Tractarian Movement Research Articles

Archaism, Antiphony and the Music of the Book of Common Prayer: A Mythical Amalgam

The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is more than four hundred and fifty years old and part of the very fabric of Anglicanism throughout the world. It has a vast catalogue of musical repertory, both in the form of settings of the text of the BCP, but also settings of other sacred texts that might be used at BCP services. This music achieved an archaic personality from the early days of the BCP, but many later periods in the life of the Anglican Church have engendered and even promoted an archaic personality quite conspicuously. Musical archaism, in turn, has supported the formal, conservative and archaic personality of the BCP and its practice more generally. The music of the BCP has also engendered a patriarchal, hierarchical and antiphonal identity, all of which have strong connexions with archaism. Additionally, the Ecclesiological Movement (or the Cambridge Camden Movement) and the Tractarian Movement (or the Oxford Movement) and their systematic archaic and antiphonal schemes have also brought archaism into the company of the music of the BCP. Finally, the archaic nature of the Tudor words of the BCP is a continuous and increasing feature from about the time of the Restoration onwards. Yet the archaic identity, or ethos, spirit, or myth, that is provoked by all these ingredients may well, at times, have been a work of fantasy rather than fact.

Sacrilege, Tractarian Fiction and the Very Long Reformation

ABSTRACTThe Tractarian movement in the nineteenth-century Church of England brought new life to Reformation-era issues. One such was the notion of sacrilege, especially associated with Catholics and high-churchmen. Responding to reformist destruction of religious houses and the lay impropriation of monastic lands and revenues, believers in sacrilege asserted that those who damaged sacred objects or stole from the church risked divine displeasure. The seventeenth-century commentator Henry Spelman’s writings on sacrilege were reprinted in the nineteenth century, and his warning that the descendants of impropriators would suffer for the sins of their ancestors was widely embraced. This essay examines how two Tractarian writers, John Mason Neale (1816–66) and Charlotte M. Yonge (1823–1901), engaged with ideas of sacrilege in their fiction.

Veinte años decisivos en la vida de John Henry Newman: 1826-1845

The article describes Newman's intellectual and religious odyssey from 1826 until October of 1845; from the abandonment of his initial liberalism and evangelism to his entrance into the Catholic Church. It constitutes a long, arduous period during which Newman set up what he was to call "the question" between the Anglican and the Catholic Churches. Newman's "question", involving his own personal search for religious truth, rested on the apparent dilemma of whether to concede priority to the "Church" (Roman-Catholic) , or if one's principal concern should be for doctrinal purity, this latter being a primary concern in the Anglican way. Newman would ultimately conclude that the dilemma did not really exist and that to achieve and maintain Christian doctrinal purity it was necessary to revere the authority of the "existing Church". This is an historical-doctrinal investigation. It is not precisely a biography of Newman during those twenty decisive years. It does not, for example, touch on many points of family ancl academic life relevant to his life at Oxford and the Tractarian Movement which are only brought up when considered as being influential on Newman's religious and spiritual development leading to his conversion. All available sources were made use of in an attempt not only to narrate the course of his conversion but also to throw light on it. The acknowledged insufficicient documentary value of Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), which for reasons of literary genre, among others, does not describe all of the aspects of a story so rich in events, required the author to search through other relevant material. The author drew on Newman's correspondence edited by Anne Mozley in 1893 and later by Ch. S. Dessain from 1966-1977, as well as all works published by Newman prior to 1845 and writings of a later date which contain retrospective considerations of special interest to the theme. The investigation clarifies events which occurred prior to the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine and Signals the appearance of Newman's first explicit ideas relevant to this area of his thought. The article points out material for study in Newman concerning the question of dialogue between churches, as he conceived it at various times. The study, as a whole, allows for an understanding of the spiritual and intellectual "iter" of a consistent man, who obeying a demanding interior command, honorably did what he found necessary after a long process of study and meditation. In 1845 Newman finally found the one, true Church. For his good Anglican friends, he had simply been transplanted to another part of the vineyard.

ДУХОВНОЕ ПРОСВЕЩЕНИЕ В РОССИИ И ОКСФОРДСКОЕ ДВИЖЕНИЕ ВО ВТОРОЙ ПОЛОВИНЕ XIX в.

The article sets the question of a possible influence of ideas, close to those of the Oxford Movement, on the ecclesiastic enlightenment in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. According to the “Lexicon of the Russian Academy”, the ecclesiastic enlightenment in a broad context could be understood as a longing of a part of the Russian society to introduce religious enlightenment and renovation. The English Church, and first of all its High Church, attracted attention of Russian society, and that interest increased in 1840-s, when the so called Oxford, or Tractarian Movement had been shaped in the frames of the High Church. The ideas promoted by that movement included those ones: restoration of the Church doctrine and the strengthening of its role in the life of society, calling for “antiquity” – theological and liturgical heritage of the common Christian Church, before its disintegration. The similar ideas, shaped under the influence of Romanticism, were popular among the supporters of the liturgical renaissance in the Roman Catholic Church, “Old Catholics”, as well as among the Kollyvades in Greece. All this could not but arouse interest of that part of Russian society, which was involved into the discourse of religious renovation and ecclesiastic enlightenment. There were not only clergymen and teachers of spiritual schools, but also a broad public: journalists, historians of religion, and philosophers. A famous participant of ecclesiastic enlightenment, specialist in Biblical studies and Christian history A. P. Lopukhin called Tractarianism “the great Oxford Movement”.

