Also part of the commemorative stamp series of 1956 was a stamp featuring a leader of the Rising, Patrick Pearse (“Padraig” is Gaelic for Patrick). Pearse was an Irish teacher, poet, writer, nationalist, and political activist. He established the School of St. Edna’s in 1908; St. Edna’s was a bilingual school that taught in Gaelic and English since Pearse himself was a supporter of the Gaelic Language Revival Movement of the early 1900s. The school itself was built on the Hermitage, which was where Robert Emmet was said to have courted his beloved before his death. Pearse tended to gravitate towards the notion of Catholic martyrdom and tended to see himself as a Catholic martyr in the years leading to the Rising: “Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.” He believed that bloodshed was a cleansing process, not as a horrible tragedy, but as essential for the goal of independence: “Blood is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood…there are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them!” He believed that death was inevitable and believed that Irish organizations should be armed in order to fight for liberty. The notion of bloodshed, so he imagined, was linked to masculinity purely because of the sublime component it possesses. In other words, one would become a man not only when he kills another man, but when another man kills you at the moment you are killing someone else. This notion of a double death was one he firmly believed in. After his execution, he became the ultimate symbol of the Rising, in addition to other leaders such as James Connolly and Thomas MacDonagh, as well as the General Post Office (the GPO), seen in the right hand corner with the Irish Tricolor flying on top of the building.