Appeared in Spring 2004, Vol. XXIX, No. 1 Download PDF here
The sixteenth-century English poet and martyr St. Robert Southwell produced writings which emanate from a vision which unites biblical, patristic, medieval, and Jesuit traditions into one interdependent whole. Southwell wrote during an age of intense political division and religious controversy, and his poetry and prose distinguish themselves as confidently rooted in an unbroken tradition going back to the primitive Church. From his deep personal commitment to his vocation in the Society of Jesus (as revealed in his early Spiritual Exercises and Devotions, 1578-86), to his affirmations of his vision in his “Letter to Sir Robert Cecil” (April 6, 1593, his last writing, sent from the Tower), and his final statements prior to his martyrdom at Tyburn in 1595, Southwell consistently reveals himself as a man and writer of unified vision. His vision is both universal and particular, and his writings present a man utterly committed to the Catholic Church as well as to his own English nation; his prose works in particular, though shamefully neglected by English scholars, disclose his Catholic understanding of God, man, and history.
Although fine studies have noted various significant features of St. Robert Southwell’s biography, it is fair to say that his full educational context, and its implications for the study of his writings, have not received the attention they deserve. I hope to present here a fuller picture of Southwell’s educational background in the hopes of illuminating certain resonances and influences in the saint’s diverse writings. For example, scholars have frequently concluded that there is no convincing evidence that Southwell translated Diego de Estella’s Hundred Meditations on the Love of God. This skepticism, I suggest, is based upon too strict a notion of influence: namely, an evident concrete borrowing of materials. Southwell’s writings, I would argue, will be much more accurately appreciated if readers are sensitive to resonances within the fuller context of his educational background. This is important, because if we begin to doubt Southwell’s reading of Estella because we haven’t discovered “proof” in the scientific sense of the word, for instance, then how will we deal with something like the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas on Southwell? As the following pages make clear, Southwell’s educational years were literally permeated with the thought of Aquinas, and yet combing Southwell’s writings will reveal very little concrete evidence of this fact. To deny the influence of St. Thomas upon Southwell’s writings is simply incredible once we are made aware of Southwell’s educational formation. Similarly, the profound Ignatian influence of teachers like St. Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Suarez on Southwell’s formation has vast implications for his writings, as do the echoes from the spiritual meditations of the Franciscan Diego de Estella. In what follows, I will outline Southwell’s educational context in a manner which, I hope, will illuminate areas of indebtedness and influence.
Robert Southwell’s earliest biographer, the Spanish Catholic Diego de Yepes, whose account is virtually contemporary and is based upon documents obtained from England (his Spanish frequently betrays idioms that, according to Pierre Janelle, “point to an English original”), published his Historia particular de la persecucion de Inglaterre at Madrid in 1599, four years after Southwell’s martyrdom.6 Historically, Yepe’s biography has been followed by a variety of others: Alegambe, More, Tanner, Foley, Thurston, Grosart, Hood, Janelle, Devlin, and Brown have all devoted their energies to Southwell’s biography over the ensuing centuries.7 Nancy Pollard Brown’s biographical summary is particularly succinct and clear:
Robert Southwell, born in 1561, was the youngest son of Richard Southwell of Horsham St. Faith’s, Norfolk, and grandson of Sir Richard Southwell, commissioner for the suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII and a powerful figure at court through the successive reigns until his death in 1564. His mother was Bridget, daughter of Sir Roger Copley of Roughway, or Roughey, Sussex. Robert was brought up a Catholic, and in 1576 he was sent to the Jesuit school at Douai, where he was boarded at the English College. He spent a short time in Paris during the political unrest in the Low Countries in 1577, returned briefly to Douai, and then entered the Jesuit novitiate at Rome on October 17, 1578. He took his vows two years later, remaining in Rome to continue his studies for the priesthood. In 1581 he was transferred to the English College, where he acted as tutor in philosophy and later as prefect of studies and prefect of the Sodality of the blessed Virgin until he left for the English mission in the spring of 1586. He landed on the coast of Kent on July 7 (according to the English calendar, or Old Style) and made his way to London where he spent most of his six years of service on the mission. He was arrested in the early morning of June 26, 1592, and after being confined in Topcliffe’s house for two days, he was transferred first to the Gatehouse Prison and then, a month later, to the Tower from which he was taken to Newgate Prison a few days before his trial in February 1595. Arraigned before the Court of the Queen’s Bench for treason under the act of 1585, he was found guilty and executed the following day, February 21, at Tyburn. He was beatified in 1929 and canonized in 1970.8
Brown describes Southwell’s silent endurance of Topcliffe’s repeated tortures (which were of the most sadistic nature), and Southwell’s imprisonment, which was characterized by harshness but which he endured in peace.9 To this basic account of Southwell’s life, we can add extensive knowledge about his specific educational formation.
