Father John Floyd, SJ, RIP--and his Brother Henry

According to Edwin Hubert Burton in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Father John Floyd, SJ, was a Catholic missionary in Recusant era England and a controversialist of that era, writing many works under several pseudonyms:

English missionary, wrote under the names Flud, Daniel à Jesu, Hermannus Loemelius, George White, Annosus Fidelis Verimentanus, and under the initials J. R. Some of his works have been erroneously attributed to Robert Jennison, S. J. He was b. in Cambridgeshire in 1572; d. at St.-Omer, 15 Sept. 1649. he was educated at the Jesuit College at Eu, then at the English College at Reims (17 March, 1588) and finally the English College in Rome (1590), where he entered the Society of Jesus, 1 Nov., 1592. Nothing is known about his ordination, but in 1606 he was a missionary priest in England. On 6 April in that year he was arrested at Worcester while attempting to visit Ven. Edward Oldcorne (sic) who was to suffer martyrdom next day. Having been imprisoned for twelve months he, with forty-six other priests, was banished for life. He then spent four years teaching at St.-Omer, though Foley (Records, IV, 238), is mistaken in supposing he published any controversial works at that time. 

Then (1913) Venerable Edward Oldcorne, SJ was beatified in 1929.

On 31 July, 1609, he was professed of the four vows, and soon after returned to England, where he laboured on the mission for many years, being often captured, but effecting his escape by buying off the pursuivants. In 1612 he published his first work, "The Overthrow of the Protestant Pulpit Babels", in which he replied to Crawshaw's "Jesuit Gospel". He was in return answered by Sir Edward Hoby in his "A Counter-Snarl for Ishmael Rabshakeh a Cycropedian Lycaonite, being an answer to a Roman Catholic who writes himself J. R." Father Floyd countered in 1614 with "Purgatorie's Triumph over Hell, maugre the barking of Cerberus in Syr Edward Hobyes Counter Snarle". This controversy closed with Hoby's rejoinder, "A Curry-comb for a Cox-combe", published in 1615. Father Floyd next turned his attention to Marc' Antonio de Dominis, formerly Archbishop of Spilatro, who had apostacized and become Protestant dean of Windsor. Against him Father Floyd wrote four works: "Synopsis Apostasiæ Marci Antonii de Dominis, olim Archepiscopi Spalatensis, nunc Apostatæ, ex ipsiusmet libro delineata" (Antwerp 1617). It was translated into English by Father Henry Hawkins, S.J., in 1617, and again by Dr. John Fletcher in 1828. "Hypocrisis Marci Antonii de Dominis detecta sui censura in ejus libros de Republicâ Ecclesiasticâ" (Antwerp, 1620); "Censura ex Librorum X de Republicâ Ecclesiasticâ Marci Antonii de Dominis" (Antwerp 1620, Cologne, 1621); "Monarchiæ Ecclesiasticæ ex scriptus M. Antonii de Dominis Archepiscopi Spalatensis Demonstratio, duobus libri comprehensa" (Cologne, 1622). All four works appeared under the signature Fidelis Annosus Verimentanus.

His brother Henry was also a Jesuit missionary in England, who died of natural causes in London about nine years before John, according to the Dictionary of National Biography:

FLOYD, HENRY (1563–1641), Jesuit, elder brother of Father John Floyd [q. v.], born in Cambridgeshire in 1563, received his education in the English College of Douay during its temporary removal to Rheims. On 8 May 1589, being then a deacon, he was sent with other students by Dr. Richard Barret, president of the college, to assist in commencing the new English College founded by Father Parsons at Valladolid (Records of the English Catholics, i. 220, 224). For a time he was stationed at the ‘residence’ or seminary established by Parsons at Lisbon. He was probably ordained priest in 1592, and he defended universal theology with great applause at Seville on 20 Feb. 1592–3. From Lisbon he crossed over to England about 1597, and for nineteen years he was chaplain to Sir John Southcote. In 1599 he entered the Society of Jesus, and in 1618 was professed of the four vows. He underwent many vicissitudes owing to his great zeal, and at various times was incarcerated in Newgate, the Clink, and the Fleet prisons in London, and in Framlingham and Winchester gaols. On James I's accession, being sent into banishment with many other priests, he returned to Lisbon, but soon revisited England, and again fell into the hands of the pursuivants. After serving the mission in the London district for many years, he died in London on 7 March 1640–1.

