Robert Barnes (martyr)

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"Barnes and his Fellow-Prisoners Seeking Forgiveness", from an 1887 edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs, illustrated by Kronheim.

Robert Barnes (c. 1495 – 30 July 1540) was an English reformer and martyr.

Life

Barnes was born in

priest 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.

King Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey were attempting to stop the smuggling of Martin Luther's books into England from the Continent, Barnes' remarks immediately drew suspicion.[2]

Barnes before Cardinal Wolsey, 1870 illustration

As a result, in 1526 Barnes was brought before the vice-chancellor for preaching a

Fleet prison, but afterwards conditionally released to the Austin Friary in London. Although under house arrest in the Friary, Barnes was allowed visitors. It was subsequently discovered that while incarcerated there, Barnes was secretly a distributor of illegal copies of William Tyndale's Protestant Bible.[2]

He escaped to

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 description of Lutheran political philosophy that he pleaded with Cromwell to invite the exile home.[3]

In late 1531 Barnes returned to England, becoming one of the chief intermediaries between the English Court and the

Six Articles, followed by the immediate annulment
of the King's marriage to Anne of Cleves in 1540, ultimately brought Cromwell and all other agents of his policies to ruin.

A denunciation by Barnes of Bishop

execution by burning
.

On

dissidents were drawn on hurdles from the Tower of London to Smithfield
for execution. In a deeply ironic moment, each hurdle carried both a condemned Lutheran pastor and a condemned Catholic priest.

The two fellow Lutherans pastors; William Jerome and

hanged, drawn, and quartered, officially for high treason, but in reality for rejecting both the King's title as Supreme Head of the Church of England and State control over the Church
.

Legacy

Both Catholics and Lutherans throughout Europe were shocked and horrified by the executions. Some historians have concluded that Barnes was crucial in having the English Protestants and Catholics alike understand the Reformation around them.[1]

The feast day of Rev. Barnes and his two companions is commemorated every year on the Lutheran Calendar of Saints.

The three Catholic priests executed with Barnes were among the fifty-four

29 December
, 1886.

Literature

  • Shortly after their executions, a dialogue in verse was published, The Metynge of Doctor Barnes and Dr. Powell at Paradise Gate and of theyre communicacion bothe drawen to Smithfylde fro the Towar (London, 1540), in the British Museum.
  • Martin Luther published Barnes' confession after writing a preface of his own as Bekenntnis des Glaubens (1540).
  • Robert Barnes also appears in The Mirror & the Light, by Hilary Mantel.

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-1-84383-290-4
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 9781843835349
  3. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1472. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)

Further reading
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