Unlike Anne Dillon's study, "The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community", Brad S. Gregory's "Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe" takes the martyrs of the Reformation period seriously and without what he calls "the hermeneutic of suspicion", which undercuts the reality of the martyr's devotion and belief. He dedicates the first chapter, "A Complex of Martyrs" to explaining why and how he has done so, at one point stating:
My depiction of sixteenth-century Christians is intended to be one in which they would have recognized themselves, not puzzled over modern or postmodern configurations of who they were. I have sought to reconstruct, not deconstruct, their commitments and experiences as far as the evidence permits. This holds not only for the martyrs, but also for fellow believers who encouraged them, authorities who tried to dissuage them, and those who responded to their deaths both positively and negatively. Several objectives can be achieved by telling a story of embattled convictions in action not from an external perspective based on explanatory theory, but rather through an exploration of the relevant traditions in turn, one that is sensitive to their emphases, nuances, and changes over time.
I think Gregory achieved his goals: he balances the three groups of martyrs (Protestant, Anabaptist, and Catholic) well; acknowledges their different understanding of the martyrs' impact on their communities; notes the reluctance of the officials (except for Richard Topcliffe, torturer and executioner extraordinaire) to condemn the accused, as they hoped for conversion and public recantation; and the crucial distinctions each group made between their martyrs and the others condemned for false religion.
I was most interested in the chapter on the Catholic martyrs, in which Gregory explores the rather muted reaction to St. Thomas More's and St. John Fisher's martyrdoms (Francois I of France planned some demonstration of his disapproval but then deferred to Emperor Charles V since it was his Aunt Catherine who was treated so badly by Henry VIII). He refers to the Catholic martyrs under Henry VIII as "defensive" martyrs who died to protect the unity of the Church under the Vicar of Christ.
While describing those whom I call the Recusant Martyrs he notes how the "emphasis on the glory of martyrdom spurred the zeal to die for Christ" and yet "how the virtue of humility bridled the same desire." This certainly reminded me of St. Robert Southwell, who called himself a mere "worm" while acknowledging that he was in his thirty-third year, the same age as Jesus when He suffered and died. Gregory notes a pattern of the martyrs imitating Christ through their suffering and death, while they became the pattern for others (like St. Henry Walpole and St. Philip Howard following St. Edmund Campion to the Church and to martyrdom). Indeed, William Allen and others emphasized the potential for conversions when the stories of the martyrs were told and offered as examples of this intense and complete imitation of Christ.
Gregory notes that 203 editions of 50 works recounting the suffering and execution of the English Catholic martyrs were published between 1580 and 1640--and 95 of those editions appeared in the 1580's alone. These books, illustrations of the executions at Tyburn Tree were disseminated to the Catholic world, where the majority of Catholics had no opportunity for such sacrifice, thus spurring the interest in relics, praying to the martyrs as saints for intercession for miracles, and, generally, to devotion to the martyrs as saints, even though no cause for canonization was started until the mid seventeenth century and later.
This is an effective and well-balanced history of martyrdom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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