October 25 -- Feast of Saint Margaret Clitherow

Margaret Clitherow joins Margaret Ward and thirty-eight others in the collective celebration of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

[Okay, let's acknowledge that the number is at least double that, since in retrospect all reasonable people can agree that the Protestants who were killed under Mary were just as much martyrs as the Catholics who were killed under Henry, Elizabeth, and James.]

The Saint herself

I don't really want to consider forty martyrs right now.  God willing (Inshallah, to be wildly and widely ecumenical), I will still be blogging thirty-eight years from now and consider the last of them, but today, let us focus on Margaret Clitherow.

I don't know what to make of the fact that she was born in Anglican England and converted to Roman Catholicism after having three kids.  Or maybe in the midst of having three kids.  At least her husband remained an Anglican, which was lucky, because then the kids were not fully orphaned when the authorities came knocking.  Then again, I guess I do know what to make of it -- it stinks.  Her kids needed a mom more than the Lord needed another martyr, and further, I cannot believe that the Lord was so narrow as to even recognize the difference between a Roman Catholic and an Anglican, let alone give a damn.  But that's just my (potentially sacrilegious) impression of the Lord, and I don't claim any special insight.

The Shrine at the Shambles

Anyway, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about Margaret is that her house is now a shrine. Sort of.  They didn't get her house exactly right -- she lived just down the street from the present-day shrine -- but it is still in The Shambles, which is the cool part.  It is at at an address in York called The Shambles, which has a wonderfully-Harry Potter sort of sound to it.  And to add to its charm, they cut a hole from her house to the one next door so priests could scurry away whenever Mass was raided by the left-footed thugs who were paid to draw and quarter Papists.

Except that one time they didn't get to scurry away.  She got busted for harboring priests, and in an attempt to get her to plead, they laid her on top of a small, sharp stone and then put a door upon her.  On that they placed weights, crushing the air out of her slowly while the stone pressed into her spine.  She refused to plead so they crushed her to death.

The Hand of Margaret at Ladyewell

Actually, the sergeants in charge of extracting her plea could not bear to torture her, so they hired four beggars to do it for them.  According to the wikipedia, Elizabeth I wrote to the judges following her execution, criticizing them for torturing and killing a woman, which (to quote Carl Spackler, is nice).  

Margaret's hand was removed from her body and preserved as a holy relic.  Bar Convent, York, had a hand that they claim is hers, but so does Ladyewell.  Of course, she had two hands when they put the door on top of her, so it could be that both are telling the truth. 

Saint Margaret has an individual feast on March 26.