Et In Arcadia Ego: Sweeney's Southwell

As Gary Bouchard comments in his recently published study of St. Robert Southwell, SJ, it is sad that Anne R. Sweeney died too soon (of cancer) to continue her work on Southwell's life and poetry. She alludes to her illness in the Introduction of this book, Robert Southwell: Snow in Arcadia: redrawing the English lyric landscape, 1586-1595, published by Manchester University Press but distributed by Oxford University Press, which describes Sweeney's achievement in this book thus:

It has traditionally been held that Robert Southwell's poetry offers a curious view of Elizabethan England, one that is from the restricted perspective of a priest-hole. This book dismantles that idea by examining the poetry, word by word, discovering layers of new meanings, hidden emblems, and sharp critiques of Elizabeth's courtiers, and even of the ageing queen herself.

Using both the most recent edition of Southwell's poetry and manuscript materials, it addresses both poetry and private writings including letters and diary material to give dramatic context to the radicalisation of a generation of Southwell's countrymen and women, showing how the young Jesuit harnessed both drama and literature to give new poetic poignancy to their experience.

Bringing a rigorously forensic approach to Southwell's 'lighter' pieces, Sweeney can now show to what extent Southwell engaged exclusively through them in direct artistic debate with Spenser, Sidney, and Shakespeare, placing the poetry firmly in the English landscape familiar to Southwell's generation. Those interested in early modern and Elizabethan culture will find much of interest, including new insights into the function of the arts in the private Catholic milieu touched by Southwell in so many ways and places.

The contents of the book:

Preface and acknowledgements

Introduction: Ben Jonson's admiration for Southwell's 'Burning Babe'
1. Rome: the discernment of angels
2. The 'Spiritual Exercises': the 'inward eie'
3. Hidden ways and secret veins: into England
4. The flight of angels: England's altered confidence
5. Snow in Arcadia: rewriting the English lyric landscape
6. Southwell's war of words
7. The 'performing Word': Southwell's sacralised poetic
8. Conclusion

Bibliography 

Index

Sweeney comments in her preface on her limitations and those who helped her overcome them:

Stonyhurst College kindly made its Library available to my studies, its late librarian, Father Turner, S.J., and the late Bishop Foley, contributing much at the outset to a project that I was so very less qualified than they to embark upon. I am also very grateful that Father Thomas McCoog, S.J., of Mount Street, took the time to look over and comment on aspects of the work, which has, in any case, called much upon his expertise in this area. If I have committed any solecisms against the belief systems of the bodies represented by these gentlemen, it is unintentional, and regretted. I have been acutely aware from the outset that, in discussing a saint from outside the boundaries of religious studies, I was on the thinnest of ice. I hope it is evident that I am addressing discoursal and literary issues only: St. Robert Southwell is beyond all comment spiritually, but as a poet and an Englishman he earned his garlands, I believe. 'Muse not,' as he said, 'to see some mud in cleerest brooke / They once were brittle mould, that now are Saintes.'

Notwithstanding her statement, as I read her study of Southwell I appreciated his religious faith and spirituality more and more. His great efforts to comfort Catholics, reach out to those who had fallen away, confront the state authorities, and challenge other poets to greater things, as Sweeney explicates them, made his love for Jesus and His Church so clear. Because she consults and references his journals and letters as well as his poetry, the reader can see Southwell's struggles in his formation in Rome and his frustrations during his mission in England, sometimes with his Jesuit authorities on the Continent and their decisions. Although this may have been beyond her intent, Sweeney's study made him real to me, not just his poetry, his martyrdom, or his garlands.

Sweeney chose an appropriate motto for the book:

"To live at peace among . . . those who oppose us, is a great grace, and a most commendable and manly achievement." (from Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated and introduction by Leo Sherley-Price (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1952, repr. 1979), p. 71)

Southwell's formation as a Jesuit, his experience living in Counter-Reformation Rome, his vocation as priest and avocation as poet, graced him with that peace even in the midst of torture and imprisonment, as reports of his trial and execution attest.

One of the parts of the book that impressed me the most was Sweeney's exploration of the effects of art in Rome on Southwell while he was studying there in combination with his formation with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola--referencing Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610 by Gauvin Alexander Bailey (University of Toronto Press, 2003). She elucidates how Southwell's formation influenced the brilliant imagery of his poetry, translating ideas into pictures, describing images to symbolize concepts, expressing the transcendent through earthly things in the imagination.

I highly recommend Snow in Arcadia to anyone interested in the era, Southwell, the English mission, Southwell's poetry, the situation of Catholics in England during Elizabeth I's reign, an understanding of the Jesuits in Rome, etc. 

As Gary M. Bouchard said, it is sad that Anne R. Sweeney died before she could continue developing her insights into St. Robert Southwell's poetry and his place in English literature. May she rest in the peace of Christ.

My review of Bouchard's Southwell's Sphere: The Influence of England's Secret Poet is forthcoming.

UPDATE: note that I purchased my copy of Snow in Arcadia.

