St. Robert Southwell on the Son Rise Morning Show

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show tomorrow morning to talk about one of the most amazing martyrs of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales: St. Robert Southwell. This fine Jesuit poet and martyr endured tremendous tortures at the hands of Richard Topcliffe and then an execution that sickened the crowd so much that they would not allow the torture to continue. I've posted often about St. Robert Southwell, his poetry, his connections with St. Philip Howard and other figures of the English Mission--but I've never mentioned the family connection to the story of St. Thomas More.

St. Robert's grandfather, Sir Richard Southwell, was one of the survivors of the Tudor Dynasty, serving Henry VIII, being imprisoned for his Catholicism during the reign of Edward VI, serving Mary I, and finally being removed from Court--because of his Catholicism--early in the reign of Elizabeth I and dying very rich in 1564. His legitimized son Richard Southwell of Horsham St. Faith's, Norfolk was St. Robert Southwell's son.(Richard of Horsham St. Faith's mother was his father's second wife, but he was conceived while the elder Richard was married to another woman). 

The connection to St. Thomas More? Sir Richard Southwell was one of those the St. Thomas More's cell in the Tower of London taking away More's books and writing materials when Sir Richard Rich supposedly heard More condemn himself by speaking treason. Southwell denied having heard any of the conversation between More and Rich, being busy with the books, but the Court convicted More anyway. While Sir Richard Southwell was willing to benefit from the Dissolution of the Monasteries, at least he was unwilling to corroborate Sir Richard Rich's perjury.

Sir Richard certainly participated in the fall and execution of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, as he presented evidence about Surrey's addition of the arms of St. Edward the Confessor to his heraldic escutcheon--when such arms could only be displayed by the Prince of Wales. While no one could find the escutcheon when they searched for it, Southwell's word was enough to condemn Surrey for treason at the paranoid end of Henry VIII's reign. Surrey's execution and the imprisonment of Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk were major blows to the Catholic coalition at Court, but Southwell shares more than a first name with Sir Richard Rich--an ability to advance by choosing the winning side in almost every conflict.

Matt Swaim, the new host of the Son Rise Morning Show, and I will discuss Sir Richard Southwell's grandson, the martyred saint, Robert Southwell, at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central tomorrow! Please listen live here!

Blessed John Henry Newman and St. Robert Southwell

What a remarkable doctrine of the Church is the Communion of Saints! Two great holy men were born this day--one to eternal life, the other to life on earth: St. Robert Southwell was executed on February 21, 1595 and Blessed John Henry Newman was born on February 21, 1801.

St. Robert Southwell was 33 years old when he was executed at Tyburn on February 21, 1595. When he cited his age during his trial, his torturer Richard Topcliffe mocked him for claiming equality with Jesus Christ. Southwell answered that he was but a worm.

It is hard to be temperate when writing about his arrest, torture and execution--it is obviously a horrendous blot against the Elizabethan "regime". He was betrayed by a woman that Elizabeth's pursuivant Richard Topcliffe had raped and blackmailed--he promised to find her a husband since she was pregnant with his child if she would turn Southwell in; he was tortured--illegally and excruciatingly--numerous times, starting with a visit to Topcliffe's personal torture chamber, while Elizabeth's officials looked on; then he was held in fetid conditions until his father visited him in Westminster's gatehouse and petitioned the queen to put him to death rather than leave him there, in his own filth.

Moved to the Tower of London he was held in greater but solitary comfort, but Queen Elizabeth allowed the sadistic Topcliffe to continue torturing Southwell, who had readily admitted his priesthood. Prior to his trial on February 20 he was moved into a hole called Limbo; the government did not even try to implicate him in any plot against the Queen; he was executed just because he was a Catholic priest. When he was executed on February 21st, the crowds made sure he was dead before the butchery began--and no one cheered when his severed head was displayed to the crowd. Indeed, Elizabeth's government recognized that they had gone too far--there was lull in executions of Catholic priests in London. Lord Cecil even ignored Topcliffe's desires to get started on new victims.

Robert Southwell was canonized by Pope Paul VI among the group called The Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. In addition to be a great saint and steadfast martyr, he is regarded as one of the great poets of the Elizabethan Age. Some of his poetry was written while he was held in solitary confinement in the Tower of London and was published posthumously.

Pope St. John Paul II remembered the 200th anniversary of Newman's birth in this 2001 letter to Birmingham:

Newman was born in troubled times which knew not only political and military upheaval but also turbulence of soul. Old certitudes were shaken, and believers were faced with the threat of rationalism on the one hand and fideism on the other. Rationalism brought with it a rejection of both authority and transcendence, while fideism turned from the challenges of history and the tasks of this world to a distorted dependence upon authority and the supernatural. In such a world, Newman came eventually to a remarkable synthesis of faith and reason which were for him "like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth" (Fides et Ratio,Introduction; cf. ibid., 74). It was the passionate contemplation of truth which also led him to a liberating acceptance of the authority which has its roots in Christ, and to the sense of the supernatural which opens the human mind and heart to the full range of possibilities revealed in Christ. "Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on", Newman wrote in "The Pillar of the Cloud"; and for him Christ was the light at the heart of every kind of darkness. For his tomb he chose the inscription: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem; and it was clear at the end of his life’s journey that Christ was the truth he had found.

