Preview: Bowden's "Mementoes" of Blessed Francis Page, SJ

Continuing our series on the Son Rise Morning Show based on Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors on Monday, April 24 we'll explore his comments on (then Venerable) Blessed Francis Page, SJ. This segment will offer listeners the first hints of Father Bowden's elegant style.

I'll be on at my usual hour, around 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central. Please listen live here and subscribe to the daily email for reminders here.

Francis Page was born in Antwerp of English parents—his date of birth is unknown— and went to England to study law at one of the Inns of Court in London. While his parents were Protestants (presumably Anglicans), he had been living in a Catholic country; at the Inns of Court he met more Catholics. He fell in love with a Catholic girl who wanted him to convert to Catholicism before they married: two very dangerous actions! It was a felony for her to try to convert him and an act of treason for him to become a Catholic, But he loved her and so studied the faith, with yet another consequence, one she had surely not foreseen.

As the Jesuits in Singapore explain:

His Catholic roommate had, as his confessor, Fr John Gerard, a Jesuit priest. So it was to Fr Gerald that Francis went for instruction. The more he studied religion, the more he felt drawn to the priesthood. Much to his fiancée’s sorrow, Francis called off the marriage as he began to think of the priesthood. When Fr Gerard was arrested and transferred to the Tower of London, Francis would stand outside the prison everyday just to get a glimpse of the priest and for his blessing. His suspicious actions led to a brief arrest and after his release, Francis decided to follow the call and joined the English College in Rheims, France. He was ordained in 1600.

Father Bowden devotes two entries to Blessed Francis Page, SJ on April 27 and 28, pages 142 and 143. As he does with each of the mementoes in the book, Bowden gives a title to the meditation and provides a verse from the Holy Bible for meditation. On April 27, the title is “Light and Darkness” and the verse is from the Book of Job: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away . . . blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

On April 28, the title is "Love, Earthly and Heavenly" and the Bible verse is "With the robe of justice he hath covered me, as a bridegroom decked with a crown, and as a bride adorned with her jewels." from Isaiah 61:10.

Between the two entries, Father Bowden describes how Blessed Francis Page barely escaped the raid on Saint Anne Line's safe-house as he was celebrating Mass on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2, 1601, and how he was finally arrested when a woman who had pretended to be a Catholic informed on him. But it's in the entry for April 27, that Father Bowden offers some great spiritual counsel as he describes Father Page's reactions to the news that his day of execution, April 20, 1602, had been set:

Fr. Page received the message as from heaven, and, having celebrated the Holy Mysteries, was so filled with joy and supernatural light that it seemed as it nothing could separate him from the love of his Lord. But that he might know that this sensible devotion is God's free gift, and might learn something also of the anguish of His Savior in Gethsemane, he was of a sudden deprived of these extraordinary favors, and like his Master, became sad, sorrowful, even unto death. . . . The storm continued until the sheriff sent to him to prepare for death as the hour was at hand. The message in a moment restored calm to his soul and he went to meet death with every sign of joy. The whole way to Tyburn his soul was engaged in prayer, and with the holy name of Jesus on his lips the cart was drawn away--on April 20, 1602*.

Father Bowden describes Father Page's feelings of Consolation and Desolation, to use the Ignatian terms, in this passage as an example of a martyr's true heroism. Toward the end of Elizabeth I's reign, a Catholic missionary to England knew the danger he faced, and Father Page, having escaped capture, imprisonment, and execution once before, and knowing that Anne Line had suffered in his place on February 27, 1601, surely knew his day of martyrdom could, would come. So he was able to persevere through that Desolation of fear and trepidation. He asked Father Floyd, a Jesuit priest in prison with him, to pray for him so he could prepare again to face his death with Consolation and poise, demonstrating his resolution at Tyburn Tree, which he did.

Father Floyd also received the martyr into the Society of Jesus: having been instructed by a Jesuit, Father John Gerard, Page had contacted Father Henry Garnet, SJ about his interest in joining the Society, but had been arrested before he could return to the Continent for his formation.

Blessed Francis Page, SJ, pray for us!

*The year is incorrect on page 142, however.