St. Philip Howard and His Dog

Please check this link today for my post at the National Catholic Register blog site on St. Philip Howard, who died a martyr in chains on October 19, 1595. In it, I explain some of background to the engraving of Howard in the Tower with his greyhound by his side. Hint: the Society of Jesus, conversion, dogs and other animals, and family connections are involved:

In a nineteenth century engraving, Sir Philip Howard, the Twentieth Earl of Arundel, leans against the wall above a fireplace. He has just inscribed the words “Quanto plus afflictionis pro Christo in saeculo, tanto plus gloriae cum Christo in futuro.” (“The more affliction we endure for Christ in this world, the more glory we shall obtain with Christ in the next.”) He is young, handsome, well-dressed: he is in the Tower of London, looking toward the source of sunlight in his cell. On the floor behind him, a dog looks up at him, perhaps awakened by his master’s sigh. Someone who loves dogs—and is devoted to St. Philip Howard for his conversion, his fortitude, and his example—sees the bond between owner and pet clearly in this drawing. Howard is often depicted with his dog in statues and stained glass portraits, and the group painting of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, commissioned when Howard and the others were canonized in 1970.

The engraving is attributed to William Barraud, a famous painter and illustrator, with his brother Henry, of animals: horses, cattle and dogs from sporting hounds and lap dogs. . . .

Please read the rest on the National Catholic Register blog page.

Georgetown, the Papacy, and Slaves

The Jesuits of Georgetown University owned slaves and sold them in 1838. In 2016, the university's Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation issued a report and the administration is taking steps to demonstrate repentance for the past, as documented here.

In Crisis Magazine, Fr. Cornelius Buckley, S.J., Professor Emeritus (history) at the University of San Francisco, comments on the issue:

Many people are surprised and shocked to learn that the American Jesuits in the nineteenth century were slave owners, and those sentiments are exacerbated when they learn that, literally, the very existence of Georgetown depended on the money that was realized by the 1838 sale of 272 enslaved blacks to plantation owners in Louisiana, and that the archdiocese of Baltimore shared in the proceeds. The feud between Georgetown and Baltimore that had existed since 1818 was at last resolved, thanks to the money from the sale, sealing a bond of friendship between the archbishop and the Society of Jesus.

Slavery as an institution should be condemned. This was precisely the position of Pope Paul III, when in 1537, he outlawed slavery and condemned those who owned or sold slaves. Three years later he approved the rule of Ignatius of Loyola and his companions constituting them as a religious order. Of course, not many paid much attention to the pope’s strong statements against black slavery. It was too advantageous for black chiefs who sold their people and for white traders who purchased them and transported them to the New World. But then in 1639, at the insistence of the Jesuits in Paraguay, where the Spaniards where enslaving the indigenous peoples, Pope Urban VIII issued another bull confirming what Paul had decreed and adding strength to it. Then, less than fifty years later, the Jesuits in Maryland were slave owners. So, in order to put into its proper perspective the historical fact that the 1838 Georgetown Jesuits were owners and sellers of slaves, it is important to see that disobedience to papal teaching was the point of departure from which Georgetown and other Jesuit colleges in the United States plotted their course.

When you recall that the Society of Jesus stressed total obedience to the Pope, this history is particularly unsettling. But then, many who have called and today call themselves Catholic feel free to disobey the Church's teachings on many issues, from slavery to abortion, from usury to Catholic theology faculty upholding Church teaching--as Father Buckley concludes his article, remembering another document that has been ignored:

Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter Ad Tuendam Fidem in which he asked theology teachers to take an oath of fidelity to the magisterium of the Holy Roman Catholic Church? No one at Georgetown paid attention to it at the time. Paul III, Urban VIII, John Paul II? Does history matter much when it goes against fashionable conceits?

Reading about this episode and its aftermath, I was reminded of one of the bon-mots our GKC group highlighted at our meeting on last Friday evening. In chapter one of his Saint Thomas Aquinas, Chesterton states:

If the world goes too worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows too worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldliness by the world.

Father Francis Walsingham, SJ

From the Worcester Cathedral Library and Archive blog: the other Francis Walsingham--not the spymaster Secretary of Elizabeth I--convert, controversialist, and Jesuit:

Francis Walsingham is best known as Elizabeth I’s secretary and spymaster. As Elizabeth’s trusted ally and a master of political and military intelligence, Walsingham was also a staunch supporter of the Protestant cause. He was one of the instigators of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (the rival Catholic claimant to Elizabeth’s throne), and directed English espionage on their Spanish enemies. You can well imagine my surprise then to find a 17th Century Jesuit tract authored by a Francis Walsingham, outlining the causes of his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. What had caused a man so committed to Protestantism to suddenly renounce his faith?

The answer is that there are in fact two different Francis Walsinghams, distantly related to one another and born 35 years apart. The younger Walsingham could not be more different in his religious outlook than his elder relative. Yet the younger Walsingham was still an apostate – he had been a Deacon in the Church of England, before traveling to Rome and entering a seminary to train as a Catholic Priest. In 1609 he published his A Search Made into Matters of Religion – the copy held at Worcester Cathedral Library is a second edition of 1615. It was deemed so effective as Jesuit propaganda that it was used until well into the 18th Century as the standard recruitment textbook to be shown to Protestants inclining towards Catholicism.

Naturally, such a work would not be without controversy. In 17th Century England, the lot of Roman Catholics did tend to fluctuate with the time, but it can’t be said to have ever been a happy one. There were notable outbreaks of persecution following the Gunpowder plot of 1605 and Titus Oates fabricated ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678-81, with attacks on Catholic individuals, property and books. While I have been unable to find any evidence that Walsingham’s book was ever officially proscribed, many similar works did suffer that fate at one point or another. What we can state for certain is that the circulation and ownership of this book would have been limited and largely taboo.

