Saint Perpetua across the Middle Ages:

Mother, Gladiator, Saint 1st Edition

Margaret Cotter-Lynch (Auth.)
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T H E N E W M I D D L E A G E S

SAINT PERPETUA
across the

Middle Ages
MOTHER , GLADIATOR , SAINT

Margaret Cotter-Lynch
 The New Middle Ages

Series Editor
Bonnie Wheeler
English & Medieval Studies
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas, USA
The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies
of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s
history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series
includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14239
 Margaret Cotter-Lynch

Saint Perpetua across

the Middle Ages
Mother, Gladiator, Saint
Margaret Cotter-Lynch
Department of English, Humanities, and Languages
Southeastern Oklahoma State University
Durant, Oklahoma, USA

The New Middle Ages

ISBN 978-1-137-47963-1 ISBN 978-1-137-46740-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-46740-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952836

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover image © National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York
For Mabel and Ruby
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It takes a village to write a book, as it does to raise a child, and I owe

many debts of gratitude for help and support. Joe Pucci first introduced
me to Perpetua when I was an undergraduate, and has encouraged me in
my love for the Latin Middle Ages ever since. Catherine Brown, Peggy
McCracken, and Charles Witke nurtured my interest in Perpetua in gradu-
ate school, even when she turned out to be a project too big for my disser-
tation. Cathy Sanok guided me through the intricacies of how to research
medieval saints and think through their gender. Bonnie Wheeler has con-
sistently and fiercely believed in this book, and me, for years. Her constant
insistence that one can simultaneously write a book, raise two kids, and
teach a 4-4 load has been inspirational. Irina Dumitrescu kindly listened to
and provided input on my reading of the Old English Martyrology. Felice
Lifshitz generously and carefully read the entire draft and provided invalu-
able suggestions. In addition, numerous colleagues, at numerous confer-
ences over the years, have offered support and asked probing questions to
help further my thinking on these texts; all of their help is appreciated. Of
course, any errors that remain are fully my own.
My students at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and Southern
Methodist University (SMU) have also helped me to think and reminded
me why it is worth doing. I particularly thank the students in my medieval
Latin seminar at SMU, who helped me to work through close readings
of several of these texts, and Hannah Jones, who had the (mis)fortune of
writing her honors thesis on Augustine at the same time as I was revising
Chap. 3, and who helped me to grapple with Augustine’s positions on
gender and martyrdom.

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due to the Newberry Library, the National Humanities

Center, the South Central Modern Language Association, the Center for
Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan, and the
Organized Research Fund at Southeastern Oklahoma State University for
grant funding.
Finally, and most importantly, thanks to the team who keeps me going
on a daily basis. Alistair Maeer and Amy Hoffman offered constant encour-
agement; when I didn’t trust myself, I still trusted them, and so kept
going. I am very fortunate to have a deeply supportive family, including
those both near and far. Joan and Barry Cotter put in extra grandparent
duty as I finished the manuscript, and Ruby and Mabel are excited that
Mommy is writing (and finishing!) a book. Most importantly, I thank
Sean, for all the small and big things, every day, that make this book and
so much else possible, and especially for feeding me yummy Indian food.
 CONTENTS

Introduction: Remembering Perpetua 1

1 The Passio Perpetuae 15

2 The Acta Perpetuae 43

3 Saint Augustine’s Sermons on Perpetua 63

4 Perpetua in the Early Middle Ages 87

5 Perpetua in Medieval England 113

6 Dominican Legendaries and the Legenda Aurea 137

ix
x CONTENTS

Conclusion: Perpetua Remembered 155

Bibliography 157

Index 165
 Introduction: Remembering Perpetua

In late February of 203 CE, a 22-year-old nursing mother named Vibia

Perpetua was imprisoned in Carthage on charges of being a Christian. Deeply
worried about the welfare of her infant son, she wrote in her prison diary:

Novissime macerabar sollicitudine infantis ibi. Tunc Tertius et Pomponius,

benedicti diaconi qui nobis ministrabant, constituerunt praemio, uti paucis
horis emissi in meliorem locum carceris refrigeraremus. Tunc exeuntes de
carcere universi sibi vacabant: ego infantem lactabam iam inedia defectum;
sollicita pro eo adloquebar matrem et confortabam fratrem, commendabam
filium; tabescebam ideo quod illos tabescere videram mei beneficio. Tales
sollicitudines multis diebus passa sum; et usurpavi ut mecum infans in carcere
maneret; et statim convalui et relevata sum a labore et sollicitudine infantis,
et factus est mihi carcer subito praetorium, ut ibi mallem esse quam alicubi.

Last of all, I was consumed with worry for my infant in that dungeon. Then
Tertius and Pomponius, the blessed deacons who ministered to us, arranged
for a bribe that we should be released for a few hours to revive ourselves in
a better part of the prison. I nursed my baby, who was now weak from hun-
ger. In my worry for him, I spoke to my mother concerning the baby and
comforted my brother. I entrusted my son to them. I suffered grievously
when I saw how they suffered for me. I endured such worry for many days,
and I arranged for my baby to stay in prison with me. Immediately I grew
stronger, and I was relieved of the anxiety and worry I had for my baby.
Suddenly the prison became my palace, so that I wanted to be there rather
than anywhere else.1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

M. Cotter-Lynch, Saint Perpetua across the Middle Ages,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-46740-9_1
2 M. COTTER-LYNCH

Approximately one thousand years later, Jacob of Voragine—later, bishop

of Genoa—recounted the story this way:

Parentes antem beatae Perpetuae cum viro accurrentes infantem parvulum

beatae Perpetuae, qui adhuc lactabatur, adduxerunt et videns eam pater
stantem ante praefectum, eadens in faciem dixit: filia mea dulcissima, miser-
ere mei et iuius moestissimae matris tuae et huius miserrimi viri tui, qui post
te vivere non valebit. Perpetua vero immobilis stabat. Tunc pater filium ad
collum eius iactavit et ipse et mater et maritus eius manus tenentes et flentes
osculabantur eam dicentes: miserere nostri, filia, et vive nobiscum. At illa
proiiciens parvulum et illos repellens ait: discedite a me, inimici Dei, quia
non novi vos.2

Then the parents of blessed Perpetua and her husband came, bringing
Perpetua’s infant child, whom she was still nursing. When her father saw
her standing before the prefect, he fell on his face and cried: “My sweetest
daughter, have pity on me and on your sad, sad mother and on your pitiable
husband, who will not be able to live without you!” Perpetua, however,
was unmoved. Then her father laid her son upon her shoulder, and he and
her mother and husband held her hands and wept, kissing her and saying:
“Have mercy on us, daughter, and stay alive with us!” But she threw the
infant from her and repulsed her parents, saying: “Get away from me, you
enemies of God, because I do not know you!”3

The differences between these two versions of St. Perpetua’s story are
dramatic. Perpetua’s third-century self-authored account of her arrest and
imprisonment portray an intelligent, well-educated, and deeply thoughtful
woman, struggling with the competing claims of religious faith and famil-
ial love. Her story is full of subtleties in her simultaneous adoption of the
roles of noblewoman, mother, publicly vocal Christian leader, and eventu-
ally, martyr. As my undergraduate students will attest, she comes across as
quite sympathetic. Jacob of Voragine’s version, meanwhile, is character-
ized by sharp dichotomies and caricatured moments; Perpetua becomes a
comic-book super-martyr, clear in her mission, unmoved by human moti-
vations and family ties, admirable but certainly not imitable.
The early text is remarkable for the ways in which Perpetua and her
anonymous redactor figure the relationship between her body, her gender,
and her sanctity. Perpetua’s gendered body is a site for miracles, as when her
lactating breasts miraculously dry up without pain. Meanwhile, the physi-
cal ordeal of martyrdom is what makes her (together with her companions
of both genders) a saint. However, even while the text foregrounds her
 INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING PERPETUA 3

