ABSTRACT
Robert Persons's reception into the Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus was timely because he was an active proponent of the English mission from its inception. A person was still a fairly inexperienced Jesuit when he was placed in charge of the English mission early in 1580. With his academic background his course of study had been accelerated: ordained priest in July 1578, he found himself playing an advisory role in a dispute between disaffected English students at the English College, Rome, and the Welsh rector, Maurice Clynogg. Persons's Christian Directory was originally conceived as a prelude to Loarte, urging his readers to a fundamental inner shift of gravity, on the basis of which to institute a life of Christian exercise. The capture and execution of Campion certainly shifted Persons's priorities from missionary to military strategy. But the fact that he continued writing The Christian Directory suggests that he regarded pastoral encouragement and political responsibility as complementary.
