Nineteen Martyrs of Gorkum

The citadel was hardly in a state to offer long resistance. Poorly provided with food and war munitions, it did not even have blacksmiths for the most urgent repairs, nor surgeons to dress the wounded. All the hope of the refugees lay in the help expected from outside. The governor, Gaspard Turc, was counting on his son, who was to bring him troops from the Count of Bossut, governor of Utrecht for the King. He was expecting him from hour to hour. He showed letters from the Count by which this help was positively promised to him.

Thus, the first response he gave to Marin's summons was marked by a truly manly resolution. Reported to Marin Brant, it deeply irritated him. He had his artillery positioned in front of the part of the rampart that seemed weakest to him and opened fire vigorously.

Night was beginning to fall. The besieged responded as best they could; but the disproportion of forces was too evident. Marin had nearly two hundred combatants. The governor, on the contrary, could only dispose of about twenty true defenders; the others were ill-accustomed to the handling of weapons, or their use was forbidden to them by their priestly or monastic character. They could not prevent the enemy from setting fire to a gate of the first enclosure of the fortress, the one that touched the city walls, and they had to retreat behind the second line of ramparts. This second line itself was still much too extensive for the small number of those guarding it. Around midnight, great clamors announced that the Geuzen had just breached it in turn, and the small garrison had only enough time to retreat into the third and last enclosure, which was called the Blue Tower, because of the color of the stone.

The governor did not despair of being able to hold out in the Blue Tower until his son's arrival. This tower was completely surrounded by a moat full of water. Built entirely of stone blocks, it offered an imposing mass, at least to the eye. But, when the enemy, inflamed by their initial successes, began to riddle all its openings with projectiles, as nothing yet announced the promised reinforcement, the governor's soldiers began to repeat that they were being deceived, that this reinforcement was only a lure, and that they no longer wanted to fight. Some threw down their weapons or defected to the enemy.

The governor, not knowing how to discern and stop the mutineers in the midst of the darkness, cried out that he would fight alone if he were abandoned, and that the Geuzen would only enter over his corpse. But another kind of confusion came to add even more to his embarrassments. Most of the refugees' wives, believing all was lost, raised clamors that no reasoning from their fathers or husbands could appease, and whose terror was only increased by the night and the sound of the muskets. The governor's wife and daughter threw themselves around his neck, held him embraced as if to bind his arms, and begged him to have pity on them, to let go of his fatal obstinacy. He pushed them away, and, calling Father Nicholas Pik, asked for his advice. The Father replied that he was not a military man to have an exact idea of the situation; that he judged it grave, no doubt, but not such that they could not hold out for a few more hours; that it was necessary at all costs to wait for daybreak to see if help would not appear; that, moreover, he augured nothing good from a capitulation, whatever it might be, for what faith deserved the word of people who had violated their oaths to God and the King? At the same time, he joined example to advice. He strove, with his brothers, to restore heart to the soldiers, to calm the women, and to help with the defense as much as their holy and peaceful profession allowed. The Geuzen's cannonballs followed one another almost without intervals. The Tower trembled, as if shaken on its foundations; one would have said at certain general discharges that it was all on fire, and the disorder only redoubled inside. The governor asked to parley.

At this news, silence was finally re-established on both sides. The governor proposed to surrender the tower; the leader of the Geuzen accepted, and these were the conditions of the capitulation: Marin pledged to do no harm to those who were in the citadel, whether lay or ecclesiastical, and to send them all back free. Only, everything that could be found there, belonging to them, would become the property of the victors.

During this time, the ecclesiastics and religious, who expected everything, confessed to one another or heard the confessions of the laity. The parish priest Nicolas Poppel had brought the holy hosts with him, in order to hide them from the usual insults of the heretics. Almost all the refugees came piously to receive communion from his hand, like those early Christians who, in the night of the prisons, fed one last time on the bread of the strong before appearing in the amphitheaters.

The Gueux entered while renewing their assurances; and one thing that must have been particularly painful to the venerable servants of Jesus Christ was to see how many of their fellow citizens, their parishioners, and even those they had until then counted among the best, had swelled the ranks of the victors.

Once he had entered with his entire troop, Marin had all the people he found in the fortress gathered in an upper hall. This hall was a square room in the middle of the tower. There, the Gueux threw themselves upon the captives like ferocious beasts, shouting at them: "Everything you have is ours! Show us your hiding places, empty your purses, turn out your pockets!" And they searched them, undressed them, and trampled them with brutality, especially the Capuchins. They could not bring themselves to believe these pious cenobites when they affirmed that their vow of poverty did not allow them to have money or any object of value on their persons for their use. Finally, they pushed them into a kitchen and from there into a fairly spacious hall, where they made them all state their names, which they then wrote down on a list.

The purpose of this list was to enable the leaders of the heresy in Gorkum, and in particular two influential members of the city council, to satisfy, if necessary, their personal vengeances. Indeed, as soon as these two men had gone through the names of the captives, one was called, named Theodore Bommer, and he was made to leave with his son. He had long been feared and hated as one of the firmest champions of the Catholic faith. He was reproached for having called the Gueux, when they had appeared before the city, "looters and thieves of sacred vessels." He limited himself to expressing the desire that he had been mistaken. "Would to God," he said, "that I had been misinformed! Make me a liar, that depends on you; respect what I accuse you of violating, and I am ready to retract with joy." The Gueux would have been careful not to accept this challenge. Already the most eager among them had stripped the churches of Gorkum, and everyone could see at the top of the main mast of their principal ship the venerated banner that was used in public processions. They took Theodore Bommer away, and a few days later, in contempt of the surrender, they hanged him in the public square of Gorkum.

The insults, reproaches, and jokes of which the captives became the object can easily be imagined. Error is not very merciful by nature. People succeeded one another at the door of the prisoners' hall as if in a theater; everyone made it a point of honor to bring their imprecation or their witticism. They finally had them, these shorn and cowled men, these tools of popery and Spanish despotism. They were going to make them pay for the evils with which the Duke of Alba was overwhelming the Reformed. Their fate was already decided; the executioner of Dordrecht had been summoned.

The captives, in general, responded only with the firmness of their attitude. The governor Gaspard Turc, having taken it upon himself, as was his right and duty, to recall the solemn promises of Marin, was put in irons and thrown into prison, without being allowed to see his wife again. "This man is a rabid papist," Marin said of him: "if one were to open his heart, one would find only priests and monks."

A soldier, having found a paten among the sacred vessels brought into the citadel, threw it with all his might at the face of Father Nicolas Pik and wounded him in the mouth. The holy guardian appeared barely affected and kept his serene air, rather laughing than saddened.

Beside him, Nicaise and Willald, both Friars Minor, meditated and read as if in the silence of their cell. Willald was Danish by nation. Driven from his homeland for his fidelity to the religion, he had taken refuge in Holland. His advanced age, almost decrepit, made the strength of his character stand out even more.

Parish priest Nicolas Poppel showed a certain despondency. His pallor and sadness were attributed to fear, but quite wrongly, as one could be convinced later. He was thinking of the cowardice, of the apostasy of his flock.

