Modern Age 91

Restoring anEminent Reputation

JOHN M. VELLA

Cardinal Manning: An IntellectualBiography, by James Pereiro,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. xii +360 pp.

AN ACCURATE AND sympathetic understand-ing of the life and work of the secondArchbishop of Westminster, Henry Ed-ward Cardinal Manning (1808-1892), hasbeen impeded by the intentional misrep-resentations of two biographers, EdmundPurcell and Lytton Strachey, whose falseportrayal has not been fully expungedfrom public consciousness. Purcell pub-lished his two-volume Life of CardinalManning in 1896. A disgruntled Catholicjournalist, Purcell purported to revealManning’s many character flaws basedon a highly prejudicial reading of por-tions of his correspondence and privatepapers soon after his death.

Manning was accused of ruthless am-bition and calculated duplicity in his lastyears as an Anglican. Purcell’s widelyread character assassination became leg-endary with the 1918 publication ofStrachey’s Eminent Victorians. Deter-mined to lampoon the Victorian periodfor its perceived religious hypocrisy andover-earnestness, Strachey selected pas-sages from Manning’s writings Purcellhad quoted falsely or out of context toexpose the Cardinal to mockery and ridi-cule. As David Newsome pointed out,Strachey’s demolition job was more sin-

ister than Purcell’s because the author ofEminent Victorians charged Manning withcrimes he must have known to be falsesince they were refuted in the very workshe cited in his bibliography.1 (As OwenChadwick once colorfully observed, “Emi-nent Victorians is not just a bad book, itappals.”)2

While there are few sympathetic biog-raphies to undo the damage caused byPurcell and Strachey, Dr. Pereiro’s treat-ment goes far to restore Manning’s repu-tation by tracing his intellectual develop-ment over a lifetime dedicated to thepursuit of religious certainty. InManning’s view, the mission of the Churchwas to expose man to God’s revealedtruth, which “changes man to the like-ness of God.” In 1840, the year he wasappointed Archdeacon of Chichester,Manning wrote to Julius Hare, Archdea-con of Lewes: “I am too much a Platonistto hold truth moderately—I should assoon think of holding the multiplicationtable in moderation.” A few years later hewould tell Hare, “I desire peace before allthings but truth.” Peace did not alwaysresult from Manning’s truth-seeking whenhis restless mind arrived at conclusionshis contemporary critics found objec-tionable.

As Pereiro points out, Herbert Vaughn,a man of Tory sensibilities and Manning’ssuccessor to the See of Westminster,thought his predecessor’s support of Ire-land, the poor, trade unionism, the tem-perance movement, and anti-vivisectioncampaigns was a sign of poor judgmentand encroaching senility. Manning’s de-fense of the less fortunate reflected theevangelical piety of his Anglican days.While scorned by the English Catholicaristocracy from which Vaughn de-scended, Manning was praised by thosewho benefited from his public leader-ship.

Even Wilfred Ward, Catholic author ofwidely praised biographies of John HenryNewman, of his father William George

JOHN M. VELLA is Managing Editor of ModernAge: A Quarterly Review.

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Ward, and of other church personalities,suggested that Manning’s public conductwas a case of emotion overcoming rea-son and judgment. Still, Ward admiredManning’s “perfect gift of expression inspeaking ‘extempore’” and his ability todeliver facts “in such perfection of orderand effect as it would be difficult to sur-pass in the most carefully revised writ-ing.”3 While the papers Manning deliv-ered in the 1870s before the Metaphysi-cal Society, in the company of such intel-lectual luminaries as Thomas Huxley,John Morley, Leslie Stephen, Tennyson,Browning, and Ruskin, may not have beenthe most original, the evidence containedin Cardinal Manning indicates that hewould have held his own.

