One of the 3%: A Painting that Survived the English Reformation

From The Guardian:

A rare medieval panel showing Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Christ survived the Reformation due to a remarkable instance of 16th-century recycling, researchers in Cambridge have discovered.

The brightly painted wooden panel of The Kiss of Judas escaped the systematic destruction of thousands of church paintings because someone turned it around and used the back for another purpose – most likely to display the Ten Commandments.

This recycling, discovered by the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Hamilton Kerr Institute, is also likely to have saved the panel from Puritan iconoclasts in the English civil war, who destroyed a lot of art that had survived the earlier purge.

“The single most fascinating thing about the painting is how it survived,” said Lucy Wrapson, the conservator who made the discovery. “This was basically repurposed and that’s how it made it through. I can’t stress how rare this is. I can think of one other image of Judas that survives from an English church of the period.”

Estimates say up to 97% of English religious art was destroyed during and after the Reformation.

The panel was bought by the Fitzwilliam in 2012 from the Church of St Mary in Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, which did not have the money to conserve it. The funds went towards fixing the church roof.

The panel arrived in Wrapson’s lab in a sorry state, she said, covered in discoloured varnish, bat faeces, dust and cobwebs. “It was really dark and discoloured, you could see roughly what was on the surface but you couldn’t see the back, it had been covered by a horrible plywood board. The front was really dark and murky, you could not make out the vibrant colours.”

Please see the panel at The Guardian or at the Fitzwilliam link above. The other surviving Kiss of Judas painting is part of a series of panels depicting both the Last Judgment and the Passion of Christ in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels at Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire:

The four panels beneath the Doom painting are another visual aid in the form of eight scenes from the Passion of Christ and are reminiscent of Mystery plays of the time. The sequence starts at the bottom left hand panel showing Judas betraying Christ with a kiss accompanied by soldiers and St Peter. The scene above depicts Christ before Pilate who is seen washing his hands with water poured from a ewer. Next to this is the mocking of Christ who sits blindfolded between two tormentors. The scene below shows the further torment of the Flagellation of Christ who is tied to a miniature column similar to those used in Mystery plays. There is no painting of the crucifixion as that would have been seen in the carved figures on the Rood Loft. So the upper panel to the right of the centre shows the Deposition from the cross watched by three women, as described in Mark's Gospel. Immediately beneath this is the scene as Jesus body is laid in the tomb again watched by three women. The outer bottom right panel has the harrowing of Hell depicting Christ having descended to hell to free Adam and early Mankind. The final scene above is the Ascension, shown by the upward disappearance of Christ watched by the disciples. These panel paintings are not sophisticated in technique but the designs are bold and simple making their subjects quite clear.

Those panels had been whitewashed but uncovered in the nineteenth century.

St. Nicholas Day and Boy Bishops

The medieval tradition of "ordaining" a Boy Bishop from among the choirboys:

In the Middle Ages the life of a chorister was harsh and severe. The daily routine was rigorous, food not over-plentiful and corporal punishment frequent. Thus one can imagine that once a year the prospect of feasts, power over their superiors and freedom to travel the diocese was looked forward to with the utmost expectation by these young boys.

The dates of these festivities varied greatly from diocese to diocese. Some started on 6 December (St Nicholas Day) and others on 28 December (Holy Innocents Day). A few continued from 6 December to 28 December without break.

The election of the Boy Bishop also varied from cathedral to cathedral. In some, the boys themselves elected their bishop but in others, especially as time went on, the bishop was elected by the clergy. He would be dressed in cope and mitre and carry a bishop's crook and his fellows would be attired in colourful robes.

This attracted enormous crowds to the cathedrals, all pressing to get a better view of the boys, also of the clergy descending from their accustomed seats and taking the lowest pews. During the exchanging of seats the canticle Magnificat was sung, also the office of Vespers during the ornate procession which wound its way round the whole cathedral with censers swinging in the light of many candles. After the service the boys would expect an enormous feast with wine.

At York the Boy Bishop and his young attendants would set off on horseback to tour the diocese, visiting monasteries and houses of the nobility where they were given money and presents. In most cathedrals the Boy Bishop preached a sermon carefully prepared for him by an adult for fear of what he might say if left to his own devices.

