What do Reformation descriptions of martyrs' blood tell us about Catholic and Protestant beliefs?

What is it about?

This article analyses English Protestant and Catholic descriptions of, and beliefs about, martyrdom. Scholarship has tended to see Protestants and Catholics as sharing very similar notions of martyrdom; however Protestants and Catholics, in fact, had fiercely opposed notions of martyrdom, which sprang from highly significant differences in theology and worldview. Protestant and Catholic descriptions of martyrs' blood illustrate this thesis. Blood was integral to early-modern people’s understandings of themselves, the world around them, and Christianity. Blood was at the heart of beliefs about salvation, sanctification, vengeance, mercy, apocalypticism, and gender. It was also key to understandings and descriptions of martyrdom. As martyrdoms proliferated across Western Europe in the Reformation era, writings about martyrs became a major vehicle of religious apologetics, and were suffused with references to martyrs' blood. Despite some surface-level similarities in rhetoric, Protestants and Catholics had very different beliefs about martyrdom, and voiced largely opposing theological perspectives on key areas such as the supernatural, materiality, the apocalypse, and notions of time. They also often had different polemic strategies and priorities. Contrary to many previous scholars' hypotheses, my research show that early-modern Catholic beliefs about martyrdom largely continued in the medieval Catholic mould, while Protestantism took up many trajectories found in medieval heresies, highlighting the deep divisions between their worldviews.

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Why is it important?

Somewhere between 7,000 and 100,000 (estimates vary wildly) Christians are still martyred each year, and these deaths are often described using a rhetoric of martyrs' blood. For example, Pope Francis said in 2015: "The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard... Their blood confesses Christ." In order to understand fully contemporary Christian beliefs about martyrdom and references to martyrs' blood, it is necessary to examine the history that has shaped them. The Reformation era is critical point in this history. There has been much scholarship on Reformation martyrdom, but also none – until now – on martyrs’ blood in the Reformation. This artucle shows the great importance of this topic, and uses it as a fresh lens through which to explore Reformation notions of martyrdom and Reformation history (both Protestant and Catholic). The research presented suggests that prevailing scholarly perceptions of Reformation martyrdoms need to be revised and nuanced, with wider-ranging implications for how we see early-modern and medieval history. It contributes to the dialogue in areas that are receiving rich focus, such as gender history, as well as those that remain understudied, such as the history of time and - of course - the history of bodily fluids. It highlights some important fault lines between early-modern Catholicism and Protestantism that have not been sufficiently recognised and explored, such as the fact that they operated within very different temporalities.