But Newman’s search was shot through with pain. Once he had come to that unshakeable sense of the mission entrusted to him by God, he declared: "Therefore, I will trust Him... If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him... He does nothing in vain... He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me. Still, He knows what He is about" (Meditations and Devotions). All these trials he knew in his life; but rather than diminish or destroy him they paradoxically strengthened his faith in the God who had called him, and confirmed him in the conviction that God "does nothing in vain". In the end, therefore, what shines forth in Newman is the mystery of the Lord’s Cross: this was the heart of his mission, the absolute truth which he contemplated, the "kindly light" which led him on.

Other than the glory they now share in Heaven, Southwell and Newman do have some other things in common:

~They are both Englishmen, born, as Pope St. John Paul II said, "in troubled times"
~Both are converts to the Catholic faith from the Church of England
~Both went to the Continent to study for the priesthood
~Both are order priests: Southwell a Jesuit and Newman an Oratorian
~Both are poets, although Southwell is probably the greater poet (but Newman's The Dream of Gerontius is a great achievement)

Of course, they differ vastly in their deaths and that marks their different status as saints in heaven: St. Robert Southwell was canonized as a martyr, while Newman was beatified--and perhaps soon will be canonized--as a confessor of the faith. Here's an article I wrote describing the differences between martyrs and confessors.

Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us!
St. Robert Southwell, pray for us!

Three Poems by St. Robert Southwell

Today is the 425th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Robert Southwell at Tyburn in London.

CatholicCulture.org featured three poems by St. Robert Southwell on a recent podcast:

In this special, post-Valentine’s Day episode, we’ve compiled a selection of three poems by St. Robert Southwell.

Like St. Valentine, St. Robert Southwell was a martyr: an English Jesuit who served as a clandestine missionary in post-Reformation England. There he ministered in secret for six years before he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. After three years of imprisonment and torture, he was convicted of high treason and executed by being hanged, drawn, and quartered.

During his time in England, Southwell witnessed the executions of many other Catholics, including those of people he knew personally. It’s in this light, and in light of his own eventual martyrdom, that his poetry carries with it an especial gravity. At once horrified and inspired by the martyrdoms he witnessed, Southwell wrote this paradox into his poetry, as reflected in the poems selected for this episode.

The three poems are "The Burning Babe", "A Child My Choice", and "I Die Alive". These three poems are included in a new anthology from Cluny Media, Lyra Martyrum: The Poetry of the English Martyrs, 1503-1681, edited by Benedict Whalen of Hillsdale College.

Saint Robert Southwell, pray for us!

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. Robert Southwell's Influence

Next month, from St. Augustine's Press: Southwell's Sphere: The Influence of England's Secret Poet by Dr. Gary Bouchard:

Once feared by Queen Elizabeth I and admired by William Shakespeare, Robert Southwell, s.j. (1561–1595), clings today to a thinning canonical presence in English literature among a sphere of other writers incongruously called the metaphysical poets. Southwell’s Sphere lifts this sixteenth century Jesuit priest and prolific writer from the obscurity in which he too often resides and places him instead at the center of a sphere of English poets upon whom his life and works exerted an observable influence. As he weaved his religious content into the familiar loom of Elizabethan form and style, this young missionary priest was seeking not just to catechize those whom he regarded as the faithful and the fallen, but to intentionally reform the verse of his native England. Remarkably, during his brief six-year mission, he actually managed in many respects to do so. Surviving for six years by successfully navigating and fostering a complicated underground Catholic network in and around London before being captured, tortured and imprisoned, Southwell was brought to trial and executed at Tyburn at age 33. He therefore never knew most of the “skillfuller wits” that he called upon to direct their poetic skills to the service of God. And like the marks upon his tortured body, the poetic marks of influence that his work left upon individual writers of this era were in many cases deliberately concealed. Southwell’s Sphere seeks to rediscover those marks and offer the reader a renewed appreciation for this subverted and subverting literary force in Early Modern England. In individual explicative chapters this book examines works by six poets whose verse may be appreciated differently in light of Robert Southwell’s life and work. The author makes the case that Southwell’s works, posthumously and prolifically published, instructed William Alabaster, provoked Edmund Spenser, prompted George Herbert, haunted John Donne, inspired Richard Crashaw and — two and a half centuries later — consoled Gerard Manley Hopkins, s.j. With the exception of Spenser, all of these poets were, like Southwell, ordained ministers. The particular personal, political and religious complexities of each of their lives notwithstanding, what they most shared in common with Southwell was their priestly vocation, their talent as English poets and the inevitable and inextricable joining of these two activities in their lives. While it would have made little sense for any of these poets to acknowledge Southwell as a poetic peer, each of them authored important verse that can best be appreciated within the sphere of this improbably successful and influential English poet.

