Sainte Anne Line, martyre
Elle nait dans une noble
famille protestante d’Angleterre. Son frère et elle se convertissent au
christianisme et sont aussitôt rejetés et déshérités par leurs parents. Anne
épouse un autre converti du nom de Roger Line, qui est arrêté puis exilé en
Flandres où il décède peu de temps après. Suspectée de protéger et d’héberger
des prêtres catholiques, et en raison de sa fidélité à l'Eglise romaine, elle
est arrêtée et condamnée à la pendaison et est exécutée à Tyburn le 27 février
1601. Avec elle moururent les bienheureux prêtres et martyrs Marc Barkworth,
bénédictin et Roger Filcock, jésuite.
Sainte Anne Line
Martyre en
Angleterre (✝ 1601)
martyre anglaise.
D'origine noble et élevée dans la Communion anglicane, elle se convertit au
catholicisme, hébergeant souvent des prêtres. En raison de sa fidélité à
l'Eglise romaine, elle fut condamnée à être pendue à Tyburn.
Elle fait partie des Quarante
martyrs d'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles qui ont été canonisés en
1970.
À Londres, en 1601, sainte Anne Line, veuve et martyre. Née de parents
calvinistes, qui la déshéritèrent et la chassèrent de chez eux quand elle
devint catholique, elle épousa Roger Line, qui mourut en exil à cause de la foi
catholique. Après sa mort, elle fournit un hébergement à des prêtres à Londres,
et pour cela, fut pendue à Tyburn, sous la reine Élisabeth Ière. Avec elle
subirent le même supplice les bienheureux prêtres et martryrs Marc Barkworth,
bénédictin, et Roger
Felcock, de la Compagnie de Jésus, qui furent mis en pièces alors
qu’ils respiraient encore.
Martyrologe
romain
St. Anne Line
English martyr, d. 27 Feb., 1601. She was the daughter of William
Heigham of Dunmow,
Essex, a gentleman of means and an ardent Calvinist, and when she and her brother announced their intention
of becoming Catholics both were disowned and
disinherited. Anne married Roger
Line, a convert like herself,
and shortly after their marriage
he was apprehended for attending Mass.
After a brief confinement he was
released and permitted to go into exile in Flanders, where he died in 1594. When Father John Gerard established a house of refuge for priests in London, Mrs. Line was placed in charge. After Father Gerard's escape from the Tower in 1597, as the authorities
were beginning to suspect her assistance, she removed to another house, which
she made a rallying point for neighbouring Catholics. On Candlemas Day, 1601, Father Francis Page, S.J. was about to
celebrate Mass in her apartments, when priest-catchers broke
into the rooms. Father Page quickly unvested, and mingled with the others, but
the altar prepared for the ceremony was all the evidence needed for the arrest of
Mrs. Line. She was tried at the Old Bailey 26 Feb., 1601, and indicted under
the Act of 27 Eliz. for
harbouring a priest, though this could not be proved. The next day she was led to the gallows, and bravely proclaiming her faith, achieved the martyrdom for which she had prayed. Her fate
was shared by two priests, [Bl.] Mark Barkworth, O.S.B., and Roger Filcock,
S.J., who were executed at the
same time.
Roger Filcock
had long been Mrs. Line's friend and frequently her confessor.
Entering the English College at Reims in 1588, he was sent with the others in 1590
to colonize the seminary of St. Albans at Valladolid, and, after completing his course there, was ordained and sent on the English
mission. Father Garnett kept him
on probation for two years to try his mettle
before admitting him to the Society of Jesus, and finding him zealous and brave, finally allowed him to enter. He was just
about to cross to the Continent
for his novitiate when he was arrested on suspicion
of being a priest and executed
after a travesty of a trial.
[Note: In 1970,
Anne Line was canonized by Pope Paul VI among the Forty
Martyrs of England and Wales, whose joint feast
day is kept on 25 October]
Sources
MORRIS, Life of Fr. John Gerard; CHALLONER, Memoirs, I, 396; FOLEY, Records S.J. I, 405; VII, 254; Douay Diaries, p. 219, 280; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. Rutland Coll. Belvoir
Castle, I, 370; GILLOW, Bibl. Dict.