The real bishop and the Boy Bishop exchanged places during the Magnificat at specifically appropriate moment: the bishop would leave his cathedra at the phrase deposuit potentes de sede ("he hath put down the mighty from their seat"), and the Boy Bishop would take his seat at et exaltavit humiles ("and hath exalted the humble and meek").

Queen Elizabeth I finally put an end to this tradition. It was very popular and I think signifies confidence on the part of the Catholic bishops. Under certain controls, designating a Boy Bishop was the local ordinary "lightening up", not taking himself so seriously. The dates chosen for the Boy Bishop's time in office highlight youth. St. Nicholas of Myra's feast is on December 6 and he is a patron saint and protector of children; the Feast of the Holy Innocents remembers the little boys murdered by King Herod the Great in his attempt to kill Jesus, the newborn King. This is Merry Old England at its best.

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

Dowager Queen of France, Mary Queen of Scots

With the death of her husband, Francis II, on December 5, 1560, Mary, the Queen of Scotland entered a period of mourning and seclusion--just in case she was pregnant with her late husband's heir. As this website points out, however, that was as unlikely as the supposed pregnancy at the beginning of the reign:

About a month after Henry [II]’s death, Mary started to believe that she was pregnant. Given the accepted view that Francis was sterile, it is hard to envisage that she genuinely thought this. If true, it would have placed her in an unassailable position as the mother of a Valois heir. She would be positioned behind the throne in the event of her husband’s early demise. Yet by September she realised this was a false alarm. Although the Guises must have been disappointed, they made light of it, pointing out that a sixteen-year-old king and his young bride had plenty of time to produce children.

Yet Catherine and the Guises had great concerns about Francis’s well-being. They will have been well aware of his sexual shortcomings, with such matters being common knowledge within the inner circle close to the Crown. He was also increasingly unwell. His face had become blotchy and his continuing running nose and dizziness were caused by an abscess developing behind his ear. He progressively deteriorated for about a year before he died, and Catherine positioned herself in the event of having to face the worst. Already an adept political intriguer, she remained at Mary’s side showing her maternal kindness, while almost imperceptibly weaning her from her uncles’ influence, loosening their grip on power. She eventually became the principal force in government, Regent in all but name. Yet she too faced criticism. Pamphlets were describing her as a whore with a leper for a son. . . .

In mid-November, after hunting near Orléans, Francis complained of a recurring dizziness and a buzzing in his ear. On the following Sunday, he collapsed in church and had a swelling ‘the size of a large nut’from an abscess behind his ear, causing stabbing pains in his head. When the doctors lanced it, puss was discharged through his mouth and nostrils, providing temporary relief, but he remained gravely ill. By late November, he was suffering seizures and was unable to move or speak. Mary and Catherine nursed him between them and sought divine aid by walking in procession with his brothers to nearby churches. The doctors bled him, purged him with enemas including rhubarb and considered boring through his scull to relieve the pressure. This was averted when the discharge appeared to stop, only to be followed by another substantial eruption of puss from his ear, nose and mouth, which made him delirious. On the morning of his death on 5 December 1560, he was completely debilitated and, after lying prostrate all day, died in the late evening. He had not reached his seventeenth birthday. The lingering hopes of the Guises were left in tatters. Catherine de Medici had no further need to cosset her daughter-in-law, and Mary had little choice but to return to her kingdom in Scotland.

Mary was returning to Scotland after living in France for 13 years. Her mother, Mary of Guise, had died on June 11, 1560, and Scotland was in the grip of John Knox's Reformation. Mary and the Catholics at her Court would be able to attend Mass and receive the Sacraments (there would be priests at Court obviously) but she agreed not to oppose the Reformation--thus she would go home, the Dowager Queen of France and Queen of Scotland.

A Catholic Hamlet in a Protestant Denmark?

In First Things, Peter J. Leithart reviews a book about Hamlet and his "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy:

Most readers and viewers of Hamlet take Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy as a meditation on suicide. In Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency, John E. Curran, Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, argues there are bigger things at work. Hamlet is opposing two ontologies, religious universes, moralities.

The first Curran labels “the Be.” The Be is the realm of predetermined fixity, without freedom, choice or contingency. It is an either/or, zero-sum world where every divine initiative must be at the expense of human merit, where signs and things stand in antagonistic opposition rather than seeking reconciliation. The Be is static, atemporal, a world within which human action is meaningless. In the Be, things stay what they are. The Be is cold, logical, technical, empty. The Be is a Protestant world.

