Saint Roger Casement?
Toward a history of Sir Roger Casement's Christian faith
‘God! break my heart—but make it pitiful !’
—
Sir Roger Casement, ‘Fragment: thoughts suggested by a stern friend’s character’
‘Broken Archangel’, the title of Roland Philipps’ 2024 biography of Sir Roger David Casement (-1864-1916), is perhaps an apt summary of the man’s personality, in its contradicting identities and convictions. Casement is remembered today for his devotion to exposing human rights abuses as a British diplomat in the Congo, and as one of the sixteen Irish republicans executed in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising.1 In the wake of increased LGBT activism and scholarship in the West, increasing attention has been given to his supposed homosexuality, which has been generally accepted by historians despite the ongoing debates regarding the authenticity of his Black Diaries and the true extent of the pederasty detailed therein.2 In his fractured personality we find a Brokenness; straddled between two modes of being and identity in many areas of his life — what Angus Mitchell nicknames ‘The Riddle of the Two Casements’. He was an Ulsterman and an Irishman;3 a Protestant and a Roman Catholic; a British Diplomat and an Irish Nationalist; and, seemingly, an outward heterosexual and a closeted homosexual.
Yet, one aspect of his personality (or one of his personalities) remains largely neglected: namely, his inclination to Christian faith. Most biographies have detailed his deathbed conversion to Roman Catholicism to varying degrees, but the lack of attention given to his religious stance throughout his life implicitly frames this as something of a senseless eleventh-hour turn-around in the face of his incoming death. This article will seek to examine the nature of Sir Roger Casement’s spirituality throughout his life, using academic biographies, his unpublished poems, and some important details of his religious instinct revealed by his friend Ada McNeill. It will seek to show that Casement’s religious inclinations extended beyond his brief born-again experience around the age of 23 and his radical turn into the Catholic faith on his deathbed.
Birth
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:6)
Sir Roger Casement was born in 1864 to a Protestant father, Captain Roger Casement, and a Catholic mother, Anne Jephson. Captain Casement appeared largely indifferent toward formal religion, and despite being nominally Anglican, it seems he christened none of his children at birth.4 Later, however, Anne Casement had them all secretly baptised by a Jesuit priest whilst on holiday in Rhyl, North Wales.5 It is not evident that Anne raised the children in her own faith, and Casement stated that he was ‘brought up really nothing’, and by adulthood, Casement had developed a general aversion to ‘formal religion’ like his father, avoiding church services when possible.6
From 1884 Roger Casement lived in the Congo, working for King Leopold II’s International African Association as a construction surveyor.7 By about 1887-8 Casement had a born-again experience.8 Jeffrey Dudgeon, recent editor of the Black Diaries, attributed this conversion to ‘long periods’ of chastity, and the presence of ‘death all around, especially the deaths of his colleagues’, making him ‘susceptible to becoming ‘saved’ in a Protestant religious experience’.9 Although, this judgement appears to rest on the assumption that Casement was sexually active at this early time, and upon a secular hermeneutic that Casement could not experience a religious awakening by supernatural means. The conversation and friendship of the Baptist missionaries W. Holman Bentley and T. H. Hoste certainly contributed to his change in outlook.
The Rev. Bentley had been personally reassured that ‘there had been nothing in his manner of life out here which would not cast a reflection on us did he become identified with us’.10 Another Baptist missionary from the Congo, John Harris, reported to the Archbishop of Canterbury that Casement ‘was one of the purest of men at a time when opportunity of vice was not only easy but was commonly yielded to’.11 However, even with Casement’s newfound love for ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life’, he would undoubtedly have been compelled by both social norms and the law to not reveal anything of his supposed secret homosexual life; and would be accustomed to staying secretive in the years prior; thus, Bentley would not likely not have any notions of his sexuality.
The zeal of Casement’s conversion would soon fade. In 1888 he was recruited as a missionary by Bentley while temporarily unemployed, and while he devoted a few months to this endeavour, he soon departed to go elephant shooting.12 Dudgeon concludes this small epoch: ‘Casement never lost a belief in God but from this moment in Africa, until his prison conversion, religion rarely intruded’;13 but the next section of this article will show that Casement continued to maintain a private grasp on his faith in his creative writing.
