SOURCE: Schten, Carol A. “Southwell's ‘Christs Bloody Sweat’: A Meditation on the Mass.” English Miscellany 20 (1969): 75-80.

In the essay which follows, Schten argues that “Christs Bloody Sweat” is not about Christ's agony in Gethsemane but is a meditation on Calvary, Christ's sacrifice, and the Eucharist.

In her recent edition of Robert Southwell's Poems, Nancy Pollard Brown identifies “Christs bloody sweat” as part of a “Gethsemane sequence”¹. However, despite its title, “Christs Bloody sweat” is not a meditation on Christ's agony in Gethsemane and is incorrectly linked with “Sinnes heavie loade” and “Christs sleeping friends”. Each of these other poems borrows its theme from the story in Luke when Christ went apart from his disciples to pray: “And being in an agony … his sweat was as it were great drops of blood, falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Each refers directly to the “sweat” that dropped like blood: “And...