Saint Henri Morse, prêtre et martyr
Originaire du Suffolk en
Angleterre, il se convertit au catholicisme et fit ses études au séminaire
anglais de Douai en France, puis à Rome où il entra chez les jésuites. De
retour à Londres, il soigna les victimes de la peste de 1636, ce qui n'empêcha
pas son emprisonnement sous l'inculpation de trahison. Libéré, il reprit son
apostolat neuf années durant. Arrêté de nouveau, parce que prêtre catholique,
il fut livré au martyr à Tyburn en 1645 sous Charles Ier.
Saint Henri Morse
Un des quarante
martyrs d'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles (✝ 1645)
Originaire du
Suffolk en Angleterre, il se convertit au catholicisme et fit ses études au
séminaire anglais de Douai en France, puis à Rome où il entra chez les
jésuites. De retour à Londres, il soigna les victimes de la peste de 1636, ce
qui n'empêcha pas son emprisonnement sous l'inculpation de trahison. Libéré, il
reprit son apostolat neuf années durant. Arrêté de nouveau, il fut livré au
martyre à Tyburn. Il fut canonisé en 1970 avec quarante
martyrs d'Angleterre et du Pays de Galles.
À Londres, en 1645, saint Henri Morse, prêtre jésuite et martyr.
Plusieurs fois arrêté, deux fois envoyé en exil, il fut enfin, sous le roi
Charles Ier, à cause de son sacerdoce, enfermé en prison et, après y avoir
célébré la messe, pendu à Tyburn.
Martyrologe romain
SOURCE : http://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/5521/Saint-Henri-Morse.html
St. Henry Morse, SJ--February 1, 1645
Philip Caraman, SJ wrote a life of today's English
Catholic Martyr titled Henry Morse: Priest of the Plague. The Jesuit
Curia in Rome provides this biography:
Henry Morse (1595-1645) was five times arrested for being Catholic and four
times was released or escaped. His ability to get out of prison meant that he
had a much longer ministry career than most Jesuits in England.
He began his studies at Cambridge then took up the study of law at Barnard's
Inn, London; at the same time he became increasingly dissatisfied with the
established religion and more convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith. He
was received into the Catholic church at the English College at Douai,
Flanders, and then returned to England to prepare to enter the seminary that
autumn. Port authorities in England asked him to take the oath of allegiance
acknowledging the king's supremacy in religious matters. The recent convert
refused to do so and was arrested the first time. He was imprisoned four years
before being set free in 1618 when the king released hundreds of religious
dissenters and exiled them to France. Morse first went to Douai but the English
College had too many students, so he was sent to Rome, where studied theology
and was ordained in 1623.
Before Morse left Rome, he met the Jesuit superior general and asked to be
admitted into the Society; the general said Morse would be admitted as soon as
he returned to England. He probably entered the Jesuits in 1624, and spent his
novitiate period doing pastoral work in the Newcastle area in northern England.
After 18 months of traveling from station to station, he was due to make the
month-long Spiritual Exercises to complete his novitiate. He was supposed to do
so at Watten, Flanders; but the ship he boarded to take him there was halted in
the mouth of the Tyne River so soldiers could search for a priest, possibly
disguised as a foreign merchant. They discovered Father Morse instead, although
he carried only a rosary. He was arrested the second time and sent to
Newcastle's prison. Soon another Jesuit was imprisoned, Father John Robinson, a
classmate from Rome, who was on his way to take Morse's place. Both ended up at
York Castle, where Robinson directed Morse in the retreat which completed his
novitiate. Morse spent three years in prison before he was released and banned
from the land. The young Jesuit returned to Flanders and served as chaplain to
the English soldiers serving in the Spanish army then in Flanders. He had to
give up this work when his health broke; then he became assistant to the novice
master.
In 1633 he was again assigned to England to work at the parish of St. Giles in
a poor district outside London. While he was there, the city was ravaged by a
plague. Several isolated cases were discovered in late 1635, but by mid-April
both city and suburbs were afflicted by the dread disease. Morse threw himself
into caring for the sick, in the classic Jesuit fashion. He found medicine for
the sick, took viaticum to the dying and prepared the dead for burial. His
reward for this selfless service was to be arrested a third time when a
priest-hunter recognized him and incarcerated him in Newgate Prison. On April
22 he came to trial and ably defended himself, but was convicted anyway
although sentence was never passed. He was released on June 17 because of the
intervention of Queen Henrietta Maria in recognition of his service to plague
victims. He briefly returned to pastoral work, but could no longer move about
safely so he returned to the continent and again became chaplain to the
soldiers.
He was again assigned to England in 1643, but sent to Cumberland where he was
less well-known. This strategy worked for 18 months until he accidentally
walked into a group of soldiers late one night. They suspected he was a priest
because he was travelling alone, so they arrested him and held him overnight in
the home of a local official. Fortunately, the official's wife was Catholic and
she helped the Jesuit escape. For six weeks he enjoyed freedom, but then had
the extreme bad fortune to knock on a door seeking directions when he was lost.
