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06 - Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen Guiney · Blessed Edmund Campion

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  Speaker 1: Chapter six of Blessed Edmund Campion. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Paula Messina. Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Emigen Guini,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter six, The Wished for Dawn, Bohemia, fifteen seventy three
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  Speaker 1: to fifteen seventy nine. Campion stayed but two months at Prague,
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  Speaker 1: as the small novitiate was removed to Bruin in Moravia,
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  Speaker 1: where the inhabitants were most hostile to Catholicism. The Bishop
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  Speaker 1: of Olmos begged the Jesuits to help him, so far
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  Speaker 1: as their rule permitted. Novices were sent out among the
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  Speaker 1: neighboring villages to catechise and instruct the poorer Catholics, and
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  Speaker 1: no one had so instant a success in this little
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  Speaker 1: enterprise as God's Englishman. At the year's end, his novice master,
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  Speaker 1: John Paul Campanus, became rector of the college in Prague
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  Speaker 1: and took Edmund Campion back with him. The latter leapt
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  Speaker 1: a good deal of his heart within the gray and
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  Speaker 1: austere walls of bruin, as two of his charming letters show.
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  Speaker 1: In the old garden, under a mulberry tree, he had
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  Speaker 1: had a wonderful vision Our Lady stood there, smiling at
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  Speaker 1: him and offering him a purple robe. He knew the
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  Speaker 1: portent of martyrdom, but for long hid it in his heart.
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  Speaker 1: At Prague, Campion continued and increased his duet employments. He
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  Speaker 1: opened the October term with what was called a glorious peroration.
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  Speaker 1: As professor of rhetoric, he wrote in fifteen seventy four
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  Speaker 1: a beautiful little treatise on that subject, so fam familiar
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  Speaker 1: to him. His duty was to be first in the
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  Speaker 1: house to rise, and lost to go to bed. He
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  Speaker 1: spent his recreation time catechising children, receiving converts, visiting the
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  Speaker 1: prison in the hospital, or helping the cook in the kitchen.
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  Speaker 1: In January fifteen seventy five he set up at his
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  Speaker 1: college a branch confraternity of the Immaculate Conception or Sodality
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  Speaker 1: of Our Lady, of which he became president about the
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  Speaker 1: same time he made his first vows. He was continually
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  Speaker 1: called upon for the great college occasions and to pronounce
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  Speaker 1: public panegyrics whatever had to be done, says his pompous
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  Speaker 1: but sympathetic biographer Bombino, was laid upon him on getting
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  Speaker 1: a fresh task, he would ask his superior in a
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  Speaker 1: spirit of perfect humility and confidence, if he was thought
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  Speaker 1: strong enough to add that to the rest, and if
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  Speaker 1: the answer were yees, he shouldered the new duty at once,
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  Speaker 1: much to the wonder of others. I am in a
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  Speaker 1: continual bloom of health, he writes gallantly to his dearest Parsons,
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  Speaker 1: who had just entered the society. I have no time
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  Speaker 1: whatever to be ill. In two sacred plays, six hours
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  Speaker 1: did it take to perform Each of them came from
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  Speaker 1: Campion's truly dramatic pen in fifteen seventy seven. One was
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  Speaker 1: on the sacrifice of Abraham, one on the melancholy career
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  Speaker 1: of King Saul. It is a matter of much regret
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  Speaker 1: that these are lost. He seems also to have composed
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  Speaker 1: dialogues and scenes for his own scholars, and to have
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  Speaker 1: put together, at the same time his spirited account of
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  Speaker 1: the origin of the English Schism in a narrative in
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  Speaker 1: Latin of the divorce of King Henry the Eighth from
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  Speaker 1: his wife and from the church. It was printed by
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  Speaker 1: Harpsfield Long after Campion's death. Meanwhile, Rudolph the Second had
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  Speaker 1: succeeded to the imperial throne, and the magnificently provided envoy
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  Speaker 1: who was sent to Prague bearing the congratulations of Queen
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  Speaker 1: Elizabeth was none other than Sir Philip Sidney. Sydney's mind
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  Speaker 1: was set upon seeing his old friend Campion and talking
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  Speaker 1: with him, but he managed only with difficulty to carry
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  Speaker 1: out his wishes. He went officially in the Emperor's train
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  Speaker 1: to hear his friend, not yet in priest's orders, preach,
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  Speaker 1: and on his return to England unguardedly spoke with delight
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  Speaker 1: of the sermon. Whenever Sydney visited the continent, he was
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  Speaker 1: supposed to become tainted with a hankering after Catholicism, though
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  Speaker 1: when all his public actions he was conspicuously Protestant. Campion,
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  Speaker 1: who knew him from boyhood and was not given to misjudgment,
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  Speaker 1: believed that he had almost won over the star of
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  Speaker 1: English chivalry, this young man, so wonderfully beloved and admired,
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  Speaker 1: He calls him in fifteen seventy six, a testimony doubly
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  Speaker 1: interesting when we remember that Philip Sidney was then but
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  Speaker 1: three and twenty to the effect which his short life
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  Speaker 1: made upon all his contemporaries. He had much conversation with me.