On the other side of the great ugly ditch is “the Not to be,” which is everything the Be is not. It is a world of both-and, a world of real contingency and freedom, a world where grace and merit, sign and thing, live together in merry fellowship. Human action makes sense, and makes a difference, in the Not to be, because the Not to be is dynamic and temporal. In the Not to be, anything can happen, even bread becoming flesh. The Not to be is warm, moist, organic, teeming. The Not to be is Catholic.

Hamlet’s dilemma, according to Curran’s interpretation, is that of a man of Catholic sensibilities and aspirations who finds himself stuck in a Protestant world. In his heart, he is a man of the Not to be who wants to breathe free of the stifling stagnant air of Geneva or Wittenberg; but he learns, with growing frustration, that he lives in the Be. By the beginning of Act 5, he is resigned to the fact that the Not to be is not to be. After that, there is nothing more to say. Submitting to the Be leaves us speechless and dehumanized. The rest is silence.

Leithart has some problems with Curran's interpretation:

Curran’s book is filled with footnotes to both secondary literature on Hamlet and an abundance of primary and secondary literature on Elizabethan theology. He has read a lot, but despite the genuine erudition, Curran is no theologian. His portrayals of Catholic and Protestant “ontologies” amount to caricatures. He knows a few things about Protestant and Catholic theology, and extrapolates from those ideas to conclusions about what Protestants and Catholics – especially Protestants – must have believed. But the things he knows are not entirely accurate, and his extrapolations even less so. In characterizing Protestantism as steady-state determinism, for instance, he ignores the significant continuities between medieval Catholic and Protestant theologies, the prominent role of sanctification in Calvin’s and Puritan theology, the notion of regeneration. He ignores the cross as an epoch-making event. In fact, a plausible – I think convincing – argument can be made that one of Protestantism’s great contributions to the church was a rediscovery the historical dimension of Christianity.

Read the rest at First Things.

The Queen's Six at Ascot Priory

I'm looking forward to receiving the Christmas issue of the BBC Music Magazine because it features the annual Christmas music CD. This year's is by The Queen's Six:

Countertenor: Daniel Brittain, Timothy Carleston;
Tenor: Nicholas Madden, Dominic Bland; 

Baritone/Bass: Andrew Thompson, Simon Whiteley

THE QUEEN'S SIX were established in 2008, the 450th anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, from whom they take their name.Elizabeth I was a great patroness of the arts, and often engaged the services of musicians to write and perform for her at court. The notable ‘six’ from this era were Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Thomas Tomkins, Thomas Morley, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Weelkes.

Based at Windsor Castle, all the members of the 21st century 'Queen's Six' are also Lay Clerks of St George's Chapel, whose homes lie within the Castle walls. The Chapel Choir, which consists of boy trebles and twelve professional adult male singers, performs some eight services a week, as well as at private and state occasions, often before the Royal Family.

Some of the musical selections were recorded in St. George's Chapel at Windsor, others at Ascot Priory. 

Ascot Priory was the mother house of a Tractarian, Anglo-Catholic Church of England religious order for women with connections to Florence Nightingale and nursing, according to the priory's website:

For a century and a half, Ascot Priory was the mother house of the Society of the Most Holy Trinity, the first of the Religious Orders re-founded in the Church of England after the Reformation. It began as The Sisterhood of the Holy Cross in Park Village, North London, in 1845 – within just twelve years of the beginning of the Oxford Movement and the start of the revival of catholic life in the Church of England.

In 1856 the Sisterhood of the Holy Cross amalgamated with Priscilla Lydia Sellon’s Devonport Society (founded in 1848), under the title of The Congregation of Religious of the Society of the Most Holy Trinity.

The property at Ascot was purchased with the aid of gifts from Mother Lydia’s father and the Revd Dr E. B. Pusey, and the present buildings – in 40 acres of beautiful woodland and gardens – were begun in 1860, with the aim of supporting the London hospitals by providing convalescent care in healthy surroundings.

More about the organizing of religious orders for women in the Church of England here. The order ceased to exist when the last nun died in 2004; then the priory became a retreat center.

