Richard Crashaw
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Richard Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649) was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature.
Crashaw was the son of a famous Anglican divine with Puritan beliefs who earned a reputation as a hard-hitting pamphleteer and polemicist against Catholicism. After his father's death, Crashaw was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. After taking a degree, Crashaw taught as a fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge and began to publish religious poetry that expressed a distinct mystical nature and an ardent Christian faith.
Crashaw was ordained as a clergyman in the Church of England and in his theology and practice embraced the High Church reforms of Archbishop Laud. Rev. Crashaw became infamous among English Puritans for his use of Christian art to decorate his church, for his devotion to the Virgin Mary, for his use of Catholic vestments, and for many other reasons. During these years, however, the University of Cambridge was a hotbed for High Church Anglicanism and for Royalist sympathies. Adherents of both positions were violently persecuted by Puritan forces during and after the English Civil War (1642–1651).
When Puritan General Oliver Cromwell seized control of the city in 1643, Crashaw was ejected from his parish and became a refugee, first in France and then in the Papal States. He found employment as an attendant to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta at Rome. While in exile he converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. In April 1649, Cardinal Pallotta appointed Crashaw to a minor benefice as canon of the Shrine of the Holy House at Loreto where he died suddenly four months later.
