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Supernaturalised culture: catholic attitudes and latin lands 1840–60

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Sheridan Gilley
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Extract

There is still a remarkable book to be written about a phenomenon as yet little recognised or understood: the sudden appearance in England of a serious and scholarly interest in religious experience as a subject worthy of study in itself, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Possibly the two best-known landmarks of the movement were William James’s Gifford Lectures and dean Inge’s Christian Mysticism, which popularised mystical theology beyond the circles to which it had been for the most part confined, within the roman catholic church. Dean Inge had many harsh words for the popish mysticism associated with monasticism, and pervaded by an easy familiarity with the ‘supernatural suspensions of physical law’ of roman catholic hagiography. He passed these strictures on French and Belgian treatises and seminary textbooks, but he might have found materials as outrageous in English, in the writings of the mid-nineteenth century ultramontanes who had striven to reproduce in native dress the religious forms of Italy, France and Spain, and to recreate in England a foreign and professedly ‘supernatural’ culture which accepted mystical experience as an ordinary fact of life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 11: The Materials Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History , 1975 , pp. 309 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1975

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References

1 The Varieties of Religious Experience, a study in human nature: being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902 (London 1902).

2 Christian Mysticism (London 1899).

3 ‘the debased supernaturalism which usurps the name of Mysticism in Roman Catholic countries’, ibid, p viii.

4 Ibid p 3.

5 He intended to publish as an appendix to Christian Mysticism a hostile analysis of Ribet’s, J. La Mystique Divine 3 vols (Paris 1895)Google Scholar, which ‘would have opened the eyes of some of my readers to the irreconcilable antagonism between the Roman Church and science; but though I translated and summarized my author faithfully, the result had the appearance of a malicious travesty’. Ibid p ix.

6 Culture and Society 1780-1950 (London 1958).

7 Ibid p 16, for the nineteenth century history and meaning of ‘culture’.

8 Ibid chapter viii especially.

9 Letters and Diaries [of John Henry Newman], ed Dessain, C.S. (London 1962-73) 12, p 386 Google Scholar.

10 Translated from the French version by C. J. Hanford and R. Kershaw.

11 Chapters viii and ix, ‘Political State of Catholic Countries no Prejudice to the Sanctity of the Church’, ‘The Religious Character of Catholic Countries no Prejudice to the Sanctity of the Church’, in Newman, [J.H.], Lectures [on certain difficulties felt by Anglicans in submitting to the Catholic Church] (London 1850) pp 191–242 Google Scholar.

12 Especially ‘Purgatory, Pardons, Images, Relics, Invocation of Saints’, Tracts for the Times, no 90, pp 23-42.

13 ‘Superficial Travelling’, ‘Italian Guides and Tourists’, ‘Religion in Italy’, ‘Italian Gesticulation’, ‘Early Italian Academies’, in Wiseman, N., Essays on Various Subjects (London 1853) III, pp 439–582 Google Scholar; originally published in the Dublin Review, February 1843, January 1836 and July 1837.

14 Newman, Lectures pp 230, 234-8.

15 Ibid p 231.

16 ‘after using the blasphemy and profanity which he confesses to be so common in Catholic countries, as an argument for, and not against, the “Catholic Faith”, he takes a seeming pleasure in detailing instances of dishonesty on the part of Catholics . . .’, Kingsley, Charles, What, then, does Dr Newman mean? (London 1864) p 34 Google Scholar et seq.

17 Newman, J.H., ‘An Essay on Miracles’, prefixed to Claude Fleury, Ecclesiastical History (Oxford 1842)Google Scholar.

18 Moody, Cited John, John Henry Newman (London 1946) p 231 Google Scholar.

19 Chadwick, W.O., The Victorian Church (London 1970) part I, p 195 Google Scholar.

20 Froude, J.A., Short Studies in Great Subjects (London 1907) V, p 325 Google Scholar.

21 Newman to Henry Wilberforce, I January 1849, Letters and Diaries, 13, pp 3-4.

22 Appendix, Apologia pro Vita Sua (London 1864) p 57.

23 Lectures p 238.

24 Ibid p 237.

25 Ibid p 221.

26 Ibid p 242.

27 As in the famous London church scene in Loss and Gain (London 1848) p 426: ‘Reding said to himself, “This is a popular religion” ’.

28 Lectures p 207.

29 ‘. . . my mind in no long time fell back to what seems to me a safer and more practical course’. Newman, J.H., A letter to the Rev E. B. Pusey on his recent Eirenicon (London 1866) p 24 Google Scholar.