Professor Bouchard wrote about Southwell and his legacy in the July/August 2014 St. Austin Review and he will be speaking later this month at the Catholic Literature Conference in New Hampshire:

“Hanged, Drawn, Quartered and Published: Robert Southwell and the Reformation of English Poetry”

Dr. Gary Bouchard - Dr. Bouchard is a professor in the English Department of Saint Anselm College, Manchester, NH. Since 1987, he has served the College in a variety of capacities, including a five-year term as the College’s Executive Vice-President from 1998 to 2003. He currently serves as secretary of the Executive Board of New Hampshire Catholic Charities, as a trustee of Catholic Medical Center, and on boards at Bishop Brady High School and The Villa Augustina. Dr. Bouchard specializes in Early Modern lyric and narrative poetry. His book Southwell’s Sphere: The Influence of England’s Secret Poet (due out in January 2016) [sic?] discusses Southwell’s influence on seventeenth-century poets.

A poem by St. Robert Southwell, "Look Home"--could it have influenced John Donne?

Retired thoughts enjoy their own delights,
As beauty doth in self-beholding eye ;
Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights,
A brief wherein all marvels summed lie,
Of fairest forms and sweetest shapes the store,
Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more.

The mind a creature is, yet can create,
To nature's patterns adding higher skill ;
Of finest works with better could the state
If force of wit had equal power of will.
Device of man in working hath no end,
What thought can think, another thought can mend.

Man's soul of endless beauty image is,
Drawn by the work of endless skill and might ;
This skillful might gave many sparks of bliss
And, to discern this bliss, a native light ;
To frame God's image as his worths required
His might, his skill, his word and will conspired.

All that he had his image should present,
All that it should present it could afford,
To that he could afford his will was bent,
His will was followed with performing word.
Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest,
He should, he could, he would, he did, the best. 

Preview of the July/August Issue of StAR

Joseph Pearce previews the next issue of the St. Austin Review, and you might guess at my interest in the issue by the title (and the list of New poetry at the bottom!):

The next issue of the St. Austin Review will soon be winging its way to the printers. The theme is St. Robert Southwell: Priest, Poet, Martyr.

Highlights include:

   F. W. Brownlow reflects on “A Plaintive Muse: Robert Southwell’s Attack on Elizabethan Terror”.

   Joseph Pearce examines “The Bard and the Jesuit: Robert Southwell’s Influence on William Shakespeare”.

   Joseph Pearce reveals “Shakespeare’s Homage to Robert Southwell” in King Lear.

   Gary M. Bouchard sees “The Enduring Legacy of Robert Southwell” in his influence on a host of other poets from John Donne to Gerard Manley Hopkins.

   Melissa Siik discusses “Robert Southwell and the Formation of English National Identity”.

   Fr. Benedict Kiely rejoices in “The Joyful Witness of the English Martyrs”.

   The full colour art feature focuses on the work of Gwyneth Holston and her perceptions of “The Role of Art and the Vocation of the Artist”.

   Kevin O’Brien sees the use of torture today and in Elizabethan England as “The Destruction of God in Man”.

   Fr. Dwight Longenecker sees the parallels between “Science Fiction and the Metaphysicals”.

   James Bemis’s regular film review focuses on Monsieur Vincent.

   Donald DeMarco vents his justifiable spleen against the blatant bias of the New York Times.

   Regis Martin, Greg Peters, Paula Gallagher, Stephen Mirarchi, Thaddeus Kozinski, Rachel Ronnow, Ken Colston, Mitchell Kalpakgian and Marie Dudzik review eleven new books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

 

New poetry by Pavel Chichikov, Donald DeMarco, Stephanie A. Mann and Lisa Salinas.

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That's really extraordinarily humbling and delightful--to have a poem I wrote published in a magazine issue dedicated to such a great martyr-poet! (St. Robert Southwell is in the poem.) I look forward to seeing it in print next month.

Sweeney on St. Robert Southwell, Poet

I'm reading this book because of another book I've received to review; the author of that other book referred to the late Anne Sweeney's work on St. Robert Southwell's poetry and its place in the English poetic milieu of the sixteenth century. According to Oxford University Press which distributes the book published by Manchester University Press:

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.

I'm just a couple of chapters in and Sweeney provides an insight connected to Elizabeth Lev's book about Catholic Restoration art: the poetry Southwell wrote was inspired by the art he was seeing in the churches of Rome during his studies. Sweeney even notes the painting that may have inspired his best known poem, "The Burning Babe": The Vision of St. Ignatius at La Storta.

