H.C. White on "Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs"

Readers of this blog might have been wondering if I've forgotten about the English Reformation and the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales since I've been posting so much about Saint John Henry Newman and the Greek Fathers of the Church, books about Newman, etc,. I have not.

I've been reading, to great benefit, Helen C. White's Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs, her survey of the books published before and during the English Reformations during the Tudor dynasty. 

She begins, after a survey of the development of devotion to the martyrs and saints from the Early Church to the Medieval Era, with pre-Henrician Reformation devotion to the saints and books of saints and martyrs, when England was pretty solidly Catholic, through the changes wrought by Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth with their effects on Catholics and of course, the interim of Mary's reign with the reversion to Catholicism and restoration of the heresy laws with their effects on Protestants. While there is plenty of historical narrative, the focus of the book is the books published during that era. Many of those books are stories of martyrdoms, Catholic and Protestant. White maintains an excellent balance of explication and analysis, describing the strengths and weaknesses of the accounts of those martyrdoms.

Table of Contents:

I. The Saint's Legend as a Literary Type

II. "The Golden Legend" [Caxton's 1483 translation of Voragine's Legenda Aurea]

III. The Attack on the Saint's Legend

IV. The Catholic Martyrs under Henry

V. Foxe's Book of Martyrs

VI. Foxe's Ecclesiastical History

VII. The English Mission

VIII. The Triumphs of Death (mya favorite chapter!)

IX. Continuing Classics and Emergent Types

Notes, Bibliography, Index

By documenting the history of the forms and contents of the books saints and martyrs from the reigns of Henry VII to Elizabeth I, White has simultaneously sketched out the history of religion in England during the Tudor Dynasty. I say "sketched out" because she confines her religious narrative to this specific genre, the saints' lives and legends. Only insofar as these books reflect the religious changes (from Catholic unity to Henrician compromises to Calvinist reform to Marian revival to Elizabethan compromise) does she trace that narrative. Because of course how the people of England were supposed to think and write and read about the saints and martyrs, how to model their lives on their examples and ask their intercession in prayer and devotion was affected by the religious changes throughout this dynasty.

I. White begins with a review of the history of saint's lives and legends from the early Church martyrs during the waves of Roman persecution, highlighting Saints Stephen, Perpetua, and Polycarp. Then she looks at the transition from martyrs to confessors, with Saint Martin of Tours for example. She examines Voragine's Legenda Aurea and his systematization of the calendar of the saints and discusses these legends in the Middle Ages as sources of both exhortation and entertainment, noting some of the pitfalls of exaggeration in these lives, their miracles and wonders, etc.

II. Then she looks at William Caxton's translation of Voragine's Legenda Aurea (in the crucial year of 1483: the death of Edward IV, the brief succession and disappearance of his son Edward V, and the beginning of the brief reign of Richard III, succeeded by Henry Tudor as Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty). White highlights The Golden Legend's basic framework and homiletic purpose. Caxton starts with the Apostles, then proceeds to the Martyrs, the Confessors, and the Virgins, exploring themes of wisdom, piety, charity, and miracles.

III. White contrasts the last printing of Caxton's book in 1527 with the first smuggled copies of Tyndale's English New Testament (written on the Continent in 1525 and 1526) before discussing the Humanists's attack on the superstition evident at saint's shrines (Erasmus, and even More, who distinguished between legitimate devotion to the saints and abuse of that devotion). She cites a 1548 sermon preached by Bishop Stephen Gardiner before Edward VI (as a test of his conformity) in which Gardiner highlights the three most important changes in the Church of England: First, the renunciation of the authority of the Pope; Second, the dissolution of the abbeys; Third, that "images [of the saints] were pulled down" (p. 68) She describes the books that accompanied that crucial third change and Henry VIII's own reaction to the over-reaction of some against images and the saints, except for, of course, any devotion to Saint Thomas of Canterbury! Photo above of the candle in Canterbury Cathedral in place of the shrine/tomb that Henry VIII had destroyed.

