Preview: Another Confessor: William Cardinal Allen, RIP

After our detour to consider the feast of Saint John Henry Newman on Monday, October 9, we'll return to our exploration of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors on Monday, October 16 on the Son Rise Morning Show.

Since it's the anniversary of his death in Rome on October 16, 1594 (429 years ago!), we'll focus on William Cardinal Allen, the great founder of the seminaries preparing the missionary priests to return to England. So I'll be on the air about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, the last segment in the second national hour on EWTN Radio. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Father Bowden has a few entries for Cardinal Allen, who was not a martyr but prepared many priests for the missionary field who became martyrs, and the one I chose for today highlights Allen's regret that he had not been able to offer his own life for the Lord.

The Catholic Encyclopedia provides great evidence for William Cardinal Allen's significance for the recusant/penal/missionary era in England. Born in 1532, 

He was the third son of John Allen of Rossall, Lancashire, and at the age of fifteen went to Oriel College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1550, and was elected Fellow of his College. In 1554 he proceeded M.A., and two years later was chosen Principal of St. Mary's Hall. For a short time he also held a canonry at York, for he had already determined to embrace the ecclesiastical state. On the accession of Elizabeth, and the re-establishment of Protestantism, Allen was one of those who remained most stanch on the Catholic side, and it is chiefly due to his labours that the Catholic religion was not entirely stamped out in England. Having resigned all his preferments, he left the country in 1561, and sought a refuge in the university town of Louvain. The following year, however, we find him back in England, devoting himself, though not yet in priest's orders, to evangelizing his native county. His success was such that it attracted notice and he had to flee for safety. For a while he made himself a missionary centre near Oxford, where he had many acquaintances, and later for a time he sought protection with the family of the Duke of Norfolk. In 1565 he was again forced to leave England, this time, as it turned out, for good. He was ordained priest at Mechlin shortly afterwards. The three years Allen spent as a missioner in England had a determining effect on his whole after life. For he found everywhere that the people were not Protestant by choice, but by force of circumstances; and the majority were only too ready, in response to his preaching and ministrations, to return to Catholicity. He was always convinced that the Protestant wave over the country, due to the action of Elizabeth, could only be temporary, and that the whole future depended on there being a supply of trained clergy and controversialists ready to come into the country whenever Catholicity should be restored.

And authors like Philip Hughes and Eamon Duffy praised the kind of formation Allen designed for the missionary priests--they weren't going to be in parishes and they were probably going to be alone most of the time--they needed to be trained for apologetics with knowledge of Church history including English Church history, the Bible, and Church doctrine. They needed to preach in English, obviously, and he also prepared them carefully for their spiritual life in the missionary field: fasting twice a week for the conversion of England, use of St. Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, frequent Confession as spiritual development, not merely juridical forgiveness of sins, and other spiritual devotions.

In his book Reformation Divided, which I reviewed several years ago for the St. Austin Review, Duffy concurs with the Catholic Encyclopedia's view: "because of Allen “English Catholicism was given an institutional lifeline to the larger world of Christendom . . . because of him, it survived.” (p. 163)"

With the title "Father of Many Sons" on page 328 and the Scripture verse from 1 Corinthians 4:15: "For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you", Father Bowden highlights Cardinal Allen's last months and deathbed:

"Douay," he wrote, a few months before his death, "is as dear to me as my own life, and which hath next to God been the beginning and ground of all the good and salvation which is wrought in England." Created cardinal by Sixtus V, he became the natural protector of the afflicted English Catholics, and, by his writings and influence, powerfully aided their cause. Dying, he said that the greatest pain he suffered was to see that after by God's help he had induced so many to endure imprisonment, persecution, and martyrdom in England, he had deserved by his sins to end his life on that bed--Rome, October 16.

May he rest in the peace of Christ.