Image Credit (Public Domain): James Tissot's The Grotto of the Agony (La Grotte de l'agonie)

April 20, Part Four: Blesseds Watkinson and Page and Venerable Tichborne

Blessed Francis Page, SJ was born in Antwerp of English Protestant parents. He went to England and fell in love with Catholic girl who would not marry him because he was Protestant, so he studied to become a Catholic, with unforeseen results, according to the Jesuit Curia in Rome:

The more he studied religion, the more he felt drawn to the priesthood, much to the young woman's chagrin. The young student went to a Jesuit, Father John Gerard, for religious instruction. When Gerard was arrested and incarcerated in the Tower of London, Francis Page stood outside the prison day after day. His suspicious actions led to a brief arrest, but he decided to follow the call and crossed the Channel to Rheims, France, where he entered the English College.

When he returned to London after being ordained in 1600, he was able to do ministry for over a year. He narrowly escaped arrest one time just as he was about to begin celebrating Mass. He barely had time to remove his vestments and then sit in the congregation as though waiting for the priest to appear. The woman who was hosting the Mass in her home, Anne Line, helped him escape but she herself was arrested and later executed for harboring a priest. She was canonized in 1970.

Fourteen months later Page was not so fortunate when he was recognized by a woman who made it her business to turn priests in so she could collect the reward. He took refuge in an inn but she raised such an outcry that the innkeeper kept Page until authorities arrived to seize him. Page's trial on April 19, 1602 led to a predictable condemnation to die for high treason. He had applied to become a Jesuit but was not able to go back to the Continent to enter the novitiate. The night before he was killed he was allowed to join a Jesuit imprisoned in the adjoining cell; the young priest took vows as a Jesuit, a fact he proudly proclaimed the next day as he stood at the gallows, just before he was hung and then dismembered.

Venerable Thomas Tichborne is one of two brothers in the recusant Catholic family (which included Chidiock Tichborne of the Babington Plot, their cousin) who suffered martyrdom:

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, Venerable Thomas Tichborne:

Born at Hartley, Hampshire, 1567; martyred at Tyburn, London, 20 April, 1602. He was educated at Rheims (1584-87) and Rome, where he was ordained on Ascension Day, 17 May, 1592. Returning to England on 10 March, 1594, he laboured in his native county, where he escaped apprehension till the early part of 1597. He was sent a prisoner to the Gatehouse in London, but in the autumn of 1598 was helped to escape by his brother, Ven. Nicholas Tichborne, and Ven. Thomas Hackshot, who were both martyred shortly afterwards. Betrayed by Atkinson, an apostate priest, he was re-arrested and on 17 April, 1602, was brought to trial with Ven. Robert Watkinson (a young Yorkshire man who had been educated at Rome and ordained priest at Douai a month before) and Ven. James Duckett, a London bookseller. On 20 April he was executed with Ven. Robert Watkinson and Ven. Francis Page, S.J. The last named was a convert, of a Middlesex family though born in Antwerp. He had been ordained at Douai in 1600 and received into the Society of Jesus while a prisoner in Newgate. Ven. Thomas Tichborne was in the last stages of consumption when he was martyred.

This blog recounts the story of Blessed Robert Watkinson, as "related by Fr Bowden, C.O. in his Mementoes of the Martyrs of England and Wales":

He was born at Hemingborough, Yorkshire, educated at Douay and Rome, and ordained priest at Arras. In 1602 he crossed to England, and, being in ill health, put himself under the care of a physician in London. A few days later, while he was walking in the street, he met a stranger, in appearance a venerable old man, who saluted him with these words, “Jesus bless you, sir, you seem to be sick and troubled with many infirmities; but be of good cheer, for within these four days you shall be cured of all.” And so it happened, for the next day, Saturday, April 17, through the treachery of an apostate priest, he was apprehended, tried and condemned, and was executed at Tyburn on the Tuesday following, April 20, and so found rest. On the morning of execution he found means to celebrate Mass in prison; those who were present, and especially Mr Henry Owen, his server and prisoner for conscience' sake, saw about his head while he was celebrating a bright light like a ray of glory, which from the consecration to the communion rested directly over his head and then disappeared. This martyr was only twenty-three years old.