The other parish priest, Leonard Wichel, could not imagine that the threats were serious and the danger real. He had so often helped or even saved heretics in the course of his long ministry that it seemed impossible to him not to encounter any pity in return. Having recognized a certain Anabaptist whom he had once snatched from death and reconciled with the Church, he did not fear to appeal to his memories and to claim his good offices for himself and his companions. The latter did not contest the good deed at all and spoke of his gratitude, of his commiseration; but whether he did not dare to compromise himself, or whether his return to Catholicism had been only apparent, he hastened to return to the crowd and lose himself in it.

Finally, after a day spent between hope and fear, new captives were called by their names, along with the women; but this time for freedom and not for punishment. All the laypeople were successively released before evening. They were not released without having taken an oath and added, each according to his fortune, a heavy ransom to what had been found in the fortress. Ransom and oath were manifestly contrary to the terms of the surrender, but they were only the least of its violations. The religious and the priests, instead of following their companions toward the drawbridge, were dragged toward the prison, where they were thrown pell-mell.

An old secular priest, called Godefroy van Duynen, an old man of very upright morals, but who was considered to no longer have all his reason, was the only one permitted to leave. As he was being led to the drawbridge, an inhabitant of Gorkum asked the soldiers where they were taking this priest. "He is being sent back because he is mad," said one of the soldiers. "Mad!" replied the Gorkumian; "he has enough head to manufacture his God by saying his mass: he will have enough to be hanged." The soldiers burst out laughing, and thanks to this horrible blasphemy, Duynen was brought back to prison.

The young nephew of the Father Guardian, the one whose tender affection for his uncle we have already recounted, was also to remain; but he escaped. The Father Guardian could have escaped as well. One of his sisters had a nephew who was on the best of terms with the Gueux, among whom he had once served. He had even, for this fact, been condemned to death by the Count of Bossut, commander for the King in Rotterdam; Father Pik had then made the trip to that city for him, and it was only out of consideration for him and his insistent supplications that the Count had granted the culprit's pardon. The latter had become neither more faithful nor more prudent, but he had retained a lively gratitude for the Father. He came to find him, and in the presence of the other religious, given the impossibility of speaking to him alone, he begged him to leave, taking it upon himself to provide him with the means. The Father Guardian, at this proposal, turned toward his brothers, as if to consult them. Several of them appeared deeply affected by the prospect of this departure. One of them, even (this was undoubtedly not one of those who earned so much glory by their courageous perseverance), went so far as to say: "It is you, Father Guardian, who brought us here, and you are abandoning us!" A reproach doubly inconsiderate, as we have seen, and which the Father did not deserve in any way, but which did not fail to move him. "No, my friends; no, my brothers," he replied. "If they want to deliver us all, I accept. But God forbid that I should abandon you! As long as one of you remains here, he will find me at his side, and if someone must die, it will either be me, or else we will die at least two!" Then, turning toward the benevolent visitor: "I thank you; but, my friend, you see, I am a Father, and in vain would you try again to take me away from my children."

The prisoners had not yet eaten anything since the day before; exhausted by a night and a day so laborious, they were falling from starvation. It was a Friday: they were brought precisely meats of all kinds for supper. We do not need to add that they preferred to fast still rather than to give the heretics the joy of seeing them break the law of abstinence.

Here begin, strictly speaking, the acts of their martyrdom, of which what precedes had been only the prelude. We ask in advance for the reader's pardon for the inexhaustible cruelty and the long series of diabolical inventions with which we have to weary his delicacy. But must not everything be told, and would it not be a sort of sacrilege to steal a single jewel from the crown of our blessed ones, to veil a single ray of their halo?

The soldiers in charge of guarding the fortress and the dungeon were, in general, former pirates; that is why they were called the Sea Gueux. Those least at odds with justice and the law of nations were, however, exalted by the pride of success and Calvinist fanaticism. They had naturally laid hands on all the provisions of the castle. The excesses of drunkenness and good cheer pushing their hatred for the habit and the sacred character of their prisoners to the point of vertigo, rejoicing at their expense seemed to them an excellent way to complete an evening of debauchery. They rose from the table like madmen and ran to the prison, calling out loudly to these "idolatrous manufacturers of God," and asking themselves what they were going to cut off from them first, the nose or the ears, the hands or the feet. They dragged ladders with them and brought ropes. The captives thought it was to hang them on the spot, when a sentry entered hurriedly, shouting that Guillaume Turc, the governor's son, the one they had expected the day before, had just arrived, and that the Spaniards were already entering Gorkum. The soldiers rushed outside in a tumult and ran to the walls. The prisoners took advantage of this moment of respite to give each other courage and to ask for it together from God. The hope of deliverance began to shine again in their eyes, but the illusion was short-lived. The rumor of the approach of the Spaniards was false. The soldiers returned to their cruel amusements. "So much the better," they said, "we will only have to deal tonight with the black robes and the gray robes; it would be a real shame if the red coats came to disturb us in such pleasant work." — "But," added one of them, "it is not a question of working for nothing, let us bring them each in their turn and see in detail the state of their pockets and their purses." Parish priest Leonard Wichel still had some money. He handed it over to them willingly.

After him, Godefroy van Duynen was ordered to step forward. "You must," the soldiers told him, "reveal a treasure to us." — "I know of none," the priest replied simply. — "That is possible," the soldiers replied: "you, you are half-mad; it is not to you that the great secrets must have been entrusted. It is rather to this old confessor of nuns." They were thus designating Father Thierry Embden, director of the nuns of Saint Agnes. They ordered him with strong threats and imprecations to show them the treasure of the Church. At the same time, they pressed a loaded pistol against his chest. Upon his calm and persistent declaration that he knew nothing, they moved on to Nicolas Poppel, the youngest of the Gorkum parish priests. They were indeed convinced that the Catholics had brought immense wealth into the citadel the day before. They also pressed the pistol against Nicolas Poppel's chest: "Your treasure or your life!" they shouted at him. Then, their avarice yielding for an instant to their sectarian passion: "Hand over to us at least the gods you manufactured at mass: they say you carry a supply of them on you. Is it true? You who have so often ranted against us in the pulpit of your church, what do you think now, in the face of this pistol, of all the nonsense you spouted to the imbeciles?" — "I believe," replied Nicolas Poppel, "in everything that the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church believes and teaches, and in particular in the real presence of my God under the sacramental species. If you see in that a reason to kill me, kill me: I will be happy to die following the confession of faith that you have just demanded." And believing his last hour had come, he knelt down, shouting in a voice so loud that it was heard throughout the citadel: *In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.*

But his sacrifice was not yet consummated; God, who wanted to add to his merits, held back the blow ready to be struck, and the soldier did not dare to fire.

His comrades tore the cord from the belt of one of the Friars Minor. They wrapped it several times around Poppel's neck; then, attaching it by one end to the prison door, they began to pull from the other, to lift the patient into the air and let him fall heavily, then to lift him again and so on several times, renewing their question about the hiding place of the treasure each time. He, unable to speak because the knot, which was tightening more and more, was cutting off his speech along with his breath, did not cease to affirm, by his gestures, that he knew nothing. Finally, they left him half-dead on the spot. The cord had left a deep mark all around his neck that remained visible until his death.