By "taboo" the author means that possessing this book would have been considered evidence that the owner was a Catholic, perhaps himself a convert, perhaps hoping to convert another, perhaps assisting priests, knowing where a priest would be saying Mass, perhaps attending Mass--and therefore violating several English laws. Someone found with Father Walsingham's book, or any other Catholic book, would be arrested, detained, questioned, and depending on the dedication of the pursuivant, tortured for information (in spite of the fact that was illegal). The term "apostate" earlier in the post is also rather startling--after all, England had been thoroughly Catholic before Henry VIII's breakaway. 

From the Dictionary of National Biography: 

WALSINGHAM, FRANCIS (1577–1647), jesuit, who assumed the name John Fennell, the son of Edward Walsingham of Exhall, near Alcester, Warwickshire, was born at Hawick, Northumberland, early in 1577. His father died before his birth, and his mother, who was a Roman catholic, brought him to London. His uncle, Humphrey Walsingham, who was kindred of Sir Francis, placed him at St. Paul's school. As the result of his instruction there he read the protestant divines Foxe, Jewell, Calvin, and Beza, and in 1603 was ordained deacon by Martin Heton, bishop of Ely. Doubts were raised as to the validity of his orders and of his belief by reading the ‘Manual’ of Robert Parsons (1546–1610) [q. v.], and in October 1606 Walsingham entered the English College at Rome. He was ordained priest on 12 April 1608, and early next year, having entered the Society of Jesus, he visited England, and there published his ‘Search made into Matters of Religion, by F. W., before his change to the Catholike’ (s. l. 1609, 4to; 2nd edit. St. Omer, 1615). The work was dedicated to James I, to whom the author states he had formerly submitted his religious difficulties. Down to the time of Alban Butler it has been frequently commended to those showing an inclination to Roman catholicism, and has been often reprinted and abridged. In the controversial parts, and especially in the attack upon the ‘falsities’ of Matthew Sutcliffe [q. v.], it is probable that the author was aided by Father Parsons. In 1618 Walsingham published his ‘Reasons for embracing the Catholic Faith’ (London, 16mo). Two years previously he had been formally attached to the ‘English mission,’ and served in Leicestershire. In 1633 he removed to the college of the Immaculate Conception, Derbyshire, and there he died on 1 July 1647. He left in manuscript at the convent at Newhall, Essex, a little prayer manual, ‘The Evangelique Pearle,’ dedicated to the abbess of the English nunnery at Pontoise.

A Widower Priest

The Recusants and renegades blog tells the story of Father Henry Hawkins, a widower who became a Jesuit missionary to England:

It’s unclear how Henry Hawkins spent the years immediately after his graduation from Oxford, though since he was said to be ‘intelligent in affairs of government, very learned in the English laws’, perhaps he attended the Inns of Court and was destined for public office. On 9th February 1604, when he was twenty-seven years old, Henry married the twenty-year-old Aphra Norton, daughter of Thomas Norton, at the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Fordwich, a few miles to the east of Canterbury. The Norton family lived at Tancrey Island in Fordwich. Some commentators mistakenly suggest that Henry abandoned his wife to pursue his vocation as a priest: the source quoted above (a manuscript ‘status’ of the English College at Rome for 1613) claims that he had ‘left a wife, office, and many other commodities and expectations, to become a priest in the seminaries.’

However, the truth is rather more poignant. On 16th January 1605, less than a year after their marriage, Aphra Hawkins died and was buried in the church where they had been married. Her tomb is adorned with a female figure, and a plate with this touching inscription:

Here lyeth buryed the body of Aphra Hawkins, wife of Henry Hawkins, gent. and daughter of Thomas Norton, Esqr. who scarcely having arrived to 21 years of age, yet fully attained perfection in many virtues, departed this frayle life the 16th of January, 1605.

Henry Hawkins must have made his decision to join the Jesuits shortly after his young wife’s untimely death. When he entered the English College of Rome on 19th March 1609, using the pseudonym ‘Brooke’, he had already spent some time studying the classics at the college of the English Jesuits at St Omer. Henry received minor orders in 1613, was ordained priest soon afterwards, and, after spending two years in the study of scholastic theology, left for Belgium and entered the Society of Jesus in about 1615.

I don't think the Society of Jesus would have admitted a man who had proved unfaithful to the vows and vocation of matrimony! Father Hawkins survived being a missionary priest in England, although he was arrested and sent into exile--so he risked the not uncommon fate of being martyred for the faith. Read the rest of his story here. His Oxford DNB article is here. A copy of his Parthenia Sacra, an emblem book devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary was offered by Christie's in 2013 and sold well above its estimated price.

Restoration of the Society of Jesus and England

Today is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus--The Jesuits, and 2014 also marks the 200th anniversary of the restoration of the Jesuit order after its suppression in 1773:

Pressured by the royal courts of Portugal, France and Spain, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society, causing Jesuits throughout the world to renounce their vows and go into exile. The suppression lasted for 41 years, until the Society’s restoration on August 7, 1814.

In England the suppression did not have quite the impact that it had on the Continent, because it depended on the government to enforce:

In 1762 because of the  suppression of the Society of Jesus in France, the English college in St Omer was transferred to Bruges. Despite the storm clouds the English Province was strong: in 1768 there were approximately 300 Jesuits, 26 of whom worked in Maryland and 136 in England. 