While studying for the priesthood in Rome (1578 – 86), Southwell proved himself not only a diligent student of the Church Fathers, but also a brilliant student of philosophy.10 That he had superb teachers in St. Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Suarez is of vital importance. both of these famous Jesuit educators taught at the Roman College during Southwell’s period of education – Bellarmine in the “chair of controversial theology”11 and Suarez in the “chair of theology,”12 – and inevitably their Thomistic views influenced Southwell deeply. Interestingly, we can even trace the influence of Bellarmine upon Southwell back to his period of study in Douay. As Christopher Devlin has shown, Southwell arrived at the English College in Douay on June 10, 1576, and boarded there (while he attended lectures at the Jesuit “Anchin College”)13 until November 1576.14 Because of social unrest, William Cardinal Allen transferred many of his students (including Southwell) to Paris, and there Southwell studied at the Jesuit College of Clermont from November 1576 through June 1577. According to the Douay Diary, Southwell returned to the English College in Douay on June 15, 1577. Though the “arrangement for Robert was that he should have board and lodging at the English College, and attend classes at the neighbouring Jesuit school,”15 he certainly would have been enthusiastically present at the morning dictations of Bellarmine’s lecture notes on St. Thomas Aquinas.16 morning classes at the Jesuit school “were from eight till ten-thirty followed by High Mass,”17 and Southwell would at least have attended the first of the two morning dictations, perhaps both. Regarding Bellarmine’s Thomism, James Brodrick writes:
At the outset of his lectures on the blessed Trinity Robert [Bellarmine] made public profession of his faith in the Summa Theologica of St Thomas…Four manuscript volumes of…[Bellarmine’s] lecture notes are preserved in the archives of the Society of Jesus…He follows St Thomas question by question, explaining, developing, supplementing him all the time…His lectures struck a fresh and inspiring note which won him some fame even beyond the frontiers of Belgium. At the English College in Douay the authorities were so impressed by the reports which reached them that they procured a copy of the lecture notes and had them dictated to their students. The second diary of the College, under date march, 1577, has the following entry: “Dr Allen, the President, gave instructions for Dr Wright to dictate to us at six o’clock in the morning after Mass, and Dr Bristow at eight o’clock, the learned, concise, and easily intelligible commentaries on the prima secundae and secunda secundae of St Thomas, which the Reverend Father Robert of Italy delivered not long since in Louvain.”18
Clearly, Southwell encountered Bellarmine’s influence early and primarily through his Thomistic lecture notes. This preliminary influence was to be followed by personal instruction in Rome.