Blessed James Bell, pray for us.

Blessed John Finch, pray for us.

Blessed Richard Sargeant, pray for us.

Blessed William Thomson, pray for us.

Blessed Robert Watkinson, pray for us.

Blessed Francis Page, pray for us.

Venerable Thomas Tichborne, pray for us.

Holy martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us.

Holy confessors of England and Wales, pray for us.

Seven (7) Martyrs on April 20: 1584, 1586, 1602

Even though there are seven Catholic martyrs today, Annie Mitchell and I are only able to discuss two of them this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show: Blessed James Bell and Blessed John Finch, a priest and a layman executed in Lancaster on April 20, 1584. Blessed James Bell was born during the reign of Henry VIII! ordained during the reign of Mary I! I'll be on during the National EWTN hour.

Blessed James Bell: Priest and martyr, b. at Warrington in Lancashire, England, probably about 1520; d. 20 April, 1584. For the little known of him we depend on the account published four years after his death by Bridgewater in his "Concertatio" (1588), and derived from a manuscript which was kept at Douay when Challoner wrote his "Missionary Priests" in 1741, and is now in the Westminster Diocesan Archives. A few further details were collected by Challoner, and others are supplied by the State Papers. Having studied at Oxford he was ordained priest in Mary's reign, but unfortunately conformed to the established Church under Elizabeth, and according to the Douay manuscript "ministered their bare few sacraments about 20 years in diverse places of England". Finally deterred by conscience from the cure of souls and reduced to destitution, he sought a small readership as a bare subsistence. To obtain this he approached the patron's wife, a Catholic lady, who induced him to be reconciled to the Church. After some time he was allowed to resume priestly functions, and for two years devoted himself to arduous missionary labours. He was at length apprehended (17 January 1583-84) and, having confessed his priesthood, was arraigned at Manchester Quarter-Sessions held during the same month, and sent for trial at Lancaster Assizes in March. When condemned and sentenced he said to the Judge: "I beg your Lordship would add to the sentence that my lips and the tops of my fingers may be cut off, for having sworn and subscribed to the articles of heretics contrary both to my conscience and to God's Truth". He spent that night in prayer and on the following day was hanged and quartered together with Blessed John Finch, a layman, 20 April, 1584.

Blessed John Finch: A martyr, b. about 1548; d. 20 April, 1584. He was a yeoman of Eccleston, Lancashire, and a member of a well-known old Catholic family, but he appears to have been brought up in schism. When he was twenty years old he went to London where he spent nearly a year with some cousins at Inner Temple. While there he was forcibly struck by the contrast between Protestantism and Catholicism in practice and determined to lead a Catholic life. Failing to find advancement in London he returned to Lancashire where he was reconciled to Catholic Church. He then married and settled down, his house becoming a centre of missionary work, he himself harbouring priests and aiding them in every way, besides acting as catechist. His zeal drew on him the hostility of the authorities, and at Christmas, 1581, he was entrapped into bringing a priest, George Ostliffe, to a place where both were apprehended. It was given out that Finch, having betrayed the priest and other Catholics, had taken refuge with the Earl of Derby, but in fact, he was kept in the earl's house as a prisoner, sometimes tortured and sometimes bribed in order to pervert him and induce him to give information. This failing, he was removed to the Fleet prison at Manchester and afterwards to the House of Correction. 
When he refused to go to the Protestant church he was dragged there by the feet, his head beating on the stones. For many months he lay in a damp dungeon, ill-fed and ill-treated, desiring always that he might be brought to trial and martyrdom. After three years' imprisonment, he was sent to be tried at Lancaster. There he was brought to trial with three priests on 18 April, 1584. He was found guilty and, 20 April, having spent the night in converting some condemned felons, he suffered with Ven. James Bell at Lancaster. The cause of his beatification with those of the other English Martyrs was introduced by decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, 4 Dec., 1886.

They were both beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.

Blessed Richard Sargeant and Blessed William Thomson suffered on April 20, 1586. Find their stories here.

