Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation

Are You Making a List? I am. More Books.

2012-03-05T00:32:00.001-08:00

G. W. Bernard is going where Eamon Duffy has gone before in this forthcoming book: The Late Medieval English Church Vitality and Vulnerability Before the Break with Rome. From Yale University Press (due out in May in the UK):

The later medieval English church is invariably viewed through the lens of the Reformation that transformed it. But in this bold and provocative book historian G. W. Bernard examines it on its own terms, revealing a church with vibrant faith and great energy. Bernard looks at the structure of the church, the nature of royal control over it, the clergy and bishops, the intense devotion and deep-rooted practices of the laity, anti-clerical sentiment, and the prevalence of heresy. He argues that the Reformation was not inevitable, nor made unavoidable by the defectiveness, corruption, superstition or outdatedness of a church ripe for a fall: the late medieval church had both vitality and vulnerabilities, the one often linked to the other. The result is a thought-provoking study of a church and society in transformation.

And here is a provocative title: Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth I and the Wars of Religion, by Susan Ronald due out in August from St. Martin's Press:

Elizabeth’s 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only twenty-five years old, the young queen saw herself as their Protestant savior; aiming to provide the nation with new hope, prosperity, and independence from the foreign influence that had plagued her sister Mary’s reign. Given the scars of the Reformation, Elizabeth would need all of the powers of diplomacy and tact she could summon. Extravagant, witty, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the ultimate tyrant. Yet at the outset, in religious matters, she was unfathomably tolerant for her day. “There is only one Christ, Jesus, one faith,” Elizabeth once proclaimed. “All else is a dispute over trifles.” Heretic Queen is the highly personal, untold story of how Queen Elizabeth I secured the future of England as a world power. Susan Ronald paints the queen as a complex character whose apparent indecision was really a political tool that she wielded with great aplomb.

Frederick Cornwallis

2012-03-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

Today a Latitudinarian Archbishop of Canterbury; tomorrow a High Church Tory Bishop of Rochester!

Frederick Cornwallis was born on March 5, 1713 (so was his twin brother, Edward, founder of Halifax, Nova Scotia and Governor of Gilbralter). Frederick was educated at Eton and took degrees at Christ's Church at Cambridge; ordained in the C of E in 1742; Doctor of Divinity in 1748. As he was the seventh son of Charles Cornwallis, the 4th Baron Cornwallis, his progress in the Church was assured. (His eldest brother was Charles Cornwallis, father of the General Charles Cornwallis who would surrender to George Washington in 1781.) In 1746 he became a chaplain to King George II and a Canon at Windsor Castle; then in 1750 he became Canon at St. Paul's in London and Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry.

When Thomas Secker died in 1768 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. He was known for his good adminstration of his office, but he was a typical latitudinarian of the 18th century. Therefore he contributed to that lack of enthusiasm for Christian doctrine and worship that lead to the evangelical and High Church reforming movements of the nineteenth century, especially the Oxford Movement. He died on the 19th of March in 1783, 70 years old, and was succeeded in his office by John Moore.

A Guide to Catholic London

2012-03-04T00:16:00.001-08:00

In preparation for visits to London during the Olympics this summer, the Catholic News Service offers this guide by Simon Caldwell to important churches and sites in connection with Catholic history:

LONDON (CNS) -- Visitors to the 2012 Olympic Games might be surprised to discover the extent to which London has been marked by the Catholic faith over the centuries. Riding the trains of the London Underground they notice stations with names such as Temple, Blackfriars, Charing Cross and Covent Garden. Above ground, the traces of Catholicism are yet more noticeable: Whitefriars, Greyfriars, Ave Maria Lane and Paternoster Square all denote a rich Catholic heritage that precedes the Reformation.

Catholics never left London, and during the 16th and 17th centuries they soaked the city with their blood, with 105 beatified and canonized martyrs dying on the Tyburn gallows, while many others were executed in other parts of the capital. However, the hope and new confidence that was ushered in with the "second spring" of the 19th century means that, today, stunning Catholic cathedrals and churches again adorn the city landscape. Here are a number of sites well worth a visit, not listed in order of importance or prominence:

1. Tyburn Convent. This is the motherhouse of the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre, an order of cloistered Benedictine nuns, and it stands just yards from the site of the infamous "Tyburn Tree" on which more than a hundred Catholics died for their faith during the Reformation. It houses the Martyrs' Crypt, which contains bones, hair, scraps of bloodied shirts, fragments of rope and other such relics salvaged secretly by Catholics and preserved for generations. The convent is increasingly popular with visitors from the U.S., and Boston Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley often asks to celebrate Mass there when is passing through London. The nuns will show visitors around the ground. http://www.tyburnconvent.org.uk/

2. The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street. Because of its proximity to the U.S. Embassy, the mother church of the English Jesuit province is sometimes considered the "American church." It is worth a visit because it is the finest Catholic example of the Victorian Gothic Revival in London and one of the most beautiful churches in the city, the grandeur of its architecture exuding the joyful hope of English Catholics as they emerged from a long period of suffering. http://www.farmstreet.org.uk/

3. Westminster Cathedral. A Byzantine-style structure designed by John Francis Bentley and opened in 1903, this is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It is not yet completed, and mosaics are being added all the time. It is the burial place of Cardinal George Basil Hume and the other archbishops of Westminster and also of St. John Southworth, a 17th-century martyr. Take the elevator up the bell tower (the bell is named Edward after St. Edward the Confessor, patron of the archdiocese) for a spectacular view across to Buckingham Palace. http://www.westminstercathedral.org.uk/

He also mentions the London (Brompton) Oratory--the picture above is the statue of Blessed John Henry Newman there--and a few other sites I appreciated:

At London Charterhouse there are still the remains of the Carthusian priory where St. John Houghton celebrated a Mass of the Holy Spirit before refusing to take the oath attached to the Act of Succession, resulting in him becoming the first martyr of the Reformation, May 4, 1535.

In London's West End is the church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory, Warwick Street. This was formerly the chapel of the Bavarian and Portuguese embassies and was, for a period, one of the few places in London where Catholics were free to attend Mass. It was destroyed in the Gordon Riots and rebuilt but still offers good examples of English Baroque architecture. . . .

Not far away is the Anglican church of St. Giles in the Fields. Eleven Catholic martyrs are buried against its northern wall, including four Jesuits and their provincial who were executed June 20, 1679, amid the hysteria of the fabricated "Popish Plot" of Titus Oates.

Read the rest here: sounds like a great itinerary! I would never even see an Olympic event.

Inside the Vatican and Outside the Vatican: The King's Great Matter

2012-03-03T00:51:00.003-08:00

These two book covers with different titles actually contain the same book. Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII & His Italian Ambassador is the UK version, which is available now. The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story from Inside the Vatican is the US version, which will be available soon. The author, Catherine Fletcher, provides this background on her website:

Our Man in Rome is set in the six-year period of Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. It's the story of Gregorio Casali, Henry VIII’s ambassador in Rome from 1525 to 1533, but also the first book-length account of the diplomatic intrigues behind the divorce for several decades.

Divorce. Deceit. Diplomacy. 1527. Gregorio ‘The Cavalier’ Casali is Henry VIII’s man in Rome. An Italian freelance diplomat, he charmed his way into the English service before he was twenty. But now he faces an almighty challenge. Henry wants a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and Casali must persuade Pope Clement VII of his master’s case. Set against the backdrop of war-torn Renaissance Italy, Our Man in Rome weaves together tales from the grubby underbelly of Tudor politics with a gripping family saga to reveal the extraordinary true story behind history’s most infamous divorce. Through six years of cajoling, threats and bribery, Casali lives by his wits. He manoeuvres his brothers into lucrative diplomatic postings, plays off one master against another, dodges spies, bandits and noblemen alike. But as the years pass and Henry’s case drags on, his loyalties are increasingly suspected. What will be Casali’s fate? Drawing on hundreds of hitherto-unknown archive documents, Our Man in Rome reconstructs his tumultuous life among the great and powerful at this turning point for European history. From the besieged Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome to the splendours of Greenwich Palace, we follow his trail in the service of Henry VIII. Lavish ceremony and glamorous parties stand in contrast to the daily strains of embassy life, as Casali pawns family silver to pay the bills, fights off rapacious in-laws and defends himself in the face of Anne Boleyn’s wrath. This stunning book will make you think anew about Tudor history.

It's interesting to have stumbled upon this book in Amazon.com's new releases/coming soon list at about the same time that the Vatican Archives has opened an exhibit outside the Vatican at the Capitoline Museums, called "Lux in Arcana" and one of the documents is the letter signed by 83 of Henry VIII's courtiers urging Pope Clement VII (note that the exhibition website cites the wrong Clement!) to grant the decree of nullity of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon.

It was the year 1530. For months the matrimonial case of Henry VIII of England versus Catherine of Aragon had been pending in the hands of pope Clement VIII. The king, obsessed more than ever by what he called his “Secret Matter,” wanted to obtain at all costs the pope’s annulment of his first marriage so that he could marry the young Anne Boleyn and hopefully sire the longed-for heir to the throne. It was thus necessary to step up the pressure on the pope. On June 12th, Henry summoned a number of his supporters to court, mostly members of the House of Lords, and asked them to write to Clement VIII, urging him to adjudicate the king’s suit by granting him an annulment. A draft of the proposed letter was read out to the meeting, but some of the attendees criticized its overly aggressive tones; it suggested that a council might be summoned to act against the pope if he did not grant Henry’s wish.

After a few days’ adjournment - perhaps the time needed to redraft the letter - the meeting sat again on June 16th, the Sunday of Corpus Christi. This time, though, Henry took a shrewder approach. To avoid the risk of further delay, he spoke separately to each member. It was impossible to resist his vehement arguments; that day, the letter received a good number of the signatures Henry sought. But the king wasn’t satisfied; the document had to be signed and sealed even by the men who hadn’t been able to come to court. The absentees were reached at their homes by royal commissioners dispatched to every corner of the kingdom. For example, during the night of June 16th the conspicuous parchment was presented to cardinal Thomas Wolsey at his house at Esher; Wolsey signed it in the space reserved for archbishops and pressed his seal into the wax with which the royal messengers had already filled the tin skippet assigned to him.

The document, bearing all its signatures and seals, was dated and dispatched a month later. The signers included nearly 70% of the members of the House of Lords: all of the kingdom’s dukes, marquesses and earls, most of the barons and the abbots in charge of the major abbeys. None of the signers could have imagined the fate that would befall some of them a few years later. George Boleyn, viscount of Rochford and brother of the future Queen Anne, was executed with her for high treason, aggravated by the further charge of having committed incest with his sister. Richard Whiting, abbot of Glastonbury, was hanged, drawn and quartered for refusing to turn the abbey and its property over to the Crown. Abbot Hugh Cook of Reading was hung as a traitor in his own abbey, his body left to rot on the gallows. Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, and Henry Pole, Baron Montague, wholehearted opponents of the “Anglican Schism,” were beheaded for having taken part in a conspiracy against the king. The document has been called “the most impressive one ever circulated by the Tudors.” Its 83 signatures embody the stories of the protagonists and the victims of some of the bloodiest decades in English history. [my emphasis added]

More here about the King's Great Matter from "inside the Vatican" now outside the Vatican! The website is excellent!

English Nuns in Exile

2012-03-03T00:15:00.008-08:00

Preparing for a trip to our one and only local Barnes & Noble to buy my sister a couple of Downton Abbey-themed gifts for her birthday last week, I checked out the website for the BBC History Magazine, to see if I wanted to look at it while shopping there. Then I saw that next month's issue (March) has this preview:

James Kelly shows how a large number of Catholic women fled Protestant England to join European convents in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Looking up James Kelly led me to this website: Who Were the Nuns:

Since September 2008, the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project team at Queen Mary has been making a comprehensive study of the membership of the English convents in exile. That is, the period between the opening of the first English convent in Brussels to the nuns' return to England as a result of the French Revolution and associated violence. Most were enclosed convents, in theory cut off from the outside world. However in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely.

As well as studying the members and their families the project is collecting data on sponsors and patrons on both sides of the Channel.

This website will provide a range of materials for the history of the convents, including edited texts as they are finished and ultimately a fully searchable database of members.

We plan to develop the section inviting contributions from researchers with data they are willing to share with us.

And that site led to this article previously published by James Kelly:

Whereas people have a passing knowledge of the activities of Catholic male religious following the Reformation — such as the Jesuit Edmund Campion, dubbed the flower of England by Elizabeth I before his conversion to Catholicism and subsequent execution — little attention has been paid to the activities of Catholic women religious at this time. Men could head to the likes of the English College in Rome, the oldest English institution abroad, but what about women who wished to lead a religious life denied to them in England? What if families desired that, as well as their sons, their daughters too should be educated within the Catholic faith?

In 1598, the first English convent was established in Brussels and was to be followed by a further 21 establishments across Flanders and France with more than 4,000 women entering them over 200 years. Most were enclosed convents, in theory cut off from the outside world. However, in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely. Here, these substantial communities of women found outlets for female expression often unavailable to their secular counterparts, until the French Revolution and its associated violence forced the convents back to England.

The published results of this study will be very expensive: $495.00 per three volume set!

The Master Builder of Priest's Holes

2012-03-02T00:12:00.000-08:00

St. Nicholas Owen died of torture in the Tower of London on March 2, 1606. This article from the National Catholic Register tells his story:

"St. Nicholas Owen was one of many who suffered and died in the Tower. He was known as “Little John.” He was a tiny slip of a Jesuit, but, as the old hagiographies commonly attested, he was big of heart. Owen was slightly taller than a dwarf and suffered from a hernia and a badly set leg, fractured when a horse fell on him. On March 2, 1606, Nicholas Owen was tortured to death in the Tower of London. He had, in fact, already been here before — when he helped two Jesuit priests escape. . . .

"At night, St. Nicholas would create small hiding places — trap doors, sliding doors, hidden crawl spaces and subterranean passages — in order to hide priests and other Catholic fugitives from priest hunters. He would use trompe l’oeil: perspective and many of the modern principles of stage illusion design that magicians often take for granted. Whenever St. Nicholas would design and build such hiding places, he would always begin with prayer and receive the Eucharist. Because of his incredible building skills, he was even able to help two Jesuit priests escape from the Tower. "

St. Nicholas Owen was captured in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot. The English government rejoiced when he was captured--they hoped to find out where he had built all those hiding places. Once they found out where they were, they could accuse the owners of treason, seize their property, add it to their holdings, and destroy the network of safe houses for Catholics and Catholic priests in England. Because of his infirmity, it was illegal to torture him, but they did it anyway--and then tried to indicate that he had committed suicide!

The image above depicts the torture of St. Edward Oldcorne, who would finally be executed on April 7, 1607, and St. Nicholas Owen. The engraving is by Gaspar Bouttats and does not represent St. Nicholas's true physical stature.

March 2, 1791: Death of John Wesley

2012-03-02T00:04:00.000-08:00

John Wesley founded the first Oxford Movement to revive the Church of England in the 18th century. Like John Henry Newman and his confreres in the 19th century, Wesley and his followers sought to emphasize the reality of Christianity in the Church of England. The 19th century Oxford or Tractarian movement also sought to re-inforce the authority of the bishops as successors of the apostles, while Wesley also looked back to the early Church and the Fathers.

While attending Christ Church at the University of Oxford he founded a "Holy Club" dedicated to reading the Holy Bible methodically, praying together, practicing ascetism, and helping the poor. That the Holy Club was mocked and considered too enthusiastic is an indication of the sad state of affairs in the Church of England at that time. Wesley turned that mockery into the name of his movement, however--Methodism. He was ordained a deacon in the Church of England in 1725 and then ordained as a priest in 1728.

Wesley preached in open areas--"Field Preaching"--along with George Whitefield; but the two men disagreed on the crucial issue of soteriology, the theology of how we are saved. Wesley was an Arminian while Whitefield was a Calvinist. It is fascinating that one of Wesley's favorite devotional works was The Imitation of Christ, a manifestly Catholic book with its emphasis on worship and adoration of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

He never intended to found a separate Christian church; Wesley wanted to revive the Church of England and he died in that church. By the time he died or soon thereafter, however, because the Church of England prevented "Methodist" ministers from ordination, there was a de facto Methodist Church. John Welsey and his brother Charles are honored on the Church of England's calendar, May 24, as Evangelists and Hymn Writers.

March 2nd, the Feast of St. Chad

2012-03-02T00:02:00.000-08:00

St. Chad, the Apostle of the Midlands, is honored today on both Catholic and Anglican calendars in England. The Cathedral in Birmingham, England, designed by A.W.N. Pugin is under his patronage so it seems appropriate to highlight the feast and the cathedral the day after remembering Pugin's birth.

The relics of St. Chad were authenticated in 1995 centuries after the destruction of his shrine during the reign of Henry VIII and are honored in the cathedral, which was built between 1839 and 1841--the first Catholic cathedral constructed in England since the English Reformation (although it was not named formally a cathedral until the hierarchy--with a bishop and a diocese in Birmingham--was restored in 1850).

A.W.N. Pugin, March 1, 1812

2012-03-01T00:11:00.000-08:00

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was born on March 1, 1812 in London--200 years ago!His parents were emigres from the French Revolution and his father, Augustin Pugin was an architect. He set his son to drawing Gothic buildings. His interest in Gothic architecture led him to study the Catholic faith and A.W. N. Pugin joined the Catholic Church in 1835.

On the Continent, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc's career is roughly coterminous with Pugin's and both contributed to the revival of Gothic architecture. Viollet-le-Duc was more interested in restoration of Gothic cathedrals, churches, and castles throughout France. Pugin was convinced that Gothic was THE style for Christian buildings. He wanted not only to design churches and cathedrals in the Gothic style but to furnish them and decorate them throughout--designing every aspect of the building. Unfortunately, his patrons did not always have the money necessary to complete all that work.

When the Catholic hierarchy was restored in 1850 after emancipation in 1829, of course, Catholics had to build a new infrastructure: churches, cathedrals, convents, monasteries, schools, and seminaries--there was a lot of work to do! In collaboration with John Talbot, the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury, Pugin designed and built 14 chapels, schools, etc between 1836 and 1848 in Staffordshire. He also worked in Ireland, especially in County Wexford in the late 1830s and throughout the 1840s. He travelled on the Continent, visiting France and the Netherlands, but did not go to Rome until 1847--where the Renaissance and Baroque architecture of the churches disappointed him. (I think there is only one truly Gothic church in Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.)

He was only 40 years old when he died. He suffered from mental illness and tremendous stress--and perhaps syphilis, according to his major modern biographer, Rosemary Hill. His sons Edward Welby and Peter Paul continued his work in their partnership, Pugin and Pugin. E.W. Pugin also died at the age of 40, in 1875 and Peter Paul finished several of his works in progress and maintained the family style.

More about the bicentennial celebrations here, and some notes about the home, church, and abbey he designed, built, and planned at Ramsgate here, including this delicious insight into Pugin's artistic work:

But he was also devout in a way that would strike us now as extreme. A Catholic convert, he believed that everything had been wrong with England since Henry VIII changed the national religion. He longed for a return of the great pre-Reformation Age of Faith, when monasteries dispensed charity to the poor, lords welcomed travellers beneath the hammer-beamed roofs of their halls, and church spires, not factory chimneys, soared over towns. He tried to realise his vision in, of all places, Ramsgate.

Not only did Pugin build a house, The Grange, at Ramsgate – note the monastic name – but, incredibly, given that he had to pay for every penny of the construction himself, a church. It is, as you would expect, one of his finest works, hard on the outside (it is built of the local material, flint) but, as its priest Fr Marcus Holden puts it, “a revelation of God’s glory within”. It is enriched with delicate stained glass, beautiful carving and a font that was originally made for the Medieval Court of the Great Exhibition. . . . Together, The Grange, St Augustine’s Church and St Augustine’s Abbey form the completest expression of what Pugin believed a revived Middle Ages could be – an inspiring testament to his genius, faith and hard work. Unesco should celebrate this anniversary by making them a World Heritage Site.

Leap Day, 1604: John Whitgift, RIP

2012-02-29T00:11:00.002-08:00

John Whitgift, Elizabeth I's third Archbishop of Canterbury, died on February 29, 1604 (although the stained glass window at right says 1603--unless it is referring to the year of Elizabeth I's death); thus his death anniversary technically roles around every four years.

According to this website, Whitgift was Elizabeth's agent against the Puritans, succeeding Edmund Grindal, whom she had placed under house arrest and deprived of his jurisdiction as Archbishop of Canterbury (fine exercise of Supremacy, there):

John Whitgift was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1583 by Elizabeth I. She knew that Whitgift was anti-Puritans and that he would spearhead a royal desire for religious conformity in England and Wales. In this task, John Whitgift was not to disappoint.

Whitgift was born around 1530. He was the son of a wealthy merchant. His father could afford to educate Whitgift and he attended St. Anthony’s School in London. After this, he went to study at Cambridge University. In 1555, Whitgift was elected Fellow of Peterhouse. During the attacks on Protestants during the reign of Mary, he stayed in England.

Over the next few years, Whitgift acquired a number of posts – Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity (1563), Master of Pembroke (1567) and Master of Trinity (1563). Professionally in the academic world, he got just about as far as he could when he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University.

Whitgift became Elizabeth’s chaplain in 1563. Such a position was very prestigious but it also meant that Whitgift had access to the Queen. Over the years it became clear to her that Whitgift shared her views on conformity, though for the Queen it was as much a political issue as religious. It is likely that Whitgift only took his stand from a religious viewpoint. When Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, refused to condemn prophesying he was replaced by Whitgift (1583). He was the obvious man to support Elizabeth and to place him in the most important religious position in the country gave Elizabeth many advantages. In 1586, Whitgift was given a position on the Privy Council.

Whitgift pursued non-conformists with a vengeance. However, the actual policing of them in a city the size of London was very difficult. Despite his best efforts, groups such as the ‘Barrowists’ grew in Islington. Whitgift produced his ‘Three Articles’, which were designed to effectively trap those he labelled non-conformists. If someone swore to uphold the ‘Three Articles’ they had to leave any non-conformist group they were in. Those who refused to swear to uphold them were, in the case of practicing ministers, deprived of their ministry. Those who held no church positions simply identified themselves as non-conformists to Whitgift. The ‘Three Articles’ were considered by the likes of the highly influential Lord Burghley to be too draconian and he asked for them to be watered down. By degrees they were, but the impact of the ‘reformed’ articles was still as marked.

Whitgift insisted that all clergy uphold Royal Supremacy and the Book of Common Prayer. The Court of High Commission gave what he did the legal clout it needed. The head of the High Commission was Whitgift.

Non-conformist leaders could pay a very heavy price for their beliefs. Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, both leaders in the Congregationalists (though followers of Barrow tended to be known as ‘Barrowists’) were executed for sedition.

However, Whitgift did make one mistake. He concentrated all his resources on enforcing conformity and eradicating non-conformity. As a result, he failed to fully tackle issues within the Church itself and few doubted that problems still existed. As a result, when James I came to the throne in 1603, the remaining Puritans gained new hope and renewed energy. It was Whitgift who crowned James king.

I've been reading a book about Christianity in England by David L. Edwards (Christian England: From the Reformation to the 18th Century) in which the author comments that Elizabeth, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, chose her bishops to do her will but that she "did not really get on with clergymen. She could not flirt with them, she seldom trouble to charm them, and even the bishops who owed their positions to her favour were probably not much attached to her person while she plundered their estates and handed down brutal instructions." (pp. 159-160) Yet, Edwards also points out that she "died gripping Archbishop Whitgift's hand". (p. 83)

Some Great Info on the Medieval Franciscans at Oxford

2012-02-28T00:19:00.000-08:00

From Once I Was a Clever Boy comes this great post on the Franciscans at the University of Oxford during the middle ages:

An early morning meeting at Christ Church last Friday took me on a slightly different route into the centre of Oxford and through the site of the medieval Oxford Greyfriars.

The buildings had been largely demolished by the time Ralph Agas drew his pictorial map of the city in 1578, but excavations in 1971 and 1972 revealed the plan of the church and some of the conventual buildings - the foundations had been largely robbed out. The church had a very unusual extended north transept to accommodate more altars, and was cut into the city wall. Part of the site of the choir is still visible as a grass plot in Old Greyfriars Street, whilst the multi-storey car to the south covers the site of the domestic ranges.

The founding Prior, Bl. Agnellus of Pisa, is buried there. The house, along with the whole Franciscan mission in England, attracted the support of the diocesan bishop, Robert Grosseteste, who held the see of Lincoln from 1235 until his death in 1253. The Oxford friary had his library and relics such as his sanctuary slippers until the dissolution. I strongly suspect that "my bishop" Richard Fleming used the library in his own time as a student and Regent Master in Oxford. Grosseteste's close friend Adam Marsh was trained and lectured at the friary.