The position of the Jesuits in England after Pope Clement XIV's brief of 1773, "Dominus ac Redemptor" - suppressing the Society of Jesus - was anomalous. The Society did not exist officially in England so it could not be suppressed by the secular government. Ironically relations between secular clergy and Jesuits were extremely friendly at the time. Ex-Jesuits were able to remain united under a type of superior associated with the college then in Bruges (eventually moving to Liège and finally in 1794 to Stonyhurst) and to retain ownership of the province's not inconsiderable assets.

Even before the universal restoration, Jesuits in England benefited from the "anomalous" situation and the support of the order in Russia:

In March 1801 Pope Pius VII approved the status of the Society of Jesus that continued to exist in Russia because of the protection of the Russian Tsars. 

In 1803, thirty-five ex-Jesuits renewed their vows at Stonyhurst under Marmaduke Stone as first Provincial of the restored English Province. 

Despite some opposition from the English Vicars Apostolic and the insertion of a clause in the Act of Catholic Emancipation (1829) that forbade Jesuits and other religious orders from accepting novices in hope of their eventual extinction, the province thrived in the nineteenth century.

Long before the suppression or the restoration, Jesuits had played an important, although sometimes controversial, role in the English mission:

Between Ignatius's begging mission to England in 1531, and the foundation of a mission in 1580, Jesuit contact with England was sporadic.  The second half of the 16th century was one of religious upheaval in England, since Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1534. Elizabeth 1 (1558-1603) was determined to build a Protestant state, and, fearing influence or invasion by stronger Catholic European monarchies, effectively banned Catholic worship, and outlawed Catholic priests. To become a Catholic priest young Englishmen would now have to train and probably work abroad.  Yet many Englishmen joined the Jesuits and worked throughout the Jesuit world: Edmund Campion was sent to Prague; Thomas Stephens to India; John Yates to Brazil.  The English College for the training of priests from England was founded in Rome in 1579 and Pope Gregory XIII entrusted the college's administration to the Jesuits.

Seizing the opportunity, William Allen, leader of English Catholic exiles and later a Cardinal, persuaded Father General Everard Mercurian to approve a Jesuit mission to England. The first missioners, Campion, Robert Persons, and Ralph Emerson, departed Rome in April 1580. By the end of 1581, Campion had been executed and Persons was back on the continent, never to return to England.

The history of the Elizabethan Jesuits is the stuff of legends and hagiography: clandestine meetings, priest-holes, raids, escapes from the Tower of London, imprisonment, torture and martyrdom.

So intense was persecution that periodically Father General Claudio Acquaviva questioned the mission's continuation. Persons, along with Jesuits in England such as Robert Southwell and John Gerard, strengthened the resolve of lay Catholics through the Spiritual Exercises.

On the continent Robert Persons and others sought to alleviate the suffering of Catholics in England by encouraging invasion of England and deposition of Elizabeth. See Jesuit conspiracy theories for more details.

Indeed, the stories of the Jesuit martyrs are often thrilling--St. Edmund Campion, St. Robert Southwell, St. Henry Walpole, St. Henry Morse, St. Philip Evans, St. Nicholas Owen (the lay brother and master builder), St. Henry Garnett, Blessed Edward Oldcorne, St. David Lewis, etc. The two books I would recommend for those wanting to know more about this history are Into the Lion's Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580-1603 by Robert E. Scully, SJ, published by The Institute of Jesuit Sources, which I reviewed here, and for the stories of the individual martyred saints and blesseds, Jesuit Saints and Martyrs by Joseph N. Tylenda, SJ.

"Recusancy and Regicide" from Penn History Review

Carolyn Vinnicombe, at that time a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote this analysis of the Jesuit mission in Reformation England, published in the Spring 2012 issue of the Penn History Review:

Introduction: In pursuing their goals of reviving the religious zeal of the English Catholic community by converting them to religious opposition in the later sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries, the drivers of the Jesuit mission in England, under the guidance of the Jesuit Robert Persons, failed. They did so not because Catholic doctrine lacked appeal in protestant Elizabethan England, but because their conversion strategy was wholly unsuited to the political realities of the times. Instead, the aggregate effects of the Church’s clerical infighting over the issues of conformity and disputation as a conversion device, failure to understand the practical needs of the average Catholic, and Person’s ill-fated political plotting polarized the English against the Jesuits and created a religious and political environment so toxic that it cannibalized the mission’s own conversion efforts. Though the Jesuits saw later success with the publication of their non-polemic spiritual texts, they never succeeded in gaining back the ground they lost as a result of their catastrophic early strategy.

The issue of conformity to the Elizabethan Settlement of 1569 presented a dilemma without an absolute solution for the English Catholic community. When Pope Pius V’s Regans in Excelsis of 1570, excommunicated the queen, and prompted her regime to mandate attendance at protestant services, it left English Catholics floundering to find traction on the plane of religious devotion. Could they still call themselves Catholics if they yielded to the state and attended protestant services, but maintained Catholicism in their hearts, or were only those who defied the state and refused to attend services worthy of the “Catholic” label and, indeed, salvation? This was a question for which neither the laity nor the Church had a clear answer.

Read the rest of the article here.