Blessed Thomas Tichborne, Blessed Robert Watkinson, and Blessed Francis Page all endured martyrdom at Tyburn in London on April 20, 1602. These five martyrs were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987.

Blessed James Bell, pray for us.

Blessed John Finch, pray for us.

Blessed Richard Sargeant, pray for us.

Blessed William Thomson, pray for us.

Blessed Thomas Tichborne, pray for us.

Blessed Robert Watkinson, pray for us.

Blessed Francis Page, pray for us.

Holy martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us.

Holy confessors of England and Wales, pray for us.

From Candlemas to Execution: St. Anne and Three Priests

There is a rich story here of martyrdom, the relationships between Recusant Catholic laity and priests, and of love and sacrifice. Although only two priests were martyred with St. Anne Line on February 27, 1601, a third priest connected with her story suffered there a year and a couple of months later. That's why I mention three priests in the headline--and then just think of how many more priests St. Anne Line had assisted and protected! Corpus Christi Watershed has published a Mass in her honor. Reports I've read indicated that she was carried to court and to the scaffold because she was so weak, but perhaps she did stand as depicted above before being hung to declare: "I am sentenced to die for harbouring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one [actually, there were many], I could have entertained a thousand."

Anne Heigham Line was a convert to Catholicism; she and her brother William Heigham were disinherited and disowned by their Calvinist father. In 1586 she married Roger Line, another disinherited convert. Not long after Anne and Roger married, he and her brother William were arrested for attending Mass and were exiled from England. Roger lived in Flanders and died in 1594.

Father John Gerard SJ, author of the famous book Autobiography of an Elizabethan Priest, asked Anne to manage two different safe houses for Jesuits, even though she was ill, but because she was destitute, surviving on teaching and sewing. She was arrested on the Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 1601, when Father Francis Page, SJ was celebrating Mass; he escaped with her help. She was tried on February 26, carried to court in a chair, where she admitted joyfully that she had helped Father Page escape and only regretted that she had not been able to help even more priests escape! After her execution by hanging, Father Filcock kissed her dead hand and the hem of her dress as she still hung from the gibbet and proclaimed, “You have gotten the start of us, sister, but we will follow you as quickly as we may.” Barkworth was first to be hung, disemboweled and quartered. Filcock had to watch his companion suffer, knowing that he would immediately follow. 

Blessed Mark Barkworth OSB was born about 1572 at Searby in Lincolnshire. He studied for a time at Oxford, though no record remains of his stay there. He was received into the Catholic Church at Douai in 1593, by Father George, a Flemish Jesuit and entered the College there with a view to the priesthood. He matriculated at Douai University on 5 October 1594.

On account of an outbreak of the plague, in 1596 Barkworth was sent to Rome and thence to Valladolid in Spain, where he entered the English College on 28 December 1596. On his way to Spain he is said to have had a vision of St Benedict, who told him he would die a martyr, in the Benedictine habit. While at Valladolid he make firmer contact with to the Benedictine Order. The "Catholic Encyclopedia" notes that there are accounts that his interest in the Benedictines resulted in suffering at the hands of the College superiors, but the Encyclopedia expresses skepticism, suggesting anti-Jesuit bias.

Barkworth was ordained priest at the English College some time before July 1599, when he set out for the English Mission together with Father Thomas Garnet. On his way he stayed at the Benedictine Monastery of Hyrache in Navarre, where his wish to join the order was granted by his being made an Oblate with the privilege of making profession at the hour of death.

After having escaped from the hands of the Huguenots of La Rochelle, he was arrested on reaching England and thrown into Newgate, where he was imprisoned for six months, and was then transferred to Bridewell. There he wrote an appeal to Robert Cecil, signed "George Barkworth". At his examinations he was reported to behave with fearlessness and frank gaiety. Having been condemned with a formal jury verdict, he was thrown into "Limbo", the horrible underground dungeon at Newgate, where he is said to have remained "very cheerful" till his death.

Father Barkworth sang, on the way to Tyburn, the Paschal Anthem: "Hæc dies quam, fecit Dominus exultemus et lætemur in ea", and Father Filcock joined him in the chant:

Hæc dies quam fecit Dominus; [This is the day which the Lord has made:]
exsultemus, et lætemur in ea. [let us be glad and rejoice in it.]

