For several centuries the fastest way to a violent death in Europe was to be wrong about God in public. These are the trials and executions that followed, and the long argument about who the martyr was afterwards.
Every story in Martyrs & the Church
- Champel, Geneva · 1553The Heretic Burned By The Reformers Who Fled RomeCalvin's Geneva burned a brilliant Spanish physician for his beliefs, then, centuries later, erected a monument of atonement.
Campo de' Fiori, Rome · 1600The Heretic Burned For What He ThoughtAfter eight years of imprisonment, he refused to recant his vision of an infinite universe, and paid with his life.
Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh · 1999The Poltergeist That Attacks Visitors In EdinburghOver 350 visitors have reported being scratched, bruised and knocked unconscious at one graveyard tomb.
Hadleigh, Suffolk · 1555The Parson Who Danced To His Own BurningA beloved country parson faced being burned alive with such joy that he turned his execution into a triumph.
Dunnottar Castle, Stonehaven · 1685The Covenanters' Vault Of Dunnottar Castle167 prisoners were crammed into a single cellar of a clifftop castle for refusing to abandon their faith.
Paris · 1778Voltaire's Final Battle With The ChurchThe Church tried to deny him a grave, but revolutionaries would carry his body to a hero's tomb thirteen years later.
Gloucester · 1555The Bishop Burned By Three FiresA Reformation bishop's execution went so horrifically wrong it became one of the most agonising deaths in the Tudor persecutions.
Konstanz · 1415The Reformer Who Burned A Century EarlyA century before Luther, a Czech priest challenged the Church's corruption and was burned alive for refusing to take back a word.
St Andrews · 1528Scotland's First Protestant MartyrA young scholar was destroyed by an institution not ready to hear him — and his botched, hours-long death made him more dangerous than ever.
Oxford · 1556The Bishop Who Burned His Own Hand FirstA scholar who had betrayed his faith to save his life recanted his recantation, then thrust the offending hand into the flames first.
London · 1546The Only Woman Tortured In The TowerA young gentlewoman out-debated bishops in open court, then became the only woman ever recorded tortured in the Tower of London.
Klingenberg am Main · 1976The Exorcism That Killed HerA young woman's epilepsy was treated with 67 exorcism rites instead of medicine, until her body finally gave out.- Mount Yudono · 1800The Monks Who Mummified Themselves AliveFor a decade Buddhist monks starved and poisoned themselves in pursuit of one goal: becoming a living Buddha.
- Tower of London, London · 1595The Queen's Own TorturerElizabeth I's licensed torturer strapped Catholic priests to instruments of pain and boasted about it in letters.
- London · 1611The Forgotten Poet Who Defended EveShe became the first Englishwoman to publish an original book of poetry, then history erased her almost entirely.
Vatican City · 855The Legend Of A Woman On The Papal ThroneLegend says a brilliant woman disguised herself as a monk and rose to become Pope, until the truth was exposed in the street.
Vatican City · 1492The Pope Who Ran The Church Like A Crime FamilyRodrigo Borgia allegedly bought the papacy, then turned the Vatican into a den of poison and scandal.
Hampton Court, London · 1555The Phantom Pregnancies Of Bloody MaryEngland's first queen regnant endured two phantom pregnancies while Parliament prepared for a birth that never came.
Rome · 768The Pope Blinded Instead Of KilledHis rivals didn't execute him for stealing the papacy, they put out his eyes instead, a punishment worse than death.
Stiklestad · 1030The Defeated Viking King Who Became A SaintHe lost his throne and his life in battle, then within a year was declared Norway's eternal king.
Sistine Chapel, Vatican City · 1541Michelangelo's Hidden Face In The Sistine ChapelHidden in his most famous fresco, the master painted his own tormented face on a flayed, empty human skin.
Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury · 1170The Archbishop Murdered At His Own AltarKilled inside his own cathedral by men acting on a king's wish, his blood-soaked murder shocked all of Christendom.
Oxford · 1555The Bishop's Candle That Lit The ReformationBurning at the stake beside a fellow bishop, he promised their deaths would light a candle that could never be put out.
Abbeville · 1766Tortured To Death Over A HatA nineteen-year-old nobleman was tortured and executed for blasphemy in a case that scandalised all of Enlightenment Europe.
Acre · 1291The Templars' Last Stand As Acre FellTrapped in their last fortress, the final Templars chose to bring the walls down on everyone rather than surrender.
Rome · 258The Deacon Who Joked While Roasting AliveOrdered to hand over the Church's treasure, he presented the poor instead, and paid with a slow death by fire.
Lindisfarne · 793The Dragons That Came By SeaStrange omens filled the Northumbrian sky before Vikings landed at Lindisfarne and shattered 150 years of monastic peace.
Tyburn, London · 1581The Jesuit Who Chose the Rack Over the CourtThe queen wanted him for her court, but he became a hunted priest facing rack, trial, and rope instead.
