Reginald Bede Camm was an English Benedictine

Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 martyrologist. A monk of Erdington Abbey

Erdington Abbey

Erdington Abbey Church on Sutton Road, Erdington, Birmingham, England, is the more usual name of the grade II listed church of Saints Thomas and Edmund of Canterbury. It is the church of a Roman Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of Birmingham served by the Redemptorists...

, he is known for works on the English Catholic martyrs.

Life

He was educated at Westminster School

Westminster School

The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...

 and Keble College, Oxford

Keble College, Oxford

Keble College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to the south by Museum Road, and to the west by Blackhall...

, graduating in 1887. Ordained in the Anglican ministry, he became a convert to Catholicism

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

 after a short period as a curate, in 1890. He made his profession as a monk in 1891, and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1895, the year in which he arrived at Erdington; he moved on to Downside Abbey

Downside Abbey

The Basilica of St Gregory the Great at Downside, commonly known as Downside Abbey, is a Roman Catholic Benedictine monastery and the Senior House of the English Benedictine Congregation. One of its main apostolates is a school for children aged nine to eighteen...

 in 1913.

He spent the years of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 as an army chaplain, spending time in Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

.

From 1919 to 1931 he was Master of Benet House, Cambridge.

Works

• A Benedictine Martyr in England: being the life and times of the venerable servant of God Dom John Roberts (1897)
• In the Brave Days of Old: historical sketches of the Elizabethan persecution (1899)
• Courtier, Monk and Martyr: a sketch of the life and sufferings of Blessed Sebastian Newdigate of the London Charterhouse (1901)
• Lives of the English Martyrs: declared blessed by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 and 1895 (1904)
• Some Devonshire screens and the saints represented on their panels (1906)
• Tyburn Conferences: Oxford, Douay, Tyburn (1906)
• The Voyage of the "Pax"; an allegory (1906)
• A Birthday Book of the English Martyrs (1908)
• William Cardinal Allen (1908)
• Roodscreens and Roodlofts (1909) with Frederick Bligh Bond
  Frederick Bligh Bond
  Frederick Bligh Bond was an English architect, illustrator, archaeologist, and psychical researcher.-Early life:...
  
  
• The Martyr-Monk of Manchester, Blessed Ambrose Barlow (1910)
• Forgotten Shrines (1910)
• Heroes of the Faith (1910)
• Sister Mary of St. Francis, S.N.D., the Hon. Laura Petre (Stafford-Jernigham) (1913)
• A North-Country Martyr (Venerable John Ducket) (1914)
• At the Feet of the King of Martyrs (1916)
• Ven. Dominic Barberi and the conversion of England (1922)
• Pilgrim Paths in Latin Lands (1923)
• The Story of Blessed Thomas More (1926)
• The English Martyrs and Anglican Orders (1929)
• The Good Fruit of Tyburn Tree (1929)
• The English Martyrs; papers from the Summer school of Catholic studies held at Cambridge, July 28-Aug. 6, 1928 (1929)
• Nine Martyr Monks: the lives of the English Benedictine martyrs beatified in 1929 (1931)
• The Life of Blessed John Wall, O.F.M.: the martyr of Harvington (1932)
• The Foundress of Tyburn Convent (1935)
• Anglican Memories (1935)
• Witnesses to the Holy Mass and Other Sermons (2004)
• The English Martyrs under Henry VIII: I. Fisher and More with Leonard William Longstaff

Further reading

• Aidan Bellenger, Two Antiquarian Monks: the Papers of Dom Bede Camm and Dom Ethelbert Horn at Downside Catholic Archives 6 (1986) 11
• Aidan Bellenger, Dom Bede Camm (1864-1942), Monastic Martyrologist, in Diana Wood (editor), Martyrs and martyrologies: papers read at the 1992 Summer Meeting and the 1993 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (1993)