On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine: From Newman to the Second Vatican Council and Beyond

340 Studies • volume 106 • number 423 On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine: From Newman to the Second Vatican Council and Beyond Fáinche Ryan If a check be not placed on the laity of England they will be the rulers of the Catholic Church in England instead of the Holy See and the Episcopate … the laity are beginning to show the cloven hoof. … They are only putting into practice the doctrine taught by Dr Newman in his article in the Rambler. ... What is the province of the laity? To hunt, to shoot, to entertain. These matters they understand, but to meddle with ecclesiastical matters they have no right at all, and this affair of Newman is a matter purely ecclesiastical. … Dr Newman is the most dangerous man in England, and you will see that he will make use of the laity against your Grace.1 Thus wrote Monsignor George Talbot (Papal Chamberlain to Pius IX and canon of St Peter’s) from Rome to Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, in April 1867. ‘The laity have no right to meddle in ecclesiastical matters’: this paper will interrogate that claim. While it begins with John Henry Newman (1801–90), its ultimate aim is to explore the locus of authority in the Catholic Church, a Church guided by the Holy Spirit. It is not about the laity, and ‘their’ role, but a paper in ecclesiology, about the theology of the Church. It is an exploration of the concept of the Church and how its authority is, and might be, exercised internally, and thus implicitly an exploration of how the Church might impact society today. In 1859 Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham, in a meeting with Newman, asked the famous question ‘Who are the laity?’, to which the reported response was, ‘The Church would look foolish without them’. This paper will ask: who is the Church? Is the Church the ‘priests and people’, those ordained with authority and those ‘lay’ who are to be ‘consulted’ or not, depending on the subject matter? Or perhaps there is another way to be the Body of Christ in the world, a way in which the fact that all share the one baptism into the priestly, Fáinche Ryan Studies • volume 106 • number 423 341 prophetic and kingly roles of Christ is clearly made manifest. The first section of the paper will outline the article, appearing in a Catholic periodical called The Rambler, that resulted in Newman being termed ‘the most dangerous man in England’. Newman has also been called the ‘Father of Vatican II’. The second section of the paper will ask to what extent The Second Vatican Council has contributed to a deepened ecclesiological understanding of the question of the locus of authority in Church. The third section will bring into the discussion recent theological explorations of the concept of the Church by the International Theological Commission, the Catholic Theological Association of the United States and recent theological work in Germany. Part One: ‘On consulting the faithful in matters of doctrine’ (1859) Newman, an Anglican divine, was a very active member of the Tractarian movement (the Oxford movement). In 1845 he was received into the Catholic Church. In 1847 he was ordained a Catholic priest in Rome. He spent a couple of years (1854–58) in Dublin as (a very unhappy) Rector of a fledgling Catholic University of Ireland. In July 1859, back in England again, he published ‘On consulting the faithful in matters of doctrine’ in The Rambler. As John Coulson notes in his introduction to a 1961 republication of the article, ‘this work is fundamental not only to a fuller understanding of Newman’s theory of doctrinal development, but to an appreciation of the importance he attaches to the laity in his theology’.2 The background to the article is significant. We are in a very particular era in the history of the Catholic Church in England. Catholic emancipation is recent (1829). In the English Roman Catholic Church at this time we have the recusant Catholic families, who had never converted to the established Church, significant numbers of ‘new’ Irish emigrant Catholics, and, most significantly, the many converts from Anglicanism of which Newman...

The Autobiographical Self and Embodied Knowledge of God in Christina Rossetti's Time Flies

In the largely autobiographical text Time Flies, Christina Rossetti constructs a Christian identity for herself based on the integration of mind, body, and environment. By practicing strategies of processing the world derived from the Tractarian movement of 19th-century England, Rossetti gains knowledge of God based on her embodied perspective in relation to the natural environment. This leads her to an ethical view of nature in which she constantly finds evidence of God’s love. Rossetti continually applies this understanding of love as a core belief in order to make meaning of her life.

Victorians in Purgatory: Newman’s Poetics of Conciliation and the Afterlife of the Oxford Movement

Why was John Henry Newman's The Dream of Gerontius so popular with Victorian readers? Our ingrained historicist instincts tell us that this should not necessarily have been case. After all, The Dream is a poetic vision of purgatory, one of most Catholic of subjects, and it was published in 1865, little more than twenty years after Newman caused tremendous upset by proposing possibility of an Anglican purgatory in Tract 90 (1841), most inflammatory document of Oxford Movement. Given outrage that followed, it seemed impossible that a few years later his devotional poem on subject would be warmly embraced rather than hotly disputed. And yet, embraced it was. The Dream of Gerontius, Newman's poem about an old man's journey to afterlife, became one of best-known and, moreover, best-loved Victorian consolation poems about death. Some scholars place it second to Tennyson's In Memoriam. (1) By 1888, indeed, poem's twenty-four published editions had made their way into numerous Victorian households. General Gordon carried it with him on his campaign in Egypt prior to his death in Khartoum and Edward Elgar turned it into a successful choral opera. Poets and professors alike bestowed their stamp of approval. Algernon Charles Swinburne praised its genuine lyric note (2) and Francis Hastings Doyle, Oxford Professor of Poetry, devoted a lecture to poem in which he said it deserved high commendation. (3) Taking his commendation a step further, he urged Oxford community to stop being envenomed by the spirit of these religious differences (p. 123). The piece de resistance is that no one better gratified Doyle's wish than Newman's nemesis, Charles Kingsley, who wrote in a private letter that he read Dream with awe and admiration. However utterly I may differ from entourage in which Dr. Newman's present creed surrounds central idea, I must feel that that central idea is as true as it is noble. (4) These statements, oddly enough, came from same man who had proclaimed Newman worse than dead to Englishmen in Fraser's Magazine a few years earlier. (5) Although Kingsley later tempered his praise with poison in a public review of poem, he still backhandedly admired the wonderful beauty of its poetry, thereby initiating a reviewer tradition of separating poem's from its overt Catholic theology. (6) Although no longer critical favorite that it was in late nineteenth century, The Dream of Gerontius remains of vital relevance in illuminating role devotional poetry played in conflict resolution after Oxford Movement. (7) As poem in recent times is rarely considered outside of its theological and religious-historical interest, it has been bypassed by a contemporary tradition of literary scholarship focusing on political work of Victorian poetry. Newman's prose is often included in considerations of relation between poetry and politics, such as Isobel Armstrong's seminal Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics, which discusses how Newman's sermons and tracts illuminate political concerns of poets like Arthur Hugh Clough and Matthew Arnold, but his poetry is itself overlooked in such studies, (8) Despite The Dream's many potential critical points of interest--including lingering mystery of its success, its controversial content, and political turnaround it helped achieve--Newman's most popular poem has received little literary critical attention in our time. As a result, its popularity has yet to be addressed as a phenomenon firmly enmeshed in Newman's poetics. This essay shows how Newman's devotional poetry shaped public perception of Tractarian Movement, and in particular Tract 90, a generation later. Situating The Dream within context of Victorian theological disputes, it explores often underestimated political potential of devotional poetry and death consolation literature in years following Oxford Movement. …

