Phineas Fletcher and Orlando Gibbons

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Phineas Fletcher was baptized on April 8, 1582. He was an:

English poet best known for his religious and scientific poem The Purple Island.

He was the elder son of Giles Fletcher the Elder and brother of Giles Fletcher the Younger. He was educated at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge. Fletcher became chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby, who presented him in 1621 to the rectory of Hilgay, Norfolk, where he spent the rest of his life.

His greatest work, The Purple Island, was published in 1633. It included the Piscatorie Eclogs and other Poetical Miscellanies. The Purple Island: or the Isle of Man, is a poem in 12 cantos describing allegorically the human physiology and soul. The manner of Edmund Spenser is employed throughout, and the chief charm of the poem is considered by critics to be its descriptions of rural scenery. The Piscatorie Eclogs are pastorals, the characters of which are represented as fisherboys on the banks of the Cam, and are interesting for the light they cast on the biography of the poet himself (Thyrsil) and his father (Thelgon), and on Phineas’ friendship with Cambridge men. Fletcher’s poetry has not the sublimity sometimes reached by his brother Giles.

He also wrote Locustes or Apollyonists, an anti-Catholic, anti-Jesuit, anti-foreigner, anti-Real Presence satire, which seems to drip with hatred, animosity, and nationalism. 

On the other hand, his poem, "Drop, drop, slow tears", was set to music by Orlando Gibbons.

Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet,
which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace.

Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat;
to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease.

In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears;
nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.

Walpole and Rawlins; Oldcorne and Ashley

Four martyrs on April 7: two in 1595 and two more in 1606:

St. Henry Walpole, who is one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales canonized in 1970, was influenced by the martyrdom of St. Edmund Campion to become a priest and return to England as a Jesuit missionary (drops of blood from Campion's torturous death fell on Walpole):

According to this blog, after studying for the priesthood on the Continent, becoming a Jesuit, and enduring imprisonment while serving English Catholics in the Spanish Netherlands, Walpole returned to England on December 4, 1593 and was betrayed and captured almost immediately.

One night of freedom in England was followed by 16 months of imprisonment. Walpole admitted during his first interrogation that he was a Jesuit and had come to England to convert people. He was transferred to York Castle for three months, and was permitted to leave the prison to discuss theology with Protestant visitors. Then he was transferred to the Tower of London at the end of February, 1594, so that the notorious priest-torturer Richard Topcliffe could wrest information from him.

Walpole was tortured brutally on the rack and was suspended by his wrists for hours, but Topcliffe stretched the tortures out over the course of a year to prevent an accidental death. Walpole endured torture 14 different times before being returned in 1595 to York to stand trial under the law that made it high treason for an Englishman simply to return home after receiving Holy Orders abroad. The man who had once aspired to be a lawyer defended himself ably, pointing out that the law only applied to priests who had not given themselves up to officials within three days of arrival. He himself had been arrested less than a day after landing in England, so he had not violated that law. The judges responded by demanding that he take the Oath of Supremacy, acknowledging the queen's complete authority in religion. He refused to do so and was convicted of high treason.

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

Blessed Alexander Rawlins:

Alexander was born in Worcestershire, England, where he was jailed twice for his fervent Catholicism. In 1589 he went to the English seminary in Reims and was ordained there in 1590. Returning to England the following year (with another future martyr and saint, Father Edmund Gennings), Alexander was arrested. He was condemned to death and on April 7, 1595, and along with Henry Walpole was hanged, drawn, and quartered in York, England. He was beatified in 1929.

For the stories of Blessed Edward Oldcorne and Blessed Ralph Ashley, click here. They were arrested, tortured, and executed in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot during the reign of James I.

Saint Henry Walpole, Blessed Alexander Rawlins, Blessed Edward Oldcorne, Blessed Ralph Askley, pray for us.

Defending St. Thomas More in The National Catholic Register

Just in time for the first episode of Wolf Hall this evening on PBS, my article for The National Catholic Register is on-line:

Catholic bishops and fair-minded historians in England protested against the inaccurate portrayal of Sir Thomas More in the BBC miniseries based on Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall when it made its debut in January this year. Since Thomas Cromwell, one of King Henry VIII’s advisers, is Mantel’s hero, Thomas More must be her villain. Mantel and the BBC portray More as cruel, bigoted, fanatical, misogynistic and sado-masochistical.

