I found this in The Martyrs' Mirror which (though it may perhaps surprise some?) is not a Medieval document:
CLEMENT OF SCOTLAND, A COMPANION OF ALBERT, EXCOMMUNICATED AND THEN BURNED, AS A HERETIC, BY THE ROMANISTS, ACCORDING TO THE TESTIMONY OF THE ANCIENTS, A. D. 750, FOR THE SAME REASON, NAMELY, FOR OPPOSING AND REJECTING THE ROMAN SUPERSTITIONS
When Clement, having come from Scotland, had joined the aforesaid Albert as a companion, and united with him in regard to doctrine, he not only began, but ceased not, even as the friend whom he had found, to combat with the spiritual armor, and, if possible, to overcome, in an evangelical manner, the pope and the Roman church, in various points, touching mostly her ceremonies. Thereupon he was also accused, and put to death in such a manner as in the proper place, we presently hope to show.
The accusations brought against him were of the same nature as those preferred against Albert, his companion; which was not at all strange, since he had placed himself under Albert, not only as a friend and companion, but also as a disciple. For this reason, the pope, through the accusation of Boniface, the papal legate, pronounced the same excommunication against him.
But when he presented himself for the purpose of vindicating his conduct in a full synod, Boniface prevented him from taking this course, making the people believe that it were not lawful to admit a heretic who had been excommunicated or excluded from the church, to divine worship, or to a synodal assembly; yea, that such an one should not be permitted to have the benefit (in whatever this might consist) of the laws or ordinances of the church.
Seeing that by this pretense his lips were sealed, making it impossible for him to properly defend himself, he had recourse to his pen and wrote a book concerning this matter, against Boniface.
Finally, it is stated and maintained that this steadfast witness of Jesus Christ, was burned as a heretic by the Romanists, even against the will of pope Zacharias, about A, D. 750, or a little after. Compare this entire account of Clement with Willibaldi, Kaucleri, Aventini. Balae. Alij ubi supra. Also, Annal. Boj. Bernhard. Lutz, in Catal. Hceres., Tom. 2, Concil. Also, A. M., 2d book, H. M., 1619, fol. 328, 329. Hist. Mart. 1. S., 1645, fol. 30.
Please note, it is generous enough to give sources, these also not Medieval:
- Willibaldi, Kaucleri, Aventini. Balae.
These names - Willibaldus, Kauclerus, Aventinus, could be late Medieval, but definitely not from the time being. Since a printing place is given (Balae may be faulty for Basileae = Basel, Bâles) it is after Middle Ages.
- A. M., 2d book, H. M., 1619, fol. 328, 329. - printing year 1619 is a near millennium after this is supposed to have taken place.
- Hist. Mart. 1. S., 1645, fol. 30. - and so is the printing year 1645.
- Annal. Boj. Bernhard. Lutz, in Catal. Hceres., Tom. 2, Concil. - can't identify it, but Tome 2 indicates we are dealing with someone after printing.
No first millennium Medieval source cited at all.
Now, note, I do accept Snorre and Saxo as indications that Odin came to Uppsala in more or less late BC times (like times of Julius Caesar to Snorre or times of Alexander or Cyrus to Saxo, preferring Snorre), but I do this as dealing with times in which Sweden was hardly documented by written indigenous contemporary sources at all. Germanica by Tacitus is very unspecific about who could have lived there by then.
On the contrary, in 750 Gaul if not Scotland was very well documented. And Scotland in the modern sense didn't exist yet.
The Kingdom of the Picts in the early 8th century, when Bede was writing, was largely the same as the kingdom of the Scots in the reign of Alexander I (1107–1124).