William Monsell of Tervoe, 1812–1894, by Matthew Potter

Matthew Potter’s biography of William Monsell is one of a number of recent studies of nineteenth-century Irish people whose political views initially seem at odds with their religious beliefs, in a society in which religious confession was a reliable predictor of attitudes to that overwhelming question of Irish life: the utility and desirability of the Union with Great Britain. Most of these have been studies of Irish Protestant nationalists: for example, Colin Reid’s biography of Stephen Gwynn, Marnie Hay’s study of Bulmer Hobson, Paul Bew’s recent reappraisal of Charles Stewart Parnell, and this reviewer’s own monograph framed around Alfred Webb. A study of a Catholic Unionist such as Monsell is a welcome addition. William Monsell was a wealthy landowner in south-west Ireland who married into the gentry. Educated in England at Winchester and Oriel College, Oxford, he was ‘much more English than any of his immediate ancestors’, but ‘paradoxically’, Potter explains, it was his exposure to the Tractarian Movement in Oxford, and in particular his friendship with John Henry Newman, which led him to convert from the Church of Ireland to the Roman Catholic Church (p. 14). The fact of an Irish Protestant converting to Catholicism was unusual in itself, but Monsell’s trajectory was particulary unexpected because it did not have a political catalyst. Whereas other contemporaries may have converted as a final step into their embrace of Irish nationalism (for example, Joseph Biggar or Roger Casement), ironically, Monsell’s conversion to Catholicism had an English ideological context, not an Irish one.

Roads to Rome. A Guide to Notable Converts from Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to the Present Day (review)

Reviewed by: Roads to Rome. A Guide to Notable Converts from Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to the Present Day Thomas M. McCoog S.J. Roads to Rome. A Guide to Notable Converts from Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to the Present Day. By John Beaumont. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press. 2010. Pp. xiii, 493. $55.00. ISBN 978-1-587-31720-0.) For Victorian Catholicism, the Catholic Emancipation of 1829 and the reestablishment of a Catholic hierarchy in 1850 restored national identity and respectability to believers villainized and marginalized for 300 years. John Henry Newman's rightly famous "Second Spring" sermon on July 13, 1853, heralded a new era that augured well for the Church's future in Great Britain. W.Gordon Gorman documented Catholic success in "Rome's Recruits": A List of Protestants Who Have Become Catholics since the Tractarian Movement [End Page 332] (London, 1878). Subsequent editions were published, with the last appearing in 1910. The rush of Protestants, especially English Anglicans, to the Church of Rome over the last three decades has occasioned the odd reference to a "third spring." If so, legal consultant and freelance writer John Beaumont assumes the Gorman role. Beaumont became a Roman Catholic in 1980, later compiling Converts to Rome: A Guide to Notable Converts from Britain and Ireland during the Twentieth Century (Port Huron, MI, 2006). Three works followed: Converts from Britain and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century (Port Huron, MI, 2007), Jewish Converts (Port Huron, MI, 2007), and Early Converts (Port Huron, MI, 2008). In his introduction to Converts to Rome, published as an appendix to this volume, Stanley L. Jaki, O.S.B., clearly connects the works of Beaumont and Gorman and considers the former as a revival of "a most praiseworthy enterprise which came to an end shortly before World War I" (p. 473). Perhaps it is slightly disingenuous of Beaumont not to acknowledge Gorman's work in his introduction. Without Gorman, Beaumont's task would have been much harder. Gorman, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and the Catholic Encyclopedia (generally the old rather than the new edition) provide Beaumont with most of his biographical data, but Beaumont must have scoured numerous autobiographical works in his search for the motives behind the conversion. The inclusion of this material makes this volume especially valuable and provides many data for any attempted explanation of the phenomenon of conversion. The entries for Elizabethan and Jacobean England are generally accurate, although stylistic inconsistencies exist (e.g., Anglican clergy referred to as "clergymen" and "ministers," although the latter term is generally restricted to non-Conformist clergy). But the entries for post-Gorman twentieth-century converts, not their Elizabethan predecessors, are the reason for acquiring this book. Many entrants are still alive. However, the criteria for inclusion are unclear. Some distinguished converts (e.g.,Kenneth Noakes, patristic scholar; Colin Amery, architectural writer and adviser to the prince of Wales; and Andrew Sanders, professor of English at the University of Durham) are missing. Actress Diana Dors and her third husband, Alan Lake, are included. Literary distinction demanded the inclusion of such embarrassing converts such as Oscar Wilde and F. W. Rolfe. But what explains the omission of Margaret, duchess of Argyle? Beaumont, like Gorman, excludes a reference to himself. Gorman stressed English, Scottish, and Welsh aristocrats and social elites. Beaumont moves beyond the governing classes to the theater, cinema, literature, and academia. Talk about conversion is not fashionable in a present-day society that is "ecumaniacal" (to use Jaki's term). Beaumont has provided us with a very useful reference work even if we query its apologetic tone. Gorman had intended to publish a new edition and announced in January [End Page 333] 1924 that it was almost ready to go to press. But the litigation that resulted from the mistaken inclusion of a peer of the realm in an earlier edition devastated Gorman. Let us hope that nothing similar prevents Beaumont from continuing this work. Thomas M. McCoog S.J. Fordham University Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

Newman and the Anglican Idea of a University

AbstractThis article discusses the educational context of John Henry Newman's earlier writings. Through a detailed analysis of the character of Oxford University it traces the development of his educational theory in his practice of teaching. Oxford, which remained a wholly Anglican institution until the 1870s, functioned as a microcosmfor the broader issues of church and state which dominated the writings of the leaders of the Tractarian (or Oxford) Movement in the 1830s. The article helps explain why English theology developed completely differently from theology in continental Europe. For Newman, education was a pastoral and religious task where faith and life were connected through a common ‘catholic’ ethos: the quest for truth was a religious duty. This idea, where the intellect and will were mutually determinative of one another, remained central to his theology and theory of education after his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, especially in his plans for the University of Dublin, published in

