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John Donne (1572-1631) - 31 March.
We all know a bit about John Donne. He was a 'metaphysical' poet. We
know he said, 'Ask not for whom the bell tolls ...' and we may know his
punning hymn ['When thou hast done, thou hast not done ...'] or a line
or two of his love poetry ['O my America! my new-found-land']. And
that's about it.
In fact, his life story is dramatic. Brought up a Catholic, his
mother being a grand-niece of Sir Thomas More, he went up to Oxford
aged 11 and may have transferred to Cambridge, but couldn't take a
degree because of his religion. At some point he travelled to Spain and
Italy, but by 1592 he was at Lincoln's Inn, writing his intensely
erotic poems. He sailed with Essex to Cadiz in 1596 and with Ralegh to
the Azores in 1597. No longer a Catholic, by 1598 he settled down as
secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton.
It did not last. In 1601, Donne secretly married Ann More, Lady
Egerton's niece. When exposed, he was dismissed and briefly imprisoned,
and spent the next fourteen years trying to live down the disgrace.
James I urged him to enter the But it was the death of Ann in 1618 that
changed his life. As Dean of St Paul's from 1621, he became a famous
preacher, and wrote some of our greatest religious poems. Carew's
epitaph sums up his career:
Here lies two Flamens, and both those the best,
Apollo's first, at last the true God's Priest.
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Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-82) 16th September.
Like the notorious Dr Fell, Dr Pusey is easier to admire than to like.
In every account of his life, the word that sums him up is
'earnestness.' An aristocrat, educated at Eton and Christ Church,
Oxford, he was from 1822 a Fellow of Oriel, Newman's and Keble's
college. And for several years he studied in Germany to equip himself
to combat the rationalism he feared from the new 'higher criticism.'
In 1828, Pusey became regius professor of Hebrew and canon of Christ
Church, positions which he held for the rest of his life. Though
lacking all oratorical skill, he quickly won renown as a preacher in
demand all over the country, in spite of a two-year ban in Oxford where
he was charged with heresy.
After his friend Newman began 'Tracts for the Times,' Pusey joined
him and contributed three tracts on baptism. Already well known, his
social position and character exaggerated his early prominence in the
Oxford movement, but after Newman's conversion to Rome in 1845, he
undertook to defend the via media against both Roman Catholics and
protestants, and became the acknowledged head of the Ritualist faction.
For the rest of his life, Pusey was engaged in controversy on all
sides, though he also worked at different times for reunion with
catholics, orthodoxy and presbyterians. He was responsible for the
introduction of the first Anglican sisterhoods, and for the revival of
private confession; and we owe to Pusey more than to anyone else the
survival of catholic influence in the church in the face of repeated
19th-century attacks.
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Mary Slessor (1848-1915).
Presbyterian missionary. Born in Aberdeen, she worked as a mill girl in
Dundee until she achieved her ambition to be accepted as a missionary
in 1876, and was sent to teach in Calabar, Nigeria. She spent many
years there, devoted to her African charges, who called her 'Great
Mother.'
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St John Bosco (1815-1888).
Founder
of Salesian teaching order (named after St Francis de Sales) in Turin
in 1869. Born to an Italian peasant family, he showed an early interest
in doing religious work among men and boys which continued after his
ordination in 1841. Established 'halfway houses' for delinquents plus
trade and agricultural schools, hospitals and foreign missions.
Allegedly performed miraculous acts of feeding his charges
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