SOURCE: Batley, Karen E. “Southwell's ‘Christs Bloody Sweat’: A Jesuit Meditation on Gethsemane.” Unisa English Studies 30, no. 2 (September 1992): 1-7.

In the following essay, Batley claims that the critic Caroline Schten's 1969 essay misreads “Christ's Bloody Sweat,” arguing that it is indeed a Jesuit meditational poem on Christ in Gethsemane.

Robert Southwell (1561-1595), exiled in Europe amongst the Catholic emigrés in order to avoid the religious persecutions in England, finally returned to his country as an ordained Jesuit in 1586. Imbued with the doctrines and dogma of the new Counter-Reformation Catholic Church, the creation of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), he had permission from his superiors to use poetry as a weapon to spread the new Faith amongst English Catholics, who had been priestless for at least a generation. Recovering the use of his native tongue (he had been in Italy and at Douai), he acquainted himself with current English...