Simpson, Richard. Edmund Campion. Rev. and Enlarged Father Peter Joseph

Book Reviews / Religion and the Arts 15 (2011) 567–583 577 Simpson, Richard. Edmund Campion. Rev. and enlarged Father Peter Joseph. Leominster, England and Melbourne: Gracewing Publishing and Freedom Publishing, 2010. Pp. 687. £25.00 and AUS $40.00 cloth. ichard Simpson was one of the Oxford converts who entered the RCatholic Church from Anglicanism in the wake of John Henry New- man’s conversion. A married clergyman, he became a Catholic in 1846 and, debarred from the Catholic priesthood by his matrimonial state, he dedicated the remainder of his life to a literary and scholarly apostolate. He was an intellectual and editor of note, and was the first significant writer of modern times to suggest (in 1854) that Shakespeare was a Catholic, a view then considered outrageous but one now accepted by increasingly many scholars. It was through discovering Simpson’s Shakespearean writings sev- eral decades ago that I became an admirer of his scholarly thoroughness, sound judgment, and stylistic grace. I was therefore delighted to learn that a newly revised edition of Simp- son’s classic 1867 life of Saint Edmund Campion (revised edition 1896, third edition 1907) had been published. The work has been updated in the light of subsequent scholarship, trimmed and compressed where appropri- ate, toned down occasionally, rephrased here and there to displace dated language, restructured in part, divided into far more paragraphs, furnished with chapter titles and sub-headings, enhanced with additional material from the original sources as well as from sources unknown to Simpson, and enlarged overall. The editor responsible for all this is Father Peter Joseph, a diversely gifted priest from a remarkable Wagga Wagga, Australia family who is cur- rently “on loan” from his home diocese to the Sydney archdiocese. The most telling evidence of his skill is the fact that, although his editing is thorough, exacting, and extensive, it is invisible. Unless one compares the new text with Simpson’s final (1896) one—which can easily be done, since the old one can be accessed on the Internet via Internet Archive—one will have no idea where the 1896 text has been altered, abbreviated, or supple- mented. The new text reads like pure Simpson, while in reality it is Jose- phized Simpson Born in 1540, Edmund Campion was an outstanding scholar and ora- tor and a most appealing personality, even in his schooldays. At Oxford he so distinguished himself as to be chosen to welcome the Queen on the University’s behalf and debate before her when she visited in 1566. So impressed was she that she directed her favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156852911X580865 578 Book Reviews / Religion and the Arts 15 (2011) 567–583 Leicester, to give Campion his patronage. The young scholar was also highly praised by the Queen’s Secretary, Sir William Cecil (from 1571, Baron Burghley). Yet even though during Campion’s formative years his family evidently accommodated itself to the idiosyncratic and unstable Protestantism that was imposed on England from a few years before his birth; and even though in 1569 he accepted ordination to the Anglican diaconate—which necessitated taking the Oath of Supremacy—he was by that date all but convinced that the Catholic Church was the One True Church. In mid-1571, after a stint in Ireland where he wrote a history of that country, he escaped impending arrest as a suspected Catholic and fled, via England, to the English College affiliated with the University of Douai (a town then in the Low Countries but now in France) where he was for- mally reconciled to the Church. At the College Campion both studied and taught until graduating in early 1573, whereupon he traveled to Rome and joined the Jesuits. After doing his novitiate at Prague and Brno (in the modern Czech Republic), he lectured in Prague, and was ordained there in 1578. He was recalled to Rome, and in April 1580 he left with thirteen others to begin the English mission. Two of the party were fellow-Jesuits—the renowned Father Rob- ert Parsons and Brother Ralph Emerson—and the remainder were English and Welsh secular priests except for two lay students. Before the party reached the French coast the oldest two had dropped out, but three others had joined, among them a fourth Jesuit, the future martyr Thomas Cot- tam, the brother of Shakespeare’s last schoolmaster, the Catholic John Cot- tam. The fifteen sailed to England from various ports, with Campion landing at Dover on June 25. For just over a year he traveled around the counties saying masses, hear- ing confessions, and giving talks, harbored secretly by the Catholic gentry. His presence in the country became widely known within months of his arrival because a pamphlet he wrote for later release, explaining and defend- ing his mission, began circulating prematurely in hand-written copies from September 1580. This was the famous “Campion’s Brag,” as it came to be known. Then, in June 1581, Campion published, by means of a secret Catholic press, a detailed Latin challenge to the Anglican Church, Decem Rationes (“Ten Reasons”), intended specifically for the attention of the two universities. During the night of June 26, by his and Father Parson’s con- trivance, a large number of copies were distributed in the pews of Saint Mary’s Church, Oxford, in preparation for the University Commence- ment Service the next morning. The effect was sensational, with the book .

Load more