Poet and martyr, born in Horsham, Norfolk, E England, UK. He studied at Douai and Rome, and was ordained as a Jesuit in 1584. He travelled to England as a missionary in 1586, aiding persecuted Catholics, but was betrayed, tortured, and executed. Beatified in 1929, he is known for his devotional lyrics (such as The Burning Babe), and for several prose treatises and epistles.
Saint Robert Southwell (c. 1561 – 21 February 1595) was an English Jesuit priest and poet.
Early life in England
He was brought up in a family of Catholic aristocrats and educated at Douai. In spite of his youth, he was made prefect of studies in the Venerable English College at Rome and was ordained priest in 1584.
It was in that year that an act was passed forbidding any English-born subject of Queen Elizabeth, who had entered into priests' orders in the Roman Catholic Church since her accession, to remain in England longer than forty days on pain of death. But Southwell, at his own request, was sent to England in 1586 as a Jesuit missionary with Henry Garnett. It was to him that Southwell addressed his Epistle of Comfort.
Arrest and imprisonment
After six years of successful labor, Southwell was arrested. She revealed Southwell's movements to Richard Topcliffe, who immediately arrested him.
He was imprisoned at first in Topcliffe's house, where he was repeatedly put to the torture in the vain hope of extracting evidence about other priests. So abominable was his treatment that his father petitioned Elizabeth that he might either be brought to trial and put to death, if found guilty, or removed in any case from that filthy hole. Southwell was then lodged in the Tower of London, and allowed clothes and a bible and the works of St Bernard.
Trial and execution
In 1595 the privy council passed a resolution for Southwell's prosecution on charges of treason, and he was removed from the Tower to Newgate prison, where he was put in to a hole called Limbo.
A few days later Southwell appeared before the Lord Chief Justice, John Popham, at the bar of the King's Bench. Popham made a speech against Jesuits and seminary priests, and Southwell was indicted before the jury as a traitor under the statutes prohibiting the presence within the kingdom of priests ordained by Rome. Southwell admitted the facts but denied he had, "entertained any designs or plots against the queen or kingdom". When asked to enter a plea, he declared himself, "not guilty of any treason whatsoever", and objected to a jury being made responsible for his death, before allowing that he would be tried by God and country.
As the proofs were presented, Southwell stated that he was the same age as, "our Saviour": he was immediately reproved by Topcliffe for insupportable pride in making the comparison, but said in response that he considered himself, "a worm of the earth". The sentence of death was pronounced - to be hung, drawn and quartered - and the prisoner returned through the city streets to Limbo.
On the next day, February 20, 1595, Southwell was sent to Tyburn. Execution of sentence on a notorious highwayman had been appointed for the same time, at a different place - perhaps to draw the crowds away - but many people came to witness the priest's death. The sheriff made to interrupt him, but he was allowed to address the people at some length, confessing that he was a Jesuit priest and praying for the salvation of the queen and his country.
Legacy
There is little doubt that much of Southwell's poetry, none of which was published during his lifetime, was written in prison.
This, which is not included in A. This last work was believed to be written by Southwell, but in fact it is his translation from an Italian version of a Spanish document, "Meditaciones devotissimas amor Dios", written by Fray Diego de Estella and published in Salamanca in 1576.
Southwell's poetry is euphuistic in manner. Ben Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that he would willingly have destroyed many of his own poems to be able to claim as his own Southwell's Burning Babe, an extreme but beautiful example of his fantastic treatment of sacred subjects.
His poetry is not, however, all characterized by this elaboration.
Southwell's poems were also edited by William Barclay Turnbull (1811–1863) in 1856.
Much of the material was incorporated by Bishop Challoner in his Memoir of Missionary Priests (1741), and the manuscript is now in the Public Record Office in Brussels.
Southwell was beatified in 1929 and canonized by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales on 25 October 1970.
In the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, Southwell and his companion and associate Henry Garnet were noted for their allegiance to the Doctrine of mental reservation, a controversial ethical concept of the period.
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