Robert Parsons (Jesuit)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the Jesuit priest. For the English composer see Robert Parsons (composer).
Robert Persons (born June 24, 1546, Nether Stowey, Somerset, England - died April 15, 1610, Rome), later known as Robert Parsons, was an English Jesuit priest.
Contents |
[edit] Life
He accompanied Edmund Campion (who was later canonized) on Campion's mission to aid English Catholics in 1580.[1]
The Jesuit General, Everard Mercurian, had been reluctant to involve the Jesuits directly in the political machinations of the pope against England. The mission was further compromised because the pope had sent a separate group, unbeknownst to the Jesuit mission, to support the Irish rebel, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. Parsons and Campion learned of this in Reims while en route to England. After Campion's capture, torture, and execution, Parsons left England, never to return.
He was associated with Cardinal William Allen in his hopes of a swift conquest of England by the Spanish Armada. With the failure of that enterprise, he spent nine years in Spain. In 1596, in Seville, he wrote Memorial for the Reformation of England, which gave in some detail a blueprint for the kind of society England was to become after its return to the faith.
He had hoped to succeed Allen as Cardinal on the latter's death. Unsuccessful, he was rewarded with the rectorship of the English College at Rome, the most important seminary for English Catholic priests.
[edit] St. Omer
In 1593 he founded the antecedent of Stonyhurst College, at St Omer, France.
[edit] Source
- Hogge, Alice. God's Secret Agents; Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot. HarperCollins: 2005.
[edit] Links
- [1] Catholic Encyclopedia article
[edit] References
- ^ God's Secret Agents: Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot.
