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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Most analysts acknowledge that guilt is a pervasive element in modern society. Possessed of a strong sense of impending doom through nuclear warfare, crises of ecology or overpopulation, modern man is haunted by an overriding sense of fear and guilt, wondering what quality in himself caused such an imminence of death. But surely this sense of guilt is not a creation of the modern world. Indeed guilt in the form of sin is even more comprehensible in earlier periods of history, where the culture was religiously oriented and where the wrath of a personal God could be visited upon a population in the form of plague or famine because of the sins of the people. Theories of guilt as applied to history, however, are much too sparse. One reason for this deficiency is that in order to use the psycho-historical technique, historians would be removed from the factual world and would be forced to probe the labyrinthine internal world that is illogical, devious and intangible. A few brave souls have explored the uncharted realms of the unconscious in the study of religion, both past and present. Yet, strangely enough, no one has ever focused upon guilt as an impetus in perhaps the most important aspect of religion—at least of Christian religion—the role of witness, better known as martyrdom.
* This article was completed with the support of a grant from the American Philosophical Society.
1 Some of the better studies are Freud, “Totem and Taboo,” “The Future of an Illusion,” and “Moses and Monotheism,” vols. 12, 21, and 23, respectively, of the Standard Edition of Freud's works; Erikson, Erik, Young Man Luther (New York: Norton, 1962)Google Scholar; Brown, Norman O., Life Against Death (New York: Random House, 1959)Google Scholar; and Alvarez, A., The Savage God (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971).Google Scholar
2 See for example the recent controversy in the American Historical Review. Jacques Barzun, “History: The Muse and Her Doctors” (Feb. 1972), brings out many of the drawbacks of the method. Otto Planze, “Toward a Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Bismarck” (April 1972), emphasizes the merits of the approach, while Gatzcher, Hans W., reviewing Walter Langer's psychohistorical work on Hitler, The Mind of Adolf Hitler … (New York: Basic Books, 1972)Google Scholar, takes a middle position. In the past few years there have been a number of seminars devoted to this approach in the historical profession. The controversy has reached much further than the narrow confines of historical journals. See for example Robert Lifton's very favorable review of Langer's study in the Dec. 31, 1972, New York Times Book Review. For basic works on the method see Lifton, Robert, “On Psychohistory,” in Bass, Herbert, ed., The Stale of American History (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970) 276ff.Google Scholar; Mazlish, Bruce, ed., Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Universal Library, 1971)Google Scholar, and Wolman, Benjamin, ed., The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History (New York: Basic Books, 1971.Google Scholar
3 Barzun, “History and Her Doctors,” notes ironically that Plutarch was the first psycho-historian and calls Langer “a far-off disciple.” Realistically, it would seem that we could go even farther to the “Father of History” for the father of the psycho-historical technique.
4 Erikson, Luther, 35–36.
5 See on this James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1964) 214. James notes that psychology and religion are in harmony, “since both admit that there are forces seemingly outside of the conscious individual that bring redemption to his life.”Google Scholar
6 There were between 290 and 308 English reformers who were martyred between 1555–58, during the Marian years. The numbers vary according to various contemporary sources. See on this B.M., Lansdowne Mss. The word reformer rather than protestant was used in the sixteenth century to distinguish the group; therefore, I will use the word reformer throughout this article. Also, my studies on the Marian martyrs indicate that Bradford's case is typical of the motivations of the other martyrs.
7 For a variety of approaches to the treatment of the martyrs along traditional lines see Dickens, A. G., The English Reformation (London: B. T. Batsford, 1968)Google Scholar; Elton, G. R., The Tudor Revolution in Government (Cambridge: University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Hexter, H. H., Reappraisals in History (London: Longmans, 1967)Google Scholar; and Powicke, Maurice, The Reformation in England (London: Oxford, 1941).Google Scholar
8 The accounts that best illustrate this tendency are, on the reforming side, Froude, James A., History of England … (London: Longmans, 1875)Google Scholar, and Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford: Clarendon, 1840).Google Scholar On the Roman catholic side are John Lingard, A History of England… (London: J. Mawman, 1819)Google Scholar, and Parsons, Robert, A Treatise of Three Conversions of England (London: Henry Hill, 1603).Google Scholar
9 On this aspect see Byman, S., “Suicide and Alienation: Martyrdom in Tudor England,” The Psychoanalytic Review 61 (Fall, 1974) 355–73.Google ScholarPubMed
10 For example, Freud, Adler, Reik, and Rank have very different theories on the origins of the guilt feeling. For a good analysis of this disagreement see Rank, Otto, Will Therapy (New York: Random House, 1936).Google Scholar In his recent study of man's struggle against the awesome might of death within the soul, Becker, Ernest, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973), sides in the most part with Rank.Google Scholar
11 Reik, Theodor, Myth and Guilt (New York: G. Braziller, 1961) 22.Google Scholar
12 See on this Rado, Sandor, in Gaylin, William, ed., The Meaning of Despair (New York: Science House, 1968) 70–95.Google Scholar
13 Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, 214.
