Nicholas Wiseman

His Eminence Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman
Archbishop of Westminster
An engraving of Cardinal Wiseman, published in "Geschichte der Kirche Christi" from Johannes Ibach, Benziger, Switzerland, 1916
Archdiocese	Westminster
Province	Westminster
Enthroned	29 September 1850
Reign ended	15 February 1865
Predecessor	Inaugural appointment
Successor	Henry Edward Manning
Orders
Ordination	19 March 1825 (Priest)
Consecration	8 June 1840 (Bishop)
Created Cardinal	30 September 1850
Rank	Cardinal priest of Santa Pudenziana [1]
Personal details
Birth name	Nicolás Patricio Esteban Wiseman [2]
Born	2 August 1802(1802-08-02) Seville, Spain
Died	15 February 1865(1865-02-15) (aged 62) York Place, Portman Square, London, England
Buried	Westminster Cathedral
Denomination	Roman Catholic Church
Parents	James Wiseman and Xaviera Wiseman (née Strange)

Styles of Nicholas Wiseman
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal

Nicholas Wiseman (1802–1865) 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.^[3]

Biography

Wiseman was born in Seville, the child of Irish parents who had settled in Spain for business.^[4] On his father's death in 1805, he was brought to 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.

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."^[5]

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. 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. It is evident that if Walsh had lived two more years, he would have been the first Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and Wiseman the second.

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, hitherto 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 was dated 19(?) September 1850, and on 7 October. Wiseman wrote a pastoral, dated "from out of the Flaminian Gate", a form diplomatically correct, but of bombastic tone for Protestant ears, in which he spoke enthusiastically, if also a little pompously, of the "restoration of Catholic England to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament".

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.^[6] 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 realization. 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.^[4] 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 the cemetery at 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.

Schools

Several schools have been named after Cardinal Wiseman, including:

• The Cardinal Wiseman Roman Catholic School, a high school located in Greenford, West London. It was opened in 1959 as a special agreement school catering for 456 boys and girls aged 11–15 years. Since then the school has been reorganised several times.
• Cardinal Wiseman Catholic Technology College, a Catholic secondary school, in Birmingham, England.
• Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School and Language College, a Catholic secondary school in Coventry, England.

Works

• Daily Meditations by Cardinal Wiseman
• The Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Blessed Eucharist, Proved from Scripture. In Eight Lectures, Delivered in the English College, Rome.
• Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion. Delivered in Rome.
• Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church. Delivered at St. Mary's, Moorfields, during the Lent of 1836.
• The Catholic Doctrine on the Use of the Bible. Being a Review of His Grace Archbishop Dixon's "Catholic Introduction to Scripture" (1852)
• Fabiola or The Church of the Catacombs (1854)
• Essays on Various Subjects in Six Volumes. Vol 1
• Essays on Various Subjects in Six Volumes. Vol 2
• Sermons on Our Lord Jesus Christ and on His Blessed Mother
• Sermons on Moral Subjects

References

1. ^ "Cardinal-Priest of S. Pudenziana". GCatholic.com. http://www.gcatholic.com/churches/cardinal/269.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-16. 
2. ^ "Nicholas Patrick Stephen (Nicolás Patricio Esteban) Cardinal Wiseman". www.catholic-hierarchy.org. http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bwiseman.html. Retrieved 2009-04-15. 
3. ^ Miranda, Salvador. "Nicholas Wiseman". The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. http://www.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1850.htm#Wiseman. Retrieved 2009-04-09. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Catholic Encyclopedia article on Nicholas Patrick Wiseman
5. ^ 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.
6. ^ Diamond, Michael (2003). Victorian Sensation. Anthem Press. pp. 83–87. ISBN 1-84331-150-X. 

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Further reading

• Wilfrid Ward, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (2 vols., 1897)

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

Persondata
Name	Wiseman, Nicholas
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	2 August 1802
Place of birth	Seville, Spain
Date of death	15 February 1865
Place of death	York Place, Portman Square, London, England