physical body, Perpetua’s account reveals a fluid conception of gender in

which, echoing Galatians 3:28, there is neither male nor female in Christ;
this contention, subtly present throughout the Passio, reaches its apogee
in her famous fourth dream (tellingly omitted from Voragine’s version).
In this dream, Perpetua becomes a gladiator who physically battles the
devil, represented as an Egyptian, in the arena. Here, Perpetua describes
herself as at once male and female, since she claims that she has become
masculine, while she continues to refer to herself with feminine-gendered
adjectives and pronouns, and is finally addressed as “filia” (“daughter”)
by the trainer announcing her victory. Passio Perpetuae thus provides a
complex and subtle articulation of the relationship between gender and
sanctity, in which gender is a fluid category with apparently little bearing
on one’s status as saint.
A thousand years later, Voragine’s version of the story is characterized
by clear dichotomies and conflict. Perpetua, in Voragine’s version, is not
listed under her own saint’s day (March 7); rather, her story is appended
to that of St. Saturninus of Toulouse, as an explanation for the poten-
tial confusion between the French St. Saturninus and the African one
who was imprisoned and martyred with Perpetua. The emphasis is thus
not on Perpetua personally, but upon the group of Carthaginian martyrs
as a whole; she is listed last, after Saturninus, Saturus, Revocatus, and
Felicity, and singled out only for her noble birth. Jacob’s Perpetua is a
new Christian convert in stark and at times violent opposition with her
father, mother, and husband; her father chastises her for bringing “dis-
honor on her family.”4 Her father seems to not know that she is a Christian
until she tells him, at which point, he physically attacks her in a rage.
When her father, mother, husband, and son together entreat her to recant,
Perpetua ferociously rejects them, calling them enemies of God. Similarly,
Felicity rejects any relationship with her husband. The emphasis through-
out Jacob’s narrative is on the unity of the group of five martyrs, in vio-
lent opposition to all others—both family and persecutors. In the Legenda
Aurea, the context and message of Perpetua’s story is clear: she is one of
many loyal Christians who reject the evil influence of a pagan family in
order to find a new family in Christ, and a new community in martyrdom.
Perpetua, in this case, is contextualized within a larger model of Christian
exemplarity. Her clear and complete rejection of earthly, and specifically
familial, connections clearly recalls the topos of virgin martyrs (in spite of
the obvious fact that Perpetua is not a virgin). In the process, Perpetua
is stripped of nearly all the empathetic—one might say human—aspects
4 M. COTTER-LYNCH

evident in her own version of the story. Rather than a woman deeply torn
between love for her family and faith in her God, Jacob’s Perpetua is clear
in her choices, coming off as a miraculous object of wonder, rather than a
relatably human model for imitation.
The differences between Perpetua’s early account of her own mar-
tyrdom and the thirteenth-century version made popular by Jacob of
Voragine are profound. Both agree that a young woman named Perpetua,
who was nursing an infant at the time of her arrest, was martyred in the
arena at Carthage along with several companions. However, the two sto-
ries—for they are, I argue, indeed two different stories—attach radically
different significance to this event, and portray a radically different woman
at the center (or not) of it. This book traces how the European Middle
Ages got from one version to the other, in the process radically transform-
ing the cultural memory attached to the consistently popular saint.
The foundational question of this book is: how was Perpetua remem-
bered, by whom, and to what purpose? Tracing the recurrence and per-
mutations of Perpetua’s story in different times and places through the
Middle Ages not only elucidates the history of Perpetua’s own cult, but
also provides a case study of the ways in which the stories of saints—
and texts more generally—circulated and were reformulated throughout
the Middle Ages. For the past twenty-five years, Mary Carruthers’ work,
supported by more recent discoveries on memorial function in cogni-
tive studies, has underpinned fruitful investigations of the relationship
between texts, memory, and culture. We now recognize the very concept
of memory as culturally contingent, even as memory (both collective and
individual) shapes culture. Carruthers coins the term “memorative compo-
sition” to describe a medieval compositional process (which I suspect may
not be strictly medieval) according to which texts are composed through
the creative recombination of the elements contained within one’s mental
memorial storehouse.5 Both the contents and the organizational struc-
ture of this storehouse are necessarily culturally determined, placing both
author and audience within a feedback loop which we might describe as
follows: for medieval religious authors, their theological ideology deter-
mines the structure and contents of their memory; that memory then
informs their actions, including their composition of texts; individuals
acting collectively constitute institutions, which then dictate theological
ideology. This loop is not static, as the site for iteration takes place in the
interaction between theology, memory, and composition. As we will see
with many of the texts examined here, an author’s theological orientation
 INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING PERPETUA 5

is a determining factor in the ways in which Perpetua is remembered and

the ways in which texts about her are composed. These texts are them-
selves often aimed at promoting a particular version of the memory of
Perpetua, while simultaneously advocating for a certain kind of ethical
action inspired by her memory. But actions, memories, and theologies, all
vary in different times and places. Part of the fascination of following the
story of Perpetua for a millennium comes from seeing which memories are
preserved versus discarded, by whom, where, and (to the extent that we
may speculate) why.6
Looking at how Perpetua was remembered in medieval texts provides
insight into the individuals and communities that told and retold her
story. In the process, we can see how memorial compositional practices
were deployed to both reflect and shape ideologies of gender. Through
detailed analysis of a variety of texts, from different places, times, genres,
and languages, we can gain insight into some of the deeply different ways
in which conceptions of gender were formulated by different authors. This
will, I hope, contribute to the admirable work of many medieval femi-
nist scholars who have demonstrated over the past decades the enormous
variety of possibilities for and activities of women in the Middle Ages.
Hopefully, by now, we know that we should not see “medieval women”
as a monolithic category; with this book, we will see that even one woman
did not maintain a single form across this diverse period.
As we proceed to look at the ways in which Perpetua was remembered
in texts throughout the medieval period, three core ideas concerning
memory will be salient. First, memory is active: we choose what to remem-
ber and what to forget. No human brain can accurately contain every
bit of information it ever encounters; all of our memories are selective.
But how they are selective, what they select, and why is determined by a
variety of factors, both individual and communal. Every act of remember-
ing also entails a decision (conscious or otherwise) of what to forget. As
Carruthers describes, “communal forgetting” is often a result of “inten-
tional mnemonic replacement.”7 By collectively deciding what is worth
remembering, a community is also implicitly (or at times explicitly) decid-
ing what should be forgotten. This dynamic is then reinforced through
repetition, as the community rehearses—often through texts—the desired
memories, while ignoring or suppressing what “should” be forgotten.
These decisions—whether ascribed to individuals or communities, con-
scious or subconscious—are most often made on the basis of utility: what
is useful for a given person or group to remember. And, at the same time,
6 M. COTTER-LYNCH

what would be useful (or convenient) to forget. As Carruthers puts it,

“[t]he matters memory presents are used to persuade and motivate, to
create emotion and stir the will. And the ‘accuracy’ or ‘authenticity’ of
these memories—their simulation of an actual past—is of far less impor-
tance […] than their use to motivate the present and to affect the future.”8
Patrick Geary describes how this works on the level of culture in medi-
eval Europe: “[A] society that explicitly found its identity, its norms, and
its values from the inheritance of the past, that venerated tradition and
drew its religious and political ideologies from precedent, was nevertheless
actively engaged in producing that tradition through a complex process of
transmission, suppression, and re-creation.”9
Memory conceived in terms of utility is not a fixed objected to be
admired or recalled, but rather, a machine to be used.10 For those of
religious vocation in the Middle Ages, we might think of this in terms
of sacra memoria, a term adopted from Hugh of Rouen.11 Memory is a
useful machine for leading a godly life—however that godly life might
be understood for a particular individual, in a particular community.
The metaphor of memory as a machine extends to the ways in which
machines and memories are made. Machines are invented; according
to medieval memory arts, so are memories. Carruthers reminds us of
the common etymology of our modern English words “invention” and
“inventory,” both of which come from the Latin “invenire.”12 One must
have things from which to make a machine; a person’s memory store-
house provides the pieces from which a machine is constructed. Thus,
the different memorial machines for Perpetua that we will examine here
are each made of a different combination of pieces; we might understand
each iteration of her story as a new prototype in a constantly evolving
process of invention, where the machine of Perpetua’s memory is ever
updated for current use.
This use, of course, is not only individual, but also communal. Memory
is not only shaped by communities, but communities are constituted
through collective memories. As Catherine Cubbitt has noted, “remem-
bering is an inherently social activity.”13 Individuals are interpolated into
a given community through their shared memory of people, experiences,
and texts. The medieval literary culture that produced these texts about
Perpetua certainly constituted a “textual community” in the larger sense,
but also in smaller senses, as individual texts constituted and held together
localized communities of believers, who remembered certain saints, in
certain ways, for certain purposes.14 Thus, by looking at the iterations of
 INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING PERPETUA 7

