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Robert Southwell’s Mary Magdalen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

Pollard Brown Nancy
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Abstract

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The imaginative life of Robert Southwell in Rome as a student and in England as a mission priest was energized by the figure of Mary Magdalen. From the translation of a Franciscan sermon to an extended meditative prose work, in poems and illustrative reference, he explored the complexity of her life, finding in it a depth of emotional experience in which he himself was immersed. Her torment of sorrow was seen reflected in the life of Catholics in England, in their suffering and in the strain of endless endurance. It is an irony that through his writing on Mary Magdalen’s witness to the Resurrection in the garden, Southwell’s message of comfort and hope introduced England to the ‘literature of tears’.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , May 2012, pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2012

Footnotes

1 Southwell to Aquaviva, 25 July 1586 (intercepted letter); translation in Pollen, J. H., Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs, vol. 1, 1584–1603, C. R. S. 5 (1908), p. 308 .

2 William Weston: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, translation, Caraman, Philip (London, etc., 1955), pp. 69–70 , notes 5, 6, 9.

3 More, Henry, Historiae Provinciae Anglicanae S. I. (St. Omer, 1660), 5, pp. 182–83 ; translation, Devlin, Christopher, The Life of Robert Southwell, Poet and Martyr (London, etc., 1956), p. 99 .

4 Douai Diaries, ed. T. B. Knox (London, 1878), p. 105.

5 Pollen, p. 294.

6 Part of the original is cited in Catalogus primorum Patrum et Fratrum S. I., ex Anglia collectus Romae 1640, under date 1578, Archivum Romanum S. I., Anglia 14, f.80. Before this entry was found by T. M. McCoog, S. J., the full text was known with the title ‘Querimonia’ in More, 5, pp. 173–75.

7 Vita Edwardi Throgmortoni. Two contemporary copies are preserved in the necrologies in the Jesuit archives in Rome in which the work is attributed to Southwell. Early biographers expressed doubt concerning the authorship, suggesting that it might be the work of Alphonso Agazzari. Internal evidence, such as reference to childhood and student experience suggests that Southwell wrote it at Agazzari’s request, so that a record might be kept in the Jesuit central archive.

8 Pollen, pp. 303–06.

9 Published as Spiritual Exercises and Devotions, ed. J.-M. de Buck; translation, P. E. Hallett (London, 1931).

10 These were passed to More when he was preparing his history. They eventually reached Stony- hurst (MS. A. v. 4) and are now at Farm Street.

11 Bodleian Library, Arch. F. g. 4.

12 Archivum Romanum, S. I., Fondo Gesuitico 651, letter of 23 January 1585; translation, Devlin, p. 88.

13 Spiritual Exercises, Appendices 1a, p. 195, and 1b, p. 197.

14 Stonyhurst MS. A. v. 4, f.50–51v.

15 The Poems of Robert Southwell, S. J., eds. James H. McDonald and Nancy Pollard Brown (Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 75–100.

16 Stonyhurst MS. A. v. 4, ff.56–60, 62.

17 Catalogue of State Papers, Scottish, 8, p. 542; Devlin, pp. 117–18. Devlin proposes that Dorothy Arundell had persuaded Southwell to return early to London and that his sermon was later developed at her request into the Funeral Teares. A sermon on ‘popish repentance’ identifying Mary Magdalen as the penitent sinner could not have served as the source.

18 Garnet to Aquaviva, 9 August 1594, Fondo Gesuitico 651, f.66; Caraman, Philip, Henry Garnet, 1555–1606 and the Gunpowder Plot (London, 1964), p. 189 .

19 Marie Magdalens Funeral Teares, 1591, sig. A3r–v. Further references to the text will be identified by signatures cited after quotations. The original spelling (except for the normalisation of i/j and u/v) and punctuation have been retained.

20 Poems, p. 45.

21 Ibidem., p. 42, 11. 59–60.

22 John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, translation, Philip Caraman (London, etc., 1951), p. 15.

23 The Triumphs over Death, Stonyhurst MS. A. v. 27, f.28.