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| St.Edmund Campion |  |
Son of a Catholic bookseller named Edmund whose family converted to
Anglicanism.
The boy planned to enter his father’s trade, but earned a scholarship
to Saint John’s College,
Oxford
Sought after speaker.
Queen Elizabeth offered him a diaconate in the Church of England.
He declined the offer, fled to the continent, and joined the Jesuits.
Ordained in 1578.
He spent some time working in Bohemia, then returned to London as part
of a Jesuit mission,
crossing the Channel disguised as a jewel merchant.
There he wrote a description of his new mission in which he explained
his work was religious,
not political; it became known as Campion’s Brag. Widely distributed,
it encouraged many
Catholics to remain loyal to their faith.
It also led to Edmund’s arrest, imprisonment and torture in the Tower
of London, and
martyrdom.
Died on 1 December 1581; hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, together with St.Alexander Briant
Beatified on 9 December 1886 by Pope Leo XIII
Canonization in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty
Martyrs of England and Wales