Newman and a Catholic Arnold

Abstract

In the struggles that divided the Anglican community in the 1830s one of the hardest fighters was Thomas Arnold, reforming headmaster of Rugby School and polemical Broad Church divine. He attacked the Tractarians in a notorious article called ‘The Oxford Malignants’ (though the title was an editorial insertion) and regarded Newman as his principal opponent; his opposition was quite impersonal, since he believed that he had never met Newman. He was annoyed when it was reported by a third party that Newman was alleged to have asked if Arnold was a Christian. Arnold’s vehemence spoiled his hopes for a bishopric, but Lord Melbourne, the sympathetic Whig Prime Minister, had him appointed to the Regius Chair of History at Oxford. Early in 1842 Dr Arnold was in Oxford delivering his first series of lectures, accompanied by his family; his eldest son Matthew was already in residence as a Balliol undergraduate. On 2nd February Arnold dined in Oriel, his old college, where Newman had been a fellow for many years. Though Arnold was initially apprehensive and ill at ease, the encounter of these old opponents was courteous and good tempered; they talked of non-controversial subjects such as North African myths. Newman reminded Arnold that they had in fact met once before, when he had been one of Arnold’s oral examiners for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity; Arnold had not identified him on that occasion, believing he was Edward Pusey, another leading Tractarian.