The Martyrs we honor today were killed by Protestants in 1572 in Holland. At that time, it was under Spanish rule, and the Spaniards had reacted energetically, strongly, to suppress heresy. Apart from the religious motive, there was also the consideration of the social disorder and the violence that the so-called Reformation had produced in Germany. Unfortunately, these measures, together with a more general discontent with Spanish rule, produced a revolutionary movement called Geuzen, which means ragamuffins or beggars. Initially, they were limited to the sea, and so we could translate their name as sea beggars. So in 1569, William of Orange gave letters of mark to 18 ships, allowing them to operate as privateers. They made raids on the Dutch coast and sold their booty in England. They were decidedly anti-Catholic, with the motto "better Turks than Papists," although they certainly had no inclination to submit to the Turks either. In 1572, the year of their martyrdom, Elizabeth I suddenly closed the ports of England to them. They needed somewhere to get food and supplies for their 25 vessels. So on April 1st, this fleet made a desperate attempt to conquer a Dutch city, and they got lucky.
 Brielle turned out to be undefended because the Spanish garrison had left to deal with trouble in Utrecht. Most of the residents fled when they saw the ships coming. They easily captured the city and sacked it. Encouraged by their success, they conquered another city as well, and this gave rise to a general insurrection in northern Holland, which was the beginning of Dutch independence, part of what was called the Eighty Years' War. In June, the rebels captured Dordrecht and Gorkum. For a brief time, a small garrison held out in the castle of Gorkum, where priests, religious, and many faithful had taken refuge. After they surrendered, the priests and religious were taken prisoner, contrary to the promises that the besiegers had made to obtain the surrender. There were 15 of the martyrs, nine Franciscan priests, two Franciscan religious brothers, three secular priests, one of whom was the parish priest of Gorkum and another his vicar, and then there was one canon regular of St. Augustine, who was a chaplain to nuns.
 St. Nicholas Pick was the guardian of the priory of Gorkum. His vicar, St. Jerome de Weert, had been a missionary in the Holy Land. The oldest of the Franciscans was St. Willehad. He was Danish. Now 90 years old, he had been exiled from Denmark when it became Lutheran and had found refuge in the priory of Gorkum. A Dominican, St. John of Cologne, was added to the group when he came to bring prisoners the sacraments. He was the parish priest of the nearby village of Hoornaer. The rebels identified him as a priest when they caught him trying to secretly baptize a baby. The prisoners remained at Gorkum from June 26th to July 6th, and during this time they were mistreated, and attempts were made to get them to deny the faith. Some Catholics tried to get them released, but all their attempts were in vain. One example of the maltreatment is what the soldiers did to Nicholas Poppel, the vicar of the parish of Gorkum.
 After searching the other prisoners in vain for loot, they turned to him. One said, "At least give us the gods that you made in the Mass. They say that you carry a supply with you. Is it true? You who have so often babbled from the pulpit of your church against us, what do you think now in front of this pistol of all that nonsense that you told the idiots?" "I believe," Nicholas Poppel replied, "in everything that the Catholic Church proposes for belief, and in particular in the real presence of my God under the sacramental species. If you see in this a reason to kill me, kill me. I would be happy to die for this confession of faith that you have asked of me." Then, thinking that His end had come, he threw himself on his knees and cried out, "Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit," with a voice so loud that it was heard throughout the castle.
 Instead, the soldiers tied the middle of a cord of a Franciscan around his neck and tied one end to a door and then repeatedly raised the other end in order to lift him into the air and drop him heavily to the ground. Then they turned to the Franciscans, thinking that they must have a lot of money from donations. They thought the younger friars would have a harder time lying and hiding the money, so they beat them to get them to hand it over. One they hit hard enough to knock a molar out of his jaw. But the friars insisted that the rule of St. Francis didn't allow them to keep money. So the soldiers decided that the guardian must have it. They turned on him, but he said that the only treasures that he had brought with him into the castle were the sacred vessels, which they had already taken. So they did the same thing to him that they had done to Nicholas Poppel, tying a cord around his neck to lift him and drop him repeatedly. When the cord finally broke, they stopped. Then they found that he wasn't moving, so they burnt him with a torch to see if he would react. But he didn't, so they decided he was dead.
 The next day, when they came back with an axe to hack his body apart, they found that he was still breathing, so they beat him some more. On July 6th, the prisoners were transported half-naked by ship to Brielle. The ship made a stop at Dordrecht to allow a crowd to insult the prisoners. In Brielle, they were handed over to Lumey, the count, the head of the group. He was a fanatical enemy of the Catholic faith and of priests. He had the priests paraded into the city through crowds that mocked and maltreated them. Some of the people in the crowd told them to sing, so they sang the Salve Regina, other praises of the saints, and the Te Deum.
 In the prison of Brielle, there were already three other priests, three other future martyrs, two Norbertines and one secular priest, as well as some other prisoners who didn't persevere. One of the Norbertines was St. James Lacops, who six years earlier had denied the Catholic faith and become a Calvinist. He had written and preached against the Church, but then he repented and returned to his abbey. Now he was about to give his life for the faith that he had once denied. Lumey tried with long disputes and interrogations to get the prisoners to abandon the Catholic faith. He especially attacked the primacy of the Pope and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
 On the first day, he did convince three or four prisoners to abandon the faith. Their names are not recorded. This initial success led him to think that he would easily get the rest to give in. But he was wrong. The other nineteen future martyrs remained firm in the faith. Among the prisoners, there were theologians and some highly effective preachers against Protestant errors. Furthermore, they had that grace of which Christ said, "What you are to say will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you". So Lumey got nowhere with them and took out his frustration by subjecting the prisoners to new torments.  Meanwhile, a letter arrived from William of Orange, the leader of the revolutionary faction, ordering, or at least telling, all the authorities to not molest priests or religious. But instead of obeying, Lumey decided that he should execute them before he lost his chance. He had them hanged in the early hours of July 9th, 1572.
 The martyrs had to climb a ladder in order to get up to the beam from which they would be hanged. The first one executed was the guardian, St. Nicholas Pick. He said, "Here, I'm showing you the way to heaven. Follow me like valiant soldiers of Christ. After having fought together, let no one miss the triumph that awaits us up there." A Calvinist minister especially targeted the younger members of the group, thinking that they would be more easy to convince. St. Nicasius, a Franciscan who had taught theology and was now 50 years old, told the young friars not to bother responding to the minister's arguments, but to simply confess the faith. He repeatedly told the minister, "You're wasting your time. They won't listen to you. We are all papists to the end."  As the Franciscan vicar, St. Jerome, was climbing the ladder, he invoked Our Lady and some saints. The minister who was standing under the ladder in front of him said, "Adore God alone and leave aside the saints, foolish idols that don't listen to you." St. Jerome couldn't refrain from giving the minister a shove in the stomach with his foot, that made him fall backwards to the ground.  Because the hangings were carried out carelessly, many of the martyrs suffered for a long time. After they finally died, their bodies were mutilated and they were thrown into two mass graves, but they were not buried for another day in order to give the curious a time to pay in order to see them.
 In 1616, during a period of peace, their relics were transferred to the Franciscan church in Brussels, where they would be safer. Clement X beatified the Martyrs of Gorkum in 1675, and Blessed Pius IX canonized them in 1867 on the feasts of Sts. Peter and Paul, since they had died in particular for the primacy of the Roman pontiff.  Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.