Saint Edmund Campion

Priest and Martyr
(1540–1581)

Saint Edmund Campion was born on January 25, 1540, in London, the son of a bookseller. He showed such extraordinary academic promise that he was selected to deliver the welcoming address to Queen Mary I at her Oxford visit when he was thirteen, and later delivered a similar address to Queen Elizabeth I. He was elected a Fellow of Saint John's College, Oxford, and became one of the most admired scholars and teachers of his generation, his tutorials attracting students who competed for his attention.

Despite being ordained a deacon of the Church of England, he was increasingly troubled by religious doubts that drove him eventually to Ireland, then to Douai in France, and finally to Rome, where he entered the Society of Jesus in 1573. He was ordained a priest in Prague and in 1580 joined the first Jesuit mission to Elizabethan England, where the practice of Catholicism was a capital offence. He and his companion Robert Persons entered England in disguise and spent a year moving from one Catholic household to another, celebrating Mass, administering the sacraments, and writing. His pamphlet Decem Rationes, a challenge to the Protestant establishment to debate, was secretly printed and distributed at the Oxford University commencement in 1581.

He was captured in July 1581 at Lyford Grange in Berkshire, taken to the Tower of London, and subjected to repeated interrogations and torture on the rack. He was charged with treason for allegedly conspiring against the Queen, a charge he consistently and truthfully denied. He was tried, convicted on perjured evidence, and hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on December 1, 1581. His last words on the scaffold expressed his loyalty to the Queen and his fidelity to the Catholic faith. He was canonised by Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. His feast is celebrated on December 1st.