In England the Catholic obligation to the disadvantaged and dispossessed was to be best exemplified by the unlikely figure of Henry Edward Manning, a child of the establishment. From the day of his birth in 1808 he was brought up in wealth and privilege and he found, throughout life, that the doors to promotion and preferment opened as he approached. Although Manning’s journey to the priesthood had been swift, his entry into Holy Orders was regarded by Wiseman as the beginning, rather than the end, of his Catholic education. It was to be continued in Rome. He travelled to the Eternal City in the company of George Talbot – the Eton- and Oxford-educated fifth son of a peer – who, like Manning, had been a Church of England clergyman before his conversion. Talbot had been sent to Rome as Wiseman’s representative and had almost immediately been appointed a papal chamberlain and was to prove Manning’s invaluable ally. During the desolation of his early days in Rome – when he missed the comforting complacency of life as an Anglican vicar and agonised about his nostalgia being a betrayal of his new faith – Talbot reassured him that he had found his true vocation by prophesying that Manning would have a glittering career in the Church of Rome and by arranging regular audiences with the Pope, who, he wrote, treated him ‘as a father treats a son’.1
Manning’s studies at the Accademia Ecclesiastica were made tolerable by the access it provided to books outside his narrow syllabus, but he longed to return to England. He declined to accept the title ‘Monseigneur’ and the appointment as papal chamberlain but he agreed, with joy and relief, to become the Pope’s representative to the British Government when – at the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853 – the Vatican expressed fears that the religious interests of Catholics, serving at the front, would be compromised.
The Vatican’s real anxiety was more about the Catholic Church’s amour propre than the immortal souls of its followers in the British army. The proposal that priests who followed the colours should be under the command of the Protestant Chaplain General was intolerable. Manning persuaded the War Office that they should answer, directly, to the Commander-in-Chief – also a Protestant, but unlikely to spend much time interfering with the work of Catholic chaplains. Having ‘solved’ the problem he was sent to resolve, Manning explored an idea of his own. Catholic nuns, sent as nurses to the Crimea, would meet the desperate need for more help in the field hospitals and at the same time demonstrate that it was possible to be both a Catholic and a patriot. But the scheme had to overcome a challenge to the Orders’ integrity, which was parallel to the ‘indignity’ that Catholic chaplains had been spared, thanks to Manning’s negotiating skills. The nuns would be under the direct command of Florence Nightingale – a friend of Manning, who teetered on the brink of conversion without ever jumping in. Manning employed what he knew to be a verbal and legal fiction. The volunteer nuns would be ‘sent’ to the Crimea by their Orders and instructed, by their superiors, to work under Florence Nightingale’s supervision.
Almost everything Manning did increased the esteem in which he was held by Rome. Newman, in contrast, seemed to court displeasure. He could not resist expressing controversial opinions, without pausing to think of the consequences. Usually their full meaning was obscured by the employment of complicated metaphors. While visiting the city, he preached a sermon on the subject of English visitors and asserted, ‘Rome is no place for them, but the very place in the whole world where Michael and the Dragon may almost be seen in battle.’2 The Pope – while not being sure what Newman meant to say – was furious that he had said it.
Many of Newman’s difficulties were caused by his habit of spreading himself too thinly over too many endeavours. While struggling to found a Catholic university in Ireland and to fulfil his obligations to the Oratory, he had written and published a second novel, Callista – A Tale of the Third Century. By then the religious tests that entrants to Oxford and Cambridge were once obliged to take and pass had been abolished. So Newman could add to his other activities toying with the idea of creating Catholic colleges in the two ancient universities. He also accepted, without any apparent qualm, the commission of the Catholic Episcopate to make a new translation of the Bible, which would replace both the Rheims–Douai version and the Challoner revision. The idea was abandoned when it was discovered that a new colloquial edition was already in production under the auspices of the Catholic Church of North America. Newman was naturally hurt and offended when he only found out by chance that his labours were no longer needed. But at least the cancellation of the project saved him from a task so great and demanding that even his selfless devotion and prodigious energy could not have saved him from the ignominy of failure. His detachment from the affairs of the Oratory – his critics called it neglect – had allowed the ambitious Frederick Faber to propose changes to the rules about which Newman was not consulted, and which he would have rejected had he been asked, as English Superior, to give his formal approval. He was particularly opposed to relaxing the ordinance which prevented Oratorians from hearing nuns’ confessions. The prohibition was intended to prevent members from spending time outside the Order’s house, which was meant to be the centre of their work and worship. But it was elevated, in both London and Rome, into an argument about the nature of mid-nineteenth-century Catholicism. It was an argument that Newman lost. Made fearful for his life and pontificate by the revolutions of 1848, Pius IX had changed from radical to reactionary, and the Church of which he was head increasingly favoured the authoritarian, rather than liberal, tendency. Faber’s Ultramontane views were in fashion. Propaganda Fide decreed that the two English Oratories were to be run independently of each other and Faber was made Provost of the Order. The London Oratorians were allowed to hear nuns’ confessions. It was not the only cross Newman had to bear. Manning – Newman’s partner in a lifetime of rivalry – was on the point of coming home.
When the Pope at last agreed to release him, Manning found himself back in England without a parish or a real purpose. He had long thought of establishing a new Order of priests and in 1856 – without the slightest intention of pouring salt on Newman’s wounds – he told Wiseman that he hoped to create ‘a sort of Oratory with external connections’. The new community would be modelled on the Italian Oblates and he hoped to set the process in motion by obtaining bodily relics of St Charles Borromeo, the founder of the Order, whose miraculously preserved body he had seen in Milan years before. He had to make do with a phial of the saint’s blood, which liquefied from time to time. But on the strength of that acquisition he bought land in Buckingham Palace Road as the site of the Order’s London home.
Wiseman either persuaded or instructed Manning to turn his attention to Bayswater, where there was already a half-built church and potential parishioners – immigrants from Galway who spoke little or no English. Years later Manning described the time he spent with the Oblates as the happiest period of his life and claimed that it was a special pleasure to be as much out of sight as if he had been in Australia. The obscurity, welcome or not, was not as complete as he pretended. Inevitably comparisons were made between the Oblates and the Oratorians of Birmingham. In terms of priests recruited and outposts created, the Oblates were almost always ahead. But the Oratorians always excited the most sympathy and support. That was, in part, because of their founding fathers’ widely different reputations. Newman was much loved. Manning was regarded as cold, arrogant and guilty of the sin that the English find hard to forgive – ambition.