Pope Gregory XIII asked Bellarmine “to teach theology to [the] English…missionary students in the Roman College.”19 And as Bellarmine notes in the preface to volume one of his Controversies (1586):
When Pope Gregory XIII, of blessed memory, in his zeal to assist Germany and England established two great colleges for the young men of those countries, I was appointed to teach them controversial theology in our schools, and thus, as it were, to arm these new soldiers of the Church for the war with the powers of darkness which they should have to wage when they returned home.20
Robert Bellarmine’s effectiveness as an educator and author is evident from the fact that his Controversies, a three-volume work, which according to J. Friske, “put order into the chaotic argumentation of attack and defense waged between Reformers and Catholics,” was “so effective a weapon against reform theology that special chairs of learning were erected just to combat …[its] influence.”21 Volume One appeared in 1586, Two in 1588, and Three in 1593.22 Significantly, as we shall later see in our discussion of Franciscan influences, “Bellarmine taught theology from the Summa…practised self-sacrifice, poverty, disinterestedness and devotion to duty…[and] fostered a special devotion to St. Francis of Assisi.”23
The impact of Bellarmine in the England Southwell was to return to in 1586 is evident from William Whitaker’s dedicatory epistle to his Disputation on Holy Scripture Against the Papists Especially Bellarmine and Stapleton (1588). Whitaker writes:
There have been many heretofore, illustrious Cecil, who have defended the papal interest and sovereignty with the utmost exertion, the keenest zeal, and no mean or vulgar erudition…amongst these locusts – that is, as very learned men justly deem, amongst the innumerable troops of monks – none, as we before said, have ever appeared more keen or better prepared and equipped for doing mischief than are the Jesuits at this present day; who in a short space have surpassed all other societies of that kind in numbers, in credit, and in audacity…amongst these Jesuits, Robert Bellarmine, a native of Italy, hath now for several years obtained a great and celebrated name…when you…demanded my opinion of the writer, I answered…that I deemed him to be a man unquestionably learned, possessed of a happy genius, a penetrating judgment, and multifarious reading…Now that Bellarmine hath been published, we shall know better and more certainly what it is [our adversaries] hold upon every subject, the arguments on which they specially rely, and what is…the very marrow of popery…I thought it worth my while to handle these same controversies…[and] to discuss the new sophisms of the Jesuits and [so] vindictive our unadulterated truth from the captious cavils with which the popish professor hath entangled it.24
The clash of Christian perspectives here is painfully evident. Bellarmine’s own opinion and treatment of Whitaker is recorded by Lupton in his History of the Modern Protestant Divines, in a passage cited by Brodrick:
I have heard it confessed of English Papists themselves which have been in Italy with Bellarmine, that he procured the true portraiture or effigies of this Whitaker to be brought to him, which he kept in his study. For he privately admired this man for his singular learning and ingenuity; and on being asked…why he would have the picture of that heretic in his presence, he would answer: …that although he was a heretic and his adversary, yet he was a learned adversary.25
This brilliant anecdote illustrates the learned saint’s respect even in times of bitter theological warfare, a warfare which was to cost Southwell and other fellow Jesuits their lives. When Southwell wrote his final letter from the Continent to John deckers on July 15, 1586, on the eve of his sailing for England, he clearly defined himself as one of Bellarmine’s “new soldiers of the Church”: his allegiance is the same, as are his adversaries. Historically, Southwell’s letter is especially valuable because it closes his preparatory period, and marks the beginning of his English mission work with an intense martyrological tone:
Faced with the last encounter, from death’s anteroom I write to you, my father, for the help of those same prayers of yours that once awakened life in me when I was dead in spirit: pray now about my body’s death, that either I may usefully escape it, or manfully endure. It is true I am being sent “amongst wolves,” and likely enough “to be led to the slaughter,” – I only wish it were “as a lamb” – for His Name’s sake who sends me… [L]ions, as well as wolves, go prowling in search of whom they may devour. But I welcome, more than fear, their fangs. Rather than shrink from them as torturers, I call to them to bring my crown…[If] I reach, God willing, the lowest rank of happy martyrs, I will not be unmindful of those who have remembered me. My helpers will not find I am less pleasing in heaven, I, who on earth would do anything to please them. Plead, then, for me…that I who play His [Christ’s] part may so sustain it…and throw away my life-blood, if I must, with fortitude and faith.26
Southwell was about to step upon his native English soil as a spiritual soldier personally trained by Bellarmine. He was also, however, about to bring with him the influence of Francisco Suarez.