Then came the turn of the Friars Minor.

These replied that they had no money and could not have any, that the rule of Saint Francis formally forbade it. "Bah!" said the soldiers. "Go tell that to others; you feign poverty so that the simpletons will enrich you all the better with their alms; but, certainly, your convent must have a nice safe, not to mention the little hoards that each of you is rounding up for himself in particular." They turned their fury on the younger religious, in the hope of finding them weaker or less capable of concealing the truth. They knocked out a molar tooth of one of them by striking him on the cheek. But everything was useless. Only one of these young confessors, overcome by suffering, declared while weeping that he knew nothing of what was being asked of him, but that after all, it did not concern him and that it was the Father Guardian to whom the care of the temporal needs of the community fell. "And where is he, the guardian of these traitors?" the soldiers shouted with one voice.

The soldiers, searching for the guardian, laid hands on Father Jerome of Werden, vice-guardian, who, willingly accepting to be taken for another in this circumstance and to suffer in place of his superior, placed himself peacefully at their disposal. But the true guardian refused to use the benefit of this error and presented himself, declaring his name and his rank. These madmen began by beating him and tossing him from one to another like a ball with which children play.

Once the first fury had passed, they summoned him like the previous ones to hand over his treasures. Nicolas Pik replied with the greatest calm: "My treasures are the chalices and sacred vessels of my church that I brought here: you have found them, I know; let that suffice for you, for there are no others." — "And the proceeds of your collections and the alms of the devout," they asked him? — "I do not know," said the guardian, "if anything remains of those alms. They feed us, but they do not belong to us, and it is pious laypeople who are kind enough to take charge of keeping and dispensing to us what is given for our maintenance." — "You lie! impudent monk!" — "I am telling the simple truth, and, as I have nothing to add to it, suffer me to say no more."

He fell silent, and neither blows, nor promises, nor threats could wring another word from him.

They took off his belt and tightened his neck, just as they had done to Nicolas Poppel, but with even more barbarity. As the cord did not hold firmly enough on the door, they drove a piece of oak wood into it to attach it, and they continued to suspend the holy Martyr, to let him fall back, and to pull him in all directions, until the end of the rope broke, worn by the friction. The body slumped heavily and remained motionless on the ground.

The soldiers, astonished to see him dead so soon, lifted him up and sat him with his back against the wall. Then, either to insult his corpse or to ensure whether he was really dead, they applied burning torches to him and burned his forehead, mouth, ears, and chin at their leisure. They made the flame rise into his nostrils to see if his brain would catch fire. They forced his mouth open and burned his tongue and palate.

One had to have a heart of bronze not to be moved at the sight of this soiled and blackened face, of this irregularly ravaged beard, of this forehead stripped of hair, of these haggard eyes deprived of eyebrows, of this mouth full of white blisters and smelling of burnt flesh, of this neck finally deeply furrowed with red and bleeding circles. The soldiers, this time, believed him to be quite dead. They pushed him away with their foot, saying: "One monk less: bah! who will ask us for an account of it?"

However, they judged that it was enough for that night, and they went away.

Father Pik, however, was not dead. He was still useful here below to strengthen his companions, who did not all run toward suffering with equal ardor, and God reserved him to serve as their model until the end.

When, after the departure of the soldiery, the blessed ones hastened around him, showing one another his wounds, they were very astonished to hear a deep sigh come from his chest. They hastened to lift him up, to warm him, to wash his neck and his face. The Martyr, as he regained his senses, realized more exactly what had happened: "What!" he said, in his voice still weak and broken, "do I then no longer have a beard or eyebrows? They burned me even inside my mouth. Would to God that they had finished me; I have the confidence that this good Master would have received me into his bosom. But may His will be done! He has undoubtedly found, and with reason, that this was buying heaven too cheaply!"

The next morning, the soldiers returned with an axe, with the intention of cutting into pieces the "chief of the traitors," whom they had left for dead. It was indeed customary, in the Low Countries, to add this extra ignominy to the torture of traitors.

Finding him returned to himself, they took it upon themselves, so to speak, to take revenge on this weak, barely revived body for the deprivation of the new pleasure they had promised themselves. "So this shorn one does not want to die; he has his soul riveted in his belly, then? Well! We will know how to make it come out!" And they struck him with their feet, with their fists, and made him roll on the ground again, but without adding any torture that could again put his life in danger.

Such are, in brief, the acts of the Martyrs of Gorkum during the first night of their glorious combat. They remained ten days and ten nights at the mercy of the soldiery of the citadel. It was especially in the evening that they had to suffer; the habit was so well established of coming to insult and torture them after dinner that it seems that digestion would have been impossible without this pleasant pastime. When one part of these executioners was satiated or rather tired, another band took their place and began again with more intensity. If a visitor presented himself at the citadel, the first spectacle of which they did him the honors was that of "the traitors," and often the visitors and those who brought them vied with each other to find some new invention of cruelty.

A certain Frisian, leader of a company, imagined making them puff out their cheeks like hunting horn blowers, then he would slap them with all his might, so much so that blood gushed from the mouth, from the nose, even from the eyes; then the Frisian, charmed by his invention, would repeat the experiment on another. Only two religious, who had hidden in the embrasure of a loophole, escaped this inhuman game. Once, a French visitor opened the face, with a knife, of a Belgian Franciscan, who had thought to soften him by speaking French to him. Other times the soldiers amused themselves by kneeling before the priests most venerable for their age, and mimicking Catholic confession, they whispered into their ears all sorts of foolishness or impieties which they usually ended with a hail of slaps. "What do you answer to my confession?" one of these false penitents asked the Dane Willald; "are you going to give me absolution?" — "Alas! No, my brother," the monk replied peacefully; "I cannot absolve you, since you lack contrition; but I will pray for you." — "Pray for me, you, proud monk!" And, instead of being disarmed by so much charity, he threw himself upon him, fist raised, like a ferocious beast. The good religious, at each blow he received, was content to answer: *Deo gratias!*

However, the fate of the detainees began to move the hearts of their fellow citizens. It was part of Marin's policy to spread as little as possible in Gorkum what was happening to them; he wanted to make it believed that they were well housed, well fed, well treated: thus, the Father Guardian having sent him, through a schoolmaster friend of his, the request to have a surgeon, he pretended not to guess what need one could have for a surgeon in the citadel. "Are they wounded, then? How could they be?" — "Perhaps by the fall of some stone," the embarrassed messenger replied timidly. — "Ah! Ah! The fall of some stone," Marin replied, bursting into laughter. And he repeated several times, still laughing, these words which, for him, constituted an atrocious joke; for, no one knew better than he what to make of it, and nothing escaped him; but he had forbidden his soldiers to speak of it. He did not dare, however, to refuse the surgeon. This man turned out to be a brother-in-law of Father Pik. He made again, while lavishing his care upon him, the greatest efforts to induce him to let himself be removed, or at least ransomed for money; but he could not shake his constancy.

