Richard Crashaw

Thomas Sutton bequeathed money to maintain a chapel, hospital, and school at the London Charterhouse, a former Carthusian monastery, where Crashaw studied from 1629 to 1631.

Richard Crashaw was born in London, England, circa 1612 or 1613. He is the only son of Anglican divine William Crashaw (1572–1626). The exact date of his birth and the name of his mother are not known, but it is thought that he was born either during Advent Season in 1612 or near the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January) in 1613.[3] It is possible that Richard Crashaw was baptised by James Ussher, later the Archbishop of Armagh.[4] His father—a Cambridge-educated clergyman who was appointed as a preacher at London's Inner Temple—was born in or near Handsworth, a village near Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, and came from a prosperous family.[5][6] It is thought that Crashaw's mother, his father's first wife, died during her son's infancy.[2] William Crashaw's second wife, Elizabeth Skinner, whom he married in 1619, died the following year in childbirth.

William Crashaw wrote and published many pamphlets advocating Puritan theology and sharply critical of Catholicism. He was "a man of unchallenged repute for learning in his day, an argumentative but eloquent preacher, strong in his Protestantism, and fierce in his denunciation of 'Romish falsifications' and 'besotted Jesuitries'".[2] Despite this opposition to Catholic thought, the elder Crashaw was attracted by Catholic devotion as exhibited by his translation of verse by Catholic poets.[7] While there is nothing certain about young Richard's early education, it is thought he benefited from his father's private library, which contained many Catholic works and was described as "one of the finest private theological libraries of the time".[8][9] At an early age, he could have been exposed to works including Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs, the life of Catherine of Siena, the Revelations of Saint Bridget, and the writings of Richard Rolle.[10]

William's death in 1626 rendered Richard an orphan when he was 13 or 14 years old. However, England's attorney general, Sir Henry Yelverton and Sir Ranulph Crewe, a prominent judge, friends and colleagues of his late father through the Inner Temple, were appointed as the young orphan's guardians. The two men supported Richard's entry into the Charterhouse School in 1629 and subsequently entry into Pembroke Hall, Cambridge in 1631 where he formally matriculated the following year.

The Old Court at Pembroke College, Cambridge

From 1629 to 1631, Crashaw attended the Charterhouse School in London. The school was established on the grounds of a former Carthusian monastery. At Charterhouse, Crashaw was a pupil of the school's headmaster, Robert Brooke, required students to write epigrams and verse in Greek and Latin based on the Epistle and Gospel readings from the day's chapel services.[11] Crashaw continued this exercise as an undergraduate at Cambridge and a few years later would assemble many these epigrams for his first collection of poems, Epigrammatum Sacrorum Liber (trans. "A Book of Sacred Epigrams"), published in 1634.

According to clergyman and editor Alexander Grosart, Crashaw was "as thoroughly Protestant, in all probability, as his father could have desired" before his graduation from Pembroke Hall in 1634.[12] During the course of his education, Crashaw gravitated to the High Church tradition in Anglicanism, particularly towards the ideals and ritual practices that emphasised the church's Catholic heritage and were advocated by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud, with the support of King Charles I, reoriented the practices of the Church of England with a programme of reforms that sought "beauty in holiness", and sought to incorporate "more reverence and decorum in church ceremonial and service, in the decoration of churches, and in the elaboration of the ritual".[13] This movement, called Laudianism, rose out of the influence of the Counter-Reformation. The University of Cambridge was a centre of the Laudian movement at the time of Crashaw's attendance.

Richard formally matriculated as a scholar at Pembroke on Easter, 26 March 1632.[2][6] at a time that the college's master was the Rev'd Benjamin Lany, an Anglican clergyman and friend of William Crashaw. Early in his career, Lany shared many of the elder Crashaw's Puritan beliefs. However, Lany's beliefs evolved toward more High Church practices. It is likely that Richard was under Lany's influence while at Pembroke.[4] It is also thought that at this time, Crashaw became acquainted with Nicholas Ferrar and participated in Ferrar's religious community at Little Gidding, near the city of Cambridge, noted for its adherence to High Church rituals centred around Ferrar's model of a humble spiritual life of devoted to prayer and eschewing material, worldly life. Little Gidding was criticised by its Puritan detractors as a "Protestant Nunnery".

