Nicholas Wiseman (Faber Finds)

Michael Staunton] Dublin to [? Fletcher to Nicholas Wiseman London: Steinmetz to Nicholas Wiseman: Bagshawe to Nicholas Wiseman: Robertson Bonn to Nicholas Wiseman: Bagshawe London to Nicholas Wiseman: Drummond Hay Tangier to Daniel Rock: Anstey to Nicholas Wiseman: Cooper Dublin to Nicholas Wiseman: Heatley London to Nicholas Wiseman: Robertson Westminster to Nicholas Wiseman: Hare Lucca to Nicholas Wiseman: Ackermann to Nicholas Wiseman: Kenrick Philadelphia to Nicholas Wiseman: Urlichs Frascati to Nicholas Wiseman: Chisholm Anstey London to Nicholas Wiseman: Chisholm Anstey to Nicholas Wiseman: Digby Paris to Nicholas Wiseman: Lease to Nicholas Wiseman: Scholz to Nicholas Wiseman Bonn: Axinger canon of Evreux to Nicholas Wiseman: Berington to Nicholas Wiseman: Westmorland to Nicholas Wiseman: Walter Philadelphia to Nicholas Wiseman: McGlen Ireland to Nicholas Wiseman: Ozanam Lyon to Nicholas Wiseman: Aerts Malines to Nicholas Wiseman: Murray Maynooth to Nicholas Wiseman: Wiseman to Nicholas Wiseman in London: Lucas Tablet office to Nicholas Wiseman: Lucas to Nicholas Wiseman printed for a limited private circulation: Brown Sedgley Park to Nicholas Wiseman: Murray Dublin to Nicholas Wiseman: Betham Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Nicholas Wiseman: Brown Bishop Eton to Nicholas Wiseman: Crolly Armagh to Nicholas Wiseman: Lucas to Nicholas Wiseman: Faber Cheadle to Nicholas Wiseman: Ennis to Nicholas Wiseman: Sawyer Chelsea to Nicholas Wiseman: Faber to Nicholas Wiseman: Nicholson Naples to Nicholas Wiseman: Donnet Brussels to Nicholas Wiseman: June] 2f Letter from Richardson Derby to H.

Page Wood] to [? Faula Minister of State [draft]: For a young lady at the S. April ] Latin 2f Ducca di [? Letter from Robert Gillow to Nicholas Wiseman: Xaviera is no longer anxious about the oath; news of the Erringtons; news from Madrid including James Wiseman working hard; baptismal ceremonies for the duke of Bordeaux On the same sheet: Letter from Xaviera Wiseman to Nicholas Wiseman: He began without delay a course of lectures, addressed alike to Catholics and Protestants , which at once attracted large audiences, and from which, wrote a well-qualified critic, dated "the beginning of a serious revival of Catholicism in England.

Wiseman was presented with a costly testimonial, and was invited to write for a popular encyclopedia an article on the Catholic Church. Gladstone described as "a masterpiece of clear and unanswerable argument"; and in the same year, , he took the important step of founding, in association with Daniel O'Connell and Michael Quin who became the first editor , the "Dublin Review", with the object, as he himself stated, not only of rousing English Catholics to a greater enthusiasm for their religion, but of exhibiting to the representatives of English thought generally the variety, comprehensiveness, and elasticity of the Catholic system as he had been taught to regard it.

In the autumn of Wiseman returned to Rome , and for four more years held his post of rector of the English College. While in no way slackening in the conscientious performance of his duties , he found himself gradually more and more drawn towards, and personally interested in, the important religious movement developing in England ; and this feeling was strengthened by his intercourse with Macaulay and Gladstone, of whom he saw much when they visited Rome in He welcomed in them that spirit of outside sympathy with Catholicism which had already seemed to him so striking and encouraging a phenomenon in men like von Ranke, A.

Schlegel, and even Victor Hugo; and his correspondence during this period shows how in the midst of his multifarious duties in Rome he longed to be at the heart of the movement in England , working for it with all the versatile gifts at his command, and with all the personal influence which he could wield.

Augustine and the Donatists which was a turning-point in the Oxford Movement , and pressed home the parallel between the Donatists and the Tractarians with a convincing logic which placed many of the latter, in Newman's famous words, "on their death-bed as regarded the Church of England.

After making a retreat with the Passionists he was consecrated on 4 June, in the chapel of the English College, with the title of Bishop of Melipotamus, and held an ordination service next day. He left Rome on 1 Aug. No encouragement in this idea was forthcoming from his scholastic colleagues in the college, and the only support he received was in the unwavering sympathy of Father Spencer , and the enthusiasm of A. Pugin , a constant visitor at Oscott.

