Over the course of her reign, Elizabeth I (1558-1603) executed eighty-seven Catholic priests.

John Gerard, Elizabethan Jesuit Missionary

by Robert Shaffern

The life of John Gerard, an English Catholic and Jesuit missionary priest, well illustrates what is at stake when the power of the state is enlisted against the Catholic faith and church. The persecutions of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I meant that the English government hunted down John Gerard as though he were a common criminal. The crown likewise imprisoned him as if he had committed a heinous crime. Gerard, who never advocated violence or subversion against a regime of persecutors, was, rather a patient and courageous servant of the Catholic church and her people.

John Gerard was one of a host of young English regular and diocesan clergymen who ministered to the dwindling Catholic population of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Despite the risks, these heroic servants of God ministered under a cloud of fear and suspicion, as the royal regime inflicted a virtual reign of terror on Her Majesty’s Catholic subjects. Over the course of her reign, Elizabeth I (1558-1603) executed eighty-seven Catholic priests. They had been convicted of treason for refusing to submit to her Act of Supremacy, which declared the monarch head of the Christian church in England. A religious secret police, known as pursuivants, was ordered to find priests and arrest them.

John Gerard’s vocation had been nurtured from birth; his parents were faithful Catholics. He was removed from their home as a young boy, for his father had been suspected of involvement in a plot to rescue Mary, Queen of Scots, from prison and execution. He was sent to the house of a Protestant relative, but was eventually reunited with his father. At the age of fourteen, Gerard received permission to study in France. Education in that Catholic country opened his mind to the richness and wisdom preserved in the Catholic intellectual tradition. In particular, he studied the works of St Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Bonaventure. He met a Jesuit in Paris and became interested in the charism and mission of the Society of Jesus. John Gerard decided to become a Jesuit. Before ordination, he returned to England to dispose of his property and was there arrested for the first time for being a Catholic. In 1588 he was in Rome, where he was ordained and formally became a Jesuit. The timing could not have been worse. The English had just defeated the mighty Armada of King Philip of Spain, and Protestants associated Catholicism even more closely with betrayal of queen and country.

Upon returning to England, Gerard worked to win converts for Catholicism. Many of those he received into the church already had Catholic contacts (family members, for instance). He was convinced that none of the persons he received into the church relapsed into Protestantism, which gave him great satisfaction. He also spent a good deal of time trying to avoid arrest. He wore lay clothes, and lived with Catholic families and sympathizers. Several times he was compelled to spend long hours in tiny “priest holes” built by homeowners in which to hide Catholic priests from pursuivants. Inevitably, however, he came under suspicion and was arrested in 1594. In prison he was tortured, suspended by the arms for long hours with a weight attached to his legs. In spite of it all, John avoided bitterness and tried to find God in all things. When his torturers relented, he counselled other Catholics he met in prison. He sometimes said Mass.

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John Gerard, S.J. (1564–1637) was an English Jesuit priest, operating covertly in England during the Elizabethan period in which the Catholic Church was subject to persecution. He was the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn, near Ashton in Makerfield, Lancashire, who had been imprisoned in 1569 for plotting the rescue of Mary, Queen of Scots, fromTutbury Castle.[1] His release in 1571 may have been influenced by his cousin Sir Gilbert Gerard who was Attorney General at that time.

John is noted not only for successfully hiding from the English authorities for eight years before his capture, but for enduring extensive torture, escaping from the Tower of London and, after recovering, continuing with his covert mission. After his escape to the continent, he was later instructed by his Jesuit superiors to write a book about his life (Latin text).[2] An English translation was published in 1951.[3] This is a rare, first-hand account of the deadly cloak-and-dagger world of a Catholic priest in Elizabethan England.

He was sent at age 12 with his brother to Exeter College, Oxford, where they matriculated on 3 December 1575. Some sources say his teacher, Mr. Lewkenor, followed him home in order to become a Catholic and continue his and his brother's education.[1] Due to the prohibition of Catholics at universities in England, Gerard was sent to study at the English Catholic school in Douai, which was later moved to Rheims, then, with the Jesuits at Clermont. As was the fate of so many Jesuits who often returned to England with foreign clothing and accents Gerard was arrested soon after he landed to begin his mission at Dover. He was sent to the Marshalsea Prison, where many undercover priests had been imprisoned. Anthony Babington, who was later to be executed for treason for being involved in a plot to free the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, posted bond to secure Gerard's release .
Second mission[edit]

He then went to Rome and was given another mission on behalf of the Jesuits to England. In November 1588, three months after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Gerard and Edward Oldcorne landed in Norfolk to begin their task of sustaining the English Catholics. Eventually, Gerard was taken to the leader of the English Jesuits, Father Henry Garnet. Gerard soon became a very popular figure in the Catholic underground. By way of disguises, he appeared very secular, being versed in gambling and wearing fashionable clothes. Gerard wrote of many escapes from the law and of occasions when he hid in priest holes.
Capture and torture[edit]

Gerard was finally captured in London on 23 April 1594, together with Nicholas Owen. He was tried, found guilty and sent to the Counter in the Poultry. Later he was moved to the Clink prison where he was able to meet regularly with other persecuted EnglishCatholics. Due to his continuation of this work, he was sent to the Salt Tower in theTower of London, where he was further questioned and tortured by being repeatedly suspended from chains on the dungeon wall. The main aim of Gerard's torturers was to identify the London lodgings of Fr. Henry Garnet that they might arrest him. He would not answer any questions that involved others, or name them. He insisted that he never broke, a fact borne out by the files of the Tower.


Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gerard_(Jesuit)