Edmund Campion: A Life

This was an amazing book. It was difficult to read as it is of any wholesale murder and suppression of a people. I had never been able to study the effects of the anti-catholic legislation and brutal suppression of the Church in England. I had alway studied it from the Irish perspective. I think that Saint Edmund Campion lived for as long as he did because he spent 10 years in Europe. Otherwise, he would have had a much shorter life, like Man-of-God Father Michael McGivney. He was already well-known in England for his writings, and oratory as a student and Deacon at Oxford University. I was struck by a few items in this book. The first was Queen Elizabeth I's remark to her bishops and clergy as she neared death, calling them "hedge priests", meaning not being actually ordained and shooing them out. The other was the shear emptiness of the English people's lives created merely to satisfy the political and power ambitions of the English Government and ministers as opposed by the people at large who were generally sympathetic and preferred to remain Catholic. Evelyn Waugh commented about the Queen's Government doing all that it could to "removing the people from the Sacraments of the Church so that it would die out in a generation" was quite striking and saddening to picture. How desolute were their lives already, but to take away the one thing that they had for hundreds of years? Mr. Waugh also points out the destruction of the abbeys and great places of learning, "...that flowed to and from Europe, suddenly cutting off England from the rest of the Church", and the greatest minds and service of the monks and priests of the Church from the English people. In Ireland, it was well known to us in America that there were safe houses and secret rooms to hide the priests and the vessels and vestments for Mass. I was surprised that this also occurred in England. I think that in many areas of history, Americans hear an "anglicized version" of the event and we see that prejudice in our books and common history. I highly recommend this book. It can be painful to read, but should be read. I would recommend some research first on the creation of the Church of England by King Henry VIII, and the Penal Laws, the Law of Supremecy, and the Catholic Faith in England first. This system of suppression remained in force until the middle of the 19th Century! There is a whole litany of English saints and martyrs that have been lost, but are waiting to be rediscovered by you.

Often, when reading a biography of a saint, one is struck by a certain dissonance: the heavenly heights of the subject matter do not correspond to the writing level of the book. The saint biography is one of my favorite genres, but it is at times a chore to get by the substandard writing to penetrate the beauty of the life of the saint. Nothing could be further from the case in "Edmund Campion" by Evelyn Waugh. Here we have a combination for the ages: the story of a magnificent saint told by one of the great authors of the 20th century. In many ways, it reminded me of Mark Twain's excellent book on Joan of Arc. Waugh's use of the language allows the story of Campion to come alive in ways a lesser author could have never conveyed. One is swept up into the time of Campion, and allowed to experience the persecution he experienced first-hand, as well as understand the motivating love behind his actions. Highly recommended for all lovers of literature and the saints.

It is always good to read about the saints, but the writing of those who write on the saints is not always good. It is no surprise that one of the great writers of the last century such as Evelyn Waugh would turn out a great book. Edmund Campion is a biography of the Jesuit Saint Edmund Campion who was martyred in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and the increasingly severe penal laws in England. This book was written in 1935 only five years after Waugh's conversion into the Catholic Church. It is a straightforward biography based on the best historical research available at the time. The author does not inject himself in the book in that he tries hard to stick to the historical narrative of what can actually be known and any dialogue in the book is straight from the historical record. This is in no way some syrupy hagiography that diverges from facts with flowery stories or that tries to inflate the actions of Edmund Campion. Though considering the subject this is not much needed when you look at his amazing life. The book running at a little more than 200 pages is divided into four very appropriate chapters: The Scholar, The Priest, The Hero, The Martyr. I wonder if you have to give a spoiler alert when you are talking a martyr. Evelyn Waugh provides the necessary historical background of the state of the Church and of the politics involved and you fast become involved in the biography as if you were reading a novel. Every time you read about the recusants and those in Church history who were persecuted for the faith it always gives you a greater appreciation of what most Catholics in the modern world take for granted. When we go to Mass we aren't worried that somebody is going to turn us in or that we don't need guards to warn is people are coming so that the priest can hide in the priest-hole. The first two chapters deal with his academic life and his early career as he initially leaves England because of the growing persecution of Catholics and his decision to become a priest and then a Jesuit. The biographic then moves to his returning to England. Like many saints he was not specifically making decisions that would lead him on the road to martyrdom. In fact circumstances could have left him teaching in Vienna and Prague since the Jesuits at the time had no chapters in England. But also like many saints when it became apparent that he would indeed be traveling down that road it was done with joy. As Waugh chronicles Campion's year of attending to the Catholics in England you again get caught up in the drama as he and other priests continue to minister to the flock for the good of souls. It is a measure of Campion's genius that his "Brag" that he wrote in a half-hour's time to defend himself from charges of treason was printed and reprinted across England. Or that his famous Ten Reasons would provide much annoyance to the authorities at the time. So annoying that once he was captured and tortured they brought him to a series o

This biography of the English saint and martyr Edmund Campion won the Hawthornden Prize in 1936, and I read it because of that. It is very well-written , tho it lacks a bibliography and footnotes. Campion was executed Dec. 1, 1581, after being sentenced to "be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight, then your head to be cut off and your body divided into four parts." It surely makes one grateful for the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishmnet. This is a fast read and eminently worth reading.

Waugh's details of Campion's European whereabouts gets a bit tedious but once Campion returns to England you can't put the book down. Waugh leaves you thinking which queen rightfully deserves the adjective Bloody.