Reassessing the stories set in sandstone

AM Psalm 78:1-39 • PM Psalm 78:40-72
Esther 5:1-14 or Judith 8:9-17, 9:1, 9:7-10 • Acts 18:12-28 • Luke 3:15-22

One-hundred fifty-one years ago today, John Coleridge Patteson, the Bishop of the Anglican Church of Melanesia, was murdered by an indigenous person (or persons) on the island of Nukapu. The official Anglican account of Patteson’s death is that he was killed in retribution for slave traders’ previous abduction of five natives. When the natives realized who they had murdered, they were extremely grieved, and so returned his body wrapped for burial. This version of events is set in sandstone on the Martyrs’ Pulpit at Exeter Cathedral, where sculptor George Gilbert Scott rendered in exquisite detail the expressions of grief on the Nukapu natives’ faces as they hold Patteson’s body, wrapped in a woven mat.

Though this narrative helped the enforcement of slave trading bans, it was also—as you might expect of an account from white missionaries to indigenous peoples—not the whole truth. Patteson may have been murdered in response to his repeated, always rebutted efforts to recruit boys to the Melanesian Mission. But if it were intentional, it was likely contested, with the women of Nukapu being most opposed to the murder. The natives shown carrying Patteson’s body on the pulpit should undoubtedly be women, or at least a woman, named Niuvai in multiple accounts of the murder. 

Niuvai’s defense of Patteson and care for his body imply a personal relationship, likely established on previous visitations, that was in total violation of the near-total gender segregation of Nukapuan society. Today’s Old Testament readings feature two women, Esther and Judith, interceding on behalf of their people. The historians who brought Niuvai’s actions on Patteson’s behalf to the forefront of the narrative of his death call her norm-defying act one of atonement, honor, and friendship by a “remarkable woman.” Esther and Judith have their places of honor in Western art for their acts of heroism; if only Niuvai’s portrait graced the Martyrs’ Pulpit.

Written by Kathryn Haydon

Kathryn holds a doctorate in Plant Science from the University of Arkansas and currently lives in St. Louis where she works as a food and plant scientist and shares a book-filled home with Nathan, Ollie, and Adair. Recently she finished Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels and is steadily chipping away at the complete works of American naturalist John Burroughs.