Conscience & Conversion in Newman: A Developmental Study of Self in John Henry Newman by Walter E. Conn

93 Second,his treatment of Private Judgment lacks the necessary distinctions which Newman maintained (166): Private Judgment is the root cause of liberalism in religion, yet at times one may“use it in order ultimately to supersede it; as a man out of doors uses a lamp in a dark night, and puts it out when he gets home.”5 Finally, Cornwell plucks out some of Newman’s most striking lines about conscience as the voice of God within. Cornwell then resolves to perpetuate the myth of Newman’s after-dinner toast. No dichotomy exists in this cavalier statement: one always raises his or her glass to God and His commands, who may witness to one through conscience or through the gift of grace that is Papal Infallibility (199–200). To further show his misapprehension, Cornwell sanctimoniously applies Newman’s notion of conscience to the longstanding feud over contraception. In the final part, the reader can appreciate Cornwell’s effort to understand why Newman chose to be buried to withAmbrose St.John. Although unclear,it seems that Cornwell believes Newman not necessarily a homosexual,but effeminate and in need of male intimacy. One, however, cannot understand his account of Deacon Jack Sullivan’s miracle. Cornwell returns to form as wanting to be above the squabble over miracles, yet he suspends the reader on a note of an ambiguity when there should have been a decisive conclusion. While Cornwell avers and seems to have a genuine affinity toward Newman, there is a nagging sense that the book was crafted opportunistically. One can only lament as Cornwell, consciously or not, bites the beatified hand that feeds him. Ultimately, his portrait shows more like a paint-by-numbers spoilt by colors bleeding—effecting a desultory image of Newman.While fresh and timely accounts of the Blessed Cardinal are needed, this is not one of them: especially as an introduction. However, it may be of service for those familiar with Newman looking to evaluate contemporary biographical and hermeneutical approaches. David Delio Silver Spring, MD Conscience & Conversion in Newman: A Developmental Study of Self in John Henry Newman. By Walter E. Conn. Marquette Studies in Theology 71. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2010. Pages: 158. Paper: ISBN 978–0–87462–777–0. $17.00. Newman titled the autobiographical chapters of his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) as the “History of My Religious Opinions”—which also provide a history of Newman’s conversions—which Walter Conn defines as “a kind of positive change, a type of development, more or less radical, that shifts the direction of one’s life” (7). Conn’s begins by examining Newman’s “first” conversion as a teenager (1816), which was back-dropped by such events as his personal illness, his entrance into Trinity College, Oxford, and his father’s bank failure. Conn characterizes Newman’s transition from the conventional Christianity of a middle-class nineteenth-century Anglican family to a deeply personal Evangelical faith as “a basic moral conversion rooted in Christian values” (24). Next Conn examines an often-overlooked aspect of BOOK REVIEWS 5 Newman, Loss and Gain (London: Longman’s, Green and Co., 1906), 203. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 94 Newman’s life as a young Oriel fellow—his “cognitive conversion to AngloCatholicism ” (26–50)—which was a transition from the Noetic influence of his early Oriel mentors, Richard Whately and Edward Hawkins, to the guidance of the future co-leaders of the Tractarian movement: John Keble, Edward Pusey, and Hurrell Froude. Anglo-Catholicism might well have become Newman’s permanent home—as it was for Keble and Pusey—had it not been for a combination of ghosts from the past—his reflections on the Arian and Monophysite controversies—which helped convince Newman that the Roman Catholic Church was the true via media between Anglicanism and Protestantism; in addition were blows in the present—the virtual condemnation of Tract XC and the establishment of an Anglican-Lutheran bishopric in Jerusalem—which also helped convince Newman that Anglicanism had opted for Protestantism rather than Catholicism. Using well-selected excerpts from Newman’s Apologia, Autobiographical Writings, and Letters and Diaries, Conn expertly chronicles Newman’s “ecclesial conversion” which is “best understood as...

Victorian Women Poets

Victorian Women Poets Emily Harrington (bio) Scholarship on women poets from 2018 sees a renewed interest in archival materials. A number of works this year deal compellingly with unpublished and undiscovered works both by the poets themselves and by previously unrecognized sources. Interest in ecological themes remains strong, including the past and the future of our planet, as well as the relationship between the human and the non-human. Christina Rossetti continues to dominate work on women poets. Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art, edited by Susan Owens and Nicholas Tromans (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2018) argues that visual art was fully woven into Rossetti’s life and work, noting not only that her works were illustrated, often by her brother, and that she was his frequent model but also that she herself studied drawing and inspired artists outside her family. This is an art book as much as a literature book, and it is rich with images related to Rossetti, many of them drawn from the archive. The first chapter, “Christina Rossetti’s Pictures” by Nicholas Tromans, offers a detailed account of pictures in Rossetti’s possession, situating them in Rossetti’s often ambivalent relationship with visual art. Tromans traces her place in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and her emergence from its avant-garde visual culture. He also discusses visual art in the context of Rossetti’s affinity with the Tractarian movement. Susan Owens’s contribution, “The Appearance of Christina Rossetti,” takes up portraits of Rossetti and considers how Rossetti might have thought about images of herself and how her image evolved over time to reveal “many facets of her character” (p. 81). Dinah Roe’s chapter, “‘Come and See’: Christina Rossetti’s Illustrations for The Christian Year,” offers the first [End Page 449] comprehensive look at Rossetti’s drawings in her own private copy of the sixteenth edition of John Keble’s devotional volume, which passed down to her from her sister, Maria. This fascinating look at Rossetti’s drawings provides insight into a visuality as spiritualized as that in her poetry, “discerning the visible in the invisible” (p. 107). Chapter 4, “Christina Rossetti’s Books: The Poet, Her Publishers and the Illustrators” by Stephen Calloway, examines the visual appearance of her volumes, including the binding and illustrations contained in them. He traces these choices through her career and after, examining posthumously published gift books and illustrated editions. The final chapter, by Susan Owens, Nicholas Tromans, and Hilary Underwood, “‘Pictures to the Public View: Artists’ Responses to Christina Rossetti’s Poetry,” like previous chapters, follows its subject chronologically, noting the spectrum from commercial to avant-garde in visual representations of Rossetti’s poetry. Overall, this book offers a comprehensive view of the relationship between text and image extending from Rossetti’s life and work. Emma Mason makes a substantial, original contribution to Rossetti studies in Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2018). Mason finds an ecotheology based on Christ as the embodiment of a fully interconnected material and spiritual world to be foundational to Rossetti’s life and work. More broadly, Mason aims to reveal the significant place of Christianity in nineteenth-century environmentalism. She argues against current ecocritics who tend to dismiss Christianity or even to find it openly hostile to environmentalism. Anglo-Catholics, Mason argues, saw all elements of creation as interconnected, every being and thing a material type indicating a corresponding sacred, unseen existence. For Mason, Rossetti’s ecotheology is political, as well as poetic and spiritual: “Rossetti’s spiritual materialism also rejects human mastery and dominion through its focus on Jesus as composite of all things” (p. 22). Mason’s position manages to be both historicist and presentist, insisting on a properly historical view of nineteenth-century Christianity and the relevance of this historical understanding to the current environmental crisis. The first chapter argues that Rossetti’s approach to Christianity in particular arises out of her investment in the Tractarian movement, which Rossetti encountered at Christ Church, Albany Street, where she saw the major figures of the movement preach when she was young and where, Mason argues, Rossetti was rooted in a community whose approach to ideas of communion and...

