Margaret Clitherow

St. Margaret Clitherow

Statue of St. Margaret at Preston

Margaret Clitherow (* around 1556 in York ; † March 25, 1586 ibid) was an English martyr who is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church . It is also called the "Pearl of York". Her feast day is March 25th.

Life

Margaret Clitherow was born in York around 1556 , after the Church of England split from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1571, at the age of about fifteen, she married the butcher John Clitherow. The couple had three children. Clitherow converted to the Catholic Church in 1574 and henceforth supported the persecuted Catholics in the north of England. Clitherow's son Henry went to Reims , France , to become a priest . Masses were regularly celebrated in secret at Clitherow's home in downtown York .

In 1586 Margaret Clitherow was arrested and charged with harboring Catholic priests. She did not plead guilty, but waived a trial to protect her family, who otherwise would have had to testify in court. She was sentenced to death by crushing , which was the standard penalty for failure to admit guilt at the time, and was executed on March 25, 1586, Good Friday . They placed them on a sharp stone, spread their arms, and tied them to two stakes; finally a door was placed over it and weights were placed on it. The execution is said to have lasted fifteen minutes. According to tradition, her last words were: “Jesus! Have mercy on me! ”. After she died, the weights were left on her body for six hours. Queen Elizabeth I later expressed her displeasure in a message to the residents of York; in her opinion, a woman should not have been executed.

Adoration

Margaret Clitherow was born in 1929 by Pope Pius XI. beatified . Paul VI canonized Margaret Clitherow along with the forty martyrs of England and Wales . Her feast day is March 25th, the anniversary of her death. In England it is celebrated on August 30th .

A house on Shambles Street, later thought to be the house of the Clitherows, houses the saint's reliquary and is open to visitors. A hand relic of the saint is in the Bar Convent in York.

Since 2008 there has been a plaque on the Ouse Bridge at the place of her death, which was unveiled by the Bishop of Middlesbrough .

Individual evidence

^ Bede Camm, St. Margaret Clitherow , in: The Catholic Encyclopedia , Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908 < http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04059b.htm >.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Clitherow, Margaret
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Pearl of York
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Martyr and Catholic saint
DATE OF BIRTH	around 1556
PLACE OF BIRTH	York
DATE OF DEATH	March 25, 1586
Place of death	York

[1] Bede Camm, St. Margaret Clitherow , in: The Catholic Encyclopedia , Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908 < http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04059b.htm >.