The Oblates were also anathema to ‘old Catholics’, who regarded them as socially suspect and, because they included so many converts, prone to excess piety and undue reverence towards Rome. Because they felt uneasy about those priests who joined the Order after a conversion which followed the death of their wives, they spoke of the Oblate living in Widowers’ House.
George Errington – Cardinal Wiseman’s Coadjutor, appointed successor at Westminster and (by courtesy) Archbishop of Trebizond – would never have condescended to smile at such a joke. He was an austere expert on canon law who was to become Manning’s most bitter enemy in a dispute that transcended personalities and, in the end, amounted to a fundamental disagreement about the nature of English Roman Catholicism.
Wiseman had made the mistake of appointing Errington as his Coadjutor in the belief that they could renew the relationship (happy at the time) they had enjoyed when the two men had served together at Oscott – Wiseman as President and Errington as prefect of studies. Then the two men held identical views about the obligation of English Catholicism to adopt Roman custom. Errington insisted in lecturing in Latin. But by the time Wiseman became Cardinal Archbishop, Errington had become Bishop of Plymouth and only agreed to move to London on the strict understanding that he would be given sole charge of diocesan administration. It was a promise Wiseman never kept and probably never intended to keep. For a time Errington accepted Wiseman’s habit of casually reversing his decisions. Then the Archbishop intervened in what his Coadjutor regarded as a matter of principle.
During a visitation to St Edmund’s seminary, Errington ordered that W. G. Ward, a lecturer in moral philosophy, should limit his teaching to students who were preparing for life, not the Church. There were two possible explanations for his action. One was that regulations, laid down by the Council of Trent, prohibited laymen from teaching students for the priesthood. The other was that Ward was a widower and that he was disqualified by his previous married state. The Pope certainly accepted the second explanation. Wiseman reinstated Ward. The Vatican endorsed the decision with the gratuitous comment that ‘It is a most novel objection to anyone engaged in the work of God that he has received a Sacrament of the Holy Church which neither you nor I could possibly receive.’3 Errington wrote to Rome asking to be allowed to leave the Westminster diocese. The Vatican responded by instructing him to remain Coadjutor, but giving him temporary charge of the Clifton district. The notion that time – and distance from Wiseman – would heal proved categorically wrong.
In 1857, the year in which Errington returned to London, the Pope appointed Manning Provost of the Westminster Chapter. It was a promotion, over the heads of older and more experienced priests, that Wiseman had wished, but not dared, to make. Although the appointment was deeply resented by most of the Westminster clergy, Manning brushed aside both the antagonism and the difficulty of combining his new authority with his role as Father Superior of the Oblates. As Provost, he had to preside over a Chapter that was predominantly ‘English Catholic’ in outlook, while his Oblates were one of Wiseman’s instruments for ‘Romanising’ the English Church. At the same time Manning was still at odds with Errington, who remained wedded to the importance of correct procedure and orthodox regulation. Manning had made the Oblates answerable to the Cardinal rather than the bishops. When Errington complained that Manning had exceeded his authority, the Orders’ rules were changed to make them conform to standard practice. Errington was not satisfied by gestures. Manning and Wiseman had, he claimed, colluded in wilfully breaking the Bayswater trust deed, in order to give the church to the Oblates.
There were times when Manning seemed to welcome unpopularity. He caused offence to many of the clergy by setting out what he, with much justification, regarded as necessary reforms to the organisation of the English Catholic Church. He was particularly critical of the more senior priests, whom he regarded as suitable for saying Mass in country houses and hearing the confessions of Irish immigrants, but unable to cope with the demands of a normal mid-Victorian parish. His remedy was the improvement in vocational education – progress that he hoped to achieve by taking personal control of St Edmund’s, by then the Westminster Diocese seminary. Without consulting the President, he appointed Herbert Vaughan – a twenty-five-year-old Oblate – as Vice President and instructed him to review the work of the college.
Herbert Alfred Henry Vaughan might have been expected to sympathise with the ‘Catholic nobility’ who had once believed that the Church in England belonged to them. His father – a retired colonel – had assumed that his eldest son would follow him into the army before managing the family’s estate at Courtfield in Herefordshire. But Herbert was encouraged by his mother – a late convert with all the ardour of recent conviction – to become a priest. Five of his six brothers followed him into the Church. All of his eight sisters became nuns. Vaughan was to become a pioneer of missionary work in North America among the emancipated slaves of the Confederacy, Bishop of Salford, and Manning’s heir and successor as Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. In 1857 his appointment provided living proof that the provost of the archdiocese was firmly in control of the Chapter.
George Errington retaliated against Vaughan’s appointment by demanding the removal of the Oblates from St Edmund’s and persuading the Chapter to support him. Wiseman overruled them. But the conflict was becoming a crisis. Manning only slightly overstated its nature and severity when he told Wiseman, ‘The question [is] whether England shall be organised and assimilated to the living devotions and spirit of Rome or perpetuate itself under its own insular centre.’4 His greatest concern was that, as in the case of the Oblates in St Edmund’s, the Pope – or at least the Pope’s representative in the form of Cardinal Barnabo, the Prefect of Propaganda – might be less ‘Roman’ than the English Ultramontanes and might find for Errington. That raised the terrible spectre of first the English bishops, then the College of Cardinals and eventually the Pope all accepting that Errington had a right to succeed to the Archdiocese of Westminster when Wiseman died. Wiseman affected concern that his Coadjutor was overtaxing his strength and suggested that he should be made a bishop in his own right in some less demanding see. Errington was offered Trinidad. The Glasgow Herald announced that the Scottish Hierarchy was at last to be re-established and that Errington would be at its head. A year before the proposed date, he made clear that he would not, under any circumstances, go to Glasgow. Every offer was refused and every suggestion rejected. He could not ‘accept anything below what I was removed from. That would endorse the sentence of removal instead of merely submitting to the supreme power from which there is appeal.’5
Rome, in the form of George Talbot, hardened Errington’s opposition to a move by telling him that the Pope hoped for a speedy and, above all, discreet conclusion to the dispute about his future. But the position was still unclear when, in September 1859, Wiseman suffered a heart attack. Manning warned Talbot that if the succession was not speedily resolved, some of the best men would leave the Westminster Diocese, and Wiseman declared himself sufficiently recovered to travel to Rome. ‘You may be certain,’ Talbot told him, ‘that the Pope will grant you all you wish and that he will desire your Coadjutor to retire.’6 There followed a flurry of exculpatory letters. Manning wrote to Wiseman refuting the accusation ‘of a love of power’ and asking (rhetorically) what evidence there was to support the charge that he had ‘crossed any man’s path, deprived him of any due, sought honours or promotion’. Wiseman told Cardinal Barnabo not to believe that Manning ‘governs my diocese and that I see everything through his eyes’, then undermined his disclaimer by insisting that it would be foolish ‘to keep at a distance … a man gifted with so many excellent qualities, prudence, learning, disinterestedness, gravity and piety’. Manning, while in Rome for no known purpose, wrote directly, ‘I am grateful that Mgr, the Archbishop of Trebizond has, at length, brought the whole subject [of his future] before your Holiness so that I may now place myself, with an entire submission as I did in 1837, at your sacred feet.’