Perpetua’s story in different times and places, we learn about different

individuals and different communities, their theologies and ideologies,
their values and actions, their relationships to a remembered past, and
their attempts to shape the ways in which the past would be remembered
in the future. The liturgy, of course, was the example of medieval Christian
memorial practice par excellence; Perpetua’s presence in the canon of the
mass, down to the present day, demonstrates the enduring importance of
her (ever-changing) memorialization. As Karl Uitti succinctly says, “hagi-
ography’s ultimate function is to link the narrator, the subject, and the
reader together as a Christian community through a shared participation
in the memorialization of the Christian saint.”15
The project of this book, then, is to look at how Perpetua was remem-
bered, and to examine the uses to which her memory was put. The
scholarship on Perpetua’s Passio is enormous,16 with considerations of
the accuracy and provenance of the text itself, its literary antecedents
as a barometer of Roman and/or Christian educational practices in the
period, the character of Perpetua herself, and what the text may tell
us about the theology and institutional practices of the Christian com-
munity at Carthage at the turn of the third century. This book seeks
to do something different. I am concerned, here, not with accuracy,
but with utility: how was Perpetua remembered, and to what uses was
that memory put. In what ways did individuals and communities shape
the memory of this early martyr, and how and why did they find that
memory—however constituted—useful to their own lives, in their own
time. This book does not concern itself with what Perpetua actually
did, but rather, with what people said that she did, and why it might
have been useful for them to remember her in that way. For faithful
Christians throughout the Middle Ages (and even today), the memory
of a saint is sacred; the sacra memoria of the martyr St. Perpetua was
a useful machine in leading a godly life. This book, then, will look at
how this machine was constructed by different people, in different times
and places, and, to the degree we can, speculate as to how and why this
machine may have been used.
The transformations of Perpetua’s story between the third and thir-
teenth centuries were neither linear nor evolutionary. Although Perpetua’s
story was successively rewritten from the fourth century onward, earlier
versions of the story continued to have currency throughout the Middle
Ages, offering each successive author or compiler a variety of possible ele-
ments for inclusion in the story. For example, we know that one of Jacob
8 M. COTTER-LYNCH

of Voragine’s sources for the Legenda Aurea was Bartholomew of Trent’s

Liber Epilogorum in Gesta Sanctorum. Bartholomew’s version of the story
is different from both Perpetua’s and Voragine’s, placing the empha-
sis on Felicity and Perpetua’s maternity, with nearly half of the (highly
abridged) story focusing on Felicity’s premature delivery of her son so that
she might join Perpetua in martyrdom. Voragine, however, made a con-
scious decision not to draw upon this version of Perpetua’s story, instead
embellishing a story adopted from Jean de Mailly’s Abbreviatio in Gestis et
Miraculis Sanctorum, which in turn draws upon the fourth-century Acta
Perpetuae. The multiple versions of Perpetua’s story circulating simultane-
ously throughout the Middle Ages remind us to avoid a monolithic, ste-
reotypical image of medieval sanctity and medieval femininity, and instead,
to focus upon the variety of possibilities available to authors, each exer-
cising agency in how he or she formulated texts. Instead, by examining
multiple versions of Perpetua’s story, as it circulated in different times and
places throughout the European Middle Ages, retold by different authors
for different purposes to different audiences, we gain some insight into
the multiplicity of ways in which Perpetua was remembered and vener-
ated. This shows the variety of deeply different ways in which the rela-
tionship between gender and Christian faith was understood in different
time periods and locations across the late antique and medieval Christian
worlds. As a result, we are reminded to understand Jacob of Voragine
and other medieval authors as making active decisions in how to portray
holy women, rather than simply repeating a mythically monolithic tradi-
tion. The medieval hagiographic tradition offered an impressive array of
models for feminine sanctity, of which the tradition of Perpetua’s story
alone offers numerous, contrasting examples. In the process of examining
this variation, we gain insight into, on the one hand, changing theological
ideas about the relationship between gender and sanctity, and on the other
hand, compositional practice and the circulation of texts within the medi-
eval world.
Chapter 1 offers a re-reading of Perpetua’s Passio. I depart from previ-
ous readings by foregrounding the ways in which Perpetua insists upon
the importance of the physical body while simultaneously refusing clear
gender categories. Based upon close reading of the Latin text, I argue
that the Passio refigures ideas of power, authority, and gender in pointing
toward an apophatic theology with ethical consequences for the ways in
which gender is lived and expressed. Specifically, I argue that, in her fourth
 INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING PERPETUA 9

dream as recounted in the Passio, Perpetua does not become male, as has
so often been asserted. Rather, I demonstrate that the text as a whole,
and the fourth dream in particular, dismantles binary categories so that
Perpetua can represent herself as simultaneously male and female.
Chapter 2 examines two Late Antique texts referred to as the Acta
Perpetuae. The Acta are two clearly related yet distinct texts that retell the
story of Perpetua’s arrest, trial, and execution, but in shorter, more simpli-
fied versions than the Passio; they were likely intended for liturgical use.
Although often overlooked by modern scholars, the Acta were, in fact, far
more popular and widely known in the Middle Ages than the Passio was;
while the Passio survives in 9 manuscripts, the Acta survive in 89.17 The
Acta, however, not only abridge the Passio, but also reframe the story of
Perpetua’s martyrdom in ways that simplify potentially problematic cat-
egories and elide the subtleties of Perpetua’s narrative. The focus of the
Acta is on the martyrs as a group, rather than Perpetua as an individual,
and the Acta also include significant interrogation scenes not present in
the Passio. Going forward through the Middle Ages, then, we can trace a
dramatic difference in the tenor of texts that take as their source the Acta
versus the Passio, or in some cases, both. While the Passio presents a syn-
cretic model of gender ambiguity, the Acta reinforce traditional gender
categories, moving the implied agency of the narrative from the martyrs
to God in order to mitigate the ethical implications of some aspects of
Perpetua’s behavior.
Chapter 3 looks at Augustine’s three extant sermons on Sts. Perpetua
and Felicity. These sermons take a different generic form, but reveal a sim-
ilar ideology of gender and sanctity to the Acta. Augustine reifies binary
gender categories for rhetorical effect, using juxtaposition and paradox to
simultaneously acknowledge the ways in which the female martyrs behave
in traditionally masculine ways, and displace the agency for such actions to
God, figuring not just the martyrdom, but Perpetua’s strength, as a mira-
cle. In so doing, Augustine emphasizes Perpetua’s apparent—paradoxical,
miraculous—manliness, and I therefore argue that it is in fact Augustine,
at least as much as the Passio, from which later writers draw the idea that
Perpetua is physically transformed into a man. In addition, Augustine
explicitly states that Perpetua is to be admired but not imitated, inaugurat-
ing another common theme which will periodically resurface throughout
the tradition. Drawing upon both the Passio and the Acta, these sermons
distill Perpetua’s story into an exemplum of clear pedagogical value to the
10 M. COTTER-LYNCH