Of course, all those great foundations, including the library, were destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. More here from the Greyfriars Centre for Franciscan Studies in Oxford:

The old Greyfriars began as a Hall of the University of Oxford. It may not have been among the grandest and most well-known, but it was one of its kind, a true gem, with a meaningful story and a lesson to impart, a place the ethos of which was precisely what Oxford has always stood for. The Hall was first founded in 1230 and its first Principal Lecturer, Robert Grosseteste, became Chancellor of the University. Among its former fellows and students were Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, William of Occam and Pope Alexander V.

Not many people know that, at the beginning of the 13th century, with Grosseteste’s collection bequeathed to the Franciscans in Oxford, Greyfriars was one of the first libraries in the University. In 1290 the college acquired another substantial collection, that of commentaries on the Bible. The bulk of Grosseteste's books are documented to have been still in place in 1317. By that time, the Franciscans had two libraries at Oxford, one for the friars, the other specifically for the students, the latter considered the finest in the University at that time. Tragically, these unique libraries are now lost. In 1538, when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, the Hall was disbanded and with it, all the priceless books and manuscripts were scattered. Nobody knows where. Small chance of ever finding any of them again.

Many centuries later, the Franciscans came back to Oxofrd, establishing Greyfrirars friary which, in 1957, was granted a licence to become a Permanent Private Hall. This was possible due the relentless energy of amazing scholarly friars. They and the help conferred by very generous and important bequests put Greyfriars back on the map of Oxford University where it belonged. The status of Permanent Private Hall conferred upon Greyfriars by the University in 1957 was surrendered in 2008.

Execution of Anne Line and Companions, February 27, 1601

2012-02-27T00:14:00.001-08:00

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

Father John Gerard SJ, author of the famous book Autobiography of an Elizabethan Priest, asked Anne to manage two safe houses for Jesuits, even though she was ill, but because she was destitute, surviving on teaching and sewing. She was arrested on the Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 1601, when Father Francis Page was celebrating Mass; he escaped with her help. She was tried on February 26, carried to court in a chair, where she admitted joyfully that she had helped Father Page escape and only regretted that she had not been able to help even more!
She was hung at Tyburn in London on February 27 and repeated her statement from court before her execution: "I am sentenced to die for harboring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand." Two priests, Father Roger Filcock and Father Mark Barkworth, paid tribute to her before their own executions, drawn, hung, and quartered. Father Filcock kissed her dead hand and the hem of her dress as she still hung from the gibbet and proclaimed, “You have gotten the start of us, sister, but we will follow you as quickly as we may.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was said to be "a man of stature tall and well proportioned showing strength, the hair of his head brown, his beard yellow, somewhat heavy eyed". He was of a cheerful disposition. He suffered in the Benedictine habit, under which he wore a hair-shirt. It was noticed that his knees were, like St. James', hardened by constant kneeling, and an apprentice in the crowd picking up his legs, after the quartering, called out: "Which of you Gospellers can show such a knee?" Contrary to usual practice, the quarters of the priests were not exposed but buried near the scaffold. They were later retrieved by Catholics. Barkworth was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.

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

His journey into England was difficult enough. The ship he was traveling on from Bilbao, Spain to Calais, France, was becalmed just outside the port and fell pray to a Dutch ship blockading the harbor. Filcock was captured, but managed to escape and land surreptitiously on the shore in Kent in 1598. Soon after he began his ministry, he contacted Father Henry Garnet, the Jesuit superior, asking to become a Jesuit. He was accepted into the Society in 1600, but then was betrayed by someone he had studied with in Spain. He was arrested and committed to Newgate Prison in London. His trial did not last long, despite the fact that there was no evidence against him and that the names in the indictment were not names he had used. Together with Father Mark Barkworth, a Benedictine, he was tied to a hurdle and dragged through the streets to Tyburn. Barkworth was first to be hung, disembowelled and quartered. Filcock had to watch his companion suffer, knowing that he would immediately follow. Pope John Paul II beatified him, on the 22nd of November 1987.

St. Anne Line was among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. She, St. Margaret Clitherow and St. Margaret Ward share a separate Feast on August 30 (the date of St. Margaret Ward's martyrdom in 1588) in the dioceses of England.

Blessed John Henry Newman on Lent

2012-02-26T00:58:00.001-08:00

From the Parochial and Plain Sermons, "The Duty of Self Denial":

Self-denial, then, is a subject never out of place in Christian teaching; still more appropriate is it at a time like this, when we have entered upon the forty days of Lent, the season of the year set apart for fasting and humiliation. {87}

This indeed is not all that is meant by self-denial; but before proceeding with the subject, I would ask whether the generality of mankind go as far as this: it is plain that they do not. They do not go so far as to realize to themselves that religious obedience involves a thwarting of those wishes and inclinations which are natural to them. They do not like to be convinced, much less will they act upon the notion, that religion is difficult. You may hear men of the world say plainly, and as if in the way of argument, "that God will not punish us for indulging the passions with which we are born; that it is no praise to be unnatural; and no crime to be a man." This, however, may seem an extreme case; yet are there not a great many decent and respectable men, as far as outward character goes, who at least fix their thoughts on worldly comfort, as the greatest of goods, and who labour to place themselves in easy circumstances, under the notion that, when they can retire from the business of their temporal calling, then they may (in a quiet, unexceptionable way of course) consult their own tastes and likings, take their pleasure, and indulge themselves in self-importance and self-satisfaction, in the enjoyment of wealth, power, distinction, popularity, and credit? I am not at this moment asking whether such indulgences are in themselves allowable or not, but whether the life which centres in them does not imply the absence of any very deep views of sanctification as a process, a change, a painful toil, of {88} working out our own salvation with fear and trembling, of preparing to meet our God, and waiting for the judgment? You may go into mixed society; you will hear men conversing on their friend's prospects, openings in trade, or realized wealth, on his advantageous situation, the pleasant connexions he has formed, the land he has purchased, the house he has built; then they amuse themselves with conjecturing what this or that man's property may be, where he lost, where he gained, his shrewdness, or his rashness, or his good fortune in this or that speculation. Observe, I do not say that such conversation is wrong; I do not say that we must always have on our lips the very thoughts which are deepest in our hearts, or that it is safe to judge of individuals by such speeches; but when this sort of conversation is the customary standard conversation of the world, and when a line of conduct answering to it is the prevalent conduct of the world (and this is the case), is it not a grave question for each of us, as living in the world, to ask himself what abiding notion we have of the necessity of self-denial, and how far we are clear of the danger of resembling that evil generation which "ate and drank, which married wives, and were given in marriage, which bought and sold, planted, and builded, till it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all?" [Luke xvii. 27-29.]

It is strange, indeed, how far this same forgetfulness {89} and transgression of the duty of self-denial at present spreads. Take another class of persons, very different from those just mentioned, men who profess much love for religion—I mean such as maintain, that if a man has faith he will have works without his trouble, so that he need be at no pains about performing them. Such persons at best seem to say, that religious obedience is to follow as a matter of course, an easy work, or rather a necessary consequence, from having some strong urgent motive, or from some bright vision of the Truth acting on the mind; and thus they dismiss from their religion the notion of self-denial, or the effort and warfare of faith against our corrupt natural will, whether they actually own that they dismiss it or not. I say that they do this at best; for it often happens, as I just now intimated, that they actually avow their belief that faith is all-sufficient, and do not let their minds dwell at all on the necessity of works of righteousness. All this being considered, surely I am not wrong in saying that the notion of self-denial as a distinct religious duty, and, much more (as it may well be called), the essence of religious obedience, is not admitted into the minds of the generality of men.

Read the rest here.

Blessed Robert Drury and the Oath of Allegiance

2012-02-26T00:12:00.005-08:00

Blessed Robert Drury was born in Buckinghamshire in about 1567. He studied at the English College, Rheims, France in 1588, and the English College, Valladolid, Spain in 1590. Ordained at Valladolid in 1593. Returned to England in 1593 to minister to covert Catholics around London, England. One of the signers of the loyal address of 31 January 1603 which acknowledged the queen as lawful sovereign on earth, but maintained their loyalty in religious matters to the Pope. When James I came to the throne, the king required them to sign a new oath which acknowledged his authority over spiritual matters. Robert refused, and was arrested in 1606 for the crime of being a priest. He was offered his freedom if he would sign the oath; he declined. Martyred by being hanged, drawn, and quartered on 26 February 1607 at Tyburn, London England. He is one of the Eighty-five Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Blessed Pope John Paul II in 1987.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia provides much more detail here.

As Promised, a Tea at Trianon Review of "The Crown"

2012-02-25T00:11:00.001-08:00

Elena Maria Vidal comes through with this review:

Nancy Bilyeau's debut novel The Crown takes readers on an odyssey through the England of Henry VIII during the bloody period of the dissolution of the monasteries as seen from the point of view of a young Dominican novice. There are many aspects of this extraordinary novel that contemporary Catholics will find that they can relate to, namely the confusion in the Church and the compromises of many of her members to political persecution and social expediency, as well as the heroic stand taken by those with the courage to speak truth to power. In Tudor England, speaking truth to power, or even silently trying to follow one's conscience, often meant dying a hideous death. Young Joanna Stafford finds that in those intense times there is no such thing as spiritual mediocrity; either she must take the high road or face perdition. Joanna is not one to settle for less than heroism anyway, having entered a strict Dominican monastery where she looked forward to an austere life of poverty, chastity and obedience. When she leaves the monastery without permission to help a relative who is condemned to death for championing the Catholic faith, she sets off a chain of events which lead her on a spiritual journey into the heart of the mysteries of faith, of sacrifice, and of royal power.

Read the rest at Tea at Trianon.

Birth of Charles of Burgundy, future Holy Roman Emperor

2012-02-24T00:17:00.000-08:00

The future Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) was born on February 24, 1500. He is an important figure in the history of the Protestant Reformation on the Continent and in the history of the English Reformation. Of course, I am more interested in the latter.

He was heir of three great lineages--the Hapsburg (thus the jaw); Valois-Burgundy, and Trastamara (Aragon and Castile). His full title was:

Charles, by the grace of God, Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King of Germany, King of Italy, King of all Spains, of Castile, Aragon, León, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Sevilla, Cordova, Murcia, Jaén, Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, King of Two Sicilies, of Sardinia, Corsica, King of Jerusalem, King of the Western and Eastern Indies, Lord of the Islands and Main Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Neopatria, Württemberg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Asturia and Catalonia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Oristano and Gociano, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molin, Salins, Tripoli and Mechelen.

Obviously, he was multi-lingual: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse," he said, according to the Wikipedia article on-line(!).

His mother was Katherine of Aragon's sister Joanna (pictured with him above) who married Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian I, HRE. Thus, he was Katharine of Aragon's nephew and her daughter Mary's cousin. When Henry VIII and Charles V were allies against France, the cousins were to be married. Since the balance of power shifted when Francois I was captured at the Battle of Pavia, Charles didn't need alliance with Henry and those plans fell through. When Henry VIII planned to have his marriage to Katherine annulled, Charles supported her particularly in her appeals to the Holy See; and when Edward VI tried to force Mary to give up the Catholic Mass and conform to the new Book of Common Prayer services, Charles supported her, too--although he had counseled her to take the oaths Henry VIII demanded before she could be reunited with her father. That event seems to have shaken Mary to her core and she certainly redicated herself to being true to her mother's Church if not to her mother. It was Charles's suggestion that she marry his son Philip.

Many years ago (2000), I visited Mechelen, home of Charles V's regent and guardian, Margaret of Austria. I toured a great exhibition of allegorical tapestries called "Los Honores", presented during the celebration of the 500th anniversary of his birth.

While in Mechelen, of course, I also honored Charles V by imbibing a Gouden Carolus, Mechelen's favorite son's eponymous beer, seated at a cafe in view of St. Rumboud's Cathedral and the statue of Margaret of Austria in the town square.

After years of wars and travel, gout caught up with Charles and he abdicated on October 25, 1555, retiring to the monastery of Yuste. At the end of Verdi's Don Carlos, based on Schiller's play, he appears outside his tomb at Yuste as a ghostly Monk to save his grandson from the Inquisitor! Years after his death there in 1558 he was buried in the Pantheon of the Kings in the Monastery at El Escorial.

Summer School, 2012

2012-02-23T00:18:00.000-08:00

Going to this summer school would certainly be no punishment:

Why not join us and students of Thomas More College this summer in a two-week course, based in Oxford and the West country, on the question of Catholic identity and the vocation of the Catholic writer? We also touch on the deeper question of what it means to be human, how a vision of humanity was imperilled by the English Reformation which helped to create the modern world, and how the Literary Revival (from Newman to Tolkien) tried to recover and reclaim it. . . .

After a week at Downside, where we will have the opportunity to participate in daily Mass and the Divine Office, we will proceed to Oxford, where we will stay at St Benet’s, a Private Hall of the University and also a Benedictine house. There we will learn about the pivotal role of Oxford in the history of British Christianity, from its time as a recusant centre to the revival of Catholic culture in the 19th century with the Oxford Movement, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and 20th century writers such as Chesterton, Greene, and Waugh. We will also look at the influence of the Inklings, particularly C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and visit sites associated with them as well as with Newman. Finally we will visit the capital, paying our respects near the remains of St Thomas More in the Tower of London and visiting Westminster Abbey and the newly reconstructed Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s plays were once performed.

More about the schedule this August here.

National History Day Project

2012-02-23T00:13:00.000-08:00

In early December last year a student from the High School of Economics and Finance in New York City contacted me to ask me some questions about Henry VIII and the English Reformation. I responded and he just sent me a link to the result of his research: "Henry VIII Ignites The English Reformation," a website. He also contacted Charles H. Parker from Saint Louis University. I hope the student, Bartosz Chrobak, will contact me about the results of the competition, coming up on March 11. More about the National History Day here.

The Ashless Ash Wednesday of 1548

2012-02-22T00:38:00.004-08:00

Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars is so indepensible! If I had to be on a desert island and couldn't follow up on G.K. Chesterson's advice to have a book about building ships, I would want to have Duffy's book with me. I still look forward to his forthcoming book, but this has been tremendously influential. It definitely changed our view of the English Reformation.

Anyway, in the chapter on Edward VI, ("The Attack on Traditional Religion III: The Reign of Edward VI") he recounts the Ashless Ash Wednesday of 1548, which followed the Candle-less Candlemas of the Feast of the Purification. Palm Sunday was palm-less that year, of course, and no processions--no Creeping to the Cross on Good Friday. The entire edifice of Catholic culture and liturgy was being dismantled in England.

Blessed John Henry Newman moved his listeners to tears at the first Catholic synod held in the Diocese of Westminster on July 13, 1852 when he preached his sermon on the Second Spring:

Three centuries ago, and the Catholic Church, that great creation of God's power, stood in this land in pride of place. It had the honours of near a thousand years upon it; it was enthroned in some twenty sees up and down the broad country; it was based in the will of a faithful people; it energized through ten thousand instruments of power and influence; and it was ennobled by a host of Saints and Martyrs. The churches, one by one, recounted and rejoiced in the line of glorified intercessors, who were the respective objects of their grateful homage. Canterbury alone numbered perhaps some sixteen, from St. Augustine to St. Dunstan and St. Elphege, from St. Anselm and St. Thomas down to St. Edmund. York had its St. Paulinus, St. John, St. Wilfrid, and St. William; London, its St. Erconwald; Durham, its St. Cuthbert; Winton, its St. Swithun. Then there were St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, and St. Hugh of Lincoln, and St. Chad of Lichfield, and St. Thomas of Hereford, and St. Oswald and St. Wulstan of Worcester, and St. Osmund of Salisbury, and St. Birinus of Dorchester, and St. Richard of Chichester. And then, too its religious orders, its monastic establishments, its universities, its wide relations all over Europe, its high prerogatives in the temporal state, its wealth, its dependencies, its popular honours,--where was there in the whole of Christendom a more glorious hierarchy? Mixed up with the civil institutions, with king and nobles, with the people, found in every village an in every town,--it seemed destined to stand, so long as England stood, and to outlast, it might be, England's greatness.

But it was the high decree of heaven, that the majesty of that presence should be blotted out. It is a long story, my Fathers and Brothers--you know it well. I need not go through it. The vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of St. Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it. That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous, an awful change!); and then it did but corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and cumber the ground which once it beautified. So all seemed to be lost; and there was a struggle for a time, and then its priests were cast out or martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. Its temples were profaned or destroyed; its revenues seized by covetous nobles, or squandered upon the ministers of a new faith. The presence of Catholicism was at length simply removed,--its grace disowned,--its power despised,--its name, except as a matter of history, at length almost unknown. It took a long time to do this thoroughly; much time, much thought, much labour, much expense; but at last it was done. Oh, that miserable day, centuries before we were born! What a martyrdom to live in it and see the fair form of Truth, moral and material, hacked piecemeal, and every limb and organ carried off, and burned in the fire, or cast into the deep! But at last the work was done. Truth was disposed of, and shovelled away, and there was a calm, a silence, a sort of peace;--and such was about the state of things when we were born into this weary world.

My emphasis added.

Blessed John Henry Newman in a Novel

2012-02-22T00:18:00.002-08:00

According to Ignatius Press:

This is the story of a Protestant young woman and her journey to the Roman Catholic Church. The fascinating novel is set in nineteenth-century England-a time when Catholicism was regarded with suspicion and prejudice against Catholics was commonplace. Leaving her sheltered life in the countryside, young Clem becomes acquainted with the fascinating ideas and people of Oxford-including a brilliant young clergyman, John Henry Newman. But when her relationship to a Roman Catholic man with a colorful reputation leads to an Italian elopement that is more innocent than it appears, the scandal drives a wedge between Clem and the upright Anglican circle of friends and family she left behind. Woven into the story of Clem and Augustine, their courtship and marriage, and Clem's conversion, is the vital, influential, and holy Newman, as seen through the eyes of friends.

Meriol Trevor's engaging plot charts the ongoing friendship between Newman and the couple as it spans many years during which pivotal historical influences, such as the Industrial Revolution and the Oxford Movement, are shaping Victorian England.

Many important events, personages, and ideas in the life of Newman appear in the story-his reasons for becoming a Roman Catholic, his differences with Cardinal Manning, his work in the Birmingham Oratory, and his being made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. The author, a renowned biographer of Newman, used Newman's actual correspondence as the basis for his parts in the dialogue.

"The love between Clem and Augustine Firle provides a nuptial counterpart to the love-affair between Newman and his God, which like their love came into focus and bore fruit over a great many years. It is the portrait of changing views and perspectives which form a slow organic development, marked out, to use a Newmanian term, by true ‘chronic vigour'." -Leonie Caldecott, from the Foreword

Meriol Trevor (1919-2000) was educated at St. Hugh's College, Oxford. One of the most prolific Catholic writers of the twentieth century, she wrote more than thirty novels, for both adults and children, and several major biographies. She is best known for her comprehensive biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman published in the early sixties. In 1967, she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society for Literature in England.

Looks like another interesting selection for the book wish list!

Robert Southwell's Martyrdom

2012-02-21T00:15:00.001-08:00

St. Robert Southwell was 33 years old when he was executed at Tyburn on February 21, 1595. When he cited his age during his trial, his torturer Richard Topcliffe mocked him for claiming equality with Jesus Christ. Southwell answered that he was but a worm.

It is hard to be temperate when writing about his arrest, torture and execution--it is obviously a horrendous blot against the Elizabethan "regime". He was betrayed by a woman that Elizabeth's pursuivant Richard Topcliffe had raped and blackmailed--he promised to find her a husband since she was pregnant with his child if she would turn Southwell in; he was tortured--illegally and excruciatingly--numerous times, starting with a visit to Topcliffe's personal torture chamber, while Elizabeth's officials looked on; then he was held in fetid conditions until his father visited him in Westminster's gatehouse and petitioned the queen to put him to death rather than leave him there, in his own filth.

Moved to the Tower of London he was held in greater but solitary comfort, but Queen Elizabeth allowed the sadistic Topcliffe to continue torturing Southwell, who had readily admitted his priesthood. Prior to his trial on February 20 he was moved into a hole called Limbo; the government did not even try to implicate him in any plot against the Queen; he was executed just because he was a Catholic priest. When he was executed on February 21st, the crowds made sure he was dead before the butchery began--and no one cheered when his severed head was displayed to the crowd. Indeed, Elizabeth's government recognized that they had gone too far--there was lull in executions of Catholic priests in London. Lord Cecil even ignored Topcliffe's desires to get started on new victims.

Robert Southwell was canonized by Pope Paul VI among the group called The Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. In addition to be a great saint and steadfast martyr, he is regarded as one of the great poets of the Elizabethan Age. Much of his poetry was written while he was held in solitary confinement in the Tower of London and was published posthumously.

Upon the Image of Death
by St. Robert Southwell, SJ

Before my face the picture hangs

That daily should put me in mind

Of those cold names and bitter pangs

That shortly I am like to find;

But yet, alas, full little I

Do think hereon that I must die.

I often look upon a face

Most ugly, grisly, bare, and thin;

I often view the hollow place

Where eyes and nose had sometimes been;

I see the bones across that lie,

Yet little think that I must die.

I read the label underneath,

That telleth me whereto I must;

I see the sentence eke that saith

Remember, man, that thou art dust!

But yet , alas, but seldom I

Do think indeed that I must die.

Continually at my bed's head

A hearse doth hang, which doth me tell

That I ere morning may be dead,

Though now I feel myself full well;

But yet, alas, for all this, I

Have little mind that I must die.

The gown which I do use to wear,

The knife wherewith I cut my meat,

And eke that old and ancient chair

Which is my only usual seat, --

All those do tell me I must die,

And yet my life amend not I.

Not Solomon for all his wit,

Nor Samson, though he were so strong,

No king nor person ever yet

Could 'scape but death laid him along;

Wherefore I know that I must die,

And yet my life amend not I.

Though all the East did quake to hear

Of Alexander's dreadful name,

And all the West did likewise fear

To hear of Julius Cæsar's fame,

Yet both by death in dust now lie;

Who then can 'scape but he must die?

If none can 'scape death's dreadful dart,

If rich and poor his beck obey,

If strong, if wise, if all do smart,

Then I to 'scape shall have no way.

Oh, grant me grace, O God, that I

My life may mend, sith I must die.

Brian Patrick and I will discuss this great saint--and make some points about "Shrove Tuesday" traditions (including the great International Pancake Day Shrove Tuesday Race competition between Liberal, Kansas and Olney, England)--this morning at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central. Please listen live here.

Thomas Haydock, 18th Century English Catholic Publisher

2012-02-21T00:11:00.001-08:00

According to wikipedia:

Thomas Haydock (1772–1859), born of one of the oldest English Catholic Recusant families, was a schoolmaster and publisher. His dedication to making religious books available to fellow Catholics suffering under the English Penal Laws came at great personal cost. He is best remembered for publishing an edition of the Douay Bible with extended commentary, compiled chiefly by his brother George Leo Haydock. Originally published in 1811 and still in print, it is one of the most enduring contributions to Catholic biblical studies. . . .

Haydock was born February 21, 1772 in Cottam, in the Fylde section of Lancashire in northern England. This is an area that was slow to accept the new Protestant religion. Speaking of Lancashire, Lord Burghley, advisor to Queen Elizabeth I complained, "The Papists every where are growen so confident, that they contempne Magistrats and their authoritie." In later centuries Lancashire would retain a small but determined Catholic population supported by families of the landed gentry, sometimes hosting secret Masses in their homes. The Haydocks were among the most prominent of these families and became legendary in their service to the Catholic Recusant movement. During the Elizabethan persecution, Father George Haydock (1556–1584), a "seminary priest", suffered martyrdom. He was beatified in 1987, earning the title “Blessed.” Early in the 18th century, Father Cuthbert Haydock (1684–1763) said secret Masses in a chapel hidden in the attic of Lane End House, Mawdesley, the home of his sister and brother-in-law.

Thomas Haydock was part of a unique generation whose combined contributions to this family tradition would be extraordinary. His father was a namesake of Blessed George Haydock. His two brothers both became priests. Older brother James (1765–1809) died caring for the sick of his congregation during a typhus epidemic. Younger brother George Leo (1774–1849), in addition to his work on the Bible, spent his career pastoring poor rural missions. A sister, Margaret (1767? - 1854), joined the Augustinian nuns, taking the name Sister Stanislaus.

He wanted to become a priest too:

After receiving his elementary education at a school established for Catholic students at Mowbreck Hall, Thomas was sent in 1785 to the English College, Douai, France, where he joined his brother, George. This institution was established for Catholic exiles in the 16th century to provide secondary education and preparation for the priesthood. His studies were interrupted in 1793, when the French revolutionary government declared war with England, closed the English College, and imprisoned some of its pro-England students. Both Haydock brothers managed to elude the authorities and escape back to England.