Part of her thesis on St. Robert Southwell's poetic method is that his shorter poems are filled with visual imagery, not Petrarchan repetition and elaboration. Therefore, the art that he lived with in Counter-Reformation Rome, especially the art in the Jesuit churches of Il Gesu, Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, and others influenced his poetry.  He transferred the impact of clear and expressive visual representations of sacred and spiritual things on the viewer to descriptive, concrete language.

As Sweeney notes, her book began because she wondered why Ben Jonson admired "The Burning Babe" so much. She believes it's the imagery, the sense of seeing something as you read the poem that elicited Jonson's admiration:

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

It's not just the image that comes to mind of a man standing in the cold and dark, the sudden appearance of a burning baby suspended in the air, the tears, the message of the baby (with its images of furnace, fire, smoke, ashes, coals, metal, etc), and his sudden disappearance, but also the feeling of shivering cold and blazing heat, and then the sudden realization of the date. The viewer has seen a vision of the infant Jesus already experiencing the suffering of His Passion and it is Christmas Day. This revelation came about not just by repetition and elaboration of abstract ideas, but by seeing something, describing it, and making the connection between the Incarnation and those abstract ideas of Love, Justice, and Mercy: the Paschal Mystery of the Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection: Jesus Christ Himself, whether Babe or Man.

Tomorrow, On the Son Rise Morning Show

Anna Mitchell and I will discuss the martyrdom in chains of St. Philip Howard tomorrow morning on the Son Rise Morning Show a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central. Please listen live or find the podcast in due time here.

It's so appropriate that we call St. Philip a martyr in chains, meaning that he died in prison, held there for his Catholic faith, because he was part of a chain--a link in a chain of martyrs. It was because of the example of St. Edmund Campion, the great Jesuit martyr that St. Philip became a Catholic; it was through the solace of St. Robert Southwell, the great Jesuit poet and martyr, that he was able to endure his imprisonment, as I explain in this post on my blog at the National Catholic Register:

The story of St. Philip Howard’s sanctification and martyrdom is inextricably linked with the mission and death of two Jesuit martyrs of the English Reformation era: St. Edmund Campion and St. Robert Southwell. . . .

Philip Howard, Edmund Campion, and Robert Southwell were all canonized together in 1970 by Pope Paul VI among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. After enduring affliction in this life, they are experiencing glory with Christ in Heaven.

Read the rest there, please.

St. Philip Howard, pray for us.
St. Edmund Campion, pray for us.
St. Henry Walpole, pray for us.
St. Robert Southwell, pray for us.

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!

February 21: Southwell and Newman

What a remarkable doctrine of the Church is the Communion of Saints! Two great holy men were born this day--one to eternal life, the other to life on earth: St. Robert Southwell was executed on February 21, 1595 and Blessed John Henry Newman was born on February 21, 1801. When I talked to Matt Swaim on the Son Rise Morning Show Friday, I mentioned the things these two men have in common:

~They are both Englishmen
~Both are converts to the Catholic faith from the Anglican church
~Both went to the Continent to study for the priesthood
~Both are order priests: Southwell a Jesuit and Newman an Oratorian
~Both are poets, although Southwell is probably the greater poet (but Newman's The Dream of Gerontius is a great achievement)

Of course, they differ vastly in their deaths and that marks their different status as saints in heaven: St. Robert Southwell was canonized as a martyr, while Newman was beatified--and perhaps soon will be canonized--as a confessor of the faith. Here's an article I wrote describing the differences between martyrs and confessors.

St. Robert Southwell was 33 years old when he was executed at Tyburn on February 21, 1595. When he cited his age during his trial, his torturer Richard Topcliffe mocked him for claiming equality with Jesus Christ. Southwell answered that he was but a worm.

It is hard to be temperate when writing about his arrest, torture and execution--it is obviously a horrendous blot against the Elizabethan "regime". He was betrayed by a woman that Elizabeth's pursuivant Richard Topcliffe had raped and blackmailed--he promised to find her a husband since she was pregnant with his child if she would turn Southwell in; he was tortured--illegally and excruciatingly--numerous times, starting with a visit to Topcliffe's personal torture chamber, while Elizabeth's officials looked on; then he was held in fetid conditions until his father visited him in Westminster's gatehouse and petitioned the queen to put him to death rather than leave him there, in his own filth.

Moved to the Tower of London he was held in greater but solitary comfort, but Queen Elizabeth allowed the sadistic Topcliffe to continue torturing Southwell, who had readily admitted his priesthood. Prior to his trial on February 20 he was moved into a hole called Limbo; the government did not even try to implicate him in any plot against the Queen; he was executed just because he was a Catholic priest. When he was executed on February 21st, the crowds made sure he was dead before the butchery began--and no one cheered when his severed head was displayed to the crowd. Indeed, Elizabeth's government recognized that they had gone too far--there was lull in executions of Catholic priests in London. Lord Cecil even ignored Topcliffe's desires to get started on new victims.

Robert Southwell was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 among the group called The 40 Martyrs of England and Wales. In addition to being a steadfast martyr, he is regarded as one of the great poets of the Elizabethan Age.

