CAMPION, EDMUND, Blessed. - Jesuit, martyr, b. in London on 25 Jan. 1539, d. there on 1 Dec. 1581. A student at Oxford, he won universal admiration for his intellectual gifts and eloquence, praised even by Queen Elizabeth during a visit to the University. Though of Catholic family, he unfortunately subscribed in 1564 to the oath acknowledging the queen’s spiritual supremacy and allowed himself to be ordained a deacon in the Anglican church. Stricken by remorse, he soon went to Ireland, living there as a Catholic, then to Douai in France, in the English seminary, where he abjured his errors, earned a degree in theology, and was ordained subdeacon, and finally to Rome, where he entered the Society of Jesus (1573). Sent to the Jesuit college in Prague, he was ordained priest there (1578). When the English mission opened, he was sent there with Fr. Persons (1580) to strengthen Catholics in the faith and win back apostates, and he did so admirably by word and pen.
A manuscript declaration he circulated, in which he challenged London’s councillors to three public disputations, alarmed the Protestants. He reinforced this with the pamphlet *Ten re[n]tions* (Cosmopoli [London] 1581), refuting every Protestant sophism and defending Catholic doctrine. His adversaries gave him no peace until they had him in their grasp. Betrayed and condemned as a conspirator against the queen, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. His cult was confirmed by Leo XIII on 9 Dec. 1886; feast on 1 Dec.