Vatican City · 1527The 147 Who Died Defending The PopeA leaderless mob of mercenaries stormed Rome, and 189 Swiss Guards held the line at the Vatican until almost none were left.
Glastonbury Tor, Glastonbury · 1539The Abbot Butchered For His Abbey's GoldAn elderly abbot stood between Henry VIII and England's richest monastery, and was dragged up the Tor to die for it.
Smithfield, London · 1538The Prophecy A Burning Friar FulfilledAn old Welsh prophecy said a wooden saint would set a forest ablaze, and Henry VIII made it true by burning a friar on its statue.
Tyburn, London · 1535The Silent Monks Who Died FirstBefore Thomas More, before anyone famous, silent Carthusian monks were the first men Henry VIII executed for defying him.
Paris · 1310The Book That Outlived Its Author's PyreA woman was burned for writing that the soul could reach God without the Church, but her banned book kept circulating in secret for centuries.
Norwich · 1373The Living Woman Given Her Own FuneralA healthy thirty-year-old woman had her own funeral rites read over her before walling herself into a cell for forty years.- St Peter Port, Guernsey · 1556The Guernsey Martyr Who Burned With Her BabyA pregnant Protestant woman was burned alive on Guernsey during Mary I's persecutions, in an atrocity even her chroniclers called unmatched.
York · 1586The Pearl Of York, Pressed To DeathA well-liked butcher's wife converted to Catholicism, and Elizabethan York crushed her slowly beneath a door for it.
Hoxne, Suffolk · 869The King Whose Head Called Out From The WoodsA Viking army executed an English king and hid his head in the forest, where his followers heard it calling back to them.
Bolgar · 921The Arab Diplomat Who Watched Vikings BurnA Muslim envoy to the Volga recorded a Viking ship funeral in horrifying detail, and got an answer that still unsettles readers.
Toulouse · 1762The Merchant Voltaire Fought To ClearA Protestant merchant was executed for his son's death in Catholic Toulouse, until Europe's most famous writer took up his cause.
Amarna · 1336 BCThe Pharaoh Who Erased Egypt's GodsA pharaoh tore down a thousand years of religion to worship a single sun god, and Egypt spent centuries erasing him for it.- Boston · 1660The Quaker Who Hung Like A FlagPuritan Boston hanged a Quaker woman as a warning, and the wind turned her execution into the opposite of what they intended.
- Santa Croce, Florence · 1642The Fingers Hidden In A Reliquary For CenturiesCondemned by the Inquisition and buried quietly, pieces of the man who moved the Earth resurfaced at an auction two centuries later.
Munich · 1347The Friar Who Defied A Pope From ExileA philosopher famous for cutting away unnecessary explanations spent his final years hiding from the Pope under an emperor's soldiers.
Alexandria · 415The Philosopher Torn Apart By A MobOne of antiquity's greatest mathematicians was dragged from her chariot and killed by a mob whose bishop was never punished.
Paris · 1572The Wedding That Turned Into A MassacreSix days after a wedding meant to bring peace, Paris turned on the Protestant guests who had come to celebrate it.
Vilvoorde · 1536Strangled And Burned For Translating The BibleHe vowed a ploughboy would know scripture better than the clergy — and it cost him his life at the stake.
Piazza della Signoria, Florence · 1497The Preacher Who Burned Art And Then Burned HimselfThe friar who torched Florence's treasures in a pyramid of vanity ended up executed in the very same square.
Rome · 1233The Papal Decree That Doomed Medieval CatsA papal bull linking cats to satanic ritual gives medieval communities religious cover to hunt, burn and drown them by the thousands.
Rome · 897The Trial Of A Dead Pope's CorpseA newly elected pope has his predecessor's rotting body dug up, dressed in full vestments, and seated on a throne to stand trial.
Vatican City, Rome · 1508The Sculptor Forced To Paint A MasterpieceA sculptor who insists painting isn't his profession is ordered by a warrior pope to cover an entire chapel ceiling instead.
Rouen · 1431The Teenage Warrior Burned As A HereticA nineteen-year-old who turned the tide of a war is condemned to death not for anything military, but for the clothes she wore.
Eyam, Derbyshire · 1665The Village That Chose To Quarantine ItselfNine months into a plague outbreak, a Derbyshire village agreed to seal itself off. The register records who died. Almost everything else is argued over.
Olney · 1748The Slave Trader Who Wrote Amazing GraceA sailor prays for the first time in years as his ship breaks apart in a storm, then goes back to trading enslaved people for six more years.
Alexandria · 415The Philosopher Torn Apart By A MobAlexandria's most respected scholar becomes too dangerous a symbol to survive a city tearing itself apart over religion.
Istanbul · 1204The Crusade That Sacked A Christian CityA crusade meant for Jerusalem was diverted, city by city, until it ended up looting and burning Constantinople itself.