Pembroke Hall (now known as Pembroke College) conferred on Crashaw a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in 1634. This degree was promoted to a Master of Arts in 1638 by Cambridge, and through incorporation ad eundem gradum by the University of Oxford in 1641.[6]

The Old Court at Peterhouse, Cambridge, the oldest constituent college of the university, which Crashaw described as "a little contentfull kingdom"

For eight years, beginning in 1636, Crashaw was appointed as a fellow of Peterhouse, the oldest constituent college at the University of Cambridge. In 1638 Crashaw took holy orders in the Church of England, and was installed as curate of the Church of St Mary the Less, Cambridge. This church, commonly known as "Little St Mary's", is adjacent to Peterhouse and had served as the college's chapel until the opening of a new chapel within the college in 1632.[14] Peterhouse's master, John Cosin, and many of the college's fellows, adhered toward Laudianism and embraced the Anglican faith's catholic heritage. In these years, also, Crashaw became more intimately connected with the Ferrar family and frequently visited Little Gidding. Crashaw incorporated these influences into his conduct at St Mary the Less including holding late night prayer vigils, and adorning the chapel with relics, crucifixes, and images of the Madonna.[14](Husain) According to an early Crashaw biographer, David Lloyd, Crashaw attracted Christians who came to his services eager to hear his sermons, "that ravished more like Poems, than both the Poet and Saint... scattering not so much Sentences as Extasies".[15] Because of the tensions between Laudian adherents and their Puritan detractors, the Puritans often sent people to attend church services in order to identify and gather evidence of "superstitious" or "Popish" idolatry. In 1641, Crashaw would be cited for Mariolatry (excessive devotion to the Virgin Mary) and for his superstitious practices of "diverse bowings, cringeings" and incensing before the altar".

With the advance of Cromwell's forces on Cambridge, Crashaw was forced to resign from his fellowship at Peterhouse. He and five of his colleagues were ousted because of their refusal to sign the Solemn League and Covenant.[16] This began his exile from "the contentfull little kingdom" at Peterhouse that he cherished. Shortly after Crashaw's departure from the city, Little St Mary's was ransacked on 29 and 30 December 1643 by William Dowsing, an iconoclast who was ordered by Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester, a parliamentary commander during the Civil War, to rid Anglican churches in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire of any ornaments or images connected to Roman Catholic "superstitions" or "popery". Dowsing faithfully kept a journal of his destructive efforts at over 250 churches, recording that at Little St Mary's "we brake downe 60 superstitious pictures, some popes, and crucifixes, and God the Father sitting in a chayer, and holding a globe in his hand".[17]

Crashaw's poetry took on decidedly Catholic imagery, especially in his poems written about of Spanish mystic St Teresa of Avila. Teresa's writings were unknown in England and unavailable in English. However, Crashaw had been exposed to her work, and the three poems he wrote in her honor—"A Hymn to Sainte Teresa," "An Apologie for the fore-going Hymne," and "The Flaming Heart"— are, arguably, his most sublime works. Crashaw began writing poems influenced by the George Herbert's collection The Temple—an influence likely derived from Herbert's connection to Nicholas Ferrar. Several of these poems Crashaw later collected in a series titled Steps to the Temple and The Delights of the Muses by an anonymous friend and published in one volume in 1646. This collection included Crashaw's translation of Giambattista Marini's Sospetto d'Herode. In his preface, the collection's anonymous editor described the poems as having the potential to induce a considerable effect on the reader—it would "lift thee Reader, some yards above the ground."[14]

The sermons of the subject were powerful and well-attended, but have not come down to us.[18]

Little St Mary's, Cambridge

Having been expelled from his fellowship in 1644, Crashaw fled into exile. Before departing he arranged for Ferrar Collet to assume his fellowship. Collete, one of his pupils at Peterhouse was the son of Mary Collet, the niece of Nicholas Ferrar. Crashaw then accompanied Mary Collet, whom he revered as his "gratious mother", into exile on the Continent settling first in Leiden.("Richard Crashaw and Mary Collett" Church Quarterly Review, vol. lxxiii)[14] It was at the onset of his exile that Crashaw is thought to have formally converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. According to the Athanae Oxoniensis (1692), antiquarian Anthony à Wood explains the reasoning for Crashaw's conversion as the result of fearing the destruction of his beloved religion by the Puritans: "an infallible foresight that the Church of England would be quite ruined by the unlimited fury of the Presbyterians".[19] However, according to Husain,

"It was not the Roman Catholic dogma, or philosophy, but the Catholic ritual and the reading of the Catholic mystics, especially St. Teresa, which largely led him to seek repose in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Crashaw's conversion was the confirmation of a spiritual state which had already existed, and this state was mainly emotional, an artistic abandonment to the ecstasy of divine love expressed through sensuous symbolism."[20]

During this period, Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I and her court fled in exile—at first at Oxford, a royalist stronghold, and later to Paris in July 1644. At some point in 1645, Crashaw appeared in Paris, where he encountered Thomas Car, whose original name was Miles Pinkney,[21] the experienced confessor to English refugees. The poet's vagrant existence made a lasting impression on Car, as shown by "The Anagramme":

He seeks no downes, no sheetes, his bed's still made.
If he can find a chaire or stoole, he's layd,
When day peepes in, he quitts his restlesse rest.
And still, poore soule, before he's up he's dres't.