Viewers of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, whether the 1963 film or the stage play, won’t recognize the witty, intelligent family man and friend if they watch Wolf Hall during its run on PBS’ Masterpiece starting Easter Sunday, April 5, through the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 10.

Mantel writes historical fiction, so she has the artistic license to interpret historical characters in her novels.

What readers and viewers have to remember is that Mantel’s More is not the real Thomas More; her version of his character does not resemble the description contemporaries like Desiderius Erasmus have left us of a humble, loving, humorous and honest man. Bolt didn’t tell the whole story of Thomas More either, when he made him a hero of individual conscience; Bolt did at least get More’s character and personality right.

If Mantel’s More were the real Thomas More, viewers might be horrified that the Catholic Church has honored More by canonizing him (in 1935 — 80 years ago this year), including him on the universal calendar of saints on June 22 (with St. John Fisher, the great bishop of Rochester, who also opposed Henry VIII’s supremacy and was beheaded) and proclaiming him the patron saint of politicians and statesmen (announced by Pope St. John Paul II in 2000).

St. Thomas More faced charges of treason for opposing Henry VIII’s desire to get a divorce in 1535. In 2015 (480 years later), he now faces charges of being “fussily pious, stiff-necked and unnaturally fond of torturing heretics” (according to Charles McGrath in The New York Times), “with a penchant for self-punishment and a misogynist to boot” (according to Vanessa Thorpe in The Guardian). Since he is not here to defend himself, here are some facts to represent the real Thomas More: . . .

Read the rest at The National Catholic Register.

Christ Is Risen, Truly He is Risen!

Music for Easter Sunday from the great Abbey of Solesmes:

Happy Easter!

Holy Saturday In "The Man Born to be King"

Dorothy L. Sayers' radio drama The Man Born to be King depicts the drama of Holy Saturday, that day of mourning and wondering as a day of activity and action for Jesus' female disciples. The men have nothing to do. Her notes for the production of the episode after the crucifixion emphasize this:

Note that, for the WOMEN, there is, on an occasion such as this, the consolation of being able to act. The male disciples are lethargic because they have come to a dead end; the women can occupy themselves with funeral details, and get a certain mournful satisfaction out of them. The bustle of preparing spices, of collecting towels and basins, of the early morning excursion--the contemplation of fine grave-clothes, a rich casket, a beautiful tomb--it all soothes and braces them. At births and deaths, women come into their own and can do something, while the men can only sit about helplessly. Melancholy as it all is, the women are on top--it is their adventure.

Sayers wanted to depict the Church's teaching about Jesus Christ, the dogma of the Incarnation, the Gospel, the Passion, Death and Resurrection through drama so that it would have an impact on people. She thought that hearing the human voices of actors portraying Jesus, Pilate, Mary and Mary Magdalen, Judas and John, would make the story compelling again. How can this story not be compelling? Particularly the story of the Passion, Death and Resurrection?

Blessed John Henry Newman, in a sermon I've posted before, noted that Christians in his day read the story of the Passion without realizing what it meant to them; they were detached and not involved--they did not feel anything:

Unless we have a true love of Christ, we are not His true disciples; and we cannot love Him unless we have heartfelt gratitude to Him; and we cannot duly feel gratitude, unless we feel keenly what He suffered for us. I say it seems to us impossible, under the circumstances of the case, that any one can have attained to the love of Christ, who feels no distress, no misery, at the thought of His bitter pains, and no self-reproach at having through his own sins had a share in causing them.

I know quite well, and wish you, my brethren, never to forget, that feeling is not enough; that it is not enough merely to feel and nothing more; that to feel grief for Christ's sufferings, and yet not to go on to obey him, is not true love, but a mockery. True love both feels right, and acts right; but at the same time as warm feelings without religious conduct are a kind of hypocrisy, so, on the other hand, right conduct, when unattended with deep feelings, is at best a very imperfect sort of religion. And at this time of year especially are we called upon to raise our hearts to Christ, and to have keen feelings and piercing thoughts of sorrow and shame, of compunction and of gratitude, of love and tender affection and horror and anguish, at the review of those awful sufferings whereby our salvation has been purchased.

Let us pray God to give us all graces; and while, in the first place, we pray that He would make us holy, really holy, let us also pray Him to give us the beauty of holiness, which consists in tender and eager affection towards our Lord and Saviour: which is, in the case of the Christian, what beauty of person is to the outward man, so that through God's mercy our souls may have, not strength and health only, but a sort of bloom and comeliness; and that as we grow older in body, we may, year by year, grow more youthful in spirit.