Another critic Pereiro identifies isWilliam Gladstone, who recorded late inlife that his old college friend did notpossess a philosophical mind and hisability to lead men was far in advance ofhis “faculties of thought.” This, however,was not Gladstone’s opinion beforeManning’s conversion to Catholicism in1851. His old friend distinguished him-self as an undergraduate through hispublic speaking at the Oxford Union andby graduating at the top of his class,earning a “First” in 1829. Gladstone’sunwavering loyalty to the Church of En-gland led him to conclude that Manning’sdecision to convert could only be a signof intellectual weakness. To Gladstonethe conversion of his own sister Helen in1845 was bad enough. The simultaneousconversion of his two closest friends,Manning and the distinguished lawyerJames Hope-Scott, was unforgivable:“[T]he two friends whom I might call theonly supports for my intellect have beenwrenched away from me, leaving me lac-erated, and I may say barely consciousmorally.”4

Yet in their youth, both Gladstone andManning shared the Tory prejudices ofHigh Church Anglicanism. Gladstone’sfirst book The State in its Relations with

the Church (1838) argued that the Statehad a corporate identity and consciencecapable of discerning religious truth andenshrining it into the constitution. Sinceno liberal would concede to the state somuch power, Lord Macaulay in a savagereview denied the Church of England’sdoctrinal unity given her toleration ofdiverse and even contradictory opinions.Since unity “is the essential condition oftruth, the Church has not the truth.”Manning conceded the essential connec-tion between unity and truth and setabout to defend the Anglican Church asa possessor of both against the denials ofher detractors. He wrote to Gladstone in1840: “I have all but done a book on theUnity of the Church, a poor matter, but itmay be a sort of flying buttress to some ofyour positions.”

Manning was not a central figure in theOxford Movement, but his friendship withseveral members, including the Wilber-force sons Henry, Samuel, and Robert,kept him informed of the ongoing Anglo-Catholic campaign to advance the au-thentic doctrine of Christian antiquitywithin the Anglican communion againstthe dominant forces of theological liber-alism and Protestant evangelicalism. Fora short time as an undergraduate, hethought he had a political calling and“began reading Burke…and politicaleconomy”5 but ultimately saw religion ashis true vocation. His respect for theremnants of Christian Antiquity still sur-viving in the English Church only grew byreading Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor,Herbert Thorndike, and other HighChurchmen.

In 1844, William George Ward, thenFellow of Balliol College, published hiscontroversial Ideal of a Christian Churchwhich intended to expose the shortcom-ings of the Church of England—particu-larly its failure to teach orthodox doc-trine with a consistent voice—andsounded a call to reform following themodel of Roman Catholicism. While he

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failed to see how Ward could reconcilethe whole of Catholic doctrine with theThirty-Nine Articles, Manning did agreewith much of Ward’s diagnosis but fearedthe Church would not acknowledge itsillness so as to apply the necessary cure.The episode raised the question inManning’s mind whether the AnglicanChurch “has rightly understood…thedoctrine of the Roman Church.”

For Ward’s labors, Oxford Universitydeprived him of his degree in February1845 and he converted to Catholicismsoon after. In October of that same year,Newman became a Catho-lic and published his De-velopment of Christian Doc-trine. In it he proposed thatthe teachings of Romecould be traced back toapostolic times and there-fore established the legiti-macy of her teaching au-thority. While he rejectedNewman’s idea of doctri-nal development, Manningwas forced to think anewnot so much the rule offaith, but the judge of it;not so much the sourcesof doctrine but to ask whois to judge what is trueand what is false. As Manning wouldwrite years later, “It was evident that toput Scripture and Antiquity into the handsof the individual is as much private judg-ment as to put Scripture alone.” Protes-tants look to Scripture for divine truth,High Churchmen to Scripture and Antiq-uity. While accepting the latter rule offaith, the Oxford Movement went furtherby rejecting the Protestant principle ofprivate judgment, equating it with ratio-nalism.

