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.
constance and her companions all saints chapel Sewanee
Let’s journey back in time across the Mississippi River to Memphis for a few minutes. 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 became the Cathedral. It’s the third epidemic of yellow fever, the mosquito-borne hemorrhagic viral infection, to strike our city on the bluff of the Mississippi River in a decade. Thirty thousand citizens flee in terror. The death toll averages 200 a day.
The city becomes so depopulated that Memphis loses its charter and will not reorganize for fourteen years. When this epidemic is over, ninety percent of Memphis’s population contracted yellow fever, and over 5,000 people died. Everyone who can afford to do so packs up their bags, leaves the city, and flees away from the river. Later, we will learn that the disease is mosquito-borne and that high and dry conditions are indeed safer.
At St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis is a community of Anglican nuns from New England who have been in Memphis for barely five years. They have the opportunity to leave, but stay despite the high risk of contracting the disease. They remain to nurse the sick and soothe the dying. They are dedicated to prayer, service, and evangelism. We can identify with them and, for today, become one of the sisters.
Imagine that we are now part of the Sisterhood of St. Mary. We come to Memphis in 1873 as one of the sisters to establish a Girls’ School next to St. Mary’s Cathedral. When the epidemic begins, our cathedral dean, George Harris, and Constance, the superior of the Sisters 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 today. But, unfortunately, most of them, thirty-eight in all, are themselves killed by the fever. One of the first to die on September 9, 1878, 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 has a virtual pilgrimage to their gravesite every year to honor their sacrifice for the church and the city.
Whenever we return to this Cathedral of St. Mary’s, we are moved to go up to the beautiful High Altar. It is a memorial to the four Sisters who died. The Cathedral’s high altar is consecrated on Pentecost, 1879, and bears the inscription “Alleluia Osanna,” which are Constance’s last words.
My family and I are indebted to the sisters for their sacrifice. Bishop Gates confirmed my husband and me at the Cathedral in 1968. Dean Dimmick baptized our two sons, Robert and John, there. Indeed, Dean Dimmick, later bishop of Northern Michigan, modeled the sisters’ ministry by seeing his call to prayer, service, and evangelism as risk-taking when he takes the processional cross from St. Mary’s down Poplar Avenue in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King, leading other Memphis clergy to Mayor Loeb’s office demanding rights for sanitation workers. He eventually loses nearly half of his congregation in protest of 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.
A Great Cloud of Witnesses (Church Publishing 2016).
St. Mary’s Cathedral Website. www.stmarysmemphis.org
Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/