Eng. Cath.
Quinn, Stanley. "St. Anne Line." The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 27 Feb. 2017 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09270b.htm>.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for
New Advent by Herman F. Holbrook. O Saint Anne, and all ye holy Martyrs, pray for us.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New
York.
The Anne
Line story
The story of Anne Line, at least
as it was passed on by the Jesuit John Gerard who knew her well, starts with
her marriage to Roger Line of Ringwood. Both husband and wife were from
Protestant families of minor landed-gentry, and Roger Line, the eldest son, was
heir both to his father and to his uncle. This meant that while they were not
vastly wealthy, they were certainly set fair for a secure future on the Line
family estates in Hampshire and Sussex. Within three years of their wedding day
Roger Line was arrested at a banned Catholic mass together with Anne’s brother
William and a Catholic priest evidently employed by the said William as a
chaplain. The priest was hanged, drawn and quartered a few weeks later and
Roger Line and William Higham were imprisoned, the latter in the Bridewell,
notorious among Catholics for particularly hellish conditions and domain of the
sadistic bigot Richard Topcliffe.
While in prison, Roger Line
learned that he was being cut out of his inheritance by his father and his
uncle because of his refusal to conform to the state church. This had been
threatened before but the threat was now carried out. At around the same time,
Anne Line’s father took similar drastic action and seems to have deprived her
of land due to her as her dowry. He also took the extraordinary step of cutting
his only son William out of his inheritance. After several months in prison
Roger Line was released but banished into exile where he managed to obtain
financial support from the Spanish crown in the form of a regular pension, part
of which he sent back to support his wife in England who was now estranged from
her own family. It appears that Anne Line became pregnant before her husband
left the country for Antwerp and subsequently gave birth to a son who was
called John. At some point, perhaps when Anne Line was very sick, the baby was
taken from her and adopted by her estranged in-laws in Hampshire. A few years
later, after fruitless attempts to obtain permission to return to England,
Roger Line died in Belgium.
This was the point in her life,
rejected by her own family and having lost her only child and her husband, that
Anne Line began to work for the Jesuits. It was, of course, a highly dangerous
course of action, but given all that had happened, it would not be so
surprising if death held few terrors for her. She was put in charge of the
Jesuit safe-house in London where newly-minted priests, arriving by diverse
clandestine means, would lodge for a while before a more permanent placement
was found for them, perhaps in some far-flung manor in the countryside. The
Jesuits at this time, though few in number, were organising practically the
whole of the English mission, and Anne Line was right at the centre of this
operation. They called her ‘Mrs Martha’ after the Martha of the gospels who
fussed about preparing food while her more ‘contemplative’ sister sat attentive
at the feet of Jesus. Her service no doubt often took the form of mundane tasks
such as cooking, cleaning, perhaps sewing on a button or three, but Fr Gerard,
who provided the money for renting the property, describes her as having
responsibility for ‘managing’ the house. This implies that she was left in
charge for extended periods, such as during the three years that Gerard was in
prison and, given the dangers and the importance of the house, is testament to
her competence, her courage, and to the absolute trust placed in her by the
Jesuits. Fr Garnet, the head of the order in England, declared that he had
‘never met a woman of greater prudence’ and compared Anne Line to the ‘Roman
Matrons’ – powerful women in charge of households who sheltered fellow
Christians at times of persecution and played a vital role in the survival of
the Church. There appear to have been three neighbouring properties rented for
the use of the mission, and as well as priests, Anne Line would have met young
men heading off to the seminaries and young women en route to the newly founded
convents for English ladies across the Channel. She also ‘instructed’ a group
of children, though we know nothing more of who they were. All in all, Anne
Line must have come in contact with a significant number of those people most
involved in the underground Catholic mission and would have been know by repute
to a great many more.
