WHEN Manning joined the Church of Rome, he acted under the combined
impulse of the two dominating forces in his nature. His preoccupation
with the supernatural might, alone, have been satisfied within the fold
of the Anglican communion; and so might his preoccupation with
himself--the one might have found vent in the elaborations of High
Church ritual, and the other in the activities of a bishopric. But the
two together could not be quieted so easily. The Church of England is a
commodious institution; she is very anxious to please, but somehow or
other, she has never managed to supply a happy home to superstitious
egotists. 'What an escape for my poor soul!' Manning is said to have
exclaimed when, shortly after his conversion, a mitre was going
a-begging. But, in truth, Manning's 'poor soul' had scented nobler
quarry. To one of his temperament, how was it possible, when once the
choice was plainly put, to hesitate for a moment between the respectable
dignity of an English bishop, harnessed by the secular power, with the
Gorham judgment as a bit between his teeth, and the illimitable
pretensions of the humblest priest of Rome?
For the moment, however, it seemed as if the Fates had at last been
successful in their little game of shunting Manning. The splendid career
which he had so laboriously built up from the small beginnings of his
Sussex curacy was shattered--and shattered by the inevitable operation
of his own essential needs. He was over forty, and he had been put back
once more to the very bottom rung of the ladder--a middle-aged neophyte
with, so far as could be seen, no special claim to the attention of his
new superiors. The example of Newman, a far more illustrious convert,
was hardly reassuring: he had been relegated to a complete obscurity, in
which he was to remain until extreme old age. Why should there be
anything better in store for Manning? Yet it so happened that within
fourteen years of his conversion Manning was Archbishop of Westminster
and the supreme ruler of the Roman Catholic community in England. This
time the Fates gave up the unequal struggle; they paid over their stakes
in despair, and retired from the game.
Nevertheless it is difficult to feel quite sure that Manning's plunge
was as hazardous as it appeared. Certainly he was not a man who was
likely to forget to look before he leaped, nor one who, if he happened
to know that there was a mattress spread to receive him, would leap with
less conviction. In the light of after-events, one would be glad to know
what precisely passed at that mysterious interview of his with the Pope,
three years before his conversion. It is at least possible that the
authorities in Rome had their eye on Manning; the may well have felt
that the Archdeacon of Chichester would be a great catch. What did Pio
Nono say? It is easy to imagine the persuasive innocence of his Italian
voice. 'Ah, dear Signor Manning, why don't you come over to us? Do you
suppose that we should not look after you?'
At any rate, when he did go over, Manning was looked after very
thoroughly. There was, it is true, a momentary embarrassment at the
outset: it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could bring
himself to abandon his faith in the validity of Anglican Orders, in
which he believed 'with consciousness stronger than all reasoning'. He
was convinced that he was still a priest. When the Rev. Mr. Tierney, who
had received him into the Roman Catholic communion, assured him that
this was not the case, he was filled with dismay and mortification.
After a five hour discussion, he started to his feet in a rage. 'Then,
Mr. Tierney,' he exclaimed, 'you think me insincere.'
The bitter draught was swallowed at last, and, after that, all went
smoothly. Manning hastened to Rome, and was immediately placed by the
Pope in the highly select Accademia Ecclesiastica, commonly known as the
'Nursery of Cardinals', for the purpose of completing his theological
studies. When the course was finished, he continued, by the Pope's
special request, to spend six months of every year in Rome, where he
preached to the English visitors, became acquainted with the great
personages of the Papal court, and enjoyed the privilege of constant
interviews with the Holy Father. At the same time, he was able to make
himself useful in London, where Cardinal Wiseman, the newly created
Archbishop of Westminster, was seeking to reanimate the Roman Catholic
community. Manning was not only extremely popular in the pulpit and in
the confessional; he was not only highly efficient as a gleaner of
souls--and of souls who moved in the best society; he also possessed a
familiarity with official persons and official ways, which was
invaluable. When the question arose of the appointment of Catholic
chaplains in the Crimea during the war, it was Manning who approached
the Minister, interviewed the Permanent Secretary, and finally succeeded
in obtaining all that was required. When a special Reformatory for
Catholic children was proposed, Manning carried through the negotiation
with the Government. When an attempt was made to remove Catholic
children from the Workhouses, Manning was again indispensable. No wonder
Cardinal Wiseman soon determined to find some occupation of special
importance for the energetic convert. He had long wished to establish a
congregation of secular priests in London particularly devoted to his
service, and the opportunity for the experiment had clearly now arisen.