Francisco Suarez was born in Granada, Spain, on January 5, 1548.27 His religious vocation was discernible early, and in “1561…[he] was sent to the University of Salamanca to study canon law…In 1566 he began his theological studies.” The prima professorship in theology at Salamanca was held (1564-1576) by the Dominican Juan Mancio. mancio, a pupil of Vittoria,28 “was able to im- press Suarez with the rst achievements of the Thomistic revival begun by the Dominicans…Suarez’s studies at Salamanca ended in 1570.”29 He had entered the Society of Jesus in 1564, and was ordained in 1572.30 after teaching philosophy at Avila, Segovia, and Valladolid, he taught from 1580-85 at the Roman College.31
That Suarez was to become an important published writer is chronologically significant to his relationship with Southwell. For just as Bellarmine first influenced Southwell through his dictated lecture notes on the Summa, so Suarez’s influence was to be based on his own Thomistic lectures. Suarez, though he began teaching in 1570, did not publish a work until 1590 – five years after he had left the Roman College, and four years after Southwell’s arrival in England. This first publication, De Verbo Incarnato, [was] a commentary on the third part of the Summa.”32 In fact, most of his early publications were commentaries on aquinas.33 This is not surprising given that “when St. Ignatius launched his new society [in 1540]…[his] decision was for Aristotle as the guide in philosophy and St. Thomas Aquinas in theology.”34 Suarez’s Thomistic lectures have not survived, unlike those of Bellarmine, but his publications reveal a method analogous to Bellarmine’s. For example, like Bellarmine in his Controversies, Suarez displays in his Metaphysical Disputations (1597) a “painstaking statement of the views held by others on every problem he treats,” and his method thus “has the wonderful advantage of setting his own views clearly in the perspective of his time.”35
His own views were consistently Thomistic, and Southwell absorbed them. As Clare C. Riedl points out,
When Suarez completed his studies in 1570, he was set the task of conducting a review of theology for those who like him had finished their course. At this time he also reviewed metaphysics and started the work which was to be published, only after many years had elapsed, as Disputationes Metaphysicae. In the preface of this work he states that he had commenced it as a young man and although he did not give it its final form until many years later, his opinions on most questions had remained the same.36
By Suarez’s own account, we can be certain that Southwell was taught essentially the same Thomistic vision which Suarez held in later life, a vision articulated in his published works.
The profound unity of vision which we see disclosed in Southwell’s prose bears the unmistakable stamp of his Jesuit education under both Bellarmine and Suarez. That these men were convincing Thomists is further evidenced by Southwell’s former educator at Douay, Leonard Lessius, whose sudden shift of pedagogical allegiance to Thomism occurred during his advanced studies in philosophy and theology at Rome under Bellarmine and Suarez from1582-84.37 When Lessius (himself a famous Belgian scholar) returned to teach theology at the University of Louvain, “he shocked some of the older professors by substituting in his classes the Summa of St. Thomas for the customary [Sententiae] of Peter Lombard.”38 It is important to remember that Thomas Aquinas was but one of many theologians studied and taught during the sixteenth century, and that his preferment and centrality only became a reality during the Spanish revival of scholasticism and the official formation of the Jesuits in 1540. Within this historical context, Bellarmine and Suarez were Jesuits committed to Thomistic studies; they attracted students from all over Europe, and their influence upon those under their instruction was felt deeply.