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  Speaker 1: Campion's letter goes on, and I hope not in vain,
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  Speaker 1: for to all appearances he was most keen about it.
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  Speaker 1: I commend him to your remembrances at Mass, since he
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  Speaker 1: asked the prayers of all good men, and at the
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  Speaker 1: same time put into my hands alms to be distributed
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  Speaker 1: to the poor. For him this trust I have discharged.
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  Speaker 1: He ends by hoping that some of the missionaries, then
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  Speaker 1: going back to England from Deuet, will have opportunity of
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  Speaker 1: war uttering this plant, poor wavering soul. Father Parsons, in
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  Speaker 1: his Life of Campion, tells us that Sidney professed himself convinced,
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  Speaker 1: but said that it was necessary for him to hold
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  Speaker 1: on the course which he had hitherto followed. Such was
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  Speaker 1: the sad answer of Felix to Saint Paul. Campion's thoughts
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  Speaker 1: had turned often of late to another friend, Gregory Martin,
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  Speaker 1: who had left overcrowded away for the seminary newly founded
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  Speaker 1: in the heart of Rome in the ancient English hospice
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  Speaker 1: for pilgrims. Campion longed to turn his fellow priest into
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  Speaker 1: a jesuit, for he loved his own society in the extreme.
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  Speaker 1: But that was not to be a letter to Martin
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  Speaker 1: glowing with that interior fire which was shut out from
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  Speaker 1: Edmund Campion, upon everything he touched ends most tenderly sins.
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  Speaker 1: For so many years we too had in common our college,
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  Speaker 1: our meals, our studies, our friends, and our enemies. Let us,
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  Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives make a more close
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  Speaker 1: and binding union, that we may have the fruit of
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  Speaker 1: our friendship in heaven. For there also I will, if
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  Speaker 1: I can sit at your feet. After years filled with
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  Speaker 1: literary and academic labor in two colleges, and blessed with
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  Speaker 1: marked growth and holiness, Edmund Campion was ordained priest by
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  Speaker 1: the Archbishop of Prague. His first Mass was set on
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  Speaker 1: the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady September eighth,
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  Speaker 1: fifteen seventy eight. Following his general's express command. He dismissed
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  Speaker 1: the old unhappy scruple about his Oxford deaconate, and it
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  Speaker 1: troubled him no more. He was made professor of philosophy.
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  Speaker 1: You are to know, he pleasantly says, that I am
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  Speaker 1: foolishly held to be an accomplished sophist. During the course
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  Speaker 1: of this year fifteen seventy eight, he wrote his last
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  Speaker 1: and most famous drama, now Lost on Saint Ambrose, in
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  Speaker 1: the Emperor Theodosius, which when acted made a tremendous stir.