Continuing his pursuit of ordination, Thomas next went to the English College, Lisbon. His superiors there did not feel he had a priestly vocation and sent him home in 1795. Undeterred, he went to the new seminary established at Crook Hall, Durham with his brother George in 1796. Again, his vocation was questioned. Described as “easy going” (see also the “Tragic Personal Life” section below), he seems to have been judged by his superiors as constitutionally unsuited for the risks and hardships of the Catholic priesthood in Penal Period England. The eloquence and dedication Thomas expresses in his letters certainly support his sincerity; and his three attempts at the priesthood show his tenacity. However, against the wishes of his older and recently ordained brother James, he was finally persuaded to leave the seminary. Family friend and former Douay professor Benedict Rayment (1764–1842), who would later serve as editor of some of Haydock’s published works, remarked that of the three Haydock brothers seeking the priesthood, ‘’Thomas would have been the best’’.

Instead, he became a publisher of Catholic books, most notably his own brother George's commentary on the Douai-Rheims English translation of the Holy Bible. Although it was a very popular and important work, he struggled as a publisher:

Thomas Haydock had an enthusiasm for publishing, but was seriously lacking in business skills. He had a trustful nature that associates freely exploited, depriving him of profit and forcing him continually to operate on a shoestring. Although his Bible sold well, he lost money to his managers, clerks, and canvassers and was forced heavily into debt to an unscrupulous lender. Former Douay classmate Father (later Bishop) Robert Gradwell (1777–1860) wrote in August 1817 that Haydock was living in Dublin, “low in the world.” In 1818 he was arrested for debt and served four months in prison.

The experience did not discourage him from continuing his publishing business. By 1822 he was able to issue the first volume of a new edition of the Bible, a more modest undertaking this time, in a smaller octavo format and without the extended commentary of the folio edition. He had to take on several partners to complete the Bible’s second volume in 1824. This edition had many misprints, including the notable substitution of fornications for fortifications in II Corinthians 10:4. He had no known involvement with an American folio edition of the Haydock Bible published in Philadelphia in 1825.

Circa 1818 Haydock married Mary Lynch or Lynde of Dublin. Unfortunately, tragedy would dog his family life, just as it did his business. Mary died in 1823. Their three children all died young. The name of only one is known: George (1822–1840). Curiously, some books dated 1827 have the imprint, Thomas Haydock & Son. The apparent inconsistency between the publication date and the likely ages of any sons that could have been living at the time is a mystery.

Haydock struggled on with publishing at least until 1831, when he was able to reissue the New Testament portion of his original folio Bible. No dated works after that year are known, although he published undated works that may have appeared later. In 1832 he made an unsuccessful attempt to begin a journal called The Catholic Penny Magazine. At some point, he opened a school in Dublin where he resumed teaching until 1840. He left Dublin probably about that year and moved first to Liverpool, then to Preston. He could only watch as other publishers enjoyed success with new editions of his Bible: two British editions, one in 1845-48, another ca. 1853, and an American edition in 1852-4. He died at Preston in 1859, aged 87, with an estate valued at “less than 100 Pounds Sterling.” He was buried in the Haydock family grave at Newhouse Chapel, Newsham.

Birthday of John Henry Newman

2012-02-21T00:05:00.002-08:00

Blessed John Henry Newman was born on Saturday, February 21, 1801 in London. His parents, John Newman and Jemima Foudrinier, had married in 1799; he was their first child, baptized on the 9th of April that year in St. Benet's Fink (a church built by Christopher Wren which was destroyed in the mid 1840s). They were living at 80 Old Broad Street in London; if Google maps depicts the same 80 Old Broad Street today, there is an "EAT" restaurant and a T-Mobile store there now, across the street from the Liverpool Street underground! They were living in The City of London because John Newman was a banker.

When he was born, Europe was in the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars and Thomas Jefferson had just been elected the third President of the United States of America. One of Newman's earliest memories was the celebration of Admiral Nelson's victory at Trafalgar in the autumn of 1805--he recalled the candles in the window of his parent's second home.

More here.

Last month at the Birmingham Oratory founded by Blessed John Henry Newman, one of the priests of the Oratory died (on January 18): the Oratory honored Father Gregory Winterton for his many years of service, highlighting two particular contributions he made:

There are two areas of his life at the Oratory for which Fr Gregory will be long remembered: Firstly, for his work as Parish Priest. For many years Fr Gregory was a familiar figure riding his old bicycle through the streets of Ladywood and Edgbaston. When poor eyesight meant he could no longer use his bicycle, his fast, military style of walking became equally familiar. He was assiduous in visiting the sick and housebound; spent long hours in his confessional; prepared engaged countless couples for marriage and converts for reception into the Church. He loved (like St Philip) the youth, and was a keen supporter and Chaplain of the Legion of Mary. Until well into old age he was a regular pilgrim to Lourdes and attended Oratorian reunions in Rome, Spain and Mexico. His acts of kindness and generosity (often of a financial nature!) were both legion and legendary.

The second great area of his work concerned the Cause for Cardinal Newman’s canonisation. Opened in 1958, the Cause had not made much progess apart from the publication, at regular intervals, of Newman’s vast ‘Letters and Diaries’.

In 1973, Pope Paul VI enquired whether it would be possible to beatify Newman during the course of the 1975 Holy Year. Of course things were nowhere near ready but, galvanised by Papal interest, Fr Gregory devoted increasing amounts of time to furthering the matter. Founding ‘The Friends of Cardinal Newman’ in 1976, giving talks and lectures to deepen knowledge and love of the Cardinal, producing pamphlets and prayerbooks, his work proved successful and interest grew year by year. Combined with the work of Fr Vincent Blehl as Postulator, significant developments occurred, a particular milestone being the Declaration by Pope John Paul II of Newman’s heroic virtues in 1991. After that another eighteen years elapsed before Cardinal Newman’s beatification at the unforgettable Mass at Cofton Park on September 19th 2010. The moment when Fr Gregory was presented to Pope Benedict XVI and, later that same day, when they met at the Oratory House, provided unforgettable pictures: two men in their eighties—one (the Pope) a devoted student of Newman, the other (Fr Gregory) the tireless advocate of Newman’s holiness. It was the culmination of half a life-time’s hard work for Fr Gregory.

At the end of his long life, dedicated to God as a faithful priest and son of St Philip, we pray for Fr Gregory in the words of the Church’s liturgy: “Lord, you gave Gregory, Your servant and priest, the privilege of a holy ministry in this world. May he rejoice for ever in the glory of Your Kingdom, through Christ Our Lord. Amen”

Please note the correspondence between their lives and Oratorian careers: both men died when they were 89 years old; both were ordained Anglican clergy; both became Catholics and Catholic priests (Father Winterton when a little younger than Blessed Newman); Newman spent the last 42 years of his life as an Oratorian; Father Winterton the last 49! May Father Winterton rest in peace, soon to meet his order's English founder!

Happy birthday, John Henry Newman--and pray for us!

Blessed Thomas Pormort, the Pole Family, John Whitgift, and Richard Topcliffe

2012-02-20T00:15:00.000-08:00

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

English martyr, b. at Hull about 1559; d. at St. Paul's Churchyard, 20 Feb., 1592. He was probably related to the family of Pormort of Great Grimsby and Saltfletby, Lincoln shire. George Pormort, Mayor of Grimsby in 1565, had a second son Thomas baptized, 7 February, 1566, but this can hardly be the martyr. After receiving some education at Cambridge, he went to Rheims, 15 January, 1581, and thence, 20 March following, to Rome, where he was ordained priest in 1587. He entered the household of Owen Lewis, Bishop of Cassano, 6 March, 1587. On 25 April, 1590, Pormort became prefect of studies in the Swiss college at Milan. He was relieved of this office, and started for England, 15 September, without waiting for his faculties. Crossing the St. Gotthard Pass, he reached Brussels before 29 November. There he became man servant to Mrs. Geoffrey Pole, under the name of Whitgift, the Protestant archbishop being his godfather. With her he went to Antwerp, intending to proceed to Flushing, and thence to England. He was arrested in London on St. James's Day (25 July), 1591, but he managed to escape. In August or September, 1591, he was again taken, and committed to Bridewell, whence he was removed to Topcliffe's house. He was repeatedly racked and sustained a rupture in consequence. On 8 February following he was convicted of high treason for being a seminary priest, and for reconciling John Barwys, or Burrows, haberdasher. He pleaded that he had no faculties; but he was found guilty. At the bar he accused Topcliffe of having boasted to him of indecent familiarities with the queen. Hence Topcliffe obtained a mandamus to the sheriff to proceed with the execution, though Archbishop Whitgift endeavoured to delay it and make his godson conform, and though (it is said) Pormort would have admitted conference with Protestant ministers. The gibbet was erected over against the haberdasher's shop, and the martyr was kept standing two hours in his shirt upon the ladder on a very cold day, while Topcliffe vainly urged him to withdraw his accusation.

There are several interesting names in this account: Mrs. Geoffrey Pole might be Catherine Pole, the daughter-in-law of Sir Geoffrey Pole, Blessed Margaret Pole's youngest son. He died in 1558 before his brother, Reginald Cardinal Pole, and "He left five sons and six daughters, two of whom were married, and one a nun of Sion." One of his sons was Geoffrey Pole of Lordington, Sussex, and of West Stoke, Sussex (1546-before 9 March 1590/1591), who was educated at Winchester College, Winchester, Hampshire, married Catherine Dutton sometime before 1573, who died after 1608. Geoffrey and Catherine had three sons:
Henry Pole (bef. 1570-aft. 1570), Arthur Pole of Lordington, Sussex, and of West Stoke, Sussex (c. 1575-murdered, Rome, 23 June 1605), who was educated at the Palazzo Farnese, in Rome, Italy, along with the son of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, and became Lord of the Manor of Walderton, Sussex, and a Member of the Household of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, unmarried and without issue, and Geoffrey Pole of Lordington, Sussex, and of West Stoke, Sussex (c. 1577-assassinated, Rome, bef. 7 January 1619), who was educated at the seminaries, in Douai, France, and at the English College, in Rome, Italy, unmarried and without issue. Now why Arthur was murdered in Rome on 23 June 1605 and Geoffrey assasinated in Rome sometime before 7 January 1619, I have not been able to ascertain.

The Whitgift mentioned is John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, nominated by Elizabeth I in 1583, after the death of William Grindal, her second Archbishop of Canterbury.

Richard Topcliffe, is, of course, Queen Elizabeth's servant, with the duties of finding and torturing priests. The History of Parliament website provides some detail of his career, with definite hints of unpopularity:

The time and manner of Topcliffe’s entry into public service are alike uncertain. The earliest reference to him as ‘her Majesty’s servant’ dates only from March 1573; but his own claim, made in June 1601, to have done 44 years’ service places its beginning much earlier, and indeed hints at a possible entry into Elizabeth’s retinue before her accession. . . .

Before the third and final session of this Parliament, in 1581, Topcliffe had begun his career as an interrogator of suspects. It is likely that he was drawn into this business both through his continuing interest in the northern rebels and by his attachment to the Earl of Shrewsbury, the custodian of Mary Stuart. It was at Shrewsbury’s instance that in 1578 Topcliffe helped to investigate the activities of some of the ex-rebels, and it was to the Earl that he reported on these and other matters. But it may well have been the anti-Catholic legislation of the parliamentary session of 1581 which determined that Catholic-hunting should become Topcliffe’s life-work. Although we know next to nothing of his part in that session (he was on one minor legal committee, 20 Feb.) his mounting activity in investigation from early in 1582 seems to reflect an accession of zeal as well as an expansion of opportunity. By the time the next Parliament met in the autumn of 1584 Topcliffe could be ranked with the notorious Richard Young as an acknowledged master of this ugly craft.

In that Parliament, and its successor, Topcliffe sat for Old Sarum, a borough whose patron, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke, was son-in-law to Topcliffe’s protector Shrewsbury. In 1584-5 we hear little of him, although he was, interestingly enough, one of four Members appointed to examine a skinner found sitting in the House without authority at the end of November. His membership of a committee to confer with the Lords, 18 Feb. 1585, on the bill against Jesuits and Catholic priests must also have been to his liking. He sat on one other recorded committee, 17 Mar., on the preservation of game. But in 1587 he came to the fore. On 24 Feb. he told the Commons of the Romish ‘trumpery’ discovered in a house near where they were sitting, and he was one of the Members named the same day to search suspected houses in Westminster. A few days later he endorsed Edward Donne Lee’s denunciation of the state of the church and called upon all Members to report ‘disorders’ in their counties, as he offered to do. Topcliffe was on the committee of a bill for East Retford (10 Mar.) and on the subsidy committee (11 Mar.).

The next 15 years of Topcliffe’s life were to make his name synonymous with the worst rigours of the Elizabethan struggle against Catholicism. It is clear that in much of what he did Topcliffe was acting under orders—whether under a commission such as that of March 1593 against Jesuits or under one of the numerous Council warrants to him to use torture—and that those who gave him these orders must share the odium of their consequences. Moreover, his superiors made only spasmodic efforts to restrain him. His brutal treatment of Southwell in 1592 cost him a spell in prison; in 1595, following the disclosure of Thomas Fitzherbert’s attempt to bribe him into doing two of the Fitzherberts to death, Topcliffe was again committed for a few weeks for maligning Privy Councillors; and early in 1596 he had to answer to the Council for his arbitrary behaviour towards prisoners in the Gatehouse. But every check was followed by a fresh outburst of activity, and only in his last few years did the moderating of official policy, and the failing of his own vigour, bring it to an end.

The gravamen of the indictment of Topcliffe is that he displayed an unmistakable and nauseating relish in the performance of his duties. On this the verdict of contemporaries is amply borne out by the evidence of his many letters and by the marginalia preserved in one of his books. It was, and is, easy to believe any evil of such a man; and to reflect that some of the worst accusations—among them that he reserved his most hideous tortures for infliction in his own house—rest upon fragile evidence is not to excuse him. Nor is there much profit in speculating on the influences which went to his making, although his early loss of both parents, the impact of rebellion upon his infant awareness, and perhaps some marital misfortunes might enter into the reckoning.

Of the general aversion which Topcliffe aroused his disappearance from the House of Commons after 1587 may be a reflection. In commending himself, in December 1590, to the newly succeeded 7th Earl of Shrewsbury he referred both to his emancipation from dependence upon Leicester and to his ‘unkind’ treatment by the 6th Earl, which perhaps included, or involved, the withdrawal of the nomination at Old Sarum. The new Earl’s quarrelsomeness was likely to make him an unsatisfactory patron, and Topcliffe’s own reputation may have stood in his way as a candidate for another seat. But his exclusion from the House did not deter him from meddling in its proceedings: in April 1593 he made ‘much stir’ in the Commons by spreading it abroad that the sheriff of Derbyshire, William Bassett II, was a harbourer of Papists. Since the House was then at the climax of its handling of a bill against religious dissidents Topcliffe perhaps hoped to influence that bill’s fate. . . .

Topcliffe’s domestic life was not without its difficulties. His marriage was clouded at least for a time by his alleged failure to pay his wife adequate maintenance. In his later years the criminal escapades of his eldest son, Charles, gave him much anxiety, and in January 1602 Sir Robert Cecil chided him for not having this wayward son ‘cleansed’. He also had the humiliation of seeing his nephew Edmund Topcliffe fall under suspicion on his return in May 1600 from a voyage abroad, during which he had assumed another name because of the ill-repute of his own.

Topcliffe had a house in Westminster from at least the end of 1571, when we know that it was burgled, clothes worth over £50 being stolen from the owner, besides other goods probably belonging to Topcliffe’s servants: the articles stolen from Topcliffe suggest that he maintained a good wardrobe. It was in this house, or an adjacent successor, that he was accused of torturing prisoners: but its nearness to the Gatehouse prison may have led to confusion between them.

The Boy King Crowned

2012-02-20T00:07:00.000-08:00

Henry VIII was buried in the chapel at Windsor Castle in the same tomb as his son's mother, Jane Seymour, on February 16, 1547. On February 20, 1547, his son was crowned King Edward VI of England and Ireland at Westminster Abbey.

Because of his youth, the coronation ceremony was shortened. Also many of the traditions of the coronation ceremony were related to Catholicism, and this reign was to be dedicated to the continued Reformation of the Church of England. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer called on the young king to be a second Josiah and to make sure that "the tyranny of the Bishops of Rome [be] banished from your subjects, and images removed". Josiah was a King of Judah who came to the throne as a young boy like Edward. The high priest Hilkiah found the Torah and Josiah returned Judah to the worship of YHWH, destroying the idols in the Temple. Josiah reigned for 31 years, so Cranmer hoped for a long reign.

Biographies of Edward VI and studies of his brief, minority reign are usually more about Lord Protector Somerset, Edward's uncle Edward Seymour; the plots of his other uncle, the Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour; the Prayer Book revolt and Kett's rebellion; the conflict between Edward and his half-sister Mary over her dedication to the Catholic Mass; Edward's last, horrible illness, and the plan to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, with the efforts of John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland leading the cause.

The most recent biography Edward VI: The Lost King of England by Chris Skidmore notes that although this young boy's new reign--like Henry VIII's after his father's death--was to be a new beginning, freedom from tyranny, freshness of ideas, instead it became a "time of intrigue, deceit, plotting and treason, very nearly plunging the country into civil war." After reading that introduction, in which Skidmore hints at greater revelations of how Edward's personality and precociousness are reflected in his voluminous writings, I was rather disappointed in the rest of the book. Because, of course, it is the adults who take all the actions; Edward might reflect, take notes, and make comments, but he did not have the opportunity to rule. He was on the cusp of maturity when he died, just as he was starting to sign documents and review matters with greater maturity. Trying to predict what a great King Regnant he might have made is still next to impossible.

I really appreciated Diarmaid McCullough's study of Edward VI's reign: The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation. I think it is a more secure study of the Calvinist theology and worship developing during Edward's reign and his interest in it.

Yet Another Historical Novel: "The Spanish Match"

2012-02-19T00:12:00.001-08:00

Sophia Institute Press announces a new historical novel, The Spanish Match, telling the story of the proposed marriage between Charles, James I's son and heir, and the Infanta of Spain:

Murder, mayhem, and religion fustrate the royal courtship that, through love, seeks to make peace between warring enemies England and Spain:
A novel based on actual events.

In 1623 Charles, heir to the throne of England, dons a disguise, crosses the Channel, rides horseback across France, and sneaks into Madrid, capital of England’s proud Catholic enemy, Spain.

His mission? To woo the lovely María, sister of the King of Spain, and accomplish by marriage what decades of war have failed to do: reconcile the two embittered nations.

Once Charles and María meet, neither palace intrigues nor bloody murders cool their growing attraction. One thing alone prevents their union: María’s Catholic Faith . . . which she will not abandon and England cannot abide.

Yes, Charles’s marriage to Catholic María would briefy unite the kingdoms, but could soon destroy the monarchy. Outraged at the prospect of a Catholic queen, Charles’s Puritan subjects are sure to rise up and take from him not only his throne, but even his life . . . and María’s . . . plunging Europe into warfare greater than any seen before.

From detailed records of this actual love’s gambit author Brennan Pursell has crafted a moving novel of faith, courage, danger, and hope, a tale in which the fate of nations hangs on the love of two young people: Prince Charles of England and Princess María of Spain.

Here is an interview with the author and here is an excerpt from novel.

There is a connection for the Sunday Shrine series--the Queen's Chapel at the Palace/Court of St. James, originally built for the use of the Infanta, but then used by Henrietta Maria, Charles I's French Queen. It was designed by Inigo Jones, but Henrietta Maria supervised some Baroque decoration. Diane Purkiss discusses the Catholic Reformation motives behind these improvements in her book, The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain starting on page 30 in this preview from Google Books.

St. Edmund Campion, Blessed William Harrington, and Henry Donne

2012-02-18T00:15:00.000-08:00

Blessed William Harrington was born in 1566. When he was 15 years old, the hunted priest, Edmund Campion visited his family home, Mount St. John. Impressed by the future martyr and saint, William left England and studied for the priesthood and prepared for the Jesuit order in 1582. He had to return to England however, because he became ill. In February, 1591, however, he was able to return once more to Reims, and, having been ordained, returned at midsummer 1592. The next May he fell into the hands of the English authorities, and nine months later was executed at Tyburn on 18 February 1594.

One of those who had assisted the young priest (he was about 28 years old when he suffered), was Henry Donne, John Donne's brother. Henry was arrested, implicated William Harrington under torture, and died of the plague in Newgate Prison. John and Henry's mother, Elizabeth Heywood was the great niece of St. Thomas More, and their family was a devoutly Catholic recusant family. John Donne would eventually leave the Catholic Church and take orders in the Church of England, serving as Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral during the reigns of James I and Charles I.

Blessed John Pibush

2012-02-18T00:11:00.000-08:00

Blessed John Pibush was born at Thirsk, Yorkshire, England, the son of Thomas and Jane Pibush. Educated at Rheims, France beginning 4 August 1580. Deacon in 1586. Ordained on 14 March 1587. Returned to England as missioner on 14 January 1588. Arrested at Morton-in-Marsh, Gloucester in the northern Cotswolds in 1593 for the crime of priesthood. Spent a year in Gatehouse prison, Westminster. Returned to Gloucester, he escaped on 19 February 1594; he was captured the next day at Matson. Sent back to Westminster, he was convicted on 1 July 1595 for the treason of Catholic priesthood. He spent over five years in Queen's Bench prison awaiting execution, ministering to fellow prisoners whenever he could. He was finally hung, drawn, and quartered on 18 February 1601 at Saint Thomas's Waterings, Camberwell, England, and was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

St. Thomas's Waterings or St. Thomas-a-Watering was an execution site on the Old Kent Road, and Chaucer's pilgrims passed it on the way to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury.

The Last Catholic Priest Executed under Elizabeth I

2012-02-17T00:18:00.000-08:00

On February 17, 1603, Blessed William Richardson became the last Catholic priest executed during the reign of Elizabeth I:

BLESSED William RICHARDSON was born in Wales and grew up near Sheffield in the county of Yorkshire. He was admitted as pupil at the English College, VALLADOLID, and afterwards to the College of St. Gregory in Seville. He was ordained a priest in 1594 and was betrayed to English authorities soon after arriving in England in 1603. Arrested at Gray's Inn, he was quickly tried and condemned to death for being a priest. When he was stripped, hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn (London) on the 17th of February 1603, he offered a prayer for Elizabeth I.

Blessed William Richardson is thus among the "Six saints, sixteen men beatified and one acknowledged as Venerable" from the English College at Valladolid, Spain. The seminarians and students still honor La Vulnerata, wounded by English soldiers under the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh. Pope Pius XI beatified this martyr on the 15th of December in 1929.

Ronald Knox, February 17, 1888

2012-02-17T00:10:00.000-08:00

Ronald Knox's conversion to Catholicism shocked the Anglican community. After all, his father was the Bishop of Manchester, an evangelical Anglican! He was born on this day in 1888. He became a Catholic in 1917, a Catholic priest in 1919 and died on August 24, 1957.

David Rooney, author of a recent biography, The Wine of Certitude: A Literary Biography of Ronald Knox, places Knox in the context of other defections from the Church of England:

The English Catholic literary revival had already been thriving for almost three-quarters of a century when Ronald Knox, fourth son of the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, was received into the Roman communion on September 22, 1917. It had begun with the conversions of the clergymen John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning, both later to become cardinals, and the layman William George Ward, whose son and granddaughter would carry on the apostolate of the pen, the former through books and essays, and the latter primarily as cofounder with her husband of the most famous Catholic publishing house of the twentieth century.

In the early 1900s, that world of letters was the domain of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton (though Chesterton's formal entry into the Church wouldn't come until 1922), and of the prolific but short-lived novelist Robert Hugh Benson, himself the convert son of an Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a world in which many well-educated men and women had come to see the Church of England as insufficiently countercultural in the face of materialism, agnosticism, and alternating moods of self-pride and despair, and who then saw in Rome a constancy and a consistency betokening a sure guide to the meaning of the Gospel message. There were converts among scientists, among historians, among novelists, even among actors, and the impression they produced, especially during the decades of Knox's prominence (the 1910s through the 1950s) was fortifying to those already in the Church, encouraging to those thinking about conversion, and vaguely alarming to those who retained the prejudice against Rome so thoroughly inbred in the nominally tolerant, vestigially Protestant culture that dominated the printed and spoken media.

Knox completed Blessed John Henry Newman's planned translation of the Jerome Vulgate into English in 1945 (New Testament) and 1950 (Old Testament). Serving as a chaplain to Catholic students at the University of Cambridge, Knox wrote apologetic and catechetical works such as The Hidden Stream and The Belief of Catholics. My favorite is his collection of homilies about saints, including several English martyrs, Captive Flames.

Ignatius Insight has a page dedicated to his life and works. There is a Ronald Knox Society of North America. I enjoyed both Evelyn Waugh's biography and Penelope Fitzgerald's study of her father and three uncles in The Knox Brothers. She was the daughter of Edmund Knox, the editor of Punch and the niece of cryptographer Alfred Knox, Bible scholar and Anglican monk Wilfred Knox, as well as Ronald Knox.

Meme Too, Meme Too!

2012-02-16T08:59:00.001-08:00

My THREE favorite books? Webmaster Gareth left me a comment and gave me the challenge, referring to his own favorites, cited here.