The poet
In 1895, Casement returned home to Ireland and stayed with his uncle in Magherintemple. He spent much of his time swimming, reading, and writing poetry.14 Casement had a poetic streak since his youth in Ballymena, greatly influenced by Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson; though in this year he ‘began to think seriously of putting together a volume of verse’.15 Nearly all of his poems were unpublished in his lifetime, though the few that were, as well as some manuscript poems, were published in 1918 as Some Poems of Roger Casement. Herbert O. Mackey later published a longer selection in his 1958 volume of Casement’s works, The Crime Against Europe.
The influence of the Romantics can be seen clearly in Casement’s poetic style — he often directly mimics them — and their particular inclinations towards pantheism undoubtedly influenced his own understanding of God. A brief analysis of his works can unveil some of the religious themes and perspectives being worked out in Casement’s mind. A poem from an 1895 manuscript, ‘The Heart’s Verdict’, betrays his sympathy for the Romantic Luciferian spirit, and a subtle questioning of Christian Dogma;
Oh! hearts that meet, and hearts that part!
The world is full of sorrow:
Men love and die—th’almighty mart16
Puts up new hearts to-morrow.Was this Creation's scheme at start?
Oh! then I little wonder
That Lucifer's proud human heart
Preferred to God His thunder.17
On the other side of the manuscript for ‘The Heart’s Verdict’ is ‘Mio Salvatore’ (‘My Saviour’). This poem is somewhat contrasting in that it is heavily devotional in tone, and has something of an ‘intimacy’ in its lines:
“Were I a king, my crown of gold
I should not for a moment hold,
Did not thy brow its glory share,
Were thou not ever next my chair.“Were I a God, my heaven would be
One long, lone, vast sterility,
Eternal only in its woe
Did thou not all its purpose know.“Were I a saint, my midnight cell
Would be the portico of hell,
Did not my scourging heart attest
Thy love dwells in a stricken breast.”18
The last stanza indicates Casement’s affinity with Catholicism, reflecting on the life of the self-denying monastic. Other poems, perhaps from the same period of creativity, betray the same sympathy (over ‘The Heart’s Verdict’’s criticism). An undated and untitled poem reflects on Christ’s ministry, in light of ‘a stern friend’s character’ — the friend was perhaps passing judgement on the immorality of another.19 Casement argues in this poem that in sin ‘there is beauty in the devious path’, and can lead to a deeper repentance. He cites Christ’s attitude in the Gospels, that He abhorred a punitive judgement of sins by fellow men; rather He
loved and knew
Vile sinners, fed with them, and never scorned
One sinful hand, tho’ its misdeeds he mourned;
He kept his anger for that rigid school
Who measure Virtue, like a gown, by rule[.]20
His reflections throughout the poem, however, do seem to border somewhat on the heterodox, verging on a kind of loose subjective morality, and neglecting that Christ is judge as well as pardoner. Nevertheless, he was, at some stage, dwelling on the moral teachings of Christ.
Another undated poem, ‘Solitude’, pulls from Romanticism, and reflects on God’s essence as seen in the Romantics’ reflections on nature:
There is a life breathed on the mountain side
That fills the frame with joy.
And hearts that ‘mid the city’s throng have sighed
For other scenes — for scenes that would not cloy
May find such on the breasts of heather hills
That throb with life fresh from the hand of God[.]21
‘Forest Thoughts’ expresses a similar view of all Creation singing in praise of God, reminiscent of the psalms;
Yet sad to think while hymns from woods and fields
On morning’s earliest breath to God are borne,
That man alone of all creation yields
No thanks to Him to meet another morn.[. . .]
Wake not to morn then with a sullen heart
But with a thankful prayer that God has given
Another day on which anew to start
Upon that path of life which leads to Heaven.22
Another fragment, perhaps an earlier version of this larger poem, holds similar sentiments — ‘All Nature seemed with one glad voice / To murmur love of thee’.23 Evidently, Casement’s poetic reflections on nature were taking on a distinctly Wordsworthian and Creationist understanding.