Pope St. John Paul II remembered the 200th anniversary of Newman's birth in this 2001 letter to Birmingham:

Newman was born in troubled times which knew not only political and military upheaval but also turbulence of soul. Old certitudes were shaken, and believers were faced with the threat of rationalism on the one hand and fideism on the other. Rationalism brought with it a rejection of both authority and transcendence, while fideism turned from the challenges of history and the tasks of this world to a distorted dependence upon authority and the supernatural. In such a world, Newman came eventually to a remarkable synthesis of faith and reason which were for him "like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth" (Fides et Ratio,Introduction; cf. ibid., 74). It was the passionate contemplation of truth which also led him to a liberating acceptance of the authority which has its roots in Christ, and to the sense of the supernatural which opens the human mind and heart to the full range of possibilities revealed in Christ. "Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on", Newman wrote in "The Pillar of the Cloud"; and for him Christ was the light at the heart of every kind of darkness. For his tomb he chose the inscription: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem; and it was clear at the end of his life’s journey that Christ was the truth he had found.

But Newman’s search was shot through with pain. Once he had come to that unshakeable sense of the mission entrusted to him by God, he declared: "Therefore, I will trust Him... If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him... He does nothing in vain... He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me. Still, He knows what He is about" (Meditations and Devotions). All these trials he knew in his life; but rather than diminish or destroy him they paradoxically strengthened his faith in the God who had called him, and confirmed him in the conviction that God "does nothing in vain". In the end, therefore, what shines forth in Newman is the mystery of the Lord’s Cross: this was the heart of his mission, the absolute truth which he contemplated, the "kindly light" which led him on.

John Henry Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict in 2010: we are awaiting the confirmation of a second miracle that would lead to his canonization. When he is canonized, he will be the first English saint since 1970 (referring to the canonization of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales) and the first British saint since 1976 (St. John Ogilvie, SJ, martyred in Scotland). Many Newman devotees hope that he will be declared a Doctor (Teacher) of the Church once he is canonized.

St. Robert Southwell, SJ

St. Robert Southwell was 33 years old when he was executed at Tyburn on February 21, 1595. When he cited his age during his trial, his torturer Richard Topcliffe mocked him for claiming equality with Jesus Christ. Southwell answered that he was but a worm.

It is hard to be temperate when writing about his arrest, torture and execution--it is obviously a horrendous blot against the Elizabethan "regime". He was betrayed by a woman that Elizabeth's pursuivant Richard Topcliffe had raped and blackmailed--he promised to find her a husband since she was pregnant with his child if she would turn Southwell in; he was tortured--illegally and excruciatingly--numerous times, starting with a visit to Topcliffe's personal torture chamber, while Elizabeth's officials looked on; then he was held in fetid conditions until his father visited him in Westminster's gatehouse and petitioned the queen to put him to death rather than leave him there, in his own filth.

Moved to the Tower of London he was held in greater but solitary comfort, but Queen Elizabeth allowed the sadistic Topcliffe to continue torturing Southwell, who had readily admitted his priesthood. Prior to his trial on February 20 he was moved into a hole called Limbo; the government did not even try to implicate him in any plot against the Queen; he was executed just because he was a Catholic priest. When he was executed on February 21st, the crowds made sure he was dead before the butchery began--and no one cheered when his severed head was displayed to the crowd. Indeed, Elizabeth's government recognized that they had gone too far--there was lull in executions of Catholic priests in London. Lord Cecil even ignored Topcliffe's desires to get started on new victims.

Robert Southwell was canonized by Pope Paul VI among the group called The Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. In addition to be a great saint and steadfast martyr, he is regarded as one of the great poets of the Elizabethan Age. Much of his poetry was written while he was held in solitary confinement in the Tower of London and was published posthumously.

 

One of the best accounts of his mission and his suffering is Philip Caraman's study of St. Robert Southwell's friendship with Father Henry Garnet, SJ, which I reviewed here.

Book Review: St. Robert Southwell and Henry Garnet by Philip Caraman, SJ

From The Institute of Jesuit Studies in St. Louis, MO (The Rome of the West!):
Saint Robert Southwell and Henry Garnet: A Study in Friendship by Philip Caraman, SJ--

This character study attempts to enter into the mind and heart of a brilliant, attractive, and astonishingly brave Elizabethan Jesuit, Robert Southwell, who was also a poet, a master of prose, and a martyr. He had a remarkable capacity for friendship, a subject on which he dwelt in his verse, his prose works, his meditations, and his letters. Among his dearest friends was Henry Garnet, a fellow Jesuit. Together they shared mortal dangers and a common ideal of religious commitment, both often described and expressed in their letters. Southwell's poems form a considerable part of this book, and they are often set in the framework of Garnet's letters, many of which were written to Claudio Aquaviva, superior general of the Jesuits and also a friend of them both. Robert Southwell's mother had been a playmate of Queen Elizabeth I; Sir Robert Cecil was his cousin. Yet as an English Jesuit priest he suffered torture for three years and in 1595 was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. A few years later, in 1606, in St. Paul's Churchyard in London, Garnet suffered the same death for the same commitment.