IV. Now we turn to the Catholic protomartyrs of English Reformation: the Carthusians, Bishop John Fisher, and Thomas More. White opines that "unlike Fisher, More would be remembered today, even if he had never been a martyr" because he was "the greatest genius in his country in that day" (p. 116). She devotes several pages to the different lives of Thomas More, from William Roper's memorial, to Harpsfield, Stapleton, and Ro. Ba., noting their different approaches and contexts, as they wrote about More from their exiles on the Continent (except Harpsfield). There's a great quotation in this chapter about "son Roper": "All this (anecdotes and reflection on More's humor and story-telling) Roper had to refresh his memory, and up to around some ten years before he presumably wrote his story, he had the help of his wife [Margaret]. With her he must often have talked over these things, doubtless finding in the later consequences much help for understanding what had once seemed so puzzling." (p. 122) More's "Dearest Meg" helped build her father's legacy.

V. and VI. In the chapters about John Foxe and his Book of Martyrs and Church history, White pays tribute to his dramatic story-telling, his consistent black-and-white, good vs. evil view of the religious controversies of his day. She also analyses his inability to contemplate any compromise in that conflict. As she notes, Foxe dedicates his works to Elizabeth I, praising her rule over the Church of England, exalting the virtues of her mother Anne--but he cannot contemplate how Henry VIII condemned good men like John Lambert to the stake. He has to find another villain to exculpate a hero and he chooses Bishop Stephen Gardiner as the deceitful persuader against Henry's better Protestant judgement. Foxe could not imagine that Henry VIII believed in the Real Presence and the Sacrifice of the Mass, just as he could not imagine any religious imagery as being anything but an occasion of idolatry. White sums up Foxe's work as the story of great victory, the victory of the State over the Church.

VII. On the other hand, the Catholic Recusants of Elizabeth I's reign could not even imagine a path to victory; their story is "of the resistance of the defeated and the irreconcilable" (p. 197), whose first years under the Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Settlement were kind of waiting game, hoping for a quick succession of Mary of Scotland (after two brief reigns, it could be imagined). Then the Jesuits (and others) Robert Parsons (or Persons) and Edmund Campion launch the English Mission in 1580. 

White devotes requisite attention to both men's books and reputations, but notes that Campion is the real hero (like the comparison and contrast of Fisher and More in chapter IV), because of his daring, the debates in the Tower, and the drama of his capture, torture, and execution. Parsons survives, leaves England never to return, and leads the later English Mission from the Continent. As White notes, he was a tireless writer and educator. She contrasts Parsons life of prose to Campion's life of poetry. Commenting on the narration of Campion's capture, she notes that his betrayer George Elliot's report is "valuable for the light it throws on Recusant life in a large country house in those days" (p. 213) Books attacking and defending Campion--including the poetry of Henry Walpole, inspired to become a missionary priest at his execution--add to his reputation and regard for him among the Catholics of England.

White also highlight a priest's "anonymous Latin diary of what happened to Catholic prisoners in the Tower of London in the years 1580 to 1585", including details about the other prisons which Catholic were incarcerated, and the tortures they endured. The diary contains tantalizingly incomplete information, for example, about the Arden family, Edward and Mary, their daughter Margaret and her husband John Somerville, and the family's resident priest, Father Hugh Hall, all accused of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I, and condemned to death. We know that Edward and John were executed, but what of the women and the priest? The diary does not tell.

VIII. This chapter is almost entirely devoted to the character, works, and reputation of the Jesuit priest and martyr Robert Southwell, particularly to how his use of Saint Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises helped prepare him for the sufferings he endured. White continues the pattern of compare/contrast between Campion and Southwell.

She notes that they were "two very different types of men" and those differences represent "some important differences" in their times in the English Mission. White says that Campion's brilliance is at the "full tide of the high Elizabethan genius, with all its optimistic energy and color and dramatic edge" while Southwell's genius is "something more withdrawn, more reflective, more solitary, more ecstatic; he belongs to a later, more complicated, more shadowed world" (p. 240) and sums him up on page 241: Southwell "was not only a mystic, but a poet." And as a poet, Southwell had the "metaphysical power of organization and the metaphysical power of the revelation of the heart of the matter through a lightning flash of the continued reality in momentary detail." (my italics) We should recall that White also wrote The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience, published by Macmillan in 1936.

White's analysis of Southwell's poetic and mystic vision and his practice of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises reminded me of Anne R. Sweeney's Robert Southwell: Snow in Arcadia: redrawing the English lyric landscape, 1586-95, which I reviewed here. Sweeney explores more fully White's insights into Southwell's experiences of the art and culture of Counter-Reformation Rome, especially in the first chapter, "Rome: the discernment of angels". By the way, Sweeney included White's Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs in her bibliography. And both White and Sweeney (in chapter 2, "The Spiritual Exercises: the 'inward eie') explore the influence of Southwell's use of the Ignatian method of meditation on his preparation for capture, torture, and execution--and in his poetry.