30 What Pattison, Mark called their ‘lurking fondness for stories of miracles’, Memoirs (London 1885) p 212 Google Scholar, Holmes, cited J.Derek, ‘Newman’s reputation and The Lives of the English Saints’, Catholic Historical Review, 51 (London, January 1966) p 538 Google Scholar.

31 42 vols (London and Derby for all the lives cited below, 1847-56).

32 Faber, F.W., ‘St Philip the Representative Saint of Modern Times’, Lecture Second in The Spirit [and genius] of St Philip Neri [Founder of the Oratory] (London 1850)Google Scholar.

33 Prospectus for the Lives, Feast of the Purification, 1847.

34 Faber, [F.W.], [An] Essay on [Beatification,] Canonization [and the Processes of the Congregation of Rites] (London 1848)Google Scholar. Also prefixed to The life of St Alphonso [Maria de Ligouri] 6 vols (1848-9) I.

35 Heroic Virtue: a portion of the treatise of Benedict XIV on the beatification of the servants of God, 3 vols (1850-2).

36 From the outset the series had the warm support of Wiseman, who promised but never wrote an introduction for it, and gave it an imprimatur also signed by his superior Thomas Walsh, vicar apostolic of the midland district, and dated 29 October 1847. Faber secured the imprimatur to discourage the attacks on the series by other, hostile bishops of the English hierarchy (Faber to an unnamed professor of Ushaw College, Co Durham, 28 December 1847: Faber Letters, Brompton Oratory). As cardinal archbishop of Westminster, Wiseman conferred two further imprimaturs on the series, in 1850 and 1851.

37 Faber, Essay on Canonization, pp 80-3.

38 ‘they would be less spiritual if more interest of a foreign kind, whether historical or psychological, were introduced into them . . .’ Faber, F.W., [On the Interest and] Characteristics [of the Lives of the Saints] (London 1853)Google Scholar. Also prefixed to The life of St Francis of Assissi (1853).

39 Faber, Characteristics, p 6.

40 Ibid p 5: italicised from Faber, Essay on Canonization, p 48.

41 Faber, Characteristics, p 21.

42 Ibid p 18.

43 Ibid p 28.

44 Preface to The lives of St Catherine of Ricci, of the Third Order of St Dominick; St Agnes of Montepulciano; B Benvenuta of Bojan; and St Catherine Raconigi of the Order of St Dominick (1852).

45 As the saints in the preceeding footnote: also Rose of Lima and the blessed Colomba of Rieti (Lives 1847) - esctatics of a type with St Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, carmelitess (Life 1849).

46 See footnote 38.

47 2 vols (1847).

48 Fabrio dall’ Aste, founder of the oratory of Forli, and Mariano Sozzini of the roman oratory (Lives 1848); blessed Sebastian Valfré, of the oratory of Turin, Antonio de Santi, founder of the oratory of Padua and Angelo Matteucci, founder of the oratory of Camerino (Lives 1849); Antonio Talpa and the venerable father Eustachio, of the Naples oratory; Giambattista Prever, of the Turin oratory (Lives 1851).

49 St Camillus of Lellis, founder of the clerks regular ministers of the sick (Life 2 vols 1850). St Joseph Calasanctius, founder of the pious schools, and the blessed Ippolito Galantini, founder of the congregation of Christian doctrine (Lives 1850).

50 (1850).

51 See footnote 34.

52 3 vols (1853).

53 The Life of St Alphonso IV, pp xi-xx.

54 ‘Introduction, by the late Father Dominic of the Mother of God, Passionist’, The life of the Blessed Paul of the Cross, 3 vols (London 1853) I, pp 1-25; ‘Supplement . . .’ Ill, pp 191-366.

55 There was also a mass of mid-nineteenth century writing in English about St Alphonso and translations from his works, mostly by members of the redemptorist order. A full bibliography would run to many pages.

56 Also published with a biography of the venerable John de Britto, SJ, and a brief account of the celebrated Robert de Nobili, SJ, apostle of the brahmins.

57 2 vols (1848-9).

58 There were three more volumes of jesuit biography in the series: of the venerable Peter Claver, SJ, apostle of the West Indies, and cardinal Odescalchi, SJ (Lives 1849); Joseph Anchieta, SJ, and the venerable John Berchmans, SJ (Lives 1849); and the venerable Ludovico de Ponte SJ, and the venerable Luigi La Nuza, SJ (Lives 1851). The briefs for the beatification of Claver and Berchmans appeared in 1852, and were published in a preface to the lives of blessed Leonard of Port Maurice and Nicholas Fattore (1852).