The accounts of the surgeon and the schoolmaster, those of some of the captives who saw themselves released around the same time, either by the influence of powerful friends or because of the rich ransoms they were able to pay, the grief above all of the parents of Nicolas Pik and of the old mother and sister of Leonard Wichel, all contributed to interest the public pity. The steps, the supplications, the offers of money, multiplied in their favor. A fairly considerable sum had been subscribed for the ransom of Poppel; it is true that it was stolen by the one who had taken it upon himself to collect it, but it nonetheless attested to the affection of a great number for the worthy parish priest. The question had been raised in full City Council and there had been found a "senator" or member of the Council bold enough to take up the cause of justice and humanity openly and to summon Marin to remember the clauses of the capitulation. Marin, quite surprised by this audacity, had to answer nonetheless. He claimed that he was not the master, that he was awaiting orders. An excuse hardly admissible for a man of heart; if he did not have the authority to have the capitulation observed, he had not had it either to conclude it; he had indignantly deceived the besieged, and the Gorkum senator did not hesitate to tell him so. The Beggars therefore conceived some fear that their prey might end up escaping them. They resolved to precipitate the outcome.

The absence of the Duke of Nassau, who had not yet arrived in Holland, served this project wonderfully. They contented themselves with asking for instructions from the ferocious Count of La Marck, nicknamed the Count of Lumay, that man who had never given quarter to a Catholic, and who was in Brielle, where he was organizing the maritime insurrection. The Count replied with an o rder to bring him comte de la Marck Leader of the Sea Beggars and instigator of the execution of the martyrs. all the detainees from the Gorkum citadel; and, to be more sure of the rigorous execution of his will, he entrusted it to a defector from the Catholic priesthood, Jean Omal, a former regular canon of the cathedral church of Liège. In that time, as today, to vigorously detest true priests, one could rely on apostate priests.

This wretch arrived all thirsty for blood. Marin did not dare or pretended not to dare to raise any objection. One likes to think, for the honor of the Gorkum citizens, that they would have shown themselves less docile; but care was taken, to avoid any popular emotion, to carry out the removal under the cover of darkness.

In the middle of the night of July 5 to 6, the holy confessors of the faith saw themselves awakened with a start, stripped of all those of their clothes that had any value, and thrown into a large boat. The night was cool. The venerable Willald, to whom they had left only his shirt, begged in vain that they return to him either his cassock or his cloak. He received at first for all satisfaction slaps and insults; then one of the assistants, less barbaric than the others, a sailor no doubt, had pity on his white hair and his aged limbs trembling with cold, and gave him a cloak.

Upon entering the boat, Leonard Wichel recognized at the helm one of his parishioners named Roch, to whom he had formerly given particular testimonies of his solicitude: "What!" he said to him, "Roch, is it you who are taking us to our death?" The sailor lowered his head and replied: "Alas! Monsieur le curé, I am not the master!" The priest added no further observation.

Standing on the boat which was slowly detaching itself from the shore to abandon itself to the current of the Meuse, he saluted one last time, through his tears, his dear city of Gorkum, whose steeples and houses were vaguely outlined in the shadows, behind the masts of the ships in the port.

Having left at one o'clock in the morning, they passed in front of Dordrecht at nine o'clock. It was a Sunday. The apostate priest could not resist the double pleasure of going to refresh himself on land and of showing his captives there as a trophy. The boat was therefore moored to the quay; but Omal did not allow anyone, except two or three companions of debauchery, to disembark with him. In compensation, whoever wanted to come and insult the martyrs had free access, and the warned heretics did not fail to do so, so much so that the soldiers who guarded them had the idea of exploiting the avid curiosity of the crowd for their own profit. They surrounded the boat with a large sail, and thus made it a sort of tent on the water, where one was admitted by paying a few pennies at the entrance. We will not attempt to recount all the insults that the blessed ones had to endure during these visits. One could say of them as of Saint Paul "that they had become a spectacle to men and to angels."

They returned to the open sea in the afternoon, at the moment when the ebb of the sea swells the bed of the river. The prisoners had not yet received any food since the day before. A piece of bread was given to each of them in the evening, not by the apostate priest or his soldiers, but by the owner of the boat. After another night spent in the open air, in a state so close to nudity, they arrived at Brielle on the morning of July 7.

The holy Martyrs, upon leaving Gorkum, were nineteen in number. We shall see that there were defections among them, but that the cowards were exactly replaced and that, by a special permission of Providence, this number of nineteen remained complete until the consummation of the sacrifice.

The Count of La Marck was still in bed when he was announced the arrival of the prisoners from Gorkum. At this news, he jumped out of bed, forgetting his habit of prolonging his sleep during the day after the orgies or labors of the night. He barely took the time to dress, mounted his horse, and rode to meet them.

Upon arriving in the presence of the boat where the blessed confessors of the faith were still located, the Count stopped his ho rse and le comte Leader of the Sea Beggars and instigator of the execution of the martyrs. regarded them for a long time in silence, as if it were a pleasant spectacle. Then, all of a sudden, he burst into a ferocious, satanic, inextinguishable laughter, so much so that he fell back on the back of his horse as if he had lost all sense of himself: "There," he said, "there are the gray robes, there are the black robes that bring us their machinations. That will make two, three, ten, nineteen less." And he counted them with his finger while still laughing.

After this kind of greeting, he had them all get off the boat and signaled to them, as they touched the earth with their feet, to kneel before him. Then, resuming a face of human appearance, he said to them in Latin: "Surgite, Domini; rise, Gentlemen"; and he forced them to line up two by two as if in a procession and to walk slowly three times around a gallows that was there all ready. Then, to add to the ridicule of this ceremony, they were made to pass by it walking backward. An executioner, or one of the Count's followers who prided himself on knowing how to substitute for the executioner if needed, even applied a ladder to it and appeared to want to hang them all instantly. "This is," he told them, "the end of your pilgrimage. Sing then, pious pilgrims; we are going to bring you closer to heaven." But his intention was only to frighten them. Lumay did not want to deprive his companions in arms and plunder of this kind of masquerade, which he found so cheerful.

Upon a signal from him, the procession was directed toward Brielle, still in the same order. The executioner walked at their head, holding aloft in his hands, in derision of the Catholic cult, the august standard of the Redemption. Peter of Assche and Cornelius of Wyck, lay brothers of the Order of Saint Francis, opened this heartbreaking march upon which the Calvinists feasted their eyes. Two soldiers on horseback pranced along the ranks, like masters of ceremonies charged with maintaining order, or rather like those dogs whose function is to bark around the herd and bite the sheep that are too slow. They had cut branches from the trees and did not spare the blows. The Count, a whip in his hand, gave them the example: "Sing then," he repeated, "lecherous monks, idlers, sing! And let us see if you are afraid!" The captives submitted, and it was in full and firm voices that they intoned, first the Salve Regina, then various canticles in honor of the Virgin and the Saints. They were singing the Te Deum when they entered Brielle.