Of course I noticed the name of Blessed John Henry Newman's great friend, the Reverend Doctor E.B. Pusey. The website of Pusey House, St. Giles at the University of Oxford offers this summary of Pusey and his connection to Ascot Priory, where he died:

PUSEY is chiefly remembered as the eponymous representative of the earlier phase of a movement which carried with it no small part of the religious life of England in the latter half of the 19th century. His own chief characteristic was an almost unbounded capacity for taking pains. His chief influence was that of a preacher and a spiritual adviser. As a preacher he lacked all the graces of oratory, but compelled attention by his searching and practical earnestness. His correspondence as a spiritual adviser was enormous; his deserved reputation for piety and for solidity of character made him the chosen confessor to whom large numbers of men and women unburdened their doubts and their sins.

In private life Pusey's habits were simple almost to austerity. Though fierce with his opponents, he was gentle to those who knew him, and his munificent charities gave him a warm place in the hearts of many to whom he was personally unknown. He financed the building of St Saviour's Church, Leeds, and was instrumental in the foundation of Ascot Priory. In his domestic life he had some severe trials; his wife died, after eleven years of married life, in 1839; only one of his daughters survived into adulthood, and his only son, who was a scholar like-minded with himself, who had shared many of his literary labours, and who had edited an excellent edition of St Cyril's commentary on the minor prophets, died in 1880, after many years of suffering. From that time Pusey was seen by only a few people. His strength gradually declined, and he left Oxford to be cared for by the community of nuns he had founded at Ascot, where he died on the 16th September 1882. He was buried at Christ Church in the cathedral of which he had been for fifty-four years a canon, his body being placed in the vault which already held the bodies of his wife and daughters. In his memory his friends purchased his library, and bought for it a house in Oxford, which they endowed with sufficient funds to maintain three librarians, who were charged with the duty of perpetuating the memory of the principles which he taught, the maintenance of the Catholic Faith, and the preaching of the Gospel. Their work continues today.

December 1 in Rome at the Venerable

From The Catholic World Report, a story about the annual remembrance of the English Catholic martyrs who studied at the Venerable English College in Rome before going on their mission home:

The annual Martyrs’ Day commemorations take place in the seminary’s main chapel, which is lit by candles for the occasion. A student reads a reflection written at the time of the persecutions – this year, a letter written by St. Ralph Sherwin the day before his martyrdom – and the relics of the VEC’s martyrs are displayed on the altar and venerated.

One of the highlights of the evening is the singing of the Te Deum in front of the Martyrs’ Painting, a 16th century image of the Trinity by Durante Alberti which hangs behind the altar. This tradition harkens back to a practice of the seminarians at the time of the Reformation every time news reached them of a former student’s martyrdom.

“If any ever news returned to Rome that one of their brother priests had been put to death in England, the College community would come and gather in front of the painting,” explained VEC vice rector Fr. Mark Harold. “They would sing a hymn of praise to God, Te Deum laudamus,” which is paraphrased in the English hymn “Holy God, we praise thy name”. . . .

On the upper level of the College chapel are a series of frescos, depicting the martyrdoms of St. Ralph Sherwin, St. Thomas More, and dozens of others, which originally dated back to the Reformation. The current paintings are based on reproductions of the originals which had been recorded in a book, as the chapel was severely damaged by Napoleon's forces in the 18th century.

The panels graphically depict the martyrdoms, Fr. Harold said, and are not for the faint of heart. “They’re a vivid reminder to us of what people gave their lives for and what a great sacrifice they made in the name of their faith and that we walk in that tradition.”

According to this site, those paintings were essential to the cause of the English martyrs in the 19th century, because they proved that devotion to the martyrs had developed.

The First Popish Plot Victim

Blessed Edward Coleman was the first victim of the Popish Plot (except for truth and justice):