In 1896 he penned a pair of sonnets titled ‘The Peak of the Cameroons’, setting the African mountain peaks against the surrounding landscape like some kind of god, and speaking of his own experience on its top as a Mosaic revelation, employing biblical allusion;
Then are the clouds set on thee to forbid
That man should share the mystery of Sinai;
[. . .]For thus, by the D[oua]la, art thou seen,
Home of a God they know, yet would not know;
But I, who far above their doubts have been
Upon thy forehead hazardous, may grow
To fuller knowledge. . .24
If the above poems are all of an 1890s and post-1890s dating, they betray that his spiritual inclinations had not left him; ‘The Cross’, a somewhat ambiguous sonnet, proclaims boldly: ‘Lo! when the sea sweeps o’er our last defence / Thy Cross, our pillar rises, Nazarene!’25
Besides lyrical poems, Casement earlier in life wrote a small cluster of narrative poems narrating Irish rebel history and mythology. In ‘Benburb’, written in fourteener couplets after the style of Sir Samuel Fergusson, Casement’s Irish nationalism can be seen emerging. In ‘Benburb’ he attributes the success of Owen Roe O’Neill — the 17th century Irish rebel — and the preservation of Irish Catholicism to the grace of God:
The Sword of State that Tudor hate laid sore on Church of God,
Hath fallen here with shattered hilt and vain point in the sod.
[. . .]
For God hath spoke in battle, and His face the foe is toward,
And ye must hold by valour what He hath freed by sword.
Yea, God in fight hath spoken, and thro’ cloud hath bent His brow
In wrath upon the routed—but in hope o’er Owen Roe.26
Another poem, of uncertain date but similar theme and form, states much the same:
Our flag no longer drooping, each fold shall now reveal,
And wave for God and Erin and our darling Hugh O’Neill.27
In these ‘Gaelic’ poems, Casement could simply have been toying with stock poetic forms and motifs — emulating the allusions to God by Catholic nationalist poets and balladeers, and being inspired by the themes of religious poetry and hymns to express Romantic reflections on love and worldly disorder. Yet, there is a persistent dwelling on God in his writing which cannot be overlooked in the context of his spiritual past and future. The Gaelic poems additionally twine Casement’s sense of religiosity with the nationalist history of Ireland.
Casement the evangelist
During Casement’s home visits, he would fraternise with Ballycastle and Glens of Antrim peers and locals, eventually becoming involved in the burgeoning Gaelic Revival movement from about 1904. One such associate in the Glens Revival was Ada McNeill, who’s family had a low view of the Casements but took a particular shining to the young Roger Casement.
The date is not stated in Ada McNeill’s reflections, but presumably in the 1890s or early 1900s during his leave from government duty, Casement conversed with her in a time when her own personal faith was wavering;
I had lost my faith and only scoffed at religion and having a biting tongue and certain power of influencing others, this gave my father great pain and vexation, my greatest and best friend. I remember a long walk up the glen with Roger and as we turned home he talked eloquently and earnestly against scoffing at religion. I listened, actually paid attention and listened. His enthusiasm was as great as my own about things and he was far more earnest and simple. There was something always very young and boyish and yet so very true and earnest about his character that he made you pause and think.28
And on another occasion, he preached to a group he was picnicking with:
I remember at a picnic in Murlough — his actually sitting on the rocks and talking so earnestly about Faith and Religion that we all listened[,] and bicycling home that night we agreed that no-one could have done it but Roger.29
Something of faith had stayed with Casement, despite his own apparent lack of devotion or conviction.
