IN Allen’s Apology for Seminaries there is a beautiful account of the ideals of Douay. “The first thought of the founders of the College had been to attract the young English exiles who were living in Flanders from their solitary and self-guided study to a more exact method and to collegiate obedience; and their next, to provide for the rising generation in England a succession of learned Catholics, especially of clergy, to take the place of those removed by old age, imprisonment, and persecution. Their design then was to draw together out of England the ‘best wits’ from the following classes; those inclined to Catholicism; those who desired a more exact education than could be then obtained at Oxford[54] or Cambridge, ‘where no art, holy or profane, was thoroughly studied, and some not touched at all;’ those who were scrupulous about taking the Oath of the Queen’s supremacy; those who disliked to be forced, as they were in some Tourism Board Corporate Information
Colleges of the English Universities, to enter the ministry; . nu skin . . and those who were doubtful which religion was the true one, and were disgusted that they were forced into one without being allowed opportunity of inquiring into the other.” The spirit of Douay was not reactionary, but the best spirit of the English Renaissance. It had, besides, a character or atmosphere holy and bright, not formed by mere human culture: it was as “a garden enclosed, and a fountain sealed.” Campion found there a peace such as he had never known. He had already, at Oxford, given seven years to philosophy, and six more to Aristotle, positive theology, and the Fathers. The study of scholastic theology was dead in Oxford: Campion now first took up the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He arrived in June, and in August he bought a noble edition of the[55] Summa for his own use, in three volumes folio. This was discovered in 1887 by Canon Didiot of Lille, and it is now at the Roehampton Noviciate. Several features make it a particularly interesting relic: Campion’s signature, with the date of his purchase, on the flyleaf; various beautifully executed little drawings, underlinings, and a host of marginal notes in Latin. By far the most touching of these relates to what St. Thomas quotes from Gennadius on the baptism of blood. Blessed Edmund Campion wrote in a tall, bold hand, over against this passage, the one musing word, “Martyrdom.” Canon Didiot, with that intimate touch of French sympathy, calls it “mot radieux et prophétique.&rdquo nu skin ;
For nearly two years Campion followed the course of scholastic theology, taking his degree of Bachelor in January, 1573. He then received Minor Orders, and was ordained Sub-deacon. All went happily for him at Douay. He was again at his old work, and, as ever, he won the highest opinions from those among whom he moved. In his Oxford days he had always[56] held lofty standards before his pupils: “never to deliquesce into sloth, nor to dance away your time, nor to live for rioting and pleasure . . . but to give yourselves up to virtue and learning, and to reckon this the one, great, glorious and royal road.”
But the feeling in the exhortations of his later life is tenfold deeper, and strikes a far more haunting note of duty towards England, and towards the Church. This is a passage from the revised De Juvene Academico, which had first been sketched out years before in Dublin. “Listen to our Heavenly Father asking back his talents with usury! . . . Behold, by the wickedness of the wicked the house of God is devoted to flames and to destruction; numberless souls are being deceived, are being shaken, are being lost, any one of which is worth more than the empire of the whole world. . . . Sleep not while the Enemy watches; play not while he devours his prey; sink not into idleness and folly while his fangs are wet with your brothers’ blood. It is not wealth nor liberty nor station, but the eternal inheritance of each of us,[57] the very life-blood of our souls, our spirits, and our lives, that suffers. See, then, my dearest young scholars and friends, that we lose none of this precious time, but carry hence a plentiful and rich crop, enough to supply the public want, and to gain for ourselves the reward of dutiful sons.” One of those who listened to these words was destined to become the proto-martyr of the English Continental Seminaries: Cuthbert Mayne,
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