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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a major rift within the ranks of English Catholicism. Following the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850, the Ultramontanes began to consolidate their hold on the channels of ecclesiastical authority. Led by the flamboyant Nicholas Wiseman, they began to dominate the newly established English Catholic hierarchy, supported in their efforts by a tide of Irish immigrants, a reservoir of talented and dedicated priests trained at the English College in Rome and a wave of Oxford converts who, in the wake of the Gorham case, thirsted for a fount of unswerving ecclesiastical authority. The domination of the Ultramontanes, both in England and on the continent, meant that Liberal Catholicism was decidedly on the defensive, seeking to combat a rising tide of intellectual and scientific. intolerance. The period from mid-century until the promulgation of the Syllabus of Errors in 1864 was a crucial one in this struggle for intellectual autonomy. It was marked by several events which placed the emerging concepts and theories of scientific inquiry in direct conflict with the authority of the Church as is most sharply demonstrated in the convoluted and intense debate which came to be focused upon an ancient Christian artifact, the ampolle di sangue or the phials of blood.
1 For a comprehensive description of this era in English Catholicism see Norman, E. R., The English Catholic Church in the nineteenth century, Oxford 1984Google Scholar, chs v, vi.
2 From a letter from Capes to John Henry Newman cited in Altholz, Joseph, The Liberal Catholic movement in England: the Rambler and its contributors 1848–1864, Montreal 1962, 8Google Scholar.
3 For a general discussion of the history of the ampoules de sang see the article by Leclercq, H. in the Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, 1/2, Paris 1910Google Scholar, cols 1747–78, and an article by C.T., ‘La question du vase de sang”, Revue critique d'histoire et de littérature vi (1872), 185–92Google Scholar. For discussions of the phials of blood in nineteenth-century English works see Rock, Daniel, Hierurgia, London 1833, ii. 383Google Scholar; Baggs, Charles, Ceremonies of holy week, Rome 1836, 94Google Scholar; Maitland, Charles, The Church in the catacombs, London 1846, 142Google Scholar; Russell's, C. W. review of Maitland in Dublin Review xxi (1848), 440Google Scholar; Bunbury, Selina, A visit to the Roman catacombs, London 1849, 20Google Scholar; Seymour, Michael Hobart, Mornings among the Jesuits at Rome, London 1849, 234Google Scholar; Northcote, J. S., ‘The Roman catacombs”, Rambler iii (1849), 405–7Google Scholar; Scott, Benjamin, The contents and teachings of the catacombs at Rome, London 1853, 167Google Scholar; MacFarlane, Charles, The catacombs of Rome, London 1852, 103Google Scholar; Anderdon, William H., Two lectures on the catacombs of Rome, London 1852, 10Google Scholar; Wiseman, Nicholas, Fabiola; or, the Church of the catacombs, London 1856, 218Google Scholar, 519, and his Lectures on the principal doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church, 3rd edn, London 1859, 181Google Scholar.
4 [Reeves, Henry], ‘The Roman catacombs”, Edinburgh Review cix (1859), 92Google Scholar.
5 Besides his series of articles on the catacombs which appeared in the Rambler in 1848 and 1849, Northcote had contributed several other articles concerning the evidence of the catacobs and had published a popular guide to the underground sites, The Roman catacombs, London 1856Google Scholar, which was reprinted in an expanded edition in 1859.
6 [Northcote, J. S.], ‘The symbolism of the catacombs”, Rambler n.s. ii (11 1859), 1Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that J. D. Acton, who was in Carlsbad at the time, wrote to Richard Simpson about Northcote: ‘I hope you have made some blunder about the catacombs. I met De Rossi, the underground archaeologist par excellence, at Vienna, and renewed an old Roman acquaintance with him. He said Northcote had made some mistakes, so I will send him the Nov. R. and ask him to send us a critique or correction of errors, by which means we shall have him among our contributors”: The correspondence of Lord Acton and Richard Simpson ed. Altholz, J. L., McElrath, D. and Holland, J. C., Cambridge 1971–1975, ii. 10–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Acton first met De Rossi in 1857, describing him in his diary as ‘decidedly the first man now working in his line of Christian antiquities”. He also noted that De Rossi thought that ‘the whole theory of the catacombs is full of error, and must be as it were rewritten”: Cambridge UL, Add. MS 5751, p. 174. Apparently the ‘blunders” in Northcote's article were not of an order that demanded a response, since De Rossi's ‘critique” never appeared, and he was not a contributor to the Rambler.