Newman et la conscience dans son roman Callista et dans son sermon « Ce qui dispose à la foi1 »

The ‘astonishing variety of literary genres’ to which Newman turned his hand must not blind us to the underlying unity of all his work. His two novels are thus not mere diversions but form an integral part of his overall vision. The article examines Newman’s skills (and occasional weaknesses) as a novelist, the (relative) value of his historical tableaux and, most importantly, the autobiographical content and the religious dimension of each, in particular Callista (1856). Whilst Loss and Gain (1848) can in no way be described as autobiographical it certainly contains, alongside the author’s brilliant satire of Oxford at the time of the Tractarian Movement, elements of his own experience of conversion to Catholicism. Callista offers an even richer source of insight into the mind of the author. Whilst a number of theological themes emerge which give the novel an apologetic dimension—the authority of the Church, the importance of the priesthood, the nature of evil and sin, the importance of the liturgy and the significance of martyrdom amongst others—the key theme of the novel, and its chief centre of interest, is to be found in the theme of conversion—this time to Christianity itself—and the role played by conscience in this process, as illustrated in the character of the young Greek pagan, Callista.

E. B. Pusey and Holy Scripture

E. B. Pusey was so strongly identified with the Tractarian movement that it was often referred to as 'Puseyism' and he became the unrivalled leader of Anglo-Catholicism. Although low-church Protestants in the Victorian age often asserted that Anglo-Catholics did not have a strong commitment to the authority and centrality of Scripture, this assumption is not borne out by a study of Pusey's life and thought. This article seeks to recover Pusey as a Bible man. In particular, it explores the nature and impact of his biblical commentaries. Pusey himself saw commenting on Holy Scripture as at the core of his life's work and Christian ministry. Nevertheless, his biblical commentaries have been ignored by scholars, who have instead maintained a consistent preoccupation with his youthful volume on German theology. Pusey's Daniel the Prophet was actually an extremely thorough and formidable piece of scholarship. Indeed, even English critics unsympathetic to his defence of a traditional date for the book of Daniel uniformly found its substantive arguments unanswerable. Pusey's commentary on the Minor Prophets was part of a larger plan he had for providing a new, popular commentary on the Bible, a project which he saw as his primary response to the challenges of the modern age.

Reading Mary as Reader: The Marian Art of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti

As the works of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti attest, among the many signs of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement's influence in the realm of English culture was the resurgent interest in the Virgin Mary as a subject for poetry and painting. Inspired this movement, sister and brother both recognized Mary as an important spiritual figure, intimately connected to the Biblical Logos. Yet their works simultaneously attest to the permanent decline in English culture of the Mary as Reader trope, a once popular artistic expression of the Virgin's central agency in the human understanding of the Logos. In different ways, brother and sister both invoke and subvert the Mary as Reader trope--he motivated recurring doubts about the Virgin's understanding of and access to the Logos, and she Protestant anxiety on the subject of Mariolatry. Christina arguably revives something of the spirit if not the letter of the Mary as Reader trope. Despite her qualms about Marian worship, she still regards Mary as a model Christian hermeneut who lived a perfect life in imitatio Christi. For her, Mary represents an inspiring example for all Christians, and especially women, who continued to be expected to defer to men in the matter of Biblical interpretation. Dante Gabriel similarly envisions Mary as a role model for contemporary women. However, his artistic representations of the Virgin not only serve to reinforce women's subordinate position in society, but also to strip them of what spiritual prerogative they possessed through the Victorian feminine ideal of the Angel in the House. The origins of the Mary as Reader trope lie in the writings of Origen, St. Ambrose, and St. Thomas Aquinas. According to Marina Warner, by mining the multi-layered meanings of the word logos, [Origen] suggested that Mary had conceived Jesus the Word at the words of the angel. (1) In his De Officiis 1.18.68-69, Ambrose similarly asserts that the Word was made flesh not through human seed but through the mystical breath of the spirit. In Summa Contra Gentiles 4.34, Aquinas sets out a rigorous series of deductive arguments to demonstrate that through the Incarnation the Virgin was the Mother of the Word of God. Based on the assumption that Mary bore in her womb not only Christ's humanity, but also God's Word, these writers grant her a special position within Biblical tradition, as the only individual who may be literally said to have read the Logos, and implication, who may assist others in gaining insight into it. As Aquinas states, But one never reads the 'Word of the Lord was made' Moses, or Jeremias, or one of the others. Yet thus uniquely was the union of God's Word to the flesh of Christ marked the Evangelist. (2) Moreover, Aquinas assumed that Mary received special instruction from Gabriel before the Incarnation concerning the mystery of the Word and the significance of the task to which she had been appointed. The recognition of Mary's special position earned her the title of Virgo Sapientissima or Virgin Most Wise. Mary was most widely celebrated as Virgo Sapientissima during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, both in painting and poetry. Paintings of the Virgin's education and the Annunciation often portrayed her reading a scroll or a book. Implicated in such representations were assumptions concerning Mary's foreknowledge of the coming of Christ and the details of his life. It was assumed that prior to the Annunciation Mary had received hints of her destiny from her lifelong study of scripture and grasp of its typological meaning. Marian poetry and painting encouraged the imitation of Mary as Reader through the rich use of typology and symbology, as well as details of Mary's life, all of which effectively transformed her into a book through which the Logos might be understood. Historically connected to Mary's status as Reader was her function as Mediatrix. It was as interpreter of the Logos that Mary came to be regarded as an essential bridge between humanity and divinity, all the more essential because she appeared closer to humanity than Christ and more likely to intercede on behalf of those longing to transcend the limits of human existence. …