This is a miniature masterpiece of biography and insight. With tremendous sympathy and delicacy, Caraman enters into the relationship between these two men: how they complemented one another in their mission to set up the network for missionary priests in London and throughout the countryside. Garnet was the superior, yet he accorded Southwell much of the credit and the leadership of their efforts because of Southwell's gentle, empathetic appeal to both priests and laity. When Southwell was finally arrested, Garnett was briefly lost emotionally and psychologically. He asked to be replaced as the Jesuit Superior in England, but Aquaviva gently told him that his experience and skill were too valuable. Caraman highlights the loneliness of both men as they travelled separately about England and their letters to Aquaviva in Rome were one of their (dangerous) ways of reaching out to let the Jesuit community know what they were accomplishing.

Caraman's description of Southwell's three years of captivity and torture is riveting and his account of Southwell's trial is dramatic and gripping. The sequel to this book would be Caraman's Henry Garnett and the Gunpowder Plot. This book ends with Southwell's execution and Garnett's reactions and his efforts to continue the mission.

The Life and Works of St. Robert Southwell

Here's an excellent overview from The Poetry Foundation of St. Robert Southwell's life and literary works --and his brave endurance and execution:

Robert Southwell was born around 1561 at Horsham St. Faith, Norfolk, the youngest son and fifth child in a family of eight. The Southwells, a county family that had prospered from the dissolution of the monasteries, formed part of a network of wealthy, interrelated families that included the Wriothsleys, Howards, Bacons, and Cecils as well as recusants such as Vaux, Arden, and Copley. Southwell was a studious boy whose father liked to call him "Father Robert." In 1576 Southwell, like many other boys of his class, was sent overseas to be educated in the Jesuit school at Douai. He would not see England again for ten years. Between the ages of fifteen and seventeen he became convinced of his vocation to a religious life, and in 1578 he was admitted to the noviceship at Rome, where he embarked upon his formation as a Jesuit. In 1581 he transferred from the Roman to the English College, where he became tutor and perfect of studies. He was ordained in 1584 and was sent on the English mission in 1586, landing secretly with his fellow Jesuit Henry Garnet somewhere between Dover and Folkestone in early July. He was about twenty-five years old.

Christopher Devlin estimated a Catholic priest's chance of survival in England in 1586 as one in three. Southwell led the active but disguised and secret life of a pastor for six years, working mostly in and around London except for some journeys into the Midlands. For much of this period he lived under the protection of Anne, countess of Arundel, whose husband, the earl, was a prisoner in the Tower of London. In June 1592 the notorious priest hunter Richard Topcliffe succeeded in capturing Southwell. Topcliffe, Elizabeth I's servant and favorite, "an atrocious psychopath," in Geoffrey Hill's words, was allowed to torture prisoners in his own house. Southwell was in this man's hands and then in the hands of Privy Council interrogators and torturers for a month; news of his transfer to solitary confinement in the Tower was a relief to his friends.

After more than two years' imprisonment he was moved to the notorious cell in Newgate called Limbo, and his trial took place on 20 February 1595 under the statute of 1585, which had made it treason to be a Catholic priest and administer the sacraments in England. He was found guilty and was executed the next day by hanging, drawing, and quartering. At his trial Southwell said that he had been tortured ten times and would rather have endured ten executions. Pierre Janelle, who quotes the records in detail, writes that Southwell made of his trial and execution "a work of art of supreme beauty." He was thirty-three at his death. Pope Paul VI canonized him on 25 October 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Remember that I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show, produced by Sacred Heart Radio for the EWTN Radio Network, around 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central to discuss this great saint, poet, and martyr.

St. Philip Howard in the Tower of London

Today is the anniversary of St. Philip Howard's death in the Tower of London on Sunday of that year, October 19, 1595. He was canonized as a martyr saint by Pope Paul VI in 1970, along with 39 other martyrs, and in life, he was affected by two other martyrs: St. Edmund Campion, who influenced him without ever knowing it, I suppose, to return to his family's Catholic faith; and St. Robert Southwell, who served as Anne Howard's chaplain, and was also imprisoned in the Tower for a time. Reports are that St. Philip Howard's dog carried messages between them.

While in the Tower of London, as I mentioned yesterday on the Son Rise Morning Show, St. Philip Howard developed a tremendous regime of devotions, prayer, spiritual reading, and fasting/abstinence. He prayed the Divine Office, read the works of Louis of Granada, the Fathers of the Church (St. Jerome, for example), and Eusebius, whose history, he told St. Robert Southwell, was of comfort to him as it depicted the Church in "her infancy".