A controversialist, politician, and secretary of the Duchess of York, date of birth unknown; executed at Tyburn, 3 December, 1678. He was the son of a Suffolk clergyman and, after a distinguished career at Cambridge, became a Catholic and was employed by the Duchess of York. As her secretary he became acquainted with continental statesmen from whom he sought pecuniary help when in difficulties. In 1675 he offered his services in favour of Catholicism to Père La Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV; again in 1676 he was in communication with Father Saint-Germain, offering his assistance to prevent a rupture between England and France. These attempts to procure money failed, but he succeeded later in obtaining £3500 from three successive French ambassadors whom he supplied with daily information regarding the proceedings of Parliament. He became a suspected character, and on the discovery of the Titus Oates Plot, conceived in 1678 for the ruin of the Duke of York whose Catholicity was suspected Coleman was named as one of the conspirators. Conscious of his innocence he took no steps to protect himself, allowed his papers to be seized, and gave himself up for examination. He was tried 28 Nov., 1678, being accused of corresponding with foreign powers for the subversion of the Protestant religion, and of consenting to a resolution to murder the king. His defense was that he had only endeavoured to procure liberty of conscience for Catholics constitutionally through Parliament, and had sought money abroad to further this object. He denied absolutely any complicity with the plot against the king's life. His foreign correspondence of 1675 and 1676, when examined, proved him to be an intriguer, but contained nothing that could connect him in any way with designs on the king's life. However, in spite of the flagrantly false testimony of Oates and Bedloe, he was found guilty, drawn to Tyburn, and there executed. He was a good linguist, writer, and controversialist. His controversy with Drs. Stillingfleet and Burnet resulted in the conversion of Lady Tyrwhit to the Catholic religion. His writings were: "Reasons for Dissolving Parliament", "Two Letters to M. La Chaise, the French King's Confessor" (London 1678, reprinted in Cobbett's "Parliamentary History"; "The Tryal of Edward Coleman" etc. (London, 1678); "Legacies; a Poem", etc. (London, 1679).

He was beatified on 15 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI. Wikipedia gives more detail, from the Dictionary of National Biography in its entry for this martyred victim of Titus Oates' Popish Plot.

After Catholic Emancipation in England

While Catholics had finally been granted the rights that were theirs by birth in 1829, much work remained for them to exercise those rights, including in the field of education. Richard J. Janet, PhD., professor of history, and director of the Thomas More Center for the Study of Catholic Thought and Culture at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, Missouri writes about this crucial period for Homiletic & Pastoral Review:

It was a particularly difficult time to be Catholic in Britain. While the repeal of the penal laws granted Catholics full political rights in 1829, a deep, popular, anti-Catholicism permeated British society. The Oxford Movement, culminating in the conversion of John Henry Newman to Catholicism in 1845, seemed to confirm fears that closet Catholics lurked everywhere. The influx of Irish immigrants into England, many fleeing the effects of the Great Famine in Ireland, fed the resentment of this largely foreign, ignorant, and Catholic underclass. Respectable newspapers like the Times routinely stoked the fires of anti-Catholicism, engaging in the most blatant racial profiling of Irish Catholics (often caricatured as monkeys in political cartoons). The growth of the Catholic population inspired some Catholic leaders to plan for the reorganization of the Church, including the return of the Catholic hierarchy to a land that, since the Reformation, had been administered as mission territory. English nativists responded with attacks on this “papal aggression,” and, within five years, the government would contemplate legislation to prevent such an incursion. While controversy reigned, the mass of Irish Catholics in English cities remained desperately poor and uneducated.

English Catholic schools proved incapable of improving the situation, existing (in the words of a recent history) in “a decentralized, irregular, and poverty-stricken condition.”1 The Catholic Institute was founded in 1838 to improve Catholic schools but could do little to improve conditions, given its lack of resources. Effectively rubbing salt in Catholic wounds, in 1839, the English government proposed changes in educational policy, establishing a Committee of the Privy Council on Education to dispense public grants to private schools, including those operated by the Church of England, and by dissenting denominations. Catholics were to be excluded from these grants unless they consented to use the protestant Bible in their curriculum—a blatant discrimination that was felt keenly by the leadership of the English Catholic community.

What to do? The ecclesiastical head of the English Church, Vicar-Apostolic Nicholas Wiseman, was preoccupied with Vatican negotiations for the return of the English hierarchy. The most popular figure in the Catholic community—Irish reformer Daniel O’Connell, the great “Emancipator”—focused on efforts to repeal the Act of Union with Ireland, and the devastating effects of the Great Famine. O’Connell died on May 15, 1847. The remaining lay leadership of the Catholic community was, unsurprisingly, deeply divided. The old Whig Catholic gentry favored a patient, moderate approach stressing quiet negotiation and keeping a low profile. The new converts were more aggressive, polemical, and unattached to any political faction. Neither side was willing to defer to the other. Prospects did not look good for a Catholic campaign to secure government grants for desperately needy Catholic schools.

