Making Edmund Campion: Treason, Martyrdom, and the Structure of Transcendence Author(S): Alice Dailey Source: Religion & Literature, Vol
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The University of Notre Dame Making Edmund Campion: Treason, Martyrdom, and the Structure of Transcendence Author(s): Alice Dailey Source: Religion & Literature, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Autumn, 2006), pp. 65-83 Published by: The University of Notre Dame Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060026 . Accessed: 28/07/2013 14:02 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Notre Dame is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Religion &Literature. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 14:02:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MAKING EDMUND CAMPION: TREASON, MARTYRDOM, AND THE STRUCTURE OF TRANSCENDENCE Alice Dailey [BJeingset up in the carte, he blessedhim self with the signe of the Crosse, being so weake as he fel downe in the carte, & after he was up, he said: I am a Catholike,and do dye in the catholikereligion, and therewithhe was interruptedby SherifeMartine, saying, you come not hitherto confesseyour religion, but as a traitor and malefactorto the Queenes Majestie and the whole Realme, moving and sturingof sedition. -William Allen, XII ReverendPriests^ It has become a critical commonplace to talk about the inherent con- structednessof - well, of nearly everything:gender, race, culture,power, self, other, past, present. The field of early modern religiousstudies is no exception.Scholars have looked at the constructionof EnglishProtestantism and nationhood in Foxe'sActs and Monuments (Haller, Collinson, Mueller); the pejorative construction of Catholicism through Protestantpolemic; and the recusant Catholic community'sconstructions of itself through writing,artifacts, and even physical space (Corthell;Dillon; Kilroy;Lake and Questier;Marotti, Catholicism]Shell; Yates).As these lines of inquiry suggest,our interestin religiousconstructedness has tended to be focused on the formationof religiouscommunities. We seem reluctantto consider the deliberatefashioning of holiness,as thoughwe might infectthe studyof earlymodern religiousbelief with an anachronisticelement of postmodern cynicism.To suggest,for example, that a mystic or martyris engaged in a consciousact of self-fashioningis to riskappearing disrespectful - or worse, ignorant- of the earnestnessof earlymodern piety.To avoid this difficulty, R&L 38.3 (Autumn2006) 65 This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 14:02:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 66 Religion & Literature we habituallyread devotional,martyrological, and hagiographicliterature as the unmediateddocumentation of what people of the period thought and believed. The literaryconstructedness of these artifactsis bracketed, quarantinedas a threat to the authenticityof faith. Brad Gregory'sSalva- tionat Stakeis an exemplarystudy in this mode, reading martyrologyas a transparentrecord of early modern Christianbelief. Gregory'sstated goal is to "plumb the living souls" of early modern martyrs,thereby produc- ing a reading that is "intelligibleon the martyrs'own terms"(1, II).2 The imperativesof genericconvention, which I will argueare absolutelycentral to both the event and text of martyrdom,exert no calculableinfluence on the martyrologicalworld Gregorypresents nor on the conclusionsdrawn from that world. - This essay takes seriouslythe notion of religiousconstructedness the constructednessof not just sacred communities but sacred experience. In particular,I want to examine the active and conscious constructionof martyrdom,first by victims themselvesand then by those chargedwith the taskof generatingmartyrology. We knowlittle about earlymodern religious experiencebeyond the texts that documentit. How then can we have direct access to that experience "on the martyrs'own terms"without attention - to the literaryterms - the conventionsand structures which shape that documentation?And what of those kindsof religiousexperience, like mar- tyrdom,which are as much about a faith event as the storythat's circulated - of that event?How does the victim'santicipation of being narrativized of - being recuperatedby devotionaltext and memory impact the experience of martyrdom?Indeed, does martyrdomever entirelyprecede martyrol- ogy? My point of entryis the 158 1 convictionand executionof FatherEdmund Campion, the firstJesuit executed in England for treason under Elizabe- than anti-Catholicpolicy. Campion's trial demonstratesthe ways in which the statutesagainst