On Monday, I posted a short review of the novel Works of Mercy by Sally Thomas on my Faith, Fiction, Friends blog. It is a fine novel, a little slow moving at the beginning but richly rewarding if you stick with it. I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did.
The main character, an aging housekeeper named Kirsty Sain, works for the priest in a small-town Catholic parish in North Carolina. She lives a somewhat isolated life, until circumstances force a change. But what threads through the change is the poetry of Robert Southwell (1561-1595).
Southwell, who would become a Catholic saint, was one of the Catholic martyrs in the religious wars in England in the 16th century. Yes, but was the age of Shakespeare, but it was also the age of religious war. Henry VIII began the English Reformation; his son and heir carried it onward for the few years he was king. Catholic Mary Tudor represented the reaction, and she was no slouch when it came to martyring Protestants.
When Elizabeth I ascended the throne, it was the reaction to the reaction. That Catholic Philip II of Spain attempted an invasion of England in 1588 to depose Elizabeth and restore the Catholic faith didn’t cause Elizabeth to look on her Catholic subjects kindly. But when it came to martyrdoms, she was a bit more reserved than her older sister.
English-born Robert Southwell was a Jesuit priest who had been educated in France. When he returned to his native England in 1586, he did so in secret and had to perform his priestly offices underground. He was captured in 1592, interrogated and tortured, confined to solitary confinement in the Tower fort wo years, and then transferred to Newgate Prison for his trial in 1595. He was found guilty, sentenced to death by hanging, drawn, and quartered. In 1970, Pope Paul VI canonized him.
The vast majority of his writings and poetry happened in the six years between his return to England and his imprisonment. Earlier works were composed in Latin, but his poems in England were written in English.
In Works of Mercy, Kristy Sain, raised a Catholic, recalls her college studies, readings, and the affair with her atheist tutor, who disparaged her interest in Southwell and Catholicism. She doesn’t finish her studies, and only years later do Southwell’s poems come back to her.
Because a significant part of the story happens at Christmas, the poem that becomes a part of the story is “The Burning Babe,” which is about the Nativity. In fact, it appears that author Thomas found the novel’s title in this poem.
The Burning Babe
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
‘Alas!’ quoth he, ‘but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I.
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shames and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath, to wash them in my blood.’
With this he vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.
It’s easy – too easy – to call Works of Mercy a “Catholic novel.” It certainly reflects a Catholic sensibility; the story is centered on a Catholic church, a Catholic housekeeper, a priest, and a number of parishioners. Yet the themes of the novel, the ideas of serving and faith, extend well beyond “Catholic fiction” and even “religious fiction.”
Intrigued by the poems, I found quite a few books on Amazon about Southwell and his poetry. The one I ended up with was simply titled Works of Robert Southwell. It includes seven of his best-known poems, including “The Burning Babe.” He’s a poet well worth knowing and reading about; his is the story of maintaining faith in a perilous place at a perilous time.
