Dr. Malcolm Brennan

With degrees in philosophy, to which he added one in literature, Dr. Malcolm Brennan put his disciplined talent to a most edifying production in these condensed and well focused accounts of the trials and executions of forty martyrs from England, Scotland and Wales. These writings originally appeared as a series of Angelus magazine articles from the 1970s, this book is a must have for any student of church history. The accounts of these trials and tortures are horrific. This book details the utterly brual treatment meted out to Catholics during the Protestant "Reformation." Their fates are beyond understanding. Saint Margaret Clitherow was crushed to death with stones after refusing to plead to the charge of "harboring a priest." Many of the others, including many Carthusinas, were hanged, drawn, and quarteredan execution almost too horrible to describe.

The Anglo heretics far surpassed the pagans in their demonic lust for blood. The gory rituals of human sacrifice (that so disgusted Cortez), consummated by Aztec priests, were less barbaric than the butchery to which Catholics were being subjected to (almost at the same time) under Henry and Elizabeth. Public hangings (followed by eviscerations of entrails and even hearts from living victims), quartering of limbs, rackings and crushing of bones — no cruelty was too much for this apostate leviathan. Those martyrs who were spared such torments received mercy from the realm by a stroke or two from an executioner’s axe. Nevertheless, for whatever reason, all the martyrs were allowed their final public profession of faith. These testimonies, by England’s most valiant heroes and heroines, will make godly souls weep for their joy while the ungodly, we pray, will not be unmoved.

In the writing of these articles Dr. Malcolm Brennan takes some swipes at the Novus Ordo antics of the "Modern" Catholic Church as compared with the principles for which these martyrs suffered and died. As Saintt Luke Kirby said on the scaffold to a group of Protestant ministers, "You and I are not of one Faith, therefore I think I should offend God if I should pray with you."… (meer)