During Southwell’s years at the Roman College, the Thomistic in uences of Bellarmine and Suarez were supplemented with Jesuit theories of art. As Pierre Janelle notes in Robert Southwell the Writer, the ideas of Bencius, Muretus, Possevinus, and Pontanus were all in circulation during Southwell’s educational period in Rome. These critics, Janelle writes, agree on one all-important point:
[a]rtistic beauty in general, is not an end in itself. Its position is subordinate. Indeed it may give pleasure, but that pleasure is not to be cultivated or enjoyed for its own sake; it is only legitimate in so far as it is made to serve the cause of virtue or religion, to concur in the greater glory of God.39
We see this didactic vision expressed in Southwell’s prefaces. In his letter to “his loving Cosen” which prefaces his poems, Southwell writes:
Poets by abusing their talent, and making the follies and fayninges of love, the customary subject of their base endevours, have so discredited this facultie, that a Poet, a Lover, and a Liar, are by many reckoned but three wordes of one signification. But the vanity of men, cannot counterpoyse the authority of God, who delivering many partes of Scripture in verse, and by his apostle willing us to exercise our devotion in Himnes and spirituall Sonnets, warranteth the arte to bee good, and the use allowable…. and because the best course to let them [misguided poets] see the errour of their workes, is to weave a new webbe in their own loome; I have heere layd a few course threds together, to invite some skillfuller wits to goe forward in the same, or to begin some finer peece, wherein it may be seene, how well verse and vertue sute together.40
In the dedication to Marie Magdalens Funeral Teares, “To the worshipfull and vertuous Gentlewoman, Mistres D. D.,” we see the same didactic concern:
For as passion, and especially this of loue, is in these daies the chiefe commaunder of moste mens actions, and the Idol to which both tongues and pennes doe sacrifice their ill bestowed labours: so is there nothing nowe more needefull to be intreated, then how to direct these humors vnto their due courses, and to draw this floud of affections into the righte chanel. Passions I allow, and loues I approue, onely I would wishe that men would alter their obiect and better their intent.41
The didactic function of art expressed in these excerpts is indicative of the pragmatic nature of Southwell’s Jesuit training in general. Every aspect of his education was directed towards the practical ends of his order. In his education, Thomism (through Bellarmine and Suarez) was integrated with Jesuit conceptions of art, and this within the broader parameters of his Jesuit spirituality.
To understand the overall complexity of Southwell’s education, it must be borne in mind that St. Ignatius himself drew together various in uences in the formation of the Society of Jesus, especially those of the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas, the Benedictine Garcia de Cisneros, and the Carthusian Ludolph.42 St. Ignatius, it is true, did something new with his influences in integrating them within a militarized spiritual context, emphasizing the notion of preparation for spiritual battle in the arena of the active life, but he did not originate an especially distinct spiritual method or view as such. Similarly, we see the Jesuit order’s educational system as eclectic and vibrant, while organized around pragmatic goals. There is nothing insular about Ignatian spirituality. For example, following the Spanish Franciscan revival of interest in St. Thomas aquinas, Ignatius accepts and implements their consensus regarding St. Thomas’ preeminent status: Thomas’ Summa Theologica is preferred over the traditional Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1095 – c. 1160). That this shift from Lombard to Aquinas, a Dominican (a shift which did not imply a rejection in any sense), was the culmination of a Franciscan revival, and was incorporated by Ignatius into the foundation of his Jesuit system of education, the Ratio Studorium,43 exemplifies the error in insular conceptions of Jesuit spirituality – conceptions which assume, for instance, that Southwell would not have been attracted to texts such as Diego de Estella’s Meditations. Robert Southwell was familiar with the various strands which together comprised the fabric of his order, and so passages, for example, from his Spiritual Exercises and Devotions, which seem to emphasize a sense of insularity, must be understood within the context of a Jesuit framework comprised of various influences. Southwell’s statement, for example, in section 69 of his Devotions, must be read in this light:
I have made the rm and inviolable resolution, in the sight of God and of all creatures, that it is ab- solutely the best, the most necessary, the most suit- able thing for me, to live and to die, for the praise and glory of God, in no other state that exists or might exist, but only in the Society of Jesus.44
The Society embraced and was founded upon various influences, but was guided – as a new militant and highly focused order – by clearly delineated pragmatic goals, rooted in the systematic educational program of the Ratio Studorium.
