De persecutione Anglicana by Robert Persons S.J.: A Critical Edition of the Latin Text with English Translation, Commentary and Introduction

Abstract

Over twenty-five years ago, John Bossy (1933-2015) controversially observed: "Still, whenever I have met the classic twin portrait of himself [Edmund Campion] and his companion Robert Persons, painted in contrasting white and black, have felt like protesting. Yes, Persons was no angel, he got his hands dirty, he was touched with the sin of the world, but if he had kept himself as clean as Campion perhaps nothing would have got done at all." ("The Heart of Robert Persons," in "The Reckoned Expense": Edmund Campion and his English Jesuit Contemporaries, ed. Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. [2nd ed., Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2007], 187-207, here 187).