Constance and her Companions
THE MARTYRS OF MEMPHIS, September 9, 1878
“We give you thanks and praise, O God of compassion, for the heroic witness of Constance and her companions, who, in a time of plague and pestilence, were steadfast in their care for the sick and the dying, and loved not their own lives, even unto death. Inspire in us a like love and commitment to those in need, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.” “Collect for Constance and her Companions,” Lesser Feasts and Fast, p. 371.
For a few minutes, let’s take a journey back in time across the Mississippi River to Memphis. It is the summer of 1878, forty years after the founding of St. Mary’s Church from Calvary Church and only eight years since St. Mary’s becomes the cathedral. Our city on the bluff of the Mississippi River is struck by its third epidemic in a decade of yellow fever, the mosquito-borne hemorrhagic viral infection. 30,000 citizens flee in terror. Death tolls average 200 a day.
The city becomes so depopulated that Memphis loses its charter and will not reorganize for fourteen years. When this epidemic is all over, ninety percent of Memphis’ population has contracted yellow fever and over 5000 people have died. Everyone who can afford to do so packs up their bags and leaves the city and flees away from the river. It was not yet known that the disease is mosquito borne, but high and dry seems safe.
In Memphis, at St. Mary’s Cathedral, is a community of Anglican nuns from New England who have been in Memphis for over five years. They have the opportunity to leave, but stay despite the high risk of contracting the disease. They stay to nurse the sick and sooth the dying. They were devoted to prayer, service, and evangelism. We can identify with them and for today can become one of sisters.
Imagine that we are now part of the Sisterhood of St. Mary. We come as one of the sisters to Memphis in 1873 to found a Girls’ School next to St. Mary’s Cathedral. When the epidemic begins, our cathedral dean, George Harris, and Constance, the superior of the Sister of St. Mary, organize a team for relief work which includes the sisters, the rectors of Grace church and Holy Innocents and three physicians, two of whom are ordained Episcopal priests. This team becomes known as the martyrs of Memphis, and we celebrate their life and ministry this very day. Most of them, thirty-eight in all, are themselves killed by the fever. One of the first to die on September 9, 1878, 116 years ago yesterday, is Constance, head of the Community of St. Mary.
A round stone in Elmwood Cemetery marks where four martyred sisters and two priests are buried in a joint grave. The cathedral will have a virtual pilgrimage to their gravesite this weekend, as it does every year to honor their sacrifice for the church and for the city.
When I always return to this Cathedral of St. Mary’s I am moved to go up to the beautiful High Altar. It is a memorial to the four Sisters who died. The high altar of the cathedral is consecrated on Pentecost 1879 and reads "Alleluia Osanna," Constance's last words.
My family and I are indebted to the sisters for their sacrifice. My husband and I are confirmed at the cathedral in 1968 by Bishop Gates. Our two sons, Robert and John, are baptized there by Dean Dimmick. Certainly, Dean Dimmick, later bishop of Northern Michigan, modeled the sister’s ministry by seeing his call to prayer, service, and evangelism as risk taking when he takes the processional cross from St. Mary down Poplar Avenue in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King, leading other Memphis clergy to the Mayor Loeb’s office demanding rights for the sanitation workers. He eventually loses nearly half of his congregation in protest to his actions.
Elizabeth Boggs transcriber, Project Canterbury The Sisters of St. Mary at Memphis: with the acts and Suffering of the Priests and Others who were There with Them During the Yellow Fever Season of 1878, New York, 1879.
Holy Women, Holy Men, Celebrating the Saints, Church Publishing.
St. Mary’s Cathedral Website. www.stmarysmemphis.org
Joanna. joannaseibert.com
Coming Soon!