audience, adopting the details which can be used to bolster the theological
and ethical arguments of the speaker, while abandoning the rest.
Chapter 4 traces various representations of Perpetua in a variety of
texts from the fifth through the ninth centuries, including martyrolo-
gies, chronicles, and a hymn composed by Notker Balbulus of St. Gall.
These texts follow the example of the Acta and Augustine by eliding the
more potentially subversive aspects of Perpetua’s story, while maintain-
ing her exemplarity. The separation between Perpetua’s body and spirit,
introduced in Augustine’s sermon 280, becomes a common theme in
narrative martyrologies. At the same time, however, tracing the geneal-
ogy of early medieval variations of Perpetua’s story reveals reinsertions
from multiple prior sources, demonstrating the intentional refashioning
of the story for different contexts. Notker’s hymn provides a particularly
cogent example of this dynamic, as it demonstrates a clear familiarity
with the Passio, and includes the image of the African gladiator from
Perpetua’s fourth dream, but deploys these images within a mnemonic
context that serves to reify, rather than undermine, traditional gender
categories.
Chapter 5 follows several strands of Perpetua’s story in England dur-
ing the central Middle Ages. The English tradition places more emphasis
on the militant aspects of Perpetua’s story in conjunction with maternal
imagery; her gladiatorial dream, omitted from most earlier texts, is cited as
proof of her power and strength in Christ. We see an emphasis on the gen-
der ambiguity characteristic of the original Passio, as Perpetua is figured as
simultaneously mother and manly warrior. Consistent with this thematic
emphasis, the versions of Perpetua’s story included in the Old English
Martyrology, Cotton-Corpus Legendary, and Goscelin of St. Bertin’s Liber
Confortatorius display a preference for the Passio over the Acta as source
text. This preference is supported by the prominence of English prove-
nance in extant manuscripts of the Passio, the use of its details in retellings
of the story, and in the overall tenor of emphasizing the malleability of
gender categories.
Chapter 6 examines the portrayal of Perpetua in three thirteenth-
century Dominican collections of saints’ lives, those by Jean de Mailly,
Bartholomew of Trent, and Jacob of Voragine. We see that Jacob bypasses
Bartholomew’s version, itself dependent upon the early medieval narrative
martyrologies examined in Chapter 4, and instead, builds upon the por-
trayal of Perpetua by Jean de Mailly, which ultimately traces back to the
Acta. This choice in source texts also entails a choice to display Perpetua as
 INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING PERPETUA 11

an unattainable ideal of Christian renunciation—ultimately beyond empa-

thy, if not beyond admiration. With the popularity of the Legenda Aurea
from the late thirteenth century on, Jacob’s version of Perpetua’s story
becomes the dominant version of the legend for the rest of the Middle
Ages.
In the conclusion, I point toward some aspects of the influence and
reception of Perpetua’s story, including the vernacular translations and
first printed editions of the Legenda Aurea in the late fifteenth century.
While some of these later versions show attempts to recuperate portions
of Perpetua’s legend from Voragine’s transformations, it is clear that the
Legenda Aurea is seen as the authoritative collection of saints’ lives in
the later Middle Ages. Through the next two and a half centuries, we see
attempts to alter Voragine’s version, but it is rarely discarded in favor of
an earlier text. Voragine’s Perpetua thus becomes the standard version of
her story until the Reformation, completely superseding the earlier ver-
sions and, I argue, unduly influencing modern scholarship with Voragine’s
assumptions and interpretations.
Overall, the story of the story of Perpetua in the Middle Ages is char-
acterized by a tension between the impulses of admiration and imitation.
This tension is revealed, in part, through the way Perpetua’s gender is fig-
ured in various texts. For some, her gender ambiguity is a syncretic simul-
taneity, revealing and transcending the limits of traditional binary gender
categories for those who are faithful to Christ. For others, gender ambigu-
ity is figured as a paradox, reconcilable only by appeal to the miraculous
intervention of God. If Perpetua is to be imitable, we must rethink what
women can do. If she is only admirable, but not replicable, then her activi-
ties in martyrdom must be seen primarily as a testimony to the miraculous
power of God to do the impossible; we should not, however, expect to try
any of this at home.
This book, then, provides simultaneously the story of Perpetua’s story,
a case study in the medieval circulation and recycling of texts, and a road-
map of some medieval formulations of the relationship between gender and
sanctity. Across a thousand years, everybody always agrees that Perpetua
was an exemplary holy woman; they radically disagree, however, in what
that holy woman looked like. By tracing how Perpetua was remembered,
we learn about the people and communities that did the remembering,
and the contours of memory itself, how the way we tell stories about what
happened in the past shapes our actions in the present and our possibilities
for the future.
12 M. COTTER-LYNCH

NOTES
1. Trans. Heffernan, in Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and
Felicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). This and all future cita-
tions from the Passio will be taken from Heffernan’s edition and translation,
except where noted otherwise. Citations will be made by chapter and line
number, in this case III:6–9.
2. Jacobus de Voragine and Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, Legenda Aurea:
Vulgo Historia Lombardica Dicta (Dresdae and Lipsiae: Impensis Librariae
Arnoldianae, 1846), Caput 173, pp. 798–799.
3. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans.
William Granger Ryan, 2 Vols., Vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1993).
4. Ibid., p. 342.
5. Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval
Culture, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 70 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 240–241.
6. Carruthers’ important work on medieval memory can be found in Mary
J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture,
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 70 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2008). And Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought:
Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).
7. Carruthers, Craft, p. 54.
8. Carruthers, Craft, p. 67.
9. Patrick Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of
the First Millennium (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press 1994), p. 51.
10. Carruthers, Craft, p. 18. With reference to St. Augustine, City of God.
11. Carruthers, Craft, pp. 81–82.
12. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture,
pp. 240–241.
13. Catherine Cubitt, “Memory and Narrative in the Cult of Early Anglo-Saxon
Saints,” in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Yitzhak Hen and
Matthew Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 31.
14. The idea of “textual communities” is introduced by Brian Stock, The
Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in
the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1983).
15. Karl D. Uitti, Story, Myth, and Celebration in Old French Narrative Poetry,
1050–1200 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 26.
16. Some of the more influential and recent monographs about Perpetua include
Jan N. Bremmer and Marco Formisano, eds., Perpetua’s Passions:
 INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING PERPETUA 13

Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2012); Rex Butler, The New Prophecy & “New
Visions”: Evidence of Montanism in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006); William
Farina, Perpetua of Carthage: Portrait of a Third-Century Martyr (Jefferson,
NC: McFarland, 2009); Eliezer González, The Fate of the Dead in Early
Third-Century North African Christianity: The Passion of Perpetua and
Felicitas and Tertullian, Vol. 83, Studien Und Texte Zu Antike Und
Christentum (Tubingen, Germany: Mohn Siebeck, 2014); Peter Habermehl,
Perpetua und der Ägypter, oder, Bilder des Bösen im frühen afrikanischen
Christentum: Ein Versuch zur Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992); Petr Kitzler, From ‘Passio Perpetuae’ to
‘Acta Perpetuae’: Recontextualizing a Martyr Story in the Literature of the
Early Church, ed. Christian Albrecht and Christoph Markschies, trans. Josef
Srejber and Rachel Thompson, Vol. 127, Arbeiten Zur Kirchengeschichte
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015); Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion: The Death
and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (NY: Routledge, 1997).
17. On extant manuscripts of the Passio, see Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua
and Felicity, p. 442. For a catalogue of extant manuscripts of the Acta, see
Cornelius Johannes Maria Joseph van Beek, Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et
Felicitatis (Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1936), pp. 107–134.
Heffernan mistakenly identifies the Acta as extant in 41 manuscripts, pre-
sumably by mistaking Amat’s list of “manuscrits les plus connus” for a com-
plete list. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, p. 442; Jacqueline
Amat, ed., Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes, Vol. 417, Sources
Chrétiennes (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1996), p. 275.
 The Passio Perpetuae

In late February and early March of 203 CE, 22-year-old Vibia Perpetua
sat in a prison cell in Carthage awaiting her trial and execution. We have,
amazingly, what appears to be her own written account of her trial and
imprisonment; it includes accounts of her interrogations before the judge,
her interactions with her family, her experiences in the prison, and four
visions which foretell aspects of the Christian afterlife awaiting Perpetua
and her companions. Attached to this autobiographical text are an intro-
duction by an anonymous redactor, an account of a vision experienced
by her companion, Saturus, and a description of her martyrdom by an
eyewitness appended to the end. This early text provides Perpetua’s rep-
resentation of herself in her roles as Christian, mother, and martyr; it also
provides at least one version of how she was understood by another mem-
ber of the contemporary Christian community at Carthage.1
The Passio Perpetuae figures the relationship between Perpetua’s body,
gender, and sanctity in remarkable ways. The physical act of martyrdom is
central to the sanctity of Perpetua and her companions. Perpetua’s physi-
cal body is simultaneously figured as female and miraculous, as when her
lactating breasts miraculously dry up without pain upon separation from
her son. And yet, while the body is repeatedly emphasized throughout
Perpetua’s narrative, her gender and the markers attached to it are strik-
ingly fluid. Perpetua is represented as simultaneously male and female,
embodying traditionally male aspects of militancy and authority while
clearly maintaining her identity as a woman. As a result, the Passio Perpetuae