The unity of the Society within this diversity of in uences can be seen in Ignatius’ incorporation of ideas relevant to his historical period and mission. We see this expressed in Southwell’s “Fourth Foundation” (in Devotions), where he writes: “I am utterly determined … to embrace with the greatest joy and alacrity all the means which are customarily employed in the Society of Jesus; but whatever other means there may be, even though they appear most excellent, if they are not used in the Society, I will reject them as alien to its spirit and foreign to my vocation.”45 Herewe see not insularity as such, but rather a selectivity borne of a desire for spiritual effectiveness. The Jesuits in general, and Jesuit educators specifically, such as Robert Bellarmine, were dedicated to Thomism (with its dominican heritage), great admirers of St. Francis of Assisi, and advocates of whatever writers were valuable to their work at hand. E. Allison Peers shows, for example, that St. Ignatius himself was deeply in uenced by the Spanish Benedictine, Garcia de Cisneros, whose “Exercises, written in Spanish and afterwards translated into Latin, were completed in 1500.”46 Ignatius “certainly knew [of Cisneros’ Exercises], and almost certainly used [them in writing his own].”47 Similarly, the meditative method Ignatius outlines in his own Exercises certainly has its origins in “the Life of Christ of Ludolph the Carthusian, which there is no doubt that St. Ignatius studied and used.”48 The influences upon Ignatius were thus diverse; this diversity infused the Society, and it is unhistorical indeed to presuppose that Southwell would have had any conditioned aversion to writers from other religious orders. This is especially true of Franciscan writers such as Diego de Estella, given Southwell’s student relationship to Bellarmine, a man deeply appreciative of St. Francis of Assisi and Franciscan ideals.
Within the context sketched thus far, it is also vital to remember that Southwell was deeply attracted to the ideal of martyrdom. Highly conscious of the example of the martyrs, spanning from St. Stephen to Southwell’s contemporary Edmund Campion (who was martyred at Tyburn on December 1, 1581).49 Southwell hungered to place himself humbly within their ranks. And it is significant that in Rome Southwell began (“after January 1st, 1585”) his translation of Diego de Estella’s Hundred Meditations on the Love of God.50 For as Janelle notes,
Estella desires union with the Godhead, to the extent of suffering any hardships to obtain it, of sacrificing his life, and even of renouncing his free will, rather than suffering the slightest decrease of the heavenly love in his breast.51
Southwell’s own writings are permeated with this desire for union obtained through sacrifice and suffering.
Estella’s potential influence upon Southwell’s martyrological ideal is important and should be explored. “The family name of Diego de Estella was Diego de San Cristobel,” the name Estella being derived from the small town in which he was born in 1524.52 His father, Diego de San Cristobal Ballesteros y Equia (who was related to Francis Xavier), sent Diego as a young man to the French University of Toulouse, but “he returned to Spain [because]…of the Franco-Spanish wars, and entered the University of Salamanca.”53 Historically, Estella’s educational period at Salamanca is without documentation; we first hear of him again as a friar minor in a document dated 1550.54 Then, as E. Allison Peers notes,
[i]n or about the year 1552, Fray Diego accompanied Philip II’s favourite, Ruy Gomez de Silva, on a journey to Lisbon…[where] he remained for some time, writing and publishing there in 1554 his first book, a Life of Saint John the Evangelist, composed ‘in a short time and amid many other occupations’and dedicated to the Queen of Portugal.55
There is a lacuna that follows, and all we know is that Estella was back in Toledo, Spain, in January 1561, for the publication of his extremely popular Book of the Vanity of the World.56 During Southwell’s lifetime, this text was published in English translation under the titles The contempte of the world and the vanitie thereof, and A Methode unto mortification: called heretofore the contempt of the world and the vanitie thereof, in 1584 and 1586 respectively.57 The Vanity of the World (1561) went through numerous editions and underwent extensive translations during Estella’s lifetime.58 It is possible that Southwell knew of it.