It was by no means clear that the Archbishop of Trebizond – who still believed that his future lay in Westminster – had ‘brought the subject’ before the Pope. But the Pope brought the subject before him. In March and again in July 1860, His Holiness implored Errington to resign or accept a transfer to Trinidad. All that he would agree to do was, as duty required, accept the Pope’s authority and obey his orders. So on July 22nd 1860 a Special Papal Decree was promulgated to deprive Errington of his appointment as Coadjutor of Westminster and to remove all rights of succession. Manning was made Protonotary Apostolic, with unspecified duties, and (according to Talbot) ‘gained the approbation of the whole Sacred College’.7 But although his status was enhanced, his view on the proper role of the Oblates was rejected. In 1861 Propaganda instructed that they leave St Edmund’s.
John Henry Newman had reacted to the Errington affair exactly as his critics expected. On one hand, he regretted that the offer of a Scottish see had not been accepted – thus ending a ‘great scandal’ – but on the other, he could ‘quite understand his asking for tongs, shovel and other implements, if he was expected to take the chestnuts out of the fire’.8 The metaphor might well have come to mind as the result of Newman’s own fingers being burned when he attempted, with a new venture, to reassert his authority over what had once been at the heart of his vocation. He had, for some time, advocated the creation of another Catholic public school. The brief in which Rome set out the duties of the English Oratorians instructed them to pay special heed to the educated classes. So the actual proposal to begin work on the project caused neither surprise nor concern.
John (later Lord) Acton – historian and convert – and the Duke of Norfolk endorsed the proposal, and Faber promised neither to frustrate nor interfere with its creation. The school was opened in temporary premises during May 1859 with seven boys on its register. In less than two years the roll had increased to seventy and the governors felt sufficiently confident of success to commission work on a new building. It was then that Newman discovered that Nicholas Darnell, the headmaster, wanted to make it independent of the Oratories and was planning, without consultation, to move to a new site. How well Newman would have dealt with the insubordination remains in doubt, for his disagreement with Darnell over the governance of the school was suddenly overshadowed by a bitter dispute over internal discipline. It concerned compassion. Darnell dismissed the school’s matron for the offence of being over-indulgent towards sick and delicate boys. Newman, who opposed the dismissal and applauded the indulgence, refused either to endorse her removal or accept her resignation. The battle that followed was long and bitter. It ended in the departure of Darnell and staff who were sympathetic to his belief in rigorous discipline, the appointment of a new headmaster and that rare event in the history of Newman’s many disputes and disagreements – victory.
Newman’s next excursion into educational matters (albeit vicarious) was less successful. Indeed it ended in near-disaster. Newman – together with John Acton – had long been a patron of The Rambler, an intellectual periodical which, by its very nature, offended Catholics who regarded theological debate as a temptation to heresy. The periodical’s editorial policy – typified by articles that examined the relationship between faith and reason, doubted the merits of the Council of Trent’s advice on seminaries and speculated about the likelihood of eternal punishment – seemed to justify the fears of and attracted criticism from The Tablet and condemnation from the Dublin Review. In February 1858 Richard Simpson, the editor, caused particular offence by correcting, on matters of detail, work by various luminaries including Cardinal Wiseman. In January of the following year, offence was replaced by outrage when Simpson published an attack by Scott Nasmyth Stokes on the Catholic bishops’ refusal to cooperate with the Royal Commission on Education. The bishops had said that they feared that a secular commission, closely associated with the Established Church, would reach conclusions that undermined the extension of Catholic schools. Stokes revealed that, in truth, the claim that Catholic interests were in jeopardy was a device to hide the real reason for boycotting the Commission. The Catholic Poor School Committee had failed to nominate a Commission member. During the uproar that followed, Bernard Ullathorne asked Newman to obtain Simpson’s resignation and provide some sort of guarantee of The Rambler’s future good behaviour. Newman decided that the only way he could fulfil both tasks was to become editor himself.
His troubles began with the first issue, which contained an editorial that defended the right of laymen to express opinions on matters of faith and morals. It cited, in support of that view, the consultations which, in 1854, had preceded the assertion of the Immaculate Conception. The precedent notwithstanding, the editorial was denounced as the advocacy of near-heresy. Newman reacted to the uproar with what must have been a conscious decision to compound the offence. In the issue of July 1859 – Newman’s third and last – he published the essay ‘On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine’. It advocated the ‘sensus fidelium’, the united testimony of all the faithful. That implied that the ‘given truth’ – the scriptures and apostolic wisdom – was open to discussion and interpretation. The Tablet immediately condemned the doctrine as schismatic. Then the synod of English bishops discussed Newman’s conduct, without telling him that he was virtually on trial. They criticised his conduct, without passing a vote of censure, but Bishop Joseph Brown of Newport made a formal complaint to the Vatican with the claim that Newman was ‘totally subversive of the authority of the church in matters of faith’.9 Bernard Ullathorne, in Rome at the time, did his best to defend Newman. Nicholas Wiseman and Henry Manning, also in the Eternal City, did not.