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 15

M. Cotter-Lynch, Saint Perpetua across the Middle Ages,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-46740-9_2
16 M. COTTER-LYNCH

asserts a complex and nuanced model of the relationship between gen-

der and sanctity, in which gender identity is fluid, and sanctity does not
depend upon gender.
Perpetua’s text makes clear that her status as a Christian is clear and
important, while her gender, perhaps, is neither. Or, more precisely, her
Christianity transforms her gender identity by redefining gender beyond
binary categories. The same person can both nurse a son and fight as a gladi-
ator; gender markers can and do mix, and the biblical injunction that there
is “neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28)
is logically extended to imply that one can be both male and female at once.2
As Barbara Newman explains in From Virile Woman to WomanChrist,
Paul’s exhortation to the transcendence of sex was often understood in
Late Antiquity to mean leaving behind one’s female sex in order to become
male, as women were seen as defined by their sex in a way that men were
not. However, this is far from the only way to read this passage; in fact,
taken at face value, Paul seems to imply an eradication of gender classifica-
tion, not the hierarchical privilege of one gender over another. I propose
that returning to the biblical phrase, rather than the patristic reading of
it, can be instructive for understanding the Passio Perpetuae. Perpetua, I
claim, presents herself as “neither male nor female” specifically by present-
ing herself as at once male and female, thus undermining the very idea
of gender categories and their relevance in the face of Christianity. This
understanding of the Passio is supported by reading the text both in its
contemporary religious context (specifically, Montanism and apocalyptic
literature) and in conversation with modern feminist theology. Ultimately,
the reading I propose of the Passio will help us to view the ancient text
apart from some of the later interpretive accruals that form the basis of the
rest of this book.
In the past 30 years, Perpetua’s Passio has been anthologized in col-
lections of medieval women’s writing, visionary literature, and prison
memoirs. The scholarly literature on the Passio is enormous, as the text
has been variously approached with particular attention to questions of
literary genre and tradition, the construction of authority, Roman versus
Christian family structures, theology, and psychoanalysis, to name but
the most prominent approaches.3 Perpetua’s own account of her impris-
onment and visions is highly complex and subtle, and works toward
undermining the very dichotomies so fundamental to later versions of
her story. Examples of this can be seen throughout the Passio, includ-
ing in Perpetua’s rhetorical representation of her own authority; the
 THE PASSIO PERPETUAE 17

portrayal of her complex and sympathetic relationship with her biological

family; and in the four divinely inspired visions she reports experiencing
in prison.
First, the dialogic structure of the self-authored portion of the Passio
demonstrates the construction and subsequent conflation of opposites that
also characterizes the Passio grammatically and semantically.4 Perpetua’s
portion of the text begins in chapter III, in medias res, in a debate with
her father:

Cum adhuc, inquit, cum prosecutoribus essemus et me pater ver-

bis evertere cupiret et deicere pro sua affectione perseveraret: “Pater,”
inquam “vides verbi gratia vas hoc iacens, urceolum sive aliud?” Et dixit
“video.” Et ego dixi ei: Numquid alio nomine vocari potest quam quod
est?” et ait “non.” “Sic et ego aliud me dicere non possum nisi quod
sum, Christiana.” Tunc pater motus hoc verbo mittit se in me, ut oculos
mihi erueret, sed vexavit tantum, et profectus est victus cum argumentis
diaboli. Tunc paucis diebus quod caruissem patrem Domino gratias egi et
refrigeravi absentia illius.
“While,” she said, “we were still with the prosecutors, my father, because
of his love for me, wanted to change my mind and shake my resolve.
“Father,” I said, “do you see this vase lying here, for example, this small
water pitcher or whatever?” “I see it,” he said. And I said to him, “Can it
be called by another name other than what it is?” And he said: “No.” “In
the same way, I am unable to call myself other than what I am, a Christian.”
Then my father, angered by this name, threw himself at me, in order to
gouge out my eyes. But he only alarmed me and he left defeated, along with
the arguments of the devil. Then for a few days, freed from my father, I gave
thanks to the Lord and was refreshed by my father’s absence.5

We begin immediately with an epistemological debate about the rela-

tionship between sign and thing, establishing the essential character of
Perpetua’s Christianity, even as all other seemingly fixed semantic markers
are called into question. Perpetua’s father’s “love” for her causes him
to argue against what the audience, if not he, knows to be Perpetua’s
best interest, i.e., her Christian salvation. In the debate that ensues, we
have a clear inversion of expected father/daughter authoritative hierar-
chies; not only is Perpetua rebelling against the father who (apparently)
has legal responsibility for her,6 but we also see female privileged over
male, and youth privileged over age, as the aged male displays himself
emotionally while the younger female embodies self-restraint and reason.
18 M. COTTER-LYNCH

Tellingly, it is the “name” that causes Perpetua’s father to fly into a rage.
This demonstrates the power of a word—to make a man fly into a rage,
to cause Perpetua to be condemned to death. It is apparently not the
fact of Perpetua’s Christian faith, but rather her insistence on the name
Christian that is the problem here. Her father’s rage is, perhaps, incited by
the disruption of his accepted understanding of the relationship between
words and things; the woman whom he loves, and thinks of as his daugh-
ter, insists upon attaching to herself a name he finds offensive. This epi-
sode therefore shows the potential power of an epistemological rupture
to cause a breakdown in expected familial and social structures. At the
same time, in this and later interactions with her father (in chapters V
and VI), the dialogic structure and semantic inversions coexist with clear
familial affection; it would seem that Perpetua is relieved by her father’s
absence exactly because they still love each other, which results in pain at
the breakdown of the previous terms of their relationship.
Chapter III continues its preoccupation with Perpetua’s relationship
with her biological family with the account of her son being brought to
her in prison:

Novissime macerabar sollicitudine infantis ibi. Tunc Tertius et Pomponius,

benedicti diaconi qui nobis ministrabant, constituerunt praemio, uti paucis
horis emissi in meliorem locum carceris refrigeraremus. Tunc exeuntes de
carcere universi sibi vacabant: ego infantem lactabam iam inedia defectum;
sollicita pro eo adloquebar matrem et confortabam fratrem, commendabam
filium; tabescebam ideo quod illos tabescere videram mei beneficio. Tales
sollicitudines multis diebus passa sum; et usurpavi ut mecum infans in carcere
maneret; et statim convalui et relevata sum a labore et sollicitudine infantis,
et factus est mihi carcer subito praetorium, ut ibi mallem esse quam alicubi.

