The Tower of London Is Hallowed for the Blood St. Nicholas Owen Spilled There
BY ANGELO STAGNARO
October 19-25, 2008 Issue |
Posted 10/14/08 at 2:24 PM
I made my way through the crowds on the bank of
the River Thames and stood in line to buy my ticket for the Tower of London
tour.
Yes, the Tower — that infamous prison that held martyrs such
as St. Thomas More.
William the Conqueror, who
commissioned the Tower in 1078, intended it to protect the city against
invaders.
Most people in line with me at the
ticket booth were probably hoping to catch a glimpse of the Crown Jewels. I, on
the other hand, came to pay homage to the martyrs’ crowns earned here at all
too great a price.
The usual visitor is unaware of the
centuries of repression British Catholics suffered during the “Penal Times.”
Between 1559 and 1829, the British government imposed a series of laws
forbidding Catholics from practicing their faith. Henry VIII’s apostasy,
treachery and moral inconsistency helped create hundreds of martyrs for the
Church. Subsequent rulers of Britain offered more of the same.
St. Nicholas Owen was one of many
who suffered and died in the Tower. He was known as “Little John.” He was a
tiny slip of a Jesuit, but, as the old hagiographies commonly attested, he was
big of heart. Owen was slightly taller than a dwarf and suffered from a hernia
and a badly set leg, fractured when a horse fell on him. On March 2, 1606,
Nicholas Owen was tortured to death in the Tower of London. He had, in fact,
already been here before — when he helped two Jesuit priests escape.
In 1588, Father Henry Garnet,
superior of the English Jesuits, directed St. Nicholas to use his cabinetry and
masonry skills to save people’s lives by creating “priest holes,” secret places
designed to hide priests from the authorities. More than 100 examples of his
work have been found throughout England, but many more will probably never be
known.
At night, St. Nicholas would create
small hiding places — trap doors, sliding doors, hidden crawl spaces and
subterranean passages — in order to hide priests and other Catholic fugitives
from priest hunters. He would use trompe l’oeil:
perspective and many of the modern principles of stage illusion design that
magicians often take for granted. Whenever St. Nicholas would design and build
such hiding places, he would always begin with prayer and receive the
Eucharist. Because of his incredible building skills, he was even able to help
two Jesuit priests escape from the Tower.
It’s not strange to imagine why
Catholic magicians, illusionists and escape artists consider him as important a
patron as St. Don Bosco. Who better to be a patron than a man who could use
illusion to fool the eye, break into prison, and help people escape?
Nicholas managed to evade
anti-Catholic authorities until the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In 1606,
he was arrested again in Worcestershire. He gave himself up without resisting
in order to distract attention from two priests hiding nearby.
Despite it being illegal for him to
be tortured (under English law the maimed were exempt from torture), he
suffered on the rack until his death. He kept his secrets from his executioners
and betrayed no one.
Father Gerard, one of the two men he
helped escape from the Tower, once wrote: “I verily think no man can be said to
have done more good of all those who labored in the English vineyard. He was
the immediate occasion of saving the lives of many hundreds of persons, both
ecclesiastical and secular.”
One particularly gruesome report
stated that they tortured Owen “with such inhuman ferocity” that he became disemboweled.
Unfamiliar Name
The tour led through a maze of dark
tunnels, and our guide offered sensationalist and titillating bits of sanitized
history. No mention at all of the Penal Times. No mention of the Catholics who
defended the Church only to be ruthlessly killed by people who had only a few
years prior been Catholics themselves. The tourists in my group seem engrossed
by the macabre details of the tortures carried out in the Tower, as portrayed
by our tour guide — horrors that even in this jaded century would be considered
crimes against humanity.
I felt the walls around me, though I
was asked not to touch them. They were, after all, hallowed because of the
blood of martyrs who died here.
“Is this where St. Nicholas Owen
died?” I asked, hoping my question wasn’t obstreperous, but still hoping to
witness to his sacrifice.
My guide smiled and apologized. She
was unfamiliar with the name.
Without St. Nicholas Owen’s help,
hundreds of British Catholics would have been deprived of the sacraments. In
recognition of his sacrifice and his love of God, Nicholas Owen was canonized
as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI on Oct. 25,
1970, their feast day.
Very few stops on my recent
pilgrimage throughout Europe solicited such strong feelings from me. I had been
to many sites made holy because of the lives of holy people, but I’d never been
to a place of martyrdom. So many people were blessed with martyrs’ crowns in
England and Wales because they never abandoned God or the Church. I won’t
forget my visit to this place, so full of aching misery and the spiritual joy
that ensued from it.
Angelo
Stagnaro is based in
Fresh Meadows, New York.
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