In 1588, when he was tried for having prayed for--specifically, having wanted a Mass offered in support of--the victory of the Spanish Armada, he began to fast three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. According to the source I'm using, The Other Face, a collection made by Philip Caraman, SJ, he would ask his servant to eat any meat offered to him when he was abstaining from meat, so that the guards would not know!

Like St. Robert Southwell--and like many of the educated noblemen of his day--St. Philip Howard wrote poetry. The famous Lament for Walsingham is attributed to him:

In the wracks of Walsingham
Whom should I choose
But the Queen of Walsingham
to be my guide and muse.

Then, thou Prince of Walsingham,
Grant me to frame
Bitter plaints to rue thy wrong,
Bitter woe for thy name.

Bitter was it so to see
The seely sheep
Murdered by the ravenous wolves
While the shepherds did sleep.

Bitter was it, O to view
The sacred vine,
Whilst the gardeners played all close,
Rooted up by the swine.

Bitter, bitter, O to behold
The grass to grow
Where the walls of Walsingham
So stately did show. . . .

The magnificent book, Firmly I Believe and Truly: The Spiritual Tradition of Catholic England, also attributes another poem to him, "On the Joys of Heaven" while Father Caraman includes a poem titled "A Prisoner's Prayer" in his collection.

St. Philip Howard, pray for us!

Preview: Three Martyred Saints in 1595

It's really kind of crazy of me to prepare to talk about three great martyrs in the time Matt Swaim and I will have on the Son Rise Morning Show this coming Monday, August 24. But it's also difficult to tell their stories and the connections among them in three separate segments. Saint Robert Southwell, SJ; Saint Henry Walpole, SJ; Saint Philip Howard--they all suffered martyrdom in 1595:

Saint Robert Southwell was hanged, drawn and quartered on February 15, 1595.

Saint Henry Walpole was hanged, drawn and quartered on April 7, 1595.

Saint Philip Howard died in the Tower of London ("martyr in chains") on October 19, 1595.

Southwell and Howard were connected because Southwell served Howard's wife, Anne (Dacre), as confessor and chaplain even after Howard was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. They shared incarceration in the Tower for a time, with Saint Philip Howard's dog as a go-between, carrying messages.

Walpole and Southwell were connected because the Jesuits hoped that Walpole could take Southwell's place in the Mission to England after Southwell was arrested, imprisoned and tortured. Both Walpole and Southwell endured torture at Richard Topcliffe's hands.Walpole was imprisoned in the Tower of London while Southwell and Howard were imprisoned there too in 1594 and 1595, but I've never read of any contact with him, even through a dog, by either Southwell or Howard.

Howard and Walpole also share the inspiration for their conversions and Walpole's vocation: Saint Edmund Campion.

Sir Philip Howard converted to Catholicism in 1584, influenced by the example of St. Edmund Campion in 1581; he was received by another Jesuit priest, Father William Weston. Howard was arrested while trying to leave England in 1585 and held in the Tower of London until his death, tried in 1588 for treason because of supposed prayers for the success of the Spanish Armada, and found guilty. No date for execution was ever set. He prayed and fasted and kept himself prepared for death. As a nobleman, he was never tortured, although separation from his wife and children (his son Thomas had been born after he was imprisoned) must have caused him great sorrow. Upon his conversion in 1584 he had become a devoted husband; he had neglected Anne while at Elizabeth I's Court before that. He carved a motto in one of the walls of his cell: 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.”)

Father Robert Southwell, after study and ordination on the Continent, returned to England in 1586; in 1589 he became Lady Anne Howard's chaplain. He wrote An Epistle of Comfort for Philip Howard, urging him to remain true to the Catholic faith. Arrested in 1592, Southwell was tortured by Richard Topcliffe in his home near the Gatehouse Prison for 40 hours and then moved to the Gatehouse for more torture and finally to the Tower of London at his father's insistence that he either be tried and executed or treated like a gentleman in prison, not "hurt, starving, covered with maggots and lice, to lie in his own filth." (His father Robert Southwell was the illegitimate son of Sir Richard Southwell, one of the men who accompanied Sir Richard Rich to Saint Thomas More's cell in the Tower of London to take away More's books and papers and pens!) Thus for three years out of ten of Howard's years in the Tower, Southwell was held in solitary confinement; his father was allowed to provide for his needs, and he had a Bible, a Breviary, and the works of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux--but Richard Topcliffe was still supervising his incarceration.

Father Henry Walpole was converted and inspired by Saint Edmund Campion's martyrdom on December 1, 1581, as some of the blood of the martyr splashed on his sleeve. He had been studying a Gray's Inn for a legal career, but left England to study for the priesthood and join the Society of Jesus. When he arrived in England in December of 1593, he was almost immediately arrested. By the end of February, 1594 he was moved from York to the Tower of London, where he endured torture at the hands of Richard Topcliffe. I don't know if Southwell and Howard knew of Walpole's imprisonment and torture as he was both tracked and hanged by the wrists for hours by Topcliffe. Topcliffe carefully spread out this torture over 14 months, even though Walpole had already confessed that he was Jesuit and had come to England to serve Catholics. He carved his name in the wall of his cell along with a litany of saints' names: Peter, Paul, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory the Great.

