Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life by Gerard Kilroy (review)

No account of Edmund Campion’s life could ever be simply biography. From the careful scholarship of A. O. Meyer, through the elegant prose of Evelyn Waugh and later works, consideration of Campion’s role in the wider history of English Catholicism under Elizabeth cannot be avoided. The on-going academic disagreement between John Bossy, Christopher Haigh, and others about the nature of Catholic survival in England has inevitably involved judgement of the activities of the Jesuits and their ultimate objectives, individually, or as a community. Campion’s position in such decisions was critical, regardless of whether he was an unwilling pawn or a committed conspirator.

In this thorough and careful study, Gerard Kilroy has attempted to disentangle Campion’s own course from those of the other key English Jesuits, William Allen and Robert Persons, the different popes, and European politics. He provides a detailed and dispassionate analysis of the documentation, some of which has been known since Campion’s death and some of which has only recently been discovered. Kilroy does not rely on a single copy of any material, but carefully compares the different surviving versions and their provenance.

The result is a life examined against the background of its time that illuminates the development of Campion’s identity and his remarkable skills as (among other things) a Latinist, a poet, a play-writer, a debater, and above all a man whose sermons and speeches could persuade even those who disagreed with him. As the biography progresses, Kilroy convinces the reader that whatever else he was, Campion was also that rare person, one who made friends.

Kilroy carefully details the stages through which a talented schoolboy, and later committed student, developed into a theologian of considerable power and authority who took seriously the difficulties of conscience that arose from wrestling with the nature of being. In passing, he casts light on the life of schools and universities thrown into turmoil by the shifts in religious authority and the problems of autonomy that teachers and students encountered.

The early chapters provide a context for Campion’s significance. The account of his time in Prague for which new material in the form of student notebooks on his lectures has appeared casts an invaluable new light on his experience both as an academic and as an individual who was able, from the periphery of the imperial court, to understand the way the course of European history was developing.

The persona Kilroy shows us can only be the public one, the face that Campion showed the world, so that the weakest part of his argument relates to the reasons that led Campion to embrace Roman Catholicism and join the Jesuits. Once he had done so, and, knowing its full implications, also taken the oath of obedience unto death, he had relinquished his right to independent choice, the result of which is clear throughout the rest of his life.

Kilroy suggests that Campion’s powers of persuasion achieved a modification in the purpose of the Jesuit missions to England, with the pope agreeing that despite the bull Regnans in Excelsis, Catholics could recognise Elizabeth as their queen and obey most of the laws of the realm. He argues that Campion restricted himself to a purely pastoral mission and could therefore sincerely argue, as he did so effectively, even after being racked, in the public disputations the government held in the Tower. What becomes clear is the difficulty the government faced in its efforts to win the propaganda war. If they could turn Campion it would be a stunning victory. If they could present him as a poorly taught scholar, ignorant of the languages of the Bible, his arguments weak and illogical, it would serve their purpose.

Eventually, of course, he had to be brought to trial for treason, which, under existing English law, was a problematic charge. In such cases, the absence of a defending lawyer usually gave the prosecution the...