Estella followed this text with a commentary on the Gospel of Luke and a technical treatise on the art of preaching.59 This period of publishing activity culminated with the publication, in 1576, of his Devout Meditations on the Love of God. This work was produced at the height of his popularity as a preacher, for it is certain that during the years 1574-75 Estella had returned from his lectureship in Madrid, to reside in “the same Convent of St. Frances where he had entered the Order” in Salamanca.60 Here, in 1574, he was made “one of the official preachers of the province.”61 Of particular note, Peers writes that “On Michaelmas Day, 1573, he had preached, by the request of St. Theresa, on the occasion of the founding of the second Carmelite convent in Salamanca, and in a contemporary document is described as being ‘one of the most famous preachers we have here.”62 This important event marks a high point in Estella’s career, and his Meditations were completed soon after it – according to Peers, “as early as the summer of 1574, since the royal privilege of a ten years’ copyright for the author is dated August 27 of that year.”63 Meditations appeared in three more editions (following the original in 1576) in Salamanca, Lisbon and Barcelona, together in 1578.64 Estella, then in failing health, died at the age of fifty-four on August 1, 1578. Aside from these basic facts of Estella’s biography, as Peers notes, “until three years before his death, his biography is all but impossible to write for lack of information.65 Within the context of a similar lack of information regarding Southwell, there is no documentary proof that he read any of Estella’s works other than the Meditations (which he translated into English). Throughout the Meditations resounds the intense martyrological tone we hear in Southwell’s own writings. And a careful examination of Estella’s Meditations allows a strong case to be made for his influence upon Southwell’s personal spiritual intensity. As is evident from the preceding pages, the complexity of Southwell’s biographical context, purely from the standpoint of discernable influence, is obvious; each of the formative educational and spiritual influences in his life (not excluding, of course, textual influences) are themselves the combined product of a complex synthesis of sources. Southwell’s writings, as Jesuit writings, portray this same complex synthesis of influences. However, the spiritual dimension which presents itself repeatedly through and within his synthesis is the ideal of Christian martyrdom, an ideal which serves as the enduring theme in Southwell’s writing.
Notes
1 Robert Southwell, Spiritual Exercises and Devotions of Blessed Robert Southwell, S. ,7., ed. J. M. de Buck, trans. PE. Hallett (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1931).
2 Robert Southwell, Two Letters and Short Rules of a Good Life, ed. Nancy Pollard Brown (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973).
3 Christopher Devlin, The Life of Robert Southwell: Poet and Martyr (London: Longmans, Green, 1956), 305-24.
4 Southwell, Two Letters, ed. Brown, 18.
5 Pierre Janelle, Robert Southwell the Writer (London: Sheed and Ward, 1935, repr. Mamaroneck, NY: Paul P Appel, 1971), 87.
6 Ibid, 6, 21, 32, 54, 71, 85.
7 See Blessed Robert Southwell, S. J., Spiritual Exercises and Devotions of Blessed Robert Southwell, S.J, ed. J. M. de Buck, S. J., trans. Mgr. P E. Hallett (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1931), 1, n. 1, regarding bibliographical information on Southwell’s biographers up to 1931. Also see Pierre Janelle, Robert Southwell the Writer (London: Sheed and Ward, 1935; repr., Mamaroneck, N. Y: Paul P Appel,1971); Christopher Devlin, The Life of Robert Southwell: Poet and Martyr (London: Longmans, Green, 1956); Robert Southwell, S. J. The Poems of Robert Southwell, S.J., ed. James H. McDonald and Nancy Pollard Brown (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); Robert Southwell, S. J., Two Letters and Short Rules of a Good Life, ed. Nancy Pollard Brown (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1973). For other biographical studies see Vittorio F Cavalli, “Saint Robert Southwell, S. J.: A Selective Bibliographical Supplement to the Studies of Pierre Janelle and James H. McDonald,” Recusant History, Vol. 21, No. 3, (May 1993), 297 – 304.
8 Two Letters, xi.
9 Ibid., xi-xx.
10 Devlin, Life, 46.
11 James Brodrick, S.J., Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar (London: Burns & Oates, 1961), 52.
12 Riejo Wilenius, The Social and Political Theory of Francisco Suarez (Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica, 1963), 19.