The Martyrs of Douai

In the Diocese of Westminster, England, today is the feast of the Douai Martyrs--that is, martyrs who studied at the English College/seminary in Douai during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--who have been beatified and canonized. According to the website of the Diocese of Westminster:

The Martyrs of Douai were a group of men who trained for the priesthood at Douai College during the English Reformation and were executed on their return to England for preaching the Catholic faith. Operating as a Roman Catholic priest during the Protestant Reformation was considered high treason, with a punishment of being hanged, drawn and quartered. In total, 158 members of Douai College were martyred between the years 1577 and 1680, including St Robert Southwell and St Edmund Campion.

These men provided essential pastoral and spiritual guidance for Catholics throughout the country and administration of the sacraments. They willingly took on this mission knowing that, as soon as they stepped onto English soil, their lives would be in imminent danger. Many people risked their lives during this period to support these men by sheltering them or allowing them to celebrate Mass in their homes.

In recognition of the work of these men and the sacrifice they made, 80 alumni of Douai College were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929, their feast day is celebrated on the 29th October.

Nineteen of the 158 martyrs were canonized in 1970:

Cuthbert Mayne
Ralph Sherwin
Edmund Campion, SJ
Alexander Briant, SJ
John Payne
Luke Kirby
Eustace White
Edmund Gennings
John Boste
Robert Southwell, SJ
Henry Walpole, SJ
John Almond

Edmund Arrowsmith, SJ
Ambrose Barlow, OSB
Alban Roe, OSB
Henry Morse, SJ

John Southworth

John Wall

John Kemble

(We'll talk about Saint John Kemble, a Popish Plot martyr, on Monday, November 2 in the last installment of our series on the Son Rise Morning Show!)

St. Cuthbert Mayne was the first Englishman prepared for the priesthood at Douai and he is the protomartyr of the English seminaries established on the Continent. Born in Devonshire, he was ordained an Anglican minister but became Catholic in the early 1570's while at Oxford. He returned to England in 1575, serving in Cornwall, and was arrested a year later. One of the charges against him was that he had an Agnus Dei, an image of Jesus as the Lamb of God, blessed by the pope. He was hung, drawn and quartered in Cornwall on November 29, 1577.

Blessed Thomas Thwing, the last Douai martyr, suffered during the Popish Plot hysteria in 1680. From 1664 to 1679 he served as a missionary priest in England. He and other members of Sir Thomas Gasciogne's household, including the master, were accused of a conspiracy to kill King Charles II and brought to London for trial. The others were acquitted but he was found guilty and condemned; the King pardoned him but the House of Commons demanded his execution. Of course he was innocent of any charges of conspiracy; he was guilty of being a Catholic priest. Blessed Thomas Thwing was hanged, drawn, and quartered on October 23, 1680.

The Catholic Encyclopedia provides information about Catholic activities in Douai:

To English Catholics, the name Douai will always be bound up with the college founded by Cardinal Allen during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, where the majority of the clergy were educated in penal times, and to which the preservation of the Catholic religion in England was largely due. Several other British establishments were founded there — colleges for the Scots and the Irish, and Benedictine and Franciscan monasteries — and Douai became the chief centre for those who were exiled for the Faith. The University of Douai may be said to date from 31 July, 1559, when Philip II of Spain (in whose dominions it was then situated) obtained a Bull from Pope Paul IV, authorizing its establishment the avowed object being the preservation of the purity of the Catholic Faith from the errors of the Reformation. Paul IV died before he had promulgated the Bull, which was, however, confirmed by his successor, Pius IV, 6 January, 1560. The letters patent of Philip II, dated 19 January, 1561, authorized the establishment of a university with five faculties; theology, canon law, civil law, medicine, and arts. The formal inauguration took place 5 October, 1562, when there was a public procession of the Blessed Sacrament, and a sermon was preached in the market-place by the Bishop of Arras.

