Blessed John Henry Newman, theBritish Magazine, and the Anglican Re-Appropriation of Catholic Hymns

Abstract

AbstractH.J. Rose founded the High Church Anglican British Magazine in 1832, in response to liberal demands for Church reform. The Magazine carried con- tributions which discussed or translated Latin hymns, approaching them from various perspectives: literary, devotional, and polemical. Since (within the Church of England) hymn-singing was the preserve of Evangelicals, the Magazine’s High Church readers might not have been expected to counte- nance any liturgical use of hymns. However, J.H. Newman’s 1833 paper on St Ambrose hinted at the possibility of drawing on ancient hymnody in Anglican worship. Over one hundred new English translations of Latin hymns appeared in the British Magazine between 1833 and 1841. Contributors included ‘O.’ (tentatively identified here as C.A. Ogilvie), Richard Mant, and Isaac Williams. This article investigates the translators’ selections of hymns, and the strategies they employed to make these Catholic hymns palatable to an Anglican readership. The interest of Williams and ...