The order of the Oblates of St. Charles was founded in Bayswater, and
Manning was put at its head. Unfortunately, no portion of the body of
St. Charles could be obtained for the new community, but two relics of
his blood were brought over to Bayswater from Milan. Almost at the same
time the Pope signified his appreciation of Manning's efforts by
appointing him Provost of the Chapter of Westminster--a position which
placed him at the head of the Canons of the diocese.
This double promotion was the signal for the outbreak of an
extraordinary internal struggle, which raged without intermission for
the next seven years, and was to end only with the accession of Manning
to the Archbishopric. The condition of the Roman Catholic community in
England was at that time a singular one. On the one hand the old
repressive laws of the seventeenth century had been repealed by liberal
legislation, and on the other a large new body of distinguished converts
had entered the Roman Church as a result of the Oxford Movement. It was
evident that there was a 'boom' in English Catholicism, and, in 1850,
Pius IX recognised the fact by dividing up the whole of England into
dioceses, and placing Wiseman at the head of them as Archbishop of
Westminster. Wiseman's encyclical, dated 'from without the Flaminian
Gate', in which he announced the new departure, was greeted in England
by a storm of indignation, culminating in the famous and furibund letter
of Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister, against the insolence of the
'Papal Aggression'. Though the particular point against which the outcry
was raised--the English territorial titles of the new Roman bishops--was
an insignificant one, the instinct of Lord John and of the English
people was in reality sound enough. Wiseman's installation did mean, in
fact, a new move in the Papal game; it meant an advance, if not an
aggression--a quickening in England of the long-dormant energies of the
Roman Church. That Church has never had the reputation of being an
institution to be trifled with; and, in those days, the Pope was still
ruling as a temporal Prince over the fairest provinces of Italy. Surely,
if the images of Guy Fawkes had not been garnished, on that fifth of
November, with triple crowns, it would have been a very poor compliment
to His Holiness.
But it was not only the honest Protestants of England who had cause to
dread the arrival of the new Cardinal Archbishop; there was a party
among the Catholics themselves who viewed his installation with alarm
and disgust. The families in which the Catholic tradition had been
handed down uninterruptedly since the days of Elizabeth, which had known
the pains of exile and of martyrdom, and which clung together an alien
and isolated group in the midst of English society, now began to feel
that they were, after all, of small moment in the counsels of Rome. They
had laboured through the heat of the day, but now it seemed as if the
harvest was to be gathered in by a crowd of converts who were
proclaiming on every side as something new and wonderful the truths
which the Old Catholics, as they came to be called, had not only known,
but for which they had suffered for generations. Cardinal Wiseman, it is
true, was no convert; he belonged to one of the oldest of the Catholic
families; but he had spent most of his life in Rome, he was out of touch
with English traditions, and his sympathy with Newman and his followers
was only too apparent. One of his first acts as Archbishop was to
appoint the convert W. G. Ward, who was not even in holy orders, to be
Professor of Theology at St. Edmund's College--the chief seminary for
young priests, in which the ancient traditions of Douay were still
flourishing. Ward was an ardent Papalist and his appointment indicated
clearly enough that in Wiseman's opinion there was too little of the
Italian spirit in the English community. The uneasiness of the Old
Catholics was becoming intense, when they were reassured by Wiseman's
appointing as his co-adjutor and successor his intimate friend, Dr.
Errington, who was created on the occasion Archbishop of Trebizond in
partibus infidelium. Not only was Dr. Errington an Old Catholic of the
most rigid type, he was a man of extreme energy, whose influence was
certain to be great; and, in any case, Wiseman was growing old, so that
before very long it seemed inevitable that the policy of the diocese
would be in proper hands. Such was the position of affairs when, two
years after Errington's appointment, Manning became head of the Oblates
of St. Charles and Provost of the Chapter of Westminster.