14 I have discussed the similarity of the reforming and papist martyrs in “Tudor Death Stands,” Moreana (Fall, 1972) 39–44.
15 Hone, Richard, The Life of John Bradford.(London: J. W. Parker, 1843)Google Scholar, has written one of the traditional biographies of Bradford. For a much better account of Bradford's martyrdom see the accounts of Gairdner, James, Lollardy and the Reformation in England (London: Macmillan, 1908) vol. 4Google Scholar, and Foxe, John, The Acts and Monuments, ed. Pratt, J. (London: Religious Tract Society, 1877) vol. 7. All of these accounts suffer from the penchant to see Bradford as a puppet of God, hence without personality.Google Scholar
16 Aries, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood (New York: Random House, 1962) 259Google Scholar, notes that: “By the sixteenth century the birch had taken the place of the traditional pecuniary punishments.” The sixteenth century, then, witnesses more severity of punishment than the earlier medieval period. Narratives of the Reformation, ed. Nichols, J. (London: Camden Society, 1859), contains the interesting assessment of one Udal, a contemporary schoolmaster of the time regarding discipline:Google Scholar
17 The earliest mention of Bradford's childhood is in Foxe, vol. 7, 143.
18 Bradford, John, Writings, ed. Townsend, A., Parker Society (Cambridge: University Press, 1848), 1. 163.Google Scholar
19 Ibid., 164.
20 Ibid., 161.
21 Ibid., 162.
22 Ibid., 163.
23 Ibid.
24 The sermon is in Latimer, Hugh, Sermons and Remains, ed. Corrie, George, Parker Society (Cambridge: University Press, 1845) 282–308. Bradford's reaction to it is discussed by his friend Sampson in his unpaginated preface to Two Notable Sermons Made by that Worthy Martyr of Christ Master John Bradford (London: John Awdeley, 1574).Google Scholar
25 Reik, Myth and Guilt, 22.
26 This is in a letter from Traves to Bradford in 1548. Traves states: “When I came to that place that you offered yourself to be a bondsman, he (Latimer) disliked it.…”; Bradford, Writings, 2. 1–2.
27 This would fit Sartre's theory that you ask advice of a person who will be certain to give you a favorable answer.
28 Reik, Myth and Guilt, 22.
29 Bradford, Writings, 2. 13.
30 Ibid., 14.
31 James, Varieties, 191.
32 Bradford, Writings, 2. 6.
33 Salzman, Leon, “The Psychology of Religious and Ideological Conversion,” Psychiatry (1953) 16. 175–85, has a good analysis of this nontolerant attitude in modern individuals who have undergone religious conversions.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
34 Cooper, Charles Henry, Annals of Cambridge (Cambridge: Warwick and Co., 1842) 1. 127; Foxe, 7. 143.Google Scholar
25 Bradford, Writings, 2. 25.
36 Ibid., 18.
37 Ibid., 27.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., 23.
40 Ibid., 28.
41 Sampson, Two Sermons, third unnumbered page.
42 Ibid., fifth unnumbered page.
43 See on this state Erikson, Erik, Insight and Responsibility (New York: Norton, 1964) 107. Erikson talks about the dangers for man of being uprooted from his animal nature and its tie to fear and guilt.Google Scholar
44 Sampson, Two Sermons, fifth unnumbered page.
45 Foxe, 7, 144; Venn, John, Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge: University, Press, 1842) 1, 199. Bradford was a prebend under the martyr Nicholas Ridley.Google Scholar
46 This fits the pattern discussed by Freud in Moses and Monotheism.
47 Bradford, Writings, 1, 225.
48 Ibid., 253.
49 P. 92. Freud has tied the repetition-compulsion principle to the death instinct in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” Standard Edition, 18. 36. He describes the compulsion to repeat as “an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things,” ultimately in desiring the state of extinction. Rank, in Will Therapy, 168–88, discussed the problem as due in part to a “birth fear” or a “fear of individuation.”
50 See on this situation in which everything is filled with catastrophe and disaster the analysis of the repetition-compulsion neurosis of Fenichel, Otto, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1945) 543.Google Scholar
51 Salzman found that conversions in our period exhibit a large amount of selfhate.
52 Bradford, Writings, 2, 31.
53 Not only was the suicide damned for all eternity, but there were earthly punishments: his goods were confiscated by the crown and his heirs left penniless.
54 Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a fellow martyr with Bradford, supported Lady Jane Grey as did most of the other leaders.
55 Bradford, Writings, 2. 124.
56 Ibid., 39.
57 Bishop Bonner; see on this Foxe, 7, 144–45.
58 Bradford, Writings, 2. 39.
59 Ibid., 42.
60 Ibid., 43.
61 Ibid., 54.
62 Ibid., 75.
63 Ibid.
64 Foxe, 7. 145–46.
65 Ibid., 146–47.
66 Ibid.
67 A letter to Mistress Wilkinson in 1553; Bradford, Writings, 2. 51.
68 Eliot, T. S., The Cocktail Party (Glasgow: The University Press, 1950) 30.Google Scholar
