Nicholas Wiseman

His Eminence
Nicholas Wiseman
Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster

Cardinal Wiseman
Archdiocese Westminster
Province Westminster
Appointed 29 August 1847 (Coadjutor Vicar Apostolic)
Installed 29 September 1850
Term ended 15 February 1865
Predecessor Thomas Walsh (as Vicar Apostolic)
Successor Henry Edward Manning
Other posts Cardinal-Priest of Santa Pudenziana
Orders
Ordination 19 March 1825
Consecration 8 June 1840
by Giacomo Filippo Fransoni
Created Cardinal 30 September 1850
Rank Cardinal-Priest
Personal details
Birth name Nicolás Patricio Esteban Wiseman[1]
Born 2 August 1802
Seville, Spain
Died 15 February 1865 (aged 62)
York Place, Portman Square, London, England
Buried Westminster Cathedral
Denomination Roman Catholic
Parents James Wiseman and Xaviera Wiseman (née Strange)
Previous post
Styles of
Nicholas Wiseman
Reference style His Eminence
Spoken style Your Eminence
Informal style Cardinal

Nicholas Wiseman (2 August 1802 – 15 February 1865) was a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who became the first Archbishop of Westminster upon the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850.[2]

Biography

Wiseman was born in Seville on 2 February 1802, the younger son of James and Xaviera Strange Wiseman, of Waterford, Ireland, who had settled in Spain for business.[3] On his father's death in 1805, he was brought to his parents' home in Waterford. In 1810, he was sent to Ushaw College, near Durham, where he was educated until the age of sixteen, when he proceeded to the English College in Rome, which had reopened in 1818 after being closed by the Napoleonic Wars for twenty years. He graduated with a doctorate of theology with distinction in 1825, and was ordained to the priesthood the following year.

He was appointed vice-rector of the English College in 1827, and rector in 1828, although he was not yet twenty-six years of age. He held this office until 1840. From the first a devoted student and scholar of antiquity, he devoted much time to the examination of Oriental manuscripts in the Vatican library, and a first volume, entitled Horae Syriacae, published in 1827, showed promise as a great scholar.[3]

Pope Leo XII appointed him curator of the Arabic manuscripts in the Vatican, and professor of Oriental languages in the Roman University. His academic life was, however, broken by the pope's command to preach to English residents of Rome. A course of his lectures, On the Connexion between Science and Revealed Religion, attracted much attention. His general thesis was that whereas scientific teaching had repeatedly been thought to disprove Christian doctrine, further investigation has shown that a reconciliation is possible. It is much to Wiseman's credit that his lectures on the relationship between religion and science received the stamp of approval from a critic as stern as Andrew Dickson White. In his extremely influential A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, whose primary contention was the conflict thesis, White wrote that "it is a duty and a pleasure to state here that one great Christian scholar did honour to religion and to himself by quietly accepting the claims of science and making the best of them.... That man was Nicholas Wiseman, better known afterward as Cardinal Wiseman. The conduct of this pillar of the Roman Church contrasts admirably with that of timid Protestants, who were filling England with shrieks and denunciations."[4]

England

Wiseman visited England in 1835–1836, and delivered lectures on the principles and main doctrines of Roman Catholicism in the Sardinian Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and in the church in Moorfields. The effect of his lectures was considerable. At Edward Bouverie Pusey's request, John Henry Newman reviewed them in the British Critic in December 1836, treating them for the most part with sympathy as a triumph over popular Protestantism. To another critic, who had pointed out the resemblance between Roman Catholic and pagan ceremonies, Wiseman replied admitting the likeness, and saying that it could be shown equally well to exist between Christian and heathen doctrines.

In 1836, Wiseman founded the Dublin Review, partly to give English Roman Catholics higher ideals of their own religion and enthusiasm for the papacy, and partly to deal with the Oxford Movement. In 1916 the name was changed to the Wiseman Review.[5] At this date he was already distinguished as a scholar and critic, fluent in many languages, and informed on questions of scientific, artistic or historical interest.

An article by Wiseman on the Donatist schism, appearing in the Dublin Review in July 1839, made an impression in Oxford, Newman and others seeing the analogy between Donatists and Anglicans. Wiseman, preaching at the opening of St Mary's Church, Derby, in the same year, anticipated Newman's argument on religious development, published six years later. In 1840, he was consecrated bishop, and was sent to England as coadjutor to Bishop Thomas Walsh, vicar-apostolic of the Central district, and was also appointed president of Oscott College near Birmingham.

Oscott, under his presidency, became a centre for English Roman Catholics. The Oxford converts (1845 and later) added to Wiseman's responsibilities, as many of them found themselves wholly without means, while the old Roman Catholic body looked on the newcomers with distrust. It was by his advice that Newman and his companions spent some time in Rome before undertaking clerical work in England. Shortly after the accession of Pope Pius IX, Bishop Walsh was moved to be vicar-apostolic of the London district with Wiseman still as his coadjutor. For Wiseman, the appointment became permanent on Walsh's death in February 1849.