It can be said that the whole city was on its feet to receive them; but what a welcome and what hospitality! They advanced slowly, always between two tight hedges of insulters who, as soon as they had passed, ran to reform in front of them a little further on. It was not, however, a very entertaining spectacle, that of these pale, undone, half-naked men, all already more or less disfigured by the traces of previous violence. One of them was a sexagenarian, a second a septuagenarian, a third was approaching his ninetieth year; but crowds, on certain days, become exalted and intoxicated to the point of losing all human feeling. One waited for them with hands full of stones or sand to throw in their faces; another with pots of dirty water, the contents of which he threw at them while repeating, to the cheers of the neighbors: Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor. It was noted that the women, usually so accessible to pity, showed even less than the men. Jerome of Werden, who had formerly traveled to the Holy Land and suffered captivity among the infidels, declared that he had never seen anything like it among the Turks. The savage kills, but he does not insult.

The martyrs were stopped on the main square of Brielle, in front of a gallows that stood there permanently, and they were forced to walk around it three times, as for the first time, then to kneel and sing the litanies of the Saints again. They did it with such heart that one would have said they were taking a liking to it. Only, upon reaching the end of the invocations, they all fell silent at once, no one judging himself worthy to pronounce alone "the collect" which, according to the rites of the Church, the officiating priest recites in the name of all the faithful. "The Oremus! The Oremus!" shouted the assistants; "let them serve us the Oremus, for it is not soon that we will have the occasion to hear one again in this country." Then Godfrey Van Duynen, in his capacity as the oldest priest, pronounced in a clear, slow voice, without hesitation, the prayer which could be heard by the whole city in the midst of the universal silence.

The martyrs replied with one voice: Amen! And the crowd remained stunned, mute, and as if shaken. But this good movement did not last, and the insults began again. Finally, they were led to prison.

They found unexpected companions there. Without counting the criminals, the usual guests of this stay, two priests had been locked up there for a short time, and two others were brought there barely an hour after the Gorkumites. The former were the two parish priests of Maesdam and Heinort, villages in the vicinity of Dordrecht, from where they had been abducted by the Geuzen; the latter two were two religious of the Order of the Premonstratensians. As these had the honor of being included in the number of the nineteen martyrs, it is appropriate to de Ordre des Prémontrés Religious order represented by two martyrs (Adrien Becan and Jacques Lacop). vote a special mention to them.

Their names were Adrian Becan and James Lacop, and they fulfilled, Adrian the functions of parish priest, and James, those of vicar in the parish of Munster, where they had been sent by the famous abbey of the Premonstratensians of Middelburg, in Zeeland. Surprised the previous night by one of those bands of looters who roamed the islands in search of priests and churches, they had been brought to the Count of La Marck with James's father, a man already advanced in age. The Count, admiring their all-white clothing, pretended at first to have difficulty recognizing them as men. He asked the old man what his country was. The old man replied in French that it was Flanders. "Good," replied the Count in the same language; "if you persuade your son to leave his papism, I will send you both back free"; but James, speaking on behalf of his father, declared that at that price he would never accept anything. "Then," said Lumay, "you will die!" — "I will die," said James; "or rather no, I will not die: I will live!" — "Eh what!" replied the Count, "do you think then that I do not have the power to kill you?" — "You will kill my body," said James; "but my soul is immortal; it will escape you." Irritated by the freedom of this answer, the Count let the old man go; but he had the two monks taken to prison.

The prison of Brielle consisted of three superimposed dungeons and arranged in such a way as to make the lowest of the three uninhabitable, the very one where our martyrs were. No special conduit had been provided for the waste; it flowed along the walls down to the bottom of the lower floor. In the midst of darkness such that in broad daylight one could only recognize each other by the sound of the voice, the blessed prisoners did not know where to put themselves to escape somewhat from the filth and the fetid odor by which they were suffocated. By dint of feeling with their feet, they managed to identify a point where the ground was higher than elsewhere; they piled up there, so to speak, one on top of the other, so much so that they were suffocating. Their first meal of the day was brought to them around three o'clock in the afternoon; but their other discomforts had not allowed them to think of the sting of hunger.

The evening was spent questioning them about the religious faith in the presence of the Count, in the town hall. Their firmness, however, did not attract any new outrage, except to Leonard, whom one of the Count's soldiers, irritated by his answers, struck with the back of an axe he was holding in his hand. "Strike again," said the priest without being moved; "strike: my flesh is in your power; it will not be there for long." A word that recalls that of the divine Redeemer in his passion, when he said: "This is your hour, and the empire of darkness." Another soldier threw a small hammer at Leonard which hit him on the forehead and made blood gush out in streams.

They were led back to the prison, but this time to an upper floor, less humid and less infected, and they were brought bread and a large pitcher of water for supper. But a pain sharper than that of physical suffering was to realize that the holy phalanx was beginning to be eroded by the enemy. The Calvinists, after this first interrogation, had conceived some hope of shaking the parish priest of Maesdam, the young Capuchin brother Henry, and a canon of Gorkum, and they had done them the injury, too justified, alas! by the sequel, of giving them more comfortable accommodation in the house of the chief of police.

The next day, July 8, heresy, already proud of this first triumph, proposed a more general, more striking, and more definitive victory. A response full of simplicity from a young Capuchin brother, "that he believed exactly what the Father Guardian believed," had given reason to think that if the main confessors were overcome, the others would follow without resistance.

They therefore chose the seven of them who were the most learned, and they were made to appear for the second time, in chains, before the City Council. Those who were honored with this choice were the two Premonstratensians, the guardian and the vice-guardian of the Capuchins, the two parish priests of Gorkum, and Godfrey of Merville, a Capuchin. This new examination took place at the instigation of two brothers of Father Nicholas Pik, who had come to Brielle to obtain his release, and were more concerned with his bodily salvation than with his eternal salvation.

The session was presided over by the Count and directed by two ministers, assisted by a clerk who transcribed everything that was said.

The two ministers were: one, an ex-sailor from Gorkum, called Cornelius, an intrepid drinker, but who did not know three words of Latin and who, every time an answer embarrassed him, could only turn to the magistrates repeating: "But hang them then, hang them, and let all this end!" The other, more educated and stuffed with Bible citations, was named Andrew. He was the former Catholic parish priest of Saint Catherine of Brielle. Seeing the Geuzen masters of his parish, he had changed his religion that very year, at the same time as his political flag.

They began by asking the confessors if and why they believed in the authority of the Roman Pontiff. Leonard Wichel protested that he considered this point as the cornerstone of Christian unity. He added that, moreover, he did not understand how the Protestants could find it bad that one kept this belief, for faith is free, according to them, and everyone has the right to find in the Bible what the Holy Spirit inspires them to find there; but if the Holy Spirit inspires someone to discover there the primacy and infallibility of Peter and his successors, by what right could they find fault with it? And would they refuse to that one person alone a right of interpretation that essentially belongs to all? The minister was very embarrassed. To answer affirmatively was to deny the fundamental principle of the so-called reformation. To answer negatively was to admit the radical impotence of Protestantism to affirm the error of Catholicism. He did what those who, in a discussion, seek something other than the truth usually do: he changed the subject.

