Author: Tradition Magazine
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“An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife”
About the Author: Richard Crashaw, born in London around 1612 and was the son of the rabidly anti-Catholic Puritan polemicist, William Crashaw. Drawn to the beauty of Catholic doctrine and practice, Richard became a High Church Anglican priest, known for his devotion to Mary and penchant for Catholic vestments. When Oliver Cromwell seized power in…
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Requiem Aeternam
by Tate Pumfrey Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord, Who now ascend the ladder laced in light Perpetual. That day of tears, of fright, Of mourning, mounts before these souls who ford Across the hidden hem of time toward That shore immortal. Christ, you did delight In calling Lazarus from death to life, Now…
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Ars Moriendi: How Jesus Died
About the work: A second excerpt from the “Craft of Dying” reflects on Christ’s death and draws from it five pieces of advice for those on the point of death. Furthermore, forasmuch as Saint Gregory saith: Every doing of Christ is our instruction and teaching; therefore such things as Christ did dying on the cross,…
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The Death of Corrupt Clergymen
About the Author: Thomas of Cantimpré (1201 – 1272) was pushed into the Church because a hermit told his father that unless one of his sons became a priest, the father would spend a very long time in purgatory. But Thomas took to the priestly life, becoming a noted preacher and theologian and writing several…
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Pascal, Selections from the Pensées
About the Author: Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont, France, in 1623 to a devout Catholic family. Though his father and sister dabbled in Jansenism, Pascal himself had something of a mystical experience at the age of thirty-one, which prompted something of a “conversion.” T.S. Elliot describes him as “one of the greatest physicists and…
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“The Recommendation”
Richard Crashaw (1613–49) These houres, and that which hovers o’re my End,Into thy hands, and hart, lord, I commend. Take Both to Thine Account, that I and mineIn that Hour, and in these, may be all thine. That as I dedicate my devoutest BreathTo make a kind of Life for my lord’s Death, So from…
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An Instruction Unto Them That Shall Die
About the work: The Ars Moriendi, or “Art of Dying” was a genre of Christian spirituality that rose to prominence after the disaster of the Bubonic Plague wiped out up to fifty percent of Europe’s population. The present work was written in the mid-fifteenth century, probably by a Dominican friar, and reminds you, the reader, that…
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Saint Theresa of Avila
About the Author: Saint Theresa of Avila (1515 – 1582) is remembered as an ascetic, an author, a founder of convents, a reformer, a poet, and a mystic. Here she considers death in her 1583 book, The Way of Perfection. Wherever this love is, then, you will not fail to recognize it; I do not know…
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Saint Gregory the Great
About the Author: In his Dialogues, Saint Gregory in conversation is challenged on the immortality of the soul. He tells stories to make the case. Saint Gregory makes the point that saints offer a specifically Catholic case for the immortality of the soul: “For sick persons come unto their dead bodies, and be cured: perjured persons…
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Sonnet 13
About the Author: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was active in the years after Catholicism became illegal in England. Part of the case that he was a secret Catholic ties Shakespeare to Saint Thomas More. In Shakespeare’s official plays, More is almost written out, but Shakespeare and other authors collaborated on a play about Saint…