On his arrival from Rome in 1847, Wiseman acted as an informal diplomatic envoy from the pope, to ascertain from the government what support England was likely to give in carrying out the liberal policy with which Pius inaugurated his reign. In response, Lord Minto was sent to Rome as "an authentic organ of the British Government," but the policy in question proved abortive. Residing in London in Golden Square, Wiseman threw himself into his new duties with many-sided activities, working especially for the reclamation of Roman Catholic criminals and for the restoration of the lapsed poor to the practice of their religion. He was zealous for the establishment of religious communities, both of men and women, and for the holding of retreats and missions. He preached on 4 July 1848 at the opening of St George's, Southwark, an occasion unique in England since the Reformation, 14 bishops and 240 priests being present, and six religious orders of men being represented.

Cardinal

Cardinal Wiseman, daguerreotype by Mathew Brady studio

The progress of Roman Catholicism was undeniable, but Wiseman found himself steadily opposed by a minority among his own clergy, who disliked his ultramontane ideas of his "Romanizing and innovating zeal," especially in regard to the introduction of sacred images into the churches and the use of devotions to the Blessed Virgin and the Blessed Sacrament, lately unknown among English Roman Catholics. In July 1850, Wiseman heard of the pope's intention to create him a cardinal, and took this to mean that he was to be permanently recalled to Rome. But on his arrival, he ascertained that a part of the pope's plan for restoring a diocesan hierarchy in England was that he himself should return to England as cardinal and archbishop of Westminster. The papal brief establishing the hierarchy, Universalis Ecclesiae, was dated 29 September 1850, and Wiseman wrote a pastoral, dated "Given out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome, this seventh day of October, in the year of our Lord MDCCCL,"[6] a form diplomatically correct, but of bombastic tone for Protestant ears, in which he said enthusiastically, if also a little pompously, "Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished."[7]

Wiseman travelled slowly to England, via Vienna. When he reached London on 11 November, the whole country was ablaze with indignation at the "papal aggression," which was interpreted to imply a new and unjustifiable claim to territorial rule.[8] Some indeed feared that his life was endangered by the violence of popular feeling. Wiseman displayed calmness and courage, and immediately penned a pamphlet of over 30 pages titled Appeal to the English People, in which he explained the nature of the pope's action. He argued that the admitted principle of toleration included leave to establish a diocesan hierarchy. In his concluding paragraphs, he effectively contrasted that dominion over Westminster, which he was taunted with claiming, with his duties towards the poor Roman Catholics resident there, with which alone he was really concerned. A course of lectures at St George's, Southwark, further moderated the storm. In July 1852, he presided at Oscott over the first provincial synod of Westminster, at which Newman preached his sermon on the "Second Spring"; and at this date, Wiseman's dream of the rapid conversion of England to the ancient faith seemed capable of realisation. But many difficulties with his own people shortly beset his path, due largely to the suspicions aroused by his evident preference for the ardent Roman zeal of the converts, and especially of Manning, to the dull and cautious formalism of the old Roman Catholics.

In the autumn of 1853, Wiseman went to Rome, where Pius IX gave full approval to his ecclesiastical policy. It was during this visit to Rome that Wiseman projected, and began to write, by far the most popular book that came from his versatile pen, the historical romance, Fabiola, a tale of the Church of the Catacombs. The book appeared at the end of 1854, and its success was immediate and phenomenal. Translations of it were published in almost every European language.[3] Wiseman wrote Fabiola in part as an answer to the vigorously anti-Catholic book Hypatia (1853) by Charles Kingsley.[9][10] The novel was mainly aimed at the embattled Catholic minority in England.

The year 1854 was also marked by Wiseman's presence in Rome at the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin on 8 December.

In 1855, Wiseman applied for a coadjutor bishop. George Errington, who was then Bishop of Plymouth, and his friend since boyhood, was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Westminster and Titular Archbishop of Trapezus. Two years later, Manning was appointed Provost of Westminster. Wiseman's later years were darkened by Errington's hostility to Manning, and to himself insofar as he was supposed to be acting under Manning's influence. The story of the estrangement, which was largely a matter of temperament, is fully told in Ward's biography. In July 1860 Errington was deprived by the Pope of his coadjutorship with right of succession. He retired to Prior Park, near Bath, where he died in 1886.