Private judgment was theoreticallyabsurd and unworkable in practice. InThe Unity of the Church (1842), Manninghad argued that the principle of privatejudgment was a radical reversal of God’s

plan for man’s redemption, fostering thetwo sins that caused his fall, ignoranceand pride. Giving tradition priority, “Man-ning felt that intellectual convictions werenot entirely trustworthy.” Scripture andantiquity together were truer guides thansola Scriptura and Manning made the casein Tract 78 published in 1837. Manningalso defended apostolic succession asthe High Church party had always done,while opposing the Roman doctrine ofChurch infallibility.

Manning rejected infallibility becausethere was no assurance that a system of

living judges could effect acontinuity of doctrine fromone religious authority tothe next. However, his viewchanged in 1847 after read-ing the sixteenth-centurySpanish theologianMelchior Cano as well asthe Church Fathers, whilerecovering from an illnessthat had kept him bedrid-den for three months. Thefallible judgment of manwould be replaced by theinfallible guidance of theHoly Spirit. Here Manningbegan to develop whatPereiro suggests is his most

original intellectual contribution, a the-ology of the Mystical Body of Christ,which he articulated in a systematic wayin his fourth volume of sermons pub-lished in 1850. The role of the Holy Spiritwas a revelation that he would soon sharewith his close friends. To RobertWilberforce, Archdeacon of East Riding,Manning wrote that the “Office of theHoly Spirit in the Church is the true foun-dation of certainty and perpetuity indoctrine….Everything below this seemsto me to be in principle purely rationalis-tic, whether the judge of Doctrine andTradition be an individual or a Synod.”

The Anglican rule of faith—the appealto Antiquity—was now insufficient. He

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wrote to Edward Pusey in May 1850: “weappeal to Antiquity—to seven Councils—and the undivided Church of the past,not claiming this guidance [of the HolySpirit]. And this seems to me to be acorporate exercise of private judgment:judging by reason.” In a letter written ayear later he characterized the Anglicanrule of faith as “manifestly private rea-son, judging by way of historical criti-cism.” He remained in the Church ofEngland believing that it comprised partof the visible Church and thus partook ofher infallibility.

The Hampden case, however, furtherweakened Manning’s allegiance to theChurch of England. It was not enoughthat a divinity professor of theologicallysuspect views was appointed to a bish-opric by Lord John Russell with the ap-proval of a large portion of the episco-pate. What is worse, Manning wroteSamuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford,the “event has brought out a miserabletruth, namely that the Civil Power is theultimate judge of doctrine in England, aprinciple which is not more hereticalthan atheistical.” And while it is possibleto argue that Hampden was not officiallycondemned for holding unorthodoxviews, the same could not be said ofReverend G.C. Gorham, who was refusedan ecclesiastical appointment by theCourt of Arches because he held Calvin-ist views on baptismal regeneration. Thedifficulty arose when Gorham appealedto the Judicial Committee of the PrivyCouncil where the decision was over-turned by a group of politicians.

In a letter to Robert Wilberforce, Man-ning pinpointed the problem by askingthis question: “Does the Royal Supremacycarry a claim to review by appeal thedeclarations and interpretations of theCourts of the Church in matter of doc-trine?” To Manning, the answer was clear.Such a claim would undermine the su-pernatural foundation of the Church bysacrificing its infallible authority to civil

courts where judgments based on hu-man reason would invariably lead to ra-tionalism. For Manning, it is not enoughto claim Scripture or antiquity as one’sown, it is the interpretation of thesesources that is the key to knowing thecontent of faith. The Hampden andGorham cases revealed to him that theChurch of England “could not speak forGod, because it was not the organ of Hisvoice.”