Last of all, I was consumed with worry for my infant in that dungeon. Then
Tertius and Pomponius, the blessed deacons who ministered to us, arranged
for a bribe that we should be released for a few hours to revive ourselves in
a better part of the prison. I nursed my baby, who was now weak from hun-
ger. In my worry for him, I spoke to my mother concerning the baby and
comforted my brother. I entrusted my son to them. I suffered grievously
when I saw how they suffered for me. I endured such worry for many days,
and I arranged for my baby to stay in prison with me. Immediately I grew
stronger, and I was relieved of the anxiety and worry I had for my baby.
Suddenly the prison became my palace, so that I wanted to be there rather
than anywhere else.7
 THE PASSIO PERPETUAE 19

As has often been noted by critics, the frank discussion of lactation in

this passage is unique for the time period, and an argument in favor of
Perpetua’s own authorship.8 We see again a semantic play on opposites
and inversions, and the obvious affection between Perpetua and her bio-
logical family. Specifically, here, the emphasis is on Perpetua as mother,
a loving mother with deep concern for her child. This episode presents
Perpetua as a sympathetic character, as the audience is invited to identify
with the maternal love exhibited by the young mother.
Alternating with the passages in which Perpetua describes her inter-
actions and relationship with her family, we also get accounts of four
divinely inspired dreams and visions Perpetua experiences while she is
in prison awaiting her trial and execution. In the first reported dream,
which occurs after her imprisonment but before her formal trial, Perpetua
sees a long bronze ladder extending to heaven. The sides of the ladder
are lined with lances, hooks, and daggers, positioned to harm anyone
who is not careful ascending the ladder. The bottom of the ladder is
guarded by a serpent. Perpetua’s companion Saturus, whom she cred-
its with converting her to Christianity and who gave himself up to the
authorities voluntarily upon hearing about the arrest of Perpetua and
her friends, climbs the ladder and then reaches his hand back down to
Perpetua, warning her to be careful. She steps on the head of the serpent
and climbs the ladder unscathed. At the top of the ladder, she finds a
shepherd with a white beard; he is tending sheep, and offers Perpetua
milk, which she drinks. Perpetua then wakes up with the taste of sweet
milk still in her mouth.
The content of this dream continues the series of inversions and eli-
sions that characterize Perpetua’s text, as here, we learn that serpents
and iron weapons are not to be feared. A shepherd, usually considered
someone in a lowly profession, is meant to be honored. Yet perhaps the
most important reversal of this dream is Perpetua’s presentation of the
relationship of authority between her and Saturus. Perpetua introduces
the dream thus:

Tunc dixit mihi frater meus: “Domina soror, iam in magna dignatione es;
tanta es ut postules visionem et ostendatur tibit an passio sit an commeatus.”
Et ego quae me sciebam fabulari cum Domino, cuius beneficia tanta experta
eram, fidenter repromisi ei dicens: “crastina die tibi renuntiabo.” Et postu-
lavi, et ostensum est mihi hoc.
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Essays in
American history
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
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eBook.

Title: Essays in American history

Author: Henry Ferguson

Release date: October 20, 2023 [eBook #71922]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: James Pott and Company, 1894

Credits: Carla Foust and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS IN

AMERICAN HISTORY ***
 E S S AY S

IN

AMERICAN HISTORY

BY
HENRY FERGUSON, M. A.
Northam Professor of History and Political Science in
Trinity College, Hartford.
New York
JAMES POTT AND COMPANY
114 Fifth Avenue.
Copyright, 1894,
BY
JAMES POTT & CO.
 CONTENTS.

i.
the quakers in new england 9

ii.
the witches 61

iii.
sir edmund andros 111

iv.
the loyalists 161
 PREFACE.
These essays are presented to the public in the belief that
though what they contain be old, it is worth telling again, and in the
hope that by viewing the early history of the country from a
somewhat different stand-point from that commonly taken, light may
be thrown upon places which have been sometimes left in shadow.
The time has been when it was considered a duty to praise
every action of the resolute men who were the early settlers of New
England. In the glow of an exultant patriotism which was unwilling to
see anything but beauty in the annals of their country, and in a spirit
of reverence which made them shrink from observing their fathers’
shortcomings, the early historians of the United States dwelt lovingly
on the bright side of the colonial life, and passed over its shadows
with filial reticence. It is evident that no true conception of any period
is possible when so studied, and it is a matter for congratulation that
at the present day the subject can be treated with greater
impartiality, and that it is no longer necessary for American writers to
make up for the political and literary insignificance of their country by
boasting either of the vastness of their continent or of the Spartan
virtue of their forefathers.
In the same manner, in earlier days, when the recollection of the
struggle for independence was still vivid, patriotic Americans were
unable to recognize anything but arbitrary tyranny in the attempts
made from time to time by the English government to give unity and
organization to the group of discordant and feeble settlements, or to
see anything but what was base and servile in the sentiments that
inspired those whom they nicknamed Tories. Now, under the
influence of calmer consideration, men are beginning to admit that
something may be said for men like Andros, who strove against the
separatist spirit which seemed to New England to be the very
essence of liberty, and even for those unfortunates who valued the
connection with Great Britain more than they did the privileges of
self-government, and who were compelled in grief and sorrow, from
their devotion to their principles, to leave forever the homes they
loved. The war of secession has taught Americans to understand the
term, and appreciate the sentiment, of loyalty. It is no longer an
unmeaning word, fit only to be ridiculed in scurrilous doggerel by
patriot rhymsters, as was the case a hundred years ago, but appeals
to an answering chord in the heart of every man who remembers the
quick heart-beats and the grand enthusiasm of those four years of
struggle, the true heroic age of American history.
The paper upon The Quakers in New England is an enlargement
and revision of an article printed in the American Church Review, in
April 1889, and that upon Sir Edmund Andros has been printed by
the Historical Society of Westchester County, N. Y., before whom it
was read in October 1892, but it has been revised and enlarged.
Instead of burdening the pages with notes and references, they have
been placed together after each essay, so that they may be readily
used by those who desire to do so, and yet may not affront the eyes
of those who do not desire them.
It is impossible to give credit for every statement to every
historian who may have made it; it has been the desire of the author
to indicate his principal sources of information, and he has not
knowingly omitted any work upon which he has relied for the
historical facts presented.
Trinity College, Hartford,
October 1894.
 I.
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND.