"Since," he said, "you seem to me disposed to reason according to the Holy Scripture, accept a formal conference, and let us argue in form according to the Bible." The discussion was accepted; it did not do honor to the Protestants and ended abruptly with the expulsion of the Catholic theologians from the room.

But before sending them away definitively, the Count wanted to speak in private with James Lacop, the Premonstratensian, whose gentleness of face and grace of elocution had made almost an impression on his fierce heart. He omitted neither promises nor threats to seduce him; but he obtained nothing.

In the meantime, a messenger was announced to the Count, bearing a letter from Marin Brant, another from the City Council of Gorkum, and a third from Prin ce William of Orange. The prince Guillaume d'Orange Leader of the Dutch Revolt, he attempted to intercede on behalf of the martyrs. Count had him brought in and took note of the various objects of his mission. The letter from Marin Brant was merely a simple passport written in his own hand, which even displeased the Count at first because Brant used the title of "lord" in it. The Senate or City Council of Gorkum set forth the circumstances of the capitulation and the promise of life saved, made to all the prisoners; it further attested to the good reputation of each of those who had been taken from the citadel of Gorkum on the night of July 6, certified that they had never done anything but good to their fellow citizens, and ended by formally interceding on their behalf. The messenger was also instructed to add verbally that they were prepared to make some sacrifices for them, and that the sister of the curate Wichel, in particular, promised ten thousand livres for the deliverance of her brother.

As for the letter from the Prince of Orange, it seemed even more decisive, if possible. The Prince had written it at the request of the Senate of Gorkum. Unfortunately, there is every reason to believe that it had an effect contrary to the one it intended. Lumay appeared indignant. He protested that William of Orange was strangely mistaken if he believed that he, Count William of La Marck, had shaken off the yoke of a king for the pleasure of bowing his head before an equal. He renewed the oath he claimed to have made to avenge the Counts of Horn and Egmont, sacrificed by Spain, by sacrificing all the papist priests who would fall into his hands.

He was supported in this barbaric design by several heretics from Gorkum, who had made the trip to Brielle specifically for this purpose. On the other hand, it is true that Catholic Gorkumians, and among them two brothers of Father Pik, had rushed to try to sway him; but his heart was accessible only to merciless inspirations.

However, the two brothers of the guardian, through much insistence, obtained something they had barely dared to hope for: the permission to take their brother away free and without him being obliged to renounce his faith, on the condition, however, of taking only him. But the holy religious had already several times rejected such a favor. To their great astonishment, he rejected it again and begged them not to speak to him anymore about abandoning his companions, whose direction the Rule of Saint Francis had entrusted to him.

The two brothers did not lose heart. They returned to the charge with the Calvinist ministers and the leaders of the Beggars, and they tore away as a second and final concession the promise that all the captives would be set at liberty if they would only renounce the Pope, even if they continued to persist in the other Catholic dogmas.

To enable the two brothers to make the most of this assurance, they were further authorized to temporarily take the guardian out of prison and invite him to supper with them in a house in the city. It was judged that if the Father Guardian were to yield, he would not yield alone: such was the motive for this unexpected tolerance toward him.

The three brothers were thus reunited at the table at nightfall, and this meal was to be the last for the Capuchin. We cannot recount all that fraternal tenderness, stimulated by the imminence of danger, put of caresses, obsessions, and ruses of all kinds into the minds and on the lips of those among them who were playing the sad role of seducers.

The holy Martyr thanked them effusively for these affectionate testimonies, by which he was touched more than it was appropriate for him to let appear. But what was the use of all these plans for an earthly future? They knew well that none existed for him if it had to be bought at the price of apostasy.

The two brothers did not consider themselves beaten. They resorted to theological arguments they had provided themselves with; but the Capuchin, very well-versed in the Holy Scriptures, had no trouble reducing them to nothing. Seeing then the little effect of their words, they feigned to forget all discussion for a moment, and to think only of eating, drinking, and rejoicing, in the hope that the wine might perhaps soften this indomitable resolution. Father Nicholas, weakened by a long fast, did not refuse to indulge moderately with them in the innocent enjoyment to which he was invited. His appearance did not betray the slightest sadness. Like a friend among his friends, he was the first to enliven the conversation, and one could not admire enough the tranquil serenity of this man who was not to see the sun rise the next day.

But as soon as his brothers insidiously returned to the object of their meeting, he resumed a serious, firm face and begged them to cease once and for all from showing him so much solicitude for the present moment and so little for eternity. "Do you think," he added, "that by the cowardice you propose to me I will escape death? No, my friends; I will only die a little later, in five, in ten, in thirty years perhaps, it matters little, only to fall into hell from there. I will be well off! Let me rather go up to heaven immediately. Death does not frighten me; we already know each other, for I have experienced its foretastes in the fortress of our city."

At this last declaration, his brothers burst into feigned anger, treated him as stubborn, and overwhelmed him with insults. Nicholas, to give them convincing proof of the ineffectiveness of this new stratagem, stretched out on a bench and soon fell into a deep sleep. Seized with stupor, his brothers remained silent. They watched him without daring to move, for fear of disturbing this last sleep, and in the depths of their hearts, they could not help but be proud of such a courageous brother.

During this time, the Count was indulging in his nocturnal orgies. He even exceeded the ordinary bounds of his intemperance, under the impression of the sharp annoyance that the letter from the Prince of Orange had caused him. Full of wine and anger, he began, whether by chance or by design, to reread this letter and noticed (which was indeed true) that Marin had kept the original and had only sent him a certified copy. This lack of respect from the commander of Gorkum seemed to cap his excitement: "He too," he cried, "he too thinks he is a personage superior to us; he, this Marin Brant, who only yesterday was handling the pick and shovel instead of the sword! Everyone here claims to command me, and those who do not dare to send me orders transmit them to me! By all the devils of the Antichrist of Rome, we shall see!"

He got up, called the officer who performed the functions of judge for him, or rather of chief executioner, and ordered him to go and hang all those Gorkumians about whom they were breaking his head at once. Then, addressing Jean Omal, the apostate priest of Liège, he charged him personally to see to the strict and complete execution of his will. "You answer to me," he told him, "that, neither by fraud, nor by connivance or weakness, will a single one of these prisoners be subtracted from my vengeance; they will all be hanged, the great as well as the small, the young as well as the old." And while reiterating these instructions, he did not cease to repeat that he was master, that he wanted to remain master, and that he cared as much for the Prince of Orange as for that scoundrel Brant.

The officer and the apostate took care not to point out to him that it is not at midnight, and while rising from the table, that one carries out death sentences. They ran to the house where they had allowed Nicholas to sup with his brothers. They found him fast asleep on his bench, woke him up, and brought him back to the other martyrs who were already waiting, twenty in number, tied two by two by the arms. Numerous soldiers surrounded them, some on foot, others on horseback, and the crowd soon began to flock, despite the darkness, at the news of the impatiently awaited spectacle.