Other distinguished men visited Wiseman there, such as Lords Spencer and Lyttelton, Daniel O'Connell, the Duc de Bordeaux, and many more; and though not interested in the routine of college life, and a great bishop rather than a successful president, he gave a prestige and distinction to Oscott which no one else could have done. A profound liturgist, he was most particular about the proper carrying-out of the ceremonial of the Church ; and his humour, geniality, and kindness made him an especial favourite with the younger members of the college.

On the publication of the famous Tract 90, written to justify the simultaneous adherence to the Thirty-Nine Articles and to the Decrees of Trent by Anglican clergymen , Wisemen entered upon direct correspondence with Newman ; and after more than four years of perplexity, doubt , and disappointed hopes, he had the happiness of confirming him at Oscott, subsequent to his reception into the Catholic Church. But neither Newman's own conversion, nor that of a large number of his most distinguished disciples, sufficed to break down the wall of reserve and suspicion which had always separated the "Old English" Catholics , such as Lingard and his school , from the leaders of the Oxford Movement.

The sincerity of their Catholic leanings had been doubted when they were Protestants ; and the sincerity of their conversion was equally suspected now that they were Catholics. Wiseman, on the other hand, saw in every fresh accession new ground for serious hope for the return of England to Catholic unity. He enlisted the prayers of many Continental bishops for this intention, and worked unceasingly to promote a cordial understanding between new converts and old Catholics , and to make the Oxford neophytes at home in their new surroundings.

Many of them found shelter and occupation at Oscott, and the "Dublin Review" was strengthened by an infusion of new writers from their ranks. Deeply interested, as was natural, in the future of Newman and his immediate followers, Wiseman concerned himself closely with the project, ultimately realized in Birmingham , of founding an Oratory in England. Meanwhile he had himself been appointed pro-vicar Apostolic of the London District, and had in July, visited Rome on business of the utmost importance in relation to English Catholicism. He was deputed by his brother bishops to submit to the Holy See the question of revising the constitution of the Church in England , and of substituting for the vicars Apostolic a regular hierarchy , such as had existed in Ireland throughout the darkest days of the penal laws , and had recently been established in Australia.

In the changed circumstances of English Catholicism some new code of laws was imperatively called for to supplement the obsolete constitution of ; but the project of creating a hierarchy , which Wiseman favoured as the true solution of the question, was strongly opposed by many English Catholics , headed by Cardinal Acton, the only English member of the Sacred College. The negotiations on the matter with the Holy See were interrupted by the exciting and important political events which followed the accession of Pius IX and the national Italian rising against Austria.

Wiseman returned to England charged with the duty of appealing to the British Government for support of the Papacy in carrying out its policy of Liberalism. Bishop Ullathorne was sent out to Rome early in to continue in Wiseman's place the negotiations on the question of the hierarchy for England ; and he left on record his admiration of the calm and detailed consideration given to the subject by the authorities, at a time when revolution and disorder were almost at their height. All the evidence forthcoming seemed to show that the British Government could find no reasonable cause of offence in the proposed measure; and it was on the point of being carried out when the Revolution burst in Rome , and the pope's flight to Gaeta delayed the actual execution of the project for nearly two years.

Soon after Wiseman's return to England he succeeded Dr. Walsh as vicar Apostolic of the London District, and threw himself into his episcopal work with characteristic activity and zeal. The means he relied on for quickening the spiritual life of the district were, first, the frequent giving of retreats and missions both for clergy and laity , and secondly the revival of religious orders, which had of course become entirely extinct in England under the penal laws.

Within two years he founded no less than ten religious communities in London , and had the satisfaction of seeing many of the converts either joining one of these communities, or working harmoniously as secular priests with the other clergy of the district. A notable event in the annals of the London Catholics was the opening, at which Wiseman assisted, of the great Gothic Church of St. George's, Southwark , designed by Pugin , in July Fourteen bishops , priests , and representatives of many religious orders took part in the opening ceremonies, which were described in no unfriendly spirit by the metropolitan Press.

A function on this scale in the capital of England indicated, as was said at the time, that the English Catholic Church had indeed "come out of the catacombs "; but Wiseman had still much to contend with in the shape of strong opposition, on the part of both clergy and laity of the old school , to what was called the "Romanizing" and "innovating" spirit of the new bishop.

In matters of devotion as well as of Church discipline every development was regarded by this party with suspicion and distrust; and no greater proof could be adduced of the tact, prudence , and firmness of Wiseman in his difficult office, than the fact that in less than three years he had practically disarmed his opponents, and had won over to his own views, not only the rank and file, but the leaders of the party which had at first most strenuously resisted him.

