VI THE WISHED-FOR DAWN: BOHEMIA: 1573-1579

CAMPION stayed but two months at Prague, as the small Noviciate was removed to Brünn in Moravia, where the inhabitants were most hostile to Catholicism. The Bishop of Olmütz begged the Jesuits to help him so far as their Rule permitted. Novices were sent out among the neighbouring villages, to catechize and instruct the poorer Catholics; and no one had so instant a success in this little enterprise as “God’s Englishman.” At the year’s end his Novice Master, John Paul Campanus, became Rector of the College in Prague, and took Edmund Campion back with him. The latter left a good deal of his heart within the gray and austere walls of Brünn, as two of his charming letters show. In the old garden, under a mulberry tree, he had had a wonderful vision:[65] Our Lady stood there, smiling at him, and offering him a purple robe. He knew the portent of martyrdom, but for long hid it in his heart. At Prague Campion continued and increased his Douay employments. He opened the October term with what was called a “glorious peroration”. As Professor of Rhetoric, he wrote, in 1574, a beautiful little treatise on that subject so familiar to him. His duty was to be first in the house to rise and last to go to bed; he spent his recreation-time catechizing children, receiving converts, visiting the prison and the hospital, or helping the cook in the kitchen! In January, 1575, he set up at his College a branch Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, or Sodality of Our Lady, of which he became president. About the same time he made his first vows. He was continually called upon for great College occasions, and to pronounce public panegyrics. “Whatever had to be done,” says his pompous but sympathetic biographer Bombino, “was laid upon him.” On getting a fresh task he would ask his Superior, in a spirit of perfect[66] humility and confidence, if he was thought strong enough to add that to the rest? and if the answer were Yes, he shouldered the new duty at once, much to the wonder of others. “I am in a continual bloom of health,” he writes gallantly to his “dearest Parsons,” who had just entered the Society; “I have no time whatever to be ill in!” Two sacred plays (six hours did it take to perform each of them!) came from Campion’s truly dramatic pen in 1577. One was on the Sacrifice of Abraham; one on the melancholy career of King Saul. It is a matter of much regret that these are lost. He seems also to have composed dialogues and scenes for his own scholars, and to have put together at this same time his spirited account of the origin of the English schism, in a narrative (in Latin) of The Divorce of King Henry VIII from his Wife and from the Church. It was printed by Harpesfield, long after Campion’s death.

Meanwhile Rudolph II had succeeded to the imperial throne; and the “magnificently provided” Envoy who was sent to[67] Prague, bearing the congratulations of Queen Elizabeth, was none other than Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney’s mind was set upon seeing his old friend Campion, and talking with him; but he managed only with difficulty to carry out his wishes. He went officially in the Emperor’s train to hear his friend (not yet in priest’s orders) preach, and on his return to England unguardedly spoke with delight of the sermon. Whenever Sidney visited the Continent he was supposed to become tainted with a hankering after Catholicism, though in all his public actions he was conspicuously Protestant. Campion, who knew him from boyhood and was not given to misjudgment, believed that he had almost won over the star of English chivalry: “this young man so wonderfully beloved and admired,” he calls him in 1576; a testimony doubly interesting, when we remember that Philip Sidney was then but three-and-twenty, to the effect which his short life made upon all his contemporaries. “He had much conversation with me,” Campion’s letter goes on, “and I hope not in vain, for to all appearances[68] he was most keen about it. I commend him to your remembrances at Mass, since he asked the prayers of all good men, and at the same time put into my hands alms to be distributed to the poor for him; this trust I have discharged.” He ends by hoping that some of the missionaries then going back to England from Douay will have “opportunity of watering this plant . . . poor wavering soul!” Fr. Parsons in his Life of Campion tells us that Sidney “professed himself convinced, but said that it was necessary for him to hold on the course which he had hitherto followed.” Such was the sad answer of Felix to St. Paul.

Campion’s thoughts had turned often of late to another friend, Gregory Martin, who had left overcrowded Douay for the Seminary newly founded in the heart of Rome, in the ancient English hospice for pilgrims. Campion longed to turn his fellow-priest into a Jesuit, for he loved his own Society in the extreme; but that was not to be. A letter to Martin, glowing with that interior fire which was shed out[69] from Edmund Campion upon everything he touched, ends most tenderly. “Since for so many years we two had in common our College, our meals, our studies, our friends and our enemies, let us for the rest of our lives make a more close and binding union, that we may have the fruit of our friendship in heaven. For there also I will, if I can, sit at your feet.”