One reason for the difference between the worlds of Campion and Southwell, measured only a few years, is the increasingly desperate situation of Catholics in England. New recusant laws, the 1581 Acts of Persuasion, declaring conversion/reversion to Catholicism, called "reconciliation with Rome" an act of High Treason, and the Act of 1585 against the Jesuits and Seminary priests, making their return to England also an act of Treason--plus the horror of the Babington Plot and its aftermath, the execution of Mary of Scotland and the 1588 Spanish Armada with the State's reaction of multiple executions--when even those Catholics who proved the answer to the "Bloody Question" was that they wanted to fight to defend England from the Armada received no consideration! What cause for optimism did Southwell have?

So he wrote works of comfort and consolation to the Catholics of England: Epistle of Comfort, written for Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, held in the Tower for years under a sentence of death, A Short Rule of Good Life, Triumphs over Death, and a Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth--all to help them deal with their sorrows through their sorrows. White particularly highlights the popularity of Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears and St. Peter's Complaint, reprinted and imitated often. 

It's really a masterful chapter.

IX. This chapter describes how saints' lives and legends returned to English Anglican literature, adapting the pre-Reformation traditions to the contemporary Elizabethan standards. Thus carefully moderated poems about the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God or of an English hero like St. George could be written and published. At the turn of the century, in the last years and months of Elizabeth I's reign, chroniclers and biographers could look back on the past and write about Reformation heroes. They weren't to be canonized saints for devotion, of course, but they could be models for imitation. 

I look forward to reading White's other Tudor book, on Books of Private Devotion.

"The torments they endured were horrible": The Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales, 1535-1679

From Fr. Christopher George Phillips, the retired founding pastor of Our Lady of the Atonement Church in San Antonio, Texas, a parish of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, comes this reflection on the May 4th feast of Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales:

The English Martyrs include 284 men and women who gave their lives during the 16th and 17th centuries. They were martyred simply because they remained steadfast in their Catholic faith. What had happened?

King Henry VIII had proclaimed himself supreme head of the Church in England, claiming for himself and his successors power over his subjects not only in civil matters, but also in all things spiritual. He took to himself a spiritual power that can belong only to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ and Successor of St. Peter. The Catholics at that time wanted to be loyal subjects of the Crown, but their consciences could not allow them to grant the power of spiritual supremacy. It is as though, in the United States, the president and Congress took upon themselves the power to determine what we as Catholics believe, and how we worship. We could not allow Congress to pass laws that changed the Church’s teaching about the Mass, or what we believe about God. But this was what had happened in England and Wales. This was what led many people to face death courageously rather than act against their consciences and deny their Catholic faith.

Please read the rest there.

This Feast, honoring all the martyrs, canonized and beatified, is celebrated in the Anglican Ordinariate* and in the dioceses of England on May 4th, the date of the execution of the Protomartyrs in 1535 (Saints John Houghton, Augustine Webster, Robert Lawrence, Richard Reynolds, and Blessed John Haile); in the dioceses of Wales, their Feast, known as the Feast of Six Welsh Martyrs and [English] Companions, is celebrated on October 25th, the date that Pope Saint Paul VI canonized the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales in 1979.

*Please note that is celebrated as a Feast in the Anglican Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, but as a Memorial in the Ordinariates of the Chair of St. Peter in North American and of Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia.

According to the Liturgical Calendar of England:

The English Men and Women martyred for the Catholic Faith 1535–1680 and beatified or canonised by the Holy See. On this day in 1535 there died at Tyburn three Carthusian monks, the first of many martyrs, Catholic and Protestant, of the English reformation. Of these martyrs, forty two [including Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, and the six Welsh Martyrs] have been canonised and a further two hundred and forty two declared blessed, but the number of those who died on the scaffold, perished in prison, or suffered harsh persecution for their faith in the course of a century and a half cannot now be reckoned. They came from every walk of life; there are among them rich and poor, married and single, women and men. They are remembered for the example they gave of constancy in their faith, and courage in the face of persecution.

The Six Welsh Martyrs, listed on the website of the Liturgical Calendar of Wales are: Saints John Jones, Philip Evans, John Lloyd, David Lewis, Richard Gwyn, and John Roberts. Saints Evans, Lloyd, Lewis, and Gwyn were executed in the throes of the Popish Plot in 1679.