John Keble and Hurrell Froude in Pastoral Dialogue

John Keble and Hurrell Froude in Pastoral Dialogue Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi (bio) The relationship between John Keble and Hurrell Froude is arguably the bedrock or foundation stone of the Tractarian Movement. Froude himself makes that argument with a characteristically vivid metaphor: "Keble is my fire but I am his poker."1 That is to say, Keble's deeply held religious convictions formed the central Tractarian tenets, including those of its poetics, but their "fire" would not have blazed into view had it not been stirred up by Froude and, through Froude, by John Henry Newman. Yet given the "reserve" also so central to Keble's convictions, there exist only rare opportunities to glimpse interactions between Keble and Froude. Fortunately, through separate accounts from both men, we have the record of such a moment: a dialogue between Keble as intellectual and spiritual mentor and Froude as disciple that illuminates their areas of agreement and of difference, thereby revealing issues at the very heart of pre-Tractarian and Tractarian poetics.2 This significant conversation between John Keble and Hurrell Froude took place on a July afternoon and evening in1825 when the two men visited the ruins of Tintern Abbey. In Froude's mind the expedition to the Wye Valley was to have ongoing significance. More than a year later he harks back to it in letter to Keble dated October 14, 1826. Froude would have had no access to the relevant passage in William Wordsworth's still unpublished Prelude, but he echoes the phrasing of "There are in our existence spots of time" (Bk. XII, l. 208)3 when he writes: "I shall always like scrambling expeditions as long as I can recollect ours up the Wye. Those few days seem like a bright spot in my existence, or perhaps it would be a more apt similitude to compare it to what you quoted as we were going in the boat to Tintern, 'The shadow of a great rock in a weary land.'"4 Although there is no record, of course, of the actual conversation, each participant describes this event in a surviving letter, and from their written words we can ascertain something about the substance of what was said and even the tenor and undertone of what was felt but unsaid. Froude's description of the event appears in a letter to his father, Archdeacon Froude, dated August 2, 1825. Keble's comes in a letter to his friend, Hubert Cornish, dated August 16 of the same year. We get more specific details from Froude's account and will consider it first. Although there are a few extraneous details, even they [End Page 7] provide context, and so I will quote the passage in full: We got to the abbey about 3 examined it well by day light in spite of 2 Bristol parties who had come to dine there for a holiday a scheme wh you wd consider meritorious + who testified how much they entered into the sentiment of the place by much merriment and jollification. & afterwards we spent 2 hours there by Moon light, of course you remember it well I think taking the situation & all together it carried the enchantment of the scenery very far beyond wht I had ever conceived, & perhaps you may be aware that this is not saying a little. Keble & I were going to make a vow that if we died worth £100,000 we wd leave it to repair the building & endow a choire & chapter but we cd not agree about the statutes.5 Froude's description offers yet another substantiation of Oscar Wilde's paradoxical dictum that Life imitates Art. If, as Wilde proposes, the Impressionists created "those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets," then one might say that Caspar Friedrich created this moment: the ruin, the moonlight, the two men.6 Without direct influence of any kind, the scene described by Froude and analogous scenes depicted by Friedrich show a common impulse toward a symbolic registration of life's meaning. Or, to turn from Friedrich's visual iconography to Keble's language: their situation is filled with "poetry" in the broad sense in which Keble uses the term...

The Broad Church: A Biography of a Movement by Tod E. Jones

For many readers, the first question that the title of this book will raise is,“what is the Broad Church Movement?” The author recognizes that the title may have only rather vague associations in the minds of readers, or if more precise, then nevertheless quite diverse links. For this reason, he devotes a short introductory chapter to setting forth the divergences and even contradictions that have attached to the phrase “the broad church.” The most succinct definition is that the Broad Church Movement was one of the three parties among which the Church of England was divided in the nineteenth century, which is the period upon which the author focuses his attention. Tod Jones states that his goal is not to write a history of the movement,but rather “to clothe principles in flesh and blood and write a biography of the Broad Church movement.” What Jones means by this is that he will tell the story of the movement through an exploration of the leading figures who shaped the character of the movement,and also of those other churchmen who found themselves set very much NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 84 Such a dynamic appears to be most present in the chapter concerning faith and reason where, on a number of occasions, Connolly offers such insights as Ferreira’s propensity for “misinterpretation” (104). The point here is not to defend Ferreira’s work. By contrast,a more elaborate discussion of Newman’s own sources may prove to be more productive given the audience Connolly chose to address. Overall, Connolly’s book is a welcome addition and is especially helpful to those individuals trying to gain an initial appreciation for not only the original nature but also the enduring value of Newman’s thought. Perhaps one way of summarizing this sense of enduring value comes through in Connolly’s ability to demonstrate that the personalist and the intellectual models of faith are capable of combination. For Connolly,“Whether one views faith from the point of the intellectual model or the personalist model, the reality of faith is always defined according to its two main elements, the object of faith and the act of faith”(120). Connolly’s selection in terms of methodology is what makes such an assertion possible—particularly in relation to the audience he seeks to address. As a result, Connolly’s book provides a readable introduction to the work of John Henry Newman that also appreciates the complex character of Newman’s work. Todd C. Ream Indiana Wesleyan University The Broad Church:A Biography of a Movement. Tod E. Jones. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, Roman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2003. Pages: ix + 347. Bound, $85.00, ISBN 0-7391-0611-2. THE BROAD CHURCH: A BIOGRAPHY OF A MOVEMENT TOD E. JONES 85 in opposition to its principles. A fundamental goal of the movement was what we might today call “inclusivity.” This was manifested in a general resistance to what Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) called “unchristian narrowness and unworthy fears.” It is useful to compare the greater inclusivity affirmed by the Broad Church leaders with theTractarian Movement which was developing during the same period. Both movements looked backward to a sermon as their source: for the Broad Church Movement,this was a sermon preached by Julius Charles Hare in Cambridge in 1828; for the Tractarian Movement, it was the Assize sermon preached by John Keble in 1833. I have occasionally heard the Broad Church Movement characterized as a reaction to the Tractarian or High Church Movement led by John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882). It is certainly true that Broad Church leaders were generally hostile to the ecclesiological principles put forward by the Tractarians, but opposition to the Tractarians was not limited to the Broad Church leaders. There was within the Church of England a generalized fear of the “catholicizing”of the church that characterized the efforts of theTractarians. For the Broad Church leaders, however, this reclaiming of the medieval Catholic heritage of the Church of England was understood as a narrowing or restricting of the Church’s life which looked backward to an idealized medieval Church while failing to engage in any adequate...

