Edmund Campion

Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription by Gerard Kilroy, 241 pages

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth,

     Relligion thear was treason to the Queene,

     preaching of peanaunce, war agaynst the lande,

     preestes were such dawngerous men as had not beene,

     prayeres and beads weare fyghte and force of hand,

          Cases of conscience bane unto the state,

          Soe blynde ys error, so false a witnes hate.

As was proven by the fate of St Edmund Campion, it was a time when holding the wrong faith or speaking the wrong words could lead to torture - forbidden under Edward and Mary but allowed under Elizabeth - and execution, when even copying a forbidden manuscript could result in having one's ears chopped off or nailed to a pillory.  In such times even the written word becomes subject to equivocation, and, as Gerard Kilroy explains, equivocation can become a language of its own.

     Yee thought perhapps when learned Campion dyes,

     his pen must cease, his sugred townge be still;

     But yow forgot how lowd his death yt cryes,

     how farre beyond the sownd of tounge or quill.

          yow did not know how rare and great a good

          yt was to write hys precious guiftes in bloode.

In this expansion of his masterly biography, Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life, Kilroy transcribes and elucidates a series of texts - the saint's own "Virgilian epic" retelling the story of the apostolic age, Henry Walpole's hagiographic eulogy "Why doe I use my paper, ynke and pen", and a selection of Sir John Harington's "All my ydle Epigrams".  He also discusses a different sort of text in the form of the symbolic architecture of Thomas Tresham.  Throughout, Kilroy is not only interested in the meaning of the texts themselves, but in what their history and manner of transmission can tell us about the time in which they were written down.  While this may not be the most exciting subject, it is a fascinating glimpse into life and faith in a time of persecution and martyrdom.