The man who opened the door happened to be one of the soldiers who had recently
apprehended him and remembered him well.
There would be no fifth escape. He was moved from local jails to London's
Newgate Prison in January 1645 and tried in Old Bailey; his very presence in
England proved him guilty of violating the law by coming back after he had been
banished. He was quickly found guilty of high treason and condemned to death.
Early in the morning of his last day, he celebrated Mass and then was dragged
to Tyburn to be executed. He stood on a cart under the gallows and was left
hanging when the cart moved away. After he was dead, his body was torn open,
his heart removed and his entrails burned. His head was exposed on London
bridge and the four sections of his quartered body were mounted on the city's
four gates.
His life and death--or the life and death of some of the other English Catholic
martyrs, like St. Edmund Campion, especially--should be the subject of a great
adventure movie. It would be good to balance out the anti-Catholic offenses of
the Cate Blanchett Elizabeth movies, with the murderous Jesuit.
Depicting early modern Cambridge, Douai, Rome, St. Giles, and London would be a
great challenge, of course! But can't you see the scene of Father Morse
knocking at the door and the soldier who'd arrested him opening the door?
Imagine him standing in the cart at Tyburn, rope around his neck, saying these
words:
"I am come hither to die for my religion. . . . I have a secret
which highly concerns His Majesty and Parliament to know. The kingdom of
England will never be truly blessed until it returns to the Catholic faith and
its subjects are all united in one belief under the Bishop of Rome. . . . I
pray my death may be some kind of atonement for the sins of this kingdom."
MORSE, HENRY (1595–1645), Jesuit, known also as Claxton (his mother's name) and Warde, was born in Norfolk in 1595, and
studied law in one of the inns of court in London. Harbouring doubts concerning
the protestant religion, he retired to the continent, and was reconciled to the
Roman church at Douay. Afterwards he became an alumnus of the English College
there. He entered the English College at Rome 27 Dec. 1618, and having
completed his theological studies, and received holy orders, he was sent from
Douay to the English mission 19 June 1624. He entered the Society of Jesus in
the London novitiate in 1625, and was soon afterwards removed to the Durham
district. Being apprehended, he was committed to York Castle, where he remained
in confinement for three years. In 1632 he was at Watten, acting as prefect of
health and consultor of the college. In 1633 he was minister and consultor at
Liege College, and in the same year he became a missioner in the London
district. He was again apprehended, committed to Newgate, tried and condemned
to death in 1637, but the sentence was commuted to banishment at the
intercession of Queen Henrietta Maria. In 1641-2 he was camp missioner to the
English mission at Ghent. Two years later he had returned to England, and again
appears as a missioner in the Durham district. He was arrested, carried in
chains to London, tried, and, being condemned to death as a traitor on account
of his sacerdotal character, was executed at Tyburn on 1 Feb. (N.S.) 1644-5.
In Father Ambrose Corbie's
'Certamen Triplex,' Antwerp, 1645, is an engraved portrait, which is
photographed in Foley's 'Records' [see Corbie,
Ambrose]; two other portraits are mentioned by Granger (Biog. Hist.
ii.207).
A copy of Morse's diary, entitled
'Papers relating to the English Jesuits,' is preserved in the British Museum
(Addit. MS. 21203).
His elder brother, William Morse (d. 1649), born in
Norfolk in 1591, was likewise a convert to the catholic faith, became a Jesuit,
and laboured on the English mission until his death on 1 Jan. 1648-9.
[An account of Morse's execution,
entitled Narratio Gloriosæ Mortis quam pro Religione Catholica P. Henricvs Mors
è Societate Iesv Sacerdos fortiter oppetijt Londini in Anglia. Anno Salutis,
1645. 1 Februarij stylo nouo Quem hic stylum deinceps sequemur, Ghent, 1645,
4to, pp. 21; a memoir appears in Ambrose Corbie's Certamen Triplex, Antwerp,
1645, 4to, pp. 95–144. See also Challoner's Missionary Priests, ii. 180; Dodd's
Church Hist. iii. 120; Florus Anglo-Bavaricus, p. 82; Foley's Records, i.
566–610, vi. 288, vii. 527; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 146; Tanner's
Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitæ profusionem militans.]
Ven. Henry Morse
Martyr; b. in 1595 in Norfolk; d. at Tyburn, 1 Feb.,
1644. He was received into the church
at Douai, 5 June, 1614, after various journeys was ordained at Rome, and left for the mission, 19 June, 1624. He
was admitted to the Society of Jesus at Heaton; there he was arrested
and imprisoned for three years in York
Castle, where he made his novitiate under his fellow prisoner, Father John Robinson, S.J., and took simple vows. Afterwards he was a missionary to the English
regiments in the Low Countries.
