December 1 - Saint Edmund Campion

Quick Facts

• Son of a Catholic bookseller named Edmund whose family converted to Anglicanism.
• The boy planned to enter his father's trade, but earned a scholarship to Saint John’s College, Oxford under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I's court favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
• Sought after speaker.
• Queen Elizabeth offered him a deaconate in the Church of England.He declined the offer, fled to the continent, and joined the Jesuits.
• Ordained in 1578.
• He spent some time working in Bohemia, then returned to London as part of a Jesuit mission, crossing the Channel disguised as a jewel merchant, and worked with Jesuit brother Saint Nicholas Owen.
• There he wrote a description of his new mission in which he explained his work was religious, not political; it became known as Campion’s Brag.
• Widely distributed, it encouraged many Catholics to remain loyal to their faith.
• It also led to Edmund's arrest, imprisonment and torture in the Tower of London, and martyrdom.