Sayers and Newman agree, as Gilbert Meilaender offers evidence in an article for Touchstone Magazine, recommending her plays on the Passion for Holy Week reading, just as C.S. Lewis did:

"God was executed," she writes, "by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own—in the over-ripeness of the most splendid and sophisticated Empire the world has ever seen." In her hands, "the greatest drama in history" regains the sting we sometimes, with the best of intentions, take out of it. Hers is the story of a man, but a man born to be king, and she will not allow us to "hear that story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all." Lent is surely the right time for such a reminder.

Good Friday

By Father Frederick Faber:

O come and mourn with me awhile;
And tarry here the cross beside;
O come, together let us mourn;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Have we no tears to shed for Him,
While soldiers scoff and foes deride?
Ah! look how patiently He hangs;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

How fast His hands and feet are nailed;
His blessed tongue with thirst is tied,
His failing eyes are blind with blood:
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

His mother cannot reach His face;
She stands in helplessness beside;
Her heart is martyred with her Son’s:
Jesus, our Lord, is Crucified.

Seven times He spoke, seven words of love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Come, let us stand beneath the cross;
So may the blood from out His side
Fall gently on us drop by drop;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

O break, O break, hard heart of mine!
Thy weak self-love and guilty pride
His Pilate and His Judas were:
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

A broken heart, a fount of tears,
Ask, and they will not be denied;
A broken heart love’s cradle is:
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

O love of God! O sin of man!
In this dread act Your strength is tried;
And victory remains with love;
For Thou our Lord, art crucified!

By Hilaire Belloc:

Our Lord and Our Lady

They warned Our Lady for the Child
That was Our Blessed Lord,
And She took Him into the desert wild,
Over the camel's ford.

And a long song She sang to Him
And a short story told:
And she wrapped Him in a woollen cloak
To keep Him from the cold.

But when Our Lord was grown a man
The rich they dragged Him down,
And they crucified Him in Golgotha,
Out and beyond the town.

They crucified Him on Calvary,
Upon an April day;
And because He had been Her little Son
She followed Him all the way.

Our Lady stood beside the Cross,
A little space apart,
And when She heard Our Lord cry out
A sword went through her heart.

They laid Our Lord in a marble tomb,
Dead, in a winding sheet.
But Our Lady stands above the world
With the white moon at her feet.

Pilate's Wife and Her Dream

The Gospel according to St. Matthew contains a small detail not in the other Passion accounts. The wife of Pontius Pilate sends a message to him asking him not to have anything to do with Jesus, because she has had a terrible dream and suffered much because of him.

As it was recommended in The Catholic Herald, I decided to read Gertrud von le Fort's "The Wife of Pilate", a short story translated and published by Ignatius Press. The wife of Pilate, usually named Claudia, is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Like Dorothy L. Sayers in The Man Born to Be King, von le Fort, author of The Song at the Scaffold, depicts Claudia's dream to be her hearing the words from the Creed: "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried . . ."; "Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et supultus es . . .".

Sayer's wife of Pilate hears different languages and voices; von le Fort's version of the dream has his wife traveling through time from the catacombs, to a Roman basilica church, to Gothic cathedrals ("the massive halls began to stand upright, as though they hovered weightlessly in the sky, freed from all the laws of stone") in which the choirs sang the words, and then to even stranger--to her--buildings with "strange draperies".

The short story takes the form of a letter from Claudia's freed Greek servant, recounting the effects of Pilate's condemnation of Jesus on Good Friday on Claudia and on her relationship with her husband. I won't spoil the end, but it is wondrous, as those words continue to echo: "Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et supultus es . . ."

Creeping to the Cross Before, During, and After the English Reformation

As Eamon Duffy describes in The Stripping of the Altars, Good Friday was a solemn day of fasting and mourning in English Catholic churches before the English Reformation. The sacramental reality of Jesus's redemptive suffering and death were commemorated by the ritual of "Creeping to the Cross" which compares to our current form of Venerating the Cross as one of the four parts of the Good Friday service. As this website notes, Henry VIII allowed the performance of this ritual throughout his "rule" as Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England, but wanted to make sure that no one celebrated it, and other observances, out of superstition:

