded a ferry to Dublin to see Trinity College's The Book of Kells, yet it was the snippet of Ann Griffith’s story that grew roots in my imagination. If the chance to return came to Wales, I  vowed to find more about Griffiths. In the meantime, I found a digital library of her works through the University of Crardiff and got acquainted with her hymns. 

On my sabbatical in 2017, I returned to this amazing residential library where you sleep B&B style, eat dinner in a hall that turns into a tea shop by day, and meet interesting people from all over the English-speaking world. 

The crown jewel of the place is a Victorian-era library with spiral staircases, helpful librarians, great wi-fi, and a surplus of old and new books. And when you need a break from study, footpaths through the Gladstone estate wend through green fields of sheep and wildflowers.

First day, the librarians led me to the shelf on Welsh hymnody where I found three books on Ann Griffiths in English.  As I read, I repeatedly encountered a few geographical place names:

Powys—an ancient kingdom, now a sparcely populated region of Mid-Wales
Donalog—the nearest town on a two-laned (main) road to Ann Griffith’s home with a small chapel built in her memory
Pontrobert—where Ann walked to the local Calvinist-Methodist society
Llanfinhangel-yng-Ngwynfa—the village where she was baptized, married and buried
Dolwar Fach—the name of the family farm
River Vyrnwy—the river that wends through the area

In recent years, a seven-mile walking path had been established as a Ann Griffiths pilgrimage route. But how to get there? Would the weather hold out? Could I follow the map with all the Welsh names?  I spent an afternoon researching trains, buses and taxis. It became clear, I needed to rent a car. 

My husband, agreed to drive, if I would plan and navigate (with the help of a GPS). Keeping to the left side of the road was not the hard part. Navigating the roundabouts and narrow one-lane roads where backing up to give way is custom proved the larger challenge.

We were off. 

Ann [nee Thomas] Griffith lived her short twenty-nine years at Dolwar Fach. The youngest of five children, she learned to read and write Welsh through the church school at Llanfinhangel yng Ngwynfa. She was tutored for a brief time in English and managed rudimentary writing skills but did not speak it.   

Small sign on the the 20th century
church that grew from the
Methodist-Calvinist
society of the 19th century. 

At the age of nineteen she joined in the Methodist Calvinist society. [1]  A couple of years earlier, she had become “mistress” of the family farm after her mother died. Her father died, too, within a few years. At twenty-eight Ann married a local farmer named Thomas Griffiths but hers would not be a happily ever after story.  A short ten months after her wedding she gave birth to Elizabeth, who survived just a few days. Ann outlived her daughter by a week more. Death  also claimed her husband within a couple of years. How could this sad tale of lives cut short be the story of one of Wales’ celebrated literary poets and hymn writers?

Ann Griffith's wrote on scraps of paper. If she was caught while writing, she hid her work. She wrote for herself and did not think others would find her words useful. Her friend and house helper, Ruth Evans, found some and sang them, using known tunes. It was Ruth's memory and the oral and singing culture of Wales that enabled Ann's poetry to outlive her. 

A resurgence of interest in the past twenty-five years, has led to significant scholarly work on Ann's poetry. One of her fans is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who translated of one of her hymns and had it sung at his consecration in 2003.

I am holding the hymnal open to
 one of Griffiths's hymns in
her memorial chapel in Donalog.

Thirty-four hymns and eight personal letters comprise her literary legacy. Seven of the letters were written to John Hughes, a weaver by trade who led the local Methodist Calvinist society. The eighth letter was written to Elizabeth Evans, the sister of Ruth Evans, the singing maid who first sang Ann’s poems. Ruth Evans later married John Hughes who became Ann's first biographer a few years after her death. It’s the stuff of legends—a young, hidden poet's work is sung by the farm maid and written down by some literate traveler. Over the centuries, it reaches us .

Ann Griffith’s hymns are theologically astute, spare and beautiful. They weave biblical images with Calvinist views on the sovereignty of God and the depravity of the human condition alongside theological threads emphasizing Methodism’s  hope in experiential salvation.

Ann was raised in a devout and loving Anglican family that paused in the morning and evening to read from the Book of Common Prayer. Her family went to church regularly and the story is told that the dog accompanied them and waited under the pew. When the family didn't attend, the dog did.