The Sir John Southcote mentioned as the patron of Father Henry Floyd, SJ, must be Sir John Southcote, the son of an MP and Judge, also named John:

Southcote was probably the John Southcote of Bodmin who in 1544 helped Tregonwell to buy and sell land in the south-west: in 1549 he was to be of similar assistance to Henry Chiverton. He bought land himself near London and late in life settled in Essex. Mary promoted him serjeant and Elizabeth made him a judge, in which capacity he revised the bill settling the form of consecration for bishops before its enactment in 1566 (8 Eliz. c.1) and took part in the conference in 1577 on how to deal with recusancy. According to his descendants he shared their Catholicism and resigned his office rather than condemn a priest, retiring to his house at Merstham in Surrey ‘where for three years he led a penitential life and happily ended his days’, this, however, conflicts with evidence of his continuing to serve as a judge until a year before his death at Witham. His son John was reported as having attended mass in 1584 and his daughters married into Catholic families, but his own conformity is borne out by his retention as a justice of the peace in all the home counties after 1564.4

The Southcote Family is included in Volume One of The Troubles of Our Catholic Forefathers Related by Themselves edited by--you guessed it--a Jesuit, Father John Morris, SJ (1826-1893).

John Shakespeare, RIP

John Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's father, died in Stratford-upon-Avon on September 7, 1601. Whether or not John Shakespeare was a Catholic and a Recusant Catholic at that is a great matter of contention. Some of the discussion relies upon the authenticity of a "Spiritual Testament" of John Shakespeare found during the eighteenth century in the rafters of William Shakespeare's birthplace. Shakespeare's father was certainly involved in the changes brought about by the Elizabethan religious settlements, as the British Library recounts:

In January 1564, three months before the birth of his son William, John Shakespeare noted in his accounts as chamberlain of the town of Stratford-upon-Avon that two shillings had been ‘paid for defacing images in the Chapel of the Holy Cross’. It may seem strange for us now living in the 21st century for someone to be paid by the town council to damage a church. However, the Protestant Reformation, like similar movements within Judaism and Islam at different periods, banned the use of religious imagery, often violently. In 1559, the new government of Queen Elizabeth I passed a Royal Injunction demanding the removal of ‘all signs of superstition and idolatry’ from places of worship, ‘so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glasses, windows or elsewhere within their churches and houses’.

More detail about religion in Stratford:

In Stratford itself, at the level of town government, conformity was naturally the rule. Because of this, it reflected the way that the monarch and Parliament in London kept reversing religious policy, so that what was orthodox one year became illegal the next. Thus in 1553, the town corporation was granted ownership of the Holy Cross Chapel and became responsible for caring for the almshouse poor, and for paying and housing the vicar and his assistant chaplain, as well as the schoolmaster. But not all Reformation proclamations were carried out to the letter. The images in the church were merely whitewashed over in 1564, allowing them to be recovered later, and the rood loft (the ornate partition between the nave and the choir of the church) was only taken down four years late. The ‘Dance of Death’ on the north wall was allowed to remain. While Stratford after 1558 was outwardly Protestant, many townsmen and women remained Catholic at heart. Some of them would become what are known as ‘recusants’: those who refused to go to the established Church out of commitment to another faith; others, known as ‘Church papists’, hid their religion behind conformity. After the Jesuit Mission of 1580–81 to reconvert England to Rome, there is evidence of Warwickshire being a prominent centre of recusancy, including militant recusancy, from the Throckmorton Plot of 1584 to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Writing for the British Library, Brian Cummings accepts the claim that John Shakespeare was a Recusant: "Evidence exists that his father John was a recusant, and his mother’s family, the Ardens, had visibly Catholic relatives."

