NO . II . CORRESPONDENCE OF CARDINAL ALLEN . CONTRIBUTED BY THE REV. PATRICK RYAN, S.J.
I. CORRESPONDENCE FROM GRENE'S " COLLECTANEA M."
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Among the Stonyhurst College manuscripts is one known as Collectanea M. It consists of a number of extracts made by Father Christopher Grene, S.J. , from originals , once in the Archives of the English College, Rome , but now unfortunately lost. The excerpts here printedfrom Collectanea M, fols. 109 sqq. , were transcribed by the late Father John Morris. He has omitted all that had already appeared in Father Knox's Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen . It has been judged best to treat Father Morris's transcript as a complete document ; and thus one or two letters appear which do not logically come under Allen's correspondence. The Letters of Cardinal Allen , which are here printed for the first time, comprise all that have been found since Father T. F. Knox published his excellent work, The Letters and Memorials of William Cardinal Allen (15321594), edited by Fathers of the Congregation of the London Oratory, with an Historical Introduction by Thomas Francis Knox , D.D., London , and ten more (not letters ) will (Nutt), 1882 . This contains 280 pieces be found in the Appendices to Mgr. Provost Bellesheim's Wilhelm Cardinal Allen ( 1532-1594 ) und die Englischen Seminare auf dem Festlande , von Dr. Alphons Bellesheim , Mainz ( Kirchheim) , 1885 . The letters of the present series (and something very similar might have been said of Father Knox's collection ) have come proximately or remotely from Rome ; almost all being connected in one way or another with the English College there. The Jesuit superiors of that house cooperated with Allen with an intimacy that could hardly be believed, if the written records were not there to bear witness . His loving charity, his perfect straightforwardness and unselfishness, and his burning zeal stand forth in these letters with a vividness that at first seems almost unnaturalin the vigour of their expression. But when we read the letters of the Jesuit Fathers to him (pp . 68-98) we can see that the spacious terms used on both sides are none too strong to convey the enthusiasm in the service of God, with which they were animated . Though certainly not unknown before, this warm friendship forms the most remarkable feature of the collection of letters before us . * Of the new facts , perhaps the most important is the light which the letter to Dr. Owen Lewis (pp . 44-47 ) throws on Allen's political hopes and plans at a comparatively early period . Pages xxxi to xxxiii of Father Knox's Introduction will need some modification in view of what Allen here says. The Memorial on the English Hospice at Rome, pp . 46-62 , even though very probably not written by Allen, tells us many things concerning men and institutions very familiar to him .
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For Father Knox's discussion of the differences with the Jesuits, alleged to have commenced at a later period of the Cardinal's life, see Knox's Introduction to the Douay Diaries ( 1878) , pp . xcviii-cii.