VII A LONG MARCH: ROME, GENEVA, RHEIMS: 1580

FROM Prague to Munich, and from Munich to Innsbrück, Campion had the distinguished and very friendly company of Ferdinand, brother of the reigning Duke of Bavaria. Afterwards he went on alone on foot, as he was always glad to do, as far as Padua. Here he took horse for Rome, which he reached just before Palm Sunday, April 5, 1580, coming “in grave priest’s garb,” we are told, “with long hair, after the fashion of Germany.” He was informed by the Father-General that he was to start for England nine or ten days after Easter. Campion begged “neither to be Superior of the expedition nor to have anything to do with the preparations,” and that during the fortnight he might be free from all except[76] necessary cares, in order to make a more devotional entrance upon the life ahead of him. “And the like did, for their part, and had done, all the Lent before, those other priests also of the English Seminary,” says Parsons, speaking of many seculars afterwards martyred, “that were appointed by their Superiors to go with us in this mission. . . . All these together used such notable and extraordinary diligence for preparing themselves well in the sight of God . . . as was matter of edification to all Rome.”

Rome was a most religious place at that time, not only in its enduring associations, but in the temper of the people. One in large measure responsible for its spirit of penance and prayer, and loving charity to the poor, was then living at San Girolamo, opposite the old English hospital, now turned into a College: this was St. Philip Neri, the most venerated and endearing figure in all the great city. He knew the successive little English bands; when he passed them in the streets, cheerful St. Philip used to smile tenderly, and give what must have[77] been to them a thrilling greeting: “‘Hail, Little Flowers of Martyrdom!’” the opening line of the Breviary Hymn for Holy Innocents’ Day. Parsons and Campion, and the secular clerics associated with them, may have originated the custom of going over to San Girolamo for a special fatherly blessing before setting forth to almost certain death. There is a tradition (mentioned by Newman) that one of that company did not care to seek St. Philip’s prayers, and that afterwards he failed to persevere. This is thought to be the lay student, John Paschall, or Pascal, who was apparently of an unstable disposition, and is known to have forsworn the Faith, when his great chance came to profess it.

The Pope, Gregory XIII, showed untiring and fatherly interest in all the missionaries, and their travelling funds were his personal gift. He wept over them in bestowing his parting benediction. Campion set out this time with seven English priests, Ralph Sherwin, a former Fellow of Exeter College, among them; also with two lay brothers, and two students. Others joined[78] them from Rheims and Louvain, some of them advanced in years and well known. The party adopted the novel and almost daredevil fashion of going on foot; but, mounted and riding privately in advance of it, were its two eldest members. One was the holy octogenarian Thomas Goldwell, the Lord Bishop of St. Asaph, who had been offered by Queen Mary a transfer to the See of Oxford, and refused it. He was destined to be the last survivor of the deposed and scattered Catholic hierarchy in England, who had all but one refused the unheard-of Oath in 1559, and had all been deprived of their Sees that same year. Bishop Goldwell now, twenty years afterwards, was one of two who were living; and his colleague, Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, was in prison. The other senior missionary was his companion, Dr. Nicholas Morton, Canon Penitentiary of St. Peter’s, who had done something already towards the making of English history. The first little Jesuit group of three was commanded by Fr. Robert Parsons, a born organizer, a man of splendid resources, afterwards[79] celebrated, and much loved and hated. For convenience, as for safety, they all put on secular dress. Campion, however, would buy no new clothes, but arrayed himself in an old buckram suit, with a shabby cloak. When rallied on his highly inelegant appearance, he remarked with the gay spirit so like that of another “blissful martyr,” Sir Thomas More, that a man going forth to be hanged need trouble himself little about the fashion!

The roads were bad beyond any modern idea of badness, and it poured rain for the first nine or ten days. Campion, the least robust of the party, and the most poorly clad, fell ill under such combined discomforts, and while crossing the Apennines had to be lifted into the saddle of one of the very few horses which had been brought along for the sake of the infirm. As soon as he was well enough he resumed his daily habit of saying Mass very early, and of walking on, in the later morning hours, till he was a mile ahead of the rest, to make his meditation, read his Office, and say the Litany of the Saints, before he should be[80] overtaken. He and his comrades planned their spiritual life, day by day, with the most careful regularity. Their talk was always of souls: “the Harvest” was their word for England, or else “the Warfare.” In the chilly spring twilights Campion would push on ahead again, “to make his prayers alone, and utter his zealous affections to his Saviour without being heard or noted.”

The route lay through Siena, Florence, Bologna. In the latter city there was a week’s delay, due to an injury to Fr. Parsons’ leg. The band of twelve was entertained by the Cardinal Archbishop of that See, who was the historian of the Council of Trent: Gabriel Paleotto. Like Avellanedo, like many another Italian, Paleotto loved the English. “Were he a born Englishman, he could not love them more,” wrote Agazzario to Allen, at that time when the national temperament was much more expressive and responsive than it is now. At Milan, in the early part of May, the future confessors and martyrs were to find another and a greater, also “much affectioned”[81] towards them, who received them most hospitably, and even asked the English College for other relays of guests in the future. This was the great Archbishop, St. Charles Borromeo. Bishop Goldwell, who had passed through Milan days before the walkers reached it, had been, in 1563, Vicar-General to St. Charles, and would have bespoken his interest in the little party. The reverend host complimented Ralph Sherwin by asking him to deliver a sermon before him, and as for Campion, he was required to discourse daily after dinner. St. Charles himself, all the while, whether vocal or silent, was acting upon the pilgrims as a Sursum corda. “Without saying a word, he preached to us sufficiently,” says the ever-appreciative Parsons, “and so we departed from him greatly edified and exceedingly animated.” How charming is the forgotten use of the last word, meaning “souled,” or, as we still say, “heartened,” “inspirited!” Such indeed is the true function of the saints.