In the spring of , just after the Gorham decision of the Privy Council, declaring the doctrine of baptismal regeneration to be an open question in the Church of England , had resulted in a new influx of distinguished converts to Catholicism , Wiseman received the news of his impending elevation to the cardinalate , carrying with it, as he supposed, the obligation of permanent residence in Rome. Deeply as he regretted the prospect of a lifelong severance from his work in England , he loyally submitted to the pope's behest, and left England , as he thought for ever, on 16 Aug.

Meanwhile strong representations were being made at Rome with the view of retaining his services at home; and he was able to write, immediately after his first audience of Pius IX , that it was decided that the English hierarchy was to be proclaimed without delay, and that he was to return to England as its chief.

At a consistory held on 30 Sept. Nicholas Wiseman was named a cardinal priest , with the title of St. The papal Brief re-establishing the hierarchy had been issued on the previous day; and on 7 Oct. We get a glimpse of the Vicar Apostolic of the London District as seen through the eyes of an Anglican clergyman about ten years after the passing of the Emancipation Act. Bishop of London,' he wrote, 'get out of an omnibus in Piccadilly, seize his carpet bag, and trudge straight home with it to Golden Square.

He had a blue cloak, but it hung below the skirts, and on he went.

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A very pleasing, venerable, episcopal-looking man, very like any other Bishop, save that none of ours would touch a carpet bag with his little finger. Edmund's College, Old Hall, in the south. Though it had been legal to hold Catholic services in public chapels since the Act of , these were usually built on obscure sites so as not to attract public attention, and were small and ill- adapted for the celebration of the Catholic liturgy.

It was the custom for priests to dress in the simplest and plainest of clothes, the Roman collar was unknown, and even the cassock was never worn except during the actual celebration of Mass or Divine Office. It was not the custom to call a priest by the title of 'Father'. Unless he were a member of a religious order the priest would be addressed by the simple designation of 'Mr. Even the bishops themselves were more usually referred to as c Dr. Griffiths' than by their episcopal titles, habits of discretion surviving from the days when to hold any office in the Catholic Church was a criminal offence.

The life of the Catholic community was simple and obscure and quite lacking in that ostentation which the Protestant mind tended lf rhe Rev. Few English Catholics, unless they had travelled abroad, had seen the liturgy of their Church performed with anything but the minimum of ceremonial. Only in London, in churches such as the chapel of the old Sardinian embassy, was a fully musical service possible. But here again there was no very high liturgical standard, and the generous habit of visiting opera singers in offering their services on these occasions, did not necessarily add to the religious content of the ceremony.

The following account from the Orthodox Journal of 8th June , of such a service, suggests that a music critic rather than a religious correspondent, would be best fitted to describe the scene. Le Jeune, the organist, commenced the splendid Gloria with a trumpet, well supported by the remainder of the band. It is a masterly composition, and Signor di Angeli has shown great musical talent in this piece, for it might be compared with any of Mozart's or Haydn's. Signor Rubini sang the admirable Quoniam with great effect. It was more like the warbling of a bird than mere singing, for it must have astonished as well as delighted the whole congregation, among whom were many Protestants.

To say the most of the Credo in a few words, it excelled the Gloria, and was supported by Madame Persiani and Signor Tamburini, who came in during the sermon. The Offertory was appropriated to Madame Persiani, who certainly sang both sweetly and elegantly. The remainder of the Mass was in tie same style as the beginning.

While Signor Rubini warbled like a bird at the grand instrumental High Mass, and seems to have carried off the musical laurels by a short head from Signor La Blanche, the average Catholic was witnessing a very different scene. For him Mass, or 'Prayers' as it was still often called by a generation not far removed from the days when the very mention of the word Mass had a danger all its own, might perhaps be celebrated in a small unostentatious chapel or in some room hired for the occasion.

The 45 priest, who probably had to travel many miles, would be clad in vestments showing all the wear and tear of much packing and un- packing, carefully mended by pious hands where age and long use had frayed them; for money was short and could not be spent on rich chasubles or embroidered copes.

It is understandable that these priests of old Catholic stock should have failed to appreciate the enthusiasm for 'Gothic' vestments that was ushered in by the convert architect Pugin and his followers, or have cherished the humour of his remark to a priest whose sacerdotal dress did not come up to his medieval ideal: The Catholic lay population was dominated by a small group of interrelated aristocratic families, chief among whom, at this time, was John Talbot, sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford, a man of generous sympathies and great munificence, who extended a warm welcome to the early converts.

