De persecutione Anglicana by Robert Persons S.J.

Robert Persons’s De persecutione Anglicana, composed in the immediate aftermath of the first Jesuit mission to England, at the time of the execution of Edmund Campion, publicized the plight of the English Catholic community under Queen Elizabeth I. It was several times reprinted and translated into Italian, French, English and German, appealing to Catholic Christendom to assist the suffering English Catholics, both at home and in exile. The work is cast in the form of a letter addressed to John Gerard (later to lead an adventurous life as a Jesuit in England), in response to a request for reliable information about the persecution in England. This Latin text and English translation of Robert Persons’s De persecutione Anglicana comprises a critical edition of the first edition of the Latin text (Rouen 1581) with additional material from the authorial revised versions (Paris, Rome and Ingolstadt, 1582), and places the work in its contemporary context, paying special attention to Persons’s involvement in English and European propaganda and in the invasion projects of the duke of Guise.