Consistency was not one of Newman’s defining characteristics. Indeed, his determination to pick and choose in matters of dogma and liturgy was one of the attributes that endeared him to ‘Cisalpine’ Catholics who regarded themselves, theologically, as ‘on the other side of the alps’ from Rome. At the height of the Rambler controversy, he wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury about opinions expressed by Augustus Pugin. The letter – which began with the prayer that his Lordship’s ‘pious and zealous labours for the advancement of religion … may receive an abundant answer from the Almighty’ – was clearly meant to damage Pugin’s prospect of future patronage. It did not have the desired effect, but it revealed a side of Newman’s character – petty-minded, pompous and self-loving – that the advocates of his canonisation overlook:
Just now the inclosed letter was brought to me which I think your Lordship ought to see. It was written, as you will observe by Mr Pugin, some six months ago, to one of our novices, Mr Caswell; not an intimate friend of his for he addresses him ‘Dear Sir’, so it is not confidential but to a friend and subject of ours. He does not scruple to tell our novice, and thinks it ‘only honest to tell him’ that he ‘holds the new system’, by which he means the architectural tradition of Rome and Italy, ‘in nearly as much horror as the principles of Voltaire, for an architectural heathen’ (such as a whole line of Popes) ‘is only one remove from an infidel and in his way more dangerous.’ This applies not only to the Popes of at least three centuries, but to St Philip, St Ignatius and a host of Saints.10
Although selective in his attitude towards authority, it was Newman’s nature to want to be at peace with the Holy See. When Ullathorne told him that the Pope was ‘much pained’ by his conduct, he at once offered to make amends and wrote to Wiseman, still in Rome, asking what clarifications and corrections were necessary to restore his reputation as a loyal son of the Church. Propaganda Fide prepared a list of errors to be renounced, and Newman was told that Wiseman would supervise the recantations on his return. Wiseman either forgot or judged it unwise to pursue the question. Newman was left in limbo. The Rambler attempted to make a fresh start by changing its name to the Home and Foreign Review. It continued, under Acton, to be the voice of Liberal Catholicism and, as such, was publicly condemned by Catholics of the ‘old school’. Newman openly applauded Acton’s rebuttal of Wiseman’s general condemnation of the magazine and Acton rejoiced that ‘for the first time Newman declared himself completely on my side.’11 The rejoicing was short-lived. When Ullathorne accused the Review of heresy, Newman appeared to betray his friend whose editorial policy he had laid down. His reply to Ullathorne endorsed the accusation on the grounds that the bishop had identified ‘certain passages which have been condemned by Rome’. Newman, who was rightly believed to be more sympathetic to the Review’s position than to Ullathorne’s, then betrayed his earlier betrayal. He explained that his apparent denial of his own beliefs was ‘an act of obedience not of approval’. The nice distinction lost some of its force when it was discovered that Ullathorne had shown the first letter to Wiseman, as proof of Newman’s redemption, and Wiseman had passed on the good news to Rome.
Both the Dublin Review and The Rambler were written for the Catholic elite – men and women (mostly men) who were interested in doctrine and dogma. The Universe – founded in 1860 in the wake of The Rambler crisis – was intended for a wider readership. The end of the newspaper tax, the development of printing machinery and the increasing literacy of the working population had all contributed to a rise in popular journalism. Much of it – reflecting the nation’s enthusiasm for the Italian Risorgimento – was critical of the Catholic Church’s apparent support for the old regimes in Naples, Sardinia and, of course, the Papal State of Rome. Cardinal Wiseman thought it essential to answer the criticism and took, as his example of how the reply could be made, France’s L’Univers. The President of the Society of St Vincent de Paul recruited volunteers who worked without pay for more than two years on a paper that never included book reviews – a staple ingredient of The Rambler and the Home and Foreign Review – but specialised in columns of general Catholic interest. One was called ‘The Saint of the Week’. At the height of its popularity, The Universe had a weekly circulation of almost a quarter of a million copies and boasted a gallery of celebrity contributors: Hilaire Belloc, G K Chesterton, Ronald Knox and Philip Gibbs.
For three years after the Home and Foreign Review controversy, very little was heard of John Henry Newman. There was talk of a mental breakdown and rumours of physical collapse, suspicions that he had come to regret leaving the Church of England and suggestions that he had lost his faith completely. Critics attributed the silence to resentment that his intellectual powers were not adequately acknowledged by Rome. Friends claimed that, fearful of being separated from the Church he had come to love, he had decided that keeping silent was the only way in which he could avoid the malign attentions of Propaganda Fide. So he wrote, but did not publish, and he travelled, always in the company of Ambrose St John. Had Newman remained silent for the rest of his life, he would have been remembered – had he been remembered at all – as an interesting curiosity. But sometime between Christmas 1863 and the New Year an event occurred which changed his life and enabled him to achieve hero status. He was sent a copy of Macmillan’s Magazine for January 1864.
The magazine contained an anonymous review of The History of England by Newman’s old friend, James Anthony Froude. When Newman read it, he understandably assumed that it was written by a ‘young scribe who is making a cheap reputation by smart hits at safe subjects’.12 In fact the author was Charles Kingsley, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, ordained Church of England priest, author of half a dozen historical novels and early convert to Darwin’s theory of evolution, which he aimed to popularise by his story of The Water Babies. The eclectic nature of his knowledge and beliefs was illustrated by the ease with which he simultaneously served as a chaplain to Queen Victoria and as a founding member of the Christian Socialist Movement. The nature and extent of his learning make it difficult to understand how he could bring himself to write:
Truth, for its own sake, has never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given to marriage.