The Black Diaries
If the Black Diaries were genuine, Casement was sexually active with young men in the Congo in 1903. It is unclear if he struggled spiritually with this concupiscence, as the Black Diaries were separate to his main personal diary, and therefore lacks any sophistication, more resembling a prostitution account book. The diaries were, naturally, extremely controversial. The convenience of their emergence upon Casement’s arrest, and the embarrassment which Casement had caused to the British establishment, led many to believe that the diaries were forgeries. William J. Maloney claimed in his 1936 book The Forged Roger Casement Diaries that the manuscripts were the genuine hand of Casement, but had been copied from the diaries of a Peruvian man he was investigating in 1911.30 However, his claims have been deemed unsubstantiated, to come from a place of political bias, and are not upheld by modern scholarship. Eoin Neeson, a journalist who wrote highly polemical histories of the Irish revolutionary period, was at the forefront of defending Casement against the ‘forgeries’, and claimed:
No one who knew him believed the allegations and are unanimous about his extremely high sense of moral integrity. . . The virtual impossibility of his practising the gross degeneracies at all, let alone with the frequency alleged, is demonstrable.31
Neeson claimed elsewhere that the diaries were forged by British agents, but cited fabricated evidence drawn from an amateur ‘Holohoax’ journal.32
Linguistic and handwriting analysis has since quite robustly affirmed them as the work of Casement. Neeson even accepted the conclusions of this evidence in 2002, and lamented that Casement had ‘become a gay, rather than a nationalist, martyr.’33 While the authenticity of the handwriting has generally been accepted, it is also difficult to dismiss persuasive linguistic analysis. However, the likes of Paul Hyde — who published Anatomy of a Lie: Decoding Casement in 2019 — insists that they were fabricated, and maintains that there has been an ongoing propaganda campaign of defamation on Casement in mainstream historiography.
Even if the Black Diaries were frabricated, Casement was, nevertheless, likely a practicing homosexual. Several male lovers within Ireland have been proposed from his other diaries and letters, including men from Ballymoney and Belfast.34 The post-mortem examination of his body after his execution also suggested evidence of sodomy, but there have been other proposed explanations for the physiological indicators.35 It appears Casement had an intimate relationship with his valet Adler Christensen, who became an informer to the British embassy in Norway of Casement’s actions, while he was sourcing guns for the 1916 Rising in Ireland. The British diplomat in the Oslo embassy, Mansfeldt de Carbonnel Findlay, sent a letter to London stating that Christensen had ‘implied that their relations were of an unnatural nature and that consequently he had great power over this man’ — showing that British intelligence was willing to take advantage of this fact, giving some credence to the suspicion that the diaries were British forgeries.36 Indeed, when campaigners in the UK and USA began to contest the charge of treason and death sentence on Casement in 1916, British intelligence showed them police typescripts of Casement’s diaries.37 This fact and the indications of other lovers suggest that Casement was undoubtedly homosexual, even if not to the extent of the Black Diaries.
Despite Casement’s prior moral and intellectual stance, religion, in the words of Dudgeon, appears to have ‘rarely intruded’.38 Ada McNeill’s account of his praise for religiosity and faith, and Neeson’s insistence on the testimony of others regarding his ‘moral integrity’, do not imply the lack of a private struggle against his homosexual urges. On the other hand, it should not be assumed that he adhered to an orthodox Christian perspective of sexual morality, or even cared to consider it, given the looseness of faith he appeared to hold.
To be Catholic or Protestant…
Casement’s attitude to the various denominations of Ireland was often negative, and his scapegoating instinct flitted from institution to institution as the political climate changed. His highly suspicious nature has been described as him having a mind ‘like a rat-trap and when suspicious it snapped before the rat reached the pan’.39
Casement, however, appeared to have a long term personal inclination to Catholicism despite being non-practicing. It was noted by a host Casement lodged with in 1907 that he had the habit of ‘always [hanging] a crucifix above his bed’ — ‘an action not typical of Ulster Protestants’ notes biographer Roger Sawyer.40 He also personally labelled himself a Catholic on several occasions. He wrote several times ‘I am more Catholic than anything else’; in 1911 he signed a letter ‘A Catholic Reader’; and wrote privately ‘I am not a Protestant’.41 He was elsewhere reported to say ‘If ever I left the Church of England I should become a Catholic. . . I am a Catholic at heart. I think I have always been one’.42 When asked to be the godfather of his friend Major Berry’s son, he wrote
The only Christian Church in this country, in my opinion, is the Roman Catholic church. [. . .] I never set foot inside those [Protestant] Churches – and never will, please God, while they preach intolerance.43
Yet, this outspoken Roman Catholicism appeared to be merely nominal, and did not reflect in any doctrinal affinity or subscription. In a 1911 letter to Alice Stopford Green he remarked that the RCC, ‘with its preposterous claims to be the beginning and end of all life[,] is a mental and moral stumbling block’, and he more broadly dismissed Christianity by writing ‘There can be no heaven if we don’t find it and make it here’, betraying that the supposed faith of his conversion experience had morphed into a kind of abstract humanism.44
Politically-minded at heart, Casement criticised the RCC through this lens, perhaps influenced by the Ulster Protestant culture of his upbringing. He appeared to agree on some level with the ‘minority outlook’ which emerged in Irish Nationalism that saw the RCC as ultimately damaging, and which led to a brief drift towards Anglicanism within the movement.45 He wrote in 1907 that Rome had ‘done more to injure Ireland than the foreign [English] Church could ever accomplish’, and in 1909 he told Bulmer Hobson ‘Freedom to Ireland can come only through Irish Protestants’.46 In typical Casement fashion, his strongest statement of a proposed solution to Ireland’s papacy problem was not a mass apostasy from Rome to Canterbury, but a mass apostasy from Christianity altogether. He wrote sardonically:
It would be a very excellent thing if Ireland could relapse into brilliant Heathenism for a year or two. When she got converted again the Bishops would all be gone [. . .] It is a hopeless thing to think you can free Ireland when she licks her chains[,]47
betraying again the Luciferian spirit of rebellion as seen in ‘The Heart’s Verdict’, and in his general affinity with historic Irish nationalism.