13 Janelle, Southwell, 7.
14 Devlin, Life, 23 – 26.
15 Ibid., 23.
16 For details regarding these notes, see John O. Riedl, “Bellarmine and the Dignity of Man,” 199, in, Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance, ed. Gerard Smith, S.J. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1939), 193-226.
17 Devlin, Life, 26.
18 Brodrick, Bellarmine, 28-29.
19 J. Friske, “St. Robert Bellarmine,” in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2, 1967, 250.
20 Brodrick, Bellarmine, 56. Brodrick writes: “The first volume of the Controversies was issued in 1586 from the press of David Sartorius of Ingolstadt, and bore diplomas from Pope Sixtus V, the Emperor Rudolph II, and the Republic of Venice…. Seven treatises were contained in the huge folio, on Scripture and Tradition; on Christ the Head of the entire Church; on the Pope the head of the Church on earth; on the members of the Church militant, clergy, religious, and laymen; on the Church suffering in Purgatory; and on the Church triumphant in Heaven” (62).
21 Friske, 251.
22 Robert Bellarmine, Robert Bellarmine: Spiritual Writings, trans. and ed. John Patrick Donnelly, S. J., and Roland J. Teske, S. J.; introd. Donnelly; pref. John O’Malley, S. J. (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1989),14.
23 Friske, 252.
24 Brodrick, Bellarmine, 67-68.
25 Ibid., 84.
26 Devlin, Life, 99- 100.
27 Francis Suarez, On Formal and Universal Unity (De Unitate Formali et Universali), trans. and introd. J. F Ross (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1964), 1.
28 Francisco de Vittoria, O. P(1483/6-1546), was called the “Christian Socrates,” and is considered the wellspring of “The Spanish Revival of Scholasticism.” See pp. 204-10 in Riedl’s essay, where he presents an extremely useful chart of teachers and students during his discussion.
29 Wilenius, Suarez, l8 – 19.
30 J. Dalmau, “Francisco Suarez,” in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13, 1967, 751.
31 Ibid.
32 Suarez, Unity, ed. Ross, 1- 3.
33 Wilenius, Suarez, 19 – 20.
34 Clare C. Riedl, A. M., “Suarez and the Organization of Learning,” in Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance, 13. The reference given by C. C. Riedl is to the Constitutiones Societatis, Jesus, IV, c. XIV, nn. 1 and 3.
35 Suarez, Unity, ed. Ross, 3.
36 C. C. Riedl, 6 – 7.
37 For a succinct biography of Leonard Lessius, S. J., see “Leonard Lessius,” by Cecil H. Chamberlain, S.J., in Jesuit Thinkers, 133 – 55.
38 C. Meyer, “Leonard Lessius,” in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, 1967, 678.
39 Janelle, Southwell, 118- 119.
40 Southwell, Poems (1967), 1.
41 Robert Southwell, “Robert Southwell’s Marie Magdalens Funeral Teares: An Edition,” ed. Richard John Gappa (Ph.D. diss., St. Louis University, 1968), 2, 1.15 – 3, 1.7.
42 E. Allison Peers, Studies of the Spanish Mystics 2nd ed., vol. 1 (London: S. P C. K., 1951), 8-10; plus see Alexandre Brou, S. J., Ignatian Methods of Prayer (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1949), 134 – 35 regarding Ludolph.
43 The complete Latin title is the Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Jesu
44 Robert Southwell, Spiritual Exercises and Devotions of Blessed Robert Southwell, S.J., ed. J. M. de Buck, trans. PE. Hallett (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1931), 115.
45 Southwell, Devotions, 34.
46 Peers, Mystics, vol. 1, 9. 47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Southwell, Devotions, 34.
50 Janelle, Southwell, 15 5. 51 Ibid., 111- 112.
52 E. Allison Peers, Studies of the Spanish Mystics, vol. 2 (London: S.PGK., 1960), 221.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 222.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 439-40, #1599, #1601. 58 Ibid., 222.
59 Ibid., 222 – 223.
60 Ibid., 223.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., 223 – 24.
64 Ibid., 224.
65 Ibid., 226.