December 1 Edmund Campion, S.J. b. 1540 d. 1581 beat. 1886 c. 1970

John and Thommy
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St. Edmund Campion, S.J.
December 1 b. 1540 d. 1581 beat. 1886 c. 1970

I was in the novitiate from 1967 – 1969. The cause for Campion’s sainthood was coming down the home stretch, there was even speculation about which American Jesuits would be attending the canonization. I also knew his name because the stories about his being the author of Shakespearean works was slipped into our sophomore English class – Fr Bernard Murphy, S.J., did have a glint in his eye and a leprechaun grin when he said it.

Edmund Campion, born (1540) and raised Catholic, was the son of a London bookseller. Catholic in 16thc London – a faithful and brave family. As the son of a bookseller, Edmund Campion had the opportunity for a breath of learning very few boys receive. It’s reasonable to assume that he took advantage of that opportunity – unlike too many of us who reject the gifts given to us, scorn them.

When Mary Tudor entered London, Edmund Campion gave the Latin salutatory.

At fifteen, Edmund Campion received a scholarship to St. John’s College, Oxford; at 17 he became a fellow - - by far, smarter than the average bear! A Youth who took the talents given to him by his Master and leveraged them with dint of effort and drive and the resources he was given into the ten thousand talents we are expected to return.

Being born and raised a Catholic does make it ‘easier’ and more likely that one will live a Catholic life. However, circumstances and situations, our personal zeitgeist, deliver challenges to our faith. And some of us reject our faith and embrace the beliefs and ways of those around us – with whom we live, with whom we study, with whom we aspire to spend our time. A tragic consequence of the temptations presented to us and how our will uses the grace, talents, resources we have to succeed.

Edmund Campion’s brilliance, on display at the secular Oxford, attracted the attention of the political and royal mucky mucks of the time, including the Queen. Edmund Campion took the Oath of Supremacy – the sine qua non of entry into the opportunities of law, court, even the official religion of the time. In 1564, at twenty four years old, Edmund Campion became an Anglican deacon. With all his brilliance, he was betting on the dominant family, royalty, religion in his life at the time – dominant in the sense of most of the people and most of the secular and religious power.


In 1569, Edmund Campion went to Ireland for further study. His doubts about Protestantism grew. He studied and prayed and consulted to discern…. Continuous learning, daily probing of your faith, from examination of conscience to the study of scripture and tradition….

Edmund Campion returned from Ireland renewed in his Catholic faith.

In 1570, when Pope Pius V excommunication Elizabeth, she began a persecution of Catholics.

[Pius V’s bull of excommunication was only six paragraphs long and did not pull any punches: “the number of the ungodly has so much grown in power that there is no place left in the world which they have not tried to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines; and among others, Elizabeth, the pretended queen of England and the servant of crime, has assisted in this, with whom as in a sanctuary the most pernicious of all have found refuge. This very woman, having seized the crown and monstrously usurped the place of supreme head of the Church in all England to gether with the chief authority and jurisdiction belonging to it, has once again reduced this same kingdom- which had already been restored to the Catholic faith and to good fruits- to a miserable ruin. 2. Prohibiting with a strong hand the use of the true religion, which after its earlier overthrow by Henry VIII (a deserter therefrom) Mary, the lawful queen of famous memory, had with the help of this See restored, she has followed and embraced the errors of the heretics”]

Of course, the persecution began with those known to the crown, thus known throughout the realm – and Edmund Campion had to flee. He went to Douai, France to study theology. He had stepped into Anglicanism as a deacon, a political and church position that expected some degree of theology. In the renewal of his Catholicism, Edmund Campion’s brilliance and passion for faith led him to the path toward ordination.

While in Douai, Edmund Campion decided to join the Jesuits. He went barefoot to Rome and arrived just before Francis Borgia died. In 1573, Edmund Campion was the first novice accepted into the Society by the Fourth Father General Mercurianus. Edmund Campionion went to Bohemia for his novitiate. In 1570, Edmund Campion was thirty, having completed post graduate studies at the highest level, served as a deacon in the Anglican church – and he was a novice. The men who were novices with me in 1967 ranged from high school graduates, about a third of us, to lawyers, a career army sergeant, a DJ, college grads with outstanding undergrad accomplishments from all American athlete status to accomplishments in academia and extracurriculars. And we were all novices. The course our life takes – closer to and further away from Jesus, faith, family, church – is hard to predict. Edmund Campion’s travels of faith is another reason of hope, and I hope of inspiration, for you.

In 1578, Edmund Campion, S.J. was ordained. He and Fr. Robert Persons, S.J., were the first Jesuits chosen for the English Mission - The ex-patriot Englishmen who were ready for the excruciating conditions incumbent on unwelcome prophets returning to (re)convert their family, friends, community, and country; prepared even for martyrdom. Conditions for which you must prepare when you reconvert.

Edmund Campion wrote the Decem Rationes and his Brag – in anticipation of his being captured, Fr. Campion wanted it to be known from his own hand why he was Catholic and, more important maybe, why he had returned home to reconvert family, friends, et al. When his writings were published – given his status from Oxford, as Anglican Deacon, as accomplished priest – he became the object of one of the most intensive manhunts in English history.

[I have only a slight sense of what that was like. In 1994 I published in the Nashville paper a small ad that reported that I had challenges with the Dominican Sisters at Overbrook and if people wanted to know more to contact me. The Bishop determined that I was no longer worthy to be a [national award winning] column author for the diocese paper. The pastor determined that as a person of disunity, I was no longer eligible to be lector or Eucharistic minister. Your mother’s attorney engaged a [Catholic] Saturday morning local radio talk show host about the heinousness of a man bringing the conflict about his children into the public light. The good sisters told your mother that they would expel you two if I were not silenced. And your mother went to secular court to thus squash the public presentation of the facts – rather than say to the sisters, gee sisters, the information that he is seeking as the boys’ father is something you should be giving to him and if the father of the children is not to be communicated with by the school, then this is not the right school for the children.]

On 17 July, 1581, when Edmund Campion was captured, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Crown offered him money, power, position, and more to apostatize. He refused. Since the carrot did not work, they tried the stick – torture. Still, Edmund Campion held on to his faith. On December 1, 1581, Edmund Campion was hung … drawn … and … quartered – he was charged with treason because in Elizabeth’s England it was treasonous to be a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.


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