At Tyburn he told the people: "I am come here to die, being a Catholic, a priest, and a religious man, belonging to the Order of St Benedict; it was by this same order that England was converted." 

He was said to be "a man of stature tall and well proportioned showing strength, the hair of his head brown, his beard yellow, somewhat heavy eyed". He was of a cheerful disposition. He suffered in the Benedictine habit, under which he wore a hair-shirt. It was noticed that his knees were, like St. James', hardened by constant kneeling, and an apprentice in the crowd picking up his legs, after the quartering, called out: "Which of you Gospellers can show such a knee?" Contrary to usual practice, the quarters of the priests were not exposed but buried near the scaffold. They were later retrieved by Catholics. 

Blessed Roger Filcock (1570-1601) was arrested in England while he was fulfilling a probationary period prior to entering the Jesuits. He had studied at the English College in Rheims, France and then in Valladolid, Spain, but when he asked to join the Society he was encouraged to apply again after ministering for awhile in England.

His journey into England was difficult enough. The ship he was traveling on from Bilbao, Spain to Calais, France, was becalmed just outside the port and fell pray to a Dutch ship blockading the harbor. Filcock was captured, but managed to escape and land surreptitiously on the shore in Kent in 1598. Soon after he began his ministry, he contacted Father Henry Garnet, the Jesuit superior, asking to become a Jesuit. He was accepted into the Society in 1600, but then was betrayed by someone he had studied with in Spain. He was arrested and committed to Newgate Prison in London. His trial did not last long, despite the fact that there was no evidence against him and that the names in the indictment were not names he had used. Before he suffered, he paid tribute to Father Barkworth, saying, "Pray for me to our Lord, whose presence you now enjoy, that I too may faithfully run my course."

St. Anne Line was among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. She, St. Margaret Clitherow and St. Margaret Ward share a separate Feast on August 30 (the date of St. Margaret Ward's martyrdom in 1588) in the dioceses of England. Blessed Mark Barkworth was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929. Pope John Paul II beatified Blessed Roger Filcock on the 22nd of November 1987. 

Father Francis Page, whom St. Anne Line had protected at the Mass of the Presentation of Our Lord was later arrested and executed for his priesthood, suffering a little more than a year later, on April 20, 1602. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.

Seven Martyrs on April 20 in Three Years

It's heartbreaking to think that such a beautiful day in the midst of April and springtime would be marred by such violence. In addition to being the dies natalis of seven martyrs, beatified by the Catholic Church, today is also the anniversary of the beginning of Henry VIII's judicial revenge on any and all who opposed his Succession and Supremacy, with the executions of Elizabeth Barton and her confessors and spiritual advisers.

For more information about the Nun of Kent and companions, executed in 1534, click here.

For details about Blesseds James Bell and John Finch, martyred in 1584, click here.

For the stories of Blesseds Richard Sergeant and William Thomson, martyred two years later in 1586, click here.

And finally, for information on Blesseds Thomas Tichhorne, Robert Watkinson, and Francis Page, hung, drawn, and quartered in 1602, click here.

Blessed Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

St. Anne Line and Three Priests at Tyburn

There is a rich story here of martyrdom, the relationships between Recusant Catholic laity and priests, and of love and sacrifice. Although only two priests were martyred with St. Anne Line on February 27, 1601, a third priest connected with her story suffered there a year and a couple of months later. That's why I mention three priests in the headline--and then just think of how many more priests St. Anne Line had assisted and protected!

Anne Heigham Line was a convert to Catholicism; she and her brother William Heigham were disinherited and disowned by their Calvinist father. In 1586 she married Roger Line, another disinherited convert. Not long after Anne and Roger married, he and her brother William were arrested for attending Mass and were exiled from England. Roger lived in Flanders and died in 1594.