From Turin the little company made for Mount Cenis, and young, middle-aged and[82] old lustily climbed it; and then among the torrents and boulders of that glorious scenery, they came down into Savoy. At St. Jean Maurienne they found the roads blocked by the Spanish soldiery, and at Aiguebelle ran across other disturbances, caused by the wars of religion raging in the Dauphiné. As there was nothing to do but abandon the direct route, they turned aside and entered Geneva, the hotbed of Calvinism, and the home of Theodore Beza, the learned apostate who had succeeded to Calvin’s leadership. There was a close community of spirit between Geneva and the English Reformation. However, Switzerland, then as now, had liberal laws, and any traveller, Catholic or Protestant, was free to pass, unmolested though not unquestioned, three days in the city. It looks decidedly like an alloy of mischief on the part of five of the English that they went to call in a body on Beza! They were admitted as far as the court by Claudine, his stolen wife, whom they had all heard of, and were not ill-pleased to see. When the famous greybeard[83] came out they managed, after passing their compliments, to worry him with some telling controversial shots. Campion knew not how to be rude: but Sherwin found amusement, ever afterwards, in remembering how that honest fellow “Patrick” stood and looked and talked, cap in hand, “facing out” (such is Sherwin’s shockingly boyish language in a private letter), “the old doting heretical fool.” The celebrity so described behaved rather vaguely, and, in the course of nature, could not have been sorry to see the last of his besiegers, and of their wits, sharpened with life in the open air. He bowed them out with less abruptness than might have been expected—indeed, with a certain show of civility; and went back to his books. Later, Sherwin and two other youngsters, in a midnight discussion with some English Protestant students, actually challenged Beza and all Calvindom to a trial of theologies, with the drastic proviso that the defeated party should be burnt in the marketplace! Meanwhile Campion, in the r?le of “Patrick,” did his share of “facing out”[84] other worthies in Geneva, besides finding an old University friend there, who “used him lovingly,” but reported that an alarm had been raised, and encouraged the departure of the paladins. These, halting on a spur of the Jura before nightfall, with Lake Leman spread beneath them, said Te Deum together, that they were safely out of the city. There seems to have been a good deal of curiosity or bravado mingled with their polemical zeal, and Campion’s always tender conscience would have readily accepted, if it did not suggest, a suitable penance for the raid. So off they trudged nine steep, contrite, extra miles (“extreme troublesome,” we are told they were) to the nearest shrine, that of St. Claude, over the French border.

They entered Rheims the last day of May, 1580, for in Rheims was the soul, if not the body, of the College now driven, partly for convenience, partly by force of trouble, out of Douay. That College was never re-formed: but the scholar-exiles lived close together, up and down the street still called Rue des Anglais. The travellers[85] were rapturously welcomed by all, especially by the great Englishman whom the old narrative quaintly calls “Mr. Dr. Allen, the President.” Here at Rheims the venerable Bishop of St. Asaph fell ill of a fever. He was never again to cross the Channel. By the time he had fairly recovered, rumours of his movements had naturally got abroad, and the Pope was unwilling to imperil so important and precious a person. While still a convalescent at Rheims, Goldwell wrote to his Holiness in person, begging him to listen to no objections, but to anoint at once three or four new Bishops to shepherd their own needy Church; and he very touchingly assures the Holy Father, knowing that the question of a fitting maintenance for them would arise, that God had so inclined the minds of all the English priests whom he knew to put up with their penniless and hunted daily lives, and the vision of the gallows always before them, that any of these, once consecrated, would be entirely contented to go on as poorly as he had gone heretofore, like a Bishop of the Early Church. The application failed.[86] “Etiquette and routine prevailed,” says Simpson, in summing up this incident.

In truth, it was not that good-will was lacking. Nobody on the Catholic side believed that the new sad order of things in England was going to last, and consequently, waiting and postponing in a matter of this sort, could not seem the disastrous mistake which it really was. The upshot, in any case, was that the good Bishop was recalled to Rome, and there died; and that for thirty weary years the poor flock struggled on without any qualified prelate to supply their crying spiritual wants and hold them together. Then the first provisional leader, known as the Archpriest, was appointed, and later came Vicars Apostolic. When finally the longed-for mitres were seen again in the land, they had been absent too long. The nominal link snapped; the great native tradition was broken; the titles of the ancient Sees, given up, as if in sleep, by their lineal heirs, were never reclaimed. So far as surface connection goes,—and it goes far indeed with people in general, who neither reason nor read, but[87] get all their ideas from what they see and hear, this was the most tragic loss which could possibly have befallen the post-Reformation Church. (The English Benedictines kept the thread of their own dynasty in their hands: but this did not affect the Catholic body, and the lay interest.) The stranger who could not destroy the life and blessing of the firstborn has had possession, for three centuries and a half, by royal grant, of his home and of his very name.