Prompted by the 50th anniversary of the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, Jesuit Collections launched its first online exhibition in March 2021. How Bleedeth Burning Love presents relics belonging to priests and laypeople martyred for their Roman Catholic faith in England and Wales in the 16th and 17th centuries. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many of these individuals were beatified, and on 25 October 1970 a group of 40, representative of those who died for their faith, were canonised by Pope Paul VI.

The exhibition takes its name from a line in a poem by one such individual, the Jesuit martyr and saint, Robert Southwell. It examines the faith stories of the remarkable men and women and shines a light on an extraordinary and little-explored period of English history, when men and women were persecuted and executed for their religious beliefs. Some of the relics in the exhibition demonstrate vividly the barbaric nature of the penalties inflicted, while others tell very personal stories of individual spiritual journeys of historic figures such as Thomas More and Mary, Queen of Scots.

The exhibition is illustrated with images of the martyrs’ relics and other manuscripts and artefacts in the care of the British Jesuit Archives and Stonyhurst College Collections. It is divided into groups of martyrs by their year of beatification or canonisation, with an intriguing detective story at the end. There is a link back to this menu at the bottom of each page, or you can click through to the next page.