Polemics and
the Image - The Battle of the Books
This
segment of the exhibition concentrates on the life and writings of the
Jesuit Edmund Campion
(1540-1581), on the left, brilliant member of Oxford University and
Robert Persons,
on the right, founder of the "Missions" to England. Campion
carried an Agnus Dei of 1578, below left, a wax medallion given
by Pope Gregory VIII on his clandestine missions. It was wrapped in
a list of indulgences and hidden in rafters of Lynford Grange, Berkshire
when Campion was arrested July 17, 1581. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered
December 1, 1581 at Tyburn. The Agnus Dei (Campion Hall, Oxford)
was discovered in 1959 when the farmhouse roof was restored.
Decem Rationes (Ten Reasons for the truth of the Roman Church) was
written by Campion in 1581. One the ten copies surviving is in the collection
of the Jesuits at Campion Hall, Oxford. Printed at a secret Catholic press,
400 copies were distributed at Oxford University. Some were left on stalls
of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin - the "University Church"
where degrees were conferred.
De
Persecutione Anglicana Libellus was written by Robert
Persons, in Rome, 1582. The small book contains 117 pages with 6 pages
of engravings that include Campion's
capture and death.
Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea, below, left and right, was published
in Rome in 1584, illustrated by engravings after the paintings of English
martyrs from earliest to present times that were installed in the English
College in Rome. George Gilbert paid for paintings and supplied underground
network for the Jesuit missions.
The
exhibition expects to include other books illustrating the debate between
Catholic and Protestant apologists. There was a thriving book trade. Persons
was probably the most important Catholic polemicist of the mid- to later
Elizabethan period and altered copies of his works became standard aspects
of English Protestant reading. Later, authors in the 18th century tried
to collate material on the Catholic past kept by families and religious
orders. Bishop Richard
Challoner (1691-1781) was one of the leading figures of in this movement.
His work Memoirs of Missionary Priests is based on primary sources
and was the first to provide an account of the martyrs from 1577 to 1681.