Augustine Baker

Augustine Baker (9 December 1575 – 9 August 1641), also sometimes known as Austin Baker, was a well-known Welsh Benedictine mystic and an ascetic writer. He was one of the earliest members of the English Benedictine Congregation, which was newly restored to England after the Reformation.

Early life Baker was born David Baker at Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales on 9 December 1575. His father was William Baker, steward to Baron Abergavenny, and his mother was a daughter of Lewis ap John (alias Wallis), a Welsh vicar of Abergavenny. His parents were "church papists", meaning that although outwardly they conformed to Anglican worship, they remained Catholic by conviction. His sister, Margaret, was fined for recusancy in 1608; she was the grandmother of the martyr David Lewis.

He was educated at Christ's Hospital and at Broadgate's Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford, afterwards becoming a member of Clifford's Inn, and later of the Middle Temple. In 1598 he was made Recorder of Abergavenny.

At Oxford he lost his faith in the existence of God, but after some years, his, to his mind, miraculous escape from a near fatal accident caused him to reconsider. He read widely the proscribed literature of the day, Anglican and Catholic. Following this, he was received into the Catholic Church.

Career In 1605 he joined the Benedictine Order at the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua, taking the religious name "Augustine", but ill health obliged him to postpone his religious profession, and he returned home to find his father on the point of death. Having reconciled him to the Catholic Church and assisted him in his last moments, Baker hastened to settle his own worldly affairs and to return to the cloister. He was professed by the Italian Fathers in England as a member of the Cassinese Congregation, but subsequently aggregated to the English Congregation. In 1633 he removed to St Gregory's at Douai, where he wrote his long treatise on the English mission. The English Benedictine Congregation investigated the use of Baker's ideas at the convent in Cambrai. Catherine Gascoigne, the abbess, and Gertrude More, the founder, stepped up in his defence and no further action was taken.

In 1638 he returned to the English mission, where he was frequently forced to change where he stayed in order to avoid the authorities who were on his track.

Writings ("Holy Wisdom", 1657) compiled and edited by Serenus Cressy