Father John Gerard SJ, author of the famous book Autobiography of an Elizabethan Priest, asked Anne to manage two different safe houses for Jesuits, even though she was ill, but because she was destitute, surviving on teaching and sewing. She was arrested on the Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 1601, when Father Francis Page was celebrating Mass; he escaped with her help. She was tried on February 26, carried to court in a chair, where she admitted joyfully that she had helped Father Page escape and only regretted that she had not been able to help even more priests escape!

She was hung at Tyburn in London on February 27 and repeated her statement from court before her execution: "I am sentenced to die for harboring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand." Two priests, Father Roger Filcock and Father Mark Barkworth, paid tribute to her before their own executions, drawn, hung, and quartered. Father Filcock kissed her dead hand and the hem of her dress as she still hung from the gibbet and proclaimed, “You have gotten the start of us, sister, but we will follow you as quickly as we may.”

Blessed Mark Barkworth OSB was born about 1572 at Searby in Lincolnshire. He studied for a time at Oxford, though no record remains of his stay there. He was received into the Catholic Church at Douai in 1593, by Father George, a Flemish Jesuit and entered the College there with a view to the priesthood. He matriculated at Douai University on 5 October 1594.

On account of an outbreak of the plague, in 1596 Barkworth was sent to Rome and thence to Valladolid in Spain, where he entered the English College on 28 December 1596. On his way to Spain he is said to have had a vision of St Benedict, who told him he would die a martyr, in the Benedictine habit. While at Valladolid he make firmer contact with to the Benedictine Order. The "Catholic Encyclopedia" notes that there are accounts that his interest in the Benedictines resulted in suffering at the hands of the College superiors, but the Encyclopedia expresses scepticism, suggesting anti-Jesuit bias.

Barkworth was ordained priest at the English College some time before July 1599, when he set out for the English Mission together with Father Thomas Garnet. On his way he stayed at the Benedictine Monastery of Hyrache in Navarre, where his wish to join the order was granted by his being made an Oblate with the privilege of making profession at the hour of death.

After having escaped from the hands of the Huguenots of La Rochelle, he was arrested on reaching England and thrown into Newgate, where he was imprisoned for six months, and was then transferred to Bridewell. There he wrote an appeal to Robert Cecil, signed "George Barkworth". At his examinations he was reported to behave with fearlessness and frank gaiety. Having been condemned with a formal jury verdict, he was thrown into "Limbo", the horrible underground dungeon at Newgate, where he is said to have remained "very cheerful" till his death.

Barkworth was executed at Tyburn with Jesuit Roger Filcock and Anne Line, on 27 February 1601. He sang, on the way to Tyburn, the Paschal Anthem: "Hæc dies quam, fecit Dominus exultemus et lætemur in ea", and Father Filcock joined him in the chant:

Hæc dies quam fecit Dominus; [This is the day which the Lord has made:]
exsultemus, et lætemur in ea. [let us be glad and rejoice in it.]

At Tyburn he told the people: "I am come here to die, being a Catholic, a priest, and a religious man, belonging to the Order of St Benedict; it was by this same order that England was converted."

He was said to be "a man of stature tall and well proportioned showing strength, the hair of his head brown, his beard yellow, somewhat heavy eyed". He was of a cheerful disposition. He suffered in the Benedictine habit, under which he wore a hair-shirt. It was noticed that his knees were, like St. James', hardened by constant kneeling, and an apprentice in the crowd picking up his legs, after the quartering, called out: "Which of you Gospellers can show such a knee?" Contrary to usual practice, the quarters of the priests were not exposed but buried near the scaffold. They were later retrieved by Catholics.

Blessed Roger Filcock (1570-1601) was arrested in England while he was fulfilling a probationary period prior to entering the Jesuits. He had studied at the English College in Rheims, France and then in Valladolid, Spain, but when he asked to join the Society he was encouraged to apply again after ministering for awhile in England.

His journey into England was difficult enough. The ship he was traveling on from Bilbao, Spain to Calais, France, was becalmed just outside the port and fell pray to a Dutch ship blockading the harbor. Filcock was captured, but managed to escape and land surreptitiously on the shore in Kent in 1598. Soon after he began his ministry, he contacted Father Henry Garnet, the Jesuit superior, asking to become a Jesuit. He was accepted into the Society in 1600, but then was betrayed by someone he had studied with in Spain. He was arrested and committed to Newgate Prison in London. His trial did not last long, despite the fact that there was no evidence against him and that the names in the indictment were not names he had used. Together with Father Mark Barkworth, a Benedictine, he was tied to a hurdle and dragged through the streets to Tyburn. Barkworth was first to be hung, disembowelled and quartered. Filcock had to watch his companion suffer, knowing that he would immediately follow.