English Catholicstrapped recusants in an inescapable circularargument that reproducedits own signs of treasonwhile simulta- neously alienatingthe Catholic subjectfrom the discursivemechanisms of martyrdom.The rhetoricalsubstitution of treasonfor martyrdomis made possibleby their structuralsimilarities: the figure of religiousexceptional- ism is structurallyanalogous to the figure of consummatepolitical crime, and thus the constructionof both martyrdomand treason depends on what is fundamentallythe same discursiveoperation. I wish to suggestthat by reading the texts surroundingthe Campion case with attention to his effortsto inscribehimself into the martyrologicaltradition, we can see the structuralfissures that the charge of treason produces for martyrological discourse.Ultimately, I argue, it is a formal rather than a confessionalor This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 14:02:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ALICE DAILEY 67 politicaldivide that rendersthe chargeof treasonsuch an effectivemeasure for containingthe Catholic mission to England. The construction of a martyr depends on transposingthe historical events of an individual'slife and death into the suprahistoricalnarrative thatconnects Christ, the martyrsof the earlychurch, and the contemporary victim throughtypological reiteration. Martyrology's stories of witnessing, torment, and constancy in death convert its subjectsfrom mere instances of sufferingand religiousdissidence into transcendentfigures of Christian exemplarity.The constructionof martyrdomis made possibleonly through strictnarrative repetition. Augustine wrote that it is the cause,not the death, that makes a martyr(non poena sed causa); but this is in fact only part of the equation.The reproductionof martyrdomdepends on the legiblenarrative rehearsalof martyrmodels. In his study of medieval hagiography,James Earldescribes the genre as "literaryiconography" in which "theindividual, by conformingthe patternsof his moral behaviorto the largerpatterns of history,enters into a typologicalrelationship with that history"(21, 18).The legibilityof the martyricon Earl identifiesis key:if an individual'sactions are inconsistentwith establishedmartyr formulas or cannot easily be read as reiterationsof apostolicor Christologicalsuffering, the individualwill not transcendthe death event. In other words,if a victim does not fit the mold, he or she can neitherbe interpretednor reproducedas a martyr.Moreover, the mold is inflexible:the victims must be persecutedfor their faith; they must openly confess their faith and readilydefend it againstthe adversary, who representsheretical belief; they must die in defense of the faith and cannot appearto will theirown deaths;in theirmanner of death, they must exhibitconstancy and piety;and ideally,death is attendedby miraculousor providentialevidence of God's favor. The Elizabethangovernment's strategic relocation of Catholicdissidence into a discourseof secularcrime truncatesthe victim'saccess to this para- digm. In place of martyrdom'stypological recapitulation, the seculartrial producesa storyof treason,duplicity, and attemptedregicide. This is made possibleby the Reformation'sconsolidation of religiousand temporalpower under the Crown, which posed a problem- at least philosophically- for the Catholic recusant, whose allegiances became divided between mon- arch and pope. This problemwas exacerbatedin 1570 when Pope Pius V issuedthe bull excommunicatingElizabeth, deposing her from power,and absolvingher subjectsfrom obedience to her.Through this action, the pope essentiallypositioned the entirebody of EnglishCatholics as enemies to the Crown, threateningthat any who continuedin obedience to her would be "innodate[d]in the like sentence of Anathema."3Spurred by the very real fears of domestic rebellion, foreign invasion, and assassinationthat grew This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 14:02:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 68 Religion& Literature out of the bull, the Queen and her ministersdeveloped severalstrategies designed to rid the realm of those Catholicswho held with the pope over their sovereignand to protect the state from the internalthreat they might pose. By 1585, Parliamenthad passeda seriesof laws naming any Catholic priest in England a traitor.The immediate targets of these policies were Jesuitand seminarypriests, who, it was believed,were being sent to England from the Continent to stir up rebellion and prepare English Catholics to takeup arms againsttheir Queen in supportof a papal-sponsoredinvasion. A 1571 Act of Parliamentreminded