The political affiliations of the leading Catholic families were krgely to the Whig party, not necessarily from any inherent attachment to Whig principles but rather because this party, with its vaguely liberal sentiments, had long favoured Catholic emancipation. In trying to accommodate their own principles with their fellow Whigs of the Protestant faith in order to ease die passing of measures for Catholic relief, the lead- ing Catholic laymen had often found themselves opposed to the Vicars Apostolic, and for this reason had gained for themselves a largely undeserved reputation for Gallicanism, that is to say, of advocating a restriction of the prerogatives of the Holy -See in favour of the immediate needs or aspirations of the local Church.

As the emphasis in the Catholic church moved from the achieve- ment of emancipation to the establishment of a national hierarchy, this accusation of Gallicanism was one which was used often, and not always scrupulously, against their opponents by the extreme papalist, or Ultramontane party. This latter point of view was to 46 find its most vehement advocate in the person of Monsignor George Talbot, a prelate whose over-excessive zeal for the cause of ultra- montanism was to prove often as much of an embarrassment as a help when in later years his enthusiasm and devotion was placed wholly at the disposal of Cardinal Wiseman.

The truth is that the English Catholic laity were in no way lacking in respect and devotion to the Holy See, but an unfamiliarity with the devious ways and archaic etiquette of the Papal Court often gave to their robust re- commendations the character of disrespect when no such meaning was in any way intended. The Established Church of England presented a very different picture in comparison with the small and unimportant remnant of Catholicism which had survived into the nineteenth century.

The great Evangelical revival, though- it had resulted in the separation of the followers of John Wesley from the Established Church, had had a revivifying effect upon the Church of Engknd, recalling it to its pastoral responsibilities out of the long and dignified slumber into which it had fallen.

There was a move to reclaim the vast bulk of the urban working classes who had been largely lost to non- conformity, and in the period following the Napoleonic wars many new churches were built. It was in the common room of Oriel College at Oxford that these ideas began to take shape in the minds of a number of young Fellows who grouped themselves around the person of John Keble, a scholarly and saintly clergyman, who divided his time between Oxford and the curacy of his father's parish in Gloucestershire. At first, the movement confined itself to a rediscovery of liturgical devotion, a tendency towards a stricter observance of fasting and abstinence, and found an outlet in poetry more distinguished for its religious sincerity than for any literary merit.

The influence of this 47 group, under the gentle and pious leadership of Keble, might never have passed beyond the confines of the University, had it not been joined, early in the third decade of the century, by two men of out- standing character amounting, in the latter case, to something of genius: Pusey brought academic distinction to the movement; he had been elected at an early age to the chair of Hebrew in the University, and enjoyed a wide reputation for scholarship.

He was also a man of good family, a point which in early nineteenth-century Oxford, probably counted for more than mere scholarly attainments; for this was an age when the Church of England could boast that it had a scholar and a gentleman in every parish, though it was more generally observed that so long as the latter qualification could be guaranteed the former might be overlooked.

But in Pusey's case both these distinctions could be claimed with equal assurance, for not only was he a Pusey of Pusey in Berkshire and a grandson of Viscount Folkestone, he had also enjoyed the rare academic triumph of being appointed to a Regius Professorship when only twenty- eight years old. Those who had been prepared to dismiss Keble's disciples as whimsical and poetical young men capable of nothing more excessive than a tendency to have crosses embroidered on their stoles, had to take a more serious view of the movement when it was joined by the formidable Dr.

Pusey, whose weighty scholar- ship took so little account of the mere externals of worship that even at the very end of his long life he was overheard to inquire of a more ritualistically-minded companion: Tray tell me, sir, what is a cope? He was a born leader in so far as he could inspire unselfish devotion in his followers, and admiration that came near, in his younger disciples, to adulation; but had those men who so eagerly welcomed his support when he first joined them been forewarned of the direction that his leadership would eventu- ally take, they might indeed have preferred the simple devotion of Keble or the stolid scholarship of Pusey to this shooting-star intel- lectual, whose sublime but disquieting flights of rhetoric were to land both himself and many of his followers on a shore that seemed then not only distant and dangerous, but also decidedly hostile to all that their movement stood for.

Newman had allied himself to Keble and his followers soon after his election to a Fellowship at Oriel. His religious faith, always deep and personal, had moved from the Calvinism of his up- bringing, through Evangelicalism, to this new High Church position with its emphasis on dogma and the traditions of the Catholic Church. At first, these novel teachings caused little stir in the uni- versity, and even less in the world outside; the only surprise shown by Newman's less sympathetic friends was when they discovered that much of the so-called new ideas to which they took exception, had in fact been expressed in the Book of Common Prayer all the time if only they had troubled themselves to examine it in detail.