These three men, being well educated gentlemen, were also poets, although Robert Southwell would have to be considered the best poet among them. Henry Walpole was inspired not only to study for the priesthood by Campion's martyrdom, but wrote a poem about him, "Why do I use my paper, ink, and pen" which William Byrd set to music. A poem about the destruction of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham is attributed to Philip Howard. You might want to listen to this long but informative podcast from CatholicCulture.com featuring more English martyr poets.

I'll provide some details about their martyrdoms in 1595 on Monday, August 24.

Saint Robert Southwell, pray for us!
Saint Henry Walpole, pray for us!
Saint Philip Howard, pray for us!

This Morning: The Martyrs of 1595

Just a reminder that I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to continue our series on the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales. Matt Swaim and I will discuss the Providential connections among Saints Robert Southwell, Henry Walpole, and Philip Howard!

Those connections make me think of a sentence from Saint John Henry Newman's famous meditation: "I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons." These saints forged a strong chain of faithfulness and fortitude.

Please listen live here on the Sacred Heart Radio website; the podcast will be archived here; the segment will be repeated on Friday next week during the EWTN hour of the Son Rise Morning Show (from 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. Eastern/5:00 to 6:00 a.m. Central).

According to this website, St. Robert Southwell comported himself so bravely at his execution at Tyburn Tree that he was hanged until dead before being butchered:

Like many martyrs before him, Southwell drew the admiration of the crowds because he walked as though he whole being were filled with happiness at the prospect of being executed the next day. On the morrow, the tall, slight man of light brown hair and beard was taken to the Tyburn Tree, a gallows, where the custom was for the condemned to be drive underneath the gallows in a cart, a rope secured around his neck, and the cart driven from under him. According to the sentence, the culprit would hang until he was dead or cut down before reaching that point. [Southwell was to be hanged, eviscerated, and quartered.]

Standing in the cart, Father Southwell began preaching on Romans 14: "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord: or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's... I am brought hither to perform the last act of this miserable life, and... I do most humbly desire at the hands of Almighty God for our Savior Jesus' sake, that He would vouchsafe to pardon and forgive all my sins...". He acknowledged that he was a Catholic priest and declared that he never intended harm or evil against the Queen, but always prayed for her. He end with "In manus tuas, Domine (into Your hands, Lord), I commend my spirit". Contrary to the sentence, he was dead before he was cut down and quartered (Benedictines, Delaney, Undset).

Other reports indicated that no one cheered when his severed head was displayed to the crowd. Indeed, Elizabeth's government recognized that Southwell's execution had had the opposite effect from what they desired--there was lull in executions of Catholic priests in London. 

After enduring a year of torture administered by Richard Topcliffe in the Tower of London Saint Henry Walpole was taken back to York to stand trial under the law that made it high treason for an Englishman simply to return home after receiving Holy Orders abroad. The man who had once aspired to be a lawyer defended himself ably, pointing out that the law only applied to priests who had not given themselves up to officials within three days of arrival. He himself had been arrested less than a day after landing in England, so he had not violated that law. The judges responded by demanding that he take the Oath of Supremacy, acknowledging the queen's complete authority in religion. He refused to do so and was convicted of high treason. 

On April 7, Walpole was dragged out of York to be executed along with another priest who was killed first (Blessed Alexander Rawlins). Then the Jesuit climbed the ladder to the gallows and asked the onlookers to pray with him. After he finished the Our Father but before he could say the Hail Mary, the executioner pushed him away from the ladder; then he was taken down and dismembered. The Jesuits in England lost a promising young priest whom they had hoped would take the place of Father Southwell; they received another example of fidelity and courage. 

As this blog describes Saint Philip Howard's death, it came "by degrees" under the threat of execution and while suffering long imprisonment in the Tower of London:

By the time Robert Southwell was executed at Tyburn, Philip was dying by degrees, from the privations of his imprisonment. He appealed again to the Queen to allow him to see his wife and son. The Queen replied: if Philip would go but once to their church, not only would she grant his request, but he would be restored to his estates and honours with as much favour as she could show. Philip once more sadly declined the offer. Nothing could show more clearly that, as Robert Southwell had written, “your cause, by whatever name it may be disfigured, by whatever colour deformed in the eyes of men, is religion.”

The last night of his life was spent mainly in prayer; he died on Sunday 19th October 1595 at noon. He was thirty eight. The immediate cause of death was most probably dysentery, though rumours of poison were current at the time. They buried him in his father’s grave in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower. It was nearly thirty years before his widow could get his body removed to her home at West Horsley, and then to Arundel, to be laid in the family vault, the Fitzalan Chapel.

Saint Robert Southwell, pray for us!
Saint Henry Walpole, pray for us!
Saint Philip Howard, pray for us!