St. Anne Line was among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. She, St. Margaret Clitherow and St. Margaret Ward share a separate Feast on August 30 (the date of St. Margaret Ward's martyrdom in 1588) in the dioceses of England. Blessed Mark Barkworth was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929. Pope John Paul II beatified Blessed Roger Filcock on the 22nd of November 1987.

Father Francis Page, whom St. Anne Line had protected at the Mass of the Presentation of Our Lord was later arrested and executed for his priesthood, suffering on April 20, 1602. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.

Anne Line and Shakespeare: Tragedy and Christ

On my review stack is this volume, Anne Line: Shakespeare's Tragic Muse by Martin Dodwell. Mr. Dodwell follows up on the efforts of John Finnis and Patrick Martin, and others, who see a connection between Shakespearean works and the story of Anne Line. I've only read a couple of chapters, so I'll withhold my opinion about Dodwell's work.

Surely, however, Anne Line's story is tragic--and amazing--not because of any flaw (the English major's knowledge that every tragic hero has to have a "tragic flaw"), but because of her virtue of conscientious faithfulness. She is rejected by her family because she becomes a Catholic; she loses her husband to exile because they are Catholic and he attends Catholic Mass; she is arrested and condemned to hanging because she aids Catholic priests, and finally she is buried without ceremony or consecration--cast off like a suicide. All of her actions are indeed in conflict with her country's laws and culture, which condemn her Catholicism as treason against the state (and against the monarch). Like Antigone burying her father and brother against Creon's decree, Anne Line upholds her Catholic faith against Elizabeth I's Protestant laws.

There is, of course, a crucial distinction for a Christian tragic heroine: the Resurrection. Now death itself is not tragic in the same sense--it is not just Anne Line's death that appeases the Elizabethan recusancy and penal laws as the ancient Attic tragedy required. With the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, as David B. Hart argued in a First Things article  almost 10 years ago (in 2003!), the whole concept of tragedy has changed. When He was crucified, condemned by Pontius Pilate, He overturned that idea of tragedy, because He rose from the dead, defeating Roman execution. Hart explains the Attic view of tragedy and expiation:

As it happens, the word “tragic” is especially apt here. A sacrificial mythos need not always express itself in slaughter, after all. Attic tragedy, for instance, began as a sacrificial rite. It was performed during the festival of Dionysus, which was a fertility festival, of course, but only because it was also an apotropaic celebration of delirium and death: the Dionysia was a sacred negotiation with the wild, antinomian cruelty of the god whose violent orgiastic cult had once, so it was believed, gravely imperiled the city; and the hope that prompted the feast was that, if this devastating force could be contained within bright Apollonian forms and propitiated through a ritual carnival of controlled disorder, the polis could survive for another year, its precarious peace intact. . . .

The religious vision from which Attic tragedy emerged was one of the human community as a kind of besieged citadel preserving itself through the tribute it paid to the powers that both threatened and enlivened it. I can think of no better example of this than that of Antigone, in which the tragic crisis is the result of an insoluble moral conflict between familial piety (a sacred obligation) and the civil duties of kingship (a holy office): Antigone, as a woman, is bound to the chthonian gods (gods of the dead, so of family and household), and Creon, as king, is bound to Apollo (god of the city), and so both are adhering to sacred obligations. The conflict between them, then, far from involving a tension between the profane and the holy, is a conflict within the divine itself, whose only possible resolution is the death — the sacrifice — of the protagonist. Other examples, however, are legion. Necessity’s cruel intransigence rules the gods no less than us; tragedy’s great power is simply to reconcile us to this truth, to what must be, and to the violences of the city that keep at bay the greater violence of cosmic or social disorder. . . .