It was at this time Abraham Cowley discovered Crashaw living in abject poverty in Paris. Cowley sought the Queen's influence in securing Crashaw a position in Rome. Crashaw's friend and patron, Susan Feilding, Countess of Denbigh, also used her influence at court to persuade the Queen to recommend Crashaw to the Pope. Crashaw made his way as a pilgrim to Rome in November 1646 where he continued to struggle with poverty and ill health, and while waiting for some papal retainer. Crashaw was introduced to the Pope as "the learned son of a famous Heretic".[22] Coincidentally, according to literary historian Maureen Sabine, though the Puritans who forced Crashaw into exile would have described him as the heretical son of a learned performer.[23] After renewed diplomatic entreaties to the pope in 1647, Crashaw secured a post with the virtuous Cardinal Palotto who was closely associated with the English College.[24] and stayed at the Venerable English College.

Crashaw moral sensitivities caused him to express shock at some of the amoral behaviour of some of the Cardinal's entourage and express his complaints directly to the Cardinal. When some of these complaints became public, several in the cardinal's retinue protested about his presence and expressed outright animosity toward Crashaw. The Italians who had evil designs toward the subject prompted the Cardinal to discharge him for his safety.[25] Finally, in April 1649, the cardinal procured him a cathedral benefice at the Basilica della Santa Casa at Loreto, Marche. Weakened by his precarious existence in exile, Crashaw set out for Loreto in May and died there of a fever on 21 August 1649. There were suspicions that Crashaw was poisoned, possibly by persons within the Cardinal's circle.[24] Crashaw was buried in the lady chapel of the shrine at Loreto.

Three collections of Crashaw's poetry were published during his lifetime and one small volume posthumously—three years after his death. The posthumous collection, Carmen Del Nostro, included 33 poems.

For his first collection of poems, Crashaw turned to the epigrams composed during his schooling, assembling these efforts to form the core of his first book, Epigrammatum Sacrorum Liber (trans. "A Book of Sacred Epigrams"), published in 1634. Among its well-known lines is Crashaw's observation on the miracle of turning water into wine (John 2:1–11): Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit, often translated as "the modest water saw its God, and blushed".[lower-alpha 1]

For instance, this quatrain, titled Dominus apud suos vilis from the collection, was based on a passage from the Gospel of Luke:[26]

Title page of Crashaw's Steps to the Temple (1646) which was published during Crashaw's exile

Crashaw's work has as its focus the devotional pursuit of divine love. According to Sabine, his poems "reveal new springs of tenderness as he became absorbed in a Laudian theology of love, in the religious philanthropy practiced by his Pembroke master, Benjamin Laney, and preached by his tutor, John Tournay, and in the passionate poetic study of the Virgin Mother and Christ Child".[14] Sabine asserts that as a result of his Marian devotion and Catholic sensibilities, "In expressing his Christian love for all men, even the archenemy of his father and most English Protestants, Crashaw began to feel what it was like for Christ to be a stranger in his own land."[14] He depicts women, most notably the Virgin Mary, but also Teresa of Ávila and Mary Magdalene, as the embodiment of virtue, purity and salvation.[27] Indeed, Crashaw's three poems in honour of the mystical Saint Teresa of Avila--"A Hymn to Sainte Teresa," "An Apologie for the fore-going Hymne," and "The Flaming Heart" are considered his most sublime works.

According to Maureen Sabine, "In his finest contemplative verse, he would reach out from the evening stillness of the sanctuary to an embattled world that was deaf to the soothing sound of Jesus, the name which, to his mind, cradled the cosmos."[14]

According to Husain, Crashaw is not a mystic—and not by traditional definitions of mysticism—he is simply a devotee who had a mystic temperament because he "often appears to us as an ecstatic poet writing about the mystical experiences of a great saint (St. Teresa) rather than conveying the richness of his own mystical experience".[28] Husain continued to categorise Crashaw's poems into four topic areas:

• (1) poems on Christ's life and His miracles;
• (2) poems on the Catholic Church and its ceremonies;
• (3) poems on the saints and martyrs of the Church; and
• (4) poems on several sacred themes such as the translation of the Psalms, and letters to the Countess of Denbigh, and "On Mr. George Herbert's book intituled, The Temple of Sacred Poems sent to a Gentlewoman," which contain Crashaw's reflections on the problem of conversion and on the efficacy of prayer."[29]

