Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury: A Life by Peter Hinchliff

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS643 Under the strong leadership of their bishop, the priests of Perugia continued their attitude of moral protest, but actually increased their level of pastoral care despite hardships. As they worked out a modus vivendi with the new regime, they also drew closer to the bishop, since there were no other protections for them. The loss of enforced conformity in society boosted their own personal morality and spirituality as a norm of conduct for others. Clericalism and careerism died out quickly as clerics grew closer to the laity by sharing their sufferings . As part of his reconcentration on spiritual values and tools, Pecci began his fifth pastoral visit (1868) with a homily at the cathedral listing twenty-four essential points of a genuine Christian life. His focus on moral living and service to the people effectively frustrated the most dedicated anticlericals. Maria Lupi has produced a fine book which illustrates the pastoral development of the man called "the first modern Pope" by some. Her research is impressive , with citations and explanatory notes accounting for 40-50% of the entire work. She provides nearly 100 pages of statistical tables and helpful documents , as well as a useful index. Students of this crucial period of church history will need a bit of patience because of the sheer size of the work, but they will be well rewarded. Leopold G. Glueckert, O.Carm. Lewis University Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury: A Life. By Peter Hinchliff. (New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. vii, 31 1. $75.00.) During his long and active ecclesiastical career, Frederick Temple held some of the most important posts in the Church of England during critical periods for the Victorian Church. Temple was an undergraduate and fellow of Balliol College during the Oxford Movement, a close friend of Matthew Arnold, Benjamin Jowett, and A. C. Tait, a noted educational reformer and headmaster of Kneller Hall (an experimental workers college) and Rugby, contributor of the lead article to the controversial Essays and Reviews, Bishop of Exeter and London and Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet, as the late Peter Hinchliff observes at the opening of this work, "There has never been a full biography of Frederick Temple." This oversight owes partly to the attention paid Temple's more charismatic colleagues (even his friends admitted that Temple was often brusque and uncommunicative) but also to a general confusion regarding his theological and political views. The standard view, conveyed in the Dictionary ofNational Biography , depicts Temple as a young Tory turned Broad Church liberal. In his masterful survey The Victorian Church, Owen Chadwick describes Temple as one of the chief instigators, along withJowett, of Essays and Reviews and considers Temple's Bampton Lectures of 1884 as reflective of his axiomatic acceptance of evolutionary theories. But a case can be made for Temple as High 644BOOK REVIEWS Church champion—he became a leading advocate of the prerogatives of the episcopacy and the status of "voluntary" (Anglican) schools and refused to issue a blanket condemnation of ritualism in London and Canterbury. Peter Hinchliff addressed this problem shortly before his death in this careful biography, which concentrates on the public (there is very little of the private) Temple. Hinchliff detects an underlying consistency throughout Temple's career . As Hmchliff sees it,Temple was essentially a constitutionalist with a deep, pre-Tractarian High Church sensibility, open to personal, individual freedom of inquiry but committed to the proprieties of the established Church, especially as his own responsibilities within that Church increased. Thus, Hinchliff carefully considers Temple's role as contributor to Essays and Reviews. Far from leading the effort, Hinchliff suggests that Temple answered an appeal from colleagues to contribute to a diverse collection designed not to advance a radical agenda but to demonstrate the possibilities for new avenues of inquiry in Anglican theology. Temple refused to disavow association with Essays and Reviews during his tenure as headmaster of Rugby and when he was being considered for the bishopric of Exeter in 1869. Only after his translation to Exeter did he remove his essay from future editions of the collection. What was appropriate for an academic was not appropriate for a responsible prelate. Likewise, Temple 's...