G.M. Hopkins and Tractarian theology: the doctrine of baptismal regeneration

Abstract

This article explores in Gerard Manley Hopkins's The Wreck of the Deutschland (1876) the Tractarian doctrine of baptismal regeneration. This doctrine was vigorously debated during the sacramental disputes between Tractarians and Evangelicals which ran from the 1830s to the end of the 1850s. A key document in this regard is Edward Pusey's Tract 67, ‘Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism’ (1835). An extensive typological and patristic study of baptismal regeneration, Pusey's work would have undoubtedly been known to Hopkins and provides an important parallel for Hopkins's treatment of the subject in the Wreck. Pointing to the ecclesiological debates of the nineteenth century as a historical context for Hopkins's ode, this article reveals in the poem's interior narrative Hopkins's extraordinary evocation of the typology and symbolism of sacramental regeneration.