April 7, 1606: Blessed Edward Oldcorne and Ralph Ashley, SJ

Two Jesuits suffered martyrdom on April 7, 1606 in connection with the Gunpowder Plot early in James I's reign--although they had no involvement with the Plot, the fact that they were companions and associates of Father Henry Garnet--and in fact, were captured with him after hiding for days in different hiding places within Hindlip Hall. Also captured that day was the designer and builder of those hiding places, Jesuit lay brother Nicholas Owen. The two lay brothers were in one hiding place and the two priests in another. The pursuivants could not find them--searching the house for days--but they finally had to leave their sanctuaries becauce of hunger and thirst. The illustration at the right shows Father Oldcorne and Owen enduring torture.

Blessed Edward Oldcorne was a Jesuit priest, ordained in Rome, Italy, and received into the Society in 1587. Worked in the English mission in Worcestershire for 16 years. Father Edward developed throat cancer, but kept preaching through the pain. He made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Winifred of Wales in Flintshire to seek a cure; his cancer healed, and he returned strong and healthy to his vocation.

Edward fell victim to the revenge following the Gunpowder Plot, a foolish conspiracy hatched by a small group of frustrated Catholic Englishmen to blow up the king and parliament. All it did was provide an excuse for renewed persecution of Catholics, especially Jesuits. Edward was arrested, falsely accused, and tortured on the rack for five days for information about the Plot. He was hung, drawn and quartered on April 7, 1607 with Blessed Ralph Ashley, SJ.

Blessed Ralph Ashley worked as a cook at Douai College. Entered the English College at Valladolid on 28 April 1590 where he became a Jesuit lay brother. Ill health forced him to leave college and return to England. Along the way he was captured by Dutch heretics; he stood up to them and explained their errors. Finally landed in England on 9 March 1598.

Servant and assistant to Blessed Edward Oldcorne. Arrested on 23 January 1606 at Hindlip House, near Worcester, England in connection with the Gunpowder Plot, and for the crime of helping a priest. Transferred to the Tower of London on 3 February 1606 along with Father Henry Garnet and Saint Nicholas Owen. Tortured for information on other Catholics and for the hiding places of priests. When they could get no information from him, he was transferred to Worcester, and condemned for his faith.
 

Of the four Jesuits captured at Hindlip Hall, three were recognized as martyrs by the Catholic Church and beatified or canonized. The torture and questioning of the two lay Jesuit brothers, St. Nicholas Owen and Blessed Ralph Ashley, was focused on discovering more hiding places like the ones the four Jesuits had been hiding in at Hindlip Hall. Owen died as a result of the torture meted out to him. Blessed Edward Oldcorne, because he was found with Garnet, was questioned about the plot. Father Henry Garnet has not been proclaimed a martyr by the Church, I presume because of questions about his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot. According to the old Catholic Encyclopedia (1909):

It is a matter of regret that we have as yet nothing like an authoritative pronouncement from Rome on the subject of Garnet's martyrdom. His name was indeed proposed with that of the other English Martyrs and Confessors in 1874, and his cause was then based upon the testimonies of Bellarmine and the older Catholic writers, which was the correct plea for the proof of Fama Martyrii, then to be demonstrated. But these ancient authorities are not acquainted with Garnet's actual confessions which were not known or published in their time. The consequence was that, as the discussion proceeded, their evidence was found to be inconclusive, and an open verdict was returned; thus his martyrdom was held to be neither proved nor disproved. This of course led to his cause being "put off" (dilatus) for further inquiry, which involves in Rome a delay of many years.

"A delay of many years" indeed.

Venerable Mary Ward

This site offers the story of her life and death:

Born into a Yorkshire Catholic recusant family in 1585 Mary Ward was remarkable for being among the first women to believe that women should be actively involved in the apostolic life of the Catholic Church. However, initially she opted for the strictest form of contemplative religious life determined to give herself totally to God.

When God revealed to her that a life of prayer and obscurity behind a convent wall was not what she was called to she returned to London in 1609. Here with a group of like-minded young women she engaged in apostolic work disregarding the strict laws against Catholics at the time. Later that same year Mary realised that God was calling her to some form of religious life “more to his glory” To discern what it was she left London for Flanders with her young companions and founded her first house at St Omer.

In 1611, when at prayer, enlightenment came to her and she heard clearly the words: ‘take the same of the Society’ by which she understood the ‘Society of Jesus’ founded by St Ignatius of Loyola. The rest of her life was to be spent in developing a congregation of religious women on the Ignatian model for which she needed, and failed to gain, papal approval.

Three times she and her companions walked to Rome from Flanders, twice to try to gain this approval and the third time as a prisoner of the Inquisition following the suppression of her congregation by Pope Urban VIII in 1631. During this period she founded houses and schools in Liège, Cologne, Rome, Naples, Munich, Vienna, Pressburg and other places, often at the request of the local rulers and bishops, but papal approval eluded her. . . .

 

Summoned to Rome in 1632 to face charges Mary was granted an audience with the Pope at which she declared: “Holy Father, I neither am nor ever have been a heretic”. She received the comforting reply: “We believe it, we believe it”. No trial ever took place, but Mary Ward was forbidden to leave Rome or to live in community.

In 1637 for reasons of health Mary was allowed to travel to Spa and then on to England. She died during the English Civil War just outside York on January 30th 1645. She is buried in Osbaldwick Anglican churchyard close by.

 

The same site also describes the progress of her cause for beatification and canonization: she has been declared Venerable--what is needed is a miracle!

 

The recognition by the Church of Mary Ward as foundress did not take place until 1909, and the First World War then presented a further delay. Only in 1922 was a petition to open her cause sent to Pope Pius XI signed by all the bishops of England. The process opened in Middlesborough, Yorkshire in 1929. Soon afterwards permission was obtained to pursue the case simultaneously in Munich where most of the archive material was available.