7 In a letter dated 20 December 1859, Simpson wrote to Acton suggesting that they omit Conroy's article from the January edition. Simpson was concerned with the length of the edition, and thought Conroy's article was too long: ‘the style is so offensively fat and flabby”, he wrote, ‘& the 29 pp. of Ms. would scarcely become less than 18 or 19 in print…”: Acton-Simpson correspondence, ii. 38. Despite these objections the article appeared in its original form.
8 [Conroy, George M.], ‘On the signs of martyrdom in the catacombs”, Rambler 3rd ser. ii (01. 1860), 201Google Scholar.
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10 Ibid. 214.
11 ‘Correspondence”, Rambler n.s. ii (03. 1860), 386Google Scholar.
12 Acton–Simpson correspondence, ii. 40.
13 Ibid. 41.
14 ‘Correspondence”, Rambler n.s. iii (05 1860), 114Google Scholar.
15 De Buck and De Rossi had corresponded about the issue for a number of years. De Rossi had visited Brussels in September 1856, where he spoke to De Buck about his arguments. De Rossi's correspondence, writings and opinions on the question of the phials are treated extensively in the introduction to Rossi's, De treatise, ‘Sulla questione del vaso di sangue”, ed. Ferrua, P. Antonio in Studi di antichità Cristiana xviii (1944)Google Scholar.
16 Ibid.
17 Boutry, Philippe, ‘Les saints des catacombs; itineraires français d'une piété ultramontaine”, Melanges de I'école française de Rome, Mqyen âge-Temps modernes xci (1979), in 875—930 at p. 887Google Scholar. In this article on the dispersion of relics taken from the catacombs in nineteenth-century France, Boutry has charted their dissemination. By using the archives of the Custode of Holy Relics he has shown that the period from 1837 to 1850 witnessed a marked rise in the distribution of relics taken from the graves of the catacombs. During these thirteen years 1,161 bodies were distributed, the majority through Italy, France and Spain. Most of them had been identified as martyrs, and many of the remains had been distinguished by the presence of a phial of blood. An interesting example of such a misidentification can be found in the history of the cult of St Philomena: O'Connell, J. B., ‘The strange story of S. Philomena”, Clergy Review xli (1956), 462–71Google Scholar. Cardinal Wiseman had a special devotion to this saint and was deeply moved when W. E. Gladstone's sister was cured through the application of one of her relics: Ward, Wilfrid, The life and times of Cardinal Wiseman, London 1897, i. 506Google Scholar.
18 Ibid.
l9 Ibid. i. 507.
20 Norman, , English Catholic Church, 144Google Scholar.
21 Ward, , Wiseman, i. 507Google Scholar.
22 The letters and diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain, C. S., Kerr, Ian and Gornall, Thomas, London 1961–, xvii. 141Google Scholar.
23 Ibid. xix. 332.
24 Acton-Simpson correspondence, ii. 59.
25 Ibid.66.
26 [Northcote, J. S.], ‘On the signs of martyrdom in the catacombs”, Rambler n.s. ii (01 1860), 203Google Scholar.
27 Ibid. 208.
28 Ibid. 210.
29 Ibid. 211.
30 Ibid. 213.
31 Ibid. 216–17.
32 Ibid. 220–1.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid. 222.
35 Acton-Simpson correspondence, ii. 66.
36 M., J., ‘The signs of martyrdom in the catacombs”, Rambler 3rd ser. iii (07 1860), 253–60Google Scholar. The documents referred to in the letter, and the familiarity shown with papal procedures, seem to suggest someone who had spent some time in Rome and was acquainted with the Vatican bureaucracy.
37 Ibid. 253–4.
38 Ibid. 255.
39 Ibid. 258.
40 Ibid. 259.
41 Ibid.
42 Altholz, , Liberal Catholic movement, 154Google Scholar.
43 Rambler, n.s. iii (07 1860), 223Google Scholar.
44 Acton-Simpson correspondence, ii. 83.
45 Ibid. 84.
46 Ibid. 85.
47 Ibid. 86.
48 Ibid. 87.
49 Altholz, , Liberal Catholic movement, 154Google Scholar.
50 For a discussion of Newman's relationship to Acton and the Rambler see Ibid. 152–71. Altholz writes that Newman differed from Acton and Simpson on two fundamental points: ‘the theoretical independence of history and the practical duty of submission to authority” (p. 169).
51 Ibid. 180–5. Wiseman was sending private reports about the Rambler to Rome, and he denounced the magazine in a pastoral letter to his clergy. In addition, other clerics were apparently sending articles from the Rambler to Rome in order to create difficulties for Newman: Purcell, E. S., Life of Cardinal Manning, London 1895, ii. 310Google Scholar.
52 Acton–Simpson correspondence, iii. 85. The phrase ‘piarum aurium” is a reference to Bishop Ullathorne's censure of the Home and Foreign Review, which he described as subversive, heretical, erroneous and ‘offensive to pious ears”: Macaulay, Ambrose, Dr Russell of Maynooth, London 1983, 197Google Scholar.
53 Acton-Simpson correspondence, iii. 83.
54 Leclercq, , Dictionnaire d'archeologie chre'tienne, i/2Google Scholar, col. 1776, attributes the article to De Buck. However, the style of the article, in addition to the evidence of the correspondence, seems to suggest at the very least that Simpson translated De Buck's opinions. More probably, Simpson used De Buck's pamphlet and advice to write the article himself.
55 ‘Contemporary literature”, Home and Foreign Review iii (04 1863), 599Google Scholar.
56 , C.T., ‘La question”, 191Google Scholar.
57 Parker, John Henry, The catacombs of Rome, Oxford 1877, 5Google Scholar, believed that the experiment was carried out under the direction of ‘a true and enlightened member of the Roman Church”, John Acton.
58 Home and Foreign Review iii (04 1863), 599Google Scholar.
59 Ibid. 603–4.
60 For a discussion of the Munich Brief and its impact see Holmes, Derek, More Roman than Rome, London 1978, 124–6Google Scholar.
61 Altholz, , Liberal Catholic movement, 224Google Scholar.
62 Acton-Simpson correspondence, iii. 118.
63 For a discussion of the work of De Rossi and Bartolini see Ferrua's introduction to Rossi, De, ‘Sulla questione”, sect, v, p. lxivGoogle Scholar.
64 Leclercq, ; Dictionnaire d'archéologie chréienne, i/2Google Scholar, col. 1754.
65 Acton-Simpson, correspondence, iii. 157.
66 Ibid. 158.
67 Ibid. 161.
68 Ibid. 171.
69 ‘Notices of books”, Dublin Review n.s. iii (09 1864), 500Google Scholar.
70 Ibid. 501.
71 Ibid. 503–4.
72 Ibid. 506.
73 , C.T., ‘La question”, 192Google Scholar.
74 Leclercq, , Dictionnaire d'archéologique chrétienne, i/2Google Scholar, col. 1754. The writer was Martigny, J. A. in his Dictionnaire des antiquités chrétiennes, Paris 1877, 714Google Scholar.
75 Leclercq, , Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne, i/2Google Scholar, col. 1754 at n. 13, lists several other scholars who had reservations about the phials as signs of martyrdom.
76 Hertling, Ludwig and Kirschbaum, Engelbert, The Roman catacombs and their martyrs, trans. Costelloe, M. J., Milwaukee 1956, 20Google Scholar. See also Kirsch, G. P., The catacombs of Rome, Rome 1933, 20–1Google Scholar.