Holy Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

The First Three of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Matt Swaim at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to start our survey of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales, beginning with the three Carthusian priors, St. John Houghton, St. Augustine Webster, and St. Robert Lawrence.

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

On Friday, I highlighted St. John Houghton's leadership in guiding the Carthusian community in their response to Henry VIII's changes in religious policy. The other priors, Webster and Lawrence, were in London to consult with him on the situation and that's why the three of them went to Cromwell with their plea for the respect of conscience after praying, fasting, and celebrating Mass. Robert Lawrence had succeeded Houghton as the Prior of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire. All three men had attended the University of Cambridge.

Even among Tudor fans of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, the treatment of the Carthusian monks rouses great repulsion and disgust, because Cromwell and Henry flaunted all the customs of England and displayed so much cruelty.

The Carthusians were hanged, drawn, and quartered in their habits--as traitors they should have been in secular clothing as laity--and Houghton was still wearing a hair shirt. Dragged from the Tower to Tyburn, their religious status was clearly displayed.

Michael Davies transcribes the scene at Tyburn, based upon the reports of Maurice Chauncy or Chauncey, a Carthusian who had sworn the oath his Priors refused:

To [Saint] John Houghton God was pleased to grant the signal honour of being the first man since pagan times to suffer death in England for being a Catholic. After lovingly embracing the executioner, who craved his pardon, the holy Martyr entered the cart which stood beneath the gallows; and there, in the sight of the multitude, he was asked once again whether he would submit to the king's laws before it was too late. Nothing daunted, he replied: "I call Almighty God to witness, and I beseech all here present to attest for me on the dreadful danger of judgement, that, being about to die in public, I declare that I have refused to comply with the will of His Majesty the King, not from obstinacy, malice, or a rebellious spirit, but solely for fear of offending the supreme Majesty of God. Our holy Mother the Church has decreed and enjoined otherwise than the king and Parliament have decreed. I am therefore bound in conscience, and am ready and willing to suffer every kind of torture, rather than deny a doctrine of the Church. Pray for me, and have mercy on my brethren, of whom I have been the unworthy Prior." He asked for time to say his last prayer, which he took from the 30th Psalm: "In thee, O Lord, have I hoped; let me never be confounded: deliver me in Thy justice . . . Into Thy hands I commend my spirit; for Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth." [Saint] John Houghton was now ready to meet death.

A thick rope had been chosen, for fear he might be strangled and expire too quickly. It was placed about his neck. The sheriff gave the signal. The cart was drawn aside; and the gentle monk, who had done good to many, and harm to none, was hanging like a malefactor from the gallows. Then came the worst part of the business, for no mercy was shown, and the hideous sentence was carried out in all its details. The rope was cut, and the body fell heavily on the ground; but John Houghton was not dead. They tore off his holy habit, and laid him on a plank or platform. The executioner inflicted a long and ghastly wound with a sharp knife, dragged out his entrails, and threw them in a fire prepared for the purpose. The poor sufferer was conscious the whole time; and while he was being embowelled  (sic) he was heard to exclaim: "Oh most holy Jesus, have mercy upon me in this hour!" When at last the executioner placed his hand upon the heart to wrench it from its place, the blessed Martyr spoke again. A German, Anthony Rescius, who afterwards became auxiliary Bishop of Wurzburg, was close by. He overheard his last words: "Good Jesu! what will ye do with my heart?" The struggle was over at last John Houghton had been faithful unto death, and gained the crown of life. 76

Webster and Lawrence suffered the same torture--although Houghton's hair shirt had made it harder for the executioner to disembowel him--and then their bodies were prepared for Henry VIII's warning to others:

The bodies were cut into quarters which were thrown into a cauldron of boiling pitch to prevent decay, and then set up in different parts of London as proof positive that the king was indeed the head of the Church in England. These executions constituted a clear and savage warning to every priest and monk in the country of what awaited them if they failed to swear upon oath that they accepted the Royal Supremacy. In order to terrify the remaining Carthusians into submission, John Houghton's severed arm, all bloody from Tyburn, was nailed above the gateway of the Charterhouse.

Many members of Henry VIII's Court and Council attended the executions and there are unfounded and later retracted reports that the king was there too. You may read a fuller account of their executions here, starting on page 41 of the document.