These criticisms of the RCC were half-hearted momentary passions, while his criticism of the Church of Ireland was much more consistent. In a letter to a Miss Bannister he produced a sweeping insult of the CoI and cultural Protestantism as limp-wristed and jingoistic:
I love the Antrim Presbyterians — Antrim and Down — they are good, kind, warm-hearted souls; and to see them now, exploited by that damned Church of Ireland — that Orange Ascendancy Gang who hate Presbyterians only less than Papists, and to see them delirious before a Smith, a Carson [. . .] is a wound to my soul [. . .] Sometimes the only thing to bring a boy to his senses is to hide him – and I think “Ulster” wants a sound hiding at the hands of her that owns her – Ireland’s hands. Failing that — I pray for the Germans and their coming. A Protestant Power to teach these Protestants their place in Irish life is what is needed [. . .] as England is too paltry, too political, too timorous to play the great r[o]le needed[.]48
His criticism of Christian denominations were generally in the context of their political affiliation, not their doctrinal beliefs or practice, though, his above condemnation of the CoI as preaching ‘intolerance’, and his exclusion of it from the category of ‘Christian Church’ altogether, indicates a feeling of its moral and practical hypocrisy.
Despite all these private attitudes and remarks, Casement was not opposed to publicly manoeuvring as a Protestant.49 This is most obvious in his public pronouncement of himself as a Protestant at the Ballymoney Home Rule Meeting in 1913, as well as his general affiliation with the British establishment and his open identity as an Ulster Protestant and as a reliable newspaper correspondent on issues of Irish politics. While in America in 1914, he also made use of his Protestant background, ‘not without a sense of shame’.50 Whatever affiliation to either Protestantism or Roman Catholicism that he maintained, he clearly did not see them as requiring committed faith, nor any form of church participation. More often, it was a useful tool in political manoeuvring.
After his exposure of the human rights abuses in Putumayo (Peru) in his ‘Blue Book’, he managed to raise support from both Protestants and Catholics in 1912, in the prospect of a Christian mission to there to maintain observance and protection of the natives there. A sermon in Westminster Abbey ‘commended him personally’, and soon a Franciscan mission was established through the support of friends. Previously he had thought it would need to be a Catholic endeavour, but decided to appeal to both the Catholic and Anglican archbishops in England. This naturally frustrated Casement, and in his disillusionment his denominational gripes were undoubtedly inflated. However, the Blue Book earned him praise and support from both denominations, seemingly without much grumbling from Casement himself.51
Deathbed conversion
In April 1916, Casement returned to Ireland on the German submarine U-19, along with the Irish Brigade he had mustered and a shipment of arms. The smuggling plot was known to British authorities. He disembarked with two companions at Banna Strand, County Kerry; due to malaria, however, he fell behind his two companions and took refuge in a Celtic ringfort near the strand, and was soon discovered along with three hidden pistols by a police sergeant. His subsequent charge and arrest took place — by coincidence or providence — on Good Friday.