It was July 9, 1572. One o'clock in the morning had just struck. They were led out of Brielle, and a suitable place for the execution was sought. Not far from the city, at a place called Ruggense, there w as a mon Ruggense Locality near La Brille where the monastery of Saint Elizabeth was located. astery by the name of Saint Elizabeth, formerly inhabited by Canons Regular of Saint Augustine, but now empty, ransacked by the Geuzen, and half-demolished. It was there that they stopped, in a building that had served as a granary and whose walls were crossed by two beams, the first long and going from one wall to the other, the second much shorter. The blessed Martyrs embraced one another, gave or received the absolution of their sins one last time, and lavished upon each other the example of courage. One thing was painful to them all: to be completely stripped of their clothing. They could have been spared this useless outrage, but they accepted it as one more point of resemblance to the great victim of Calvary. The Father Guardian climbed the fatal ladder first. After giving everyone a final kiss: "Behold," he said to them, "I show you the way, the way to heaven! Follow me like valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ, and after having fought together, may none be missing from the eternal triumph that awaits us on high!" He did not cease to exhort them until the rope, tightening around his throat, intercepted his voice. This heroic leader of the martyrs of Gorkum was in his thirty-eighth year. As soon as his strong voice failed, his vicar, Jerome of Weert, and Nicasius Janssen, as well as the two parish priests of Gorkum, took it upon themselves to replace him. And this care was not useless. There was a Calvinist minister there who was trying to seduce the laymen and the young religious, and offered them life and other advantages if they would renounce popery. Nicasius, who knew the simplicity of several of them and knew them to be incapable of surely untangling by themselves the quibbles, the captious or truncated citations, and all the sophisms of heresy, threw himself, so to speak, like a shield between them and the tempter. Nicasius ordered them to avoid discussion and to simply confess the constancy of their faith with an affirmation. Often he even answered for them and said to the minister: "You are wasting your time, they will not listen to you; we are all papists until death!" As the vicar Jerome of Weert climbed the rungs of the ladder while invoking the Blessed Virgin and various saints, the minister came to stand directly in front of him and reproached him one last time for his alleged idolatry: "Adore God alone," he shouted at him, "and leave the saints there, foolish idols who do not hear you!" Jerome, holily indignant at these blasphemies, thrust his foot toward him through the rungs and struck him so hard in the middle of the stomach that he made him fall backward. This act of violence may seem strange in a martyr: but what excuses it even better than the indignation caused by the minister's blasphemy was the distressing spectacle that the blessed man had the pain of seeing at that moment. The novice Henry, the youngest of the confessors, after having given a first proof of weakness by saying he was only sixteen years old, while he was eighteen—a lie inspired by the hope of softening the executioners—had just signaled that he accepted the minister's conditions. He was untied and made to leave the circle of those who were dying or about to die. "O misfortune, worse than all torments," cried the vicar at this defection: "it is you, minister of Satan, who will answer before God for the eternal loss of this adolescent whose inexperience you seduce!" The Geuzen closed his mouth with pike blows and deformed his entire face. Then, as the wretched apostate, to whom God granted the grace to convert, later recounted, they began to erase, with the edge of their swords, the image of the cross that the vicar, during his trip to Jerusalem, had tattooed on his chest and right arm, and they were only satisfied when these symbolic imprints were either removed with the flesh or disappeared under the blood that flooded them. The courageous vicar was still breathing and did not cease for that reason to pray and encourage his companions. Nicasius Janssen and Nicholas Poppel did the same, but they uttered many words in Latin, which the novice, little versed in that language, did not know how to repeat. Another defection, even more deplorable than that of Henry, was that of a Capuchin named William who, at the moment when he was touching the end and the reward of so many evils, cried out in French that he did not want to die, that he renounced the Pope and everything they wanted, and begged the soldiers to save him. The soldiers cut the rope of this coward, covered him with one of their tunics and a helmet, so that he would not be recognized, and helped him escape. Moreover, this wretch only prolonged by a few days a life bought at the price of an apostasy. Enlisted among the Geuzen, and all the more abandoned by heaven as he had abused more graces, he did not take long to fall into all sorts of excesses; he was hanged two months later, no longer, alas! for a holy and glorious cause, but for the crime of theft. There were also one or two of the youngest martyrs who, seized by the horror of death, a horror so natural to all men, secretly implored the executioner's mercy and asked that their ropes be cut, but without consenting, however, to deny Catholicism; thus they were not listened to. God, always compassionate to human weaknesses, nevertheless allowed them to be counted among the martyrs of Gorkum. They were like the prince of the Apostles, "they stretched out their hands, and another girded them and led them where they did not want to go." Godfrey of Merville repeated before dying the words of Jesus Christ on the cross: "Forgive them, Lord, for they do not know what they do!" Leonard Vechel thought of his family, and said that only one thing saddened him at that moment, and that was the thought of the pain of his mother, already much weakened by age, when she would learn of his death. He slowed his pace under the weight of this thought and did not seem to climb the ladder with enough diligence. Godefroy Van Duynen shouted to him: "Courage! Master Leonard, today we will sit in heaven at the feast of the Lamb!" Godefroy Van Duynen was hanged last. As the soldiers hesitated to remove the ladder from under his feet and said to each other: "Ah! let us at least spare this one, we all know he is an innocent!" — "No, no," he said to them, "hasten to associate me with my brothers: I see the heavens opened!". And he added: "If I have offended or scandalized anyone, I beg him to forgive me."

Here the narrator feels the need to suspend his account and pause, in silent recollection, to contemplate this glorious row of victims and to count them by their names as the Church herself does when she bestows upon them the supreme honors.

They were nineteen in all, including eleven Capuchins, two Premonstratensians, one Dominican, one Canon Regular of Saint Augustine, and four secular priests.

We have said that the attic was crossed by two beams, one long, the other shorter. To the latter were attached only three of the martyrs: Saint Nicholas Pik, guardian or superior of the Capuchins. Beside him, Saint Godfrey Van Duynen, a secular priest. Then, Saint Cornelius of Wyck, that is to say, born in Wyck. He was a Capuchin friar who knew, through the promptness and simplicity of his obedience, how to acquire in the most menial tasks merits that high positions do not always provide as easily. It is said that while he was in Bois-le-Duc, his superior said to him one day, without adding any explanation: "Brother Cornelius, go to Utrecht."

Cornelius left for Utrecht and presented himself at the Capuchin convent of that city, where he was asked the reason for his visit. He could give no other reason than these words: "Brother Cornelius, go to Utrecht," and he was sent back to Bois-le-Duc to ask what mission they had intended to entrust to him.