If they are my favorites, I've read them often, thought about them often, recommended them often. So here goes:

1. By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson: I read it as an undergraduate when Dr. Lewis Dralle recommended it and I have read it several times since--it is a beautifully vivid historical novel set in Elizabeth's reign, featuring two neighboring families, one Catholic and one Protestant, and the effects of recusancy and conversion between them.

2. Civilisation by Lord Kenneth Clark: I read it while in college when the series was repeated on PBS. I was impressed by Clark's insights into art and culture and have gone back to it often ever since.

3. Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language by Richard Lederer: I have laughed at the grammatical errors and other verbal infelicities documented in this book over and over again. (Examples: "Stock Up and Save: Limit One."; "For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs."; and, from the chapter on history: "Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.")

Elena Maria Vidal Interviews the Author of "The Crown"

2012-02-16T00:18:00.000-08:00

She also promises a review of this historical novel soon on her blog, Tea at Trianon. An excerpt:

An aristocratic young nun must find a legendary crown in order to save her father—and preserve the Catholic faith from Cromwell’s ruthless terror. The year is 1537. . .

EMV: Nancy, welcome to Tea at Trianon! Congratulations on your magnificent novel, The Crown, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was especially impressed by the research that went into making it one of the most authentic novels of the Tudor era that I have ever read. You bring to life the beauty and peace of the cloister even as it is about to be destroyed. Can you tell us a little about how you began your journey into the past, and where you found the best sources on such a turbulent, controversial epoch?

NB: I’ve been interested in English history since I was 11 years old and saw a re-broadcast of “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” on television with my parents. Ever since that time, the Tudor period was my particular passion, and I read the major books about the time. I pored through the major biographies, from J.J. Scarisbricke’s Henry VIII to Garrett Mattingly’s Catherine of Aragon. Every time a new biography on Anne Boleyn was published, I bought it. I do think I have all of them. When I began the research for The Crown, I dove into all books and sources on the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Pilgrimage of Grace, which was the 1536-1537 rebellion in the North against the Protestant reforms. I found some of the most helpful books written almost a century ago: F.A. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life (1906) and Cranage’s The Home of the Monk: An Account of English Monastic Life and Buildings in the Middle Ages (1926). On the other end of the spectrum, British History Online is an amazing Internet source of contemporary and secondary source documents. . . .

I look forward to the review and to reading the book myself. I trust Elena Maria's judgment (after all, she liked Supremacy and Survival) and know she is great historical novelist herself (Trianon, Madame Royale, and The Night's Dark Shade) so when speaks so highly of an author's research, you know it will be good reading and good history. I certainly echo Nancy Bilyeau's comment about British History Online: it is a great source for little details about the last days of the monastic houses, etc.

St. Claude at the Court of St. James

2012-02-15T00:19:00.000-08:00

St. Claude de la Colombiere, SJ died on February 15, 1682. In a way, he is a victim of the Popish Plot, according to this biography published on the Vatican website:

After a year and half in Paray, in 1676 Father La Colombière left for London. He had been appointed preacher to the Duchess of York - a very difficult and delicate assignment because of the conditions prevailing in England at the time. He took up residence in St. James Palace in October.

In addition to sermons in the palace chapel and unremitting spiritual direction both oral and written, Claude dedicated his time to giving thorough instruction to the many who sought reconciliation with the Church they had abandoned. And even if there were great dangers, he had the consolation of seeing many reconciled to it, so that after a year he said: "I could write a book about the mercy of God I've seen Him exercise since I arrived here!"

The intense pace of his work and the poor climate combined to undermine his health, and evidence of a serious pulmonary disease began to appear. Claude, however, made no changes in his work or life style.

Of a sudden, at the end of 1678, he was calumniously accused and arrested in connection with the Titus Oates "papist plot". After two days he was transferred to the severe King's Bench Prison where he remained for three weeks in extremely poor conditions until his expulsion from England by royal decree. This suffering further weakened Claude's health which, with ups and downs, deteriorated rapidly on his return to France.

During the summer of 1681 he returned to Paray, in very poor condition. On 15th February 1682, the first Sunday of Lent, towards evening Claude suffered the severe hemorrhage which ended his life.

On the 16th of June 1929 Pope Pius XI beatified Claude La Colombière, whose charism, according to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, was that of bringing souls to God along the gospel way of love and mercy which Christ revealed to us.

Blessed John Paul II canonized St. Claude in 1992.

Book Review: Tudors and Stuarts on Film: Historical Perspectives

2012-02-14T00:17:00.000-08:00

This book is edited by Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman. From the publisher: Film can be an invaluable teaching resource. Tudors and Stuarts on Film provides analyses of films about the Tudor and Stuart period from leading historians. The accuracy of each film is assessed, and they are also placed within the context of the period in which they were made, and the influence they have had on popular conceptions of early modern England.

Contents:

List of Illustrations (14)
Acknowledgements
Notes on the Contributors

1. Introduction: It's Only a Movie--T.Freeman & S.Doran
2. A Tyrant for All Seasons: Henry VIII on Film--T.Freeman
3. Saints and Cinemas: A Man for All Seasons--P.Marshall
4. Anne of a Thousand Days--G. Richardson
5. Lady Jane Grey on Film--C.Levin
6. From Hatfield to Hollywood: Elizabeth I on Film--S.Doran
7. Ladies in Waiting: Young Elizabeth Tudor on Film--J.Richards
8. Kapur's Elizabeth--C.Haigh
9. Mary Queen of Scots (1971)--J.Guy
10. The Armada, War and Propaganda in the Cinema--W.Coster
11. Elizabeth: The Golden Age: A Sign of the Times?--V. Westbrook
12. Shakespeare in Love: Elizabeth I as dea ex machina--B.Usher
13. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and the Romanticization of Eliabethan Politics--P.Hammer
14. Oliver Cromwell and the Civil Wars--J.Morrill
15. The Unfilmed Oliver Cromwell--D.Smith
16. Winstanley--C.Durston
17. Why Don't the Stuarts Get Filmed?--R.Hutton

Notes
Index

You might notice immediately that Mary, the First Queen Regnant of England isn't even mentioned in a chapter title, although she does show up on the chapters on the Tudors; only one of Henry's wives has merited a chapter. Of course, this because of Hollywood's (standing for all film production) choices of whose story works on film. Perhaps it's a good thing Mary I has not been portrayed extensively on film--those fires of Smithfield! Elizabeth I dominates: eight of the chapters, including the chapter on her cousin Mary, Queen of Scotland and her 1971 movie, discuss the presentation of the last Tudor monarch on screen.

What these distinguished authors have done is not only analyze the historical accuracy of the films (and they all take certain liberties with the facts) but explore the reasons for the film makers' choices. Perhaps the best two chapters for this analysis are the two on the Shekar Kapur Elizabeth films. The anti-Catholic, really misogynist views the director and his screenwriter have taken of her reign are really disturbing, totally anti-feminine, twisting facts, playing with the timeline and creating plots and events that really don't fit with the history we know. Now, there's that disclaimer in the introduction, "it's only a movie" but the film makers, including the actors, are presenting their film as "a" truth, a plausible, dramatic, and effective presentation to move the audience: move them to think or feel something about events in the past. From these two movies the audience will certainly think that all Catholics in sixteenth century England were treasonous villains, ready to murder, but not really ready to suffer (Westbrook comments that "the torture sequences were hardly shocking. Apparently, Catholics were prepared to give it all up for a few pokes with a torch and the loss of body hair"!) We certainly know that's not true--at least the Catholic priests like St. Edmund Campion, St. Alexander Briant, St. Robert Southwell, and St. Henry Walpole, to name just a few, suffered the most excruciating and unrelenting torture Topcliffe and Elizabeth's other torturers could devise and deliver!

The last chapter, on the Stuarts, is really a gem in the book. Ronald Hutton immediately admits that his chapter title is completely misleading, because the Stuarts have been filmed, of course. He says the real title should be two questions, "Why don't the Stuarts get filmed as often as the Tudors?" and "Why don't the Stuarts get filmed memorably?" In answering those questions, he introduced me to a film I've never heard of but would love to see, The Exile, with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Hutton also mentioned Forever Amber with Linda Darnell (I remember finding my mother's copy of that "scandalous" novel, printed in double columns to save paper during WWII, hidden in the front closet and reading all about the plague!) TCM has the fun note that The Exile was released in sepia tone and came out at the same time as Forever Amber so that it was nicknamed "Forever Dark Brown"!

I read this book primarily because I am preparing a presentation series for the Eighth Day Institute here in Wichita, Kansas. I want to examine the changes in how the history of the English Reformation has been presented, from the Whig interpretations to the revisionist views I summarize in Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. I plan to use a historical novel, By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson to represent a Catholic interpretation and a movie, Fire Over England by Alexander Korda to represent a nationalistic, Whig view--both focused on the reign of Elizabeth I.

Beyond that purpose, for which the chapter on "The Armada, War and Propaganda in the Cinema" was most useful to me, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It satisfies my love of history, truth, and great movies, especially movies from the great days of Hollywood. The other book (perhaps a guilty pleasure?) that satisfies those interests is George MacDonald Fraser's The Hollywood History of the World From One Million Years B.C. to Apocalypse Now! Fraser was a real fan of Charlton Heston, I recall. He also highlighted one movie in particular which I've seen at least once on TCM: Saraband for Dead Lovers, with Stewart Granger and Joan Greenwood, who must have had the most distinctive voice of any actress in her era. I can never decide which performance of hers I enjoy more: in Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Importance of Being Earnest.

This Morning on the Son Rise Morning Show

2012-02-13T00:11:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned on Saturday, I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show today at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central, talking to either Matt or Anna about the parallels commentators have been seeing between the English Reformation religious mandates of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and the HHS Contraception mandates.

You may listen live here and I will post the podcast as soon as it is available. UPDATE: Here is the podcast; my interview starts after the 1:45 mark.

As a reminder, here and here and here are the posts from last week in which I first addressed this issue, based on other commentators making the connection. I look forward to our discussion this morning very much.

The Massacre of Glencoe--February 13, 1692

2012-02-13T00:05:00.000-08:00

The massacre of the MacDonald clan by the Campbell clan, and the subsequent horror of women and children freezing to death in the west highland glen was the scandal of William and Mary's reign--what did William III know and when? Finally it was determined that he did not know the intent of the Earl of Argyll's foray into Glencoe, and an underling received the blame.

According to this site:

The massacre commenced about five o'clock in the morning at three different places at once. Glenlyon, with a barbarity which fortunately for society has few parallels, undertook to butcher his own hospitable landlord and the other inhabitants of Inverriggen, where he and a party of his men were quartered, and despatched Lieutenant Lindsay with another party of soldiers to Glencoe's house to cut off the unsuspecting chief. Under the pretence of a friendly visit, he and his party obtained admission into the house. Glencoe was in bed, and while in the act of rising to receive his cruel visitors, was basely shot at by two of the soldiers, and fell lifeless into the arms of his wife. The lady in the extremity of her anguish leaped out of bed and put on her clothes, but the ruffians stripped her naked, pulled the rings off her fingers with their teeth, and treated her so cruelly that she died the following day. The party also killed two men whom they found in the house, and wounded a third named Duncan Don, who came occasionally to Glencoe with letters from Braemar.

While the butchery was going on in Glencoe's house, Glenlyon was busily doing his bloody work at Inverriggen, where his own host was shot by his order. Here the party seized nine men, whom they first bound hand and foot, after which they shot them one by one. Glenlyon was desirous of saving the life of a young man about twenty years of age, but one Captain Drummond shot him dead. The same officer, impelled by a thirst for blood, ran his dagger through the body of a boy who has grasped Campbell by the legs and was supplicating for mercy.

A third party under the command of one Sergeant Barker, which was quartered in the village of Auchnaion, fired upon a body of nine men whom they observed in a house in the village sitting before a fire. Among these was the laird of Auchintriaten, who was killed on the spot, along with four more of the party. This gentleman had at the time a protection in his pocket from Colonel Hill, which he had received three months before. The remainder of the party in the house, two or three of whom were wounded, escaped by the back of the house, with the exception of a brother of Auchintriaten, who having been seized by Barker, requested him as a favour not to despatch him in the house but to kill him without. The sergeant consented, on account of having shared his generous hospitality; but when brought out he threw his plaid, which he had kept loose, over the faces of the soldiers who were appointed to shoot him, and thus escaped.
and then:

After the destruction of the houses, a heart-rending scene ensued. Ejected from their dwellings by the devouring element, aged matrons, women with child, and mothers, with infants at their breasts and followed by children on foot, clinging to them with all the solicitude and anxiety of helplessness, were to be seen wending their way, almost in a state of nudity, towards the mountains in a quest of some friendly hovel, beneath whose roof they might seek shelter from the pitiless tempest and deplore their unhappy fate. But as there were no houses within the distance of several miles, and as these could only be reached by crossing mountains deeply covered with snow, a great number of these unhappy human beings, overcome by fatigue , cold, and hunger, dropt down and perished miserably among the snow.

Jim MacLean's ballad depicts the horror of the attack:

They came in a blizzard, we offered them heat
A roof for their heads, dry shoes for their feet
We wined them and dined them, they ate of our meat
And they slept in the house of MacDonald.

Chorus: O, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o'Donald
O, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald.

They came from Fort William with murder in mind
The Campbell had orders King William had signed
"Put all to the sword" these words underlined"
And leave none alive called MacDonald".

Chorus: O, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o'Donald
O, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald.

They came in the night when the men were asleep
This band of Argyles, through snow soft and deep
Like murdering foxes amongst helpless sheep
They slaughtered the house of MacDonald.

Chorus: O, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o'Donald
O, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald.

Some died in their beds at the hand of the foe
Some fled in the night and were lost in the snow
Some lived to accuse him who struck the first blow
But gone was the house of MacDonald.

Chorus: O, cruel was the snow that sweeps Glencoe
And covers the grave o'Donald
O, cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the house of MacDonald.

Image Source: wikipedia.

Five English Catholic Martyrs and the Ladywell Shrine in Lancashire

2012-02-12T00:19:00.000-08:00

From the Catholic Encyclopedia comes this account of one of the five priests executed on February 12, 1584, Blessed George Haydock, and of course, his connection to the other four, accused with him of a conspiracy against Elizabeth I:

English martyr; born 1556; executed at Tyburn, 12 February, 1583-84. He was the youngest son of Evan Haydock of Cottam Hall, Lancashire, and Helen, daughter of William Westby of Mowbreck Hall, Lancashire; was educated at the English Colleges at Douai and Rome, and ordained priest (apparently at Reims), 21 December, 1581. Arrested in London soon after landing, he spent a year and three months in the strictest confinement in the Tower, suffering from the recrudescence of a severe malarial fever first contracted in the early summer of 1581 when visiting the seven churches of Rome. About May, 1583, though he remained in the Tower, his imprisonment was relaxed to "free custody", and he was able to administer the Sacraments to his fellow-prisoners. During the first period of his captivity he was accustomed to decorate his cell with the name and arms of the pope scratched or drawn in charcoal on the door or walls, and through his career his devotion to the papacy amounted to a passion. It therefore gave him particular pleasure that on the following feast of St. Peter's Chair at Rome (16 January) he and other priests imprisoned in the Tower were examined at the Guildhall by the recorder touching their beliefs, though he frankly confesses it was with reluctance that he was eventually obliged to declare that the queen was a heretic, and so seal his fate. On 5 February, 1583-4, he was indicted with James Fenn, a Somersetshire man, formerly fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the future martyr William Deane, who had been ordained priest the same day as himself, and six other priests, for having conspired against the queen at Reims, 23 September, 1581, agreeing to come to England, 1 October, and setting out for England, 1 November. In point of fact he arrived at Reims on 1 November, 1581. On the same 5 February two equally ridiculous indictments were brought, the one against Thomas Hemerford, a Dorsetshire man, sometime scholar of St. John's College, Oxford, the other against John Munden, a Dorsetshire man, sometime fellow of New College, Oxford, John Nutter, a Lancashire man, sometime scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge, and two other priests. The next day, St. Dorothy's Day, Haydock, Fenn, Hemerford, Munden, and Nutter were brought to the bar and pleaded not guilty.

Haydock had for a long time shown a great devotion to St. Dorothy, and was accustomed to commit himself and his actions to her daily protection. It may be that he first entered the college at Douai on that day in 1574-5, but this is uncertain. The "Concertatio Ecclesiae" says he was arrested on this day in 1581-2, but the Tower bills state that he was committed to the Tower on the 5th, in which case he was arrested on the 4th. On Friday the 7th all five were found guilty, and sentenced to death. The other four were committed in shackles to "the pit" in the Tower, but Haydock, probably lest he should elude the executioner by a natural death, was sent back to his old quarters. Early on Wednesday the 12th he said Mass, and later the five priests were drawn to Tyburn on hurdles; Haydock, being probably the youngest and certainly the weakest in health, was the first to suffer. An eyewitness has given us an account of their martyrdom, which Father Pollen, S.J., has printed in the fifth volume of the Catholic Record Society.

He describes Haydock as "a man of complexion fayre, of countenance milde, and in professing of his faith passing stoute". He had been reciting prayers all the way, and as he mounted the cart said aloud the last verse of "Te lucis ante terminum". He acknowledged Elizabeth as his rightful queen, but confessed that he had called her a heretic. He then recited secretly a Latin hymn, refused to pray in English with the people, but desired that all Catholics would pray for him and his country. Whereupon one bystander cried "Here be noe Catholicks", and another "We be all Catholicks"; Haydock explained "I meane Catholicks of the Catholick Roman Church, and I pray God that my bloud may encrease the Catholick faith in England". Then the cart was driven away, and though "the officer strock at the rope sundry times before he fell downe", Haydock was alive when he was disembowelled. So was Hemerford, who suffered second. The unknown eyewitness says, "when the tormentor did cutt off his members, he did cry, 'Oh! A!'; I heard myself standing under the gibbet". As for Fenn, "before the cart was driven away, he was stripped of all his apparell saving his shirt only, and presently after the cart was driven away his shirt was pulled of his back, so that he hung stark naked, whereat the people muttered greatly". He also was cut down alive, though one of the sheriffs was for mercy. Nutter and Munden were the last to suffer. They made speeches and prayers similar to those uttered by their predecessors. Unlike them they were allowed to hang longer, if not till they were dead, at any rate until they were quite unconscious. Haydock was twenty-eight, Munden about forty, Fenn, a widower, with two children, was probably also about forty, Hemerford was probably about Haydock's age; Nutter's age is quite unknown.

The Haydock family of Lancashire was one of the great recusant families of that northwestern county that resisted the established Church of England. Later this month, on February 21, I'll post about Thomas Haycock, publisher. On April 11, I'll tell you about his brother, Father George Leo Haydock.

The Ladywell Shrine, The Shrine of Our Lady and the Martyrs, is in Lancashire.

The Executions of Guilford and Jane Dudley

2012-02-12T00:04:00.000-08:00

All three recent biographies of Mary I highlighted the singular mercy the first Queen Regnant showed to the young woman who had temporarily displaced her and to her family immediately after coming to the throne. Guilford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey could have been summarily executed, but Mary knew that John Dudley, Lord Northumberland bore the greater share of blame for the plot to change Henry VIII's will and divert the succession. They were tried in November of 1553 and found guilty (they actually pleaded guilty), but were held in some comfort at the Tower of London. Their brief rule had also been spent in the Tower, but Jane had refused kingship for Guilford; whatever reluctance she might have felt, once she became Queen, she intended to hold the power as Queen Regnant exclusively and she intended to reign for "God's Glory" which meant of course that she would continue Edward VI's Reformed reforms. Guilford certainly wanted to reign and he presided over the Council meetings held between Edward VI's death and Mary's overthrow of Northumberland's plot.

It was only after the Wyatt rebellion that Jane's continued existence as a focal point for overthrowing Mary became too great a liability, especially with Philip of Spain on the way. Jane had little to do with Wyatt's plans--in fact, Elizabeth was probably more guilty of collusion with Wyatt's plot than Jane had willingly been with her father-in-law (at first, at least). Unfortunately for her, however, her father had taken part in Wyatt's attempt to depose Mary to place Elizabeth and Courtenay, an erstwhile Catholic candidate as husband for Mary, on the throne and even though Mary regretted it, She ordered Jane's execution. Jane watched her husband be taken to Tower Hill for execution and his headless body brought back the morning of February 12, 1554 while she was scheduled for a private execution at Tower Green. He had asked to meet the night before but she refused, saying it would be too painful and certain they would meet again soon in heaven.

At her execution, she acknowledged her guilt in the one case and declared her innocence in the other: "Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same. The fact, indeed, against the Queen's highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day."

The Delaroche painting romantically depicts her moment of panic when she could not find the block after being blindfolded as her ladies swoon behind her. John Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster accompanied her on the scaffold, sent by Mary before to help Jane prepare for death. As I've noted before, although they strictly disagreed on religious matters, Jane and Father Feckenham at least respected each other.

I have not read Eric Ive's recent study of Lady Jane Grey's claim to the throne, but I agree with Leanda de Lisle in The Sisters Who Would be Queen: Mary, Catherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy that "The sixteenth-century Jane was a much more interesting and ambivalent figure than the traditional stories allow." Since Guilford's brother Robert had become Elizabeth's great favorite, the story of their brief reign and their executions were soon part of Elizabethan propaganda. Her seeming innocence and evangelical fervor also made her a likely target of Foxe's myth-building.

Would You Believe? Another Historical Parallel

2012-02-11T00:28:00.000-08:00

The White House announces an "accommodation" for religious institutions to the HHS Contraception/Abortafacient/Sterilization Mandate. If Catholic Institutions and the Bishops say "we still can't comply", the White House will reply, "how can you not comply? we've made special accommodations!"

The Beckett Fund explains the situation and the "accommodation"

According to a White House statement, some religious employers will no longer be required to provide insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs; coverage for those services will instead be provided for free directly by insurance companies. However, at least three problems remain. First, hundreds if not thousands of religious organizations self insure, meaning that they will still be forced to pay for these services in violation of their religious beliefs. Second, it is unclear which religious organizations are permitted to claim the new exemption, and whether it will extend to for-profit organizations, individuals, or non-denominational organizations. Third, money is fungible, and many religious organizations may still object to being forced to pay money to an insurance company which will turn around and provide contraception to its employees for free. --in other words, there is still no conscience provision, just some sleight of hand to confuse the matter.

The parallel that I see is with James I's Oath of Allegiance, introduced in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot. As you might remember if you've read some posts I've made not so long ago about James I and Catholics, he did not want to execute priests and laity at the same rate as Elizabeth I's government had. King James introduced this new Oath and hoped that Catholics would take it--he also hoped that it would divide the Catholic community, small as it was: could one take the Oath or not?

And it did divide the Catholic community. The Jesuits, led by Robert Parsons, followed the lead of Pope Paul V against the Oath; the secular archpriest, George Blackwell changed his mind several times and finally took the Oath while in prison. James I assured him that he did not mean to impose on his conscience at all.

Some of the priests who were executed during James I's reign were found guilty not so much of violating the Elizabethan statute of their presence in England, but of not swearing this Oath of Allegiance, for instance: St. Thomas Garnet, Blessed Robert Drury (whose dies natalis we will soon honor).

My disclaimer is again, that I do not know that the Obama administration issued this accommodation to divide the Catholic community, which since January 20 has been united in opposition to the HHS Mandate. It's certainly true, however, that the accommodation HAS divided the Catholic community. It's shifted the issue from the protection of religious freedom to a debate over funding contraception, abortafacient and sterilization as preventive medicine (which could also be a good debate, if we could actually have it!).

Remember the Blaine! Amendment, That Is

2012-02-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

PLEASE NOTE: I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday Morning, February 13 at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central to discuss the connections commentators are seeing between the HHS Mandate and what I call the "Tudor Mandates" (Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth I's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity). Listen live here.

This September 27, 2004 article from America magazine even has an appropriate title for our current situation in the USA: "A Mandate for Anti-Catholicism: The Blaine Amendment". The issue now is health care; the issue in the 1870s was public education. (Of course, the underlying issue was and is freedom of religion.) Thomas E. Buckley provides an excellent survey of post-Civil War America, facing issues of unity and diversity:

The advancement of public schools represented a key element in that program as well as an important part of the Republican drive for cultural homogeneity in post-Civil War America. The schools would lift up Southern blacks and Americanize newly arrived immigrants, especially Irish and German Catholics. Following the program laid out by Horace Mann in the 1840’s, public education would inculcate a nondenominational Protestant morality through Bible reading, hymn singing and the use of the McGuffey readers. The result would be a law-abiding, hard-working, broadly based middle-class society that embodied the values of capitalism embedded in Republican ideology.

Some Republican politicians, like President Ulysses S. Grant, James Gillespie Blaine, Judge Elisha Hurlbut of New York, and future President Rutherford B. Hayes began to believe that the Catholic Church and Catholic schools stood in the way of those goals. Thus they began to use language much like Queen Victoria's government, headed by Lord John Russell did when after Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Catholic Church re-established a hierarchy in 1850.