The historical research was begun by Fr Josef Grisar SJ and completed by Sr Immolata Wetter CJ accompanied by the Postulator Fr Paul Molinari SJ and the Relator Fr Peter Gumpel SJ. This was accepted by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in 1995. The theologians completed their investigation in May 2009 and recommended unanimously that Mary Ward demonstrated ‘heroic virtue’ and that her cause should go forward. This was confirmed by the commission of Cardinals and Bishops in November 2009, and promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI on 19th December of the same year. By this action Mary Ward was officially recognised as ‘Venerable’ by the Church.

 

Prayers for her beatification and other devotions may be found here.

A Lay Victim of The Popish Plot

Blessed Richard Langhorne (c. 1624 – 14 July 1679) was a barrister executed as part of the Popish Plot. He was admitted to the Inner Temple in May 1647 and called to the bar in November 1654. He provided legal and financial advice for the Jesuits.

His wife, Dorothy, was a Protestant from Havering in Essex. His sons Charles and Francis were both priests. When, in October 1677, Titus Oates was expelled from the English College at St Omer "for serious moral lapses", Charles Langhorne entrusted Oates with a letter to his father. Oates returned to St Omer with a letter from Richard thanking the Jesuits for all they had done for his sons.

When Oates and Israel Tonge unleashed their Popish Plot in September 1678, three Jesuits and a Benedictine were arrested. Langhorne was arrested a week later, imprisoned at Newgate and charged with Treason. Oates claimed, corroborated by William Bedloe, that Langhorne's earlier correspondence dealt with treason.

He was found guilty of High Treason. As the result of a petition by his wife, a ‘true Protestant’, he received a month's reprieve to tidy the affairs of his clients. He was executed at Tyburn, London, on 14 July 1679. According to the Benedictines at Tyburn Convent, "He declared on the scaffold at Tyburn, that not only a pardon, but many preferments and estates had been offered to him if he would for sake his religion.As the hangman was placing the rope round his neck, he took it into his hands and kissed it."

On 15 December 1929, he was beatified by Pope Pius XI.

As I've noted before on this blog when discussing the Popish Plot, England's justice system benefitted the accuser and gave little leeway to a defendant trying to prove a negative: Langhorne could not prove their interpretation of his letters was wrong. Samuel Pepys and other defendants finally received some measure of justice because Judge Scrogg figured out Oates' and his confreres' perjury. Samuel Pepys was accused that same year of giving naval secrets to the French and of being a Catholic, just because of his loyalty to James, the Duke of York. He spent six months in the Tower of London and eventually established, not his innocence per se, but his accuser's guilt. Pepys was cleared of charges and reinstated as Secretary to the Admirality--in 1684!

Last Words of Blessed Peter Wright in 1651

The hangman having fitted the rope to his neck, the confessor made a short speech to the spectators: Gentlemen, this is a short passage to eternity; my time is now short, and I have not much to speak. I was brought hither charged with no other crime but being a priest. I willingly confess I am a priest; I confess I am a Catholic; I confess I am a religious man of the Society of Jesus, or as you call it, a Jesuit.

This is the cause for which I die; for this alone was I condemned, and for propagating the Catholic faith, which is spread through the whole world, taught through all ages from Christ's time, and will be taught for all ages to come.

For this cause I most willingly sacrifice my life, and would die a thousand times for the same if it were necessary; and I look upon it my greatest happiness, that my most good God has chosen me most unworthy to this blessed lot, the lot of the saints. This is a grace which so unworthy a sinner could scarce have wished, much less hoped for. And now I beg of the goodness of my God with all the fervour I am able, and most humbly entreat Him that He would drive from you that are Protestants the darkness of error, and enlighten your minds with the rays of truth. And as for you Catholics, my fellow soldiers and comrades, as many of you as are here I earnestly beseech you to join in prayer for me and with me till my last moment; and when I shall come to Heaven I will do as much for you. God bless you all; I forgive all men. From my heart I bid you all farewell till we meet in a happy eternity.

Read more about this Jesuit martyr here.

Theme and Narration: A Book Review

Into the Lion's Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580-1603 by Robert E. Scully, SJ, published by The Institute of Jesuit Sources (St. Louis, Missouri), c. 2011.

Contents:

List of Illustrations and A Map
Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Initialisms
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Jesuit Mission: Its Background and Organizational Framework
Chapter 2: "The Enterprise is Begun": Launching and Sustaining the Mission
Chapter 3. Questions of Priorities: The Geography and Social Topography of Catholic Evangelization
Chapter 4. Elizabethan Wales: A Unique Challenge and Opportunity
Chapter 5. Behind Closed Doors: Jesuits and Their Clandestine Ministries
Chapter 6. Elizabethan Catholic Women: Their Indispensable Role in Sustaining the Catholic Community
Chapter 7. Religion and Politics: The Jesuit Mission and the Elizabethan Government
Chapter 8. The Shadow of Death: Persecution, Prison Life, Exile and Execution
Chapter 9. A House Divided? The Jesuits and the Other Catholic Clergy and Religious Orders
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Book Review: This is a very well-written and well-judged history of the Jesuit mission in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. It relies on both primary and secondary sources and adjudicates well the many issues of the interpretation: were the Jesuits trying to overthrow the English government by coming to England? was the English government persecuting Catholics or prosecuting traitors? did Catholics conform or merely pretend to? Father Scully also probes some specifically Jesuit questions: did they spend too much time with the gentry or did they really have any choice, hunted by pursuivants and needing the shelter of Catholic homes? did they abandon Scotland too soon and fail in Wales or were their decisions in both determined by government persecution?