And then he explains how Jesus Christ changed all that, beginning with the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate in the Gospel of St. John--in which the representative of the Roman Empire is stymied by the regalness of a Jewish peasant--and then considering Peter's tears:

This slave is the Father’s eternal Word, whom God has vindicated, and so ten thousand immemorial certainties are unveiled as lies: the first become last, the mighty are put down from their seats and the lowly exalted, the hungry are filled with good things while the rich are sent empty away. Nietzsche was quite right to be appalled. Almost as striking, for me, is the tale of Peter, at the cock’s crow, going apart to weep. Nowhere in the literature of pagan antiquity, I assure you, had the tears of a rustic been regarded as worthy of anything but ridicule; to treat them with reverence, as meaningful expressions of real human sorrow, would have seemed grotesque from the perspective of all the classical canons of good taste. Those wretchedly subversive tears, and the dangerous philistinism of a narrator so incorrigibly vulgar as to treat them with anything but contempt, were most definitely signs of a slave revolt in morality, if not quite the one against which Nietzsche inveighed — a revolt, moreover, that all the ancient powers proved impotent to resist.

In a narrow sense, then, one might say that the chief offense of the Gospels is their defiance of the insights of tragedy — and not only because Christ does not fit the model of the well-born tragic hero. More important is the incontestable truth that, in the Gospels, the destruction of the protagonist emphatically does not restore or affirm the order of city or cosmos. Were the Gospels to end with Christ’s sepulture, in good tragic style, it would exculpate all parties, including Pilate and the Sanhedrin, whose judgments would be shown to have been fated by the exigencies of the crisis and the burdens of their offices; the story would then reconcile us to the tragic necessity of all such judgments. But instead comes Easter, which rudely interrupts all the minatory and sententious moralisms of the tragic chorus, just as they are about to be uttered to full effect, and which cavalierly violates the central tenet of sound economics: rather than trading the sacrificial victim for some supernatural benefit, and so the particular for the universal, Easter restores the slain hero in his particularity again, as the only truth the Gospels have to offer. This is more than a dramatic peripety. The empty tomb overturns all the “responsible” and “necessary” verdicts of Christ’s judges, and so grants them neither legitimacy nor pardon.

(Among the surprised judges must be the Sanhedrin, with Caiaphas and Annas--and Caiaphas' proposal of offering Jesus as a sacrifice for the good of the community being overturned by reports of His resurrection and appearances.)

The Elizabethan authorities knew that their prosecution of Catholics was creating martyrs--Elizabeth's spymaster Walsingham warned against the power of the martyrs after their executions to create sympathy and inspire followers--so the whole notion of executing Anne Line and the other priests who suffered that same day at Tyburn as a way of proclaiming the power and justice of the state had changed. Not only the Greeks and Romans had to respond to this revolution in life and death in tragedy--but even the Elizabethan/Anglican polis had to recognize that its sacrificial victims lived on beyond Tyburn and an unmarked, unconsecrated grave.

Candlemas, 1601 in London

On Candlemas, February 2, 1601, Jesuit priest, Father Francis Page, was celebrating Mass for the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple at the safe house in London run by Anne Line.

Father John Gerard, SJ, author of the memoir Autobiography of a Hunted Priest had asked the widowed Catholic convert to be the housekeeper for the Catholic priests staying in London. On that day, the safe house proved to be none too safe, as pursuivants entered the house as Mass was in progress. Father Page was able to discard his vestments and mingle with the congregation, but Anne Line was not able to escape.

Since she was the keeper of the house, and the pursuivants had found an altar, vestments, and all the altar vessels for the celebration of Catholic Mass, Anne Line was arrested.

She was held and tried and executed for harboring and assisting priests on February 27, 1601. One of the priests executed that day after her at Tyburn, Blessed Roger Filcock, had once been a guest in the safe house. Father Francis Page was eventually captured and executed on April 20, 1602. St. Anne Line is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Blessed Roger Filcock (and his companion on the way to Tyburn, Blessed Mark Barkworth) were beatified by Blessed John Paul II in 1987 among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales, and Blessed Francis Page was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929, among 136 martyrs of England and Wales.