Returning to England at the end of 1633 he laboured in London, and in 1636 is reported to have received
about ninety Protestant families into the Church. He himself contracted the plague but recovered.
Arrested 27 February, 1636, he was imprisoned in Newgate. On 22 April he was brought to the
bar charged with being a priest and having withdrawn the king's subjects from
their faith and allegiance. He was found guilty on the
first count, not guilty on the second, and sentence was deferred. On 23 April
he made his solemn profession of the three vows to Father Edward Lusher. He was released on
bail for 10,000 florins, 20 June, 1637, at the insistence of Queen Henriette
Maria. In order to free his sureties he voluntarily went into exile when the royal proclamation
was issued ordering all priests to leave the country before 7 April, 1641, and
became chaplain to Gage's English
regiment in the service of Spain. In 1643 he returned to England; arrested after about a year and a half he was
imprisoned at Durham and Newcastle,
and sent by sea to London. On 30
January he was again brought to the bar and condemned on his previous
conviction. On the day of his execution his hurdle was drawn by four horses and
the French ambassador attended
with all his suite, as also did the Count of Egmont and the Portuguese
ambassador. The martyr was allowed to hang until he was dead. At the
quartering the footmen of the French
Ambassador and of the Count of Egmont
dipped their handkerchiefs into the martyr's blood. In 1647 many persons possessed by evil spirits were relieved through the
application of his relics.
Sources
FOLEY, Records of the English Province S.J. (London, 1877-1883), I,
566-611; IV, 288-9; VII, 528, 658, 1198, 1200; CAHLLONER, Memoirs of Missionary
Priests, II (Manchester, 1803), 151-1; TANNER, Societas Jesu (Prague, 1675),
126-131; HAMILTON, Calendar State Papers Domestic 1640-1 (London, 1882), 292.
Wainewright, John. "Ven. Henry Morse." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 1 Feb. 2016 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10578a.htm>.
Wainewright, John. "Ven. Henry Morse." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 1 Feb. 2016 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10578a.htm>.
SOURCE : http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10578a.htm
Henry Morse, Priest, SJ M (RM)
Born in Broome, Suffolk, England, in 1595; died at Tyburn, England, February 1, 1645; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0201.shtml
Henry Morse, Priest, SJ M (RM)
Born in Broome, Suffolk, England, in 1595; died at Tyburn, England, February 1, 1645; beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Saint Henry, like
so many saints of his period in the British Isles, was a convert to
Catholicism. He was a member of the country gentry, who studied at Cambridge
then finished his study of law at Barnard's Inn, London. In 1614, he professed
the Catholic faith at Douai. When he returned to England to settle an
inheritance, he was arrested for his faith and spent the next four years in New
Prison in Southwark. He was released in 1618 when a general amnesty was
proclaimed by King James.
Henry then returned
to Douai to study for the priesthood, and finished his studies at the
Venerabile in Rome, where he was ordained in 1623. He was sent on the English
mission the following year and was almost immediately arrested after his
landing in Newcastle, and imprisoned at York with the Jesuit Father John
Robinson. Before leaving Rome he had obtained the agreement of the father
general of the Society of Jesus that he should be admitted to the Jesuits in
England. His time in prison with Robinson served as his novitiate; thus, he
became a Jesuit in 1625. After three years in prison was exiled to Flanders,
where he served as chaplain to English soldiers in the army of King Philip IV
of Spain.
He returned to
England in 1633, where he worked in London under the pseudonym of Cuthbert
Claxton. Father Morse made many converts by his heroic labors in the plague of
1636-37. He had a list of 400 infected families--Protestant and Catholic--whom
he visited regularly to bring physical and spiritual aid. He devoted service
made such an impression that in one year nearly 100 families were reconciled to
the Church. He himself caught the disease three times, but each time recovered.
At the same time his brothers in faith were urging him to moderate his zeal,
the authorities deemed it suitable to arrested Father Morse for his priesthood.
They charged him with perverting 560 of his Majesty's loyal subjects 'in and
about the parish of St. Giles in the Fields.'
Released on bail
through the intercession of Queen Henrietta Maria, he again left England in
1641 when a royal decree ordered all Catholic priests from the country, but
returned again from Ghent in 1643. He was arrested in Cumberland eighteen
months later while making a sick-call. He escaped with the help of the Catholic
wife of one of his captors, but was recaptured and brought to trial. He was
convicted of being a Catholic priest at the Old Bailey. On the day of his
execution, Father Morse celebrated a votive Mass of the Most Holy Trinity. He
was summarily hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. His hanging was attended
by the French, Spanish, and Portuguese ambassadors in protest (Attwater2,
Benedictines, Delaney, Walsh).
SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0201.shtml