He describes the personalities involved in the crisis--laymen dealing with practical issues, as Father John Henry Newman would argue they should in his famous article on "Consulting the Faithful" in The Rambler--and the compromise finally reached, referencing the book pictured above:

English Catholic schools still faced obstacles in achieving parity with Anglican and secular schools. The historian, Eric Tenbus, in a revealing book entitled [sic] English Catholics and the Education of the Poor, 1847-1902 (Pickering and Chatto, 2010), argues that efforts to promote English Catholic schools helped form a more cohesive Catholic community in 19th century Britain. And Catholic schools have earned high regard in English educational circles, as evidenced by recent government attempts to require Catholic schools to register a higher number of non-Catholic students in an effort to “improve social cohesion” in the kingdom.13 What began as an apparently one-sided attempt of poor Catholic schools to share in the public largesse has evolved to the point that the broader English society recognizes (and covets) the values on which Catholic education rests.

Blessed John Beche, The Last Abbot of Colchester

John Beche (alias Thomas Marshall) was executed for treason on December 1, 1539--the last abbot of Colchester's Benedictine abbey. He had previously been the abbot at St. Werburgh's abbey in Chester. In 1534, he took Henry VIII's Oath of Supremacy, but after the executions of the Carthusians, Thomas More, and John Fisher in 1535, he began to speak of them as martyrs of the Faith. His comments were reported to Henry VIII and when he refused to surrender the Abbey of St. John in Colchester, he was arrested and held in the Tower of London. John Beche was returned to Colchester to face charges of treason against Henry VIII's role as Supreme Head and Governour of the Church in England and found guilty. He was hung, drawn, and quartered in Colchester on December 1, 1539. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1895

The Abbey of Colchester was dedicated to St. John the Baptist and was founded in the 11th century. This site has more detail about the questioning the abbot endured and his fate--and that of the abbey: 

The abbot was in the Tower of London on 20 November. (fn. 86) Soon afterwards he was sent down to Colchester to be tried by a commission (fn. 87) consisting of the earl of Essex, Sir Christopher Jenny, Sir Thomas Darcye, Sir Giles Capell, Sir John Seynclere and Sir William Pyrton; with a jury of sixteen to inquire and seventeen to try. In view of the evidence given above there can have been no possible doubt as to the result of the trial, but we only know that the abbot was found guilty and hanged (fn. 88) at Colchester on 1 December, 1539. Sir Christopher Jenny, writing(fn. 89) soon afterwards to Cromwell, says 'The prisoner after his judgment axed the kyngs highness, yr lordeshippes and my lord chauncellors forgiveness and knowlegid hymself in substaunce to be giltie accordynge to theffect of the indictmente and shewyd hym self to be very penytent, savynge he stoode somewhat in his own conceyte that the subpression of abbeys should not stonde with the lawes of God, and therby and by other circumstances I thought hym an evill man in myn own concyensand opinion yf ther had apperyd noo more but his own confesion.'

By this attainder the abbey and all its possessions came into the hands of the king. Pensions were, however, granted to the monks; John Fraunce receiving £6 13s. 4d., and William Ryppner £5 yearly in 1553. Sir Thomas Audeley endeavoured to get a grant of the site from the king, but failed; though he held it for a time at farm. On 20 August, 1546, it was leased (fn. 90) to Sir Thomas Darcy for twenty-six years, and the lease was afterwards sold by him to John Lucas. The reversion of the site was granted (fn. 91) on 22 June, 1547, to John Dudley, earl of Warwick, and later it came into the possession of John Lucas.

One of the Diamonds of England and His Companions

Today is the anniversary of the 1581 executions of St. Edmund Campion, SJ; St. Alexander Briant, SJ, and St. Ralph Sherwin; it is also the Feast of all the English Jesuit Martyrs. Matt Swaim and I will discuss these great martyrs this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show at the end of the 7:00 a.m. hour (Eastern time)--about 7:45 a.m.: 6:45 a.m. Central.