Newman wrote the publishers a letter which forbore to point out that most of the paragraph was meaningless nonsense, but merely administered a majestic rebuke:
There is no reference at the foot of the page to any words of mine, much less any quotation from my writing which justifies this statement. I should not dream of expostulating with the writer of such a passage or with an editor who could insert it without appending evidence … Nor do I want reparation … I do but wish to draw your attention, as gentlemen, to a grave and gratuitous slander, with which I feel confident you will be sorry to find associated with a name so eminent as yours.13
Kingsley first responded by contending that Newman’s Church of England sermons revealed that he was always a crypto-Catholic. He then conceded that he might have misunderstood their meaning. There followed what Newman regarded as, at best, only half an apology and, at worst, a further imputation of bad faith. It included the two ambiguous passages ‘No man knows the use of words better than Dr Newman’ and ‘It only remains for me to express my hearty pleasure in finding him on the side of Truth.’14 After a couple of weeks’ argument, a truncated version of the ‘apology’ appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine. But Newman was still not satisfied. So, at his invitation, Longmans published a pamphlet entitled Mr Kingsley and Dr Newman – A Correspondence. It contained most of the letters they had exchanged and Newman’s satirical commentary upon them. The pamphlet became a bestseller, as did Kingsley’s counterblast. Newman, in a moment of unbecoming hubris, told Jesuit priest Thomas Harper that the ‘sensation which the affair had caused proved that he was still feared’.15
Feared or not, Newman was still not wholly trusted. He was suffering the fate of all apostates. Some of his critics suspected that he had never been a true Anglican. Others doubted that he had ever become a true Catholic. Kingsley’s review had made the first of those allegations a topic of dinner-table dispute throughout educated England. Newman – not altogether free of the sin of pride in his own purity – determined to combat the growing ‘prejudice that [he] was a Papist while [he] was an Anglican’.16 He told William Copeland, a Littlemore curate who had remained a faithful follower for twenty years, ‘The only way in which I can destroy this is to give my history, and the history of my mind, from 1822 or earlier, down to 1845.’17 The result was the Apologia Pro Vita Sua.
What Newman himself rightly called ‘an egotistical matter from beginning to end’18 began life as a weekly pamphlet. The first of seven issues was published on Thursday April 21st 1864 and caused an immediate sensation. To meet his deadlines, Newman worked sixteen hours a day for almost two months. As well as defending his own record, he made an eloquent plea for theological speculation: ‘It is manifest how a mode of proceeding, such as this, tends not only to the liberty, but to the courage of the individual theologian or controversialist.’ The Apologia – published as a book six months after the first pamphlet appeared – became the most famous theological work of the nineteenth century. There is no evidence that it produced a spate of converts to the Catholic faith, but there is no doubt that it moved mountains. George Eliot’s view of religion was made plain when she was asked to describe her approach to the ‘three trumpet calls to men – God, Immortality and Duty’. She answered, ‘How inconceivable the first, unbelievable the second and yet how peremptory and absolute the third.’ Yet, asked to comment on Apologia Pro Vita Sua, she replied, ‘The revelation of life – how different from one’s own, yet with how close a fellowship in its needs and burdens. I mean spiritual needs and burdens.’19
The Apologia was not the only historically important Catholic document to be published in 1864. In the Syllabus Errorum, Pius IX – no longer a political or theological radical – denounced the idea that ‘the Church can or ought to reconcile itself with Progress, Liberalism and Modern Civilisation’. Manning regarded that rejection of the modern world as ‘among the greatest acts of the Pontificate’.20 In a fusillade that offended with every shot, he described England as possessing ‘the melancholy and bad pre-eminence of the most anti-Catholic, and therefore most anti-Christian, power in the world’, asserted that the Pope possessed temporal authority and illustrated his devotion to the world as it used to be by condemning the annexation of the Papal States by the Kingdom of Piedmont. It was his destiny to grow more progressive with age.
Newman flaunted his support for the Risorgimento so openly that it was rumoured he had sent money to Garibaldi, and his disdain for Rome was far too well documented to be dismissed as malicious gossip. When Monsignor Talbot invited him to preach a sermon to Protestants in Rome, Newman seized on the unfortunate assurance that he could expect a more highly educated congregation than was usual in England as justification for the gratuitously offensive reply with which he declined the invitation: ‘Birmingham people have souls; and I have neither taste nor talent which you cut out for me.’21 Newman and Manning had diametrically different convictions on the powers of the Pope and the relationship of the Catholic Church in England and Rome. In the history of English Catholicism, that disagreement was infinitely more important than the disagreement – or possibly misunderstanding – about whether or not Newman should be made a cardinal.
In the autumn of 1862, Manning found a new way of advancing his Ultramontane views. He took over from Wiseman theological control of the Dublin Review. The editor he appointed, W G Ward – a layman and Professor of Theology – shared Manning’s position in the Catholic spectrum, ‘narrow and strong – very narrow and very strong’.22 Ward had a penchant for the flamboyant, and therefore often offensive, phrase. He dismissed claims that the Church should take a greater interest in social justice with the assertion that ‘these men who would liberalise Catholicism would never Catholicise Liberalism’. The Via Media he dismissed as a compromise heresy. The Dublin Review argued that papal infallibility should be extended to include all pronouncements by the Holy See.
Because of his robust defence of papal authority, Manning was already a favourite of the ultras in the Vatican. In 1863 Talbot had written to Wiseman, ‘Manning has come out nobly this year, in Rome. He has gained immensely in the opinion of the Pope and I may say all the Cardinals. They are open mouthed about him.’23 Increasingly he became their champion against Henry Newman, the man who seemed to personify – though not to lead in any active way – the Cisalpine rejection of absolute subservience to the Holy See.
Newman was not alone in his Gallican heresies. Cardinal Wiseman was being constantly challenged – on questions of faith and morals as well as organisation – by the bishops of his archdiocese. Arguments at bishops’ meetings were, he complained, resolved by determining which faction had a majority. Democracy was replacing authority and scholarship. Wiseman was sick as well as old. To the constant threat of a mortal heart attack was added the constant debilitation of diabetes. The argument for nominating his coadjutor and successor was overwhelming and made more urgent, in the estimation of Rome, by the (as it turned out unjustified) suspicion that Errington was planning some sort of coup. But there was a problem.
Henry Manning, the candidate whom Rome strongly preferred, was so unpopular with the English bishops that there were fears that his appointment would lead to an episcopal civil war. Herbert Vaughan, the Vice President of Oscott, was an Oblate and a Manning satrap, but he thought it necessary to tell Talbot that most of the English bishops dismissed the views held by the Provost of their Chapter as ‘extreme, exaggerated and contentious’.24 Manning’s reaction to his critics confirmed the allegation: ‘It is necessary for the bishops in England to feel the weight of Rome as it was ten years ago for priests to feel the weight of the hierarchy.’ Even Wiseman, who increasingly relied on Manning and would certainly have chosen him as his successor, flinched at the thought of the outrage that Manning’s nomination would cause.
