ENGLISH SPEAKING SAINTS DECEMBER 1
St. Edmund Campion. Edmund was born in London, the son of a bookseller. He was raised a Catholic,given a scholarship to St. John's College, Oxford, when fifteen, and became a fellow when only seventeen. His brilliance attracted the attention of such leading personages as the Earl of Leicester, Robert Cecil, and even Queen Elizabeth. He took the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging Elizabeth head of the church in England and became an Anglican deacon in 1564. Doubts about Protestantism increasingly beset him, and in 1569 he went to Ireland where further study convinced him he had been in error, and he returned to Catholicism. Forced to flee the persecution unleashed on Catholics by the
excommunication of Elizabeth by Pope Pius V, he went to Douai, France, where he studied theology, joined the Jesuits, and then went to Brno, Bohemia, the following year for his novitiate. He taught at the college of Prague and in 1578 was ordained there. He and Father Robert Persons were the first Jesuits
chosen for the English mission and were sent to England in 1580. His activities among the Catholics, the distribution of his rations at the University Church in Oxford, and the premature publication of his famous Brag (which he had written to present his case if he was captured) made him the object of one of the most intensive manhunts in English history. He was betrayed at Lyford, near Oxford, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and when he refused to apostatize when offered rich inducements to do so, was tortured and then hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on December 1 on the technical charge of treason, but in reality because of his priesthood. He was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the forty English and Welsh Martyrs.
Bl. Alexander Briant, 1581 A.D. Missionary and martyr, one of the English priests slain in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Alexander was born in Somerset, England, circa 1556 , and entered Oxford University at a young age. He was called "the beautiful Oxford youth" because of his handsome appearance and
the radiance of his holiness. Alexander converted to Catholicism at Oxford and met Richard Holtby, following Holtby to the English seminary college at Reims, France. He was ordained a priest there on March 29, 1578. Returning to England, Alexander worked in Somerset and was caught up in a search by
British authorities in April 1581. Taken to the Tower of London, he was subjected to inhuman tortures but did not reveal the names of other priests. He also wrote to the Jesuit Fathers, asking permission to join. He was accepted. In November 1581, he was condemned to death by an English court. Again Alexander suffered hideous tortures and died on December 1, 1581, at the age of twenty-five.
Bl. John Beche, 1539 A.D Martyr of England and a friend of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. John was abbot of Coichester Abbey. Benedictine, he received a doctorate from Oxford in 1515. He took the Oath of Supremacy in 1534, but then saw his own abbey being plundered. The deaths of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More horrified him as well. When he refuted King Henry VIII’s right to suppress the English monasteries, he was arrested for treason and hanged, drawn, and quartered at Colchester. John was beatified in 1895.
Bl. Richard Langley, 1586 A.D. English martyr. A member of the gentry, he was born at Grimthorpe, where he had extensive estates, as he did in Riding. He was arrested for giving shelter to Catholic priests and hanged, drawn, and quartered at York on December 1. He was beatified in 1929.
St. Grwst, 7th century. A Welsh saint honored at Llanrwst, Clwyd, Wales.
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