The Martyrdom of Carl Völkner

Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?

The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.

For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth.

The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.

His ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them.

He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity.

His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity.

He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor.

He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net.

He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones.

He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it.

Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble.

Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? he hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it.

Thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it with thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the fatherless.

Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: seek out his wickedness till thou find none.

The Lord is King for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land.

Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear:

To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress.

- Psalm 10

Happy Sunday. Today is the 160th anniversary of the death of CMS missionary Rev. Carl Sylvius Völkner at the hands of the Pai Mārire cult (better known at the time as the ‘Hauhau’) on 2 March 1865. Völkner’s death and bodily mutilation was brutal but unsurprising of a group of syncretic pagans thirsty to take out revenge against Europeans after the Invasion of the Waikato.

The Hauhau faith was a syncretic mix of Christianity and pagan Maori religion founded in the early 1860s by a man named Te Ua Haumēne. Te Ua believed that the Archangel Gabriel had visited him in 1862, whereby Gabriel told him that the end days of the Bible were at hand, and that God had chosen him to be the Prophet that would expel the Europeans and restore Israel (the Maori) to the land of Canaan (New Zealand). To Te Ua, Maori were essentially the ‘second chosen people’.

The Anglican Bishop of Waiapu thought that he was insane. Historian Walter Gudgeon called him a "harmless lunatic" and said that "his tribe looked on him as of weak intellect, but yet of peaceful disposition."

Although Te Ua never explicitly advocated violence against Europeans, his followers and chosen disciples were notorious for their barbarism that drew from the practices of pre-colonial Maori. After attacking a group of armed settlers, ‘Archangel Gabriel’ allegedly appeared before them - proclaiming that the severed heads of the settlers they had murdered be exhumed with the skulls to be used as a medium to speak to God. They also believed that the Virgin Mary also specially protected them from harm.

At the time of his death, Völkner had been operating in Opotiki and was tending to the Maori in the area who were known to be sympathetic with the Kiingites during the invasion. As no Government agents were operating in the area, Völkner had taken it upon himself to be responsible for corresponding with the Government on both the conditions of his Maori flock as well as general events occurring in the area.

Although Völkner’s last visit to Auckland was regarding his concern for the poor conditions of the Maori in Opotiki, his several trips back and forth to Auckland were a cause of suspicion, and he was warned by some of the locals not to return to the area. However, when he did return on 1 March alongside Rev. Thomas Grace, they were both captured before leaving their ship after a party of Hauhau had convinced the local tribe to ‘convert’. It was then decided (although not unanimously) by a meeting of chiefs that Völkner should be executed because of his ‘spying’.

The next day, before his execution, Völkner, Grace and the other captives read together Psalm 10. In his diary, Grace wrote: “My poor dear friend offered up a most earnest prayer. During the morning I could not help noticing the calmness of his manner, and the beautiful smile that was on his face.” In the early afternoon “we had prayer and reading for the last time, the portion read being Psalm 14, the words of which so exactly described the rampant ungodliness of the natives - ‘The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek after God. They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.’”

Shortly thereafter, the Hauhau, led by Kereopa Te Rau, took Völkner away from his fellow captives and towards a nearby willow tree. Völkner knew what was coming. He asked for his prayer book, which had been taken from him, and knelt down and prayed. He then shook the hand of his murderer before saying, “I am ready.”

He was then hanged and suspended for two minutes before being lowered, shot in the torso, and then suspended again. An hour later, his body was taken down, and his head was decapitated. Grace described the event: “The scene where this was done was most dreadful. They were eager to taste his blood, and many rubbed it on their faces. Some of his old friends took part in all this! From my own observance, the people appeared to be half lunatic, and so worked up by their religion as to be ready for any work of the devil.”

