Richard
Crashaw
born c. 1613, London, Eng.
died Aug. 21, 1649, Loreto, Papal States [Italy]
English poet known for religious verse of
vibrant stylistic ornamentation and ardent
faith.
The son of a zealous, learned Puritan minister,
Crashaw was educated at the University of
Cambridge. In 1634, the year of his graduation,
he published Epigrammatum Sacrorum Liber (“A
Book of Sacred Epigrams”), a collection of Latin
verse on scriptural subjects. He held a
fellowship at Peterhouse, Cambridge, a centre of
High Church thought, where he was ordained.
During the English Civil Wars (1642–51), his
position at Peterhouse became untenable because
of his growing inclination toward Roman
Catholicism, and he resigned his post before the
Puritans could evict him. He prepared the first
edition of his Steps to the Temple: Sacred
Poems, with other Delights of the Muses for
publication in 1646. It included religious and
secular poems in Latin and English.
He went to France in 1644 and became a Roman
Catholic. When Queen Henrietta Maria of England,
consort of Charles I, moved to Paris with her
entourage two years later, Crashaw was found, by
his friend and fellow poet Abraham Cowley,
living in poverty. The queen sent him to Rome
with a strong recommendation to the pope, but it
was not until a few months before his death that
he received the position of canon of the
Cathedral of Santa Casa (“Holy House”) at
Loreto.
Crashaw’s English religious poems were
republished in Paris in 1652 under the title
Carmen Deo Nostro (“Hymn to Our Lord”). Some of
his finest lines are those appended to “The
Flaming Heart” a poem on St. Teresa of Avila.
Having read the Italian and Spanish mystics,
Crashaw reflected little of the contemporary
English metaphysical poets, adhering, rather, to
the flamboyant imagery of the continental
Baroque poets. He used conceits (elaborate
metaphors) to draw analogies between the
physical beauties of nature and the spiritual
significance of existence. Crashaw’s verse is
marked by loose trains of association, sensuous
imagery, and eager religious emotion. The
standard text of his poems was edited by L.C.
Martin (1927; rev. ed., 1957).