It was only when Newman and Pusey began to address their ideas to a wider public in a series of tracts, which they called Tracts for the Times, that an opposition began to organize itself and the Tractarians', as the authors of the Tracts came to be called, first started to attract the unsympathetic and even alarmed attention of their diocesan bishops. It was, however, some considerable time before any positive action was taken against the new Movement, and Newman, who was appointed Vicar of the University Church of St.

Mary's at Oxford in the same year in which Nicholas Wiseman was made Rector of the English College at Rome, had by then become one of the most prominent clergymen in the Established Church, famous for his oratory in the pulpit, respected for the sanctity of his personal life, and either followed with enthusiastic devotion, or held in the strongest aversion and fear, for the fascinat- ing if dangerous beliefs which he expounded with such eloquence from the pulpit or propounded in such impeccable style with his pen.

That Wiseman, in distant Rome, should know of these happen- ings so many hundreds of miles away, may seem strange to the reader. But Wiseman did know, and watched the developments in Oxford with a growing interest, being kept well informed of all that happened by three converts to the Roman faith whose zeal for the conversion of England was as boundless as their observation, and the conclusions they drew from it, was so often at fault.

Each one was in his own way extraordinary. Pugin, the architect, carried his enthusiasm for Gothic architecture to such a pitch that he would 49 offer the guests at his table a gothic pudding 1 with the same enthus- iasm as he would announce that his wife had presented him with a gothic baby. Equal in ardour for the faith as well as for fan- vaulting and rood-screens, was Ambrose Phillipps, before his con- version the first man to put a cross on the communion table of an Anglican Church since the Reformation, and after it one whose taste for ecclesiastical titles brought a rebuke from Dr.

Poynter who, answering a letter in February , had to point out 'when you write pray do not give me such high tides. If Spencer showed less of the extraordinary characteristics of the other two, the mode of his conversion was none the less unusual, for it took place during a performance of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni at the Paris Opera in It was these three men, at different times and under different conditions, who kept the Rector of the English College both informed and misinformed, about the religious revival which had started in Oxford, and hinted at possibilities of such great promise for the Roman Catholic Church.

The special problems occasioned by the Oxford Movement were not the only matters coming from England which occupied the attention of Dr. He was to take an ever deeper interest in the affairs of the Established Church after George Spencer came as a student to the English College in , but long before that date, before, even, he became Rector of the College, he came into contact with a personality whose influence in the Catholic Church was not always as helpful as it was vigorous, but whose forceful character dominated the English scene in the years before and just after the passing of the Emancipation Act.

This was Peter Augustine Baines, a Benedictine monk of Ample- forth Abbey, who in had been consecrated coadjutor to the Vicar Apostolic of the Western District with the title of Bishop of Siga in partibus mfidelium. We have noted that the Vicars Apostolic were men of simple tastes who tended to live in quiet, if not obscure, lodgings, and who avoided any ostentation or display in the exercise of their sacred office. Bishop Baines was the exception to this rule, though he was not able to indulge his taste for living en grand seigneur until some years after he first became a bishop, nor did his love of episcopal grandeur spring from personal ambition or lack of more worthwhile accomplishments, as is witnessed by the fact that his merits encouraged Leo XII to suggest his candidacy for a Cardinal's hat, while his own modesty prompted him to decline it.

Bishop Baines was one of the strangest men to be produced by the English Catholic Church for many generations. In geographical extent it was of equal proportions, containing not only the entire principality of Wales, but also all the counties from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire to Land's End. In population of Catholics and in the number of missions, however, it was very much the smallest, and while the Northern and London districts had their colleges at Ushaw and Old Hall, and the Midland District supported a flourishing seminary at Oscott near Birmingham, the Western District could boast of no college or seminary at all.

This defect it was Bishop Baines's ambition to remedy at once, and his imperious nature fixed upon a plan which was to involve him in disputes lasting almost until the end of his life, bringing the remote concerns of the Western District of the English Mission through the tribunals of the Congregation of Propaganda to the very feet of the Sovereign Pontiff himself, carrying Dr.

Wiseman along in their wake. Lacking, then, the prestige of a diocesan seminary of his own, the bishop's eye, as he surveyed his District, fell upon the monastery of St. Gregory the Great at Downside, and his problem seemed to be solved. Did he not himself wear the Benedictine habit, and was it not the tradition that the Western District should be ruled by a regular, either Benedictine or Franciscan? He would resolve his difficulty by making the Western District an entirely Benedictine diocese with Downside as its college.