While Crashaw is categorised as one of the metaphysical poets, his poetry differs from those of the other metaphysical poets by its cosmopolitan and continental influences. As a result of this eclectic mix of influences, literary scholar Maureen Sabine states that Crashaw is usually "regarded as the incongruous younger brother of the Metaphysicals who weakens the 'strong line' of their verse or the prodigal son who 'took his journey into a far country', namely the Continent and Catholicism."[14] Lorraine M. Roberts writes Crashaw "happily set out to follow in the steps of George Herbert" with the influence of The Temple (1633), and that "confidence in God's love prevails in his poetry and marks his voice as distinctly different from that of Donne in relation to sin and death and from that of Herbert in his struggle to submit his will to that of God."[30]

Much of the negative criticism of Crashaw's work stems from an anti-Catholic sentiment in English letters—especially among critics who claim that his verse suffered as a result of his religious conversion.[31] Conversely, the Protestant poet Abraham Cowley memorialised Crashaw in an elegy expresses a conciliatory opinion of Crashaw's Catholic character"

Today, Crashaw's work is largely unknown and unread[32]— if he is not the "most important" he is certainly one of the most distinguished of the metaphysical poets.[2] Crashaw's poetry has inspired or directly influenced the work of many poets in his own day, and throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

According to literary scholars Lorraine Roberts and John Roberts, "those critics who expressed appreciation for Crashaw's poetry were primarily impressed not with its thought, but with its music and what they called 'tenderness and sweetness of language'"—including a roster of writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Amy Lowell, and A. Bronson Alcott.[31] During and after his life, friends and poets esteemed Crashaw as a saint—Abraham Cowley called him such in his elegy "On the Death of Mr. Crashaw" (1656);[33] and Sir John Beaumont's poem "Psyche" (1648) compares Crashaw with fourth-century poet and saint Gregory of Nazianzen.[34] Others referred to him in comparison with George Herbert, as "the other Herbert" or "the second Herbert of our late times".[35][36]

"His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right:
And I, myself, a Catholic will be,
So far at least, dear saint, to pray to thee"

The Crashaw prize for poetry is awarded by Salt Publishing.[37]

Pope judged Crashaw "a worse sort of Cowley", adding that "Herbert is lower than Crashaw, Sir John Beaumont higher, and Donne, a good deal so."[31][38] Pope first identified the influence of Italian poets Petrarch and Marino on Crashaw, which he criticised as yielding thoughts "oftentimes far fetch'd and strain'd", but that one could "skim off the froth" to get to Crashaw's "own natural middle-way". However, contemporary critics were quick to point out that Pope owed Crashaw a debt and in several instances, plagiarised from him.[39] In 1785 Peregrine Philips disparaged those who borrowed from and imitated Crashaw without giving proper acknowledgement—singling out Pope, Milton, Young, and Gray—saying that they "dress themselves in his borrowed robes"[31][40] Early 20th-century literary critic Austin Warren identified that Pope's The Rape of the Lock borrowed heavily from Crashaw's style and translation of Sospetto d'Herode.[41]

In a 1751 edition of in The Rambler, critic Samuel Johnson called attention to a direct example of Pope's plagiaristic borrowing from Crashaw:[42]

Crashaw's verse has been set by or inspired musical compositions. Elliott Carter (1908–2012) was inspired by Crashaw's Latin poem "Bulla" ("Bubble") to compose his three-movement orchestral work Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei (1993–1996). The festival anthem Lo, the full, final sacrifice, Op. 26, composed in 1946 by British composer Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) is a setting of two Crashaw poems, "Adoro Te" and "Lauda Sion Salvatorem"—translations by Crashaw of two Latin hymns by Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274). "Come and let us live", a translation by Crashaw of a poem by Roman poet Catullus (84–54 BC), was set to music as a four-part choral glee by Samuel Webbe, Jr. (1770–1843). Crashaw's "Come Love, Come Lord" was set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. "A Hymn of the Nativity" was set as "Shepherd's Hymn" by American composer Timothy Hoekman in his 1992 set of three songs entitled The Nativity for soprano and orchestra.

• The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, edited by Alexander B. Grosart, two volumes (London: printed for private circulation by Robson and Sons, 1872 & 1873).
• The Poems, English, Latin, and Greek, of Richard Crashaw edited by L. C. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927); second edition, revised, 1957).
• The Complete Poetry of Richard Crashaw edited by George Walton Williams (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970).