Casement was soon transferred to Brixton Prison and put on suicide watch (which he attempted several times). He was soon after transferred to Pentonville Prison, where he would die. Seeking the support of a sympathetic Irishman, he marked himself down as a Catholic when offered the support of a prison chaplain in his final days — perhaps also another example of his strident self-identification as Catholic.52 In his subsequent conversation with Father Carey, he told how his friendship with the chaplain to the POWs in Germany had led to a genuine seeking of instruction toward joining the Roman Catholic Church, and he continued his interest under the guidance of a priest in Munich, but this had not come into full fruition in the previous two years.53 He similarly told Carey of his secret baptism a child, which made the priest realise that he ‘was a Catholic already, although he had never known it; and for the priest it became a definite obligation to “reconcile” him to the Church of his baptism’.54 Casement conceded that it must be done.
Carey set upon an intense and brief catechesis of Casement, challenging his views of morality, politics, and the supernatural. They were also joined by the support of Father Timothy Ring, dean of Westminster Cathedral, who became the executor of Casement’s final wishes.55 Cardinal Bourne, the Archbishop of Westminster, upon Casement’s request to join the church, sought a ‘signed statement of sincere repentance for scandal caused, public or private’; Casement refused, still fearing for his reputation — and perhaps compelled by shame — so his request was refused.56 However, Frs Carey and Ring understood that he could be received into the church by another avenue: in articulo mortis, or, ‘in the instant of death’, a form of indulgence which can be granted by Roman Catholic priests.57
In these final weeks, Casement penned his last poem; a sonnet— ‘Written on receiving a letter from a friend, T. H., who had spent the best years of his life as a missionary in Central Africa, in which he speaks of "the glorious superfluity of strength and spirits one remembers as a lad, but alas! only remembers”’ — titled ‘Lost Youth’’.
Weep not that you no longer feel the tide
High breasting sun and storm, that bore along
Your youth on currents of perpetual song:
For in these mid-stream waters, still and wide,
A sleepless purpose the great deep doth hide;
Here spring the mighty fountains pure and strong,
That bear sweet change of breath to city throng,
Who, had the sea no breeze, would soon have died.
So though the sun shines not in such a blue,
Nor have the stars the meaning youth deviced,
The heavens are nigher, and a light shines through
The brightness that nor sun nor stars sufficed;
And on this lonely waste we find it true
Lost youth and love, not lost, are hid with Christ.58
The two priests spent much time with Casement in the lead up to his death. They prayed with him in the prison chapel; Casement confessed to Father Ring; they both walked the prison grounds together on the day before his execution; and spent time with him in silent prayer on the day of his execution. 59
On his last morning, Casement received his first Holy Communion as a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
Conclusion
While there are still many questions regarding his life, and the full extent of his faith as it waxed and waned in strength across his lifetime, he undoubtedly died as a genuine, convicted, and contrite Christian. Hopefully this article can contribute in some small part to the revaluation of Casement’s spiritual worldview as it developed throughout his lifetime, as briefly evidenced above.
After Casement’s execution, a journalist asked Father Carey:
“was the rumour true that Casement had become a Catholic before he died. If so, had he made a last confession? and had the chaplain any statement to make concerning it?” There was a long pause before Father Carey collected himself sufficiently to answer, and then he turned towards the young man who had spoken to him. He answered slowly, in a soft Irish voice [. . .] “You have asked me a question which is a secret between Sir Roger Casement and his God.”
Carey later said that Casement was ‘a saint [. . .] we should be praying to him [Casement] instead of for him’.60
The survival of a small prayer card (below) indicates that lay Catholics readily accepted him as a martyr of Ireland and the faith. And, indeed, it appears some are prepared to recognise him as a saint. A recent YouTube video explaining Casement’s deathbed version calls him an ‘Unlikely Saint’, and compares him to Saint Dismas — the traditional name for the Thief on the Cross. Many have recognised the power of his dramatic turn to faith in the end. As Pope Francis has marked himself out for his many canonisations of saints, currently numbering 942, and with the RCC’s increasing openness regarding homosexuality, perhaps a future of canonisation is not an unrealistic expectation for the legacy of Roger Casement.
This article has hopefully laid the first steps of untangling another layer of the complex influences upon Casement’s thought, and perhaps in tandem with a deeper analysis of his notion of ethics, could create a fuller picture of both his interior life, and his spiritual and moral perspectives.
