The Metaphysical poet who fled England to find God in the Baroque

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Richard Crashaw was a brilliant 17th-century poet and Anglican cleric whose devotion to Catholic ritual made him a pariah in Puritan England. Forced into exile during the Civil War, he transformed from a Cambridge fellow into a Roman Catholic convert, leaving behind a legacy of sublime, ecstatic religious verse.

Born around 1613 to a staunchly anti-Catholic Puritan pamphleteer, Richard Crashaw’s intellectual journey was marked by profound irony. Educated at Cambridge, he gravitated toward Laudianism—a High Church movement emphasizing beauty, ceremony, and the church's Catholic heritage. As a curate at Little St Mary's in Cambridge, Crashaw’s use of crucifixes, images of the Virgin Mary, and elaborate rituals drew the ire of Puritan spies who labeled his practices as superstitious idolatry.

The English Civil War shattered his life in 1643 when Oliver Cromwell’s forces seized Cambridge. Refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, Crashaw was ejected from his fellowship and forced into a life of wandering. He eventually found refuge in Rome, where he converted to Catholicism and served under Cardinal Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta. His final years were spent in poverty and ill health, ending abruptly in 1649 when he died of a fever at the Shrine of the Holy House in Loreto.

Crashaw’s poetry occupies a unique space in English literature. While often grouped with the Metaphysical poets, his work is distinct for its continental, Baroque influences and its focus on divine love. Inspired by Spanish mystics like St. Teresa of Avila, his verse seeks to bridge the physical beauty of nature with the profound truths of religion. Though his work was once dismissed by critics due to anti-Catholic sentiment, he remains a distinguished, if often overlooked, voice whose ecstatic imagery continues to influence poets centuries later.

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