The Archbishop of Trebizond had been for some time growing more and more
suspicious of Manning's influence, and this sudden elevation appeared to
justify his worst fears. But his alarm was turned to fury when he
learned that St. Edmund's College, from which he had just succeeded in
removing the obnoxious W. G. Ward, was to be placed under the control of
the Oblates of St. Charles. The Oblates did not attempt to conceal the
fact that one of their principal aims was to introduce the customs of a
Roman Seminary into England. A grim perspective of espionage and
tale-bearing, foreign habits, and Italian devotions opened out before
the dismayed eyes of the Old Catholics; they determined to resist to the
utmost; and it was upon the question of the control of St. Edmund's that
the first battle in the long campaign between Errington and Manning was
fought.
Cardinal Wiseman was now obviously declining towards the grave. A man of
vast physique--'your immense', an Irish servant used respectfully to
call him--of sanguine temperament, of genial disposition, of versatile
capacity, he seemed to have engrafted upon the robustness of his English
nature the facile, child-like, and expansive qualities of the South. So
far from being a Bishop Blougram (as the rumour went) he was, in fact,
the very antithesis of that subtle and worldly-wise ecclesiastic. He had
innocently looked forward all his life to the reunion of England to the
See of Peter, and eventually had come to believe that, in God's hand, he
was the instrument destined to bring about this miraculous consummation.
Was not the Oxford Movement, with its flood of converts, a clear sign of
the Divine will? Had he not himself been the author of that momentous
article on St. Augustine and the Donatists, which had finally convinced
Newman that the Church of England was in schism? And then, had he not
been able to set afoot a Crusade of Prayer throughout Catholic Europe
for the conversion of England?
He awaited the result with eager expectation, and in the meantime he set
himself to smooth away the hostility of his countrymen by delivering
courses of popular lectures on literature and archaeology. He devoted
much time and attention to the ceremonial details of his princely
office. His knowledge of rubric and ritual, and of the symbolical
significations of vestments, has rarely been equalled, and he took a
profound delight in the ordering and the performance of elaborate
processions. During one of these functions, an unexpected difficulty
arose: the Master of Ceremonies suddenly gave the word for a halt, and,
on being asked the reason, replied that he had been instructed that
moment by special revelation to stop the procession. The Cardinal,
however, was not at a loss. 'You may let the procession go on,' he
smilingly replied. 'I have just obtained permission, by special
revelation, to proceed with it.' His leisure hours he spent in the
writing of edifying novels, the composition of acrostics in Latin Verse,
and in playing battledore and shuttlecock with his little nieces. There
was, indeed, only one point in which he resembled Bishop Blougram--his
love of a good table. Some of Newman's disciples were astonished and
grieved to find that he sat down to four courses of fish during Lent. 'I
am sorry to say,' remarked one of them afterwards, 'that there is a
lobster salad side to the Cardinal.'
It was a melancholy fate which ordained that the last years of this
comfortable, easygoing, innocent old man should be distracted and
embittered by the fury of opposing principles and the venom of personal
animosities. But so it was. He had fallen into the hands of one who
cared very little for the gentle pleasures of repose. Left to himself,
Wiseman might have compromised with the Old Catholics and Dr. Errington;
but when Manning had once appeared upon the scene, all compromise became
impossible. The late Archdeacon of Chichester, who had understood so
well and practised with such careful skill the precept of the golden
mean so dear to the heart of the Church of England, now, as Provost of
Westminster, flung himself into the fray with that unyielding intensity
of fervour, that passion for the extreme and the absolute, which is the
very lifeblood of the Church of Rome. Even the redoubtable Dr.
Errington, short, thickset, determined, with his `hawk-like expression
of face', as a contemporary described him, 'as he looked at you through
his blue spectacles', had been known to quail in the presence of his,
antagonist, with his tall and graceful figure, his pale ascetic
features, his compressed and icy lips, his calm and penetrating gaze. As
for the poor Cardinal, he was helpless indeed.