Cardinal Barnabo’s official candidate was Bernard Ullathorne, Bishop of Birmingham. Talbot wrote to Wiseman that ‘he has many faults but with them all, he is a good bishop and will not undo your work’.25 That was his public position. In private Talbot repeated his respect for Ullathorne, as a bishop, but added that the plain-speaking Yorkshireman ‘seems to have all the faults of an uneducated man’26 and expressed the hope that if a formal offer were made, he would not accept it. Wiseman, who wrongly regarded Ullathorne as ringleader of the rebellious bishops, would not even consider him as successor to the archbishopric. Manning, belying his ambitious reputation, did his best to change the Cardinal’s mind. There are, he told Wiseman, ‘many reasons why the nomination would ensure union among the bishops and peace for yourself’.27 Wiseman was immovable, but Manning was resolute. In Rome he canvassed for Ullathorne with a vigour that was taken to be motivated by self-interest. Frederick Neve, President of the English College, said that there would be ‘no peace as long as Manning is here. He is always scheming.’ And so he was. But in the affair of Wiseman’s successor, he was not scheming on his own behalf.
At home in England, Manning faced new problems from an old source. The assumption that it was the success of the Apologia that emboldened Newman, once more, to challenge authority was almost certainly mistaken. He did not need a stimulus to rouse him into action on behalf of the issues that he felt deeply, and the establishment of a Catholic college in Oxford was high on his list of worthy causes. Manning shared his concern that Catholics in England, who did not wish to enter the Church, were effectively denied higher education, but Newman dismissed the idea of sending them to the Gregorian University in Rome as wildly impractical. In the hope of ending Newman’s agitation, Manning brought the question of a Catholic college – at either Oxford or Cambridge – before a formal meeting of the English bishops. They roundly condemned it, as Manning knew they would, and went on to urge Catholic parents to discourage their sons from entering either university. Undaunted, Newman bought five acres of Oxford land with the ostensible purpose of building an oratory.
The oratory proposal was, in itself, controversial since it was assumed that, once created, it would enjoy a close relationship with the godless university. Cardinal Reisarch had been sent from Rome to examine the idea and had visited Oxford without telling Newman. The Cardinal’s decision was communicated to the bishops, who passed it on to Newman together with a codicil from Propaganda. The oratory could be established, but Propaganda ruled – in an edict which was to be kept secret from all but the directly affected parties – that Newman was never to live in Oxford. Sceptical about Newman’s motives in buying land for an oratory which he could not control, the bishops met again, confirmed their opposition to a Catholic college at either of the ancient universities and wrote to Propaganda with a request for a formal and binding ruling. Manning, unsure that Cardinal Barnabo was in sufficiently robust opposition, made one of the dashes to Rome which – in the travel conditions of the day – were a remarkably frequent feature of episcopal intrigue. His journey was unnecessary. Newman had changed his mind. A Catholic college would be ‘impeded in its free actions by a number of petty semi-monastic regulations’ and would be ‘regarded with suspicion by influential portions of the Catholic body’.28
Manning had been in Rome for less than a week when he received news from England that Cardinal Wiseman was dying. It took him sixty-eight sleepless hours to reach London. Manning kept vigil for the three days of life that were left to Wiseman. The Cardinal recognised him once. Colleagues who expressed their admiration for Manning’s devotion were told – in one of the moments of brusque frankness that so damaged his reputation – that it was necessary for him to return home in order to avoid the accusation that he was canvassing the cardinals to make certain that he secured the succession. In London, instead of pleading his cause, he totally uncharacteristically took it for granted that he had no hope of becoming Archbishop and spent his time undermining the chances of the candidates who were, in his opinion, least suited to the job.
When William Clifford, Bishop of Clifton, was called to Rome, Manning was near to despair. It seemed that the Catholic Church in England was to be led by a member of the Catholic nobility who was deeply opposed to the principles and practice of the Church’s Ultramontane wing and, worse still, was a friend of John Henry Newman. Manning wrote to Talbot to warn him that Clifford was heavily supported by the Farm Street Jesuits and would, therefore, feel under an obligation to them, once he was in office. Talbot’s reply ignored the Jesuit threat but implied, without being explicit, that Manning should be prepared for the worst. As a result, Manning took it for granted that when the Chapter met on March 25th 1865, it would submit one name to Rome for the Pope’s approval. And so it did. But it was not William Clifford. The Chapter recommended George Errington.
Pius IX regarded the nomination as an intentional insult. Errington was told of the papal outrage and the English bishops were warned as to their future conduct. New names were canvassed. Lord Palmerston ‘let it be known’ that the British Government would be content if either Clifford or Thomas Clark of Southwark got the job. Cardinal Antonelli, the Papal Secretary of State, reminded the Pope that Clifford would at least avoid open rebellion by the English bishops. Propaganda at last recalled the undoubted merit of Bernad Ullathorne. Pio Nono, in mock despair, joked that he would have to appoint Talbot – who took the idea seriously, sent the good news to Manning and received (apparently sincere) congratulations in return. He added that Talbot should take over without fear of the future. It was the Westminster Chapter, not the English Catholic Church, that was in open rebellion.
Faced with such a plethora of conflicting advice, the Pope consulted the one authority on whom he could rely. He ordered a month of Masses and prayers, in the hope that they would induce the Holy Spirit to come to his rescue. The much-needed help from on high came at the end of April when the Pope announced, ‘I shall always believe that I heard a voice saying. “Put him there. Put him there.”’29 Henry Manning was, it seemed, God’s choice.