One slight issue I have with the book is that its thematic format means the narrative repeats: we read about St. Edmund Campion, St. Henry Walpole, St. Robert Southwell, Fathers John Gerard, Henry Garnet, etc, several times--sometimes with a different context, but sometimes with essentially the same informaition. On the other hand, chapter 5 is an excellent overview of the use of the Spiritual Exercises, the Daily Examen, and other devotions throughout the Jesuit Mission in England. Chapter 6 tells the stories of not only the three female martyrs (St. Margaret Clitherow, St. Margaret Ward, and St. Anne Line) but also of the wives and daughters left behind when their husbands and fathers suffered death or exile.

Chapter 7 is a very balanced look at the claims and motives of both sides and the difficult positions Catholics had to try to balance themselves: loyalty to the Queen in matters of state and security and loyalty to the Pope and to the Church in matters of spirituality and religion. Father Scully does not shrink from discussing divisions between the Jesuits and other clergy over the goals and methods of the English mission in Chapter 9 and then unflinchingly measures the success and failure of the mission overall in the Conclusion. The bibliography is excellent; I am so used to endnotes that the footnotes are somewhat distracting to me. Highly recommended as an excellent overview of Catholic life, and especially the Jesuits' contributions to it, during the recusant age of Elizabeth I.

The 16th Century Lion's Den

Another title from the Institute of Jesuit Sources--I can certainly recommend their processing and quick delivery if you are interested in their publications:

Into the Lion's Den by Robert E. Scully, SJ vividly tells the story of the Jesuit mission to England and Wales from its beginning in 1580 to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. This endeavor was to be filled not only with hope and daring but also with fear and danger, as Edmund Campion, Robert Persons, and Ralph Emerson found out after they landed in England in June 1580 and as their successors were also to learn in the ensuing years.

In the context of the religious and political backgrounds of the times the mission was organized and launched, and carried on its work, often in clandestine ministries. Two special characteristics of the work are for the first time highlighted here, the unique challenges and opportunities of ministry in wales and the indispensable role of the Elizabethan Catholic women in sustaining the Jesuits and the seminary priests and the larger Catholic community. Differences of outlook, strategy and circumstances between the Jesuits and the other Catholic clergy and religious orders sometimes contributed to a house divided. But ever present were the realities of persecution and prison, exile and execution as the Elizabethan government exerted all its power to thwart Jesuit efforts.

In the end, those heroic efforts, the Jesuit organizational structure and spiritual vision that undergirded them, and the crucial support of the men and women who shared in those efforts helped to ensure the survival of a tenacious and resilient Catholic community.

Father Scully's style is clear and his narrative comprehensive. He effectively outlines the progress of the Jesuit mission to England and devotes a chapter to their efforts in Wales. I'll post a full review soon.

Blesseds Robert Middleton, SJ and Thurstan Hunt

Two martyrs executed on April 3, 1601: Robert Middleton (1571-1601) was one of several English martyrs who applied to enter the Society of Jesus but were imprisoned before they could enter the novitiate. As a young man in York, England, Middleton belonged to the Church of England even though his family was Catholic. At some point he began to practice his Catholic religion and then traveled first to Rheims, France to study at the English College there, then moved to Seville and then finally to Rome which he reached in April 1597. He was ordained a priest Jan. 4, 1598 and then a few months later left for his native land.

Middleton was able to work as a priest for slightly more than two years before he was seized and interrogated on Sept. 30, 1600. He admitted being a priest but denied any subversive activity. His captors sent him to London and then brought him back to Lancaster where he had been arrested. He was condemned to death for having been ordained overseas and daring to return and exercise his priesthood. As punishment he was hanged until almost dead, then cut down and beheaded.

and

Blessed Thurstan Hunt: An English martyr (March, 1601), who belonged to the family seated at Carlton Hall, near Leeds, and had made his course of studies at Reims, 1583, 1584. Robert Middleton, his fellow-martyr, a nephew of Margaret Clitheroe, had also studied at Reims and at Rome, 1594-1598. In November, 1600, Middleton was arrested by chance near Preston, and an attempt to rescue him was made by four Catholics, of whom Hunt was one, but the attempt failed, and after a long and exciting tussle, Hunt was captured. They were then both treated with great inhumanity, and heavily ironed night and day until, by the order of the Privy Council, with their feet tied beneath their horses' bellies, they were carried in public disgrace up to London and back again to Lancaster, where they were condemned and executed for their priesthood. But the attempt to degrade them in public opinion failed. No one would let out his horse to drag them to the place of execution; they reconciled to the Church the felons condemned to die with them; their relics were eagerly carried off after their death; and a contemporary sang admiringly of

Hunt's hawtie corage staut,
With godlie zeale soe true,
Myld Middleton, O what tongue
Can halfe thy vertue showe!

They are listed among the Lancaster Martyrs and were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987.

