Robert Southwell

Robert Southwell, SJ (c. 1561 – 21 February 1595), also Saint Robert Southwell, was an English Catholic priest of the Jesuit Order. He was also an author of Christian poetry in Elizabethan English, and a clandestine missionary in Elizabethan England.

After being arrested and imprisoned in 1592, and intermittently tortured and questioned by priest hunter Sir Richard Topcliffe, Southwell was eventually tried and convicted of high treason against Queen Elizabeth I, but in reality for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, renounce his belief in the independence of the English Church from control by the State, and similarly repudiate the authority of the Holy See. On 21 February 1595, Southwell was hanged at Tyburn. In 1970, he was canonised by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Early life in England He was born at Horsham St Faith, Norfolk, England. Southwell, the youngest of eight children, was brought up in a family of the Norfolk gentry. Despite their Catholic sympathies, the Southwells had profited considerably from King Henry VIII's Suppression of the Monasteries. Robert was the third son of Richard Southwell of Horsham St. Faith's, Norfolk, by his first wife, Bridget, daughter of Sir Roger Copley of Roughway, Sussex. The hymnodist's maternal grandmother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Shelley; Sir Richard Southwell was his paternal grandfather, but his father was born out of wedlock.

Enters the Society of Jesus In 1576, he was sent to the English college at Douai, boarding there but studying at the Jesuit College of Anchin, a French college associated, like the English College, with the university of Douai. He studied briefly under Leonard Lessius. He returned to Douai on 15 June 1577. A year later he set off on foot to Rome with the intention of joining the Society of Jesus. A two-year novitiate at Tournai was required before joining the Society, however, and initially he was denied entry. He appealed the decision by sending a heartfelt, emotional letter to the school. He bemoans the situation, writing, "How can I but wast in anguish and agony that find myself disjoined from that company, severed from that Society, disunited from that body wherein lyeth all my life my love my whole hart and affection" (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Anglia 14, fol. 80, under date 1578).

On the English mission In 1586 Southwell, at his own request, was sent to England as a Jesuit missionary with Henry Garnet. He went from one Catholic family to another. The Jesuit William Weston had previously made his way to England, but he was arrested and sent to Wisbech Castle in 1587. the first such mission was that of Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion of 1580–1581.

A spy reported to Sir Francis Walsingham the Jesuits' landing on the east coast in July, but they arrived without molestation at the house at Hackney of William Vaux, 3rd Baron Vaux of Harrowden. In 1588 Southwell and Garnet were joined by John Gerard and Edward Oldcorne. Southwell was from the outset closely watched; he mixed furtively in Protestant society under the assumed name of Cotton. He studied the terms of sport, and used them in conversation. For the most part residing in London, he made occasional excursions to Sussex and the North. Arundel had been confined to the Tower of London since 1585, but his execution was postponed, and he remained in prison till his death in 1595. Southwell took up his residence with the countess at Arundel House in The Strand, London. During 1591 he occupied most of his time in writing; although Southwell's name was not publicly associated with any of his works, his literary activity was suspected by the government.

Trial and execution

In 1595 the Privy Council passed a resolution for Southwell's prosecution on the charges of treason. He was removed from the Tower to Newgate Prison, where he was put into a hole called Limbo. As his severed head was displayed to the crowd, no one shouted the traditional "Traitor!".

Works and legacy Southwell addressed his Epistle of Comfort to Philip, Earl of Arundel. This and other of his religious tracts, A Short Rule of Good Life, Triumphs over Death, and a Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth, circulated in manuscript. Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears was openly published in 1591. It proved to be very popular, going through ten editions by 1636. Thomas Nashe's imitation of Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears in Christ's Tears over Jerusalem proves that the works received recognition outside of Catholic circles.

Much of Southwell's literary legacy rests on his considerable influence on other writers. There is evidence of Shakespeare's allusions to Southwell's work, particularly in The Merchant of Venice, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, and King Lear. Southwell's influence can be seen in the work of Donne, Herbert, Crashaw and Hopkins.

A memoir of Southwell was drawn up soon after his death. Much of the material was incorporated by Richard Challoner in his Memoirs of Missionary Priests (1741), and the manuscript is now in the Public Record Office in Brussels. See also Alexis Possoz, Vie du Pre R. Southwell (1866); and a life in Henry Foley's Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus: historic facts illustrative of the labours and sufferings of its members in the 16th and 17th centuries, 1877 (i. 301387). Foley's narrative includes copies of documents connected with his trial, and gives information on the original sources.

Southwell was beatified in 1929 and canonised by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales on 25 October 1970.