After years filled with literary and academic labour in two Colleges, and blessed with marked growth in holiness, Edmund Campion was ordained priest by the Archbishop of Prague. His first Mass was said on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, September 8, 1578. Following his General’s express command, he dismissed the old unhappy scruple about his Oxford diaconate, and it troubled him no more. He was made Professor of Philosophy. “You are to know,” he pleasantly says, “that I am foolishly held to be an accomplished sophist!” During the course of this year 1578, he wrote his last and most famous drama, now lost, on St. Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius, which, when[70] acted, made a tremendous stir. He became ever more and more noted as a preacher, a “sower of eternity” in the popular heart, as well as the favourite orator when grandees died and were buried in state. But all this time his mind and heart were far away.

No one ever practised religious obedience in a more heroic spirit; yet he secretly longed to throw his life and his labours directly into the balance for England’s sake. He knew what was going on there, and his thoughts seem never once to have turned towards pikes, or any political remedy; his whole ambition was, as he said in one letter, to “torture our envious foe with good deeds,” and in another, “to catch them by the prayers and tears at which they laugh.” His long-dear Cuthbert Mayne, of whom he had lost sight for awhile, had given up his life for the Faith at Launceston, November 29, 1577. He had been captured near Probus; his wealthy host, Francis Tregian, was attainted of pr?munire, and his children completely beggared. This young Westcountryman[71] had a character all his own. He had been charged with nothing but the exercise of his priestly functions, and was offered his life, on the day of his execution, if he would but swear that the Queen was Supreme Head of the Church of England. “Upon this,” continues the chronicle, “he took the Bible into his hands, made the sign of the Cross upon it, kissed it, and said: ‘The Queen neither ever was, nor is, nor ever shall be, the Head of the Church of England!’” Campion had only recently heard the news in the August of 1579. One can read between the lines of a passage like this: “We all thank you much for your account of Cuthbert’s martyrdom; it gave many of us a divine pleasure. Wretch that I am, how far has that novice distanced me! May he be favourable to his old friend and tutor! Now shall I boast of these titles more than ever before.” Within the next six months Edmund Campion was to see the beginning of his heart’s desire.

Dr. Allen, the founder of Douay, was in Rome to organize the English College; and[72] there he brought all his persuasion to bear upon the General of the Society of Jesus and his consultors, that the English Jesuits might be allowed to join the English secular priests in the pressing redemption of their distracted country. There were the gravest reasons for and against the proposal, but the answer given to Dr. Allen was that the Society would do its best to supply missioners thenceforward, and that Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion should be sent first as forerunners of the rest. Allen was naturally overjoyed. While Merc?ur, the Father-General, wrote officially to Campion’s Superior at Prague, Allen wrote a moving letter to Campion himself: “My father, brother, son,” he calls him, “make all haste and come, my dearest Campion . . . from Prague to Rome, and thence to our own England.” . . . “God, in whose hands are the issues, has at last granted that our own Campion, with his extraordinary gifts of wisdom and grace, shall be restored to us. Prepare yourself, then, for a journey, for a work, for a trial.”

[73]

The imaginations of Campion’s comrades at Prague were touched to the quick by the prospect opening before their happy brother. One of these bore witness to the fragrance of his own thoughts by painting a garland of roses and lilies on the wall of Campion’s little room, just at the bed’s head. A white-haired Silesian, Father James Gall, wrote in scroll fashion, by night, over the outer door of that same little room: “P[ater] Edmundus Campianus, Martyr.” For such a romantic irregularity the old saint was reprimanded. He replied quite simply: “But I had to do it!” Poor Campion, who was shy, had seen both these things, before Campanus, the sympathetic Rector, gave him his marching orders to start at once for Rome. “The Fathers do verily seem to suspect something about me; I hope their suspicions may come true!” he said. “God’s will be done, not mine.” And then, adds that first English biographer who so well knew him and so much loved him: “Being scarce able to hold tears for joy and tenderness of heart, he went to his chamber, and[74] there upon his knees to God satisfied his appetite of weeping and thanksgiving, and offered himself to His divine disposition without any exception or restraint: whether it were to rack, cross-quartering, or any other torment or death whatsoever.”