Blessed John Nelson, SJ

John Nelson (1535-1578) became a Jesuit in prison just before he was martyred. A man of bold and unshakeable convictions, he died two years before the English mission began, but he provided the same fearless service to Catholics that Jesuits later lived and died for. The son of Sir Nicholas Nelson, he was born in Yorkshire about 1535. He was firm in his conviction that Catholics should be bold in professing their faith and did not accept the practice of attending Protestant services to avoid penalties. Finally he left England when he was almost 40 and studied at the English College in Douai. His younger brothers Martin and Thomas followed him to Douai. He was ordained a priest at Bynche in June 1576 and set out with four other newly ordained priests the following November to return to England.

Little is known about Father Nelson's ministry except that it lasted only one year before he was arrested on the evening of Dec. 1, 1577 when priest-catchers burst into his residence as he was reading his breviary. They arrested him on suspicion of being a Catholic; but when he was brought before the queen's high commissioners and asked who the head of the Church was, he boldly answered that it was the pope, thus sealing his fate. His trial took place February 1 and featured the comments he made before the commissioners; since he refused to take the oath acknowledging the queen's supremacy in religious matters, he was found guilty of high treason and condemned to be executed as a traitor. Nelson had admired the Jesuits but their mission to England did not begin until two years after his death. He wrote to the French Jesuits asking to be admitted, and they were pleased to accept a priest about to be martyred. He was kept in a foul dungeon--possibly the Pit in the Tower of London--for two days and then dragged to Tyburn to be executed.

He spoke to the crowds, leading the Catholics assembled there in the Credo, the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria. Then he said, "I die in the unity of the Catholic Church; and for that unity do now most willingly suffer my blood to be shed; therefore, I beseech God . . . to make you, and all others that are not such already, true Catholic men, and both to live and die in the unity of our Holy Mother, the Catholic Roman Church." As he gave his final words to onlookers, asking forgiveness of any he had offended and forgiving his enemies and his executioners, Blessed John Nelson was hanged but then cut down while he was still alive and disembowelled. He was beheaded and quartered with his body parts exhibited on London Bridge and the city gates as a warning.

Blessed John Nelson could definitely be a patron of those who enter the religious life or the priesthood when they are older than the norm. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886.

The Society of Jesus and the English Reformation

On September 27, 1540 Pope Paul III approved the formation of the Society of Jesus. Founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Society would have a great impact on post-Reformation England.  Eamon Duffy commented on the controversial decision of Reginald Cardinal Pole not to have the Jesuit order assist with the re-establishment of Catholicism in England during the reign of Mary I in his book Fires of Faith. As I mentioned in my review of Duffy's study of that reign, Pole had a different campaign planned. Many of the English martyrs mentioned on this blog were Jesuits, including most famously St. Edmund Campion and St. Robert Southworth. Forty years after the order's formation, the Jesuit mission to England began.

As the U.K. site for the Society of Jesus states:

The history of the Elizabethan Jesuits is the stuff of legends and hagiography: clandestine meetings, priest-holes, raids, escapes from the Tower of London, imprisonment, torture, and martyrdom.

There were also conflicts between the Jesuits and the secular priests over the strategy for perpetuating Catholicism in England. Some Catholics, the Appellants, wanted to demonstrate loyalty to the Queen and to England, while Father Robert Parsons, who came to England with Edmund Campion and then returned to the Continent, urged steps like the excommunication of Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada. Jesuit colleges in France, Spain, and Italy trained young men for the mission in England.

The Jesuits in England were also involved in some manner in the plots to place Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne of England and the Gunpowder Plot; then they were suspected in the so-called Popish Plot and supported the Jacobite rebellions after the Glorious Revolution--and therefore many of them suffered execution and/or martyrdom. Titus Oates really aimed his "Popish Plot" perjury at the Jesuits, claiming a group of them met to plan the assasination of King Charles II and that all of the Jesuits in England were in on it one way or another. On the other hand, Lord Baltimore asked the Jesuits to assist in the founding of Maryland in the New World.

One excellent resource for the stories of the English Jesuits martyred during the Recusant era (Elizabeth I through Charles II) and particularly during the Popish Plot crisis is Jesuit Saints and Blesseds by Joseph Tylenda, SJ.

The French Revolution drove the English Jesuits from the Continent to Stonyhurst in England in 1794, even though the Pope had suppressed the order in 1773. As the same website comments:

In 1762 because of the Society's suppression in France, the English college in St Omer, then inside France, was transferred to Bruges. Despite the storm clouds the English Province was strong: in 1768 there were approximately 300 Jesuits, 26 of whom worked in Maryland and 136 in England.

The Society's situation in England after Pope Clement XIV's brief of 1773, Dominus ac Redemptor - suppressing the Society of Jesus - was anomalous. The Society did not exist officially in England so it could not be suppressed by the secular government. Ironically relations between secular clergy and Jesuits were extremely friendly at the time. Ex-Jesuits were able to remain united under a type of superior associated with the college then in Bruges (eventually moving to Liège and finally in 1794 to Stonyhurst) and to retain ownership of the province's not inconsiderable assets.

In 1801 the Jesuits were restored and in 1803 the English Province was restored. Finally, Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850 led to the foundation of many Jesuit colleges--including Campion Hall in Oxford--and parishes throughout England.

Famed English Jesuits of the modern era include: Gerard Manley Hopkins, convert and poet; Frederick Copleston, the historian of philosophy; John Hungerford Pollen and Philip Caraman, historians and biographers who focused on the English recusant era of Jesuit martyrdoms; and Clifford Howell, who wrote on doctrine and worship. A more infamous Jesuit was George Tyrrell, the Modernist theologian.