This gruesome death was not enough for the Hauhau. Kereopa took Völkner’s decapitated head inside the latter’s church, placed it upon the reading desk, drank his blood from the Communion chalice, plucked out his eyes and consumed them whilst declaring that each eye represented the Queen and the Parliament of England respectively. This reflected the revival of an old Maori custom in which the eating of a great chief’s eyes by his conqueror would prevent the chief from having due honour.

The church in which this event took place would later be rededicated to St. Stephen the Martyr and contains Völkner’s grave as well as a memorial to his death.

Fortunately for Rev. Grace, his execution was delayed long enough that he was able to escape two weeks later from captivity whilst most of the tribe had been away for a feast. Bishop Selwyn had assisted in the escape by requesting the HMS Eclipse to be sent to Opotiki to pick Grace up. If he had stayed longer, Grace would have almost certainly suffered the same fate.

It would take years before those responsible for the murder were brought to justice and executed (although some of the executed were not directly involved). Kereopa Te Rau wouldn’t be caught until 1871, and he was executed in 1872. However, Kereopa’s iwi argued that this was a miscarriage of justice, which resulted in his posthumous pardon as part of a Treaty of Waitangi settlement in 2014.

I’d like to finish this piece with a comment made about the incident by the ‘Church Missionary Intelligencer’ shortly after Völkner’s death:

“Let us consider. What does this atrocity demand from us? An abandonment of effort? Nay, a renewal of effort. Our work is not done: this is now undeniable. Then on the very foundation of this atrocity let us begin to build anew. A missionary has been put to death amidst circumstances of the most revolting character. Is New Zealand then to be given up? That is not the genius of Christianity.

“There was a scene once occurred, one the traces of which are indelible. It was an act of the most malignant cruelty committed against the great Benefactor of the human race. Missionaries, after all, are but men. They have their faults and imperfections. They are sometimes injudicious in their proceedings, and are liable to be misunderstood. But in Him of whom we speak there was a total absence of all these accidents. Never was there such an expression of perfect love, and never was there one upon earth on whom was poured forth such a flood of concentrated malignity. Around Him raged the surges of human hatred. ‘Crucify Him! crucify Him!’ was the doom which they awarded Him; and they crucified Him - one of themselves; of their own race - their friend, who had gone forth amongst them, doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil; nay, their divine instructor, their Savior, their Lord, who would have gathered them even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and they would not.

“Never was there greater exultation manifested than when they saw Him uplifted on the cross. But was the divine mission therefore withdrawn, and the earth abandoned to its fate because Christ had been crucified? Nay, this very deed inaugurated new and unprecedented efforts, and the death of the Redeemer became the foundation on which was raised that superstructure of a progressive Christianity, which is yet, in our own day, advancing to its consummation.

“That his good should be overcome of evil is not God’s way; nay, the contrary is his principle - to ‘overcome evil with good.’ His glory is concerned in this, that his good prove itself stronger than human evil. It has been so of old. It must be so now, unless, to our shame, we would proclaim to the world, that, whilst we retain the name, we have lost the animating spirit and excellence of Christianity.

“Völkner has died - the first Missionary that ever suffered mortal ill at the hands of a New Zealander. Then let us build over his grave new efforts for the evangelisation of the Maori race. He suffered patiently. Like his great Master, he uttered no complaint; he broke out into no revilings. Meekly, lamb-like, he laid down his life. His was a martyr’s death. We doubt whether Christianity ever achieved a national victory, the foundation of which was not laid in the martyrdom of some of the first evangelists.

“The seed died that it may rise again. ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but, if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ That was true of the parent seed; and it is also true of those who, under the direction of the once crucified but now enthroned Saviour, are engaged in reproducing his Gospel through the world. Like Völkner, at some special crisis, one or another may be called upon to lay down their lives; but when it is so, their death will infuse into the work a new vitality, and Christianity spring up more vigorously than it did before.”

If you’d like to read more about the history of the Hauhau in New Zealand, we previously wrote a Substack article about their attempted attack on Wanganui in 1864. You can read it here.