Barton, Elizabeth
Barton, Elizabeth
(c.1506 -1534 ) The Benedictine Nun of Kent, a visionary whose prophecies led to her execution without trial at Tyburn, London , 1534 . Whether she was an impostor or was gifted with supernatural knowledge has been the subject of controversy. The only evidence against her comes through her enemies.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Barton, Elizabeth
Born probably in 1506; executed at Tyburn, 20 April, 1534; called the “Nun of Kent.” The career of this visionary, whose prophecies led to her execution under Henry VIII, has been the source of a historical controversy which resolves itself into the question: Was she gifted with supernatural knowledge or was she an impostor?
In 1525, when nineteen years of age, being then employed as a domestic servant at Aldington, Kent, she had an illness during which she fell into frequent trances and told “wondrously things done in other places whilst she was neither herself present nor yet heard no report thereof.” From the first her utterances assumed a religious character and were “of marvellous holiness in rebuke of sin and vice.”
Her parish priest, Richard Masters, convinced of her sincerity, reported the matter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent a commission of three Canterbury Benedictines, Bocking, Hadleigh, and Barnes, two Franciscans, Hugh Rich and Richard Risby, a diocesan official, and the parish priest to examine her again. Shortly after the commission pronounced in her favour, her prediction that the Blessed Virgin would cure her at a certain chapel was fulfilled, when in presence of a large crowd she was restored to health. She then became a Benedictine nun, living near Canterbury, with a great reputation for holiness. Her fame gradually spread until she came into wide public notice.
She protested “in the name and by the authority of God” against the king’s projected divorce. To further her opposition, besides writing to the pope, she had interviews with Fisher, Wolsey, and the king himself. Owing to her reputation for sanctity, she proved one of the most formidable opponents of the royal divorce, so that in 1533 Cromwell took steps against her and, after examination by Cranmer, she was in November, with Dr. Bocking, her confessor, and others, committed to the Tower. Subsequently, all the prisoners were made to do public penance at St. Paul’s and at Canterbury and to publish confessions of deception and fraud.
In January, 1534, a bill of attainder was framed against her and thirteen of her sympathizers, among whom were Fisher and More. Except the latter, whose name was withdrawn, all were condemned under this bill; seven, including Bocking, Masters, Rich, Risby, and Elizabeth herself, being sentenced to death, while Fisher and five others were condemned to imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. Elizabeth and her companions were executed at Tyburn on 20 April, 1534, when she is said to have repeated her confession.
Protestant authors allege that these confessions alone are conclusive of her imposture, but Catholic writers, though they have felt free to hold divergent opinions about the nun, have pointed out the suggestive fact that all that is known as to these confessions emanates from Cromwell or his agents; that all available documents are on his side; that the confession issued as hers is on the face of it not her own composition; that she and her companions were never brought to trial, but were condemned and executed unheard; that there is contemporary evidence that the alleged confession was even then believed to be a forgery. For these reasons, the matter cannot be considered as settled, and unfortunately, the difficulty of arriving at any satisfactory and final decision now seems insuperable.
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Act of Attainder, 25 Henry VIII, cap. xii; Wright, Suppression of the Monasteries; Gardner, Letters and Papers of Henry VIIIfor 1533-4; Lee in Dict. Nat. Biog., III, 343; Gasquet, Henry VIII and the Eng. Monasteries (1889), I, iii; Bridgett, Life of Fisher (1890), xi; Idem, Life of More (1892), xvii.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Barton, Elizabeth
the holy maid of Kent, first becomes known to us in 1525, when, while a servant at an inn at Aldington, in Kent, she began to acquire a local reputation for sanctity and miraculous endowments. She was subject to epileptic fits, and in the paroxysms vented incoherent phrases, which Richard Master, parson of Aldington, took advantage of to make people believe that she was an instrument of divine revelation. A successful prediction lent its aid to the general delusion. A child of the master of the inn happened to be ill when Elizabeth was attacked by one of her fits. On recovering, she inquired whether the child was dead. She was told that it was still living. It will not live, I announce to you; its death has been revealed to me in a vision, was the answer. The child died, and Elizabeth was immediately regarded as one favored by Heaven with the gift of prophecy. She soon after entered the convent of St. Sepulchre’s at Canterbury, and became a nun. In this new situation her revelations multiplied, and she became generally known as the holy maid of Kent. Bishop Fisher and Archbishop Warham countenanced her pretensions. Led by her zeal, or more probably worked upon by others, she boldly prophesied in reference to the divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine and his marriage with Anne Boleyn, that she had knowledge by revelation from heaven that God was highly displeased with our said sovereign lord, and that if he proceeded in the said divorce and separation and married again, he should no longer be king of this realm; and that, in the estimation of Almighty God, he should not be king one hour, and that he should die a villain’s death. The prediction was widely diffused, and caused great popular excitement. In November, 1533, the nun, with five priests and three lay gentlemen, her accomplices, were brought before the Star Chamber, and sentenced to do public penance as impostors at St. Paul’s Cross. But the nun’s confession, whatever were its motives, availed her nothing. From the pillory she and her companions were led back to prison, where they lay till the following January, when they were attainted of high treason. On the 21st of April, 1534, the nun was beheaded at Tyburn, together with the five priests. English Cyclopoedia; Burnet, History of Reformation, 1:243-249.