Manning’s eventual decision to leavethe church of his birth was a result of hissingular quest for religious certainty. Itwas a quest not wholly shared by Keble,Pusey, or even Gladstone. Echoing BishopButler, they argued that religious knowl-edge was based on probabilities andtherefore could not be fully known; cer-tainty only undermines faith. Yet forManning faith is undermined by doubtand uncertainty. If he had devoted his lifeto opposing liberalism in religion, or whatNewman called the “anti-dogmatic prin-ciple,” it made no sense for him to con-tent himself with the same uncertaintyand skepticism that Butler’s epistemol-ogy would allow. Truth in religion re-quired continuity and consistency indoctrine which in turn demanded an in-fallible Church led by bishops with theauthority to teach infallibly. The Churchof England did not claim to be infallible;and since there was no unity in its teach-ing, religious articles could not be ac-cepted with certainty.

The inherent weaknesses of the offi-cial state church were known to Englishliberals who sought to restrict its politi-cal power. While Manning came to recog-nize these same weaknesses over time,his search for the authentic voice of di-vine truth never wavered. His transfer ofreligious loyalty from the Church of En-gland to the Church of Rome was whollyin keeping with his conservative disposi-tion. Ecclesiastical hierarchy and reli-gious authority are essential character-istics of a church with a commission to

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preach divine truth. Private judgmentinvariably leads to theological disputeand institutional schism. The churchesthat claim to be the most scriptural bydisposing of religious tradition and insti-tutional authority become children oftheir age without the counterweight thewisdom of their ancestors affords them.

The controversy unleashed by the1860 publication of Essays and Reviews—a collection of biblical studies by liberalAnglican theologians using the new Ger-man historical-critical method—con-firmed Manning’s view since this deviceof Protestant origin resulted in “denyingthe inspiration and authenticity of HolyScripture.” Lord Acton himself was sus-ceptible to German rationalism when hejudged the accuracy of Church doctrineby the voice of History. But History hasno claim to identify religious truth andfor Manning, it would be folly to suggestthat the supernatural authority of theChristian Church depends upon theworldly opinions of fallible historians.

Acton’s mentor, the German Catholichistorian Ignaz von Döllinger, falsely de-nied the ecumenical character of theCouncil of Florence in the process ofopposing papal infallibility on historicalgrounds.6 Pereiro’s discussion of the firstVatican Council (1870) is one of the mostsignificant contributions of the book forit lays to rest a host of falsehoods perpe-trated by opponents of papal infallibilityand Manning’s role in securing its decla-ration.

Pereiro has produced a well-written

and thoroughly researched book thatfills in large gaps in the secondary litera-ture on the development of CardinalManning’s mind and his place in the intel-lectual life of Victorian England. Thereare rare occasions when the criticisms ofManning’s positions are not sufficientlyexplained. There is also an assumptionthroughout that readers are already fa-miliar with the subject; for example, LouisVeuillot and L’Univers are mentioned sev-eral times but the former is never identi-fied as the editor of the latter. Despitethese minor shortcomings, this work willlikely become a standard reference forthose who desire a better understandingof the theological debates that took placein nineteenth-century England, both in-side and outside the Anglican Church,since the questions that mattered mostwere invariably asked by Manning in hislifelong quest for divine truth.

1. The Convert Cardinals: Newman and Manning(London, 1993), 11. 2. See Chadwick’s essay “TheOxford Movement and its reminiscencers,” in TheSpirit of the Oxford Movement (Cambridge, 1990),146. 3. Maisie Ward quoting her father, in TheWilfrid Wards and the Transition (London, 1934),220. 4. As H.C.G. Matthew observed: “Loss of faith,not a common occurrence in the circles in whichGladstone moved, led to pity, but apostasy tohorror, revulsion and torment.” See “Gladstone,Vaticanism, and the Question of the East,” in Stud-ies in Church History, Vol. XV, ed. D. Baker (Oxford,1978), 422. 5. Convert Cardinals, 44. 6. Acton himselferred by claiming at the time that doctrinal deci-sions in council must always be unanimous accord-ing to historical precedent. See Owen Chadwick, AHistory of the Popes, 1830-1914 (Oxford, 1998), 203-204.