Of course, there were the Scoti who were Gaels:
Thereafter, periodic raids by Scoti are reported by several later 4th and early 5th century Latin writers, namely Pacatus,[4] Ammianus Marcellinus,[5] Claudian[6] and the Chronica Gallica of 452.[7] Two references to Scoti have recently been identified in Greek literature (as Σκόττοι), in the works of Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, writing in the 370s.[8] The fragmentary evidence suggests an intensification of Scoti raiding from the early 360s, culminating in the so-called "barbarian conspiracy" of 367–368, and continuing up to and beyond the end of Roman rule c. 410. The location and frequency of attacks by Scoti remain unclear, as do the origin and identity of the Gaelic population-groups who participated in these raids.[9] By the 5th century, the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata had emerged in western Scotland. This kingdom was inevitably conquered and consumed by Pictland, spreading its culture to it in the generations preceding and following its conquest. The name came to be applied to all subjects of this now predominantly Goidelic speaking Pictish kingdom – hence the modern terms Scot, Scottish and Scotland.
In Dal Riata:
Dál Riata or Dál Riada (also Dalriada) (/dælˈriːədə/) was a Gaelic overkingdom that included parts of western Scotland and northeastern Ireland, on each side of the North Channel. At its height in the late 6th and early 7th centuries, it encompassed roughly what is now Argyll in Scotland and part of County Antrim in the Irish province of Ulster.
Where the presence of Iona makes anti-Roman positions very unlikely, except on marginal issues like the date of Easter (same article):
No written accounts exist for pre-Christian Dál Riata, and the earliest known records come from the chroniclers of Iona and Irish monasteries. Adomnán's Life of St Columba implies a Christian Dál Riata.
Gaul was of course much better documented, as can be seen from the figure of Theodulf of Orléans, born this year or ten years later.
But, there is a clincher, there is a real Clemens Scotus, namely St Clement of Ireland:
Saint Clement of Ireland (Clemens Scotus) (c. 750 – 818) is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church.
Born in Ireland, he founded a school for boys under the patronage of Charlemagne and figures in the Carolingian Renaissance of learning. ... The 17th-century hagiographer John Colgan, in his Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae (Louvain, 1645) says that he was living in 818, and gives the date of Clement's death as 20 March and the place as Auxerre, where he was interred in the church of Saint-Amator.
In fact, there is a Saint Albert or Adalbert which fits in with the times of St. Boniface even:
Saint Adalbert of Egmond (also called Adelbert of Egmond) (died c. 710 in Egmond) was a Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon missionary. He was one of Saint Willibrord's companions in preaching the gospel in Holland and Frisia.
And this Willibrord is praised by St Boniface:
Pepin of Heristal died in 714. In 716 the pagan Radbod, king of the Frisians, retook possession of Frisia, burning churches and killing many missionaries.[6] Willibrord and his monks were forced to flee. After the death of Radbod in 719, Willibrord returned to resume his work, under the protection of Charles Martel. Winfrid, better known as Boniface, joined Willibrord and stayed for three years, before travelling on to preach in Frankish territory.
...
In 752/753 Boniface wrote a letter to Pope Stephen II, in which it is said that Willibrord destroyed the Frisian pagan sanctuaries and temples.
Here is an iconographic representation on St Adalbert (third from left, click to enlarge):
Attribution is probably welcome: By Jan Joesten van Hillegom - Frans Hals museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands, Public Domain, Link
So, the Martyrs' Mirror takes two less known saints, one of them actually popular in the region (perhaps Clemens Scotus was so too) and turns their lives upside down, into martyrs killed by Roman Catholicism and this in a time when ... that is, the supposed killing, not the book, in a time when Inquisition is not known to have existed nor to have handed over anyone to Secular Arm for burning.
Well, I'd say The Martyrs' Mirror is nearly as historical as the Iliad, in which Hittites aren't mentioned and about the destruction of a Troy (arguably level VII) that probably post-dates destruction of palaces in Pylos and Mycenae, but even so, Achaean kings are systematically attributed to living in palaces.
Now, Homer had the excuse of taking his sources from a purely oral tradition in which Hittites were forgotten and in which periods were mixed before they arrived to him. This doesn't mean everything is false, it only makes for some inaccuracies ... which can be appreciated as anachronisms, perhaps also omertà, once they are recognised as such. But whoever came before, and perhaps also Thieleman J. van Braght, the author himself of The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians who baptized only upon confession of faith, and who suffered and died for the testimony of Jesus, their Saviour, from the time of Christ to the year A.D. 1660, they were one or other or both, misrepresenting epochs from which written records are had and were accessible in their times.*
Next to the Bible, the Martyrs Mirror has historically been held as the most significant and prominent place in Amish and Mennonite homes. ... The Martyrs Mirror is still a beloved book among Amish and Mennonites. While less common now than in the 20th century, in Mennonite homes Martyr's Mirror is a common wedding gift.