The plan seemed simplicity itself and had an impressive pre-Reformation precedent in the primatial diocese of Canterbury centred in the great Benedictine Abbey and shrine of St. Thomas i Becket, a saint with whom the Bishop of Siga may be said to have shared certain characteristics. In proclaiming the solution to his dilemma, however, Dr. Laying claim to the freedom of monastic institutions from episcopal control the Downside community refused to have anything to do with the bishop's pkn. A complete deadlock was reached, and any hope there might have been for a compromise solution was lost by the imperious manner adopted by the Bishop which made negotia- tions with him almost impossible.

At this critical point the whole matter was suddenly shelved by circumstances beyond the control of either Dr. Baines or the Prior of Downside. The Bishop of Siga's health broke down completely and he was compelled to exchange the enervating atmosphere of Bath for the more temperate and tranquil skies of Italy. Neither the clergy of his District nor the monks of Downside ever expected to see him again in this world.

The two men met, and Wiseman, in his Recollections, has described how the Italian climate soon effected a cure. He came merely as a visitor, with some private friends who had kindly accompanied him, in hopes that change of climate might do more than medicines or their administrators. They were not deceived. The mild climate, the interesting recreation, and perhaps, more still, the rest from the labour and excitement in which he had lived, did their duty; at some due period, their interior enemy capitulated, in that English- man's stronghold of misery and pain the liven.

For all that his health was still fragile the Bishop of Siga was not idle during the months he spent in the Eternal Qty. He improved his acquaintanceship with Dr.

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The Rector of the English College, with becoming modesty, describes his rival's success in this activity which he himself was then still finding something of a burden: The flow of his words was easy and copious, his imagery was often very elegant, and his discourses were replete with thought and solid matter. But his great power was in his delivery, in voice, in tone, in look, and gesture. His whole manner was full of pathos, sometimes more even than the matter justified.

Wiseman, who was sometimes critical of the attainments of his fellow clergy, found much to admire in the Bishop, and fully shared in his enthusiasm for improving the educational standards of English Catholics, both lay and clerical. There were also contacts to be made with the Congregation of Propaganda, and Dr.

Baines soon won the confidence and support of the Prefect, Cardinal Capellari, a conquest that was to be all the more useful two years later when that prelate was to rule the Catholic Church as Gregory XVI. Meanwhile the paternal eye of Leo XII was turned upon the proud and forceful personality of the still young bishop from England, and noted with approval his strength of character and engaging eloquence.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman

The Pope had long wished to honour the Benedictine Order as a compliment to the memory of his prede- cessor, Pius VII, who had been a Benedictine monk, and it occurred to him that he might do honour both to that Order and to England by placing a Cardinal's hat on the deserving head of Bishop Baines. Had he done so. Baines, however, had no ambition to remain in Rome as a member of the Sacred College, and the gracious offer of a red hat was tactfully declined. The appointment was unique in more ways than one, for the new Prince of the Church had lived for many years with his wife and child as Squire of Lulworth Castle, where his father had entertained King George III during that 1 Recollections, Ch.

After the death of his wife and his daughter's marriage Thomas Weld renounced the world and became a priest, being ordained in by the Archbishop of Paris. Five years later he was consecrated bishop, though continuing to live in Engknd until in the final honour of the Cardinalate was con- ferred upon him. Not only was he the first Englishman for many years to sit in the Senate of the Church but his position was also unique in the College of Cardinals in that he could admit, without blushing, to being both a father and a grandfather.

Perhaps one of the facts that induced Dr. Baines to decline the supreme honour of the Church was the news, which reached him in September , that Bishop Collingridge, whose coadjutor he was, had died, and that he was himself now the undisputed ruler of the Western District. His health was restored, so he could return to England at once. If the monks of Downside trembled when they heard of the bishop's return, they did so with good cause, for Dr.

Baines had left something in the nature of an ecclesiastical bomb- shell behind him in Rome. This parting shot, aimed at the Order of which he was a member, was nothing less than the claim that the Order of St. Benedict in England was uncanonically instituted, having been founded there without formal permission from the Holy See as canon law re- quired, and that in consequence their monastic vows were invalid. In pressing this astounding and, as it was to be proved, untenable proposition, the Bishop hoped to prove that the monks were, in fact, not monks at all, but secular priests, in which case they would come under his immediate and undisputed jurisdiction.

But this time the Bishop overplayed his hand by a step which has been described as 'almost unparalleled in our ecclesiastical history, and one which alienated much sympathy from his side, as well as causing him grave trouble in Rome'. One might suppose that the Bishop would now stay his hand, at least until the issue had been decided one way or another. Baines; he had set his heart on gaining control of Downside, and nothing, it seemed, would stop him. He addressed an ultimatum 1 Bernard Ward: As the matter had already been referred to Rome the monks not unnaturally refused, whereupon the Bishop withdrew all faculties from the community, that is, deprived them of canonical authority to hear confessions.

