This week in Christian history: Protestant preacher found guilty of heresy; GK Chesterton dies, Pius IX becomes pope

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Twitter

Female Protestant preacher sentenced to death — June 18, 1546

A woodcut illustration of the burning of Protestant preacher Anne Askew at Smithfield, London, England on July 16, 1546.
A woodcut illustration of the burning of Protestant preacher Anne Askew at Smithfield, London, England on July 16, 1546. | Wikimedia Commons

This week marks the anniversary of when Anne Askew, an English Protestant preacher, was sentenced to death for denying the teaching of transubstantiation.

Although King Henry VIII had by this time broken ties with the pope, the Church of England retained many Catholic beliefs, such as the belief that during Communion, the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ.

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At her trial, when Askew reaffirmed her rejection of the teaching, declaring “I have read that God made man; but that man can make God, I never read, nor, I suppose, ever shall read.”

After being found guilty of heresy and then tortured in a failed attempt to get her to recant her beliefs, Askew was burned at the stake later that year on July 16 in Smithfield, London.

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