Saint John Houghton, pray for us!

Saint Augustine Webster, pray for us!

Saint Robert Lawrence, pray for us!

Image Source: used by permission.

Preview: The Protomartyrs of the English Reformation

On Monday, June 15, we'll start our survey of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales on the Son Rise Morning Show. Matt Swaim and I will talk about the three Carthusian priors who suffered being hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn Tree on May 4, 1535. Saints John Houghton, Augustine Webster, and Robert Lawrence are among the five protomartyrs of the English Reformation. St. John Houghton, portrayed by the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán holding his heart, asked before he was eviscerated by the hangman "Jesus, Jesus, what will you do with my heart?"

The Tudor administration particularly wanted the Carthusians to accept the change in Church leadership in England because of their great reputation for holiness and integrity. Houghton had argued in 1534, when presented with the Oath of Succession, that Carthusian hermit monks had no interest in worldly events and their opinion should not matter to the world (the King). For that argument, Father Houghton and Father Humphrey Middleton were imprisoned in the Tower of London for a month. They later agreed to take the Oath of Succession, persuaded that the King's authority over the Church would be limited "as far as the law of Christ allows". This was the same oath that Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More refused to take in April of 1534 and were thus imprisoned in the Tower of London at the King's pleasure, attainted traitors and stripped of all worldly possessions and rights. Fisher was even removed from his see and was no longer considered a bishop (a Lord and Member of the House of Lords).

Having sworn the Oath of Succession, the Carthusians went back to their way of life and hoped for peace and to be let alone. Then on February 1, 1535 the revised Oath of Supremacy proclaiming Henry VIII the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England without that limiting phrase was presented to the Carthusians. They weren't going to be let alone.

Prior John Houghton led the Carthusians to do what hermit monks do: fast and pray for three days and then offer the Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit to decide whether or not they could take the Oath of Supremacy. Dom David Knowles praises Houghton in his Saints and Scholars: Twenty-Five Medieval Portraits, for his leadership and docility: When Father Houghton elevated the Host during the Canon of the Mass, he felt the Holy Spirit's call to remain united with the universal Church, and refuse the Supremacy Oath. So he, Webster and Lawrence asked Henry VIII for an exemption from taking this oath, again on the stated grounds that they were hermit monks who had no interest in or influence on worldly events, and that their opinions on worldly matters should not matter to the world (Henry VIII). For that argument, they were arrested and called before a special commission in April 1535, and sentenced to death, after the jurors on the commission were told to change their first, not guilty, verdict.

Fathers Webster and Lawrence were priors of the other Carthusian houses in England, of Epworth and Beauvale, respectively. Two others were sentenced to death with the three Carthusian priors: Father Richard Reynolds of the Briggitine House of Syon and Father John Haile, the Vicar of Isleworth.

Then comes that great scene on May 4, 1535. Margaret More Roper was visiting her father, Thomas More in the Tower of London, and they were standing by a window so that they just happened to see the five martyrs to be dragged away from the Tower to Tyburn. More said to his daughter, who was there to persuade her father to take the Oath of Supremacy:

Lo, dost thou not see (Meg) that these blessed fathers be how as cheerful going to their deaths, as bridegrooms to their marriages? Wherefore thereby mayest thou see (mine own good daughter) what a difference there is between such as have in effect spent all their days in a strait, hard, penitential, and painful life religiously, and such as have in the world, like worldly wretches, as thy poor father hath done, consumed all the time in pleasure and ease licentiously. For God, considering their long-continued life in most sore and grievous penance, will not longer suffer them to remain here in this vale of misery, and iniquity, but speedily hence take them to the fruition of his everlasting deity: whereas thy silly father (Meg) that, like a most wicked caitiff, hath passed forth the whole course of his miserable life most pitifully, God, thinking him not worthy so soon to come to that eternal felicity, leaveth him here yet, still in the world further to be plunged and turmoiled with misery.

Margaret More Roper had her answer: her father would not take the Oath. Prior John Houghton would soon have his answer: what would Jesus do with his heart?

More about the scene at Tyburn on Monday at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

A Little Like Recusants: Spiritual Communion in Recusant England and Today

This year, on October 25, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the canonization of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome (1970).