In the year 1656, in the midst of the period of the

Commonwealth, the good people of Massachusetts, who were
enjoying a brief season of rest after their troubles with the Baptists
and the Antinomians, heard to their horror that they were likely to be
visited by certain fanatics of whom they had heard from their
brethren in England. These were known to them by the invidious
name of Quakers, and were confounded with Adamites,
Muggletonians, and Ranters, strangely named sects which the
1
confusion of the times had brought forth.
This remarkable body of men, whose history has presented such
strange contrasts of wild enthusiasm and imperturbable stolidity, of
fanaticism and quietism, of contempt for the world and its rewards on
the one side, and of sordid love of peace and money-getting upon
the other, had recently come into being as one of the natural results
of the unsettling of religious faiths and practices which had
accompanied the political revolution in England. The Quaker
movement was a revolt at once from the enforced conformity of the
Laudian establishment and from the intolerable spiritual oppression
of the Calvinistic divines, whose little fingers, when they came into
power, had been thicker than the loins of their predecessors.
The great Anglican prelates of the reign of Charles I. were
unfortunate in the circumstances amidst which their lives were spent.
They were liberal and tolerant in theology, and they were pilloried as
bigots; they held an idea of what the Church of England should be,
that was utopian in its comprehensiveness, and they are described
by every New England writer of school histories or children’s story-
books as narrow minded enemies of freedom of thought. The system
proposed by Andrewes and Montague was essentially that of Sir
Thomas More: liberality in matters of belief, with uniformity in
practice and in ritual. The Puritan divines, on the other hand, were
despotic in matters of faith and doctrine to a degree rarely equalled
in the history of the human mind, while they insisted upon their right
of refusing the system of worship which was established by law in
the Church of England, and of choosing for themselves religious
ordinances to suit their own tastes and fancies. They did not plead
for liberty on the ground that the principle of compulsion in religious
matters was wrong and illegitimate, but because the services of the
Church of England were, in their opinion, unscriptural if not
idolatrous. The one party was tolerant in doctrine, and despotic,
tyrannical at times, in matters of ritual; the other claimed to be
indifferent as to ritual, but was despotic in opinions. The church, by
attempting to regulate public worship, was led in some instances to
appear to be persecuting men for doctrinal differences; the Puritans,
from their zeal for orthodoxy in doctrine, became, when the power
was placed in their hands, the strictest possible disciplinarians. The
tendency of the one party was to subject the church to the state, and
thus make it an instrument of political authority; the other tended to
the subjection of the state to the church, making the civil authority
little more than the body by which the edicts of the ministers should
be registered and their decrees should be enforced.
With the early history of Quakerism we have little to do. Its
founder, George Fox, was the son of a weaver at Fenny Drayton (or
Drayton in the Clay) in Leicestershire. He had been piously brought
up by his parents, who were members of the Church of England, and
passed a boyhood and youth of singular purity and innocence. When
he was growing up to manhood he passed through a period of deep
religious depression, and found no help from any of his friends or
from the ministers of the parish churches in his neighborhood (who
at this time were mainly Presbyterians) or from the newer lights of
the rising separatist bodies. One counselled him to have blood let,
another to use tobacco and sing psalms; and the poor distracted
boy, whose soul was heavy with a sense of the wrath of God, found
no comfort from any of them. A careful study of the Bible made him
quick to see the weak points in the systems that surrounded him,
and at last he found the comfort he sought in the sense of an
immediate communion with God and an indwelling of the Spirit of
Christ within the soul. For a time he led a solitary life, leaving home
and friends and wandering over the country on foot, clothed in
garments of leather, sleeping wherever he could find a lodging, and
spending whole days sometimes in the hollows of great trees. Soon
it was “borne in upon him” that the presence of the Spirit and the
inner light was as good a qualification for the office of preacher as
that of being a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, and he began his
2
public ministry about the year 1646.
With the externals of Quakerism we are all familiar: the morbid
conscientiousness that forbade the use of the common forms of
courtesy, the simple dress, the refusal to submit to the authority of
magistrates or of priests in matters concerning religion, and the
unwillingness to pay them the usual compliments due to their
position. The true inner nature of Quakerism, which gave it its
strength, lay not merely in its abhorrence of forms and formulas, its
vigorous protest against any compulsion in matters either of religious
thought or religious observance, but essentially in its consciousness
of the need of the Divine presence and its belief in the fulfilment of
the Saviour’s promise to send his Spirit into the world.
It was a faith for martyrs and enthusiasts, a faith which in its
simple earnestness had wonderful power of conviction, but which
was especially liable to counterfeits and pretenders, who could
delude themselves or others into a belief in their inspiration, and who
substituted a wild extravagance for the enthusiasm of the first
believers. One cannot help regretting that Fox’s fate placed him in so
uncongenial a century as the seventeenth and in so matter-of-fact a
country as England. Had he been born in Italy in the middle ages, his
name might rank with that of Francis of Assisi. But it was impossible
to expect comprehensiveness or liberality from the Puritans of the
day, all the less because of the abuses and fanatical actions by
which Quakerism was parodied and made ridiculous. It was
essentially an esoteric religion, and had, in consequence, the great
disadvantage of being able to furnish no tests by which the true
could be distinguished from the false, those inspired with a genuine
religious enthusiasm from the fanatics and pretenders.
Their revolt from all established customs and usages, their
disrespect for authority, and the boldness with which they rebuked
and disputed with the preacher in the pulpit of the “steeple house” or
with the justice on the bench, brought them at once into difficulties
with the rulers in church and state, who showed themselves no more
tolerant of dissent from their own favorite way of thinking and acting
than were the most despotic of all the Anglican prelates. They were
imprisoned, fined, beaten, and exiled; in 1656 Fox computed that
there were seldom less than a thousand Quakers in prison at once.
They seemed inspired with a spirit of opposition; wherever they were
not wanted, there were they sure to go. They visited Scotland and
Ireland, the West India islands and the American colonies; one
woman testified before the Grand Turk at Adrianople, two others
were imprisoned by the Inquisition at Malta; one brother visited
Jerusalem and bore his testimony against the superstition of the
monks, others made their way to Rome, Austria, and Hungary, and a
3
number of them preached their doctrines in Holland and Germany.
Such enthusiasm, even in those in whom it was genuine, was very
nearly akin to insanity; and in many instances the dividing line was
crossed, and the votaries allowed themselves to commit grotesque
and indecent actions, or to speak most shocking blasphemies and to
receive an idolatrous veneration from the silly women who listened to
their ravings. The disturbances of the times produced many other
bands of fanatics who were frequently confounded with the Quakers,
and gave to them the odium of their misdeeds. The Ranters, the
Adamites, the Muggletonians, and the Fifth Monarchy Men were all
akin to the Quakers in being opposed to the order established by
law, and in professing to be guided by an inner light; they differed
from them, however, in making their religious fanaticism very often a
cloak for secret vice or for wild plots against the government. The
temporary overthrow of the comprehensive church establishment of
the judicious statesmen and reformers of Elizabeth’s reign had
opened the gates to a flood of irreligion and fanaticism. The
ecclesiastical despotism established by the Westminster Assembly
was more repugnant to Englishmen than the old church which had
been suppressed, and the condition of England in religious matters
during the Commonwealth forms one of the best apologies for the
severe reactionary measures that were adopted when the king and
the bishops were restored in 1660.
It was in the middle of this period that the episode of the Quaker
troubles in New England occurred, an episode which has been given
an unpleasant prominence in the colonial history of New England,
partly from the bitterness of the feelings which were aroused on both
sides, but especially from the bearing that it had upon the question of
the people of Massachusetts for the powers and responsibilities of
self-government. The story is a sad one of misdirected earnestness
and zeal on the one side, of mistaken consistency and fidelity to
principle, however false, upon the other. We condemn while we
admire; we wonder at the steadiness and constancy of both judged
and judges, while we regret the tragic results that stained the new
commonwealth with innocent blood. It is not surprising, however, that
such a conflict took place, for as a recent writer of great learning and
ability has well said of the relations of the Quakers and their
opponents,—“the issue presented seemed to have a resemblance to
the mechanical problem of what will be the effect if an irresistible
4
body strikes an immovable body.”
The colonial governments which had been established in New
England in the first half of the seventeenth century were not, as is
frequently assumed, homogeneous and similar, but differed from
each other in their political status and to some extent in their political
institutions, and very greatly in the spirit which governed and
directed them.
Massachusetts had a charter obtained from the Crown for a
trading company, and transferred to the colony by a daring
usurpation; Rhode Island had a charter granted by the Long
Parliament; Plymouth had obtained its territory by purchase from the
old Plymouth Company, but its political existence was winked at
rather than recognized; Connecticut and New Haven were, to all
intents and purposes, independent republics, save for a somewhat
doubtful acknowledgment of the supremacy of the king and of the
Commonwealth that was his successor. All but Rhode Island were
joined together in a federal league for mutual defence against
external and internal enemies.
The circumstances of the settlement of the various colonies had
been such as to render the colonists extremely tenacious of their
own privileges, and extremely jealous of any interference from the
other side of the ocean. The people of Massachusetts, especially,
lived in constant dread of their much-prized charter being taken
away from them by the king, from whom it had been obtained, or by
the parliament, which considered that it was its province to meddle
with and to regulate all things in heaven and on earth.
It is quite remarkable that the attitude of the colonies to the home
government, during the period of the Commonwealth, no less than in
the years which preceded it, was one of jealous suspicion. The
charter colonies feared that their privileges would be interfered with,