His speeches, sermons and lectures, delivered during his tour, were printed in a volume of 400 pages, showing an extraordinary power of rising to the occasion and of speaking with sympathy and tact. Wiseman was able to use considerable influence with English politicians, partly because in his day, English Roman Catholics were wavering in their historical allegiance to the Liberal party. As the director of votes thus doubtful, he was in a position to secure concessions that bettered the position of Roman Catholics in regard to poor schools, reformatories and workhouses, and in the status of their army chaplains. In 1863, addressing the Roman Catholic Congress at Mechelen, he stated that since 1830, the number of priests in England had increased from 434 to 1242, and of convents of women from 16 to 162, while there were 55 religious houses of men in 1863 and none in 1830. The last two years of his life were troubled by illness and by controversies in which he found himself, under Manning's influence, compelled to adopt a policy less liberal than that which had been his in earlier years.

Birthplace of Cardinal Wiseman, 5 Calle Fabiola, Seville, Spain

Wiseman had to condemn the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom, with which he had shown some sympathy in its inception in 1857, and to forbid Roman Catholic parents to send their sons to Oxford or Cambridge, though at an earlier date he had hoped (with Newman) that at Oxford at least a college or hall might be assigned to them. In other respects, however, his last years were cheered by marks of general regard and admiration, in which non-Roman Catholics joined. After his death on 16 February 1865, there was an extraordinary demonstration of popular respect as his body was taken from St Mary's, Moorfields, to St Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Kensal Green, where it was intended that it should rest only until a more fitting place could be found in a Roman Catholic cathedral church of Westminster. On 30 January 1907, the body was removed with great ceremony from Kensal Green and was reburied in the crypt of the new cathedral, where it lies beneath a Gothic altar tomb, with a recumbent effigy of the archbishop in full pontificals.

Wiseman's birthplace on Calle Fabiola in Barrio Santa Cruz, the old Jewish quarter of Seville, carries a commemorative plaque; as does Etloe House in Leyton, London E10 where he lived from 1858 to 1864.

Quotes

"The doctrine and practice of the Church must not be allowed to be impugned by those who have no claim at all to Scripture, and who can prove neither the canon, its inspiration, nor its primary doctrines, except through that very authority which they are questioning, and through treacherous inconsistency with the principles on which they are interrogating it. When many years ago this ground was boldly adopted, it was charged with being an attempt to throw Protestants into infidelity, and sap the foundations of the Bible. Years of experience, and observation not superficial, have only strengthened our conviction, that this course must be fearlessly pursued. We must deny to Protestantism any right to use the Bible, much more to interpret it. Cruel and unfeeling it may be pronounced by those who understand the strength of our position, and the cogency of the argument; but it is much more charitable than to leave them to the repeated sin of blaspheming God's Spouse, and trying to undermine the faith of our poor Catholics. The cry of 'The Bible! [T]he Bible! [N]othing but the Bible!' is as perilous to man's salvation as the Jews' senseless cry, 'The Temple of the Lord! [T]he Temple of the Lord! [T]he Temple of the Lord it is!' (Jeremiah 7:4)"[11]

Schools

Several schools have been named after Cardinal Wiseman, including:

Works

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nicholas Wiseman.
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Nicholas Wiseman
  1. ↑ "Nicholas Patrick Stephen (Nicolás Patricio Esteban) Cardinal Wiseman". Catholic-Hierarchy.org. David M. Cheney. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
  2. ↑ Miranda, Salvador. "Nicholas Wiseman". The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. Retrieved 9 April 2009.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Hunter-Blair, Oswald. "Nicholas Patrick Wiseman." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 16 Mar. 2015
  4. ↑ White, Andrew Dickson (1896). A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Volume 1, Chapter V: From Genesis to Geology. New York: D. Appleton and Company, pp. 223–224.
  5. ↑ Morrin, Olive. "Cardinal Wiseman at Maynooth", Libfocus, February 13, 2015
  6. ↑ From closing of pastoral letter.
  7. ↑ From body of pastoral letter.
  8. ↑ Diamond, Michael (2003). Victorian Sensation. Anthem Press. pp. 83–87. ISBN 1-84331-150-X.
  9. ↑ Wheeler, Michael, The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-century English Culture, pp. 70–71, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  10. ↑ Uffelman, Larry K. (Jun. 1986), "Kingsley's Hypatia: Revisions in Context". Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 87–96, University of California Press.
  11. ↑ "The Catholic Doctrine on the Use of the Bible" (1853), p. 11. Alt Link: https://www.facebook.com/AnsweringProtestants/posts/320278284786489

Further reading


Catholic Church titles
New title Pro-Vicar Apostolic of the London District
1847–1848 		Last appointment
Preceded by
Thomas Walsh		 Vicar Apostolic of the London District
1849–1850 		Last appointment
New title Archbishop of Westminster
1850–1865 		Succeeded by
Henry Edward Manning
Preceded by
Tommaso Pasquale Gizzi		 Cardinal priest of Santa Pudenziana
1850–1865 		Succeeded by
Lucien Louis Joseph Napoleon Bonaparte