Presently this brilliant figure disappears from English society, and the heroine returns to her native land to marry her kinsman, Allan McDonald, and to become the mother of the celebrated Sir John McDonald.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MARTYR PERIODS: RELIGIOUS ZEAL AND RELIGIOUS APATHY.
Religious life in the sixteenth century—Religion the great motive-power—The Lollard persecutions—Protestant martyrs of the sixteenth century—Anne Askew—Women martyrs in the seventeenth century—Persecution of the Quakeresses—Quaker doctrines—Seventeenth-century Anglicanism—Indifference of the Church to social work—Condition of the clergy—Mary Astell and her Protestant nunnery—The Countess of Warwick.
The religious history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is notorious for comprising two great periods of martyrdom—periods which are significant as showing the strong latent force in women, waiting for opportunity to call it forth. Whatever position may be assigned to women either by the Church or the State, whatever may have been the current notions about the place they should occupy, however much they may have been repressed or neglected, they have always been ready, when occasion arose, to respond to the call for action. In times of political struggle, of fierce fighting, they have been eager to spend and be spent, enthusiastic, persistent, unflinching. In the cause of religion, which, above all others, appeals to women, their zeal has been most conspicuous.
It has been elsewhere noted that throughout the Middle Ages the Church was the dominant force.[51] All over Europe the unity of Christendom was the central idea, binding men together in spite of the rents caused by war. In the sixteenth century this idea was overthrown. Christendom was divided, never again to be welded into one. Yet the unloosening of the bonds which had held the laity in subjection to ecclesiastical authority, did not subvert the influence of religion itself among the people. As an interest religion occupied a large place in the lives of all classes. Those who had leisure used it for the study of theology and religious literature; among women the literary efforts of that period were chiefly concerned with devotional matters. Liberty awakened an ardour more intense. A new power was given to the people—the right of private judgment. It brought with it an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Questions that had before been decided by an infallible authority were left to be solved by each one for himself. Religion became for the first time a matter dependent on personal conviction and understanding. The priest no longer stood as interpreter between the individual and his faith.
All the influences of the period, the literary movement, the awakening forces of the Renaissance, the stress and stir in the whole national life, added to rather than diminished the strength of the religious emotion. It might have been supposed that people would have been lax and indifferent in a period of so much general activity, when new vistas were opening out in the social horizon. But the sixteenth century was not a time of apathy in any department of life, and the religious question which was agitating the whole Continent burned fiercer than ever in England on account of the increased mental activity.
With women who embraced the reformed faith, religion was the dominating force. All their enthusiasm awoke. To those with a strong spiritual bias the question of belief became the most supreme matter of concern. To be false to conscience was to poison the very root of their being. The Roman Catholic martyrs died loyally in the service of the Church—that Church which was tottering from blows without and corruption within—they died as servants of a spiritual power that had ruled Europe. The glamour attaching to the traditions of a Church which had had no rival in Christendom hung round their faith. The Protestant martyrs died like soldiers in a cause which they had espoused from intense conviction of its rightness. They died exultingly for a belief which had become the mainspring of their lives, which was a personal possession, a deep spiritual experience. In these martyr periods we see the apotheosis of the religious sentiment in women.
The abnormal character of the martyr periods makes them stand out from the general course of history. They are not evolutionary, except in the sense in which all events spring from causes, and all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, are part of a chain of circumstances. In the attitude of the Church towards women during religious persecutions, there are no features which are not characteristic of the attitude of the Church to the general body of the laity. During these periods differences of sex are obliterated. The perfervid zeal and fanaticism which inspired to persecution suspended all ordinary relations.