The She-Apostle by Glyn Redworth is a tale of self-harm,
ideological control, and international terrorism. In the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth century, when the book is set, the social medium within which the
self-harm of especially young women was perpetrated was the Church. The
ideological control in question was also perpetrated by the Church, a control
so absolute, misguided and complete that individuals often suffered
hallucination as a result of the guilt that was heaped upon them by what they
were taught. International terrorism, in the case of The She-Apostle, is
manifest in the Gunpowder Plot, when a group of ideologically driven fanatics
tried to blow up the entire political leadership of a sovereign state, being
England under James the First. If this were a review of a contemporary novel,
the fact that it featured self-harm promoted by social media, hallucinations
and violence, and international terrorism might be merely par for the course.
When, as is the case of Glyn Redworth’s book, it is associated with the life of
a seventeenth century saint, it may seem strange. It might just be that little
has changed in human society in the intervening four hundred years, except, of
course, our appreciation of just how brutal life was at that time.
Doña Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza was born in Extremadura
into a Spanish nobility that was enjoying the country’s Golden Age. Colonies
overseas were disgorging their riches towards the seat of imperial power, the
nobility were gobbling up the proceeds and Spanish priests were at work, saving
the souls of a whole continent by converting them to Christianity, whilst at
the same time sending them to heaven at the double by infecting them with
smallpox, influenza, and typhoid. Europe was riven by ideological differences
between Catholics and Protestants that to an outsider seem about as
consequential as disagreeing about how many angels would fit on a pinhead. If
you are a Christian, I accept, angels matter. If you are not, they don’t exist. The evidence, surely, lies on that side, but
whenever did the ideologically committed ever trouble themselves with evidence?
Unless, of course, it could be twisted into a case against someone who thought
differently from oneself…
Born with several silver spoons already in her mouth,
Luisa sought solace in faith. She was regularly abused by her guardian, in the
name of God, of course, and regularly harmed herself with instruments of
torture. Eventually, she adopted a life of frugality, continued to self-harm,
and to pioneer a life of religious devotion that was personal rather than
institutionalized. She never became a nun. She also decided to free the English
from the manacles of Protestantism and, soon after the armada had failed to do the
same by force, moved to England to follow her mission.
Glyn Redworth’s The She-Apostle is more than a
biography of Luisa. It perhaps stops short of being a conventional hagiography.
The author does describe the personal and societal consequences of Luisa’s
campaign to promote Roman Catholicism in Protestant England, but quite often a
reader might feel that the author stopped short of delivering the criticisms of
her actions that he himself felt. Luisa may indeed have sought martyrdom, but
her crime in the end was to steal the remains of already butchered Roman
Catholics, put to death by a state that arrogated absolute power because of the
terrorism they threatened.
As a reminder, it must be pointed out that the method
of choice by which the just imposed their will on dissenters was as follows. “Hung,
drawn and quartered” might sound like it might apply to a Spanish ham. But in
that age, it meant being hung by the neck until you are almost dead. Then you
were cut down and disembowelled, your intestines being trailed onto a fire as
you watched. Then your arms, legs and head were cut off and then the final
ignominy was that your torso was cut into quarters, each part of you destined
for a different resting place. The idea, of course, was ideologically driven in
that admission to heaven needed intact remains, so once quartered, a person was
to be damned forever.
Louisa, herself, was indeed arrested for stealing the
remains of executed Catholics, although she herself died eventually in bed. She
wanted to pass on the dried-out flesh and bones of the martyred as relics to
consecrate holy places. But she was spared the ignominy of the gallows and axe
so there was no obvious martyrdom for her. Glyn Redworth’s book, though
superficially adulatory, does give a vivid portrayal of the political and
social life of the time, and as such it is worth reading. For a believer, I
suppose it provides joyous example of a pious life. For a nonbeliever, like me,
it portrays the shockingly violent absurdity of the irrational.
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