On Candlemas Day, 2 February,
1601, during the blessing of candles that precedes the mass on that day, there
was a raid on the house where Anne Line was then living in Fetter Lane. She was
arrested and jailed in Newgate prison on Old Bailey Lane and three weeks later,
on Ash Wednesday, 25 February, she was sentenced to death by the Lord Chief
Justice at the Sessions House. On Friday 27 February, as snow flurries swept
through the London streets, Anne Line was taken on a cart to the execution site
at Tyburn and hanged before the crowd that had gathered there. Two priests from
the same prison, Mark Barkworth and Roger Filcock, were hanged, drawn and
quartered shortly afterwards. Anne Line’s body was retrieved from the grave in
the road (where it had been dumped without ceremony) by the servants of the
Countess of Arundel, so that it could be buried with ‘full decorum’ after a
proper requiem mass held in great secrecy. It is this requiem that is thought
to be the setting for Shakespeare’s cryptic poem, ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’.
SOURCE
: https://theneatherdsdaughter.wordpress.com/mini-bio/
Sant' Anna Line Martire
† Londra, Inghilterra, 27 febbraio 1601
Canonizzata
il 25 ottobre 1970 da Papa Paolo VI.
Martirologio
Romano: A Londra in Inghilterra, sant’Anna Line, vedova e martire, che, morto
il marito in esilio per la fede cattolica, procurò in questa città una casa ai
sacerdoti e per questo, sotto la regina Elisabetta I, a Tyburn fu impiccata.
Insieme a lei patirono anche i beati sacerdoti e martiri Marco Barkworth,
dell’Ordine di San Benedetto, e Ruggero Filcock, della Compagnia di Gesù,
dilaniati con la spada mentre erano ancora vivi.
Seconda figlia di Guglielmo (o Giovanni)
Heigham e di Anna Alien, Anna nacque a Dunmow, nella contea di Essex.
Convertitasi al cattolicesimo insieme col fratello Guglielmo, fu con questo
diseredata e scacciata di casa dal padre, fiero calvinista, che inutilmente
aveva anche tentato di farla apostatare. Poco dopo Anna sposò Ruggero Line,
anche egli cattolico convertito, che per la fede aveva subito la stessa sorte
della moglie. Ma ben presto rimase sola e senza risorse perché il marito, arrestato
nel 1586, mentre stava ascoltando la s. Messa, e condannato all'ergastolo,
mutato poi in esilio perpetuo, andò a stabilirsi nelle Fiandre, dove visse
ancora otto anni poveramente, percependo una piccola pensione concessagli dal
re di Spagna e di cui inviava parte alla moglie a Londra.
Rimasta vedova nel 1594 e molto malandata in salute, Anna più
che mai si trovò afflitta dal bisogno, dovendo fidare unicamente nella divina
Provvidenza per il suo sostentamento.
Quando nel 1595 il gesuita Giovanni
Gerard istituì in Londra una casa di ricovero per i sacerdoti che giungevano
nuovi nella città, o che già vi esercitavano il ministero, Anna fu chiamata a
governarla ed amministrarla, mansioni queste che ella svolse giorno per giorno
con l'affetto di una madre e la devozione di un'ancella, finché cadde in
sospetto dei persecutori, specie dopo la fuga del Gerard dalle prigioni della
Torre nel 1597. Costretta per questo a cambiare residenza, andò ad abitare in
una casa molto appartata, dove nondimeno, per la delazione di un vicino, venne
catturata il 2 febb. 1601 da un manipolo di armati e rinchiusa nelle prigioni
di Newgate. Trascinata poco dopo in tribunale, dove fu necessario condurla su
una sedia, talmente gravi erano le sue condizioni di salute, venne processata
dal giudice Popham, sotto l'imputazione di aver dato rifugio ed assistenza ai
preti missionari. Dichiarata colpevole del reato ascrittole da una giuria compiacente,
fu condannata alla pena capitale, venendo giustiziata al Tyburn il 27 febb. 1601, insieme
con il gesuita Ruggero Filcock, suo confessore ed amico, e col benedettino
Marco Barkworth. Prima di porgere la testa al capestro, dichiarò ad alta voce
rivolta alla folla circostante: « Sono stata condannata per aver concesso
ospitalità ad un prete cattolico; eppure sono cosi lontana dal pentirmene che
vorrei di tutto cuore averne ospitato un migliaio, invece di uno solo ». Innalzata da Pio XI all'onore degli altari, il 15 dic. 1929
(cf. ASS, XXII [1930], p. 15, n. LXXXIII), la beata Anna viene commemorata il
27 febbraio.
Autore: Niccolò Del Re
