| Popis: |
Just prior to their departure for England in the spring of 1580, Robert Persons and Edmund Campion received an explanatio from Pope Gregory XIII suspending the sentence of excommunication against Queen Elizabeth in the bull Regnans in Excelsis. The explanatio decreed that English Catholics were not bound to implement the sentence of deposition against Elizabeth rebus sic stantibus, that is, under the present circumstances. The two priests hoped that this faculty would allay the English government's fear that they had come to foment rebellion in England. But the explanatio produced the opposite result. Lord Burghley and the government seized upon the conditional nature of the decree to argue that any future profession of Catholic loyalty must be disregarded out of hand. Rome's strategy, therefore, had backfired. The rebus sic stantibus declaration had given the Persons/Campion mission a fatal taint of treachery and treason. |