Next to the Bible ... you bet (unless the real importance is reversed).
Now, the event with "Anabaptist" or "Protestant martyrs" Clemens Scotus and Albertus "Gallus" are comment on at somewhat great length, the book citing: FURTHER OBSERVATIONS TOUCHING THE CASE OF ALBERT AND CLEMENT, ACCORDING TO THE ACCOUNT OF SEBASTIAN FRANCK, SPECIAL ACCOUNT OF CLEMENT, ACCORDING TO P. J. TWISCK. Franck lived in * 1499 in Donauwörth; † 1542 in Bazel and while Netherlandish wiki has no article on P. J. Twisck, I don't doubt he's named after the village Twisk - which for one thing is not documented before 1200's and for another a man from there back then would have been Tuiscus, not Twisck, so, again, the documentation is at least as late as Renaissance.
Probably this did not at all bother Thieleman J. van Braght, who probably would have frowned on the original documentation for being:
- in not quite Classical Latin
- by people whose theology he would have identified as Papist.
I'll give him a point as history forger for a well chosen theological cause (if an error can be well chosen).
You see, Matthew 28:20 requires the presence of Christ's true Church on Earth "all days". This cannot be had for Anabaptism - his confession - with normal documentation. But it can be had by twisting testimonies, as he did with one Germanos' canons about adult baptism in Constantinople, which he twisted into a refusal of child baptism, though it is highly improbable and cannot be documented, and it can be had by relying on someone else's forgeries, like in the case of these two saints, probably the forgeries of ex-Catholic (that is apostate) writer Sebastian Franck.
The fact that the point is fairly crucial is why I bother to reply to Martyrs' Mirror.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Genevieve
3.I.2019
Update : while the context for Joyce Arthur quoting this Luther quote is an attack on Duane Gish, it is perhaps much better suited to illustrate original context, if not necessarily Thieleman J. van Braght, at least men like Sebastian Franck:
"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." --- Martin Luther (full citation at end)
...
As cited in Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, by Sissela Bok, Pantheon Books, New York, 1978. The full citation given in Bok's book is: Martin Luther cited by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., Briefwechsel Landgraf Phillips des Grossmuthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, vol. 1.
So, the Luther letter is even involved in a correspondence also involving Bucer? This is not totally irrelevant, since Bucer, apart from being Reformer of Strasburg, was also mentor or part mentor to both Cranmer and Calvin. He's not a Lutheran Reformer, but he's definitely both an Anglican and a Calvinist one. I don't know how Bucer reacted, or if he was told of Luther's stance./HGL
* Unlike Linear B, which was out of use when Homer lived and which anyway was not used as far as we can see, to document events, but as an aid to bureaucratic bookkeeping. That Troy's human destruction level is VIIa and that this is later than destruction of palaces in Mycenae can be gathered from La Grèce préclassique, pp. 72-73, by Jean-Claude Poursat. This means if Mycenean Achaeans destroyed Troy, it was after their own city was destroyed in its "classical" (or rather not, but Mycenean) shape. I differ from him in taking this as ruling out Trojan War roughly speaking as described in Iliad and Odyssey. Having a palace is not a military prerequisite for destroying one, and can be a requittal for an earlier destruction of one's own.
The city of the archaeological layer known as Troy VIIa, which has been dated on the basis of pottery styles to the mid- to late-13th century BC, lasted for about a century, with a destruction layer at c. 1190 BC. It is the most often-cited candidate for the Troy of Homer and is believed to correspond to Wilusa, known from Hittite sources dating to the period of roughly 1300–1250 BC.
These dates correspond closely to the mythical chronology of Greece as calculated by classical authors, placing the construction of the walls of Troy by Poseidon, Apollo and Aeacus at 1282 BC and the sack of Troy by the Greeks at 1183 BC.
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