Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea sive Sanctor
Martyrum
Rome, 1584
Folger Shelf Mark: BR 1607 C7 1584 Cage
The engraving depicted here is one of series by Giovanni Baptista Cavalleri
which reproduced the frescoes painted in the church of the English College
in Rome in 1583. The college was one of many placed under the jurisdiction
of the Society of Jesus. It provided both a home and a spiritual
formation for English exiles. The original wall paintings by
Niccolò Circignani (Pomerancio) narrate the history of Christianity
in England and Wales, and include, among the victims of religious persecution,
Saints Alban, Oswald, Ethelbert, Winifred, Thomas à Becket, and
Hugh of Lincoln. Several of the original paintings promoted the cults of
more recent martyrs. The volume was intended to console Englishmen studying
for priestly ordination, to edify other recusants, and to secure support
for their cause among Continental readers.
George Gilbert, an English layman who had moved to Rome, commissioned
the chapel paintings. Gilbert had been converted to Catholicism by Robert
Parsons, S.J., and had developed a desire for martyrdom and a devotion
to the martyrs in the wake of Edmund Campion's death. The grisly scene
of hanging, racking, drawing, and quartering is meant to bolster the spirits
of the seminarians potentially facing similar fates. For the Latin
inscription reminds the viewer that Sherwin had been a seminarian there,
too. In English translation it reads, "(A) Edmund Campion of the
Society of Jesus preaches from the gibbet and is hanged along with Alexander
of Rheims and Ralph Sherwin, an alumnus of this college. (B) Their bodies
still warm, heart and entrails are taken out and thrown into the fire.
(C) Their limbs are boiled, then suspended on the towers and gates of the
city, in the reign of Elizabeth, the first of December, 1581. Some thousands
of men and women were converted to the Roman Church (inspired by) their
steadfast death."
For more information, consult Jesuits in Conflict (London: Burns
and Otis, 1873); Michael E. Williams, "Campion and the English Continental
Seminaries" in The Reckoned Expense: Campion and the Early English Jesuit,
edited by Thomas McCoog (Woodbridge, England: The Boydell Press, 1996);
and Michael E. Williams, The Venerable English College Rome: A History
1579-1979 (London: Associated Catholic Publications, 1979). Thanks
to Edward Bodnar, S.J., for his assistance with the English translation
of the Latin inscription.