There were already a considerable number of English Catholics living at Douai, and their influence made itself felt in the new university. In its early years, several of the chief posts were held by Englishmen, mostly from Oxford. The first chancellor of the university was Dr. Richard Smith, formerly Fellow of Merton and regius professor of divinity at Oxford; the regius professor of canon law at Douai for many years was Dr. Owen Lewis, Fellow of New College, who had held the corresponding post at Oxford; the first principal of Marchiennes College was Richard White, formerly Fellow of New College; while Allen himself, after taking his licentiate at Douai in 1560, became regius professor of divinity. It is reasonable to suppose that many of the traditions of Catholic Oxford were perpetuated at Douai. The university was, however, far from being even predominantly English; it was founded on the model of that of Louvain, from which seat of learning the majority of the first professors were drawn. The two features already mentioned — that the university was founded during the progress of the Reformation, to combat the errors of Protestantism, and that it was to a considerable extent under English influences — explain the fact that William Allen, when seeking a home for a projected English college abroad, turned his eyes towards Douai. . . . His object was to gather some of the numerous body of English Catholics who, having been forced to leave England, were scattered in different countries on the Continent, and to give them facilities for continuing their studies, so that when the time came for the re-establishment of Catholicism, which Allen was always confident could not be far distant, there might be a body of learned clergy ready to return to their country. This was of course a very different thing from sending missionaries over in defiance of the law while England still remained in the hands of the Protestants. This latter plan was an afterthought and a gradual growth from the circumstances in which the college found itself, though eventually it became its chief work. . . .

Please read the rest of the article to see how the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror meant the return of the Catholic scholars, seminarians, and monks to England. The article does not mention the Carthusian house that was also dissolved during the Reign of Terror (perhaps it had few English connections since the English Carthusian exiles were first located in Bruges and finally suppressed in Nieuwpoort by Emperor Joseph II), but the Chartreuse Saints-Joseph-et-Morand is now an art museum.

Martyrs of Douai, pray for us!

Image Credit: the Colleges at Douai (the English College is on the top), Adrien de Montigny (?–1615)[2] - From Les Collèges à Douai of the Album of Duke Charles of Croy. (Public Domain)

Contemporary Writing about the English Martyrs

I'm still reading this article by Susannah Brietz Monta, "Representing Martyrdom in Tudor England", available for free on the Oxford Handbooks site. I've printed it out for easier reading:

While the scope of English religious persecution pales in comparison with that of the continent, England’s several official changes of religion and its many Catholic martyrs make it a distinct case.9 Still, Tudor martyrdom ought not to be studied in isolation. Foxe’s first Latin martyrology, Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum (1554), was influenced by continental Protestants, such as Matthias Flacius (Illyricus), and the Lutheran martyrologists known as the Magdeburg Centuriators; in turn, the martyrologists Adriaan van Haemstede, Ludwig Rabus, and Jean Crespin made use of the Commentarii.10 Much of Foxe’s second Latin martyrology, Rerum in Ecclesia gestarum (Basle, 1559), was incorporated into Crespin’s Actiones et monumenta martyrum (Geneva, 1560), the title of which influenced that of Foxe’s English martyrology, the Actes and Monuments.11 The fullest Catholic response to Foxe’s Actes and Monuments was written in Latin for a broad audience; the Concertatio Ecclesiae Catholica in Anglia was first published in Trier in 1583 and in subsequent, expanded editions from 1588. Continental interest in English Catholic martyrs was significant.12Diego de Yepez, bishop of Taracona and confessor to Philip II, wrote a history of the English persecution, and numerous works in Latin and vernacular languages commemorated martyrs from Edmund Campion in 1581 to priests executed during the English Civil Wars in the 1640s.13

As affecting, dramatic offerings of religious testimony, martyrologies served important religious and polemical functions.14 Reformation-era martyrologies seek to establish continuity with Christianity’s foundational martyrdom, that of Christ, and to extend and shape subsequent Christian history. The construction of martyrdom concerns the writing of historical narrative, the boundaries of genre, the nature of living tradition, the power of exemplarity, the invocation of reading communities, and practices of imitatio, or imitation, in its literary and devotional forms. The making of martyrs thus depends upon both contemporary literary practices and religious convictions, as this essay hopes to show.

The writer of the essay has also published Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and an edition of Anthony Copley's A Fig for Fortune: A Catholic Response to the Faerie Queene (Manchester University Press, 2016).

I don't know how long this 25 page essay will be available for download and printing, so be forewarned. Also, please note the licensing restrictions!