St. Margaret, pray for us!

 A ribald hagiography from The Pillar for one of today's saints:

In line with English legal practice at the time, Margaret was laid atop sharp stones under a wooden platform, upon which weights were piled until she pled either guilty or not guilty, or she was crushed to death. She chose death.

Of course, had she pled “not guilty” I wouldn’t have fancied her chances for mounting a successful defense — she could hardly deny being Catholic, and they had found the priest holes in her house. And a guilty plea would have meant (equally) certain execution.

But by refusing to plead one way or another, she couldn’t be convicted, so the family home and assets couldn’t be seized, and her children and husband were spared (potentially self-incriminating) interrogation under oath during her trial.

I cannot say for sure if I admire most her witness of faith, her maternal concern for her family, or her faultless command of procedural law — but the combination of all three is surely saintly.

Her story is also, by the way, historically instructive. The absurd myth of the Spanish Inquisition as a bloodsoaked torture fest, with dank dungeons full of prelates with red hot pokers, is and always has been an Elizabethan invention and naked exercise in projection by Bloody Bess’s royal court.

St. Margaret’s treatment under English law was neither especially uncommon nor illegal; no such conduct existed in the canonical system. 

Some people would argue, in fact, that the Spanish Inquisition was more enlightened than any other European legal system of its time — and more than most for several centuries to come. 

How’s that for unexpected?