Flash In The Pan - 14. Memento Mori

If you wanted to set your life on fire, there wasn’t a better combination.

Here, this is the one: faith, politics, and heresy in sixteenth century England. Treading the treacherous, ever-changing path which divided the follower of the true religion from the apostate. Something which often resulted in death at the stake.

Take Thomas Cranmer. He set his life on fire with a vengeance. A dispute with the Catholic Queen Mary and he was finished. As a serving archbishop, his public execution in 1556 was a spectacle. Did it make his death special? A red-letter day? The crowd in Oxford seemed to think so. They drank in the emotions, the open sympathy for the condemned man as he gave out his last words. He didn’t struggle, or weep, or curse fate as the flames licked around him. Instead, in the words of an observer, he came ‘to the stake with a cheerful countenance and willing mind, he put off his garments with haste and stood upright in his shirt’.

Tudor propaganda? Maybe. Did he think he would cheat Death somehow by going willingly into the fire? If he did, he was wrong. No-one bypasses me. Everybody is gathered in from the never-ending harvest. Sometimes ripe, sometimes not. Yet … he has outwitted me in a way. Death should mean the extinction of a life. Complete erasure. Cranmer lives on. He, his life, the causes he stood for are in the public consciousness, just, after nearly five hundred years. People at the time were moved to record his death in writings and woodcut illustrations. Quite some effort to go to at that time.

He died for his version of the Christian faith. Did he go to the stake so he would get preferential treatment at the pearly gates? Now there’s something to think about. Yes? Or no? Death isn’t a middleman, someone you employ to improve your chances elsewhere. It isn’t a service I offer so you can abuse it to increase your hopes of gaining paradise. Death is universal. It happens to everyone. It should be egalitarian. Equal opportunity. Gender neutral. Faith, no faith. … But even I admit that’s rubbish. You’ll find a hierarchy of death throughout time. Won’t stop me trying to change things. Just don’t expect it soon.

So, does Cranmer’s death resonate with you? Martyrdom his way? Restrained, kinda quiet. No? Ah, silly me. I forgot. You want to take other people with you, when you ignite the flames. You see yourself as the instigator of your own death, not someone else’s victim. Well, that’s debatable. Sorry, muttering to myself. I hope you were listening earlier. The bit about not using me to get preferential treatment? Only I saw you making your video. Your claims struck me as being premature, that’s all.

You might want to check the small print on that special offer. You’re expecting how many maidens? No hunks, or twinks? Shame – gotta move with the times. And the people who are going to accompany you … Sorry, those who will leave at the same time as you, are they willing participants, by the way? I thought not. … What difference does it make to me? Well, maybe I’m having my own #Me Too moment. Shouldn’t ‘consent’ or at least ‘acquiescence’ figure in your plans somewhere? It’s a new idea I’m trying out.

I sense I’m not making any headway here. Your mind’s set. The video’s ready. You expect your fame and martyrdom will be the talk of the world as you wage your holy war. I have news for you, my friend. Your messy, murderous demise will be a damp squib, hardly lighting up a couple of days before it’s forgotten. The other people, your victims, will be remembered longer than you. I have a suggestion. Be a martyr if you wish, it’s all the same to me. Follow Cranmer’s example. But leave the others out of it.

Death’s a dirty enough business without you making it more so.