Ann’s older brother became a Methodist, and Ann did not think highly of his decision. Then in the summer of 1796, as the story goes, Ann went to a nearby town to go dancing. There, she met a friend, who invited her to attend the independent chapel. For the first time, she heard a description of sin and a call to accept “true religion” which entailed a more serious surrender and sober life. By 1879, Ann joined the Methodists and was hosting, cooking and making socks for the itinerant preaches. Soon her home had become an official preaching point for the traveling Methodist preachers.

Travelling these same narrow roads by car was difficult. After more than an hour of travel none of the place names we were seeking had appeared on the roadside. I could tell my husband was doubting my plan. Then we saw a sign for Pontrobert. As we slowed to a crawl I scrutinized the church we were passing. Stop. “Let’s park and go back!”  We pulled to a side lane and walked by two other churches. One was the Wesleyan-Methodist chapel, now a trendy private home. The other, a tiny congregational church. The church I has first spotted on the main road had a worn sign that said “MC Seiat”.  I knew that ‘seiat’ meant society. The date on the church told me it was post-Ann and the grumpy shopkeeper next door, confirmed the locked church was opened on Sunday. He said we should turn right at the next main road to find the Ann Griffiths trail.

The Hughes home and attached chapel
where the society met still is stills standing.

As we approached the intersection I saw a sign that had John Hughes’s name in a string of Welsh words—“That’s Ann’s friend!” We turned and went up a narrow unpaved drive. There it was! John Hughes’ house with the chapel he had built alongside in the 1880s. A grave yard across the street had markers for Griffiths and Hughes—no doubt Ann’s siblings and their descendants. From my reading, I knew Ann was not buried there. A weathered map behind glass showed us the general direction of all the other sites we sought!

We headed up a narrow road and stopped after many twists and turns to confirm with some teenagers that we were still heading toward Llfinhangel—Ann Griffiths home. Place names are hard to pronounce in Welsh. Stony faces nodded yes. Michael said to me, “They have no idea what you asked them.” I said, “Maybe they do.”  Around another blind corner, we saw a group of people gathered near a pub. Yes, they pointed to the nearby church where Ann Griffith was buried. A nice woman said, "Make time to stop at Lake Vyrnwy." 

In the graveyard, I found the obelisk atop Ann’s grave. I stopped to pay attention. Birds sang and sheep bleated from the surrounding fields. The sky was filled with billowing clouds. Little had changed over the centuries. I sensed the peace of this place. I paused to give thanks for the life of Ann Griffiths, her husband, and their tiny daughter.

We headed down to Dolwar Fach, missed it, but found Donalog and the Memorial chapel where busts of Ann and John top the modest pillars. A hymnbook was open from recent use. How it pleased me to see this congregation still sang her songs.

We retraced our steps to Dolwar Fach, took another wrong turn that took us for a muddy but glorious walk along the River Vrynwy. We eventually found Ann’s family farm, dotted with sheep and protected by the newest owner’s dogs.

A road marker pointed to Lake Vrynwy. We were hungry and expected a nice view but found a magical place. The woman who sat across from us at dinner said: “It looks like the castle and lake from the Disney movie Frozen!” Yeah, it kinda did. We looked out at the still waters and retraced the day: imagining Ann working the farm, walking to the stone parish church as a child, then turning another direction as a young adult to walk miles meet with the new Methodists in a modest chapel. Throughout her twenty-eight years, she would have walked along the River Vrynwy toward this lovely lake. Being in her local surroundings gave her poetry texture and pathos.

Ann Griffith wrote poetry to help her understand what she was learning and experiencing about God. She had no idea anyone would ever read or sing her words. Two hundred and twelve years after her passing, this pilgrim learned from her faith and enjoyed the beauty of her praise:

Pilgrim, fainting in the tempest

Lift your gaze where he is found,

See the Lamb, our Mediator,

Where his vestments sweep the ground;

Faithfulness, his golden girdle;

Bells around his hem proclaim

Endless mercy for the sinner,

Full atonement in his name.

In your feeble state remember:

Ankle deep, the stream will rise

Like a great unfathomed river,

Measured for you in the skies;

Only resurrection’s children

Swim in floods so deep and wide;

Fathomless and shoreless waters,

From Bethesda’s mighty tide.

O, the depths of our salvation!

Mystery of godliness,

That the God of gods, appearing,

Wore our nature and our flesh;

Here, in his own person, suffered,

All the anger in our stead,

Until justice cried, ‘release him!