St. Edmund Campion was born on January 25, 1540 in London, the son of a bookseller. He was raised a Catholic, given a scholarship to St. John's College, Oxford, when fifteen, and became a fellow when only seventeen. His brilliance attracted the attention of such leading personages as the Earl of Leicester, Robert Cecil, and even Queen Elizabeth. He took the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging Elizabeth head of the church in England and became an Anglican deacon in 1564. Doubts about Protestanism increasingly beset him, and in 1569 he went to Ireland where further study convinced him he had been in error, and he returned to Catholicism. Forced to flee the persecution unleashed on Catholics by the excommunication of Elizabeth by Pope Pius V, he went to Douai, France, where he studied theology, joined the Jesuits, and then went to Brno, Bohemia, the following year for his novitiate. He taught at the college of Prague and in 1578 was ordained there. He and Father Robert Persons were the first Jesuits chosen for the English mission and were sent to England in 1580. His activities among the Catholics, the distribution of his Decem rationes at the University Church in Oxford, and the premature publication of his famous Brag (which he had written to present his case if he was captured) made him the object of one of the most intensive manhunts in English history. He was betrayed at Lyford, near Oxford, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and when he refused to apostatize when offered rich inducements to do so, was tortured and then hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on December 1 on the technical charge of treason, but in reality because of his priesthood.

St. Alexander Briant (1556-1581) was a diocesan priest who entered the Jesuits just before he was executed. He studied at Oxford at Hertford (then Hart Hall) College where he met and became a follower of Robert Parsons at Balliol who later became a Jesuit and slipped into England with Campion. Briant crossed the Channel in August 1577 to attend the English College at Douai where he was reconciled to the Catholic Church. He was ordained in 1578 and in August 1579 returned to his homeland and took up ministry in his native shire (Somerset). He was only able to care for Catholics for two years before priest-hunters caught him by accident.

They searched unsuccessfully for Fr. Persons in one house, and then went to a neighboring house where they discovered Fr. Briant. His captors kept him without food and with little to drink for six days hoping to force information from him about Persons. He refused to speak so he was transferred to the Tower for further interrogation and torture on the rack. He wrote to the English Jesuits about his torture, saying that he kept his mind so firmly set on Christ's Passion that he felt no pain during the torture, only afterwards. He also wrote that just before he was tortured a second time, he had determined to enter the Jesuits if he were released from prison. However, since he doubted that he would be released, he asked to be accepted into the Society. The Jesuits accepted him upon receiving his letter.

St. Alexander Briant had carved a small wooden cross and held it in his hands in the courtroom. When one of the judges took it from him (Why?) he said, "You can take it out of my hands, but not out of my heart." Taking the cross from him seems an act of petty cruelty. I guess when you've tortured a man so much that the man using the rack boasts that the victim will be a foot longer, you'll do just about anything.

St. Ralph Sherwin: Born 1550: Rodsley, Derbyshire. Ralph Sherwin was the nephew of John Woodward, rector of Ingatestone in Essex from 1556 to 1566. In 1568, Sir William Petre of Ingatestone Hall, nominated Ralph to one of eight fellowships he had founded at Exeter College, Oxford; Ralph took his MA there in 1574.

Brought up as a Protestant, Ralph converted to the Catholic faith in 1575, and went to the English college at Douai where he was ordained in 1577. He continued his studies at the English College in Rome, his name being the first in the College register. When an oath requiring students to consent to the English mission was required, Ralph readily agreed, saying, ‘Today rather than tomorrow’.

Ralph returned to England on 1st August 1580, but on 9th November 1580 he was arrested in London and committed to the Marshalsea prison. He was transferred to the Tower of London where he was alternately tortured on the rack and thrown out into the December snow. He was once kept upon the rack for five consecutive days without food. He was offered a bishopric if he would conform to the authorised religion, but refused.

On 20th November 1581, Ralph was tried at Westminster Hall, accused of treason. He wrote a letter to his uncle, John Woodward, saying, "Innocency is my only comfort against all the forged villainy which is fathered on my fellow priests and me." His last words were: "Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus!" "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, be to me Jesus (Saviour)".

When they were found guilty, St. Edmund Campion told the judges: "In condemning us you condemn all your own ancesters--all the ancient priests, bishops, and kings--all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter. For what have we taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned with these lights--not of England only, but of the world--by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us." Upon hearing the sentence of death, the three sang "Te Deum Laudamus".

At Tyburn Tree, St. Alexander Briant watched the brutal execution meted out to those found guilty of treason inflicted on Sherwin and Campion. It's hard to imagine the fortitude and faith necessary to witness such horrors and know that in a moment, you will endure the same--at least humanly speaking. Only the theological virtues of faith, hope and love grants that kind of strength.

These three holy men were canonized by Pope Paul VI among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970.