Impelled by a combination of gratitude and common sense, the new Archbishop prepared to mend fences and heal old wounds. The task was accomplished with greater ease and less embarrassment than he had expected. The old Catholic families emphasised what pleasure his elevation had given them. The bishops and the Westminster Chapter stressed their determination to cooperate. There was no formal message of congratulation from Newman, though he did welcome the evidence that Rome was not distrustful of, and biased against, converts. Manning’s suggestion that his old adversary be made a bishop in partibus infidelium was brushed aside with the half joke, ‘He wants to put me in the House of Lords and muzzle me.’30 Newman’s letter, accepting the invitation to attend Manning’s consecration, provides further evidence of his egocentricity: ‘I will willingly attend … on a condition which I will state presently … A year or two ago, I heard that you were doing your best to get me made a bishop … Your kindly feelings towards me make it not unlikely that you attempt the same thing now.’ Newman would not attend the consecration without Manning’s ‘pledge to have nothing to do with such an attempt’.31
Newman, who thrived on controversy, turned his attention from rejecting the episcopal appointment, which he was not offered, to attacking views that, at least in part, he had previously supported. In the year that Manning was consecrated Archbishop, Edward Pusey – like Newman, a veteran of the Tractarian Movement – published Eirenicon. Pusey’s contention that the Church of England was, by its theological nature and history, a part of the Holy Catholic Church, and that it was necessary for both Churches to work towards unity, echoed Newman’s long-held view. And it might have been supposed that the frequently unorthodox Newman endorsed the complaint that attempts to unite the two communions were being hindered by the extreme views held by Ultramontane converts. The role of the Virgin Mary, interceding for sinners, was given as an example of irreconcilable items of dogma. Newman’s published objections to sections of the text were part theological and part linguistic. As usual, his argument turned on a point which, according to taste, could be described as intellectual precision or logic-chopping. ‘It is one thing to say that no one is saved without the intercession of the Virgin Mary (meaning simply that she is the intercessor who prays according to the will of her Son and is, therefore, the channel by which his will is carried out) but quite different to conclude from this that without invocation of Mary, nobody is saved.’32 But his real complaint, expressed in a later open letter to Pusey, was the implication that Ultramontane converts represented the Church. ‘They are,’ the letter concluded, ‘in no sense spokesmen for English Catholics and they would not stand in the place of those who have title to such an office.’33
The Ultramontanes were losing patience. ‘Poor man, by living surrounded by inferior men who idolise him,’ Talbot wrote. Newman never ‘acquired the Catholic instinct’.34 Manning had to be encouraged to stand firm against the ‘old school of Catholics’. He was reassured that Talbot would ‘stand by’ him as he fought the battles that the insular character of his countrymen made inevitable. ‘Every Englishman is naturally anti-Roman. To be Roman is to every Englishman an effort. Dr Newman is more English than the English. His spirit must be crushed.’ Manning confirmed the analysis: ‘He has become the centre of those who hold a low view of the Holy See.’ Hostilities intensified.
The two men often fought their battles through surrogates. Manning fired Frederick Neve, the Newmanite Rector of the English College in Rome, and replaced him with an Oblate. A letter, signed by the heads of two hundred ‘noble’ Catholic families, made no mention of Manning, Oxford or the authority of Rome, but told Newman of their belief that ‘every blow that touches you inflicts a wound upon the Catholic Church in this country’.35 The Rome correspondent of the Weekly Register caused great offence by writing what everybody involved knew to be true: The Oxford initiative had been abandoned because of Rome’s doubts about Newman’s reliability. The fight became so bitter that even the chief protagonists began to fear it would end in mutual destruction. Manning told George Talbot – who had dismissed the petition of support for Newman as the work of men whose proper activity was hunting and shooting – that it was necessary to tread carefully. ‘A word or act of mine towards Dr Newman might divide the bishops and throw some on his side … the chief aim of the Anglicans has been to set Dr Newman and myself in conflict.’36
Talbot forbore to say that the conflicting characters of the two men had already guaranteed that the aim had been achieved. Instead he applauded Manning’s decision to make overtures to Newman. The approach – though meant to safeguard the interests of the Church – was made in the language of personal friendship: ‘It would give me great consolation to know from you anything in which you have thought me wanting in you.’37 Newman’s reply was as sanctimonious as Manning’s invitation was devious: ‘I wish I could get myself to believe that the fault was my own, and that your words, your bearing and your implications ought, though they have not served, to prepare me for your acts.’ It was clear that neither man wanted to make peace. Whether or not Manning gave up the idea of a reconciliation, there and then, he certainly spent little subsequent time attempting one. He had other pressing obligations.
On June 26th 1869 Pope Pius IX announced that he was to convene a Vatican Council. Five years earlier the Pope had invited thirty-four carefully chosen clerics – Manning among them – to consider, in confidence, what should be on the agenda, were there to be a worldwide congregation of the Catholic Church. They had kept the secret until 1867. Then, at a celebration of St Peter and Paul in Rome, the assembled bishops somehow discovered that the great gathering was to be held before the end of the decade. When the news reached Newman in Birmingham he already knew that, whenever it happened, the Council would be asked ‘to recognise and reaffirm the Immaculate Conception, not as throwing doubt on the previous definition but as normalising the ecclesiastical proceeding’.38 He welcomed that intention as ‘showing that the normal mode of deciding a point of faith is a Council not the Pope speaking ex cathedra’ and hoped that there would be a discussion of reunion with the Eastern Orthodox Church. However, he was apprehensive about the general outcome. He feared that the Ultramontanes ‘would push for the Pope’s Infallibility and be unscrupulous in doing so’. His hopes were not realised, but his fears were, at least in part, justified.