Bibliography
Primary
Casement, Roger. The Crime Against Europe ed. Herbert O’Mackey. Dublin, 1958.
Casement, Roger. Some Poems of Roger Casement. Dublin, 1918.
‘Poem by Roger Casement titled ‘Fragment - Thoughts suggested by a stern friend's character’’(undated), Roger Casement Papers, 1889-1945, National Library of Ireland, MS 13,082/2vi/15.
‘Poems titled ‘Mio Salvatore’ and ‘The Heart’s Verdict’ by Roger Casement’ (1895), Roger Casement’s correspondence and papers, 1898-1924, National Library of Ireland, MS 17,406/3.
‘TREASON: Sir Roger Casement: Post-mortem examination of Casement's body: evidence of alleged homosexual activities’, The National Archives, HO 144/1637/311643/141.
Secondary
Clavin, Terry. ‘Neeson, Eoin Francis’, Dictionary of Irish Biography [Website] https://www.dib.ie/biography/neeson-eoin-francis-a9988 [accessed 11 February, 2025]
Daly, Mary E. Roger Casement in Irish and World History. Dublin, 2005.
Dudgeon, Jeffrey. Roger Casement: The Black Diaries: with a study of his background, sexuality, and Irish political life. Belfast: Belfast Press, 2002.
Gwynn, Dennis. The Life and Death of Sir Roger Casement. London, 1936.
Hyde, Paul. ‘Lost to History: An Assessment and Review of the Casement Black Diaries’, Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies [Website] https://breac.nd.edu/articles/lost-to-history-an-assessment-and-review-of-the-casement-black-diaries/ [12 February, 2025]
MacColl, René. Roger Casement: A New Judgement. London, 1956.
Mitchell, Angus ed. One Bold Deed of Open Treason: The Berlin Diary of Roger Casement 1914-1916. Dublin, 2016.
Mitchell, Angus, and Jeffrey Dudgeon correspondence in the Times Literary Supplement — https://jeffdudgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/Casement-Controversies/Angus-Mitchell-Casement-post-mortem-letter-and-Jeffrey-Dudgeon-response-TLS-January-2011.docx [accessed 11 February, 2025].
Phoenix, Eamon, Pádraic Ó Cléireacháin, Eileen McAuley and Nuala McSparran eds. Feis na nGleann: A Century of Gaelic Culture in the Antrim Glens. Newtonards, 2005.
Sawyer, Roger. Casement: The Flawed Hero. London, 1984.
The Secrets of the Black Diaries (2010) [BBC Documentary]
‘[Sir] Roger Casement (1864-1916)’, Ricorso [Website] http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/index.htm [accessed 12 February, 2025].
Stephanie Millar, ‘Roger Casement and North Antrim’, Eamon Phoenix, Pádraic Ó Cléireacháin, Eileen McAuley and Nuala McSparran eds. Feis na nGleann: A Century of Gaelic Culture in the Antrim Glens (Newtonards, 2005), p. 63.
Ibid.
These terms are not necessarily contradictory, but in the political and cultural mainstream of Home Rule period Ireland, these terms came politically charged.
Jeffrey Dudgeon, Roger Casement: The Black Diaries: with a study of his background, sexuality, and Irish political life (Belfast: Belfast Press, 2002), p. 54.
Roger Sawyer, Casement: The Flawed Hero (London, 1984), p. 17; Dudgeon, The Black Diaries…, pp. 511-2.
Sawyer, Casement, p. 18; Dudgeon, The Black Diaries…, p. 54.
The Secrets of the Black Diaries (2010) [BBC Documentary]; Dudgeon, The Black Diaries…, p. 74.
Sawyer, Casement, p. 23; Dudgeon, The Black Diaries…, pp. 89-90.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 51.
Sawyer, Casement, p. 23.
Dudgeon, The Black Diaries…, p. 90.
Millar, ‘Roger Casement and North Antrim’, p. 55.
Ibid., pp. 54-5
‘Mart’ appears to be used in the sense of a market, casting the world as some kind of ruthless, capitalistic producer of souls. The word mart also exists in Old Irish, and denotes a cow or ox slaughtered for meat, doubling down on this ‘ruthless’ implication. This very bleak, ruthless, almost karmic, perspective on the world is not exactly a Christian outlook — however the poem could be written in another voice. It is difficult to say if Casement intended such a double meaning of the word ‘mart’ — his involvement with the Irish language movement does not seem to have began until the mid 1900s.
