A Neglected Religious Thinker: José María Blanco White (1775-1841)

Abstract

‘Dissent is the great characteristic of liberty’ was the central tenet in the life of José María Blanco White (1775-1841), a Spanish exile in Britain, whose fame as a man of letters often obscures the fact that he was first and foremost a religious thinker. The milestones of his life were set by his conversions, from Catholicism to Anglicanism (1814), and finally to Unitarianism (1835). Yet his theological ideas continue to be the least researched part of his oeuvre, mostly due to the problematic reception of his work, so that the ex-Catholic Blanco White - rather than the Protestant Blanco White - continues to occupy centre stage. This article reconstructs the spiritual biography of Blanco White, showing how skilfully he navigated through the world of European Protestantism, arguing that it was in Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy (1835) that he reached the peak of his creative powers as an original religious thinker.