Right is done, atonement made!’

O, eternal rest and rapture,

When I labor here no more,

Found within that sea of wonders,

Where one never sees a shore;

Coming in to life abundant,

Where the Three in One is mine;

Boundless sea to swim forever;

One the human and divine!  

Ann Griffith, “Pilgrim, fainting in the tempest,”  Hymns and Letters, translated by Alan Gaunt and Alan Luff, (Stainer & Bell:London, 1999).

---

[1] In Wales the Methodist revival began primarily as a revival within the established church in South Wales. Efforts were made to create educational circuits and materials to educate the laity to read the Bible. In 1783 Thomas Charles settled in  nearby Bala and created a distinctive Methodist organization with new small groups called seiats. These societies met in farmhouses or other common buildings and sponsored outdoor preaching where travelling preachers called for a committed live of faith, a pure heart, and attendance at regular society meetings. Both the established and dissenting churches that embraced these “methods” retained a Calvinistic theology.      

Seeking Susanna Wesley in Epworth

Susanna Wesley (1669-1742) easily becomes a historical figure who reflects the preferred image of the one looking for her.


To prepare lectures and academic papers on Susanna Wesley, I have read her letters and essays*. Her voice is direct, theologically confident, and  focused on matters of faith. She is not prone to small talk beyond relaying family health concerns. She writes to promote right belief and faith in her children, resolve family and church conflicts. and address a lack of money to run her household--a recurring worry.

What might seeing the church in Epworth, standing in Susanna's kitchen and walking through the village where she raised her children and buried her husband reveal that her writings had not? Before heading to Lincolnshire, I had seen the memorial to her at the Wesley Chapel on City Road in London and walked through the nearby Bushkill cemetery where she is buried not far from poet William Blake. These two memorials mark her as mother of the Methodist movement, but they were made of stone and didn't seem to reflect the flesh and blood person behind the monuments.  

Would I find the model methodical mother that homeschoolers love in Epworth? Her most famous son, John, shared her writings “On Educating My Family” with the early Methodists commending his mother’s disciplined ways of teaching her sons and daughters to read and “do well” in the Lord’s sight. She gave birth to 19 children and 10 survived. She was the youngest of 25 children born to Samuel Annesley, a minister whose church in East London counted more than 800 congregants before he was forced out for nonconformist views. Her mother, Mary White, was his second wife, and that is all that is known about her. Susanna's whole life was lived surrounded by a large families.

Susanna  famously is remembered by her children for throwing her apron over her head when she needed some solitude and for allotting one-on-one time with each child. John’s time was on Thursday, his brother, Charles’, on Saturday.  One biographer, John Newton,  claims Susanna functioned as an informal spiritual director to John throughout his life. He claims John met with her after “heart, strangely warmed” experience in 1739 to do a life-review—a Puritan practice of retelling of God’s work to a trusted mentor after a major spiritual or religious experience to gain a larger view of God's ongoing guidance.

Most of the furniture in the Old Rectory
is representative of the time period. This
is though to have belonged to the family. 

Would I find  in Epworth a prototype of self-assured public female leadership sought by women in ministry?  Susanna knew her own mind and was convinced that ministry that brought glory to God would make one seem “peculiar” to the world. Wagging tongues did not change her mind or actions. Early in life, at 13, she aligned herself with the Church of England, choosing a different path from her Presbyterian parents. At 19 Susanna married Anglican Samuel Wesley, who had  turned away from his father's nonconformist views, too. After a brief time in London, Samuel became curate at Epworth, where the couple lived for the next 40 years. Samuel was a poet as well as a minister and spent lots of time and money on his literary dreams. His debts were a source of marital stress. Susanna and Samuel were also known to harbor conflicting political views. Differing ideas about who was England's rightful monarch, led Samuel to declare if she did not pray for the king, they would not share the same bed. Samuel soon left for London, but John's birth, proved that he returned and that this vow was not ultimately kept.

Michael and Rebecca at
Samuel & Susanna's place 

In 1711, Susanna conducted family prayers on Sunday afternoons in her home when her husband was again away in London. Dozens of people came to hear her teach and read one of her absent husband's sermons. (She did this because the curate left in charge of St. Andrew’s Church in Epworth did not “do well” and people were not attending church). Her husband, Samuel heard about the controversy and wrote home for her to stop. She said she would do so if he “commanded” her to do so. He  (wisely) did not.