On the longer beam were aligned fifteen of the martyrs:

Saint Jerome of Werden, vicar or vice-guardian of the Capuchins, born in Werden, in the county of Hoorn, and who had lived for some time in the convents of his Order in the Holy Land;

Saint Thierry Embden, born in Amersfoort, near Utrecht, director of the nuns of Saint Agnes, in Gorkum;

Saint Nicaise Johnson, commonly called of Heeze, a Capuchin bachelor of the University of Louvain, an eloquent preacher, who knew the entire New Testament by heart;

Saint Willald, a Capuchin, Danish by nation, ninety years of age, a man of tall stature, but so emaciated that he was, according to the common expression, nothing but skin and bones, and who, after having confessed the Catholic faith in his homeland until his exile, confessed it on foreign soil until the sacrifice of his life;

Saint Godfrey of Merville, a Capuchin, born in Merville, a town situated on the left bank of the Lys. He fulfilled the duties of confessor at the convent of Gorkum and was in charge of everything concerning divine worship.

Saint Anthony of Werden, a Capuchin, born in Werden in the county of Hoorn. An eloquent preacher, he devoted long years of his life to repelling the attacks directed against the faith of Jesus Christ, and to fighting error wherever he encountered it. His charity for the poor led him not only to succor souls, but to relieve the miseries of the body by means of the alms he went to collect himself to then distribute to them;

Saint Anthony of Hornaer, a Capuchin; Hornaer was a small village near Gorkum;

Saint Francis of Roye, of Brussels, a Capuchin, still young and ordained a priest only a few years prior;

Saint Peter of Assche, in Brabant, a lay Capuchin, who worked with zeal in the service of the other members of the convent;

Saint Leonard Wichel, born in Bois-le-Duc, an important city of Brabant, pastor of Gorkum;

Saint Nicholas Poppel, of Weerd, a small village in Holland, another pastor of Gorkum;

Saint John of Oosterwyck, in Brabant, a man already advanced in age, a Canon Regular of Saint Augustine and of the very monastery of Saint Elizabeth, within the walls of which he gathered the palm of martyrdom;

Saint John of Cologne, pastor of Hornaer, a Dominican of the province of Cologne, who was not in the citadel of Gorkum at the time of the siege, but had been brought there since, because he had been caught baptizing a child;

Saint Adrian Becan, of the Order of Premonstratensians, aged thirty-nine to forty, born in Hilvarenbeek, in Brabant, brought only the day before yesterday from Munster, where he fulfilled the duties of the holy ministry;

Saint Andrew Walter, pastor of Heinort, in the territory of Dordrecht;

Finally, as space eventually ran out on the beams, the nineteenth and last martyr was hanged from the top of a ladder. This was Jacques Lacop, a Premonstratensian, born in Oudenaarde, in Flanders, vicar in Munster.

The Bollandists provide for this date the representation of a marvelous bouquet composed of nineteen flowers, a number equal to that of the martyrs. Here is the explanation of this engraving, which recalls a prodigy perhaps unique in the annals of the Saints.

The venerated bones of our heroes were still resting in the place of their martyrdom when suddenly, at the beginning of the 18th century, a small white and fragrant flower grew on this land watered by their blood. It grew rapidly; it was so beautiful and of such a marvelous shape that it could not be compared to any other plant, not only of these regions but of all Europe, as attested at the time by the most skillful and learned botanists of Holland. At the news of this marvelous phenomenon, a crowd of pious visitors of every sex and every condition, drawn by the ardor of their faith and the impulse of their piety, flocked to the tomb of the martyrs to contemplate the dear plant, an admirable testimony to their holiness. For a long time, a continuous concourse of pilgrims invaded this blessed place; all took with them some branch of the miraculous bush which, far from diminishing, never ceased to grow and multiply its stems. Thus grew even more the veneration and devotion of the faithful toward the holy martyrs whom God wished to glorify on the altars.

This prodigy produced another even more astonishing one. Adrien-Antoine de Oorschat, pastor of Saint-Gertrude in Utrecht, had placed a branch of these flowers in a small box; from time to time he looked at them, and he always found them beautiful, fresh, and moist with dew, as if he had just picked them. Once he went eight or nine months without going to contemplate his dear flowers; but what was his astonishment when, at the prayer and in the presence of several people, he opened the box. His flowers had not only kept their initial freshness, they had multiplied, and their number represented exactly that of the glorious athletes of Christ martyred at Brielle. This miracle was solemnly verified and filled all of Belgium and Holland with admiration.

The generous martyrs of Gorkum are represented having under their feet a person bitten by a dog: this is the famous William de la Marck, the instigator of the butchery of Brielle; it is reported that while he was on his properties in the vicinity of Liège, he perished miserably from the bite of a mad dog. Some, especially the priests, sometimes hold in their hand a chalice or a monstrance, with the manifest goal of recalling that they suffered death for the faith in the real presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

It is not rare to see near them the bouquet with nineteen flowers, of which we spoke above.

## CULT AND RELICS.

As soon as the news of the martyrdom had spread in the Low Countries, the people, knowing that "God holds as precious in his presence the death of his Saints," began to invoke them and to render them a cult, at least privately. Estius relates thirty-two official reports of healings or other miraculous favors obtained through their intercession. He recounts how he himself, suffering from a long and cruel illness, recovered his health almost suddenly after having made a vow to go on a pilgrimage to the place of their torture.

In 1615, during a truce between Spain and the United Provinces, the venerated tombs were opened in secret by trusted men, and the precious bones were brought to Brussels where they were solemnly recognized by the Archbishop of Mechelen, Mathias Bovius, and deposited in gilded chairs in the church of the Franciscans, except for some fragments which were sent to the Bénallets of Leuven, Ath, Mechelen, Cambrai, Tienen, Antwerp, Sint-Truiden, Binche, Tournai, Lille, Douai, Valenciennes, Mons, Nivelles, Namur, Cologne, and several other cities. The archbishops of Cambrai and Mechelen and the bishop of Namur permitted from then on the invocation of the names of the martyrs of Gorkum; but on the advice of the bishops of Antwerp and Ypres that public cult could not be authorized without the approval of the Apostolic See, a regular process of canonization was requested in Rome.

This process was begun in 1628 in Gorkum, Haarlem, Utrecht, and Leiden, where twenty-two witnesses were heard; in Amsterdam and Haarlem in 1634, where seven were heard, and in Namur, between 1658 and 1661, where nineteen were examined. The Belgian bishops, on various occasions, then, in 1664, the Emperor Leopold, the electors of Bavaria and Trier, and the three Orders of the province of Brabant insisted piously to hasten the conclusions of the Congregation of Rites. Finally, the decree of beatification was given in Rome by Pope Clement X on November 24, 1675, and the august ceremony took place with all the accustomed splendor and in the midst of an immense concourse of the faithful in the Basilica of Saint Peter.

Rome had taken a century to examine and mature this great cause. It was reserved for the glorious pontificate of Pius IX, after two more centuries had passed, to give it the final consecration. Indeed, on June 29, 1867, a day consecrated to the memory of the Pie IX Pope who canonized Josaphat in 1867. princes of the apostles Peter and Paul, to the applause of the Catholic universe, the immortal Pontiff Pius IX inscribed in the book of Saints the martyrs of Gorkum, who thus received the most brilliant honors of our cult.

In this account, we have in part analyzed and often reproduced the beautiful work of M. Villefranche.