The bishop's act caused the gravest scandal and was to prove fatal for his own designs, for it evaporated what influence remained to him in Rome, despite all the golden opinions he had won from Cardinal Capellari. Furthermore it prejudiced him for the future with the Holy See, for when he was later involved in controversy over the question of the converts, and the issue was referred to Rome, he was already clearly looked upon there as a potential trouble-maker.

Meanwhile peace had somehow to be restored to the Western District. Cardinal Capellari had been elected Pope in February under the name of Gregory XVI, and deputed Bishop Bramston, of the London District, to mediate in the dispute, but in this the good bishop had no success.

It was then that the Pope turned to Dr. Gregory had often come into contact with the Rector of the English College when the business of the English Mission brought him to Propaganda, and, furthermore, he admired him as a scholar. He had, indeed, helped the young Rector to correct the proofs of a book shortly before the death of Pius VIII, so that when Wiseman went to pay his respects to the newly elected Gregory XVI he was greeted with the jovial remark: I fear I shall not have much time in future to correct them.

Bishop Baines's dispute had now spread from Downside to the sister community of Ampleforth in Yorkshire, where he had himself formerly been a monk, and later Prior. When it seemed clear that he would be unable to transform Downside into a seminary the Bishop had purchased Prior Park, a vast country house outside Bath, and here he hoped to establish a school and a seminary in each of the two wings, and possibly kter make it the nucleus for a Catholic University.

Meanwhile he installed himself in the main 1 Recollections, p. To staff his college he had persuaded some of the Ampleforth monks to quit their monastery and ally themselves to his new insti- tution at Prior Park, an act which had made him as unpopular with the remainder of the Ampleforth monks as he was already with their brethren at Downside.

Wiseman's mission as a peacemaker was not an unmitigated suc- cess. All he could do was to try to implement the compromise which he had suggested in over the status of the English Benedictine community, namely that the Holy See should issue a Sanatio, or decree of healing, which made good any defects which might have existed in the past, without being too specific about them, and assured that for the future there could be no shadow of doubt as to the validity of further monastic professions.

His visit to England was short, for he was back in Rome by December. We may conclude that he took a charitable view of Bishop Baines's curious conduct, for he remained the enthusiastic supporter of all his activities to improve the educational standards of Catholics. The possibilities of a Catholic University were again discussed and it may well be that during this brief visit Bishop Baines first suggested, as he was soon formally to request, that Dr. Such exciting future plans, so close to the. Baines continued, from his sumptuous surroundings at Prior Park, to harry the unfortunate monks of Downside whenever an opportunity offered.

The return journey to Italy from this brief and unspectacular visit to England almost cost Wiseman his life, for near Turin his coach was overturned and he was carried, unconscious, to a nearby house. Fortunately, he suffered nothing more serious than shock and was well enough, on his return, to celebrate the feast of St.

Nicholas Patrick Wiseman

Thomas of Canterbury at a ceremony in the chapel of the English College at which eleven members of the Sacred College were present. If Wiseman's involvement in the dramatic concerns of the Bishop of Siga had done nothing else, it had at least served to broaden his outlook and kindle his interest in the practical affairs of the English 57 Mission. It was now that he began to turn his attention to those religious movements in England which were outlined in the previous chapter, for in there arrived at the English College a new and interesting candidate for the priesthood in the person of the Hon.

George Spencer, a convert clergyman of the Church of England. His mother was a daughter of the Earl of Lucan and his father's family was closely related to the noble houses of Marlborough and Sunderland, so that young George, like the character in Oscar Wilde's play, may be said to have risen from the ranks of the aristocracy. He received the conventional upbringing of a member of his class passing from Eton to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated as a fellow commoner in After leaving Cambridge he travelled abroad.

It was at the Paris Opera, in , that the trombone chords of Mozart's Don Giovanni called him to repentance, and he experienced his first conversion. We have his own account of the scene. No other than the Italian Opera at Paris. I passed through that city Both times I went to see the opera of Don Giovanni, which was the piece then in course of representation.

The last scene of it represents Don Giovanni, the hero of the piece, seized in the midst of his licentious career by a troop of devils, and hurried down to hell. As I saw this scene, I was terrified at my own state. I knew that God, who knew what was within me, must look on me as one in the same class with such as Don Giovanni, and for once this holy fear of God's judgement saved toe: The next seven years saw him moving gradually in the direction of Rome, but the crisis did not come until 1 Quoted by the Rev.