 After Samuel died, Susanna left Epworth  and moved in with Samuel, Jr. who died before she did. She moved among her daughters' homes in her widowhood before ending her years with John at the Foundry in London.

Shortly before she died, she wrote a broadside pamphlet stepping into the theological controversies between John Wesley and Charles Whitefield, an early member of Oxford’s holy club and successor to John’s and Charles’s failed mission to Georgia. Susanna weighed in favor of  ‘universal salvation’ vs.  ‘limited election.’ Now in her 70s  she both defended the reputations of her sons and made the case for God’s love extending to all who would receive.  

St. Andrew's Church, Epworth

Getting to Epworth required navigating many roundabouts while driving on the left side of the road. It was a relief to turn into the village and find Wesley House, the local bed and breakfast, that is kept in business by people like me seeking a connection with the Wesleys.

Epworth is a charming, rural village with lots of green, open areas. St. Andrew’s Church, a 12^th century, stone structure is tucked away at the edge of town next to a large field. The tidy graveyard remains serene with walking paths and a marker identifying  Samuel’s grave.  John famously preached standing upon it on June 6, 1742 when his offers to assist at services were refused. The early Methodists were labeled “enthusiasts”  and the new curate did not want the Wesleys stirring things up in his church. John’s father had served the parish for 40 years, and John had returned there from Oxford to serve the nearby church at Wroot before going to Georgia as a missionary. The local community knew him well. He did not experience a hometown welcome and the experience left an uneasiness in John about Epworth for many years.

We visited 265 years after first John preached outdoors In Epworth. He recalled in his journal, “I stood near the east end of the church upon my father’s tomb and cried, ‘The kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost!’”  It was easy to imagine dozens of people standing on the slight rise near the grave listening to him on a summer night.

A short walk from the church, the worn market cross near the square is said to also be a location where he preached. Would I have gone to hear John preach? Probably. Would I have been drawn by his spirited preaching and rousing antics? I am not sure. Curiosity would have made me want to hear him and evaluate his claims for myself.  

A short walk to the east, is the Old Rectory. The brick Queen-Anne style house replaced the thatched house that burned when John Wesley was six-years-old nearly trapping him in the flames. His  mother saw his rescue as providential proof that God had something in store for John. Now restored with 18^th century furnishings, it was easy to imagine the large family climbing the stairs, gathering by the fire or crowding into the sunny kitchen. My favorite places were outside in the physic garden where John’s favorite medicinal herbs are grown and the orchard where some of the trees date from the time the Wesleys were in residence. I could imagine the family picking herbs and apples and the kids sneaking off to play among the trees. (Susanna did not prioritize play. Learning, devotion and service were higher priorities).

Standing in the orchard, I looked across the nearby field and could see the statue of John Wesley that was erected in 2003 on the 300^th anniversary of his birth. It seemed fitting that John was standing in a preaching pose looking out at a field of sheep. He was always seeking the lost ones.

Susanna was present in photos in the house and stories told. The guide pointed out a small bed with a very old patchwork quilt. It was original; she would have used to keep warm. That was a personal glimpse but little else gave me a sense of her outside of her role as mother and mentor. The kitchen was in a sunny corner. It was easy to see the children working nearby as she cooked or rocked a baby but it was harder to imagine dozens straining to hear her on a Sunday afternoon reading out a sermon or holding a class meeting. 

Just a few blocks south, is Wesley Memorial Church built after the Methodist church separated from the Church of England. John and Charles are remembered in portraits in the entry and in life-sized stained-glass profiles over the chancel. The communion table is said to have come from Saint Andrew's and been used by two generations of Wesleys.

I walked to the brass baptismal font and saw my own reflection in it as I bent to read the inscription, “Erected to the Glory of God and Given in Reverent Memory of Susannah Wesley, Mother of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A.”  Seeing myself in the bowl of Christian initiation moved me as the stone memorials and sunny kitchen had not. Susanna Wesley had once written, “There are few if any, that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime of life in hopes to save the souls of their children, which they may be saved without so much ado; for that was my principle intention, however unskillfully and unsuccessfully managed.” She had given her life to the primary vocation of all Christians, to give one’s life to serve those nearby and witness to God's persistent love in a challenging world.


