Saints celebrated on the 27th of July
John Gerard, a Jesuit, was born October 4, 1564; died July 27, 1637. He is well known through his autobiography, a fascinating record of dangers and adventures, of captures and escapes, of trials and consolations. The narrative is all the more valuable because it sets before us the kind of life led by priests, wherever the peculiar features of the English persecution occurred.
John Gerard was the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Old Bryn Hall, Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire, for a time a valiant confessor of the Faith, who, however, in 1589, tarnished his honour by giving evidence against the Venerable [now Saint] Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel. Different opinions are held (by Morris and Gillow) as to the permanence of his inconsistency. John left his father's house as a teenager, and went first to Douai seminary; matriculated at Oxford (1579), and thence proceeded to the Jesuits' College at Paris (1581). Fr Gerard returned to England covertly shortly after the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada.
Feeling against Catholics ran so high that fifteen priests had been butchered in two days in London, and twelve others sent to the provinces for the same purpose, though half of these eventually escaped death.
It was in these dangerous circumstances that Fr Gerard, the tall and dashing young Jesuit, landed by night on the Norfolk coast and got in touch with contacts in Norwich who introduced him to a network of Catholic sympathisers across Norfolk and nearby counties.
Fr Gerard, being an accomplished sportsman and rider, succeeded in making his way about the country inconspicuously, now as a horseman who had lost his way in the chase, now as a huntsman whose hawk had strayed. Before long he had won the steadfast friendship of many Catholic families, with whose aid he was able to make frequent conversions, to give retreats and preach, and to send over many nuns and youths to the convents, seminaries, and religious houses on the Continent.
Dr. Jessopp, a Protestant, writes:
The extent of Gerard's influence was nothing less than marvellous. Country gentlemen meet him in the street and forthwith invite him to their houses; highborn ladies put themselves under his direction almost as unreservedly in temporal as in spiritual things. Scholars and courtiers run serious risks to hold interviews with him, the number of his converts of all ranks is legion; the very gaolers and turnkeys obey him; and in a state of society when treachery and venality were pervading all classes, he finds servants and agents who are ready to live and die for him. A man of gentle blood and gentle breeding - of commanding stature, greate vigour of constitution, a master of three or four languages, with a rare gift of speech and an innate grace and courtliness of manner - he was fitted to shine in any society and to lead it. From boyhood he had been a keen sportsman, at home in the saddle, and a great proficient in all country sport. His powers of endurance of fatigue and pain were almost superhuman; he could remain in hiding days and nights in a hole in which he could not stand upright, and never sleep, and hardly change his position: he could joke on the gyves that were ulcerating his legs. He seems never to have forgotten a face or a name or an incident. Writing his autobiography twenty years after the circumstances he records, there is scarcely an event or a name which recent research has not proved to be absolutely correct. As a literary effort merely, the Life is marvellous. ("Academy", July 9, 1881)
Moving from one country house to another, Fr Gerard managed to persuade their owners, at substantial risk to themselves, to use their houses as centres for building local Catholic communities. In the process he made numerous converts to the faith, at least 30 of whom subsequently became priests themselves.
Fr Gerard not only successfully hid from the English authorities for eight years before his capture but also endured extensive torture, escaped from the Tower of London, recovered and continued with his covert mission until the exposure of the Gunpowder Plot made it impossible to continue.
After his escape to Catholic Europe, Fr Gerard was instructed by his Jesuit superiors to write a book about his life in Latin. An English translation by Fr Philip Caraman was published in 1951 as "John Gerard: Autobiography of an Elizabethan and is a rare first-hand account of the dangerous cloak-and-dagger world of a Catholic priest in Elizabethan England." Ignatius Press published a second edition in 2012 under the title "The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest: John Gerard, S.J."
Fr Gerard was finally captured in London on April 23, 1594, together with Nicholas Owen. He was tried, found guilty and sent to the Compter in the Poultry. Later he was moved to the Clink prison where he was able to meet regularly with other imprisoned English Catholics. Due to his continuation of this work, he was sent to the Salt Tower in the Tower of London, where he was further questioned and tortured by being repeatedly suspended from chains on the dungeon wall. The main aim of Fr Gerard's torturers was to find out the London lodgings of Fr Henry Garnet, so that they could arrest him. However, Fr Gerard refused to answer any questions that involved others, or to name them. He later insisted that he never broke down, a fact borne out by the files of the Tower.
 |
| The Tower of London today |
Fr Henry Garnet writes about John Gerard:
Twice he has been hung up by the hands with great cruelty on the part of others and no less patience on his own. The examiners say he is exceedingly obstinate and a great friend either of God or of the devil, for they say they cannot extract a word from his lips, save that, amidst his torments, he speaks the word, "Jesus". Recently they took him to the rack, where the torturers and examiners stood ready for work. But when he entered the place, he at once threw himself on his knees and with a loud voice prayed to God that ... he would give him strength and courage to be rent to pieces before he might speak a word that would be injurious to any person or to the divine glory. And seeing him so resolved, they did not torture him.
Fr Gerard's most famous exploit is believed to have been masterminded by Nicholas Owen. With help from other members of the Catholic underground, Gerard, along with John Arden, escaped on a rope strung across the Tower moat during the night of October 4, 1597. Despite the fact that his hands were still mangled from the tortures he had undergone, he succeeded in climbing down. He even arranged for the escape of his gaoler (jailer), with whom he had become friendly, and who he knew would be held responsible for the jailbreak. Immediately following his escape, he joined Henry Garnet and Robert Catesby in Uxbridge. Later, Gerard moved to the house of Dowager Elizabeth Vaux at Harrowden, near Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. From this base of operations, he continued his priestly ministry, and reconciled many to the Catholic Church, including Sir Everard Digby.
For the next eight years he continued his ministry among the English people before he was recalled to the continent to train Jesuits for the English Mission. He was accused by Robert Catesby's servant Thomas Bates of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. While on the run, Fr Gerard stayed at Harrowden again. While hiding in a priest hole during a nine-day search of the house, he wrote a refutation of Bates' charges, and arranged to have it printed and scattered about the streets in London. He eventually escaped from there to London. He left the country with financial aid from Elizabeth Vaux, slipping away disguised as a footman in the retinue of the Spanish Ambassador, on the very day of Henry Garnet's execution. Fr Gerard went on to continue the work of the Jesuits in Europe, where he wrote his autobiography on the orders of his superiors. He died in 1637, aged 73, at the English College, Rome.
Sources:
Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913
https://thecatholicherald.com/how-i-got-the-bbc-to-apologise-for-misrepresenting-my-jesuit-ancestor/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gerard_(Jesuit)
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/what-fr-john-gerards-escape-teaches-us-about-catholic-life-today/
Comments
Post a Comment