Introduction
Young
Edmund Campion’s future seemed promising; he was one of Oxford’s most brilliant
students, lauded by the Queen, well-known for his eloquent speeches. He had much potential in the eyes of this
world but died in seeming disgrace upon the gallows. Campion willingly renounced worldly honors to
gain unending glory. Evelyn Waugh’s Edmund Campion: Jesuit and Martyr tells
the story of the scholar, priest, and martyr who sacrificed everything for the
glory of God and His Church.
Campion,
the Scholar
At Oxford, Campion was a brilliant student, able to
capture listeners with his moving orations.
He was only twenty-six years of age, yet “already a person of
outstanding importance in the University.”[1] On Queen Elizabeth I’s visit to Oxford, Campion
instantly won her favor and friendship, and was promised the patronage of Cecil
and Leicester, the Queen’s closest advisors.
Campion was on the path to becoming the most celebrated orator in England. However, when he came to study
the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the Catholic Faith he had abandoned began to stir again in his heart. He
could not reconcile the contradictions between the Fathers and the Anglican Church. The lives of a good Catholic and a prominent scholar
in England were not compatible. He would
have to choose. Certain that he could no
longer serve the Church of England, yet still uncertain of his future, Campion
left England for Douai.
Campion,
the Priest
On June 24, 1580,
Campion returned to England, a far different man. Now a Jesuit priest, Campion came to his homeland
to fight and die. He had told his
superior, “[a]s for me, all is over…I have made a free oblation of myself to His
Divine Majesty, both for life and death, and I hope that He will give me grace
and force to perform; and this is all I desire.”[2] Campion’s mission was simple. The General of the Society of Jesus had said
that the Jesuits’ goal in England was to “preserve…and to advance in the faith
and in our Catholic religion, all who are found to be Catholics in England…and
to bring back to it whoever may have strayed from it….”[3] Campion was a herald of joy, courage, and hope,
revitalizing the faith of the suffering Catholics of England. The Jesuits “came with gaiety among a people
where hope was dead.…[T]hey brought with them, besides their priestly dignity
and the ancient and indestructible creed, an entirely new spirit of which
Campion is the type.”[4]
With
his very presence in England a crime of high treason, Campion courted death
daily, yet never altering his cheerful and fearless attitude. Campion’s mission continued for the following
year, offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, hearing confessions, preaching, writing
denouncements of Protestantism, baptizing, bringing comfort, and lifting the
hearts of fearful and discouraged Catholics.
Enemies of the Faith were always on Campion’s trail and on July 11,
1581, they caught him in the house of the Yates family, betrayed by a traitor, George
Eliot.[5]
Campion,
the Martyr
Campion was taken to London on horseback, his hands,
elbows, and feet bound, with the sign “Campion the Seditious Jesuit” above his
head. Even in this state of humiliation,
Campion remained joyful and pleasant with his captors. [6] No fault could be found in Campion, save that
he was a Catholic, to which he responded, “[w]hich is my greatest glory.”[7] Campion was brought before the Queen and the
Duke of Leicester who still held high opinions of him. They offered Campion his freedom and a place
in court if he would abandon his Faith. Upon
refusing, Campion was handed over to the torturers and for four months he
disappeared from the eyes of the world, tortured ruthlessly on the rack. The rack-masters could not get any of the
information they desired, saying, “one might sooner pluck his heart out of his
bosom, than rack a word out of his mouth….”[8]
His trial was far from fair and Campion knew there was no
chance of saving his life. Yet, he kept
up the defense, not to save himself, but because he knew that all England was watching,
and he had to make a good case for the Church.
When he and his companions were condemned to death on the gallows,
Campion bravely spoke out: “It was not our death that ever we feared….[I]f our religion
do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned; but otherwise are, and have
been, as good subjects as ever the Queen had.”[9]
He was hanged at Tyburn, cut down before dead, and his
entrails cut out and burned. It was a
horrific martyrdom. Yet he was “heroic
in his dying moments”[10] and because of his
courage, thousands returned to the Faith that day.[11] In death, Campion’s mission was victorious.
Conclusion
Evelyn Waugh’s biography of St. Edmund Campion is a
thrilling and inspiring story, in which we see a man who gave up everything on
this earth and won far more in the next life.
Like Christ on the cross, Campion’s body hung from the scaffold, a stark
sign of contradiction to the world and the errors of Protestantism. Campion’s words, written in his Brag, are a clarion call to battle for
Catholics of all ages:
[B]e it known to you that we have
made a league…cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to
despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be
racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is
begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the Faith was planted: so it must be
restored.[12]
[1] Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion: Jesuit and Martyr, (Garden City, NY: Image Books,
1946), 19.
[2] Waugh, Edmund Campion, 93.
[3] Everard Mercurian, in Joseph A.
Munitiz, “Minds of the Martyrs,” The Way
48, no 4 (4 Oct 2009): 67-78.
[6] Waugh, Edmund Campion, 151.
[10] Sarah Covington, “Consolation on
Golgotha: Comforters and Sustainers of Dying Priests in England, 1580-1625,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60,
no 2 (April 2009): 270-293.
[12] Edmund Campion, Campion’s Brag, quoted in Waugh, Edmund Campion, 196.
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