I stood there and thought about her children, those nearest to her. She had buried nine, including a couple sets of twins. Daughter Molly lived with a disability making walking a challenge.  After one of the fires that decimated her home, the children had been scattered to various families. No doubt grateful for help, she also rued the habits and attitudes they brought back home. She watched her three sons go to Oxford and return clergyman, but then the younger sons choose revivalism and non-ecclesial tactics that did not initially make much sense to her or to her oldest son, Samuel, who opposed the Methodist movement. Six of her seven daughters had disastrous marriages. The stories of abuse, polygamy and early death are heartbreaking. Only Anne and son, Charles, seemed to marry happily. Then as her life was near its end, the revivals were taking off, and it looked like her sons may "do well" for God, they came under attack. It is my conclusion that she wrote her furious tract defending them and the family name as much as their shared theological view.

Leaving Epworth, I ruminated on what I had seen. Susanna Wesley knew that lowering a child into the waters of faith would not inoculate against hardship, misunderstanding, suffering or early death. She knew, however, that it would ready them to face life trusting that provisions might be slim or friends fickle, but faith in God's saving and sustaining action was a sure thing. She bet her life on it.

The Susanna Wesley, I found at Epworth became three-dimensional while looking in the baptismal waters. Birthing, Washing, Cleansing. Claiming. Purifying. Sustaining. Saving. Sanctifying. Burying. Raising. Co-laborer with Christ is who I saw reflected back at me.

* Read her letters, essays and pamphlet in Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings, ed. Charles Wallace, Jr. Oxford University Press, 1997.

A window between worlds--Dame Julian of Norwich (c.1342-1430)

Oops! We misread the time for the Sunday service. We tiptoed up the aisle in St. Julian's Church in Norwich as a resonate voice said, “The Lord be with you."We slipped into the front pew of the main sanctuary where we could hear but not see inside the adjoining chapel.I leaned back in the pew, my ears attuned to the familiar thanksgiving prayer.

My eyes fixed on an icon of Dame Julian holding a hazelnut in her raised hand and her book, Revelation of Divine Love, the first written in English by a woman, in the other. A rendering of this church, named for Julian, a male saint who predated the writer-mystic-saint who drew me here. Her given name is lost to time.  

There is a wonderful geometry to the icon. In the top left corner, Jesus reads from a scroll. A diagonal line can be drawn from Jesus’ eyes, through the scroll, the hazelnut, Julian’s revelations, and the small cell alongside the Church. Spiritually speaking, the line never stops it just exits the icon and goes on through eternity. The icon writer left no doubt that Dame Julian's life directly follows the way of Jesus. 

Dame Julian has drawn me to this hard-to-find chapel off a small alleyway. I have hoped to make pilgrimage here for more than 25 years. 

Soon the priest offers the final blessing and exits in front of us with a nods, He heads to the back of the church. A couple of elderly white man, a middle-aged black man and several women of various ages exit shrine and greet us. One man said, “You could have come in. There is always room.”  I wished we had.

We stepped down into the shrine and pause at a bowl of hazelnuts and slips of paper with Julian’s famous words: In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was generally answered thus, ‘It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It lasts and ever shall because God loves it.

I took a hazelnut, held it, and walked slowly around the room. To the left was is a small window that opens from the sanctuary into the shrine and a stone crucifix with the inscription “Here dwelt Mother Julian, anchoress of Norwich c.1342-1430, ‘Thou art enough for me.” On the right, four leaded glass windows look out to a garden and add light to the small, sunken room.

The priest, now in clerical collar and no vestments, re-enters the room. As he cleans the chalice and straightens the linen, he tell us that Julian probably attended her own funeral in the church. The local bishop would have said the office for the dead to commemorate her death to the world before she would have been sealed into this “anchorhold” to live out the rest of her life. She voluntarily declared her own life finished so she could devote the rest of her years to anchoring others to Christ through prayer.  

The small window above the stone crucifix allowed her to see the raised host—the high point of the Eucharist— and to listen to those seeking prayer and guidance. Margery Kempe, who wrote The Book of Margery Kempe, around 1430 described her visit to the anchoress Julian relaying much of what we know about Julian's life of withdrawl. Margery, a married woman with many children, felt a call to the religious life. She traveled to visit Julian and described her vision of Christian vocation seeking support and verification. Julian told her if her visions did not contradict the worship of God and helped others, they could be trusted. 