Athens · 399 BCThe Old Man Athens Put On Trial For Asking QuestionsA seventy-year-old philosopher was condemned for corrupting the youth — his real crime was making powerful men look foolish.- Prague Castle, Prague · 1618The Word Born From Throwing Men Out WindowsProtestant nobles hurled two Catholic officials from a castle window into a moat — and started a war that killed millions.
Melrose · 1329The Heart That Was Thrown Into BattleDying, he asked his heart be carried to the Holy Land in his place — instead it ended up hurled into a Spanish battlefield.
Île de la Cité, Paris · 1314The Templar Who Cursed A King From The FlamesArrested on a single dawn across France on fabricated charges, the last Templar grand master burned still proclaiming his order's innocence.
Tower Hill, London · 1535The Chancellor Who Refused His King's SupremacyHenry VIII's own former Lord Chancellor walked to the block for refusing to accept the king as head of the Church.
Béziers · 1209Kill Them All, Let God Sort Them OutA city refused to hand over its heretic neighbours — so a crusader army was ordered to kill everyone inside.
Toledo · 1567The Woman Condemned For Clean ClothesNot eating pork and washing on Saturdays was enough for the Spanish Inquisition to put her to the rack.- Kutná Hora · 1318The Cemetery That Became A ChandelierA handful of holy soil made one graveyard so coveted that its overflow of bones became a chapel's decoration.
Rome · 100 BCBuried Alive to Avoid Shedding Her BloodRoman law forbade killing a Vestal or burying her in the city, so they sealed the condemned underground alive instead.
Nantes · 1793The Drownings of NantesOverflowing prisons and a revolutionary need for speed turned the Loire River into a mass execution site for priests.
Fotheringhay · 1587The Queen Who Dressed for MartyrdomOn her final morning, she revealed a crimson gown beneath her black robes — the color of Catholic martyrdom.
Luz-Saint-Sauveur · 1500The Untouchables of the PyreneesFor a thousand years, a group indistinguishable from their neighbours was forced through separate, low church doors — and no one truly knows why.
Münster · 1534The Tailor Who Crowned Himself KingA 25-year-old tailor seized a German city, took sixteen wives, and declared himself king of a new Jerusalem.
Unzen · 1630Boiled Alive on Unzen's Sulfur MountainChristians who refused to trample a holy image were stripped and doused with boiling spring water on a steaming mountain.
Harvington, Worcestershire · 1606The Carpenter Who Hid England's PriestsA five-foot Jesuit carpenter carved hidden chambers into English manors for years, and the state never beat their locations out of him.
London · 1534The Prophet Who Warned a KingShe told Henry VIII he would die within months if he married Anne Boleyn — and paid with her own head instead.
Tyburn, London · 1535The Cheerful Walk to TyburnWatching from his cell, Thomas More saw five monks dragged to Tyburn cheerful as bridegrooms, knowing he would follow.
Saint Peter Port · 1556The Rope That Broke at the StakeAcquitted of theft, three women were burned for heresy anyway when the strangling rope snapped before the flames rose.
Oxford · 1555The Fires That Made Bloody Mary's NameThree of England's highest churchmen were chained to stakes in the center of Oxford and burned before a watching crowd.
Smithfield, London · 1535Starved Into Martyrdom at CharterhouseHenry VIII chose slow starvation over swift execution to break England's most devout holdouts.
Münster · 1536The Iron Cages Above MünsterWhen Münster's radical kingdom fell, its leaders' bodies were hoisted into iron cages that still hang from a church spire.- Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome · 1517The Cardinal's Poisoned Bandage PlotA furious cardinal bribed the Pope's own surgeon to dress his wounds in slow-acting poison.
- London · 1563The Poisoned Pages of a Martyr's BookConspirators laced the corners of his manuscript pages with arsenic to silence the writer who exposed Bloody Mary.
- Southwark, London · 1569Bloody Bonner's Decade of RotThe bishop who sent dozens to the flames spent his final decade rotting in a foul, forgotten dungeon.
- Newgate Prison, London · 1537The Monks Starved in the DarkRefusing to bow to the King, ten monks were chained upright in darkness and left to waste away.
- Smithfield, London · 1556The Queen Who Burned Nearly Three Hundred SubjectsDetermined to restore Catholic rule, she made denying doctrine a capital offence and lit the fires herself.
- Tyburn, London · 1534The Prophecy That Got Her HangedThe Pope, Thomas More, and 20,000 witnesses believed her visions, then she told Henry VIII he'd die, and he didn't.
- Worms · 1521The Monk Who Defied the Emperor and SurvivedDeclared an outlaw who anyone could kill without consequence, he stood before the empire and refused to take back a word.
- Formia · 303The Saint Who Kept Preaching While DisemboweledRomans wound his intestines out on a ship's winch, and he reportedly never stopped preaching.
- Oxford · 1555The Candle That Would Never Be Put OutBurned together for their faith, one died quickly while the other screamed in agony for nearly an hour.
- Place Maubert, Paris · 1546Burned for Mistranslating a Single LineA single disputed word in a translation of Plato was enough to have him tortured and burned alongside his own books.