"Goldengrove unleaving": Hopkins' "Spring and Fall," Christina Rossetti's "Mirrors of Life and Death," and the Politics of Inclusion

(For Isobel Armstrong) now quite familiar argument for inspiration behind Hopkins' and Fall: To a Young Child asserts that lines from poem describing Margaret's poignant response to falling leaves may been derived from George Eliot's Mill on Floss. (1) As argument goes, little girl at novel's opening, whether Maggie Tulliver or Eliot's authorial persona, becomes Hopkins' Margaret, both of whom lament all-too-soon demise of season that in turn analogizes ephemeralness of things. Hopkins had only recently read Mill on Floss (1860), and on February 22, 1881, had even solicited John Henry Newman's estimation of Eliot. Heretofore unknown, however, are subtle echoes, perhaps even direct borrowings, between Hopkins' and Fall, his song to decaying year (Now am minded), and Christina Rossetti's Mirrors of Life and Death, with its long sequence of mourning images. (2) This essay, then, seeks to document poem's indebtedness to Christina Rossetti and, as well, Hopkins' profound desire to be included in an anthology connected to her. In comparing these two Latecomers to Tractarian Movement, Margaret Johnson finds many echoes of theme and approach in Hopkins' Oxford poems, a common theological and aesthetic base, concordances of subject and metaphor, but each without knowledge of other's [lyrics]. (3) But Johnson, and for that matter Rossetti's biographer Jan Marsh, who also acknowledges Rossetti's mentoring of Hopkins, ignore altogether shaping of Mirrors of Life and Death on and Fall. And so too does Jerome Bump, who otherwise demonstrates convincingly that Rossetti, Hopkins' icon and the woman who was to inspire some of his best art in 1860s, provided him examples of simple, unified songs which liberated him from fetters of pseudo-Keatsian excesses of his early word-painting. (4) No doubt, says W. H. Gardner, the poetry of Christina Rossetti exerted a strong influence on Hopkins' early composition) Perhaps more than anything else, Christina Rossetti modeled for Hopkins poetry of religious faith in which two--poetry and religion--become interfused and inseparable. That she also remained chaste for kingdom of heaven's sake might appealed to him. Her religion imposed duties so imperative that she could compromise with them, but, more than that, it made even marriage an impossibility. (6) two also share casual openings to poems. Few poets, says C. M. Bowra, have her gift of beginning a poem with most homely and humble words or of using phrases which are consciously trite or commonplace, only to to some sudden burst and thereby to show that even in drabbest conditions there are possibilities of dazzling splendour (p. 264). In this Hopkins is easily Rossetti's match, with such matter-of-fact, ordinary, and mundane openings that give way to explosive images: Nothing is so beautiful as Spring (Spring), On ear and ear two noises too old to end (The Sea and Skylark), I remember a house where all were good (In Valley of Elwy), Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, stooks rise (Hurrahing in Harvest), Sometimes a lantern moves along night (The Lantern out of Doors), and Some candle clear burns somewhere come by (The Candle Indoors). Considering how much of Hopkins' poetry derived from actual experiences aesthetically appropriated, how much of it is 'autobiographical' fact, it is curious that and Fall was not founded on any real incident, suggesting, perhaps, poem's mythopoetic origin. (7) Jeffrey B. Loomis observes poem's ideological affinity to Robert Herrick's ephemeral Daffodils and sees Hopkins' young girl modeled in part after Goethe's Margarete: The childlike epithet may even allude to Goethe's too-innocent heroine Gretchen (Margarethe) in Faust One; of all Continental writers of his century, Goethe is only one who receives repeated discussion in Hopkins' letters. …

"Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me": Eucharist and the Erotic Body in Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market