the self-organized colonies were in dread of a quo warranto or a
scire facias, which would disclose the irregularity of their
organizations or the defectiveness of their titles.
The godly and judicious Winthrop, the statesmanlike founder and
governor of Massachusetts, had died, sorrowing on his death-bed for
the harshness in religious matters into which he had been forced;
and in his place was the severe and fanatical Endicott, a man of
gloomy intensity of nature, a stern logician, a man who neither asked
nor granted mercy. The clergy were fanatically devoted to their
religious and political peculiarities, and were inferior in wisdom and
judgment to the great leader who had come out from England with
the early settlers at the beginning of the colony. Cotton was dead,
and was succeeded in his office of teacher by John Norton, who
differed from his predecessor by the lack of the principal
characteristics which had so greatly distinguished him: “Profound
judgment, eminent gravity, Christian candor, and sweet temper of
spirit, whereby he could very placidly bear those who differed from
5
him in other apprehensions.” Hooker had long since removed to
Connecticut, where he had been largely instrumental in founding a
more genial commonwealth upon a broader and more liberal basis.
Wilson, the first pastor of the church at Boston, was indeed still
living, but was a worthy associate of Endicott and Norton, and
distinguished then, as he had always been, rather by zeal than by
either discretion or Christian charity.
By a process of successful exclusions and banishments the
community had been rendered tolerably homogeneous, or at least
submissive to the theocratical system which had been established.
Those who had been defeated in the struggle for existence had gone
elsewhere to found new commonwealths, all with a greater amount
of religious liberty than that of Massachusetts.
The first we hear of the Quakers in New England is in an order of
the General Court appointing May 14, 1656, as a public day of
humiliation, “to seek the face of God in behalf of our native country,
in reference to the abounding of errors, especially those of the
6
Ranters and Quakers.”
About two months later a ship arrived from Barbadoes, bringing
as passengers two Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin. As
soon as they arrived in the harbor, the Governor, the Deputy
Governor, and four assistants met and ordered that the captain of
the ship should be compelled to carry them back to Barbadoes; that
in the mean time they should be kept in jail, and the books which
they had brought with them should be burnt. During imprisonment
they were subjected to great indignities and insults at the hands of
the brutal jailer, apparently without warrant, being stripped naked
and their bodies examined for witch-marks, with attending
circumstances of great indecency. They were half-starved in prison,
and then after a detention of about a month they were sent away. No
sooner had they gone when another vessel arrived from England,
bringing eight more, four men and four women, besides one man
from Long Island, who had been converted during the voyage.
Officers were sent on board the vessel, and the Quakers were taken
at once to the jail, where they were kept eleven weeks, and then
7
sent back to England, despite the protests of the shipmaster. During
their detention they were examined before the magistrates, and they
increased the abhorrence in which they were held by their rude and
contemptuous answers, which gave the authorities a sufficient
excuse for keeping them in prison. Their books were burned; and
though some pains seems to have been taken to convince them of
their errors by argument, it was in vain. One of the women, Mary
Prince by name, made herself particularly obnoxious by the
eloquence of her abuse. She reviled the governor from the window
of the prison, denouncing the judgment of God upon him, wrote
violent letters to him and to the magistrates, and when the ministers
attempted to argue with her, she drove them from her as “hirelings,
deceivers of the people, priests of Baal, the seed of the serpent, the
brood of Ishmael, etc.”
While this second batch of Quakers was in prison, the Federal
Commissioners were in session, and resolved to propose to the
several General Courts that all Quakers, Ranters, and other
notorious heretics should be prohibited coming into the United
Colonies, and if any should hereafter come or arise, that they should
8
be forthwith secured or removed out of all the jurisdictions. These
recommendations were acted upon by all the General Courts at their
next sessions: by Connecticut, October 2, 1656; Massachusetts,
October 14, 1656; New Haven, May 27, 1657; Plymouth, June 3,
1657.
In Massachusetts the action of the General Court was most
decided and severe. Shipmasters who brought Quakers into the
jurisdiction were to be fined one hundred pounds, and to give
security for the return of such passengers to the port from which they
came. Quakers coming to the colony were to be “forthwith committed
to the House of Correction, and at their entrance to be severely
whipped, and by the master thereof to be kept constantly at work,
and none suffered to converse or speak with them during the time of
their imprisonment.” A fine of five pounds was imposed upon the
importation, circulation, or concealment of Quaker books; persons
presuming to defend heretical opinions of the said Quakers should
be fined two pounds for the first offence, four pounds for the second;
for the third offence should be sent to the House of Correction till
they could be conveniently sent out of the colony; and what person
or persons soever should revile the officer or person of magistrates
or ministers, “as was usual with the Quakers,” should be severely
9
whipped, or pay the sum of five pounds.
It was not long before the law was put into operation. The first
cases were Ann Burden and Mary Dyer. They were imprisoned for
two or three months, and then Burden, after having all of her little
property taken from her in fines and jail charges, was sent back to
England, and Dyer was delivered to her husband, the Secretary of
Rhode Island, upon his giving security not to lodge her in any town in
10
the colony nor permit any to speak with her.
Mary Clarke, however, who had come from England “to warn
these persecutors to desist from their iniquity,” was whipped,
receiving twenty stripes with a whip of three cords, knotted at the
ends. Charles Holden and John Copeland, who had been sent away
the year before, returned to the colony, and were whipped thirty
stripes apiece and imprisoned, and Lawrence and Cassandra
Southwick were imprisoned and fined for harboring them. Richard
Dowdney, who arrived from England to bear his testimony, was
scourged and imprisoned, and, together with Holden and Copeland,
11
was reshipped to England.
The authorities now thought that their laws were too lenient, and
in October 1657 they were made more rigorous. The fine for
entertaining Quakers was increased to forty shillings an hour, and
any Quaker returning into the jurisdiction after being once punished,
if a man, was to lose one ear, and on a second appearance to lose
the other. If he appeared a third time, his tongue was to be bored
through with a red-hot iron. Women were to be whipped for the first
and second offences, and to have their tongues bored upon the
12
third. In May of the following year, a penalty of ten shillings was
laid upon every one attending a Quaker meeting, and five pounds
13
upon any one speaking at such meeting.
In spite of these severe enactments the Quakers returned; and
the more they were persecuted, the more they appeared to aspire to
the distinction of martyrdom. Holden, Copeland, and John Rouse, in
1658, had their right ears cut off; but the magistrates were afraid of
the effect upon the people of a public execution of the law, and
hence inflicted the penalty in private, inside the walls of the prison, in
spite of the protest of the unfortunates, after which they were again
14
flogged and dismissed. In October 1658 a further step was taken
in accordance with the advice of the Federal Commissioners, who
met in Boston in September, and the penalty of death was
threatened upon all who, after being banished from the jurisdiction
15
under pain of death if they returned, should again come back.
Massachusetts was the only colony to take this step, which indeed
was carried in the meeting of the Commissioners by her influence
against the protest of Winthrop of Connecticut; and the measure was
passed by a bare majority of the General Court after long debate,
and with the express proviso that trial under this act should be by
special jury, and not before the magistrates alone. Captain Edward
Hutchinson and Captain Thomas Clark, men whose names should
be remembered, desired leave to enter their dissent from the law.
The Court was urged on to this unfortunate action by a petition from
twenty-five of the citizens of Boston, among whom we find the name
of John Wilson, the pastor of the First Church. These represented
that the “incorrigibleness” of the Quakers after all the means that had
been taken was such “as by reason of their malignant obdurities,
daily increaseth rather than abateth our fear of the Spirit of Muncer
and John of Leyden renewed, and consequently of some destructive
evil impending,” and asked whether the law of self-preservation did
not require the adoption of a law to punish these offenders with
16
death. In order to justify its action, the Court ordered that there
should be “a writing or declaration drawn up and forthwith printed to
manifest the evils of the teachings of the Quakers and danger of
their practices, as tending to the subversion of religion, of church
order, and civil government, and the necessity that this government
is put upon for the preservation of religion and their own peace and
safety, to exclude such persons from among them, who after due
17
means of conviction should remain obstinate and pertinacious.”
This declaration was composed by John Norton, and printed at
18
public expense.
The rulers of the colony had now committed themselves to a
position from which they could not recede without loss of dignity, and
which they could not enforce without great obloquy. They evidently
were under the impression that the mere passage of the law would
be enough, and that they would never be obliged to proceed to the
last extremity. But they miscalculated the perseverance and
enthusiasm of the men with whom they had to deal, and were soon
involved in a conflict of will from which there seemed to them to be
no escape except by putting the law into effect. It would have been
better for them to have heeded the wise advice that they had already
received from Rhode Island, whose magistrates had replied to one of
the former communications of Massachusetts requesting their co-
operation in restrictive measures against the Quakers, in these
remarkable words:

“We have no law among us, whereby to punish any for only
declaring by words, etc., their minds and understandings
concerning the things and ways of God, as to salvation and an
eternal condition. And we, moreover, find that in those places
where these people aforesaid in this colony are most of all
suffered to declare themselves freely, and are only opposed by
arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come.
And we are informed that they begin to loathe this place, for that
they are not opposed by the civil authority, but, with all patience
and meekness, are suffered to say over their pretended
revelations and admonitions. Nor are they like or able to gain
many here to their way. Surely, we find that they delight to be
persecuted by civil powers; and when they are so, they are like
to gain more adherents by the conceit of their painful sufferings
19
than by consent to their pernicious sayings.”

The law was passed in October 1658, and at first it seemed to

have accomplished its object. The first six Quakers who were