Judge Elisha Hurlbut, for example, proposed a new Constitutional amendment:

It would empower Congress to ban “any foreign hierarchical power...founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions.” Some read in Hurlbut’s proposal the opening salvo of an anti-Catholic, nationalistic campaign akin to Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, which was gathering steam in Germany. Moreover, the campaign to identify the United States as a Christian Protestant nation, which had begun during the Civil War, now revived with the efforts of Supreme Court Justice William Strong and the National Reform Association to amend the U.S. Constitution’s preamble to read: “Recognizing Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, and...the Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government,” we the People, etc.

President Grant concurred with these sentiments and Blaine followed up on them:

the president proposed that Congress approve a constitutional amendment formally separating church and state, provide for the taxation of church property and forbid the states from allocating public funds to any schools that taught “sectarian tenets.” Sectarian meant Catholic. A week later Blaine offered his amendment on the floor of the House. It included the most popular of the Grant proposals. After extending the language of the First Amendment to the states, it provided that “no money raised by taxation in any state for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund thereof, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect, nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”

As the University of Chicago law professor Philip Hamburger has demonstrated in his superb study, Separation of Church and State (Harvard Univ. Press, 2002), Blaine’s proposal directly challenged Catholic efforts for school funding while leaving nondenominational Protestantism securely entrenched in public education.

Although the amendment passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives, it failed to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary in the Senate. Nevertheless, state legislatures began to adopt Blaine amendment type clauses in their constitutions. Meir Katz of The Beckett Fund provides detail about them in this report.

Again, I am not drawing absolute comparisons between the USA in the nineteenth century and today. This history, like the conflicts between the Catholic Church and Queen Victoria's government in nineteenth century England, represents another phase in the ongoing "dialogue" between Church and State. I don't think anyone in the executive or legislative branches of our government is speaking this kind of language, but you can clearly see, if you read even a few comments on any news website covering or commenting on the HHS Mandate, the old nativist anti-Catholic attacks. Unfortunately, they are now combined with mentions of the priest sex-abuse crisis of the last decade.

Unintended Consequences? The Reformation and Today

2012-02-10T00:16:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed reading Brad Gregory's Salvation at Stake, his study of the state of Christian martyrdom in 16th century Europe. His most recent book is The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society:

In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West.

Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge.

The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.

Barton Swaim, author of Scottish Men of Letters and the New Public Sphere, 1802-34, reviewed it for The Wall Street Journal: "Blame It on Calvin and Luther"--

Brad Gregory, a history professor at Notre Dame, is deeply unhappy with modern life. "I wish this book could have had a happier ending," he says late in "The Unintended Reformation," an intellectual history of the West since the religious upheaval of the 16th century, "but that would have happened only if the world in which we are living today were different. And our present world would be different only if the past had not been what it was."

Mr. Gregory describes six ways in which the West has lost its moral and intellectual bearings, and in each case he traces the loss to the Protestant Reformation, when Martin Luther, John Calvin and others led a rebellion against what they perceived to be the Roman Catholic Church's corruption and theological error.

The book begins with a broadside against "supercessionist" views of history: narratives in which supposedly primitive ideas give way to progressively more sophisticated ideas, culminating in those of the enlightened present. The sophisticated ideas of the present, Mr. Gregory notes, always seem to bear a striking similarity to those of the historian and his or her like-minded colleagues in the faculty lounge. The problem with supercessionist histories is that the overwhelming majority of Westerners, unlike most historians, are not disenchanted, secularist intellectuals, and any serious interpretations of history claiming to explain how we got to the present day must also describe the present as it actually is—not as the historian thinks it should be or soon will be. . . .

Read the rest of the review here. Something new for the wish list?

More on the HHS Mandate and the English Reformation

2012-02-09T01:57:00.000-08:00

Chris Matthews from MSNBC sees the connections too:

"If the church teaches it's morally wrong to use birth control, how can you make the teacher pay for the birth control without losing their authority, their moral authority?" Matthews asked today when discussing the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that many religious institutions provide contraception to their employees. "If you can make them do it, they can't teach it anymore."

Matthews recalled the stories of Thomas More and Thomas Becket when explaining his thinking. "I guess I grew up watching movies like Becket and A Man for All Seasons and seeing the church and state go to war with each other and being told stories from the Old Testament about the Maccabees, about people, families being told you got to eat pork," he said. Matthews added that it is "frightening" to him "when the state tells the church what to do."

Thanks very much to my facebook friend, Penny McKelvey, for pointing this story out to me! It just demonstrates that knowledge of history helps us see connections and distinctions in current events. The great difference between the English Reformation and the subsequent Recusant era and the crisis the Catholic Church--and all organized religion in the USA--faces today is that we have a representative democratic republic. The voters have an official voice and can protest against their elected officials. We have a constitution to refer to. The martyrs and the Catholic survivors of the sixteenth and seventeenth century did not have our methods for protest. Even though St. Thomas More brilliantly argued his case at his trial, the verdict and the sentence were already determined.

Catholics in sixteenth century England could either conform to the Church of England or pretend to conform to the Church of England. They could actively work to overthrow the monarch to change the regime and the religion, which meant treason, violence, and probably execution if the rebellion failed. The Catholic martyrs chose to be absolutely true to their faith, certainly, and suffer the consequences of disobeying laws that made Catholic priesthood in England, aiding a Catholic priest in England, attending Catholic Mass in England, or becoming a Catholic in England all crimes punishable by death. Chris Matthews is definitely correct in seeing the English Reformation and now the HHS Mandate as events in the long battle between Church and State.

UPDATE: PLEASE NOTE: I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday Morning, February 13 at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central to discuss the connections commentators are seeing between the HHS Mandate and what I call the "Tudor Mandates" (Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth I's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity). Listen live here.

Catholic Maryland and Oxford

2012-02-09T00:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Once I Was a Clever Boy, here is a link to John Whitehead's post on Catholic Maryland. At Mass at the Oxford Oratory, he met

a visiting American academic. Talking afterwards I found that he was Dr Henry M. Miller, Director of Research at the Historic St Mary's City project in Maryland, of which I had read something a while back on the internet, and that he was spending a sabbatical research year in Oxford attached, through the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, to Keble college.

The importance of St Mary's City, of which none of the original buildings survive above foundation level, is that it was the first capital of Maryland, established as a private Catholic colony in 1634 by George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, and with freedom of religion. After it was taken over as a Crown colony in 1694 that position changed, and in 1704 there was an Act to deter the growth of Popery. Nonetheless this was the first such experiment in religious pluralism, and the chapel, of which the one built in 1667, replacing one destroyed in the Civil War, and recently reconstructed on its foundations under Dr Miller's leadership, can claim to be the mother church of English Roman Catholic North America.

Here is the website for Historic St Mary's City and a link to Dr. Miller's blog while working in Oxford:

This blog reports the experiences and findings of Dr. Henry Miller while he is on assignment at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Oxford, England. From September 2011 to May of 2012, he will be conducting research about early Maryland and its English connections, writing, and teaching. Watch this space for Dr. Miller's research findings, insights on the remarkable history and nature of Oxford and other places he visits, and curious aspects of living in another country.

If you have read Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation (and if you haven't, why haven't you?), you will know that I trace the thread of the Lords Baltimore and the Maryland colony throughout the chapters on the Stuart monarchs. From the first Lord Baltimore, Geroge Calvert to the third Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert, the fortunes of their vision of religious freedom in the colony in Maryland ebbed and flowed with the changes in the Stuart dynasty through the Civil War, Interregnum, and finally the so-called "Glorious" Revolution of 1688. John D. Krugler wrote what I think is still the standard work on the their efforts: English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century.

HHS, Henry VIII and Recusancy

2012-02-08T01:24:00.000-08:00

Even a contributor to The Wichita Eagle's opinion line has noticed the parallel: Like Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy, the Obama administration’s HHS mandate is an attempt to seize control of all Catholic institutions. But Catholics are only the beginning. If this decision stands, freedom of religion is dead in this country.

This article in The Catholic World Report makes the connection between the recent contraception mandate and the English Reformation, although Matthew Cullinan Hoffman focuses on Elizabeth I and recusancy:

Intentionally or not, the administration's policy smacks of the methods established by England's Queen Elizabeth against Catholic "recusants," who refused to participate in the worship services of the Anglican Church during the late 16th century. Although Elizabeth's regime, and those that followed for the next two hundred years, did not provide a penalty for Catholic belief as such, they found a simple and devastating way to coerce Catholics to violate their consciences: the recusancy fine, which was levied against those who absented themselves from Sunday Anglican worship or failed to receive communion once a year.

The fine, which began as a few shillings, was eventually raised to 20 pounds a month, a devastating penalty that few could afford. After being impoverished by such levies, family members would be thrown in jail for failing to pay, and sometimes expelled from the country. Only the wealthiest Catholic families, generally of the aristocracy, could avoid persecution by paying the fines and maintaining a Catholic existence in the privacy and secrecy of their estates.

Although it is far removed from the severity of Britain's old recusancy measures, Obama's policy bears an uncomfortable similarity to them. Catholics will not be directly forced to repudiate their moral principles, but some of their most important institutions will be fined handsomely for refusing to do so. For each employee not provided with contraceptive insurance coverage, a Catholic university, charity, or other institution will be required to pay the government $2,000 annually.

As under the old recusancy system, some larger and wealthier institutions might be able to sustain the financial burdens, but smaller ones will simply go bankrupt and be forced to fold, or will publicly violate their religious beliefs to remain in existence. The outcome will be painfully similar to that of other policies that impose morally offensive requirements on Catholics, such as requiring adoption agencies to give children to homosexuals. As a result of such measures, Catholic agencies in some states have been forced to close or have renounced their Catholic identity to continue operating.

As the publisher's blurb on the back of my book Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation so clearly states: "This book tells the story of the Catholic Church's survival and restoration in one land. It serves both as a lesson and a warning of the risks to faith and freedom when absolute power is given free reign."

UPDATE: PLEASE NOTE: I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday Morning, February 13 at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central to discuss the connections commentators are seeing between the HHS Mandate and what I call the "Tudor Mandates" (Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth I's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity). Listen live here.

Charles Dickens and the Gordon Riots

2012-02-08T00:21:00.000-08:00

Charles Dickens' 200th birthday was celebrated yesterday, February 7. Among Dickens' many, many works is one rather unusual historical novel, Barnaby Rudge, concerning the Gordon Riots--those anti-Catholic disturbances that followed the first steps of emancipating Catholics in England. There are two interesting features of this novel: one that Dickens wasn't really that interested in history and the other that Dickens really had no sympathy for the Catholics attacked during the Gordon Riots!

As to the first feature: Chesterton commented on Dickens writing two historical novels (A Tale of Two Cities and Barnaby Rudge) while not knowing anything or caring about history:

But it is very typical of Dickens's living interest in his own time, that though he wrote two historical novels they were neither of them of very ancient history. They were both, indeed, of very recent history; only they were those parts of recent history which were specially picturesque. I do not think that this was due to any mere consciousness on his part that he knew no history. Undoubtedly he knew no history; and he may or may not have been conscious of the fact. But the consciousness did not prevent him from writing a History of England. Nor did it prevent him from interlarding all or any of his works with tales of the pictorial past, such as the tale of the broken swords in Master Humphrey's Clock, or the indefensibly delightful nightmare of the lady in the stage-coach, which helps to soften the amiable end of Pickwick. Neither, worst of all, did it prevent him from dogmatising anywhere and everywhere about the past, of which he knew nothing; it did not prevent him from telling the bells to tell Trotty Veck that the Middle Ages were a failure, nor from solemnly declaring that the best thing that the mediæval monks ever did was to create the mean and snobbish quietude of a modern cathedral city. No, it was not historical reverence that held him back from dealing with the remote past; but rather something much better -- a living interest in the living century in which he was born. He would have thought himself quite intellectually capable of writing a novel about the Council of Trent or the First Crusade. He would have thought himself quite equal to analysing the psychology of Abelard or giving a bright, satiric sketch of St. Augustine. It must frankly be confessed that it was not a sense of his own unworthiness that held him back; I fear it was rather a sense of St. Augustine's unworthiness. He could not see the point of any history before the first slow swell of the French Revolution. He could understand the revolutions of the eighteenth century; all the other revolutions of history (so many and so splendid) were unmeaning to him. But the revolutions of the eighteenth century he did understand; and to them therefore he went back, as all historical novelists go back, in search of the picturesque. And from this fact an important result follows,

The result that follows is this: that his only two historical novels are both tales of revolutions -- of eighteenth-century revolutions. These two eighteenth-century revolutions may seem to differ, and perhaps do differ in everything except in being revolutions and of the eighteenth century. The French Revolution, which is the theme of A Tale of Two Cities, was a revolt in favour of all that is now called enlightenment and liberation. The great Gordon Riot, which is the theme of Barnaby Rudge, was a revolt in favour of something which would now be called mere ignorant and obscurantist Protestantism. Nevertheless both belonged more typically to the age out of which Dickens came -- the great sceptical and yet creative eighteenth century of Europe. Whether the mob rose on the right side or the wrong they both belonged to the time in which a mob could rise, in which a mob could conquer. No growth of intellectual science or of moral cowardice had made it impossible to fight in the streets, whether for the republic or for the Bible. If we wish to know what was the real link, existing actually in ultimate truth, existing unconsciously in Dickens's mind, which connected the Gordon Riots with the French Revolution, the link may be defined though not with any great adequacy. The nearest and truest way of stating it is that neither of the two could possibly happen in Fleet Street to-morrow evening.

As to the second feature, Dickens commented on his sympathies in the preface:

"However imperfectly those disturbances [the 1780 riots] are set forth in the following pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the Romish Church, though he acknowledges as most men do, some esteemed friends among the followers of its creed."

As I read the book a couple of years ago, I realized that Dickens' sympathies are against the anti-Catholics, not for the Catholics. The same pattern occurs in A Tale of Two Cities: Dickens is not for the aristocrats slaughtered at the guillotine; he is against the injustice of the execution of Charles Darney and revenge that furthers the suffering of Dr. Manette and Lucy. To Dickens, the Catholic and the aristocrat are foreign and unknown, but he still cannot stand to see them unjustly treated. Although his natural sympathies are for the mob and not for the Catholics or the aristocrat abused by the mob, he still has to reveal the horror of the mob's cruelty--just as much as he exposed the cruelty of the Marquis d'Evremonde and lacked sympathy for the "Romish creed", even though he had friends who were Catholics!

Peter Ackroyd describes this idea to a certain extent in his analysis of Barnaby Rudge:

The Gordon riots were the single most important threat to Parliament, and to the authorities of London, in the city's history. They began as a protest against the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, in which Roman Catholics were relieved of certain historical penalties. But under the leadership of Lord George Gordon the first protests quickly turned into a form of mob rule, in which Parliament was invaded and the prison of Newgate burned to the ground. For a few days London was at the mercy of the populace.

Dickens was always interested in the behaviour of the London crowd. He knew its volatility at first hand, having been brought up in its shadow. Just a year before he began Barnaby Rudge he attended the public hanging of a murderer, François Benjamin Courvoisier, and noted of the mob gathered on that occasion that there was "nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes". These were scenes that he recreated in the novel. Even as he was writing it there were rumours of Chartist uprisings in the heart of the city. Two years before there had been street battles in Birmingham and in Newport.

Dickens was a radical by instinct, if not by judgment, and he always manifested a signal dislike or suspicion of authority in all its forms. Yet he was too capacious a novelist to take a single or unambiguous attitude towards the events he was describing.

At any rate, belated happy birthday, Charles Dickens!

February 8, 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle

2012-02-08T00:08:00.000-08:00

Soon we will consider the executions of Lady Jane Grey and her husband Guilford at the orders of Mary I of England during the crisis of the Wyatt Rebellion. As I read different on-line accounts on their deaths, I certainly noticed the effects of their mythology and legend--with comments about Mary's panic and cruelty in ordering their deaths. Yet she had delayed those orders and had really intended that they be freed at some point. Jane's father participated in Wyatt's rebellion--Mary had forgiven him once and she had not ordered their executions in November of 1553, even though they pled guilty. Yet, their executions are used to further bloody Mary.

If those minor legends hold such sway, the legend--and the real impact--of Mary, Queen of Scots' execution on February 8, 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle looms tremendously over our imaginations and reactions. I admit that my knowledge of Mary is formed by Antonia Fraser's 1969 biography. The epilogue still has great impact when Fraser writes about all the childrens' coffins found when the vault was opened and the fact that all the kings and queens of England after the Tudors were and are her descendants--in contrast to the barrenness of Elizabeth and Mary of England; and the summary with Mary's motto: In My End is My Beginning--Fraser really wraps it up!

Like her half-sister Mary regarding Lady Jane Grey, Elizabeth also regretted the deposed Queen of Scotland's execution--especially since Mary of Scotland had been anointed and crowned. For one anointed and crowned Queen to say that another anointed and crowned Queen could be executed was a bad precedent--one that Mary of Scotland's grandson would inherit. Elizabeth also knew that this death would have a wide-ranging impact, as Mary herself had pointed out--the reactions of France and Spain [Armada, anyone?] had to be considered. The manifest unfairness of the trial, as Mary was without legal counsel, could call no witnesses, did not see the evidence to be presented against her, and had never been a subject of Queen Elizabeth (a prisoner, yes, but how can an anointed and crowned Queen be a subject?) and thus could not be accused of treason--and then there was the whole issue of entrapment! Please note that the same injustices in the conduct of Charles Ist's trial are levied against Cromwell and his Rump Parliament--no legal counsel, no knowledge of the charges beforehand--and the same dilemma of the authority of the court over the king!

And then the theatrics of the execution: her weeping attendants, Mary's pointed references to martyrdom and her Catholicism, the reports of her head falling out of its wig in the executioner's hand and the piteous image of her little terrier on the scaffold! A public relations nightmare for Elizabeth!

But Elizabeth had signed the death warrant and although she had the privy councillor who enacted it (William Davison) thrown in the Tower, he was eventually freed. Philip II of Spain and the other Catholic courts on the Continent reacted just as Mary had predicted.

Happy Birthday to Thomas More

2012-02-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

Thomas More was born in London on February 7, 1478; he was educated at St. Anthony's School and then lived in the household of John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England from 1490-1492. Archbishop Morton arranged for his admittance to Canterbury College at the University of Oxford, where More studied classicial literature. He was a pupil of Linacre and Grocyn, but left Oxford after only two years in 1494 because his father, successful lawyer Sir John More wanted him to study law and become a lawyer.

He studied law at the Inns of Chancery and the Inns of Court and was called to the bar in 1502. From 1503 to 1504 More lived near the Carthusian Charterhouse outside the walls of London. According to Erasmus, he even thought of becoming a monk.

In 1505, Thomas More married Jane Colt and again, Erasmus is our source for the detail that More began to teach his young wife about music and literature. They had four children--three girls and one boy: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. Just as he cared for his wife's education, More made sure that his daughters were well-educated. John Guy wrote a great study of Thomas More's special relationship with his daughter Margaret (Meg), A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg, which I reviewed in 2009 on amazon.com:

There have been attempts to besmirch the reputation of Sir (Saint) Thomas More--unsubstantiated and denied rumors of torture, inflated numbers of executions for heresy under this administration as Chancellor, and emphasis on the more colorful language in his polemics against Luther and Tyndale. All are cited as unworthy of a canonized saint, either reflecting confusion about historical accuracy or what it means to be a saint.

In this book, John Guy describes the relationship between Thomas More and his dearest daughter, Margaret Roper. It is a loving relationship, demonstrating the richness of character and integrity of both father and daughter. Guy highlights Thomas More's progressive educational program for all his children, including his daughters, uncommon at the time, with the highest standards of contemporary humanism. Erasmus of Rotterdam found in Margaret More Roper a critical and discerning reader who could appreciate his efforts and correct his Latin.

Crucially, John Guy emphasizes that Thomas More had completely integrated the sacred and the secular in his way of life and yet steadfastly kept the public and the private aspects of his life separate. When he was with his family, or when he wrote to them when he was away from them, he did not discuss the efforts, burdens or issues of his working life, as lawyer, member of Parliament, ambassador, or Chancellor. It was only when he knew that public life was going to intrude violently and with deadly force on his private life that he gave his family a sign of what was to come: a brutal knock at the door, interrupting the family gathered at meal and a preemptory summons to answer charges of treason.

Also crucially, Guy highlights the ferocious will to power of Henry VIII once he knew what he wanted and experienced the satisfaction of obtaining it. Henry was then insatiable and only those who bowed utterly to his desire could hope to survive, and even they faced the danger of his changing mood and will. Thomas More tried to warn Thomas Cromwell (as depicted in the film "Anne of the Thousand Days") never to let the king focus on what he could do, but only on what he should do. More followed his own advice and was executed; Cromwell did not follow that advice and was still executed.

Margaret was one of the few who knew her father wore a hair shirt; she would thus be the only one who knew how to sustain him during his imprisonment in the Tower, engaging him with both intellectual diversion and prayer. She would be his champion after his execution, rescuing his head from its place in the row of traitors and preserving all his works, including the letters and treatises he wrote in the Tower, so that they could be published during the reign of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's surviving child and the first Queen Regnant of England, Ireland and Wales.

A sad and final irony I gained from the story of this relationship was an inkling of what might have been: if Henry VIII could have had the same respect and love for his daughter Mary, he could have fulfilled his early promise as a Renaissance prince. If Henry had seen Mary as the gift she was, with her intellect, her musical talent, and the same desire that Margaret had to please her father, what might have been? But then, we might not have the works Thomas More wrote in the Tower, when he put polemics aside and contemplated Jesus in His Passion, the soul facing comfort and tribulation, and that loving last letter to Margaret, praising her for her demonstration of love as he returned to the Tower of London after his trial.

John Guy has given us the great gift of this book, clarifying many aspects of Thomas More's life, including his relationships with his second wife Alice and his great friend Erasmus, who both sadly abandoned him when he faced the trials of the Tower. The supporting materials (illustrations, family trees, and bibliography) are great.

Blessed Thomas Sherwood, Wooldraper

2012-02-07T00:14:00.000-08:00

According to this article from EWTN:

Thomas Sherwood was not a priest and he was not a religious. He had planned to study for the priesthood but had not yet carried out his plan when he was arrested.

He was by profession a wool draper and was associated with other Catholic families, in particular the family of Lady Tregonwell. The son of Lady Tregonwell turned him in to the authorities, who sent him to the Tower of London. There he was tortured in order to discover where he heard Mass, who the priest was who celebrated the Mass, and the names of other Catholics with whom he was associated.

St. Thomas More's son-in-law, William Roper, tried to send him money for medicine and food, but the officer at the Tower would not permit money to be spent on anything but clean straw for him to sleep on. Blessed Thomas Sherwood was twenty-seven years old at the time of his arrest, and his brother wrote an account of his sufferings and martyrdom. We also possess the directions given to the lieutenant of the Tower from the privy council, ordering him to obtain information from Thomas Sherwood on the rack. After his execution, his mother was arrested and put in prison, where she died fourteen years later.

During his terrible sufferings, all that he said was: "Lord Jesus, I am not worthy to suffer for thee, much less to receive those rewards which thou hast promised to those who confess thee." Three weeks after his death, his death was recorded in the daybook of Douay College, where he had been expected: "On the first of March, Mr. Lowe returned to us from England bringing news that a youth, by name Thomas Sherwood, had suffered for his confession of the Catholic Faith, not only by imprisonment, but by death itself."

He was executed on February 7, 1578--hung, drawn, and quartered because he denied the Royal Supremacy of Elizabeth I, an act of treason according to the State.

Anne, Future Queen of Great Britain, Born

2012-02-06T00:13:00.000-08:00

Anne, the second daughter of James, the Duke of York and Anne, the Duchess of York, was born at 11:39 p.m. on 6 February 1665 at St James's Palace, London. She was baptised into the Anglican faith at the Chapel Royal at St James's. Her older sister, Mary, was one of her godparents, along with Archbishop of Canterbury Gilbert Sheldon and Anne Scott, Duchess of Monmouth.

According to the wikipedia summary:

As a child, Anne suffered from an eye condition, which manifested as excessive watering known as "defluxion". For medical treatment, she was sent to France, where she lived with her paternal grandmother, Queen Dowager Henrietta Maria, at the Château de Colombes near Paris. Following her grandmother's death in 1669, Anne lived with an aunt, Henriette Anne, Duchess of Orléans. On the sudden death of her aunt in 1670, Anne returned to England. Her mother died the following year. As was traditional in the royal family, Anne and her sister were brought up separated from their father in their own establishment at Richmond, London. On the instructions of Charles II, they were raised as Protestants. They were placed in the care of Colonel Edward and Lady Frances Villiers and their education was focused on the teachings of the Anglican church.

Around 1671, Anne first made the acquaintance of Sarah Jennings, who later became her close friend and one of her most influential advisors. Jennings married John Churchill (the future Duke of Marlborough) in about 1678. He was the brother of the Duke of York's mistress, Arabella Churchill, and was to be Anne's most important general.

