Who was St Edmund Campion?

For several reasons it is fitting that St Edmund Campion, a Jesuit priest and martyr, has been adopted as a model and mentor of our Catholic tertiary college, and ultimately university, in Australia - as, in fact, its patron saint - in the midst of the great educational and religious challenges we face.

First, Campion was an outstanding scholar - indeed, the outstanding don of Elizabethan England. When the Queen visited Oxford in 1566, Campion - who had been appointed at the age of 17 as a Junior Fellow - was chosen to deliver the welcoming address. So admired was he at Oxford that students imitated his speech and mannerisms and style of dress. William Cecil, a major architect of the English Reformation, referred to Campion as 'one of the diamonds of England'.

Secondly, Campion himself, at one stage, was actively involved in helping found a university - in Ireland, as it happened (shades of John Henry Newman: we might, indeed, regard Newman and Campion as the Peter and Paul of Catholic higher education). This university, which did not materialise in Campion's time, was later to become Trinity College in Dublin. While in Ireland he produced a portrait of the ideal student, De Homine Academico, as well as a magisterial History of Ireland (which, in the judgment of Evelyn Waugh, distinguished Campion as 'one of the great masters of English prose').

Thirdly, Campion showed himself capable of confronting and overcoming intellectual error - as well as spiritual pride.

Fourthly, Campion has a cherished place in Australian Catholicism, being invoked as the patron of the Campion Society in the 1930s - and, more recently, the Campion Fellowship. Both these associations of Australian Catholics, dedicated to the intellectual apostolate, felt a deep resonance with the life and work of Campion, applauding his adventurous intellectuality and his holy and heroic life.

Fifthly, although St. Edmund Campion was convicted as a traitor in England during the Reformation, he was in fact killed for his fidelity to his priestly vocation to provide the Mass and otherwise care for persecuted Catholics. As a Jesuit priest and martyr, he remains as an inspiration to both scholarship and fidelity to the Catholic Faith in difficult times.

Invoking the name of Edmund Campion, as a scholar who was also a martyr, captures the spirit in which we should be contemplating the establishment of a new university. Edmund Campion is:

• a symbol of spiritual faith and continuity, joining us early in the third millennium with Christ himself at the dawn of the first - and with the great procession of saints throughout the ages.
• a model of intellectual inspiration, as we recall his scholarly ability and faithfulness; and
• a figure of historical and cultural importance, uniting us with the Catholic heritage of Europe, especially English and Irish, and with our own native traditions of Catholic thought and action here in Australia.

Click here for a series of panels depicting the life of St. Edmund Campion.