September 20th, 2020
Headsman
On this date in 1547, the anti-Catholic publisher Jan Olivetsky was beheaded in the town square of Olomouc. Links in this post are predominantly Czech.
Part of a whole family of pioneers in early Bohemian and Moravian printing — his father Pavel stamped out the first printed editions of Jan Hus‘s writings in Czech — Jan skirted even closer to the lines proscribing subversive and heretical propaganda. Too close.
Jan set up shop a couple miles down the road from Olomouc in Drozdovice where — in addition to ponderous legal compendiums and popular folk stories that comprised his daily bread — he dared to run the presses for a variety of Lutheran sermons and manifestos against the pope.
The outbreak of, and the decisive Catholic triumph in, the Schmalkaldic War of 1546-1547 came a sharp imperial crackdown on this sects trafficking.
He’s regarded as the protomartyr among Moravian publishers, a professional distinction rather than a confessional one.
On this day..
Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Austria,Beheaded,Businessmen,Capital Punishment,Czechoslovakia,Death Penalty,Execution,God,Habsburg Realm,History,Holy Roman Empire,Martyrs,Milestones,Power,Public Executions,Religious Figures
Tags: 1540s, 1547, drozdovice, jan olivetsky, olomouc, schmalkaldic war, september 20
March 15th, 2020
Headsman
On or about this date in 1547, the Spanish-born scholar Diego de Enzinas was burned by the Roman Inquisition.
Like his (more renowned) brother Francisco de Enzinas — who translated the New Testament into Spanish — Diego (English Wikipedia entry | Spanih) was an apostate (to Cathoic eyes) Protestant scholar.
He spent the early 1540s — when he was merely in his early 20s — studying, translating, and propagandizing in Paris and the Low Countries. Catching word from his kin in Burgos that it was too dangerous to risk returning to his homeland, he took refuge with fellow dissidents in Rome … but when arrested, he would betray their names to Inquisition torturers.
On this day..
- 1943: Martial Van Schelle, Belgian Olympian - 2019
- 1766: Nicholas Sheehy, Whiteboys priest - 2018
- 1718: Stepan Glebov, lover of the tsarina - 2017
- 1988: Dmitri Polyakov, Cold War spy - 2016
- 1745: Martha Stracey, whore and reprobate-creature - 2015
- 1878: Joseph LaPage, murderer of Josie Langmaid - 2014
- 1963: Victor Feguer, by the feds - 2013
- 1865: Marcellus Jerome Clarke, "Sue Mundy" - 2012
- 1536: Pargali Ibrahim Pasha, Suleiman the Magnificent's friend and grand vizier - 2011
- 1990: Farzad Bazoft, journalist - 2010
- 1957: Burton Abbott, reprieved too late - 2009
- 1938: Seventeen former Bolshevik officials from the Trial of the 21 - 2008
Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Burned,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,God,Heresy,History,Intellectuals,Italy,Martyrs,Papal States,Public Executions,Religious Figures,Torture
Tags: 1540s, 1547, diego de enzinas, francisco de enzinas, march 15
January 29th, 2008
Headsman
On this date in 1547, the Duke of Norfolk was to have been beheaded.
But thanks to the previous day’s death of the corpulent 55-year-old King Henry VIII, the duke’s death warrant was never signed, and the condemned noble died in bed … seven years later.
A force in the gore-soaked arena of English politics for two generations, Thomas Howard had steered two nieces into the monarch’s bed. Both girls had gone to the scaffold,* and the disgrace of the second, Catherine Howard, brought a collapse in the whole family’s fortunes. Thomas Howard’s son Henry was not as lucky as the father: Henry was beheaded just a few days before the king succumbed, on the same charge of treason that almost claimed Thomas this day.
Though Howard pere would survive long enough to see his title restored, this day was far from the last chapter of his grasping family’s encounter with that classic Tudor denouement, the chopping-block. Thomas, his executed son, and his executed grandson today stock the family tombs at St. Michael, Framlingham — itself a sort of late monument to the aristocracy unmade by Henry’s reforms more than by his executioners.
* “She has miscarried of her savior,” Howard famously remarked of the male heir his niece Anne Boleyn delivered stillborn. A few months later, the Duke presided over Anne’s trial and voted to condemn her to death. (Hat tip: Fiz.)
Part of the Themed Set: The English Reformation.
On this day..
- 1733: Henry Neal, for shoes and breeches - 2020
- 1726: Thomas Craven and William Anderson, reluctant autobiographers - 2019
- 1696: Thomas Randal, obstinate - 2018
- 2015: Robert Ladd, "let's ride" - 2017
- 1802: Joseph Wall - 2016
- 1745: Eve, her smoke visible throughout the country - 2015
- 1879: John Achey and William Merrick, the first hanged in Indianapolis - 2015
- 1253: P. Morret, poor guesser - 2014
- 1913: Edward Hopwood, clumsy suicide - 2013
- Daily Double: Century-Old English Legal Novelties - 2013
- 1912: Albert Wolter, white slaver - 2012
- 1869: Chauncey W. Millard, candy man - 2011
- 1810: Pedro Domingo Murillo, for Bolivian independence - 2010
- 2006: A female spy by al Qaeda - 2009
- Themed Set: The English Reformation - 2008
Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Beheaded,England,Lucky to be Alive,Nobility,Not Executed,Politicians,Power,Scandal,Treason
Tags: 1540s, 1547, anne boleyn, catherine howard, henry howard, henry viii, january 29, katherine howard, kathryn howard, The Tower of London, thomas howard, tudor england
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