Southwell's poetry is largely addressed to an English Catholic community under siege in post-Reformation Elizabethan England. Southwell endeavoured to convince remaining English Catholics that religious persecution by the State represented an opportunity for spiritual growth. In his view, martyrdom was one of the most sincere forms of religious devotion. Southwell's poem "Life is but Losse" is an example of this concern. Throughout the seven stanzas, Southwell describes the martyrdom of English Catholics at the time, employing biblical figures of both Testaments (Samson and the Apostles). The poem's title forewarns the reader of the pessimistic tone Southwell uses to describe life, as in the line "Life is but losse, where death is deemed gaine." Being next to God is the perfect way to achieve spiritual bliss: "To him I live, for him I hope to dye" is Southwell's manner of informing the reader of the reason for his existence, which does not end with death.

Southwell's writing differs from that of the Neostoics of his time and the negative Stoic view of the passions in his belief in the creative value of passion. Some of Southwell's contemporaries were also defenders of passion, but he was very selective when it came to where passions were directed. He was quoted as saying, "Passions I allow, and loves I approve, only I would wish that men would alter their object and better their intent". He felt that he could use his writing to stir religious feelings, and it is this pattern in his writing that has caused scholars to declare him a leading Baroque writer.

Pierre Janelle published a study on Southwell in 1935 in which he recognized him as a pioneer Baroque figure, one of the first Baroque writers of the late 16th century and influential on numerous Baroque writers of the 17th century.

Ben Jonson remarked to Drummond of Hawthornden that "so he had written that piece of [Southwell's], 'The Burning Babe', he would have been content to destroy many of his." In fact, there is a strong case to be made for Southwell's influence on his contemporaries and successors, among them Drayton, Lodge, Nashe, Herbert, Crashaw, and especially William Shakespeare, who seems to have known his work, both poetry and prose, extremely well.

More recently, the posthumously published 1873 first edition of Southwell's literary translation into Elizabethan English of Fray Diego de Estella's Meditaciónes devotíssimas del amor de Dios ("A Hundred Meditations on the Love of God") helped inspire Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins to write the poem The Windhover.

Quotations "The Chief Justice asked how old he was, seeming to scorn his youth. He answered that he was near about the age of our Saviour, Who lived upon the earth thirty-three years; and he himself was as he thought near about thirty-four years. Hereat Topcliffe seemed to make great acclamation, saying that he compared himself to Christ. Father Southwell answered, 'No he was a humble worm created by Christ.' 'Yes,' said Topcliffe, 'you are Christ's fellow.'"—Father Henry Garnet, "Account of the Trial of Robert Southwell," quoted in Caraman's The Other Face, page 230. Southwell: I am decayed in memory with long and close imprisonment, and I have been tortured ten times. I had rather have endured ten executions. I speak not this for myself, but for others; that they may not be handled so inhumanely, to drive men to desperation, if it were possible.Topcliffe: If he were racked, let me die for it.Southwell: No; but it was as evil a torture, or late device.Topcliffe: I did but set him against a wall.Southwell: Thou art a bad man.Topcliffe: I would blow you all to dust if I could.Southwell: What, all?Topcliffe: Ay, all.Southwell: What, soul and body too? At his Trial "Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live" on the outside of The DeNaples Center at the Jesuit University of Scranton. Longer version: "Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; / Not where I love, but where I am, I die." "Hoist up saile while gale doth last, Tide and wind stay no man's pleasure."—from "St. Peter's Complaint. 1595" "May never was the month of love, For May is full of flowers; But rather April, wet by kind, For love is full of showers."—from "Love's Servile Lot" "My mind to me an empire is, While grace affordeth health."—from "Look Home" "O dying souls, behold your living spring; O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace; Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring; Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace. From death, from dark, from deafness, from despair: This life, this light, this Word, this joy repairs."—from "The Nativity of Christ" "A poet, a lover and a liar are by many reckoned but three words with one signification." – from "The author to his loving cousin," published with "St. Peter's Complaint." 1595.

Depictions in other media

Novels

Love is the Fire: Robert Southwell, Shakespeare's Cousin, Poet and Martyr by Wales based author Norma Procter (environmentalist) MBE is a historical fiction novel written in 20213 which follows Southwell's life and the lives of a family of Catholic recusants. The title is derived from Southwell’s own religious poetry, which frequently used the metaphor of burning fire to describe spiritual passion and devotion. Procter grew up in the Norfolk villages of St Faiths and Spixworth, and as a child would play in the gardens of the derelict Spixworth Hall, the marital home of Richard Southwell, Southwell's eldest brother.

The last four verses of "New Heaven, New Warre", were set to music in Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols (1942), beginning:

"This little babe so fewe daies olde, / Is come to rifle [rout and ransack] Satan's foulde; / All hell doth at His presence quake, / Though He Him self for cold do shake / For in this weake unarmed wise / The gates of hell He will surprise."