Posted on 07/29/2015 12:31:45 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
After 400 years in the Virginia dirt, the box came out of the ground looking like it had been plucked from the ocean. A tiny silver brick, now encrusted with a green patina and rough as sandpaper. Buried beneath it was a human skeleton. The remains would later be identified as those of Captain Gabriel Archer, one of the most prominent leaders at Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America. But it was the box, which appeared to be an ancient Catholic reliquary, that had archaeologists bewildered and astonished...
...It’s the kind of discovery that makes historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and other academics giddy with curiosity. But it raises even bigger questions, too—ideas that could rewrite our understanding of the intersection of religious and cultural identities in colonial America.
The English settlement of the New World is most often remembered as a Protestant endeavor. But if indeed there were Catholics at Jamestown, then, from the very beginning, it was a project pursued by those of multiple faiths, seeking new opportunities.
“There is this sense that American Catholic history begins in the 19th century with a wave of immigrants from Germany and Ireland in the 1820s and 1830s, but there is a history of earlier Catholicism,” said Maura Jane Farrelly, an associate professor of American studies at Brandeis University. “What’s captivating about it is the notion of the secretive nature. If he’s secretly Catholic, what does that faith mean to him that he’s willing to hold onto it even though it’s dangerous?”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Since Maryland was established as a Catholic haven in 1629, I’m pretty sure it’s well known there were Catholics in America well before the 1800s.
A skeleton, a Catholic relic, and a mystery walked into a bar...
Strange article. Plenty of French Catholics came to the new world in the 16th and 17th centuries as explorers, traders, trappers, and priests to convert the Indians.
And the Spanish were no slouches either but they were generally further south.
plenty of Jesuits came to American to un-savage we savages...
**Archer, an influential secretary and magistrate “was one of the most prominent of the first leaders at Jamestown,” Horn told me. Historians knew Archer as a rival of Captain John Smith, the explorer who, according to legend, was saved from execution by Pocahontas, the daughter of a Powhatan chief. Smith and Archer were rivals. “And Archer spent a good chunk of time trying to remove Smith from the government council of Jamestown,” Horn told me. Researchers now wonder whether there was more to the antagonistic relationship between Smith and Archer. Could Archer’s motives—as a colonial leader, as a searing critic of Smith’s—have been linked to a secret religious identity?**
.
Wow!
And were here earlier.
An another wow!
**But there are other hints that suggest Archer was indeed a Catholic, and possibly even an important figure to other Catholics. He was buried in a hexagonal wooden coffin with his head pointing east. “Because of the orientation of archer in the grave, his head to the east, this is usually a sign of clerics,” Horn said. “He could have been the leader of a secret Catholic cell and even possibly a secret Catholic priest.”**
In the article, they talk about Maryland.
Here is something that I was thinking. I read the entire piece to see if one of the researchers presented this possibility. Is it possible that he had no idea that this item would be buried with him? Was there someone close to him who chose to bury it with him even though he was an Anglican? Or could it be that it was not actually buried with him but just hidden in the soil of his freshly-filled grave by someone intending to retrieve it at a later date?
That is true, but the French were not in Jamestown, Virginia.
I honestly think they are really reaching with this secret Catholic business. Unless there are more facts that are not presented in this article.
Every Protestant in England had at least one "embarrassing" Catholic family member including Anglican bishops and Protestant members of Parliament. The most "embarrassed" were the ones who's family member was a priest, most notably a Jesuit.
The fight about religion centered around the monarch thinking that he or she owned everyone's consciences. It was a tremendous problem. Thomas More said that he was uncomfortable pinning his conscience onto another man's back for fear that he did not know where that person would take it.
Another thing -- Maryland was not set up as a Catholic colony. It was a colony designed to allow everyone to worship according to their own conscience with no interference from the government.
The only law concerning religion was that there were to be no fights that disturbed the peace. Both parties caught fighting about religion would be fined in tobacco.
Maryland was not a theocracy until the Anglican church took over the colony.
Just after the signing of the Constitution and the election of George Washington as the first president, all of the founders and their wives were invited to hear James Wilson give a set of lectures where he explained what they had just done for the country. In Wilson's very first lecture he credited George Calvert, the founder of Maryland, with providing the example of true freedom of religion.
...and a root of my family came from NY & VT in 1850s to un-savage the savage Southerners!
>>Or could it be that it was not actually buried with him but just hidden in the soil of his freshly-filled grave by someone intending to retrieve it at a later date?<<
And yet in a later post you wonder if they are “really reaching”???
I can understand why you would say that, but I am just throwing out possible explanations that are no more outrageous than their supposition that Archer was a closet Catholic. As I said, unless there is more information to support what they say, I just don’t get it.
Thanks. Very interesting.
“...But hadn’t Catholicism been banished in England? Weren’t they all Anglicans? Yes, Horn pointed out, but there were still Catholics practicing underground. Rosary beads, medallions of saints and a crucifix carved on jet have also turned up at Jamestown. Gabriel Archer’s father was among the Catholics, called a “recusant” and cited in court for failing to attend Anglican services. Archer had learned resistance at home...”
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