Saint robert southwell biography

St Robert Southwell was a Martyr of England.
Saint Robert Southwell (1561-1595), one of England's many poets but one of its most illustrious martyrs, was killed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
Robert Southwell, SJ (c.

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Venerable Robert Southwell

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Poet, Jesuit, martyr; born at Horsham St. Faith's, Norfolk, England, in 1561; hanged at Tyburn, 21 February, 1595. His grandfather, Sir Richard Southwell, had been a wealthy man and a prominent courtier in the reign of Henry VIII. It was Richard Southwell who in 1547 had brought the poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, to the block, and Surrey had vainly begged to be allowed to "fight him in his shirt". Curiously enough their respective grandsons, Father Southwell and Philip, Earl of Arundel, were to be the most devoted of friends and fellow-prisoners for the Faith. On his mother's side the Jesuit was descended from the Copley and Shelley families, whence a remote connexion may be established between him and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Robert Southwell was brought up a Catholic, and at a very early age was sent to be educated at Douai,

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Robert Southwell (priest)

English Jesuit

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

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Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives

Saint Robert Southwell - Jesuit Saint

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

My apologies for breaking up your regular order. As you probably gathered, my life is not that regular, it is very unpredictable. Our saint for this evening is St. Robert Southwell, the English Jesuit, poet and martyr. He was born in 1561, died in 1595 at the ripe old age of thirty-three. He was canonized – took a long time, in 1970. His family on his mother's side was related to the Shelleys', the other English poet. By this time the Catholic faith was proscribed in England – English Catholics, had to go into hiding. If they wanted a catechetic education they had to leave the country. In case you haven't been told, it's getting closer and closer to that in the United States. He was therefore sent to Douay, which as you know, is the place where the first and official English translation of the Bible was made, Douay, later on revised, the Douay-Reams.

It was while studying at Douay that he first met some Jesuits, including the famous Leo