Martyrdom of Jacques Pavanes

Jacques Pavanes finds his name spelled different ways. In The Fourteen of Meaux, it notes his name as Iacobus Pauaneus, Jaques Pavanes, Pavannes, and Jacques Pauvant. However you spell his name, they said “This Jaques Pavanes began to teach the truth with such fervency of soul that he was the first to suffer death by fire in Paris.”

Likely less than thirty years old, he was a “young scholar,” translated the writings of Luther (1), and declared “the denial of purgatory, the assertion that God had no vicar, repudiation of excessive reliance on doctors of the Church… denied the propriety of offering candles to the saints” and more.

He recanted during Christmas 1525 and performed an amende honorable. “but the memory of that concession caused him acute distress, and he afterwards consistently professed his principles, welcoming the sentence of death, which he now regarded as the restoration of his honour. He was burned alive at Paris, showing the greatest readiness and the greatest firmness.”

Though sources differ as to the exactness of the date and place, the best we can tell is that on August 28, 1526, he was burned to death across the Seine from Notre Dame.