In 1673, the Duke of York's conversion to Roman Catholicism became public (Anne's mother had also become a Catholic before her death). He married a Catholic princess, Mary of Modena, who was only six and half years older than Anne. Charles II had no surviving legitimate children, and so the Duke of York was next in the line of succession, followed by his two surviving daughters from his first marriage, Mary and Anne. Over the next ten years, the new Duchess of York had ten children, but all were either stillborn or died in infancy, leaving Mary and Anne second and third in the line of succession after their father.

Mary Beatrice of Modena and Queen Anne of Great Britain thus had a similar history of pregnancy. Anne married Protestant Prince George of Denmark brother of King Christian V of Denmark in 1683. Anne was pregnant seventeen (17) times: six stillborn babies, six miscarriages, and five live births. The only child to survive infancy was William, Duke of Gloucester, and he died at age 11.

The Official Website of The British Monarchy summarizes her reign as queen here.

Sunday Shrine Series: Church of Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs, and St. Ignatius

2012-02-05T00:15:00.000-08:00

This church is the shrine of the Dorset martyrs, whom I have mentioned before.

As the website states, the Dorset martyrs are among the "clouds of witnesses" of the English Martyrs:

Of these, eight are associated with Chideock. Seven were put to death and are known as the Chideock Martyrs. The eighth, John Jessop, was put in prison for his Faith and died there. Their portraits are displayed above the nave in the Church.

Fr.Thomas Pilchard was a Jesuit and despite being banished, in 1586 he returned to England and became Chaplain at Chideock Castle where he was concealed. While he was here, he made many converts including William Pike, a carpenter in Chideock. Both were put to death in Dorchester and were beatified, together with Jessop, in 1987.

Blessed John Cornelius was a friend and Chaplain to the Arundells at Chideock Castle. Around Easter 1594, a servant betrayed his presence and he was arrested along with

Thomas Bosgrave, a nephew of Lady Arundell, and two servants, John Carey and Patrick Salmon, all of whom had tried to save Fr. Cornelius. All four were executed at Dorchester on 4th July 1594 and beatified in 1929.

Blessed Hugh Green also became Chaplain to the Arundell family and was martyred in 1642 after being arrested at Lyme Regis as he tried to escape to France. He was beatified in 1929.

More about the history of the shrine and pilgrimages here.

February 5, 1649: The King is Dead; Long Live the King (of Scotland)

2012-02-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

Charles, the Prince of Wales, at age 18, succeeded his father Charles I as king of Scotland on February 5, 1649--that Parliament not accepting the Republican form of government and defying the English Parliament which forbade any succession after the execution of Charles I. Charles II of Scotland had to agree to support the Solemn League and Covenant, which meant supporting the establishment of the Presbyterian Kirk throughout Britain. He did not land in Scotland until June of that year and was not crowned until January of 1651.

He did not get along very well with the Covenanters and his supporters in England regretted his abandonment of the Church of England. Losing the Battle of Worcester when attempting an invasion of England to take the throne on September 3, 1651, he--like his great-great nephew Bonnie Prince Charlie--had to hide and wear a disguise to escape England. He famously hid in the "Royal Oak" in Boscobel Wood, and Father John Huddleston and he escaped discovery at Moseley Old Hall, hiding there in a recusant-era priest hole!

He and his family would live in exile in France until the Restoration of 1660. That Restoration would be remembered every May for many years on Royal Oak Day or Oak Apple Day, while Charles II rewarded Father Huddleston and the others, especially the Penderell brothers of Whiteladies, once he became King of England, Ireland and Scotland. And of course, Father John Huddleston, protected by the King during the Popish Plot, received Charles into the Catholic Church in 1685 (February 6 Old Style).

Blessed John Speed or Spence

2012-02-04T00:15:00.000-08:00

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: English martyr, executed at Durham, 4 Feb., 1593-4, for assisting the venerable martyr St. John Boste, whom he used to escort from one Catholic house to another. He died with constancy, despising the inducements offered to bring him to conformity. With him was condemned Mrs. Grace Claxton, wife of William Claxton, of the Waterhouse, in the parish of Brancepeth, Durham, at whose house Boste was taken and probably Speed also. She was, however, reprieved on being found to be with child. In 1929, John Speed was beatified by Pope Pius XI as one of the Durham Martyrs. (More about the Durham Martyrs here.)

Re: St. John Boste: Priest and martyr, b. of good Catholic family at Dufton, in Westmoreland, about 1544; d. at Durham, 24 July, 1594. He studied at Queen's College, Oxford, 1569-72, became a Fellow, and was received into the Church at Brome, in Suffolk, in 1576. Resigning his Fellowship in 1580, he went to Reims, where he was ordained priest, 4 March, 1581, and in April was sent to England. He landed at Hartlepool and became a most zealous missioner, so that the persecutors made extraordinary efforts to capture him. At last, after many narrow escapes, he was taken to Waterhouses, the house of William Claxton, near Durham, betrayed by one Eglesfield [or Ecclesfield], 5 July, 1593. The place is still visited by Catholics. From Durham he was conveyed to London, showing himself throughout "resolute, bold, joyful, and pleasant", although terribly racked in the Tower. Sent back to Durham for the July Assizes, 1594, he behaved with undaunted courage and resolution, and induced his fellow-martyr, Bl. George Swalwell [or Swallowell], a convert minister, who had recanted through fear, to repent of his cowardice, absolving him publicly in court. He suffered at Dryburn, outside Durham. He recited the Angelus while mounting the ladder, and was executed with extraordinary brutality; for he was scarcely turned off the ladder when he was cut down, so that he stood on his feet, and in that posture was cruelly butchered alive. An account of his trial and execution was written by an eye-witness, Venerable Christopher Robinson, who suffered martyrdom shortly afterwards at Carlisle.

St. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines

2012-02-04T00:09:00.000-08:00

Last year, the UK Catholic Herald featured this saint, "who founded the only distinctively English medieval religious order" in the Twelfth Century in his native Lincolnshire. The article details his path to becoming leader of this order and notes:

"Though the Gilbertines were never richly endowed they continued to flourish until the Reformation. The order, however, died out after being dissolved by Henry VIII. Today it is difficult to find even the church at Sempringham, while virtually nothing remains of the monastic buildings which had once housed 200 nuns." At the time of the Dissolution there were 26 houses, but only four major monasteries. All were handed over to the king without any trouble, and the last prior of Sempringham Abbey, Robert Holgate, became Archbishop of York in 1545, succeeding Edward Lee, whom Henry VIII appointed after the death of Thomas Wolsey.

St. Gilbertine was arrested and imprisoned in 1165, suspected of aiding St. Thomas a Becket as the latter fled from Henry II after the Council at Northampton. He was eventually released. As Alban Butler more poetically states, "During the exile of St. Thomas of Canterbury, he and the other superiors of his Order were accused of having sent him succors abroad. The charge was false; yet the saint chose rather to suffer imprisonment and the danger of the suppression of his Order, than to deny it, lest he should seem to condemn what would have been good and just."

This site discusses the renewal of Gilbertine Spirituality. The photo above, from the Catholic Herald, is of The Abbey Church of St Andrew, Sempringham. This site provides even more detail about the history of the order.

Finally, this site describes the revival of a priory at Chicksands (where St. Thomas a Becket did stop on his way to Pontigny!).

St. Gilbert of Sempringham died on February 4, 1189 when he was almost 106 years old.

Blessed John Nelson, SJ

2012-02-03T00:10:00.000-08:00

John Nelson (1535-1578) became a Jesuit in prison just before he was martyred. A man of bold and unshakeable convictions, he died two years before the English mission began, but he provided the same fearless service to Catholics that Jesuits later lived and died for. The son of Sir Nicholas Nelson, he was born in Yorkshire about 1535. He was firm in his conviction that Catholics should be bold in professing their faith and did not accept the practice of attending Protestant services to avoid penalties. Finally he left England when he was almost 40 and studied at the English College in Douai. His younger brothers Martin and Thomas followed him to Douai. He was ordained a priest at Bynche in June 1576 and set out with four other newly ordained priests the following November to return to England.

Little is known about Father Nelson's ministry except that it lasted only one year before he was arrested on the evening of Dec. 1, 1577 when priest-catchers burst into his residence as he was reading his breviary. They arrested him on suspicion of being a Catholic; but when he was brought before the queen's high commissioners and asked who the head of the Church was, he boldly answered that it was the pope, thus sealing his fate. His trial took place February 1 and featured the comments he made before the commissioners; since he refused to take the oath acknowledging the queen's supremacy in religious matters, he was found guilty of high treason and condemned to be executed as a traitor. Nelson had admired the Jesuits but their mission to England did not begin until two years after his death. He wrote to the French Jesuits asking to be admitted, and they were pleased to accept a priest about to be martyred. He was kept in a foul dungeon--possibly the Pit in the Tower of London--for two days and then dragged to Tyburn to be executed.

He spoke to the crowds, leading the Catholics assembled there in the Credo, the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria. Then he said, "I die in the unity of the Catholic Church; and for that unity do now most willingly suffer my blood to be shed; therefore, I beseech God . . . to make you, and all others that are not such already, true Catholic men, and both to live and die in the unity of our Holy Mother, the Catholic Roman Church." As he gave his final words to onlookers, asking forgiveness of any he had offended and forgiving his enemies and his executioners, Blessed John Nelson was hanged but then cut down while he was still alive and disembowelled. He was beheaded and quartered with his body parts exhibited on London Bridge and the city gates as a warning.

Blessed John Nelson could definitely be a patron of those who enter the religious life or the priesthood when they are older than the norm. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886.

Candlemas, February 2

2012-02-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind;
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see. --Robert Herrick, Ceremony on Candlemas Eve
************
Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunset let it burn ;
Which quench'd, then lay it up again
Till Christmas next return.
Part must be kept wherewith to tend
The Christmas log next year,
And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.--Robert Herrick, Ceremony on Candlemas Day

February 2, Candlemas, was the day for taking down all the Christmas decorations, the 40th day after Christmas. The Yule Log was also lit and allowed to burn almost away, with some kept to start the next Yule Log.

Liturgically, February 2 is the day of Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. The Gospel is taken from St. Luke, depicting the ritual offering and the encounters with the priest Simeon and the prophetess Anna. Candles for use at church or in the home for prayer were blessed on Candlemas. More here. And here is a link to the text of St. Robert Southwell's poem on the Presentation.

Another event to mark on February 2nd--Blessed John Henry Newman established the first Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England on that date in 1848. The Birmingham Oratory is celebrating its 164th anniversary today! As I recall from when Father Dennis Corrado from the Brooklyn Oratory visited Newman University last century, Newman's selection of the Congregation of the Oratory after his conversion and training in Rome for the priesthood was led by how similar Oratorian community life was to the life he loved in Oxford at Oriel and at the College in Littlemore. It afforded him the opportunity to work in education and with the laity. Father Corrado recommended Placid Murray's Newman the Oratorian which I then dutifully read: the author emphasized the true development and continuity of Newman's ministry, spirituality, preaching, and teaching in the Oratory and the Catholic Church from his days at the University of Oxford and in the Church of England. Happy anniversary!

St. Henry Morse, SJ--February 1, 1645

2012-02-01T00:16:00.000-08:00

I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central, to discuss today's English Catholic martyr. You may listen live here and I will post the podcast when available here.

Philip Caraman, SJ wrote a life of today's English Catholic Martyr titled Henry Morse: Priest of the Plague. The Jesuit Curia in Rome provides this biography:

Henry Morse (1595-1645) was five times arrested for being Catholic and four times was released or escaped. His ability to get out of prison meant that he had a much longer ministry career than most Jesuits in England.

He began his studies at Cambridge then took up the study of law at Barnard's Inn, London; at the same time he became increasingly dissatisfied with the established religion and more convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith. He was received into the Catholic church at the English College at Douai, Flanders, and then returned to England to prepare to enter the seminary that autumn. Port authorities in England asked him to take the oath of allegiance acknowledging the king's supremacy in religious matters. The recent convert refused to do so and was arrested the first time. He was imprisoned four years before being set free in 1618 when the king released hundreds of religious dissenters and exiled them to France. Morse first went to Douai but the English College had too many students, so he was sent to Rome, where studied theology and was ordained in 1623.

Before Morse left Rome, he met the Jesuit superior general and asked to be admitted into the Society; the general said Morse would be admitted as soon as he returned to England. He probably entered the Jesuits in 1624, and spent his novitiate period doing pastoral work in the Newcastle area in northern England. After 18 months of traveling from station to station, he was due to make the month-long Spiritual Exercises to complete his novitiate. He was supposed to do so at Watten, Flanders; but the ship he boarded to take him there was halted in the mouth of the Tyne River so soldiers could search for a priest, possibly disguised as a foreign merchant. They discovered Father Morse instead, although he carried only a rosary. He was arrested the second time and sent to Newcastle's prison. Soon another Jesuit was imprisoned, Father John Robinson, a classmate from Rome, who was on his way to take Morse's place. Both ended up at York Castle, where Robinson directed Morse in the retreat which completed his novitiate. Morse spent three years in prison before he was released and banned from the land. The young Jesuit returned to Flanders and served as chaplain to the English soldiers serving in the Spanish army then in Flanders. He had to give up this work when his health broke; then he became assistant to the novice master.

In 1633 he was again assigned to England to work at the parish of St. Giles in a poor district outside London. While he was there, the city was ravaged by a plague. Several isolated cases were discovered in late 1635, but by mid-April both city and suburbs were afflicted by the dread disease. Morse threw himself into caring for the sick, in the classic Jesuit fashion. He found medicine for the sick, took viaticum to the dying and prepared the dead for burial. His reward for this selfless service was to be arrested a third time when a priest-hunter recognized him and incarcerated him in Newgate Prison. On April 22 he came to trial and ably defended himself, but was convicted anyway although sentence was never passed. He was released on June 17 because of the intervention of Queen Henrietta Marie in recognition of his service to plague victims. He briefly returned to pastoral work, but could no longer move about safely so he returned to the continent and again became chaplain to the soldiers.

He was again assigned to England in 1643, but sent to Cumberland where he was less well-known. This strategy worked for 18 months until he accidentally walked into a group of soldiers late one night. They suspected he was a priest because he was travelling alone, so they arrested him and held him overnight in the home of a local official. Fortunately, the official's wife was Catholic and she helped the Jesuit escape. For six weeks he enjoyed freedom, but then had the extreme bad fortune to knock on a door seeking directions when he was lost. The man who opened the door happened to be one of the soldiers who had recently apprehended him and remembered him well.

There would be no fifth escape. He was moved from local jails to London's Newgate Prison in January 1645 and tried in Old Bailey; his very presence in England proved him guilty of violating the law by coming back after he had been banished. He was quickly found guilty of high treason and condemned to death. Early in the morning of his last day, he celebrated Mass and then was dragged to Tyburn to be executed. He stood on a cart under the gallows and was left hanging when the cart moved away. After he was dead, his body was torn open, his heart removed and his entrails burned. His head was exposed on London bridge and the four sections of his quartered body were mounted on the city's four gates.

His life and death--or the life and death of some of the other English Catholic martyrs, like St. Edmund Campion, especially--should be the subject of a great adventure movie. It would be good to balance out the anti-Catholic offenses of the Cate Blanchett Elizabeth movies, with the murderous Jesuit. Depicting early modern Cambridge, Douai, Rome, St. Giles, and London would be a great challenge, of course! But can't you see the scene of Father Morse knocking at the door and the soldier who'd arrested him opening the door? Imagine him standing in the cart at Tyburn, rope around his neck, saying these words:

"I am come hither to die for my religion. . . . I have a secret which highly concerns His Majesty and Parliament to know. The kingdom of England will never be truly blessed until it returns to the Catholic faith and its subjects are all united in one belief under the Bishop of Rome. . . . I pray my death may be some kind of atonement for the sins of this kingdom."

The Gunpowder Plotters Die, Part Two

2012-01-31T00:11:00.000-08:00

On January 31, 1606, the second group of Gunpowder Plot conspirators were executed: Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Guy Fawkes. From the site I quoted yesterday:

On Friday, 31 January 1606, Fawkes, Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes were taken to the Old Palace Yard at Westminster and hanged, drawn and quartered "in the very place which they had planned to demolish in order to hammer home the message of their wickedness". Thomas Wintour was followed by Rookwood and then by Keyes. Guido, the "romantic caped figure of such evil villainy" came last. A contemporary wrote:

"Last of all came the great devil of all, Guy Fawkes, alias Johnson, who should have put fire to the powder. His body being weak with the torture and sickness he was scarce able to go up the ladder, yet with much ado, by the help of the hangman, went high enough to break his neck by the fall. He made no speech, but with his crosses and idle ceremonies made his end upon the gallows and the block, to the great joy of all the beholders that the land was ended of so wicked a villainy".

Jardine says, "according to the accounts of him, he is not to be regarded as a mercenary ruffian, ready for hire to do any deed of blood; but as a zealot, misled by misguided fanaticism, who was, however, by no means destitute of piety or humanity".

Another of the condemned, Ambrose Rookwood, also escaped the agony of evisceration:

While being dragged to his execution, he asked to be told when they were passing his house in the Strand so he could have one last look at his beloved wife. He cried to Elizabeth 'pray for me, pray for me'. She replied "I will, and be of good courage. Offer thyself wholly to God. I, for my part, do as freely restore thee to God as He gave thee unto me".

At the scaffold, he made a speech where he freely confessed his sin, and asked God to bless the King and his family, that they might 'live long to reign in peace and happiness over this Kingdom', and beseeched God to make the King a Catholic. "The onlookers could scarcely restrain their tears since he had been well known and loved for his exemplary behaviour while he lived". This speech earned him his mercy, as he was hanged until he was almost dead.

The Death of Bonnie Prince Charlie

2012-01-31T00:05:00.000-08:00

According to Theo Aronson in Kings Over the Water: The Saga of the Stuart Pretenders, the Young Pretender, AKA Bonnie Charlie, born Charles Edward Stuart, actually died on the anniversary of his grandfather's execution on January 30, 1788. His death, however, is dated January 31st of that year.

After the defeat at Culloden in '45 and the Holy See's recognition of the House of Hanover after Prince Charles' father died in 1766, the Pretender wandered in Europe, sometimes calling himself the Duke of Albany.

His wife, Princess Louise of Stolberg-Geden, left him in 1780, claiming abuse. He legitimized his daughter Charlotte, born of his mistress Clementine Walkinshaw, in 1783. They stayed together in Rome and Florence until his death in 1788. Prince Charles was first buried in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter's in Frascati where his brother was bishop, but then he was moved to St. Peter's Basilica when Henry Cardinal Stuart died in 1807. That's where the Prince Regent, later George IV of the House of Hanover, supported the construction of a monument by Antonio Canova to the three Stuart Pretenders--the threat was gone, after all--commemorating the saga of the Kings over the Water.

The Gunpowder Plotters Die, Part One

2012-01-30T00:36:00.000-08:00

Sir Everard Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant, and Thomas Bates, four of the surviving Gunpowder Plotters were executed in St. Paul's Churchyard on January 30, 1606. They and the other conspirators had been tried on January 27th in Westminster Hall.

According to this site:

Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant and Thomas Bates were the first scheduled to be executed. Their executions took place at St. Paul's Churchyard on 30 January 1606. Digby was the first to mount the scaffold, which he did unrepentant. In his speech he had claimed that he 'could not condemn himself of any offense to God' in his motives of the 'ending of the persecution of the Catholics, the good of souls, and the cause of religion', although he freely admitted to offending the laws of the realm, for which he was willing to suffer death, and 'thought nothing too much to suffer for those respects which had moved him to that enterprise.'.

He refused to pray with the preachers, and called on the Catholics in the crowd to pray with him, whereby he "fell to his prayers with such devotion as much moved all the beholders".

He then saluted each nobleman and gentlemen upon the scaffold, in 'so friendly and cheerful manner' that they later said that he seemed 'so free from fear of death' that he could have been taking his leave of them as if he was just going from the Court or out of the city.

Digby was hung only a very short time, and was undoubtedly alive when he went to the quartering block and was disembowelled. Cecil's cousin, Sir Francis Bacon told the story that when the executioner plucked out his heart, and held it up saying, as was the custom "Here is the heart of a traitor", Digby managed to summon up the strength to respond "Thou liest".

Digby, perhaps given his youth and earlier popularity, made quite an impression, as recounted by Gerard:

"He was so much and so generally lamented, and is so much esteemed and praised by all sorts in England, both Catholics and others, although neither side do or can approve this last outrageous and exorbitant attempt...".

More about the other conspirators tomorrow.

Heads Roll on January 30 in 1649 and 1661

2012-01-30T00:11:00.001-08:00

On January 30, 1649, King Charles I was executed in London outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Because of the cold, he wore two shirts so that he would not be seen to tremble, which could be interpreted as fear. I blogged about the start of his trial on January 20; this execution was the inevitable result. There are conflicting reports about crowd reaction to his beheading: one mentions a loud groan and people dipping their handkerchiefs in the blood at the scaffold as either relics or mementos. There is also some uncertainty about who the masked executioner was. Soon after his execution, the pamphlet Eikon Basilike (Royal Image) appeared, building up the image of Charles I as martyr for Anglicanism--John Milton wrote Eikonoklastes (The Iconoclast) as a Parliamentary reaction, attempting to destroy that image in popular imagination.

On January 30, 1661, the body of Oliver Cromwell was exhumed from its grave in Westminster Abbey and was posthumously executed by hanging, drawing and quartering as punishment for his crimes of treason and regicide. His body was left hanging at Tyburn and his head displayed outside Westminster Hall until 1685. Other regicides were either hunted or dug up, as the son exacted vengeance.

In London this morning, a service of commemoration is planned at the site of King Charles the Martyr's execution. According to the Society of King Charles the Martyr (SKCM):

Commemoration at the place of the Martyrdom
Noon High Mass with Sermon
Inside the Banqueting House, Whitehall
Celebrant: The Chaplain to SKCM
The Preacher: The Bishop of Richborough
Followed by Veneration of the Relic

The service is held at the site of S.Charles’s martyrdom, The Banqueting House in Whitehall, London. Wreath laying and prayers near the place of the martyrdom are offered at 11.40 a.m. followed by High Mass (sic) and sermon at noon within the Banqueting House itself.

When the 30th January falls on a Sunday it is customary to transfer the observance to the preceding Saturday.

The Society’s relics of S. Charles are placed upon the altar for the Mass and may be venerated and viewed after the service. A choir, usually from King’s College, London sings at the Mass. The Banqueting House is where S. Charles was kept for several hours on the day of his decollation. It is a magnificent setting for the Mass: the architect was Inigo Jones and the ceiling adorned by the great paintings of Rubens. There is an exhibition on the ground floor describing the events of 30th January 1649.

The Society is very grateful to the Royal Palaces Agency for their permission to hold the Mass. Access to the Banqueting House for the commemoration and Mass is free of charge. The costs of the service are considerable and donations gratefully received. SKCM also provides a bookstall after the Mass.

If you wish to attend, here are some travel notes. One of the SKCM's patrons is Lord Nicholas Windsor, who joined the Catholic Church in 2001 and then got married in the Vatican in 20006--he has thus lost his place in the succession (great-grandson of King George V, younger son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the latter of which became a Catholic in 1994 with Elizabeth II's approval.

Decollation. That's a fine Latinate term for beheading!

Frederick Oakeley, RIP

2012-01-30T00:11:00.000-08:00

Frederick Oakeley died on January 30, 1880; he is better known for his English translation of Adestes Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful), but he was a member of the Oxford Movement, friend of W.G. Ward, defender of Newman's Tract 90, and a Catholic convert and priest.

He was born on September 5, 1802 and attended Christ Church at Oxford, becoming a Fellow at Balliol College. He defended W.G. Ward when Ward defended Newman's Tract 90--Ward was removed from his post at Balliol. Oakeley also defended that Tract in which Newman judged that Anglican doctrine was closer to Catholic doctrine than to Protestant, and he lost his living at Margaret Chapel in London.

Thereafter, he joined Newman's community in Littlemore and became Catholic a few weeks after Newman. He studied at St. Edmund's College and was ordained by then Dr. Nicholas Wiseman in 1847.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911:

"The next thirty-three years were spent as a canon of the Westminister chapter and missionary rector of St. John's, Islington. Short-sighted, small of stature, lame, he exercised a wide influence by his personality, his writings, and the charm of his conversation. His chief works are: Before his conversion: "Aristotelian and Platonic Ethics" (Oxford, 1837); "Whitehall Sermons" (Oxford, 1837-39) "The Subject of Tract XC examined" (London, 1841); "Homilies" (London, 1842); "Life of St. Augustine" (Newman's series, Toovey, 1844). After his conversion: "Practical Sermons" (London, 1848); "The Catholic Florist" (London, 1851); "The Church of the Bible" (London, 1857); "Lyra Liturgica" (London, 1865); "Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement" (London, 1865); "The Priest on the Mission" (London, 1871)."