Roger Casement The Crime Against Europe ed. Herbert O’Mackey (Dublin, 1958), p. 161.
Dated from the manuscript: ‘Poems titled ‘Mio Salvatore’ and ‘The Heart’s Verdict’ by Roger Casement’ (1895), Roger Casement’s correspondence and papers, 1898-1924, National Library of Ireland, MS 17,406/3.
It is possible this manuscript is the final drafts of these two poems, and they are from an earlier date (perhaps even around the time of his conversion). He had indeed ‘began to think seriously of putting together a volume of verse’ in 1895, but they could just as easily be from this year, with his outpouring of creativity during his leisure time in Magherintemple. Many of the other manuscripts held in the National Library are also undated, making the sketching of his spiritual development via his poetry practically impossible at present.
Casement, The Crime Against Europe, p. 162.
The typed manuscript contains the further clarification that this friend’s character was ‘when residing in a spot that breathed only of mercy and stillness’: ‘Poem by Roger Casement titled ‘Fragment - Thoughts suggested by a stern friend's character’’(undated), Roger Casement Papers, 1889-1945, National Library of Ireland, MS 13,082/2vi/15.
Casement, The Crime Against Europe, p. 191.
Ibid., p. 196.
Ibid., pp. 199-200.
Ibid., p. 197.
Ibid., p. 165.
Ibid., p. 210.
Ibid., p. 173.
Ibid., p. 175.
Ada McNeill, ‘Ada McNeill's recollections of Roger Casement (1929)’ in Phoenix, Ó Cléireacháin, McAuley and McSparran eds. Feis na nGleann, pp. 48-9.
Ibid., p. 49.
Sawyer, ‘The Black Diaries: A Question of Authenticity’ in Mary E. Daly ed. Roger Casement in Irish and World History (Dublin, 2005)., p 93; The Secrets of the Black Diaries (2010) [BBC Documentary]
Terry Clavin, ‘Neeson, Eoin Francis’, Dictionary of Irish Biography [Website] https://www.dib.ie/biography/neeson-eoin-francis-a9988 [accessed 11 February, 2025]
Ibid.
Ibid.
Sawyer, ‘The Black Diaries…’, pp. 94-5.
Angus Mitchell and Jeffrey Dudgeon correspondence in the Times Literary Supplement — https://jeffdudgeon.com/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/Casement-Controversies/Angus-Mitchell-Casement-post-mortem-letter-and-Jeffrey-Dudgeon-response-TLS-January-2011.docx [accessed 11 February, 2025]. The original report is housed in the National Archives, reference number HO 144/1637/311643/141.
Christopher Andrew, ‘Casement and British Intelligence’ in Daly, Casement in Irish and World History, pp. 76, 83.
Paul Hyde, ‘Lost to History: An Assessment and Review of the Casement Black Diaries’, Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies [Website] https://breac.nd.edu/articles/lost-to-history-an-assessment-and-review-of-the-casement-black-diaries/ [12 February, 2025]
Dudgeon, The Black Diaries…, p. 90.
Ibid., p. 406.
Sawyer, Casement, p. 18.
Ibid., p. 19; Dudgeon, The Black Diaries…, pp. 511-2.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 214.
Ibid., p. 512.
Ibid., p. 178
Ibid.
Ibid.
René MacColl, Roger Casement: A New Judgement (London, 1956), p. 121.
Millar, ‘Roger Casement and North Antrim’, p. 60.
Sawyer, Casement, p. 19.
Ibid., pp. 96-100.
Dennis Gwynn, The Life and Death of Sir Roger Casement (London, 1936), 306
Ibid., p. 307
Ibid., p. 309
Ibid., pp. 310-1
Dudgeon, The Black Diaries…, p. 512.
Sawyer, Casement, p. 144.
Roger Casement, Some Poems of Roger Casement (Dublin, 1918),p. 9.
Gwynn, The Life and Death…, pp. 310-12.
‘[Sir] Roger Casement (1864-1916)’, Ricorso [Website] http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/index.htm [accessed 12 February, 2025].