He was buried in the Church of the Holy Trinity (image credit). May he rest in peace.

St. Mary Magdalene and the English Reformation

Today is one of my name days honoring one of my three patron saints (St. Stephen, St. Anne, and St. Mary Magdalene)--it would be celebrated today as Feast but that today is Sunday and the Mass of every Sunday has precedence over Feasts. Parish churches named for St. Mary Magdalene or Magdalen may celebrate her Feast today, however. Pope Francis raised her feast day from a Memorial to a Feast in 2016, as she is "the Apostle to the Apostles" bringing the good news of the Resurrection of Jesus to them.

I've found some interesting research on devotion to St. Mary Magdalene among recusant Catholics: with the title “They have taken away my Lord”: Mary Magdalene, Christ’s Missing Body, and the Mass in Reformation England, Lisa McClain of Boise State University published an article in The Sixteenth Century Journal (Spring 2007):

In early modern Protestant England, traditional Catholic worship and sacraments, particularly the Mass, declined, and many Catholics feared for their salvation. At the same time, an increased veneration of Mary Magdalene focused no longer on penance and redemption, but on Mary’s discovery of Christ’s empty tomb. Magdalene’s distress at losing the corporeal body of Christ mirrored English Catholic anxiety over losing the body of Christ as contained in the Eucharist in the absence of regular Mass. English Catholics chose to revive and adapt this form of Magdalene symbolism to best meet their spiritual needs, thus emphasizing the many uses and flexibility of such a familiar symbol as Mary Magdalene and suggesting types and nuances of Magdalene worship that have yet to be fully investigated by scholars.

Other works, including a doctoral dissertation, focus on different views of St. Mary Magdalene during the Reformation era, Protestant and Catholic.

St. Robert Southwell, SJ, as the Poetry Foundation describes, wrote a major work on St. Mary Magdalene at the tomb of Jesus:

The second of Southwell’s prose works to appear in print was Mary Magdalen’s Funeral Tears. It had been circulating in manuscript before Gabriel Cawood published it in late 1591 with an author’s preface to the reader, and it, too, was written for one of the recusant circle: Dorothy Arundel, the daughter of Sir John Arundel of Lanherne; she later became a Benedictine nun. The work originated in a popular homily, usually attributed to Origen, on Saint John’s account of Mary Magdalen’s encounter with Christ on Easter morning. Southwell first read this homily in Italy, presumably in Italian and Latin (an Italian version survives in manuscript at Stonyhurst, attributed to Saint Bonaventura). In the Stonyhurst holograph there are fragments of Southwell’s attempts at an English translation; they show how difficult he found English composition after speaking Latin and Italian for ten years. The homily was available in England, printed in Latin around 1504 and in English translation in 1565. There are signs that Southwell knew and used this translation. Some writers suggest that he may also have known Valvasone’s poem Le lagrime di S. Maria Maddalena, but no clear evidence of this influence has been presented.

In Southwell’s hands the little homily grows to a work three times as long. It used to be thought that the book originated as a sermon, but this theory was based on ignorance of the source. Mary Magdalen’s Funeral Tears is a meditation on Mary’s experience, cast largely in the form of a dialogue between Mary and the other persons present, the angels in the empty tomb, Christ, and the narrator. The homily provides the outline and some of the contents, but Southwell’s tone is different from that of his source, partly owing to the intensity, detail, and accomplishment of his prose but mostly to his conception of the incident as a love story. Southwell’s Mary is less the repentant sinner than the lover of Christ; she weeps tears of loss, not remorse. For her, Christ is the sum of all value, and in finding the empty tomb she experiences utter loss. All Mary’s thoughts and actions proceed from her love, and as Southwell presents her, she is a heroic woman.

There is also an allegorical tendency in the work, which Southwell found in his source but which he develops according to his own preoccupations. Allegorically speaking, Mary is the Christian soul, separated from the living Christian truth that is her only happiness; more specifically, she is an English Catholic woman, and the violence that threatens her is that of contemporary England.

St. Robert Southwell, pray for us!

St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us!