New Sunday Series: "Our Lady and the English Martyrs"

2012-01-29T00:16:00.000-08:00

Last year I dedicated quite a few posts to English churches from before the Reformation and the saints and shrines they featured. Now I am changing the Sunday Shrine series to focus on English "RC" churches built after Emancipation and Restoration that are dedicated to or feature shrines to the Catholic Martyrs. I'll start today with a series of posts on churches named for "Our Lady and the English Martyrs" beginning with the parish church of that name in Cambridge, aka OLEM:

The Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs, or OLEM, is situated in the heart of the city of Cambridge. An imposing example of the 19th Century Gothic Revival, it was built to the designs of Dunn & Hansom of Newcastle between 1885 and 1890, and founded solely by Mrs Yolande Marie Louise Lyne-Stephens, a former ballet dancer at the Paris Opera and Drury Lane, London, and widow of a wealthy banker. She promised to build the church on the feast of Our Lady of the Assumption, and Monsignor Christopher Scott - the first Rector - also wished to commemorate the Catholic Martyrs who died between 1535 and 1681, over thirty of whom had been in residence at the University.

Designed by architects Dunn and Hansom of Newcastle and built by the Cambridge firm of Rattee and Kett , OLEM is constructed in Casterton, Ancaster and Combe Down Stone. The church is a traditional cruciform structure in the early-decorated style with a large tower at the crossing, a polygonal apse and a west bell tower with a 65-metre spire, visible for miles around Cambridge. Quite often, it is quoted by visitors and local residents as a location point. The approximate internal dimensions of the church are: length 48 meters [156 ft] width across the aisles 16 meters [51 ft] width at the transepts 22 meters [71 ft], the height of the nave 15 meters [71ft].

Inside and over the west door stands the figure of Our Lady of the Assumption crowned with lilies and standing on the crescent moon with the vanquished serpent beneath. The west window shows the English Martyrs arranged in two principal groups, the clergy on the south side with St John Fisher in their midst and the laity on the north grouped round St Thomas More. . . .

The aisle windows were almost completely destroyed when the church was struck by a bomb on 1941, but were subsequently replaced in their original form. They epitomise the various sufferings of the English Martyrs, their being brought before the Council, racked, hung, drawn and quartered in the sight and sympathy of the faithful. The windows of the north aisle portray Carthusians, St Thomas Moore (sic), B. Margaret Pole and others, while the south aisle is made a “Fisher Aisle”, devoted to scenes from the life of St John, Cardinal Bishop of Rochester, who in so many important ways is identified with Cambridge.

Here are some photos from a Flickr photographer, focused on the stained glass windows.

Archbishop Chaput's "Render Unto Caesar"

2012-01-29T00:10:00.000-08:00

I belong to a reading group that meets weekly, reading the chosen book aloud and discussing it as we go. We just finished Archbishop Charles J. Chaput's book Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs In Political Life which he wrote while serving the Denver Archdiocese. The book has nothing to do with the topic at hand--but, I found it interesting how Archbishop Chaput referred to historical figures I mention often on this blog, and highlighted in my own book, Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation.

Any book about Church and State will feature Thomas More, and Chaput features Thomas More extensively. He also highlights Bishop John Fisher.

Any book about the rights of religion in the USA will mention Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Chaput features that great founder also.

Tolkien is the interesting figure and how Chaput works him in is a discussion of how Tolkien's mother Mabel became a Catholic and the very adverse reaction of her family: withdrawing material assistance and love. The Archbishop used her story to depict the cost of following Jesus Christ: "We can't follow Jesus Christ without sharing in his cross."

Reading a book aloud a paragraph (or so) at a time, even with different voices, highlights the rhythm of sentence structure, phraseology, and word choice in an author's prose. I read Supremacy and Survival aloud as I wrote it to hear what I was "saying" and how I was "saying" it. It's a big leap back to ancient times when all reading was aloud--remember how St. Augustine was amazed when St. Ambrose read silently? What reading groups do you belong to, readers, and have you ever participated in a read aloud group?

One Henry Born; Another Henry Dies

2012-01-28T00:16:00.000-08:00

Henry VII was born on January 28, 1457 while Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547.

Henry Tudor, founder of the Tudor Dynasty, was the son of Edmund Tudor the First Earl of Richmond and Margaret Beaufort. His Lancastrian claim to the throne of England was through his mother who was the great granddaughter of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. It was a rather tenuous claim, however, since it was maternal and based on a lineage of ancesters who had legitimized by Parliamentary act, since John's children by Kathryn Swynford were born before they were married. Through his father's ancestry, there was the link to Catherine of Valois through her marriage to Owen Tudor. His reputation, based on the joyous young reign of his second son, has been of a dour skinflint who just saved lots of money for that son to waste (per Hoskins). Henry VIII of course began that interpretation by executing his father's unpopular ministers, Empson and Dudley. Nevertheless Henry VII ended the Wars of the Roses, established the new dynasty, developed England's foreign policy; in doing so, he had to destroy any rivals to the throne through fair means or foul, curtail the power of the nobility, and institute unpopular taxes--except that England was ready for a stable central government and thus he succeeded in most of his efforts.

There is a new biography of Henry VII coming out soon: Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn, published by Simon and Schuster:

It was 1501. England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and countercoups. Through luck, guile and ruthlessness, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, had clambered to the top of the heap—a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England’s throne. For many he remained a usurper, a false king.

But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. Queen Elizabeth was a member of the House of York. Henry himself was from the House of Lancaster, so between them they united the warring parties that had fought the bloody century-long Wars of the Roses. Now their older son, Arthur, was about to marry a Spanish princess. On a cold November day sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon arrived in London for a wedding that would mark a triumphal moment in Henry’s reign.

In this remarkable book, Thomas Penn re-creates the story of the tragic, magnetic Henry VII—a controlling, paranoid, avaricious monarch who was entering the most perilous years of his long reign.

Rich with drama and insight, Winter King is an astonishing story of pageantry, treachery, intrigue and incident—and the fraught, dangerous birth of Tudor England.

Here is an analysis of Henry VIII's legacy and last will and testament from a very popular Tudor blog. The reputation of Henry VIII as a ruler is so bound up in popular imagination with our desire to see people in the past and present be happy (that is, do whatever they want to do) that we sometimes forget Henry VIII's vocation and purpose in life was to be a good king, husband, and father. His sexual and marital life, a la The Tudors, perhaps prevents us from judging his actions in those three roles more objectively. From my point of view, for instance, citing the establishment of the Church of England as an accomplishment of his reign deserves a great deal of qualification. It was not based upon a theological reforming inspiration; it involved horrible destruction and loss of life; it required the establishment of an empire and a tyranny, and Henry VIII died wanting all the consolations of a traditional Catholic death: Masses and prayers, forgiveness and Heaven. By dividing England from the universal Catholic Church and the spiritual and moral authority of the Pope in Rome, Henry ensured that his bequests for spiritual assistance in the afterlife would never be fulfilled. Along the way, in addition to becoming a tyrant to his people, he proved himself a poor model of a husband (treating Katherine of Aragon cruelly and inhumanely and sentencing Anne Boleyn to a unjust death) and of a father (humiliating and threatening Mary; neglecting Elizabeth). As Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury said a few years ago, if Henry VIII gained Heaven it was only through the prayers of one of the holy men he condemned to hideous death--because they opposed his break away from the universal Catholic Church and his claim on ecclesiastical supremacy in establishing the Ecclesiae Anglicanae. [And the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury would even say such a thing, indicating a belief in salvation through works or even purgation after death, demonstrates again the confused legacy of Henry VIII's Church of England!]

It is also interesting to remember the words of Henry Peto, Observant Franciscan, who warned Henry VIII that dogs would lick his blood after his death, just like the bad King Ahab in the Old Testament: When Henry's body was being brought to Windsor Castle for burial, it rested overnight at the former Syon Abbey:

Syon Abbey had become renowned for its spiritual learning, public preaching and library. It was favoured and visited by King Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon but it got embroiled in the religious turmoil of the King’s divorce and his subsequent action of making himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. The Father Confessor, of the nuns, Richard Reynolds, could not accept the King’s supremacy and was brutally executed in 1535, his body placed on the abbey gateway. He was later canonised as a martyr.

In 1547, King Henry VIII's coffin was brought to Syon on its way to Windsor for burial. It burst open during the night and in the morning dogs were found licking up the remains! This was regarded as a divine judgement for the King's desecration of Syon Abbey.

And the fulfillment of Henry Peto's warning to Henry/Ahab about Anne/Jezebel! I'm sorry, I just don't agree that Henry VIII's establishment of the Church of England was an accomplishment worthy of unmitigated or unreserved praise.

The English Reformation and "Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran School v. EEOC"

2012-01-28T00:10:00.000-08:00

The recent decision from The Supreme Court of the United States of American reversing a Sixth Circuit Court decision was written by Chief Justice Roberts. He cites the history of religious conflict in England from King John and the Magna Carta to Henry VIII and the Act of Supremacy--and beyond, to the colonies of "New England":

Controversy between church and state over religious offices is hardly new. In 1215, the issue was addressed in the very first clause of Magna Carta. There, King John agreed that “the English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.” The King in particular accepted the “freedom of elections,”a right “thought to be of the greatest necessity and importance to the English church.” J. Holt, Magna Carta App. IV, p. 317, cl. 1 (1965).

That freedom in many cases may have been more theoretical than real. See, e.g., W. Warren, Henry II 312(1973) (recounting the writ sent by Henry II to the electorsof a bishopric in Winchester, stating: “I order you to hold a free election, but forbid you to elect anyone but Richard my clerk”). In any event, it did not survive the reign of Henry VIII, even in theory. The Act of Supremacy of 1534, 26 Hen. 8, ch. 1, made the English monarch the supreme head of the Church, and the Act in Restraint of Annates, 25 Hen. 8, ch. 20, passed that same year, gave him the authority to appoint the Church’s high officials. See G. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary 331–332 (1960). Various Acts of Uniformity, enacted subsequently, tightened further the government’s grip onthe exercise of religion. See, e.g., Act of Uniformity, 1559,1 Eliz., ch. 2; Act of Uniformity, 1549, 2 & 3 Edw. 6, ch. 1. The Uniformity Act of 1662, for instance, limited service as a minister to those who formally assented to prescribed tenets and pledged to follow the mode of worship set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. Any minister who refusedto make that pledge was “deprived of all his Spiritual Promotions.” Act of Uniformity, 1662, 14 Car. 2, ch. 4.

Seeking to escape the control of the national church, the Puritans fled to New England, where they hoped to elect their own ministers and establish their own modes of worship. See T. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment 3 (1986); McConnell, The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 Harv. L. Rev.1409, 1422 (1990). William Penn, the Quaker proprietor of what would eventually become Pennsylvania and Delaware, also sought independence from the Church of England. The charter creating the province of Pennsylvania contained no clause establishing a religion. See S. Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America 440–441 (1970).

Colonists in the South, in contrast, brought the Church of England with them. But even they sometimes chafed at the control exercised by the Crown and its representatives over religious offices. In Virginia, for example, the law vested the governor with the power to induct ministers presented to him by parish vestries, 2 Hening’s Statutes at Large 46 (1642), but the vestries often refused to make such presentations and instead chose ministers on their own. See H. Eckenrode, Separation of Church and State in Virginia 13–19 (1910). Controversies over the selection of ministers also arose in other Colonies with Anglican establishments, including North Carolina. See C. Antieau, A. Downey, & E. Roberts, Freedom from Federal Establishment: Formation and Early History of the First Amendment Religion Clauses 10–11 (1964). There, the royal governor insisted that the right of presentation lay with the Bishop of London, but the colonial assembly enacted laws placing that right in the vestries. Authorities in England intervened, repealing those laws as inconsistent with the rights of the Crown. See id., at 11; Weeks, Church and State in North Carolina, Johns Hopkins U. Studies in Hist. & Pol. Sci., 11th Ser., Nos. 5–6, pp. 29–36 (1893).

It was against this background that the First Amendment was adopted. Familiar with life under the established Church of England, the founding generation sought to foreclose the possibility of a national church. See 1 Annals of Cong. 730–731 (1789) (noting that the Establishment Clause addressed the fear that “one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combine together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform” (remarks of J. Madison)). . . .

Chief Justice Roberts goes on to cite a proof text of the government's non-interference in the naming of church ministers, in connection with the Catholic Church and the firt Archbishop of Baltimore, John Carroll:

The first [example] occurred in 1806, when John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, solicited the Executive’s opinion on who should be appointed to direct the affairs of the Catholic Church in the territory newly acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. After consulting with President Jefferson, then-Secretary of State Madison responded that the selection of church “functionaries” was an “entirely ecclesiastical” matter left to the Church’s own judgment. Letter from James Madison to Bishop Carroll (Nov. 20, 1806), reprinted in 20 Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 63 (1909). The “scrupulous policy of the Constitution in guarding against a political interference with religious affairs,” Madison explained, prevented the Government from rendering an opinion on the “selection of ecclesiastical individuals.” Id., at 63–64.

It is interesting that Roberts does not cite Maryland and the Lords Baltimore in the paragraph on the Puritans and the Quakers.

Your Own Personal Tour of an Historic Building

2012-01-27T00:12:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Chadwick, an author of historical fiction set in Medieval England, offers this post on the English Historical Fiction Authors blog about a personal tour she received of the Palace of Westminster. Since she writes about William Wallace, she was attuned to certain things during the tour:

A little while ago, A reader called Mike Pinchen wrote to me to say he'd been enjoying the novels about William Marshal. He also told me that he worked as an usher for Black Rod's department at the House of Lords and that should I ever wish for a bespoke guided tour of the Palace of Westminster, he would be delighted to show me round. How could I refuse? What a wonderful and unique opportunity. I accepted with alacrity and delight. Thank you Mike. What gave the invitation that extra frisson is that 800 years ago, John Marshal - hero of my novel A Place Beyond Courage, was in charge of the King's ushers, and the Marshal always carried a rod of office when on official business. We also know the name of two of the ushers from John Marshal's time - Bonhomme and Ralf. What a connection down the centuries. It gives me a feeling of warmth and pride and security to know that the job still exists. I guess that's what experiencing roots and continuity does for you.

She describes visiting the House of Commons, Westminster Hall, the undercroft chapel, (more images here from another source on flicker) and the House of Lords, and provides photographs of the areas where photography was allowed. It's a very worthwhile post.

Reading it led me to consider what I would really pay attention to and be meditating on when given a personal tour of the Palace of Westminster. In Westminster Hall I would certainly want to find the marker on the floor designating St. Thomas More's trial, but would also remember St. John Fisher and many others tried and convicted there, some later led to martyrdom on Tower Hill or at Tyburn Tree. St. Mary's Undercroft looks absolutely gorgeous and I would enjoy the Gothic glories there, while in the House of Commons again, I would think, not of William Marshal, but of Thomas More withstanding Thomas Cardinal Wosley, or of Charles I entering the House of Commons to arrest certain members of that house who had already fled. Visiting the chapel in the undercroft would also call to mind the Gunpowder Plot and Guy Fawkes's capture while checking on the gunpowder stored in the undercroft to plow up the Houses of Parliament; today is the anniversary of the trials in 1606 of the surviving conspirators in Westminster Hall. Found guilty of treason, they were scheduled to be executed the last two days of January, two cold midwinter mornings.

What would you want to see in the Houses of Parliament? What other historic building would you want to tour with a personal guide?

TRENT AND ALL THAT: Catholic Reformation or Counter Reformation? Or Something Else??

2012-01-26T00:08:00.000-08:00

One of the last purchases on my Eighth Day Books gift certificate from my husband this Christmas is Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era by John W. O'Malley. Previously, I have enjoyed reading his book Four Cultures of the West (prophetic, academic, humanistic, performance/art). Re: this book, Harvard University Press states:

Counter Reformation, Catholic Reformation, the Baroque Age, the Tridentine Age, the Confessional Age: why does Catholicism in the early modern era go by so many names? And what political situations, what religious and cultural prejudices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave rise to this confusion? Taking up these questions, John O’Malley works out a remarkable guide to the intellectual and historical developments behind the concepts of Catholic reform, the Counter Reformation, and, in his felicitous term, Early Modern Catholicism. The result is the single best overview of scholarship on Catholicism in early modern Europe, delivered in a pithy, lucid, and entertaining style. Although its subject is fundamental to virtually all other issues relating to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, there is no other book like this in any language.

More than a historiographical review, Trent and All That makes a compelling case for subsuming the present confusion of terminology under the concept of Early Modern Catholicism. The term indicates clearly what this book so eloquently demonstrates: that Early Modern Catholicism was an aspect of early modern history, which it strongly influenced and by which it was itself in large measure determined. As a reviewer commented, O’Malley’s discussion of terminology "opens up a different way of conceiving of the whole history of Catholicism between the Reformation and the French Revolution."

Table of Contents:
Introduction: What’s in a Name?
1. How It All Began
2. Hubert Jedi and the Classic Position
3. England and Italy in Jedin’s Wake
4. France, Germany, and Beyond
Conclusion: There’s Much in a Name
Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

The work he highlights in chapter three is H. Outram Evennett's Spirit of the Counter-Reformation, based on his Birkbeck Lectures of 1951 edited by John Bossy, one of Evennett's students and the author of the major study on English Catholicism, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 . What both O'Malley and Bossy point out in their evaulation of Evennett's achievement in this book (which has NOT BEEN OUT OF PRINT since publication), is that he was working in a cultural milieu, British academia at the University of Cambridge that of course had not considered the Catholic side of early modern history at all. I read Evennett's book a few years ago while preparing a couple of presentations on the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic/Counter Reformation for my parish's RCIA program.

After tracing the development of the names of what O'Malley calls "the Catholic side" of the religious changes that happened in Europe during the 16th and 17th century, he summarizes their effectiveness and proposes a new name (as of 2001, at least): Early Modern Catholicism. The other terms used: The Counter Reformation (describes the actions taken by the Catholic Church to "counter" the Protestant Reformation; The Catholic Reformation (describes the actions taken by the Catholic Church to address abuses, improve discipline); The Tridentine Age (focuses on the efforts of the Council of Trent); Confessional Catholicism (focuses on the efforts of states and nations to identify themselves politically as Catholic)--each have strengths and weaknesses in attempting to summarize the Church's activities in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The term O'Malley proposes, Early Modern Catholicism, suffers, as he admits, from some vagueness but benefits by comprehending all the other names under its big tent, and other names besides--like the Baroque Era, the Age of Gold in Spain, the Great Century in France, etc. Robert S. Miola uses that term in the title of his great anthology.

Although he uses yet another term for the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation ("The Reinvention of Catholicism") I thought of Nathan Mitchell's book on the Rosary as I read O'Malley describing how his term Early Modern Catholicism allows much more leeway in discussing people and events that don't fit under the categories claimed in the names listed above: the missionary efforts (including England); the devotional and confraternity movements and new orders founded in the 16th and 17th centuries, like the Oratory; and the role of women, the Ursulines, Mary of Agreda, etc.

Another book that represents that broader reach and uses YET ANOTHER TERM, "Catholic Renewal" also demonstrates the dating issue O'Malley brings up, extending the period from 1540 to 1770, up to Enlightenment times. The second edition added a chapter on "The Catholic Book", which means I need to supplement the edition I already have!

Finally, there is Robert Bireley's book, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation published by Catholic University of America Press:

Throughout its history, Christianity has adapted to contemporary society and culture in order to reach people effectively and have an impact on the world. This process often evokes controversy. Certainly this is the case in the current century, and so it was in the sixteenth. Robert Bireley argues that early modern Catholicism, the period known more traditionally as the Counter Reformation, was both shaped by and an active response to the profound changes of the sixteenth century--the growth of the state; economic expansion and social dislocation; European colonialism across the seas; the Renaissance; and, of course, the Protestant Reformation.

Bireley finds that there were two fundamental, contrasting desires that helped shape early modern Catholicism: the desire especially of a lay elite to lead a full Christian life in the world and the widespread desire for order and discipline after the upheavals of the long sixteenth century. He devotes particular attention to new methods of evangelization in the Old World and the New, education at the elementary, secondary, and university levels, the new active religious orders of women as well as men, and the effort to create a spirituality for the Christian living in the world.

This book will be of great value to all those studying the political, social, religious, and cultural history of the period.

What term do you think best describes "the Catholic side" of the 16th and 17th centuries? Please cast your vote in the comment box and tell why:

1) Catholic Counter Reformation
2) Catholic Reformation
3) Tridentine Age
4) Confessional Catholicism
5) Early Modern Catholicism
6) Catholic Renewal or Catholic Refashioning
7) Your Own Term

Tract 90--January 25, 1841

2012-01-25T00:11:00.000-08:00

The last of the Tracts of the Times came out on January 25, 1841 and received a very cold reaction that had nothing to do with the winter weather. The full title of Tract 90 is "Remarks on certain Passages of the Thirty-nine Articles."

In it, Tractarian John Henry Newman examined the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and argued that they had more in common with Roman Catholicism than with Protestantism: as he noted in the introduction, "while our Prayer Book is acknowledged on all hands to be of Catholic origin, our articles also, the offspring of an uncatholic age, are, through GOD'S good providence, to say the least, not uncatholic, and may be subscribed by those who aim at being catholic in heart and doctrine." Because of Tract 90, the Oxford Movement was effectively shut down; Newman soon retreated to Littlemore. The Tract was condemned and Newman barely escaped censure--it was a good time to leave town!

As he wrote later in the Apologia Pro Vita Sua:

I saw indeed clearly that my place in the Movement was lost; public confidence was at an end; my occupation was gone. It was simply an impossibility that I could say any thing henceforth to good effect, when I had been posted up by the marshal on the buttery-hatch of every College of my University, after the manner of discommoned pastry-cooks, and when in every part of the country and every class of society, through every organ and opportunity of opinion, in newspapers, in periodicals, at meetings, in pulpits, at dinner-tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway carriages, I was denounced as a traitor who had laid his train and was detected in the very act of firing it against the time-honoured Establishment.

When he compiled works from the Tractarian movement in The Via Media of the Anglican Church Illustrated in Lectures, Letters and Tracts Written between 1830 and 1841, then Cardinal Newman explained the background and purpose of the Tract:

THIS Tract was written under the conviction that the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, of which it treated, were, when taken in their letter, so loosely worded, so incomplete in statement, and so ambiguous in their meaning, as to need an authoritative interpretation; and that neither those who drew them up, nor those who imposed them were sufficiently agreed among themselves, or clear and consistent in their theological views individually to be able to supply it.

There was but one authority to whom recourse could be had for such interpretation—the Church Catholic. She had been taught the revealed truth by Christ and His Apostles in the beginning, and had in turn taught it in every age to her faithful children, and would teach it on to the end. And what she taught, all her branches taught; and this the Anglican Church did teach, must teach, if it was a branch of the Church Catholic, otherwise it was not a branch; but a branch it certainly was, for, if it was not a branch, what had we to do with it? And it being a branch, it was the duty of all its members, priests and people, ever to profess what the Universal Church had from the beginning professed, and nothing else, and nothing short of it, that is, what had been held semper et ubique et ab omnibus. Accordingly, it was their plain duty to interpret the Thirty-nine Articles in this one distinct Catholic sense, the sense of the Holy Fathers, of Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, and of all Doctors and Saints; it being impossible that in any important matters those Articles should diverge from that sense, or resist the interpretation which that sense required, inasmuch as the Divine Lord of the Church watched over all her portions, and would not suffer the Anglican or any portion to commit itself to statements which could not fairly and honestly be made to give forth a Catholic meaning.

And the circumstances under which the Thirty-nine Articles came into existence, favoured this view. Its compilers were not likely knowingly to exclude the possibility of a Catholic interpretation of them. Doubtless they wished to introduce the new doctrine, but it did not follow from that that they wished to exclude those who still held the old. The ambiguity above spoken of, in the instance of men so acute and learned as they were, could only be accounted for by great differences of opinions among themselves, and a wish by means of compromise to include among the subscriptions to their formulary a great variety of the then circulating opinions, of which a moderate quasi-Catholicity was one. This would lead them to the use of words, which in the long-run, as they would consider, would tell in favour of Protestantism, while in the letter and in their first effect they did not enforce it.

It must be added, in corroboration, that, as is well known, the very Convocation which received and passed the Thirty-nine Articles, also enjoined that "preachers should be careful, that they should never teach aught in a sermon, to be religiously held and believed by the people, except that which is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments, and which the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected from that very doctrine." Could they mean their Thirty-nine Articles to be inconsistent with that patristical literature, which at the same time they made the rule even for the interpretation of inspired Scripture?