Their feast was moved in 2000 from October 25 to May 4, the anniversary of the executions of the protomartyrs among the Forty, Saint John Houghton, prior of the London Charterhouse, Saint Robert Lawrence, prior of Beauvale Charterhouse, Saint Augustine Webster, prior of Axholme Charterhouse, and Saint Richard Reynolds, a Bridgettine monk of the Syon Abbey. These four, and a Blessed martyr, John Haile, Vicar of Isleworth (beatified on December 29, 1886 by Pope Leo XIII) were all hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn in 1535.

(The original feast day of October 25 is still kept in the dioceses of Wales under the title of The Six Welsh Martyrs and Their Companions--the "English" martyrs are the companions. This year because October 25 is a Sunday the feast will not be observed.)

In this time of pandemic, I've wondered if other Catholics like me who usually attended Daily Mass as often as possible, kept a weekly Holy Hour in their parishes, and were likewise pretty active in religious observances, have been experiencing something like what Catholics in Tudor England did when gradually, eventually cut off from the public worship of the Church. I was fortunate enough to attend Mass at Noon on Tuesday, March 17 and receive Holy Communion that day at the Cathedral. During the brief homily, it was announced that no public Masses would be celebrated after 1 p.m. that day and that all Adoration Chapels would be closed as of 1 p.m. that day. Anyone keeping their Noon Holy Hours in their parish chapels might have witnessed the Blessed Sacrament being removed from the Monstrance and transferred to the Tabernacle, the candles snuffed out, and the door locked. Like the Stripping of the Altars in the middle of the day.

In our diocese (Wichita, Kansas), churches have been kept open and visits to the Blessed Sacrament--limited to ten people at a time--have been possible. Confessions have been regularly offered, with the required safety precautions. Otherwise we have had to rely on broadcast (EWTN) or streamed Masses (Facebook and YouTube)--and of course, the practice of a making Spiritual Communion.

Secretly practicing Catholics in England had recourse to Spiritual Communion regularly during the Recusant/Penal era. Lisa McClain in Lest We be Damned: Practical Innovation & Lived Experience Among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559-1642 (Routledge: 2005), cited the Jesuit priest John Radford's 1594/1605 book for Catholic laity in England, A Directorie teaching the Way to the Truth in a briefe and plaine Discourse against the Heresies of this Time. He explained that yes, the Sacraments, especially the Mass and Holy Communion, are the normal means by which Catholics receive sanctifying grace but that God was not bound to the Sacraments. Even if they could not attend Mass, they could unite themselves to the celebration of the Mass wherever it was; even if they could not receive Holy Communion, they could make a spiritual communion: God had not left them without the means of receiving His love and grace. Another book, William Stanney's 1617 A Treatise on Penance, instructed Catholics how to make a Spiritual Communion: make a good examination of conscience and an act of perfect contrition, and then pray to receive Jesus spiritually through act of fervent desire. McClain notes that Stanney seems "uncomfortable with an exact substitution of spiritual reception for the corporal, but he clearly comforts Catholics that they would make progress toward salvation by receiving spiritually in the absence of the Mass."

As generally noted in histories about Catholic practices before the Reformation, the laity did not receive Holy Communion nearly as frequently as we do today--a Catholic who did so, like Margery Kempe or Margaret Beaufort, was thought unusual. Ordinarily, they confessed their sins at the beginning of Lent (Shrovetide) and during Holy Week, and then received Holy Communion on Easter Sunday: then they broke their Lenten fast. In The Stripping of the Altars, Duffy notes that this was more a community event than an individual act: everyone went to Holy Communion Easter Sunday--extra priests were brought in to accommodate all the communicants.

But English Recusant Catholics could not be assured that they would see a priest, risking capture and martyrdom, each Easter so they could "take [their] rights" ("taking one's rights" was the common term; when I was growing up it was referred to as "the Easter duty"!). That's why Spiritual Communion became so important and McClain demonstrates that the missionary priests serving in England wanted to encourage use of this devotion whenever Catholics couldn't attend Mass or receive Holy Communion.

So Recusant Catholics availed themselves of these spiritual means of remaining connected with the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrament of Holy Communion. McClain describes how Stanney consoled these Catholics with the thought that their hunger for receiving the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus was part of their sanctification, bringing them closer to Jesus in their hearts even though they could not receive Him.

That's exactly where we are--or should be--today in the time of limited physical access to Mass and the Sacraments. Pray God we will be able to attend Mass soon--and be prepared to receive Holy Communion worthily.

Holy Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

All the holy, unknown saints of Recusant England, pray for us!