Edmund Campion:Memory and Transcription (review)

Over the past decade Edmund Campion has assumed quasi-iconic status in Elizabethan studies. Executed for treason in December of 1581, Campion has benefited from cross-confessional interest in martyrs and martyrologies. Literary critics excavate his writings as they recover the long-lost voice of English Catholics. More important for Campion's international renown is his alleged association with William Shakespeare, an association that remains nothing more than fanciful conjecture despite repeated unsubstantiated insistence. One suspects that despite contemporary concern for coded language and historical criticism, confessional issues often lay not far beneath the surface. An Hilaire Bellocesque autumnal pastoral, nostalgic for by-gone days and melancholic for what might have been, permeates many of these works. Kilroy's monograph must be seen in this context: it may have evolved out of his reading Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, 1992), Philip Caraman's edition of John Gerard's The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (London, 1951), and Richard Wilson's "Shakespeare and the Jesuits" (Times Literary Supplement [December 19, 1997], 11-13), but the Campion that emerges is the traditional, martyred saint out of Robert Hugh Benson's Come Rack, Come Rope (London, 1912).

How many literary critics and historians, perhaps deterred by the difficult Latin, passed over Campion's so-called Virgilian epic? But the language may have been what attracted the author. Kilroy has not only transcribed for the first time Sancta salutiferi nascentia semina verbi [The Birth of the Sacred Seeds of the Salvation-bringing Word], but also has provided an English translation. This important theological poem, composed between 1566 and 1570, illuminates Campion's state of mind as he pondered the next step: should he remain in the Established Church and proceed to orders, or return to the Roman Church. He juxtaposes the permanence of the Roman Church with the transitoriness of the Roman Empire in his apologia for papal primacy: "the sure barque of Peter, never to sink, sailed bravely forward despite the tyrant; sure it always was, unbroken by tempests or force of arms, and never to perish by the wiles of devils" (p. 193).

Campion dedicated the poem to Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague. This was not the first time that Campion had presented something to him: "you have shown to me personally, above all others, such a token of your splendour and glory in accepting my rough and loquacious little works of literature" (p. 177). Hitherto we had been unaware of any contact between the two and their relationship should be explored. Montague was one of the few Catholics who retained Queen Elizabeth's favor despite his religion. Was he in some way influential in the decision to send Campion on the mission?

Kilroy's reading of Campion's role on the English mission follows traditional hagiographical lines. Accordingly, Campion's resolve faltered only once, upon hearing of the collapse of negotiations for the Anjou match and of the landing of an Hispano-papal army in Ireland. Admittedly it is difficult to ascertain tone in the printed text, but his remark to Allen, "Do you think that my labours in England will countervail all this travail, as well as my absence from Bohemia, where, though I did not much, yet I was not idle nor unemployed, and that also against heretics?" suggests more than a "moment of hesitation" (p. 56). Unlike his more notorious colleague Robert Parsons, Campion had apparently turned his back on his homeland, never demonstrating any eagerness to return. He may even have dragged his feet about leaving Prague. In such a scenario, news of the attack may have reinforced earlier reluctance. Similarly the author refuses to take seriously the so-called confessions of Campion. Sir Thomas Tresham's manuscript accounts may help resolve doubts regarding their authenticity, but we cannot dismiss official versions as government propaganda and assume that Catholic manuscripts, written and preserved clandestinely, are more accurate and less rhetorical.

Although the monograph's title highlights Campion, arguably...