This primâ facie view of the Thirty-nine Articles as not excluding a moderate Catholicism (that is, Roman doctrine, as far as it was Catholic) became more cogent, when it was considered that one of these Articles recognized, approved, and appealed to the two Books of "Homilies," as "containing a godly and wholesome doctrine," and by this appeal determined the animus and drift of the Articles to be Catholic. It was evidence of this in two ways, positively and negatively:—positively, inasmuch as the Homilies, though hitherto claimed by the Evangelical party as one of their special weapons against the High Church . . . were found on a closer inspection to take a view more or less favourable to Rome as regards the number of the Sacraments, the Canon of Scripture, the efficacy of penance, and other points; and negatively, because the Homilies for the most part struck, not at certain Roman doctrines and practices, but at their abuse, and therefore, when, once these Homilies were taken as a legitimate comment on the Articles, they suggested that the repudiations of Roman teaching in the Articles were repudiations of it so far as it was abused, not as it was in itself.

Indeed, it may be further asked, if the Articles were not aimed at the abuses, doctrinal and practical, as drawn out in the Homilies, the abuses of times and places, of particular dioceses, schools, preachers, and people, against what could they be directed? Certainly not against any formal doctrines of Rome, call them Catholic or not, for the Tridentine Decrees were not promulgated till 1564, and the Thirty-nine Articles were agreed on in Convocation in 1562.
For these reasons it appeared likely, that when the Articles were carefully handled, little in them would interfere with the liberty of teaching in the Church of England the semper, ubique, et ab omnibus of the Catholic Religion, the unanimous teaching of the Holy Fathers, the present teaching, as far as concordant, of the East and West.

The all-important question followed, whether the Articles, when examined, actually fulfilled this expectation for which there were several good reasons; whether, one by one, they were (as was said at the time) "patient, though not ambitious, of a Catholic interpretation." The Tract which follows made that experiment.

Introduction.
1. Holy Scripture and the Authority of the Church.
2. Justification by Faith only.
3. Works before and after Justification.
4. The Visible Church.
5. General Councils.
6. Purgatory, Pardons, Images, Relics, Invocation of Saints.
7. The Sacraments.
8. Transubstantiation.
9. Masses.
10. Marriage of Clergy.
11. The Homilies.
12. The Bishop of Rome.
Conclusion.

First Jesuit Popish Plot Martyrs

2012-01-24T00:14:00.000-08:00

Blessed William Ireland, SJ (picture) and Blessed John Grove, a Jesuit lay brother, were executed on 24 January 1679, found guilty in Titus Oates' perjured plot:

William Ireland (1636-1679) worked for 10 years in Flanders, waiting to return to his native England. When he was finally able to do so, he served as procurator (responsible for finances) for only one year before he became the first victim of the infamous Titus Oates plot. Ireland studied at the English College at Saint-Omer, Flanders, and entered the Jesuit novitiate at age 19. After studying theology at Liège, he was ordained in 1667. For the next decade he taught at his alma mater and was confessor to the Poor Clares at Gravelines. Finally, he was able to return to England in June 1677 and settled in London where he used the alias "Ironmonger" while he cared for the financial affairs of the Jesuit mission.

Titus Oates was a renegade Anglican minister who hated the Society of Jesus. Along with another minister, Israel Tonge, he invented a story that the English Jesuits planned to assassinate King Charles II, overthrow the government and its established religion and reinstate Catholicism. This fabricated tale raised an angry furor and led to a renewed persecution of Catholics. Among the first to suffer was Father Ireland who was arrested along with Father John Fenwick and their lay assistant, Mr. John Grove. They were imprisoned in the Newgate and burdened with heavy chains that rubbed the flesh on their legs raw. After three months, Ireland and his companions came to trial on Dec. 17, 1678; along with them were Fr. Thomas Whitbread and Thomas Pickering, a Benedictine brother.

At the trial Titus Oates testified that he had been present at a meeting of Jesuits in April that year and listened to plans being made to murder the king. He claimed that Ireland, Fenwick and Grove were present at the meeting, while Whitbread and Pickering had been assigned to carry out the murder. According to Oates, Ireland had been seen loitering about the royal residence during August; an attempt would have already been made but Pickering's pistol failed three times to fire. A second witness agreed with most of the testimony. Ireland had witnesses to prove that he was in the Midlands and North Wales at the time he was alleged to have loitered about the royal palace. To contradict him, Oates bribed a maid to say she had seen him in London at that time. On the basis of the false testimony, Ireland, Grove and Pickering were found guilty of high treason and condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The execution was postponed for a month by royal order because Charles II never believed that the Jesuits were involved in a plot against him. Oates produced more unreliable witnesses and the king allowed the executions to take place out of fear for popular anger.

Ireland and Grove were taken to Tyburn on Jan. 24, 1679. The people of London pelted them with stones and insults as they were dragged to the gallows. They were hanged until dead, and then cut down so their bodies could be drawn and quartered.

They were beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

Charles Kingsley, RIP

2012-01-23T00:03:00.000-08:00

Charles Kingsley died on January 23, 1875. Clergyman, proponent of "muscular Christianity", novelist (Westward Ho! and Water Babies), and Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, he also provoked Father John Henry Newman, Oratorian to write his Apologia pro Vita Sua in response to Kingsley's attacks on Newman's honesty--and that of all Catholic priests.

Kingsley had reviewed Froude's History of England in Macmillans Magazine and commented: "truth, for its own sake had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy . . . [and] Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage."

Although Newman contacted Kingsley asking him to point out where and when he had ever said such a thing, Kingsley ignored that question and just offered an apology.

An exchange of letters ensued which resulted in Newman's pamphlet Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman: A Correspondence on the Question Whether Dr. Newman Teaches That Truth is No Virtue. Instead of letting the matter drop, Kingsley flailed out in his own pamphlet: "What, Then, Does Dr. Newman Mean?" A Reply to a Pamphlet Lately Published by Dr. Newman. In his pamphlet Kingsley foolishly broadened his charge: not only had Newman made a statement he denied having made and which Kingsley was unable to locate, Newman had also lived a dishonest life. Throughout that text, Kingsley presents one of his main themes (found for instance in his novel Westward, Ho!): that there is something un-English about Catholicism, that the latter is foreign, deceptive, and manipulative--and that somehow becoming Catholic (Romish, Romanist are Kingsley's perferred terms) Newman had betrayed his country, wasted his Oxford education, and ignored the virtues of his English heritage.

Of course the Apologia pro Vita Sua put the lie to that charge, vindicated Newman completely, and made Kingsley look rather ridiculous. Kingsley was not sophisticated enough to face Newman's argument and persona; I remember reading that their verbal duel was like a country bumpkin challenging a trained swordsman, the former armed with a stick, the latter with a fine rapier. By giving Newman the occasion to write about his religious opinions from his youth to his conversion to Catholicism to demonstrate his honesty, Kingsley also gave Newman the opportunity to convince Anglicans who had remained in the Oxford Movement that he had been sincere in his efforts in that cause and to persuade Catholics that he was truly a Catholic, not with one foot in Canterbury and the other in Rome.

St. Vincent Pallotti's London Connection

2012-01-22T00:18:00.000-08:00

Today would be the memorial of St. Vincent Pallotti if t'were not Sunday (I once applied for a position with the Pallotines here in Wichita; the order was setting up an office of their Society of the Catholic Apostolate--I had to write a long essay in which I waxed eloquent, to no avail, on the correspondences between Newman's Oratory and Pallotti's Society), the nineteenth century founder of the Pallotines. He died on January 22, 1850 and was canonized in 1963 by Blessed Pope John XXIII. His London connection?--St. Peter's Italian Church on Clerkenwell Road. According to the parish website:

In the early 19th century the Saffron Hill area of London was a poor neighbourhood of densely populated slum-ridden alleys. By 1850, nearly 2000 Italian immigrants had settled there, chiefly employed as itinerant workers - street musicians, organ-grinders, street vendors or as artisans producing plaster figures, picture-frames, looking-glasses, barometers and other scientific instruments. They worshipped at the Royal Sardinian Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields, because they had no church of their own.

In 1845 St. Vincent Pallotti, a RC priest and founder of the S.A.C. (Pallottine Fathers), thought of constructing a church in London for Italian immigrants.
The Irish architect, Sir John Miller-Bryson, modelled the church on the Basilica of San Crisogono in Rome.

Originally it was meant to hold 3,400 people, but the plans were scaled down. It was consecrated as "The Church of St. Peter of all Nations" on 16 April 1863 and, at that time, it was the only church in Britain in the Roman Basilica style.

and

St Vincent Pallotti, the priest asked by Cardinal Wiseman to establish St Peter's, was born in Rome in 1795. His parents Pietro Paolo and Magdalena were the decisive religious influence during his youth. He was ordained priest on the 16th of May 1818. After his ordination, he committed himself to keep alive the Christian faith of the people of Rome. His pastoral presence on all fronts urged him on to become an animator of collaboration among clergy, religious and laity. He held very strongly a belief in the then new concept that every Christian, not just those in the holy orders, has from Jesus a mission for the Church and for the world.

To put this concept into action he founded in 1835 the Union of Catholic Apostolate. This movement brought together priests, monks, nuns and lay people as a community for the common purpose of living and spreading awareness of the Good News to all of the world.

St. Vincent died on the 22nd of January 1850 at the centre of his new community, the church of San Salvatore in Onda, Rome. He was beatified by Pope Pius XII on 22 January 1950, and proclaimed a Saint by Pope John XXIII in January 1963.

Dangerous Time to Come Home

2012-01-22T00:12:00.000-08:00

Bl. William Patenson was martyred on January 22, 1592. Born at Durham, he departed his homeland and studied at Reims before receiving ordination there in 1587. The following year he sailed home and worked to promote the Catholic cause in the dangerous atmosphere of Elizabethan England, arriving in the year of the Spanish Armada and the intense government reaction against English Catholics, including multiple executions. Arrested in 1591, he was tried and condemned for being a priest and was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. During his imprisonment, he converted six other prisoners to the Catholic faith. Pope Pius XI beatified him in 1929.

Arthur Tooth Arrested January 22, 1877

2012-01-22T00:05:00.000-08:00

As John Shelton Reed's Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism recounts, the Anglo-Catholic ritualists who carried on the work of the Oxford Movement into local parishes and communities often faced tremendous conflict with the hierarchy of the Church of England. As the established church, it was able to use Parliament to pass laws forbidding certain ritualistic practices. The Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874, introduced in Parliament by the Archbishop of Canterbury Archibald Campbell Tait was supported by Queen Victoria and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, and descried by William Gladstone, future Prime Minister . Among the ritualistic practices condemned by the Act: incense, lighted candles, genuflecting, mixed chalice (water added to the wine), ad orientatem position at the altar (facing East), and wearing vestments.

One Anglican clergyman who fell afoul of this Act was the Reverend Arthur Tooth, Vicar of St. James, Hatcham in South London. He rejected Parliament's authority to pass such an act without the concurrence of the Convocation of Bishops, but soon found himself arrested and imprisoned for such criminal acts -- he also wore a biretta and the choir sung the Agnus Dei! He was arrested on January 22, 1877 after protesting against the law, ignoring Court summons, and enduring riots and other disturbances at Sunday services.

He was only in gaol until February 17 but his health was broken down. He went abroad to recover and returned to find his church locked against him--but he found a way in through a window. Reverend Tooth soon had to retire his living at St. James and went to live in Woodside, Croydon, a borough of London where he continued his work with an orphanage for boys and an order of Anglican religious, the Sisterhood of the Holy Paraclete. He died on March 5, 1931.

In 1906, a Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline formally recognized diversity in worship throughout the Church of England but the law was not repealed until 1965.

Cold January Mornings, January 21, 1586 and 1642

2012-01-21T00:15:00.000-08:00

The facts:
~Blessed Edward Stransham, priest and martyr--A native of Oxford, born about 1554, earning his BA from St. John's College in 1575-76. Then he went to Douai in 1577 and Reims in 1578. Because he was ill he returned to England to recuperate; then went back to Reims in 1579; ordained in 1580. In 1581 he returned to England as a missionary priest, but was still suffering from consumption; he left England in 1583, bringing 12 Oxford converts with him to Reims. After a stay in Paris, he returned to England and was arrested while saying Mass in London in 1585 and executed at Tyburn on January 21, 1586.
~Blessed Nicholas Wheeler (or Woodfen), priest and martyr--Born at Leominster in 1550, he studied for the priesthood in Reims, after ordination he returned to England with Edward Stransham, and was executed with him at Tyburn in 1586. (He is honored at this church in Herefordshire.)

~Saint Alban Roe, OSB, priest and martyr--Born in Suffolk in 1583, after his conversion to Catholicism, he became a Benedictine and was ordained; he was arrested several times during his ministry, and exiled and imprisoned for seventeen years. He was executed at Tyburn in 1642.
~Blessed Thomas Green (Reynolds), priest and martyr--Born under the name Green, he trained at Rheims, Valladolid and Seville; exiled from England once, he returned and spent fourteen years imprisoned until his execution at Tyburn in 1642 at the age of 80.

The significance:
In 1586, Blessed William Freeman witnessed the executions of Stransham and Wheeler. He became a Catholic, went to Reims, was ordained and returned to England as a missionary priest. He was hung, drawn, and quartered for that crime on 13 August 1595in Warwick, after spending some time in Stratford-on-Avon.

Notice, however, that the time Fathers Stransham and Wheeler spent in England was relatively short. Although Stransham traveled back and forth between England and the Continent because of his health (how poorly he must have fared in prison while waiting trial and execution!), he and Wheeler received no second chances once finally captured--during some periods of Elizabeth I's reign, that was the common practice: capture, torture (if some plot was suspected), trial, execution.

St. Alban Roe and Blessed Thomas Green, ministering during the Stuart dynasty, however, received different treatment. They were captured, imprisoned, and exiled, sent back to the Continent--then they returned. Their long final imprisonments were spent in relative "freedom". St. Alban Roe was allowed to leave his cell in the Fleet prison, minister to Catholics, and return at night for lock-up. In 1641 he was transferred to close confinement within the strict Newgate prison and was finally tried in 1642 and found guilty of treason under the statute 27 Eliz c.2 for being a priest. [The authorities really didn't know what to do with him and at trial Roe perplexed the judge so much that he suspended his sentence of execution!] Just before his death, Alban asked the sheriff if his life would be spared if he renounced his Catholic religion and became an Anglican. The sheriff swore he would be spared if he did. Alban then said to all: “See, then, what the crime is for which I am to die, and whether my religion be not my only treason... I wish I had a thousand lives; then would I sacrifice them all for so worthy a cause.” More about him here, on the website of Ampleforth Abbey.

His companion, Blessed Thomas Reynolds (Green) had also been exiled in 1606, during the reign of James I--after the Gunpowder Plot!--but had returned to England to serve Catholics until he was arrested in 1628. He spent fourteen years in prison before his trial and execution. Why the long prison sentences, the relative freedom, the delay in trial and execution? Because Charles I was reigning without Parliament! "When he finally had to recall Parliament and the Long Parliament convened, however, the hangings began again in earnest (20 between 1641 and 1646 including Fr. Alban [and Fr. Reynolds])" Ampleforth Abbey notes.

The situation: (a little Ignatian method here, as I shared yesterday on the Son Rise Morning Show): think of the cold these men endured those January mornings. After all dangers of their missionary efforts, the discomforts of imprisonment, and the anticipation of the horrendously painful and humiliating death they were about to undergo, they were shivering with cold. The hurdles they were tied to, on their backs, bumped and jostled on frozen ground. St. John Roberts, executed in December of 1610, managed to joke about the cold: when someone said he should be wearing a cap, he asked "are you afraid I'll catch a cold?"; when he arrived at the scaffold he saw the fire (which would actually be used to burn his guts) and said "I see you have prepared a hot breakfast for us!" It's clear that the demeanor and steadiness of these four men moved the crowds to empathy--and at least in one case we know of, conversion.

The stories of the English Catholic martyrs--like all the Church's martyrs from Apostolic times until today--never cease to inspire!

BTW, I will post a link to the podcast of my interview yesterday on this facebook page dedicated to The Catholic English Martyrs when it is available.

Priests Holes and Safe Houses

2012-01-21T00:13:00.000-08:00

The blog Laudem Gloriae posted this very well illustrated examination of the construction of "priests holes" in Catholic households where priests, their altar vessels and other sacramentals could be be hidden if pursuivants came hunting:

Under the reign of "Good Queen Bess", a law was passed prohibiting the celebration of Mass, on pain of extradition. On a second offense, the guilty priest would be sentenced to a year in prison, and on the third offense, jailed for life. In some cases, the offending priest would be put to death, usually by hanging, drawing, and quartering. Another law was passed that punished with death any Catholic who should convert a Protestant.

It was during this time that the Jesuit and martyr Nicholas Owen was called on to design and build priest holes in all the great Catholic manses in England. He spent the greater part of his life doing so.

St. Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit lay brother, died under torture when James I's government, further investigating the background of the Gunpowder Plot, sought information about the various hiding places he had constructed:

The Jesuits were taken to London, and Owen was put into Marshalsea Prison before being moved to the Tower to be tortured. The king's men realized they had the only person who knew the location of the hiding places and residences of priests all over the kingdom. They were eager to force him to uncover the Catholic underground, but he was even more firm that he would not betray those whom he had spent so much time protecting. He was tortured on the rack for hours a day, several days in succession but maintained his silence. In frustration the torturers kept adding weight to his feet but went beyond all limits. On March 1 his abdomen burst open and his intestines spilled out. Owen lingered on for one painful day before dying in the early hours of March 2. The rack-master tried to cover his behavior, excessive even under the harsh standards of the day, by saying that the Jesuit had committed suicide. Clever and hard-working in his life, Nicholas Owen remained courageous and faithful in his death.

Son Rise Morning Show Preview of January 21 Blog Post

2012-01-20T00:20:00.000-08:00

While you will have to wait for the unveiling of my post about four Recusant martyrs on January 21 in 1586 and 1642 until tomorrow, you can hear me on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central. Brian Patrick and I will discuss these four martyrs: Blessed Edward Stransham, Blessed Nicholas Wheeler, St. Alban Roe, OSB, and Blessed Thomas Reynolds. Please listen live here.

The King on Trial

2012-01-20T00:19:00.000-08:00

The trial of King Charles I began on January 20, 1649--a unique event. Not even King Louis XVI would be tried as monarch in the French Revolution; he was deposed and tried as Louis Capet: and he had defense counsel and knew the charges against him before the trial. Charles' grandmother had been deposed as Queen of Scotland when she was tried, and like him, Mary of Scotland protested against the grounds of the trial. She was not the subject of Elizabeth, Queen of England; she was an anointed and consecrated monarch (and that's why Elizabeth was concerned about the precedent set). How can one Queen commit treason against another Queen?

It's one thing to depose a king and murder him (as happened to Edward II, Richard II, and Henry VI), it's another thing to put him on trial when he is, according to the custom and the law, the source of law and justice in the land. With his high, divine right of kings view of his role in the British polity, Charles I would not recognize the Parliamentary Court and he would not plead or participate in the trial. Luckily for him, they did not sentence him to peinte et dure (pressing until he would plead one way or the other (remember St. Margaret Clitherow). But they did find his lack of plea an admission of guilt. He challenged the legality of the trial and the court on the first day of the proceedings:

I would know by what power I am called hither ... I would know by what authority, I mean lawful; there are many unlawful authorities in the world; thieves and robbers by the high-ways ... Remember, I am your King, your lawful King, and what sins you bring upon your heads, and the judgement of God upon this land. Think well upon it, I say, think well upon it, before you go further from one sin to a greater ... I have a trust committed to me by God, by old and lawful descent, I will not betray it, to answer a new unlawful authority; therefore resolve me that, and you shall hear more of me.

I do stand more for the liberty of my people, than any here that come to be my pretended judges ... I do not come here as submitting to the Court. I will stand as much for the privilege of the House of Commons, rightly understood, as any man here whatsoever: I see no House of Lords here, that may constitute a Parliament ... Let me see a legal authority warranted by the Word of God, the Scriptures, or warranted by the constitutions of the Kingdom, and I will answer.

As this attorney notes,

The trial of King Charles I was, by legal standards, a rather discreditable affair. The "Court" had no legal authority. It was the creature of the power of the army. The King had no advance notice of the charge. No one was appointed to help him with his defence. The court did not even pretend to be impartial. When the King scored a point in argument, the soldiers around the Hall showed where the real power lay. . . .

The King was denied the chance to appeal to a true Parliament, the only body that might have been relevant in his case. His deprivation of liberty, and ultimately of his life, was by the power of a purported Parliament and not by a procedure established by law. He was not informed at the time of his arrest of the charges against him. Indeed, until the trial began, he was not informed of the precise accusations. Nor was he brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise the judicial power. Instead, he was kept in close custody in successive isolated places of detention whilst his accusers decided what they would do with him. He had no access to a court to invoke the Great Writ to secure his liberty. Although he was treated with courtesy and dignity, he was not treated with humanity. He was kept away from his family, friends and advisers. He was surrounded by guards, informers and pimps engaged by the army for surveillance.

Charles I spoke as much as he could at trial to warn the people that the precedent set by this trial guaranteed further injustices--and the royalists left behind would discover that he was right.

Henry VIII's Last Victim: Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey

2012-01-19T00:15:00.000-08:00

The Earl's father, Thomas Howard, the Third Duke of Norfolk survived just because Henry VIII died before signing the final order for execution. The Earl was executed on January 19, 1547 because Henry VIII feared that he wanted to usurp the throne from Edward, the Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales. According to this site:

When Henry VIII's health was failing in 1546, Surrey made the mistake of announcing his opinion of the obviousness of his father becoming Protector to young Prince Edward. The Seymours finally had their day, when Surrey ill-advisedly displayed royal quarterings on his shield. Arrested along with his father on charges of treason, he was imprisoned in the Tower. Several additional claims were made against him, including that he was secretly a papist. Surrey was indicted of high treason in January 1547, despite the lack of any real evidence, condemned, and executed on January 19, 1547 on Tower Hill.

Although the Howard family had been so loyal to the first two Tudor kings, conflict between the Seymour family, especially the brothers of Jane Seymour, the Queen who finally fulfilled Henry VIII's hopes for a male heir, and the Howard family meant trouble for both Thomas and Henry Howard. The Seymours tried to spread rumours that the Howards were opposed to the Dissolution of the Monasteries (although they benefitted from it) and supported the Pilgrimage of Grace (although they fought against it). Henry Howard even spent some timed imprisoned at Windsor Castle after striking a courtier who repeated the slander. Therefore, he wrote a poem contrasting his time in prison to the time he spent there with Henry Fitzroy:

PRISONED IN WINDSOR, HE RECOUNTETH
HIS PLEASURE THERE PASSED.

SO cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor, where I in lust and joy,
With a Kinges son, my childish years did pass,
In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy.
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour.
The large green courts, where we were wont to hove,
With eyes cast up into the Maiden's tower,
And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love.
The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue.
The dances short, long tales of great delight;
With words and looks, that tigers could but rue;
Where each of us did plead the other's right.
The palme-play, where, despoiled for the game,
With dazed eyes oft we by gleams of love
Have miss'd the ball, and got sight of our dame,
To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above.
The gravel'd ground, with sleeves tied on the helm,
On foaming horse, with swords and friendly hearts;
With chere, as though one should another whelm,
Where we have fought, and chased oft with darts.
With silver drops the mead yet spread for ruth,
In active games of nimbleness and strength,
Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth,
Our tender limbs, that yet shot up in length.
The secret groves, which oft we made resound
Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise;
Recording oft what grace each one had found,
What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.
The wild forest, the clothed holts with green;
With reins availed, and swift y-breathed horse,
With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,
Where we did chase the fearful hart of force.
The void vales eke, that harbour'd us each night:
Wherewith, alas ! reviveth in my breast
The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight;
The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest;
The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust;
The wanton talk, the divers change of play;
The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,
Wherewith we past the winter night away.
And with this thought the blood forsakes the face;
The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue:
The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas!
Up-supped have, thus I my plaint renew:
'O place of bliss! renewer of my woes!
Give me account, where is my noble fere?
Whom in thy walls thou d[id]st each night enclose;
To other lief; but unto me most dear.'
Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rue,
Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint.
Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine, with bondage and restraint:
And with remembrance of the greater grief,
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.

Along with Sir Thomas Wyatt, Howard was the great developer of the sonnet form in English, and he even wrote a sonnet on the death of his fellow poet:

OF THE DEATH OF SIR THOMAS WYATT.

DIVERS thy death do diversely bemoan :
Some, that in presence of thy livelihed
Lurked, whose breasts envy with hate had swoln,
Yield Cæsar's tears upon Pompeius' head.
Some, that watched with the murd'rer's knife,
With eager thirst to drink thy guiltless blood,
Whose practice brake by happy end of life,
With envious tears to hear thy fame so good.
But I, that knew what harbour'd in that head ;
What virtues rare were tempered in that breast ;
Honour the place that such a jewel bred,
And kiss the ground whereas the corpse doth rest ;
With vapour'd eyes : from whence such streams availe,
As Pyramus did on Thisbe's breast bewail.

Robert Hutchinson traces the career of the Howard family in House of Treason: The Rise and Fall of a Tudor Dynastyand describes the situation at Court in The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant.