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History versus Hagiography: The Reception of Turner's Newman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2010

SIMON SKINNER
SIMON SKINNER
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford OX1 3BJ; e-mail: [email protected]
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Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 764 - 781
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Frank M. Turner, John Henry Newman: the challenge to Evangelical religion, New Haven–London 2002.

2 Idem, Between science and religion: the reaction to scientific naturalism in late-Victorian England, New Haven–London 1974; The Greek heritage in Victorian Britain, New Haven–London 1981; and Contesting cultural authority: essays in Victorian intellectual life, Cambridge 1993.

3 John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua and six sermons, ed. Frank M. Turner, New Haven–London 2008, 173.

4 Turner, John Henry Newman, 10.

5 Tristram Hunt, ‘Cardinal spin’, Guardian, 4 Jan. 2003, 11.

6 Daniel Johnson, ‘Cardinal virtues and vices’, Sunday Telegraph, 10 Nov. 2002; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4729223/Cardinal-virtues-and-vices.html.

7 Brian Cosgrove, ‘Once a Catholic’, Irish Times, 18 Jan. 2003, 13.

8 A. N. Wilson, ‘What if he went the whole way?’, Literary Review (Dec. 2002/Jan. 2003), 24–5.

9 Johnson, ‘Cardinal virtues and vices’.

10 Jeffrey Cox, book review, HJ xlviii (2005), 590–2.

11 W. R. Ward, book review, Journal of Modern History lxxvi (2004), 680–1.

12 Donald J. Dietrich, book review, The European Legacy x (Feb. 2005), 90, 91.

13 Peter B. Nockles, book review, Albion xxxv (Winter 2004), 669–73.

14 David Newsome, ‘Warts and all’, The Tablet, 26 Oct. 2002, 22.

15 William Schoenl, book review, American Historical Review cviii (Oct. 2003), 1214.

16 James Pereiro, book review, Recusant History xxvi (2003), 526, 530.

17 Zealley, Christopher, ‘Review article’, Anglican and Episcopal History lxxiii (June 2004), 208–18Google Scholar.

18 Richard J. Mammana, Jr. book review, The Living Church, 4 May 2003, 5–6.

19 See S. A. Skinner, ‘Newman, the Tractarians, and the British Critic’, this Journal (1999), 717, 721, 748, and Tractarians and the ‘Condition of England’: the social and political thought of the Oxford Movement, Oxford 2004, 47–7, 52.

20 See, for example, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5214156/Cardinal-John-Newman-poised-for-beatification-after-ruling.html, where Ker remarks that ‘Newman was definitely a saint and he was a very English saint’; also http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/zcardnewmdoc.htm, and http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000698.shtml.

21 Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: a biography, Oxford 1988.

22 Idem, ‘Slow road to Rome’, TLS, 6 Dec. 2002, 32.

23 Turner, John Henry Newman, p. x.

24 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32. Turner responded to this review in the letters pages of the TLS (20 Dec. 2002, 15), complaining that ‘Ker carried into his review … unacknowledged baggage of vested personal interest and pre-judgement’, since he had been ‘active in the cause of Newman's sainthood’; Ker replied on 3 Jan. 2003 (p. 15), protesting that Turner sought to ‘impugn the integrity’ of his review and asserted that he had ‘played no part at all’ in the case for Newman's sainthood' and had ‘never written specifically about Newman's sanctity’.

25 Ker, John Henry Newman, 2nd edn. Oxford 2009, 746.

26 Ibid. 747. Most press coverage fastened onto comments by the British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who wrote to the UK Justice Minister Jack Straw to protest the granting of a special licence of exhumation. Tatchell later commented that it was an act of ‘desecration’: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/catholicism.gayrights. See for examples of the ensuing coverage The Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4566639.ece and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4615144.ece; and the Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1050418/Buried-secrets-Cardinal-Newman-set-Britains-newest-saint-First-exhumed-grave-shares-man--greatest-love-life.html.

27 Ker, John Henry Newman, 748.

28 Idem, ‘John Henry Newman and the sacrifice of celibacy’, L'Osservatore Romano, repr. at http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=29114.

29 Simon Caldwell, ‘Biographer challenges Newman revisionists’, Catholic Herald, 29 May 2009; http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000555.shtml.

30 Turner, John Henry Newman, 425–36, 623–39.

31 Geoffrey Faber, Oxford apostles: a character study of the Oxford Movement, London 1933, esp. ‘Virginity and friendship’ at pp. 215–32. As Faber pointed out, an earlier biographer had gone as far as he could at the time in hinting in this direction: Edwin Abbott, The Anglican career of Cardinal Newman, London 1892, i. 187.

32 Turner, John Henry Newman, 425.

33 Ibid. 429.

34 Ibid. 430.

35 Ibid. 434.

36 Johnson, ‘Cardinal virtues and vices’.

37 Turner, John Henry Newman, 635, 631.

38 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32.

39 Nockles review, 672–3.

40 John T. Ford, book review, Catholic Historical Review lxxxix (Oct. 2003), 790.

41 Zealley, ‘Review article’, 209, 210.

42 Sheridan Gilley, ‘Written with learning, not with love’, Church Times, 21 Feb. 2003, 17. The section is in fact eleven pages: Turner, John Henry Newman, 425–36.

43 Digby Anderson, ‘An intolerant sort of liberal’, Spectator, 26 Oct. 2002, 53–4.

44 Jaki, Stanley L., ‘Newman, an “apostate”?’, New Oxford Review lxx (May 2003), 42Google Scholar.

45 James J. Buckley, ‘A new Newman? Two accounts of England's most famous convert’, Weekly Standard, 5 May 2003, 42.

46 Lawrence S. Cunningham, book review, Horizons (Spring 2003), 146.

47 Oakes, Edward T., ‘Newman's liberal problem’, First Things iv (2003), 46Google Scholar, 47.

48 George W. Rutler, ‘Newman's own Church’, National Review, 41 Oct. 2002, 66.

49 Jeffrey von Arx, ‘Nowhere else to go?’, Commonweal, 8 Nov. 2002, 34.

50 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32.

51 Nockles review, 672.

52 Gilley review, 17.

53 Jaki, ‘Newman, an “apostate”?’, 44.

54 ‘A little modesty and self-restraint’: Keith Beaumont, book review, Etudes Newmaniennes xix (Nov. 2003), 167. The Etudes is published by the Association Française des Amis de John Henry Newman of which Beaumont is president.

55 John Richard Orens, ‘Review essay: Turner contra Newman: a tract of our times’, The Anglican Catholic (Summer 2003), 46. The Anglican Catholic Church was founded out of the ‘Continuing Anglican’ movement in protest at the proposed ordination of women and liturgical changes after the 1977 Congress of St Louis: see http://www.anglicancatholic.org.uk.

56 Cunningham review, 144.

57 Zealley, ‘Review article’, 208, 213, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 218.

58 Rutler, ‘Newman's own Church’, 66–7.

59 Oakes, ‘Newman's liberal problem’, 49.

60 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32; Anderson, ‘An intolerant sort of liberal’, 54.

61 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32.

62 Jaki, ‘Newman, an “apostate”?’, 38–9.

63 Gilley, ‘Written with learning’, 18.

64 Pereiro review, 527.

65 Nockles review, 672.

66 Buckley, ‘A new Newman?’, 39–42; Avery Dulles, Newman, London 2002.

67 Cunningham review, 145–6.

68 For Blehl's role as Postulator see http://www.newmanfriendsinternational.org/newman/?p=199.

69 Its publisher states that the Catholic Historical Review ‘is the only scholarly journal under Catholic auspices in the English-speaking world devoted to the history of the universal Church’: http://cuapress.cua.edu/journals/CHR.htm.

70 Ford review, 789. Ker's preface said of his method that ‘the subtlety of Newman's highly nuanced approach to complex issues constantly discourages any bland, reductive paraphrasing, in favour of the exact rendering of his own words which alone so often convey the fullness of his thought’: John Henry Newman, p. ix.

71 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32.

72 Jaki, ‘Newman, an “apostate”?’, 39.

73 Orens, ‘Review essay’, 49.

74 Zealley, ‘Review article’, 208.

75 Paul H. Friesen, book review, Dalhousie Review lxxxvi (Summer 2006), 312.

76 Turner, John Henry Newman, 5.

77 Anderson, ‘An intolerant sort of liberal’, 54.

78 Hunt, ‘Cardinal spin’, 11.

79 Gerald Bray, ‘Editorial: the spirituality deficit’, Churchman, 1 June 2003, 5.

80 The Benedictine Stanley Jaki, author of the single most abusive review, was one of the few overtly to denominate Turner, calling him ‘a Baptist by background, but as vaguely Evangelical as vagueness would permit’: ‘Newman, an “apostate”?’, 42. Ian Ker opened his review by characterising the book as a ‘Protestant polemic against the Tractarians’: ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32.

81 Turner, John Henry Newman, 10.

82 Cox review, 591.

83 Nockles review, 670.

84 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32; Gilley, ‘Written with learning’, 17.

85 Cox review, 591; Ward review, 680–1; Grayson Carter, ‘“At no time conspicuous, as a party, for talent or learning”: Newman and Evangelicalism’, Books & Culture: A Christian Review (Jan./Feb. 2004), 19.

86 Pereiro review, 526–31.

87 Yngve Brilioth, Three lectures on Evangelicalism and the Oxford Movement, London 1934; Elisabeth Jay, The Evangelical and Oxford Movements, Cambridge 1993.

88 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32.

89 ‘Letters’, TLS, 20 Dec. 2002, 15.

90 Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan (eds.), The Cambridge companion to John Henry Newman, Cambridge 2009, pp. xvi–xvii.

91 See n. 3 above.

92 Ker and Merrigan, Cambridge companion, 28.

93 Ibid. 98–117.

94 Skinner, ‘Newman, the Tractarians, and the British Critic’, 715–59. On the suppression of this episode by Newman's biographers and editors see his Tractarians and the ‘Condition of England’, 47–7, 52.

95 Idem, Tractarians and the ‘Condition of England’, 52.

96 Wilson, ‘What if he went the whole way?’, 25.

97 Anderson, ‘An intolerant sort of liberal’, 53.

98 Cox review, 590–2.

99 Turner, John Henry Newman, 1, 640, 641. For further emphasis on the Apologia as a ‘masterpiece’, and on Newman as ‘the only Victorian author of Christian theological prose to enjoy a substantial, engaged transatlantic readership in 2000 as well as 1900’, see Newman, Apologia (Turner edn), pp. vii, 1.

100 Zealley, ‘Review article’, 209.

101 Frederick D. Aquino, book review, Theology Today lxi (Apr. 2004), 136.

102 Michael Purcell, book review, Expository Times cxiv, 1 July 2003, 351–2.

103 Ker, ‘Slow road to Rome’, 32.

104 Mary Eleanor Hill, book review, Anglican Theological Review lxxxv (2003), 784.

105 Cunningham review, 145.

106 ‘[He] is incapable of understanding the depths of Newman's interior life’: Beaumont review, 171.

107 ‘The historian as historian does not have access to the interior life of a man’: ibid.

108 ‘The historian owes it to himself, as a matter of intellectual honesty, to recognise the boundaries of his enterprise’ (original emphasis): ibid. Beaumont has expressed his hope for Newman's canonisation: http://www.newmancause.co.uk/featured/interpreting-newmans-beatification-reactions-from-key-figures.html.

109 Herbert Butterfield, The Whig interpretation of history, London 1931, 31–2.