"Holy water, holy bread, the use of vestments, Candlemas candles, ashes, palms, creeping to the Cross, sepulchres, hallowing of the font, and “all other like laudable customs, rites, and ceremonies” were allowed by the Ten Articles of 1536 “as good and laudable things to put us in memory of what they signify.” On February 26, 1539 (Wilkins, III, 842), Henry issued a proclamation in which holy water, holy bread, kneeling and creeping to the Cross on Good Friday, setting up lights before the Corpus Christi on Easter Day, bearing candles at the Purification were allowed since “as yet” they had not being abolished. But they were to be used without superstition. “Let the minister on each day instruct the people on the right and godly use of every ceremony. On every Sunday let him declare that holy water is sprinkled in remembrance of our baptism and of the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. On every Sunday let holy bread be given, to remind men of the housel, or Eucharist, which in the beginning of the Christian Church was received more often than now, and in sign of unity, for as the bread is made of many grains so are all Christian men one mystical body of Christ. Let candles be borne at Candlemas, but in memory of Christ, the spiritual light. On Ash Wednesday let ashes be given to every Christian man to remind him that he is dust and ashes. On Palm Sunday let palms be borne, but let it be declared that it is in memory of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Let it be declared on Good Friday, that creeping to the Cross and kissing the Cross signify humility and the memory of our redemption. They are signs and tokens, not the workers nor the works, of our salvation”. This explanation is almost identical to No. IX of the Ten Articles (1536). The same ordinances concerning ceremonies were embodied in some royal directions which appeared on Nov. 10, 1539. In January, 1545-46, Cranmer prepared letters for the King, which however never received Henry’s signature, abrogating creeping and kneeling to the Cross (Cranmer, Remains. p. 415). The Royal Injunctions of 1547 (No. 27) tolerated holy water, holy-bread and palms, did not condemn ashes, Candlemas candles, creeping to the Cross, Easter sepulchres, hallowing of the font, and allowed two lights; although the Homily of Good Works published before them and ordered by them to be read, condemned fire, bread, water, palms and candles.

During the reign of Edward VI, Archbishop Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer omitted the ceremony and Parliament forbade it. Mary I's restoration of Catholicism revived the practice which then was forbidden again under Elizabeth I. 

To me, it represents great devotion to Jesus and the Paschal Mystery and acknowledgment of sin and penitence--not something you would want to condemn at all. People did not want to give it up, either, and Anglican bishops complained that some still "creeped" on their knees to the Cross on Good Friday during Elizabeth's reign.

A Martyred Priest for Holy Thursday: St. John Payne

Executed on April 2, 1582, St. John Payne's story is perfect for Holy Thursday, since this the day of Holy Week dedicated to the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist:

St. John Payne was an English Catholic Priest and Martyr. He was born in Peterborough in 1532. He was a mature man when he went to the English College at Douai in 1574. The Archbishop of Cambrai ordained him a Priest on April 7, 1576. Shortly after being ordained, he left for the English mission with another Priest, Cuthbert Mayne. Mayne headed for his native South West England, and Payne headed for Essex. In early July 1851, he and another who had come to England were arrested in Warwickshire while staying at the estate of Lady Petre. It was through the efforts of George “Judas” Eliot, a known criminal, murderer, rapist and thief, who made a career out of denouncing Catholics and Priests for bounty. After being examined at Greenwich, they were committed to the Tower of London on July 14th. Eliot was a Catholic, and had been employed in positions of trust in the Petre household where he had embezzled sums of money. He enticed a young woman to marry him, and the approached Fr. Payne. When he refused, Elliot was determined to make his revenge, and a profit as well, by turning him in.

Fr. John Payne was indicted at Chelmsford on March 22, on a charge of treason for conspiring to murder the Queen and her leading officers. John denied the charges, and affirmed his loyalty to the Queen in all that was lawful; contesting the reliability of the murderer Eliot how had turned him in. No attempt was made to corroborate Eliot’s story, which had been well rehearsed. The guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion. 

Although the verdict was a foregone conclusion, authorities almost lost control of the execution:

At his execution, he was dragged from prison on a hurdle to the place of execution and first prayed on his knees for almost thirty minutes. He then kissed the scaffold, made a profession of faith, and publicly declared his innocence. He was called upon to repent of his treason, and again, Payne denied it. A Protestant minister shouted out that he knew of Payne’s treason, from his brother, years prior. Fr. Payne admitted that his brother was an earnest Protestant, but that he would never had said such a lie. Fr. Payne asked that his brother who was in the same vicinity, be brought in and asked. The execution proceeded and John Payne was at their mercy. What was supposed to be a smooth, quiet execution was anything but that. The crowd had become so sympathetic to John Payne that they hung on his feet to speed up his death and prevented the infliction of the quartering until he was dead.

