Protestant sainthood: martyrdom and the meaning of sanctity in early New England.(Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations)(Brief article)

This dissertation examines the rhetoric of martyrdom in seventeenth-century Protestant culture, exploring how Puritans, Baptists, and Quakers imagined themselves within biblical and historical narratives of persecution both to strengthen their authority in matters of religion and to reinforce a model of the true spiritual life. Memories of persecution, especially stories of the Protestants killed during the reign of Queen Mary in the mid-sixteenth century, were central to a model of sanctity that had powerful devotional and political applications.

In examining how the notions of persecution and affliction move in and out of the literature of the period, I find that …