59 ‘If we cd get S. Ignazio out early it wd perhaps get ye Jesuits to our side . . .’ Faber, St Wilfrid’s, Cheadle, to Michael Watts-Russell (11 December 1847) Faber Letters, Brompton Oratory. Watts-Russell lived in Florence, and collected many of the Italian biographies from which Faber made his translations.

60 Ward, Wilfrid, The Life of John Henry Newman (London 1912) I, p 206 Google Scholar et seq.; Ward, Bernard, The Sequel to Catholic Emancipation (London 1912) II, p 243 Google Scholar et seq.

61 Butler, Cuthbert, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathome (London 1926) I, pp 154-8Google Scholar.

62 Bowden, [J.E.], [The] Life [and Letters] of [Frederick William] Faber (London 1869) pp 342-58Google Scholar; Chapman, Ronald, Father Faber (London 1961) pp 190-9Google Scholar.

63 Dessain, , Letters and Diaries, 12, pp 278 Google Scholar et seq.

64 Faber, [F.W.], Notes on [Doctrinal and] Spiritual Subjects (London 1866) II, p 110 Google Scholar.

65 Faber, Characteristics, p 67.

66 Ibid p 70.

67 Reverend Edward Price, review of The lives of St Rose of Lima Dolmans Magazine (September 1848); cited Letters and Diaries, 12, p 403.

68 Faber, Preface, Heroic Virtue I, p xxii.

69 Or as Anthony Hutchison noted, ‘one of the commonest things possible in the genuine Lives of the Saints’ was marriage to the Infant Jesus: as in the lives of Catherine of Siena, Rose, Veronica Giuliani ‘and a host of others’, Bowden, Life of Faber p 353.

70 The ‘visible rings of the two Catherines, Agnes, Rose, and Mary Magdalene of Pazzi’, Faber, Characteristics pp 80-1.

71 Ibid pp 45 et seq: as in the famous passage on the holy Sturmes’ ‘preternatural discernment’ of the evil of some unconverted Germans by their smell, in Newman’s biography of Walberga in the Lives of the English Saints, quoted and attacked by Kingsley, What, then, does Dr. Newman mean ? p 27.

72 Faber, Characteristics pp 88-92.

73 Ibid p 97.

74 Faber, Notes on Spiritual Subjects II, p 102.

75 Faber, Characteristics p 45; compare Faber, , The Blessed Sacrament (London 1855) pp 520-5Google Scholar.

76 Faber, Essay on Canonization p 26.

77 Inge, Christian Mysticism p 264.

78 As in his discussion of how far the visions of the mystics could be considered a source of dogma: Faber, Characteristics pp 15-17.

79 Hence his ready answer to the attack on the life of Alphonso for exposing ‘with too truthful and unsparing a hand the state of disorder, neglect, and depravity, which prevailed in St Alphonso’s diocese and in other parts of the kingdom of Naples at that time’. Faber, The Life of St Alphonso II, p xiii.

80 ‘. . . a long work and a hard one . . .’, Faber, The Life of St Rose p x.

81 Faber, Characteristics pp 33, 108 et seq.

82 Faber, Essay on Canonization p 37.

83 Ibid p 36.

84 As with Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross etc: ibid pp 41-3.

85 ‘Moving in society for years without being known to be Catholics - horror at this - poor Jesus Christ, as St Alphonso said . . .’, Faber, Notes on Spiritual Subjects II, p 104.

86 (London 1853).

87 ‘ Faber, Preface to The life of St Francis Xavier, from the Italian of D. Bartoli and J. P. Maffei (London 1858) pp vi-vii. This biography was not in the series of modern saints’ lives.

88 Sermon on ‘St Thomas of Canterbury’, preached on St Thomas’s Day, 29 December 1848, in reply to the critics of the modern saints’ lives: Faber, Notes on Spiritual Subjects I, p 359.

89 Mathew, [David], [Lord] Acton [and his Times] (London 1968) p 215 Google Scholar.

90 Faber, The Spirit of St Philip Neri p 98.

91 Mathew, Acton p 215.

92 The Complete Works of St John of the Cross of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, translated from the original Spanish by Lewis, David MA, 2 vols (London 1864)Google Scholar. Lewis also translated the writings of Theresa of Avila and collected a great library of works on catholic spirituality now housed at the Brompton oratory. He had been Newman’s curate at Littlemore. See DNB.