Unscrupulous though the Ultramontanes may have been, they were certainly open about their ambition. Manning regarded papal infallibility as an article of faith and an essential Catholic weapon in the ‘internecine conflict … between the army of dogma and the united hosts of heresy, indifference and atheism’.39 He was, however, a moderate as compared with some of the infallibility lobby. Some wanted the definition to cover the Pope’s whole life and entire range of activities – including his private correspondence. La Civiltà Cattolica (published by the Jesuits of Rome) declared that the Pope’s thoughts were infallible since, in truth, they were God thinking in him. The rest of the English bishops, with the exception of Robert Cornthwaite – Bishop of Beverley, and Manning’s only ally – were Cisalpine moderates. None of them was, or could be, opposed to the principle of infallibility, but some wanted a definition that severely limited the circumstances in which it could be invoked, and others wanted to maintain the façade of unity by postponing the definition to some unspecified date. The English bishops, who had fought hard against their power being expropriated by Wiseman and Manning, did not propose to capitulate to a new threat – ‘a wild enthusiasm on the part of the converts and a disposition among the clergy and even the laity to lower the power of the episcopate and a stronger centralisation leading ultimately to a narrow door presented to those who are seeking the Church’.40
The Papal Bull Aeterni Patris decreed that the Council would open the first of its four public sessions on December 8th 1869 – each of which was to be preceded by long, private, preparatory discussions. There was no indication of how long it would have lasted, had it not been indefinitely suspended on October 20th 1870, a month after the Sardinian troops occupied Rome. Infallibility was scheduled to be discussed during the last session and the Council might well have ended without the subject being settled, had it not been for a ‘monster petition’ – in part initiated by Manning and signed by 380 delegates – which called for assurances that infallibility would be examined and a definition, of some sort, agreed. That in itself guaranteed that the debates on the subject would be heated, that the lobbying, on the fringes of the Council, would be intense and that the delegates would, at least in private, treat their opponents with scant respect. After Georges Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, made a passionate speech opposing any definition that would widen the gulf between Catholics and other Christian faiths, Paul Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin and an uncompromising Ultramontane, rejoiced that ‘his French pronunciation and bad voice prevented him from doing any harm’.41
The Vatican Council provided Vaughan’s Tablet with an ideal opportunity to demonstrate its complete commitment to orthodoxy. Special supplements were published describing, and claiming to analyse, the proceedings. But the descriptions and analysis were openly biased against cisalpines (who were dismissed as ‘disloyal’), and letters supporting a more limited definition of infallibility and the opening of discussions with other faiths were excluded from the correspondence columns. The ultimate proof of its Ultramontane loyalty came with the Sardinian occupation of Rome. The Tablet asked its readers to subscribe to its own version of Peter’s Pence. More than £2,000 was collected and sent to the Pope, a refugee from Rome while the future of the Papal States was challenged by the forces of Italian nationalism.42
English history books are inclined – whatever the author’s view on infallibility – to make Manning the hero of the Ultramontane campaign, even though the final definition of infallibility was less comprehensive than he wished it to be. Perhaps he was the moving force behind the scene – cajoling, persuading and sometimes bullying. But a major part in the actual proceedings (perhaps the major part) was played by Cullen. To him the supreme and unquestioned authority of the Pope was an indispensable part of Catholicism. Failure by the Vatican Council explicitly to proclaim his infallibility would ‘inflict a great wound on the Pope’s authority and give a triumph to the heretics and infidels of this world’. The ‘most dangerous speech’ in support of postponing endorsing a definition was made by Cardinal Guidi, the Archbishop of Bologna. Cullen refuted his arguments, point by point, and later reported that Pius IX ‘said he was much obliged to me for having administered castigation to one who had corresponded so badly to his favours’.
Manning certainly made one speech of great power – though its effect may not have been what he intended. He began by identifying himself as the only convert at the Council and went on to argue that it was the uncompromising certainty of Catholicism which made it attractive to followers of more tentative faiths. ‘To hold back from defining [infallibility] would be a sign and source of weakness in the Catholic position.’43 It much impressed delegates who were already on his side. The undecided were alienated by a speech of such passion that the chairman thought it necessary to rebuke him: ‘This is not the way in which this affair should be conducted.’ It would be wrong to suggest that Manning had so badly overplayed his hand that he prevented the acceptance of the uncompromising definition that he favoured. The Council was always likely to seek unity around a formula that both extreme views could at least tolerate. So it agreed:
We define that it is a dogma divinely revealed that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is … by his supreme Apostolic Authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith and morals … by the divine assistance promised to him by the blessed Peter [and] is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed.
Back in England the Liberal Government, undaunted by previous failures, was making another attempt to establish in Ireland a university that – while having the intellectual freedom essential to such an institution – was acceptable to the Catholic Church. Gladstone’s Irish University Bill (which, among other provisions, proposed to federate Trinity and Maynooth) had pleased nobody and, after Archbishop Cullen had condemned it as another attempt to impose secular education on a Catholic people, it was rejected by the House of Commons. The coalition collapsed, leaving its leader more time for theological questions. During the summer of 1874 he drafted a pamphlet, The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Exposition. After much soul-searching and consultation with colleagues – including Lord Acton, who was summoned to Hawarden for the purpose – Gladstone decided to publish. In November 145,000 copies were printed. They were all sold by Christmas.
The preface included the claim, ‘It has been a favourite purpose of my life not to conjure up, but conjure down, public alarm.’ The images by which he described the developments in the Vatican did little to support that contention. ‘The myrmidons of the apostolic chamber’ had disinterred the claims of ancient popes, ‘like hideous mummies picked out of Egyptian sarcophagi’. The temporal power of the Pope was to be reasserted, ‘even if it could only be re-erected on the ashes of the city and amidst the whitening bones of the people’, and it would be supported by converts who described themselves as ‘Catholic first and Englishmen afterwards’.44
Manning, as was only to be expected, replied. In a letter to The Times he asserted, with commendable restraint, that nothing prevented a Catholic from holding ‘a civil allegiance as pure, as true and as loyal as is rendered by the distinguished author of the pamphlet or any other subject of the British Empire’.45 In a letter to the New York Herald he added that the disagreement was the first incident to interrupt the friendship of forty-five years, and Gladstone, in his next sally – Vaticanism: An Answer to Reproofs and Replies – emphasised his refusal to withdraw or apologise, with the gratuitous and ungracious insistence that reconciliation might be possible in heaven but not on earth. He also drew what he hoped would be a damaging distinction between Newman and Manning.: ‘If we had Dr Newman as Pope, we should be tolerably safe, so merciful and genial would be his rule.’46
Newman’s position on the controversy had been set out in a pamphlet entitled A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. It claimed that the Vatican Council’s decisions needed to be interpreted by theologians just as ‘lawyers explain Acts of Parliament’ and that he was unable to accept that ‘the ultimate decision rest with any except the general Catholic intelligence’.47 It ended with the usual suggestion that Ultramontanes – far from being typical of Catholic opinion – were a minority within the Church. He chose to emphasise his point with a particularly offensive metaphor: ‘The Rock of St Peter, on the summit, enjoys a pure and serene atmosphere, but there is a great deal of Roman malaria at the foot of it.’
The whole of the Vatican was outraged. The Prefect of Propaganda wrote to Manning with the demand that Newman be censured, and initially received the reply – strange but true – that the Archbishop had not read the pamphlet. He did so at Rome’s request and concluded that the offensive sentiments would only be read by the more intellectual Catholics who, by definition, would dismiss them as simple abuse. And he added, in a moment of not altogether characteristic charity, that ‘The reverend Father Newman is as right and as Catholic as it is possible to be.’ So Newman was not rebuked. Gladstone, on the other hand, was accused of attempting to instigate rebellion against the authority of the Pope and was advised that ‘if he would incline the Catholics of the Empire to accept the ministries of his compassion, he must first purify his style of both writing and thinking’. Whatever the cause and date of the first breach in the two men’s close relationship, the public argument that followed the publication of the Vatican Decrees ensured that it was not healed for another twenty years.