Just a few windows, one that reached the church, and a few others that extended into the garden, were Julian's portals to life. The anchoress, while living in solitary, remained a community person. She held the people of her plague-ridden village in prayer and wrote down her visions as a divine offering to help others find hope in such suffering. 

Father Chris said Julian was a young widow who had lost a child to the plague. She turned the tragic end of her family into a life of compassion for others. She was dead to her own future but not cut off Christ's hope or from the needs of the world. This cell is less than half a mile from the docks where goods from Europe came and went from Norwich’s medieval market. 

Julian nearly died in her cell on 8 May 1373. In that liminal time, she received her visions. She wrote them down in a short version. Twenty years later she wrote a longer version.

Father Chris said, “People are drawn here because of Julian’s, life but it is all of those who have prayed and brought their faith here that makes this place holy.” He wanted to clarify that this shrine is not a place where one holy woman lived centuries ago, but it is a living community of people who continue to seek God’s help in times of suffering.  

Father Chris left to pay a visit. His presiding at the Eucharist and care for his flock moved me. I was a pilgrim seeking to touch sacred history. He was the embodiment of the holy work in the present.

Julian's actual cell was demolished after the Reformation as the zealous new Protestants sought to erase all signs of monastic life. Centuries later heavy bombing during World War II  unearthed the foundation stones which showed the outlines of the cell. The current shrine was rebuilt on this footprint although several feet below the original floor. That information made the room make more sense. The window over the crucifix would have been at eye level rather than overhead.  I could better imagine Julian sitting there listening to those who came seeking aid.

On the way out of the church, we stopped at a bulletin board asking for prayers that would be brought to the Friday service. I added the name of a dear friend I had just learned was suffering from a debilitating disease. Julian wrote of the concept of “oneing”—that suffering and love make us one with Christ and one with each other. 

We left the church and headed across the Lady Julian bridge that spans the River Wensum.  A new development of modern restaurants and a theater stands on the other side. We stopped for a coffee and to ponder all that we had just seen. People were walking around enjoying the warmth of a Sunday morning unaware that there was a nearby place of prayer anchoring their city in divine love. 

I remain awed by those who hold the world before God through intercessory prayer. I want to live in that eternal line that connects all of life--Christ, creation, creatures, revelation, church--with the way of Jesus as Julian did. 

  

Married English Martyrs--Anne Askew (1521-1546) and Margaret Clitherow (1556-1586)

I first toured the Tower of London when I was 18. I keenly remember seeing display cases showcasing the crown jewels and crowns worn by centuries of monarchs. My mind, then was on an imagined life of royalty and splendor. On my second tour of London, decades later, as we floated past the Tower on a boat on the Thames, I more fully understood the heavy iron gates under the tower were designed to receive religious and political prisoners who threatened the crown. On my third, and most recent visit, to the Thames, my thoughts were of a twenty-five year old woman named Anne Askew, whose fame is as the first woman to be tortured in the Tower. 

English religious history is complex but important to understand why good women would be killed by their own government for Christian convictions.

The earliest Christian missionaries reached the Britain by the second century but waves of raiding Vandals and local warfare sacked monasteries and plundered churches over the next couple of centuries. Renewed missionary efforts in the 6th century by Augustine of Canterbury in the south and Aidan of Lindisfarne to the north (and countless others) led to eventual spread of Christianity during the next millennium. Great monasteries, soaring cathedrals, and simple parish churches dot the landscape showing Christianity’s long history in England.

In 1532 there was a divorce—two divorces, really. Parliament declared Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church divorcing the English Church from Rome just as the king divorced his first wife Katherine of Aragon, something the Church in Rome would not grant. Henry VII decided he could have as many wives as he wished and reign over state and church without anyone’s oversight.

Calls for religious change in England and on the Continent had been sounding for a long time. In 1376 John Wycliffe (1330-1384), prominent Oxford theologian and early translator of the Bible in English, called for reform asserting that scripture was the highest authority in Christian doctrine rather than the pope or clergy, that communion bread--while taking on the virtues of Christ, remained bread--and that Christians learned best by hearing and reading the Bible in their own language. By 1517 Martin Luther (1483-1546) had become megaphone for reformation. He picked up earlier calls for scripture as the highest Christian authority over the church officials, for individual salvation by faith alone, and reading the Bible in the spoken language of the people. William Tyndale, another Oxford professor, translated the Bible into English in 1526 while on the Continent and was executed ten years later for it (strangled then burnt). The long and violent schism between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, in all its variation, had begun.  