In scholarship surrounding Goblin Market, there is no dearth of readings which focus on erotic nature of its imagery. In addition, any number of readings of poem focus on its allegorical rendering of spiritual redemption. Few readings, however, have attempted to bridge gap between these two approaches. And almost none, as Diane D'Amico has noted in her work Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender, and Time, have yet given any detailed attention to Rossetti's Eucharistic beliefs, (1) even though Eucharist as sacrifice and saving meal is clearly at heart of Goblin Market. But, as I will argue in this essay, both/and nature of Rossetti's central image of erotic body as vehicle for salvation--an image that is at once profoundly spiritual and profoundly erotic--can only be understood through an appreciation of Anglo-Catholic doctrine of Holy Eucharist. This doctrine, shaped by teachings of Saint Augustine and heavily influenced by such key Tractarians as Edward Pusey and Robert Isaac Wilberforce, is, like Goblin Market itself, a bewildering and eroticized combination of physical and spiritual. Moreover, doctrine of Eucharist offers a paradigm of desire, echoed in Goblin Market, which acknowledges physical body and asserts that body may be used (and even enjoyed) in service of what Augustine and Pusey see as highest good, that is, the closest union of God and man. (2) In this essay I will first sketch briefly history of Rossetti's reading of Augustine (specifically The Confessions) and her connection with Tractarians. I will then offer some background concerning Anglo-Catholic doctrine of in Holy Eucharist as well as a discussion of role of physical body--that is, body of Christ as literal nourishment--in Eucharistic language. Finally, I will offer a reading of Goblin Market through twin sensibilities of erotic desire and spiritual satisfaction. In this reading, I will argue that Rossetti's startlingly physical imagery is logical and indeed appropriate spiritual conclusion of Eucharistic doctrine. In so doing, I will suggest that Rossetti is using body not as a symbol or metaphor but rather as concrete conduit through which humans understand God. In other words, for Rossetti, humans do not so much transcend body as they experience transcendent through it. As such, Rossetti resists a purely ascetic repression of body even while insisting it be employed in service of a higher desire. Backgrounds The influence of such spiritual reading as John Keble's The Christian Year and Edward Pusey's translation of The Confessions of Saint Augustine (3) left its mark on Rossetti's personal theology of Eucharist, as did her early initiation into rarified world of Tractarian movement. (4) As early as 1844, Rossetti was attending Christ Church, Albany Street, whose minister was a dedicated follower of Tractarian movement and its efforts to revitalize Anglican High Church tradition. Edward Pusey himself, one of leading lights of Tractarianism, preached there frequently. It thus stands to reason that Rossetti's Eucharistic beliefs were shaped by both conversion tradition found in The Confessions (which Augustine describes as soul's search for only food that will satisfy our spiritual longing--that is, heavenly food) and High Church tradition of Tractarians. Indeed, one of Rossetti's earliest works, novella Maude (written between 1849 and 1850 when Rossetti was nineteen but not published until after her death), reveals these influences with her tale of a young woman torn between allure of art and call to God, expressed ultimately in a conflict over receiving Eucharist and resolved by a final act of spiritual conversion. Throughout her poetry and prose, Rossetti demonstrates a firm belief both in Real Presence of Christ within bread and wine, as well as in efficacy of Eucharist to redeem and cleanse those who receive it (D'Amico, pp. …

BOOK REVIEW: Albert D. Pionke.PLOTS OF OPPORTUNITY: REPRESENTING CONSPIRACY IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2004.

Reviewed by: Plots of Opportunity: Representing Conspiracy in Victorian England Chris R. Vanden Bossche (bio) Plots of Opportunity: Representing Conspiracy in Victorian England, by Albert D. Pionke; pp. xxxii + 188. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2004, $44.95. Albert Pionke situates Plots of Opportunity as a contribution to the current reassessment of Victorian liberalism as a form of guardianship that produces disciplined individualism. He thus seeks to show how the British ruling elite deployed the rhetoric of conspiracy first to discredit social, political, and religious movements and then to define forms of Englishness consistent with the principles of guardianship democracy. At the same time, however, he aims to discover opportunities for resistance that arose when this rhetoric collapsed upon itself, undoing the oppositions—between openness and secrecy, candor and deception, order and subversion—through which it operated. The heart of the book lies in four chapters concerned with the application of the rhetoric of conspiracy to working-class trades unionism, the Tractarian movement and Anglo-Catholicism, the Indian rebellion of 1857, and Italian republicanism during [End Page 183] the era of unification. The first of these chapters demonstrates how the prosecution and judges, during the 1838 trial of the Glasgow spinners, treated the accused as members of a conspiratorial cabal. By accusing them of taking secret oaths of initiation, the prosecution suggested that the spinners' loyalty to the union precluded loyalty to the nation. Moreover, the accusation that a secret committee directed the actions of the union implied that a small cabal had manipulated the rank and file for its own political ends. As Pionke demonstrates, the British press and members of Parliament used this same discursive formation to depict the Indian Mutiny as a conspiracy by a handful of designing men rather than a broad-based rebellion against English oppression. By implying that the rank and file lack social agency—that their actions were the result of conspiratorial manipulation, not their own volition—such representations legitimated guardianship of subaltern groups deemed incapable of self-governance. Because Pionke is interested not only in how ruling elites use this rhetoric to produce Englishness as guardianship democracy, but also in the potential for resistance, he seeks out texts that destabilize this rhetoric and, in some cases, reframe it as a counter- discourse. As he points out in chapter 1, because freemasonry was practiced respectably by members of the ruling elite, the figure of the secret society could not always be confined to marginalized groups. Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge (1841), for example, depicts the Prentice Knights as a dangerous secret society, but then destabilizes the opposition between English candor and conspiratorial secrecy by depicting the Protestant Association as equally secretive and socially disruptive. By the time we reach Benjamin Disraeli's Lothair (1870) and Italian unification, the rhetoric is radically destabilized. While there were attempts to stigmatize the Italian republican movement, which operated through secret societies, in a manner similar to the treatment of the Indian rebels, the opponents of the movement—the Pope and the Roman church—could not readily be aligned with British Protestant nationalism. Consequently, a whole series of such unstable oppositions phantasmatically emerge and dissolve throughout Disraeli's novel. Like much recent work on liberal democracy, this study seeks to discover sites of "individual resistance" that a deterministic Foucauldianism would foreclose (xviii). This does not mean, however, that advocates of radical democracy produced a counter- rhetoric in response to the rhetoric of conspiracy deployed against them. Indeed, the kind of direct counter-discourse mounted by the Tractarians and Anglo-Catholics— exemplified here by John Henry Newman's brilliant riposte to charges of Jesuitism during the Papal Aggression crisis—seems to have been the exception rather than the rule. Pionke is careful to note that he finds no evidence that Dickens (or Disraeli, in whose Sybil [1845] he finds a similar destabilization of the rhetoric of conspiracy) meant to critique the rhetoric of power or those who deployed it. While his analyses suggest that these textual aporias opened up sites of resistance, however, exactly how these instabilities could ground resistance to power is not always clear. Two unacknowledged critical issues are at play in Pionke's work, the...