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  Speaker 1: He became ever more and more noted as a preacher,
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  Speaker 1: a sower of eternity in the popular heart, as well
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  Speaker 1: as the favored orator when grandees died and were buried
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  Speaker 1: in state. But all this time his mind and heart
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  Speaker 1: were far away. No one ever practiced religious obedience in
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  Speaker 1: a more heroic spirit. Yet he secretly longed to throw
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  Speaker 1: his life and his labors directly into the balance for
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  Speaker 1: England's sake. He knew what was going on there, and
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  Speaker 1: his thoughts seemed never once to have turned towards the
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  Speaker 1: pikes or any political remedy. His whole ambition was, as
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  Speaker 1: he said in one letter, to torture our envyus foe
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  Speaker 1: with good deeds, and in another, to catch them by
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  Speaker 1: the prayers and tears at which they love. His long
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  Speaker 1: dear Cuthbert Mayne, of whom he had lost sight for
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  Speaker 1: a while, had given up his life for the faith
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  Speaker 1: at Launston November twenty ninth, fifteen seventy seven. He had
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  Speaker 1: been captured near Probus. His wealthy host, France's Trejan, was
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  Speaker 1: attained of Premuniri, and his children completely beggared. This young
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  Speaker 1: West countryman had a character all his own. He had
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  Speaker 1: been charged with nothing but the exercise of his priestly functions,
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  Speaker 1: and was offered his life on the day of his
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  Speaker 1: execution if he would but swear that the Queen was
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  Speaker 1: supreme head of the Church of England. Upon this continues
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  Speaker 1: the chronicle. He took the Bible into his hands, made
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  Speaker 1: the sign of the Cross upon it, kissed it, and
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  Speaker 1: said the Queen neither ever was, nor is, nor ever
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  Speaker 1: shall be the head of the Church of England. Campion
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  Speaker 1: had only recently heard the news in the August of
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  Speaker 1: fifteen seventy nine. One can read between the lines of
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  Speaker 1: a passage like this, we all thank you much for
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  Speaker 1: your account of Cuthbert's martyrdom. It gave many of us
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  Speaker 1: a divine pleasure. Wretch that I am, how far has
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  Speaker 1: that novice distanced me? May he be favorable to his
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  Speaker 1: old friend and tutor. Now shall I boast of these
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  Speaker 1: titles more than ever before. Within the next six months
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  Speaker 1: Edmund Campion was to see the beginning of his heart's desire.
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  Speaker 1: Doctor Allen, the founder of Duet, was in Rome to
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  Speaker 1: organize the English College, and there he brought all his
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  Speaker 1: persuasion to bear upon the General of the Society of
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  Speaker 1: Jesus and his consulters that the English Jesuits might be
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  Speaker 1: allowed to join the English secular priests and the pressing
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  Speaker 1: redemption of their distracted country. There were the gravest reasons
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  Speaker 1: for and against the proposal, but the answer given to
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  Speaker 1: doctor Allen was that the Society would do its best
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  Speaker 1: to supply missioners thenceforward, and that Robert Parsons and Edmund
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  Speaker 1: Campion should be sent first as forerunners of the rest
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  Speaker 1: Allan was naturally overjoyed. While Macure, the Father General, wrote
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  Speaker 1: officially to Campion Superior at Prague, Allan wrote a moving
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  Speaker 1: letter to Campion himself, my father, brother son. He calls him,
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  Speaker 1: make all haste and come, my dearest Campion, from Prague
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  Speaker 1: to Rome and thence to our own England. God in
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  Speaker 1: whose hands are the issues, has at last granted that
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  Speaker 1: our own Campion, with his extraordinary gifts of wisdom and grace,
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  Speaker 1: shall be restored to us prepare yourself then for a journey,
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  Speaker 1: for a work, for a trial. The imaginations of Campion's
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  Speaker 1: comrades at Prague were touched to the quick by the
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  Speaker 1: prospect opening before their happy brother. One of these bore
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  Speaker 1: witness to the fragrance of his own thoughts by painting
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  Speaker 1: a garland of roses and lilies on the wall of
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  Speaker 1: Campion's little room. Just at the bed's head. A white
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  Speaker 1: haired Silesian father, James gall wrote in scroll fashion, by
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  Speaker 1: night over the outer door of that same little room,
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  Speaker 1: parter Edmundus Campianus Martyr. For such a romantic irregularity. The
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  Speaker 1: old saint was reprimanded, he replied, quite simply, but I
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  Speaker 1: had to do it. Poor Campion, who was shy, had
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  Speaker 1: seen both these things before. Campanus, the sympathetic rector, gave
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  Speaker 1: him his marching orders to start at once for Rome.
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  Speaker 1: The fathers do verily seem to suspect something about me.
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  Speaker 1: I hope their suspicions may come true. He said, God's
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  Speaker 1: will be done, not mine, and then adds that first
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  Speaker 1: English biographer, who so well knew him and so much
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  Speaker 1: loved him, being scarce able to hold tears for joy
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  Speaker 1: and tenderness, of heart. He went to his chamber, and
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  Speaker 1: thereupon his knees to God, satisfied his appetitive weeping and thanksgiving,
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  Speaker 1: and offered himself to his divine disposition without any exception
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  Speaker 1: or restraint, whether it were to rack, cross quartering, or
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  Speaker 1: any other torment, or death whatsoever. End of Chapter six