Wycliffe and Tyndale translated the Bible in English. Luther

in German, Erasmus in Latin.

In 1543 King Henry VII published A necessary doctrine and erudition for any Christian man, set further by the kynges maiestie of Englande, commonly called “The King’s Book.” 

The king embraced the ideals of the reformation to detach from Roman oversight, but he did not affirm the Protestant ideal of freedom of conscience before God. Persons, especially priests, with views that threatened the king/supreme leader of the church would be asked if they affirmed “The King’s Book.” Church councils and religious institution officially disputed doctrine and battled about divine authority while ordinary people decided what to believe and what belief required. 

Anne Askew claimed a faith that differed some from that of her family and King, and it cost her. 

Anne Askew (1521-1546) was born in Lincolnshire to a prominent and wealthy family. She was among the 10% of the population could write in English--more could read. During her early life, Anne read the Bible, probably Tyndale’s version which was illegally circulating. She began to associate with local evangelicals--Protestants who met in Bible studies and advocated preaching outside the established church. When her sister, Martha, died on the verge of marrying Thomas Kyme, Anne’s father required fifteen-year-old Anne to marry him instead. Thomas was a committed Catholic and Anne, an increasingly vocal Protestant.  After bearing two children, the contention between the couple grew, and Thomas threw Anne out of the house. In her early twenties, she traveled to London to seek a divorce on the basis of “scriptural incompatibility.” The divorce was denied and Anne began to refer to herself by her unmarried name and began to distribute Bibles, speak publicly, and meet with Protestants within the English court. 

By this time, Henry VIII was married to his 6^th and last wife, Catherine Parr, a Protestant sympathizer. Henry VIII was a sworn enemy of Martin Luther and did not want his Queen associated with this new brand of Christianity.

Intrigue about Queen Catherine’s beliefs led to suspicion of those in her circle of influence. Anne Askew was arrested and interrogated more than once in the hopes that she would divulge the names of Protestant sympathizers close to the Queen. While imprisoned, a document of her interrogation, purportedly in her own words, was published after her death by John Bale, who added his own commentary which compared Askew to Blandina, a Christian woman martyred in 177.  Anne’s account of her interrogation can be found here: http://anne-askew.humanities.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/First_Examination_Of_Anne_Askew.pdf 

A poem, "The Ballad of Anne Askew" recounts her conversion story and knowledge of her pending martydom.  https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/16century/topic_3/asballad.htm

Askew’s answers to her interrogators show resolute defiance and clever ability to deflect leading questions. When asked what she said to The Kings Book, she said she had never seen it. When asked if a bit of the communion host fell to the floor and a beast (mouse) ate it did the beast receive God? She replied, since you asked the question perhaps you care enough to answer it. Perhaps the most remarkable part of her defense is her felicity with the scriptures she was not supposed to be reading. Anne was taken to the Tower of London and tortured on the rack. 

By Robert Crowley [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Unable to stand, Anne was bound to the stake with chains alongside three men also accused of heresy in Smithfield, on 16 July 1546. 

Her final prayer recorded in Foxes Book of the Martyrs describes she understood she would die for her beliefs. (A few choice bits are in boldface.)

 "I, Anne Askew, of good memory, although my merciful Father hath given me the bread of adversity, and the water of trouble, yet not so much as my sins have deserved, confess myself here a sinner before the throne of his heavenly Majesty, desiring his forgiveness and mercy. And forasmuch as I am by the law unrighteously condemned for an evil doer concerning opinions, I take the same most merciful God of mine, who hath made both heaven and earth, to record, that I hold no opinions contrary to his most holy word. And I trust in my merciful Lord, who is the giver of all grace, that he will graciously assist me against all evil opinions which are contrary to his blessed verity. For I take him to witness, that I have done, and will, unto my life's end, utterly abhor them to the uttermost of my power.

            "But this is the heresy which they report me to hold: that after the priest hath spoken the words of consecration, there remaineth bread still. They both say, and also teach it for a necessary article of faith, that after those words be once spoken, there remaineth no bread, but even the self-same body that hung upon the cross on Good Friday, both flesh, blood, and bone. To this belief of theirs say I, nay. For then were our common creed false, which saith, that he sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and from thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead. Lo, this is the heresy that I hold, and for it must suffer the death. But as touching the holy and blessed supper of the Lord, I believe it to be a most necessary remembrance of his glorious sufferings and death. Moreover, I believe as much therein as my eternal and only Redeemer Jesus Christ would I should believe.