Life of Father Ignatius of St. This was Ambrose Lisle Phillipps who later changed his name to Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle who came of a well-to-do Leicestershire family and had been converted to the Roman faith while still a schoolboy.

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Under the influence of this enthusiastic young convert Spencer, already hovering on the brink, was swept across to the farther shore. A visit to Phillipps had resulted in the resolve to be received into the Catholic Church the week following, but then even so short a delay as seven days had seemed too much. C I said to Phillipps Father Spencer later wrote "If this step is right for me to take next week, it is my duty to take it now.

My resolution is made; tomorrow I will be received into the Church.

Ambrose Phillipps or Phillipps de Lisle as we shall refer to him in future had fired George Spencer with his enthusiasm for the conversion of England to the Catholic Faith. Phillipps de Lisle brought to the nineteenth century a romantic medievalism which was to find an ally in the architect Augustus Welby Pugin when he too joined the Catholic Church in He welcomed with open arms all those medieval aspects of Catholicism which many of the older Catholics had no wish to see revived and which non-Catholics regarded as no more than Popish superstition.

Furthermore, he really believed that England was on the very verge of a return to the ancient faith.

If one man was converted her believed that ten would soon follow; if ten were converted, a hundred would follow them; and if a hundred converts made their submission then all England would be begging Rome to receive it back. This enthusiasm was as genuine as it was misconceived. Thus, in , when ten men had come for religious instruction to the Prior of die Monastery he had established on his country estate, he wrote to Lord Shrewsbury: It was full of these exalted but misleading notions for the con- version of England that George Spencer arrived at the English 59 College in to pursue his studies for the priesthood.

Phillipps de Lisle came to Rome with him and remained long enough to impress Dr. Wiseman with his zeal. Certainly Spencer's arrival at the College was a turning point in Wiseman's career. The new student was three years older than the Rector and his position there was from the beginning rather a special one, so that he not only spent more time in the company of the Rector and Vice-Rector than was usually the case, but could also associate with them on terms of greater equality than was customary in a student.

To these ideas of a religious revival a new emphasis was brought in when three Frenchmen arrived in Rome and soon made themselves known to Dr. The most singular of these was the Abb6 de Lamennais, who since the revolution of had been proclaiming the ideas of Ultramontanism in his paper UAvenir, attempting to reconcile an absolutist interpretation of the papal office with the new ideas of political liberalism.

With him came the Abbe Lacordaire, not yet clothed in the Dominican habit, and the Count de Montalembert, both of whom survived the eventual condemna- tion of their ideas by the Holy See, remaining in the Catholic body as a liberalizing influence while their elder companion became a bitter enemy of the papacy which he now exalted so highly. Husenbeth, quoted in Ward, Vol.

Wiseman as one who shared in many of their hopes for a European revival of religion, and displayed more sympathy for them than some of the older and more conservative divines who seemed to increase in number and influence the nearer they got to the person of the Holy Father. The idea of trying to reconcile democracy with the Church was bound to fail under the pontificate of Gregory XVI, but Wiseman, with his English back- ground, was less likely to identify democracy with militant atheism, as did the advisers of the Pope, and gave the Frenchmen what help and encouragement he could.

With Montalembert he was to remain on friendly terms for life. If anything were needed to encourage the hopes which Spencer's enthusiasm had kindled in Wiseman's mind with regard to the conversion of England it was the visit paid to him in by John Henry Newman and Hurrell Froude. This visit to Rome was the culmination of a European tour which the two men had made together, the latter in search of health which was to be denied him and the former, though unconsciously, in search of faith. To him this was to be granted, but only at the end of a long and agonizing pilgrimage.

For him 'Rome is the place after all where there is most to astonish me, and of all ages, even the present,' but despite this he was still a long way from any acceptance of the claims of the Roman Church, though he could view her ecclesiastical organization with less distaste than some of his fellow-countrymen. To his sister he wrote: Is it possible that so serene and lofty a place is the cage of unclean creatures? I will not believe it till I have evidence of it.

It is to be hoped that they found neither his cordial welcome nor hispleasantapartments, which Macaulay later described as 'snugly furnished in the English style, and altogether very like the rooms of a senior Fellow of Trinity', 1 Quoted by Sir Geoffrey Faber: For it is in Froude's Remains that we have an account, written with characteristic exuberance, of this historic encounter. The only thing I can put my hand on as an ac- quisition is having formed an acquaintance with a man of some influence at Rome, Monsignor Wiseman, the head of the English College, who has enlightened Newman and me on the subject of our relations to the Church of Rome.

We got introduced to him to find out whether they would take us b on any terms to which we could twist our consciences, and we found, to our dismay, that not one step could be gained without swallowing the Council of Trent as a whole.