Saint Nicholas Owen

The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia begins by saying what is missing: "There is no record of his parentage, birthplace, date of birth, or entrance into religion." ¹ Catholic World Report agrees that no one knows where or when he was born. ⁴ Franciscan Media says he was born at Oxford. ²

He was, the encyclopedia thinks, probably a carpenter or builder by trade. ¹ He was small, which is why he was called "Little John," and Catholic World Report adds that he was strong. ²⁴ Franciscan Media places his work in the penal times, when a series of laws punished Catholics for practicing their faith, and when, as Catholic World Report puts it, it was a capital crime to be a Catholic priest and a capital crime to hide one. ²⁴

For about twenty years he built hiding places for priests in houses across England. ²⁴ Franciscan Media says he did it entirely alone, as both architect and builder, and lists what he made: "subterranean passages, small spaces between walls, impenetrable recesses." ² Catholic World Report describes him digging into underground passages, taking apart thick walls and putting them back, and building false fronts. ⁴

The searchers, Catholic World Report explains, were paid to find priests, and might take a house apart for days. ⁴ If they broke in during a Mass and found no priest and no sign of the Mass, the family could say they had been having a dinner party. ⁴ The Register says he worked alone at night in cramped spaces, and that the work gave him a hernia. ³

Franciscan Media says that before he began each hiding place he received Communion, and that he prayed throughout the work. ² Catholic World Report, more cautiously, says "it is said" that he prayed before the Blessed Sacrament before each one. ⁴ Several of his hiding places survive. ⁴ The Register notes that some are in houses now open to visitors, among them Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, where visitors can crawl into one. ³

The encyclopedia says he had been the trusted servant of the missionary priests, and that he was first imprisoned after the death of Edmund Campion in 1581, for saying openly that Campion was innocent. ¹³ He then served Fathers Henry Garnet and John Gerard for eighteen years. ¹

When he joined the Jesuits is uncertain. The encyclopedia says before 1580, and cites the seventeenth-century historian More as associating him with the first English lay brothers. ¹ Franciscan Media says he entered after many years at his work, and that his connection with the Society was kept secret "for very good reasons." ² Catholic World Report says it was Garnet who admitted him. ⁴

In 1594 he was caught with Gerard. ¹²⁴ Franciscan Media says he was tortured at length and named no one, and was let go when a ransom was paid. ² Catholic World Report says wealthy Catholics paid the fine, and that the torture did lasting damage to his health. ⁴ He then helped Gerard escape from the Tower of London. ³⁴ The encyclopedia is more careful: he "is said to have contrived the escape of Father Gerard." ¹ Franciscan Media credits him with the escape of two Jesuits. ²

After the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the government wanted Garnet and Edward Oldcorne for what they might have known of it. ³ The searchers came to Hindlip Hall in Worcestershire and, the Register says, searched it for days without finding the hides; at last Owen, the two priests and the lay brother Ralph Ashley had to come out for want of food and water. ³ The encyclopedia says Owen was taken while impersonating Garnet. ¹ Catholic World Report says he let himself be found to protect the priests hidden elsewhere. ⁴

Cecil, the Secretary of State, understood what they had. The encyclopedia quotes him: "It is incredible how great was the joy caused by his arrest . . . knowing the great skill of Owen in constructing hiding places, and the innumerable quantity of dark holes which he had schemed for hiding priests all through England." ¹ If he talked, the Register points out, the government could raid the recusant houses he knew and arrest their owners. ³

He was held in the Marshalsea and then moved to the Tower, where he was racked: hung by his arms in iron rings, and later with heavy weights at his feet, until he died. ¹ The Register says his jailers knew they were torturing an injured man and fitted a metal plate and a belt to keep his hernia from rupturing. ³ He told them what they already knew and nothing more. ³ The Register quotes from one of the records of his examinations, of March 1, 1606: that he had known and sometimes attended Garnet for about four years, had made his fire and served him, and had hidden with him in a secret room below the dining room. ³

The government gave out that he had killed himself. ¹²⁴ Gerard, in the Register's quotation from his autobiography, said they added "calumny to murder," and that a man who would not harm his neighbor by betraying him would not "offend God by self-murder." ³ Catholic World Report points out that if he had implicated anyone, it would have come out at the trials of the priests, and it never did. ⁴

The day of his death is not agreed. The Register gives March 22, 1606. ³ Catholic World Report gives the night of May 1 to 2 that year. ⁴ The encyclopedia says a letter of Garnet's shows him still alive on March 3, and that the English Jesuit province's Menology puts his martyrdom as late as November 12. ¹

Pius XI beatified him in 1929, and Paul VI canonized him on October 25, 1970, among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. ¹³⁶ Catholic World Report counts twenty-eight priests and an earl among the forty. ⁴ Paul VI did not name Owen in his homily, but in its Italian, translated here, he spoke of lay people among them "of modest condition" as well as of noble birth. ⁶

In English, he prayed that "the blood of these Martyrs" might "heal the great wound inflicted upon God's Church by reason of the separation of the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church." ⁶ The encyclopedia closes with its own summary: "He was of singularly innocent life and wonderful prudence, and his skill in devising hiding-places saved the lives of many of the missionary fathers." ¹

None of the sources used for this page names a patronage for Saint Nicholas Owen, so none is given here. ¹²³⁴⁵ Franciscan Media calls him "a clever builder and architect who used his skills to protect endangered priests." ²

Saint Nicholas Owen's feast is March 22. ²³⁴ CatholicCulture.org says the Roman Martyrology commemorates him that day. ⁵ He is also kept with the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, whose joint feast New Advent's note on the encyclopedia article gives as October 25, and CatholicCulture.org says he is included in the feast of the English Martyrs on May 4. ¹⁵

His work was meant not to be seen, and almost nothing about his own life was written down. ¹² What is known is the work itself, some of which is still standing, and what he endured rather than give it away. ³⁴

He prayed over the work, by Franciscan Media's account, beginning each hiding place with Communion. ² Without it, Franciscan Media says, "hundreds of English Catholics would have been deprived of the sacraments." ²

He was tortured in 1594 and again in 1606. The first time left him injured, and he went back to building. ²⁴ The second time killed him, and the men responsible put it about that he had taken his own life. ¹³

Catholic World Report ends by remembering a lay brother "who served the Church by swinging a hammer and sawing wood," and who was willing to lay down his life for his friends. ⁴