            "Finally, I believe all those Scriptures to be true, which he hath confirmed with his most precious blood. Yea, and as St. Paul saith, those Scriptures are sufficient for our learning and salvation, that Christ hath left here with us; so that I believe we need no unwritten verities to rule his church with. Therefore look, what he hath said unto me with his own mouth in his holy gospel, that have I, with God's grace, closed up in my heart, and my full trust is, as David saith, that it shall be a lantern to my footsteps.

            "There be some do say, that I deny the eucharist or sacrament of thanksgiving; but those people do untruly report of me. For I both say and believe it, that if it were ordered like as Christ instituted it and left it, a most singular comfort it were unto us all. But as concerning your mass, as it is now used in our days, I do say and believe it to be the most abominable idol that is in the world: for my God will not be eaten with teeth, neither yet dieth he again. And upon these words that I base now spoken, will I suffer death.

  

Anne was officially burnt at the stake for reading the Bible and trusting it to be the supreme guide for her life and for seeing communion as a memorial meal instituted by Christ in the gospels. She was made a public lesson for Protestants. Beware, your beliefs might get you killed. 

 ******

Photo by Christine Anderson 

Margaret Clitherow (1556-1586) is the Catholic converse of Anne Askew. Margaret was born a decade after Anne’s death to a merchant Protestant family. Anne converted to Catholicism in 1574 after her marriage to John Clitherow, a wealthy butcher. Her husband belonged to the state church but had a Catholic brother who was a priest. John paid his wife’s fees and supported her when she was later imprisoned for not attending services at the Cathedral as required by law. Common folk were fined 12 pence for not attending church and 100 for have attended a public Catholic mass. Priests who would not take the oath of supremacy and who continued to arrange for or say mass using the Catholic rite were to be punished by death. From 1549, all churches in England, whether identified as Catholic, Anglican or Puritan were to use the service outlined in the earliest version of the Book of Common Prayer.

A few weeks after reading Anne Askew’s words and seeing her fidelity to faith and trust in the scriptures unto death, I walked into the St Winfred's Catholic Church that stands in the shadows of the Anglican Cathedral at York and read the handwritten list of martyrs associated with the church. There was one woman’s name: Margaret Clitherow.  A walk around the sanctuary led to a statue of her. After reading of her  martyrdom, I lit a candle in her memory. What a terrible story.

Margaret’s home became an underground railroad of sorts for these fugitive priests. She hid them in an underground room and other locations around York. When her eldest child neared adulthood, it was arranged for him to travel to France to train for the priesthood. When this was discovered, her house was raided, the underground room discovered, and she was charged with abetting fugitive priests.

Margaret had three children and was pregnant with a fourth. She chose to remain silent to keep from implicating them. It was decreed that she would be put to death by crushing. The door to her own home was laid on top of her and piled with heavy slabs of rock until she was crushed along with the child she was carrying.

 Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins memorialized her:

Christ lived in Margaret Clitheroe.

She caught the crying of those Three,

The Immortals of the eternal ring,

The Utterer, Uttered, Uttering,

And witness in her place would she.

She not considered whether or no

She pleased the Queen and Council. So

To the death with Margaret Clitheroe!

(To whole poem is here: https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/margaret-clitheroe).

Margaret was crushed for wishing to worship as she believed and for seeking to protect priest who she believed mediated  Christ and the apostolic authority of the church. She also became a public lesson for Catholics. Beware, your beliefs might get you killed.

Religious toleration in England would not officially be declared until more than a century later in 1689. By this time many Puritans—those who wanted to purify the Established church (of its Catholicism) had fled England for other places, including Plymouth in 1620, where we know them as the Thanksgiving Pilgrims. English Catholics who wanted to flee the requirements of the Book of Common Prayer fled to Maryland settled in 1634.  

The lesson I took from my journey down the Thames through York is this: Beware when the government takes sides in the religious lives of its citizenry. The fears of threatened leaders can lead to scapegoating vulnerable people of conscience. History reminds us, that women, even married or pregnant women, who defy social and religious convention are easy targets for social and ecclesial punishment. The Christian call to love one’s neighbor and enemy alike can be conveniently forgotten in the frenzy to maintain political power.