St Edmund Campion

St Edmund Campion (1540-1581), best known of the English Jesuits martyred during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Born in London on January 25, 1540, Campion was educated at the University of Oxford, where he showed early promise as a scholar and orator. Although ordained a deacon in 1567, he could not accept the Protestant formulary as required by the Church of England. Accordingly, he left England for Ireland in 1569; later he went to Douay in France, joined the newly founded English College there, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. In 1573, after being ordained subdeacon, he went to Rome and entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He was ordained priest in 1578 and returned to England in 1580 on a mission to help re-establish Roman Catholicism there. To avoid capture by the government, he rarely spent more than a day in any one place. Despite persecution he wrote a bold attack on the Church of England, Decem Rationes (Ten Reasons), which was distributed at the Oxford commencement in 1581. A few weeks later he was captured and brought before Queen Elizabeth, who offered him honours and fortune if he would recant. When he refused the offer, he was imprisoned, tortured, and hanged as a traitor on December 1, 1581. He was beatified in 1886 and was one of the “Forty English Martyrs” canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Campion's feast day is December 1.