St. Cuthbert Mayne, with whom St. John Payne returned to England is the protomartyr of the recusant era, executed for treason in 1577 on November 29. Mayne and Payne: They are both among the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales.

No April Fool Here: Blessed John Bretton, Recusant Martyr

According to this tremendous account of his life and death, the layman Blessed John Bretton was executed on April 1, 1598 after years of recusancy "For words spoken out of Catholic Zeal" "because he was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church," he "urged others to embrace the same religion" and he "denied the spiritual primacy of the Queen." His wife, Frances, survived him and continued their recusancy. 

Just some highlights: 

John Bretton was executed at York on 1st April 1598 because of his faith, the culmination of many, many years of courage and steadfastness in the face of persecution, by both John Bretton and Frances, his wife. . . .

The earliest reference to the Recusancy of John and Frances Bretton occurs in Archbishop Sandys’ List of Yorkshire Recusants returned to the Privy Council in 1577, wherein they are stated to have “no Habilities (Wealth)” “and yet are the most obstinate and perverse”. This list was sent five years after the Earl of Huntingdon had begun his intense investigation and persecution of Catholics in Yorkshire, four years before the passing of the Act 23 Eliz. c1 which made “reconciliation” to the Catholic Church a capital crime. For many years, because of the persecution he was suffering through his Recusancy, John Bretton was forced to flee and hide. Altogether he seems to have been a fugitive from 1577 to 1593, when the Act 35 Eliz. c2 forced all recusants to return home and stay within five miles thereof on pain of the loss of all property. . . .

That the Brettons were regarded as amongst the more notorious recusants is shown by the fact that on 12th February, 1589, within a year of their first conviction, the Exchequer issued a Commission for the assessment and seizure to the use of the Queen of two thirds of their lands and all their goods and chattels in accordance with the Statute of 1586. The Memoranda Roll recording this Commission and the subsequent enquiries gives the text of the patent, signed for the Queen by Burghley, and the names of the Yorkshire Gentry thereby empowered. They included “John, Lord Darcye: Sir Thomas Fairfax: Sir Richard Malliverer: Sir George Savell, and eleven others” In fact only six people, Richard Wortley, William Wentworth, Thomas Wentworth, Robert Bradford, Henry Farrer and Michael Kaie did the work and had produced before them on 8th April 1589, not only details of John Bretton’s property, but also that of forty five other recusants whose names were included in the schedule, including Maud (Matilda) Wentworth, widow, who was Frances’ aunt by marriage and lived over the way at Bretton Hall, and Dorothy Wentworth, the wife of Maud’s son, Matthew, also living there. . . .

Read more here about how Frances struggled without her husband's constancy and loyalty to the Faith:

One might be forgiven for hoping that, having had so much suffering in her life, culminating in her husband’s execution Frances Bretton would now be left in peace - but this was not to be. Within a month the Escheator was on her track. His very presence was proof that the family fortunes were in great jeopardy. In the midst of her grief, therefore she had to remind herself that it now devolved on her alone, as legal owner, to safeguard the livelihood of her children. To whom could she turn for advice ?

Her own kinsfolk, the Wentworths, one of the most powerful families in Yorkshire, doubtless watched events with interest, if not with sympathy. But, with one exception, (Michael of Woolley), all her male relatives appear to have been, at best, "Church Papists". One or two were strong and active supporters of the new religion. Tenacious of this world’s goods they must, as a whole, have been highly impatient with her rigid adherence to Catholic principle. Even her aunt, Maud Wentworth of Bretton Hall, after maintaining her recusancy for many years had, in her old age, publically (sic) conformed three years previously and thus preserved her property intact for her son, Matthew. 

Although Frances herself finally submitted to the Archbishop of York and was pardoned of her previous recusancy for the sake of her own son, Luke, and his inheritance, she was was soon numberered among the recusants again, and died in the Catholic faith. Blessed John Bretton and Frances also had two other sons, Richard and Matthew, who became Catholic priests!

What remarkable steadfastness and love! In this Holy Week, the holiest time of the Christian year, it is indeed marvelous to meditate on men and women so willing to live their lives and give their lives for their Savior and His Church! John Bretton was beatified among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales in 1987.