Robert Barnes (martyr)
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Robert Barnes (c. 1495 – 30 July 1540) was an English reformer and martyr.
Life
Barnes was born in King's Lynn, Norfolk in 1495,[1] and was educated at Cambridge, where he was a member of the Austin Friars. Sometime after 1514 he was sent to study in Leuven. Barnes returned to Cambridge in the early 1520s, where he graduated Doctor of Divinity in 1523, and, soon after, was made Prior of his Cambridge convent.
John Foxe says that Barnes was one of the Cambridge men who gathered at the White Horse Tavern for Bible-reading and theological discussion in the early 1530s. At the encouragement of Thomas Bilney, Barnes preached at the Christmas Midnight Mass in 1525 at St Edward's Church in Cambridge. Barnes' sermon, although against clerical pomp and ecclesiastical abuses, was neither particularly unorthodox nor surprising. However, seeing a churchwarden whose civil suit resulted in the imprisonment of a local man, Barnes departed from his prepared text to denounce lawsuits by one Christian against another—and this in a church traditionally associated with the lawyers' college. Coming at a time when Cardinal Wolsey was attempting to stop the infiltration from the continent of copies of Luther's works, Barnes' remarks appeared suspect.[2]
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As a result, in 1526 he was brought before the vice-chancellor for preaching a heterodox sermon, and was subsequently examined by Wolsey and four other bishops. He was condemned to abjure or be burnt; and preferring the former alternative, was committed to the Fleet prison and afterwards to the Austin Friars in London. Although confined to the house, he was allowed visitors. It was subsequently discovered that while there, Barnes became a known distributor of contraband copies of the Bible in the vernacular.[2]
He escaped to Antwerp in 1528, and also visited Wittenberg, where he became good friends with Martin Luther.[3] While at Wittenberg in the summer of 1531, Barnes was commissioned to ascertain the opinion of Luther and other continental divines on the divorce proceedings between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. That year he also published the first edition of A Supplication, which essentially outlined his Lutheran theology in an appeal to Henry VIII. Stephen Vaughan, an agent of Thomas Cromwell in the Low Countries and an advanced reformer, came across a copy of Barnes's work and was so impressed by his Lutheran political philosophy of kingship that he pleaded with Cromwell to grant the exile a hearing.[3]
In late 1531 Barnes returned to England, becoming one of the chief intermediaries between the English government and Lutheran Germany, and he spent the next several years going between England and Germany. He was a staunch defender of Henry's Royal Supremacy over the Church of England. In 1539 he was employed in negotiations connected with Anne of Cleves's marriage. The policy was Cromwell's, but Henry VIII had already in 1538 refused to adopt Lutheran theology, and the statute of Six Articles (1539), followed by the king's unsuccessful marriage to Anne of Cleves (1540), brought the agents of that policy to ruin.
An attack upon Bishop Gardiner by Barnes in a sermon at St Paul's Cross was the signal for a bitter struggle between the Protestant, Proto-Anglican, and Crypto-Catholic courtiers in King Henry's council, which raged during the spring of 1540. Barnes was forced to apologise and recant; and Bishop Gardiner delivered a series of sermons at St Paul's Cross to counteract Barnes' invective. But a month or so later Cromwell was made earl of Essex, Gardiner's friend, Bishop Sampson, was sent to the Tower, and Barnes reverted to Lutheranism. It was a delusive victory. In July, Cromwell was attainted, Anne of Cleves was divorced and Barnes was burnt (30 July 1540).
Five other religious dissidents were executed on the same day: two fellow Lutherans; William Jerome and Thomas Gerrard, were, like Barnes, burnt at the stake for heresy under the Six Articles; three Catholics: Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherstone and Edward Powell, were hanged for high treason, for rejecting the King's title as Supreme Head of the Church of England. Both Lutherans and Catholics on the continent were shocked and horrified. Luther published Barnes' confession with a preface of his own as Bekenntnis des Glaubens (1540).
Some historians have concluded that Barnes was crucial in having the English Protestants and Catholics alike understand the Reformation around them.[1]
Literature
Robert Barnes appears in The Mirror & the Light, by Hilary Mantel.
See also
References
- ^ a b Ryrie, Alec (2007). "Chapter 6: 'A saynt in the deuils name': Heroes and Villains in the Martyrdom of Robert Barnes". In Freeman, Thomas S.; Mayer, Thomas F. (eds.). Martyrs and martyrdom in England, c.1400-1700. Boydell Press. pp. 144–165. ISBN 978-1-84383-290-4.
- ^ a b Maas, Korey. The Reformation and Robert Barnes: History, Theology and Polemic in Early Modern England, Boydell & Brewer, 2010 ISBN 9781843835349
- ^ a b "Barnes, Robert". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1472. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Further reading
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- McGoldrick, James Edward (1979). Luther's English Connection: the Reformation Thought of Robert Barnes and [of] William Tyndale. Northwestern Publishing House. ISBN 0-8100-0070-9
- 1495 births
- 1540 deaths
- Protestant Reformers
- Doctors of Divinity
- English Lutheran martyrs
- People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar
- People executed for heresy
- Executed British people
- People executed under Henry VIII
- 16th-century Protestant martyrs
- People from King's Lynn
- 16th-century English people
- People executed by the Kingdom of England by burning
- Protestant martyrs of England