Henceforward, there was to be no paltering with that dangerous spirit of
independence--was it not almost Gallicanism which possessed the Old
Catholic families of England? The supremacy of the Vicar of Christ must
be maintained at all hazards. Compared with such an object, what were
the claims of personal affection and domestic peace? The Cardinal
pleaded in vain; his lifelong friendship with Dr. Errington was plucked
up by the roots, and the harmony of his private life was utterly
destroyed. His own household was turned against him. His favourite
nephew, whom he had placed among the Oblates under Manning's special
care, left the congregation and openly joined the party of Dr.
Errington. His secretary followed suit; but saddest of all was the case
of Monsignor Searle. Monsignor Searle, in the capacity of confidential
man of affairs, had dominated over the Cardinal in private for years
with the autocratic fidelity of a servant who has grown indispensable.
His devotion, in fact, seemed to have taken the form of physical
imitation, for he was hardly less gigantic than his master. The two were
inseparable; their huge figures loomed together like neighbouring
mountains; and on one occasion, meeting them in the street, a gentleman
congratulated Wiseman on 'your Eminence's fine son'. Yet now even this
companionship was broken up. The relentless Provost here too brought a
sword. There were explosions and recriminations. Monsignor Searle,
finding that his power was slipping from him, made scenes and protests,
and at last was foolish enough to accuse Manning of peculation to his
face; after that it was clear that his day was over; he was forced to
slink snarling into the background, while the Cardinal shuddered through
all his immensity, and wished many times that he were already dead.
Yet, he was not altogether without his consolations; Manning took care
to see to that. His piercing eye had detected the secret way into the
recesses of the Cardinal's heart--had discerned the core of simple faith
which underlay that jovial manner and that facile talk. Others were
content to laugh and chatter and transact their business; Manning was
more artistic. He watched his opportunity, and then, when the moment
came, touched with a deft finger the chord of the Conversion of England.
There was an immediate response, and he struck the same chord again, and
yet again. He became the repository of the Cardinal's most intimate
aspirations. He alone sympathised and understood. 'If God gives me
strength to undertake a great wrestling-match with infidelity,' Wiseman
wrote, 'I shall owe it to him.'
But what he really found himself undertaking was a wrestling-match with
Dr. Errington. The struggle over St. Edmund's College grew more and more
acute. There were high words in the Chapter, where Monsignor Searle led
the assault against the Provost, and carried a resolution declaring that
the Oblates of St. Charles had intruded themselves illegally into the
Seminary. The Cardinal quashed the proceedings of the Chapter;
whereupon, the Chapter appealed to Rome. Dr. Errington, carried away by
the fury of the controversy, then appeared as the avowed opponent of the
Provost and the Cardinal. With his own hand he drew up a document
justifying the appeal of the Chapter to Rome by Canon Law and the
decrees of the Council of Trent. Wiseman was deeply pained: 'My own
co-adjutor,' he exclaimed, 'is acting as solicitor against me in a
lawsuit.' There was a rush to Rome, where, for several ensuing years,
the hostile English parties were to wage a furious battle in the
antechambers of the Vatican. But the dispute over the Oblates now sank
into insignificance beside the rage of contention which centred round a
new and far more deadly question; for the position of Dr. Errington
himself was at stake. The Cardinal, in spite of illness, indolence, and
the ties of friendship, had been brought at last to an extraordinary
step--he was petitioning the Pope for nothing less than the deprivation
and removal of the Archbishop of Trebizond.
The precise details of what followed are doubtful. It is only possible
to discern with clearness, amid a vast cloud of official documents and
unofficial correspondences in English, Italian, and Latin, of Papal
decrees and voluminous scritture, of confidential reports of episcopal
whispers and the secret agitations of Cardinals, the form of Manning,
restless and indomitable, scouring like a stormy petrel the angry ocean
of debate. Wiseman, dilatory, unbusinesslike, and infirm, was ready
enough to leave the conduct of affairs in his hands. Nor was it long
before Manning saw where the key of the whole position lay. As in the
old days, at Chichester, he had secured the goodwill of Bishop
Shuttleworth by cultivating the friendship of Archdeacon Hare, so now,
on this vaster scale of operations, his sagacity led him swiftly and
unerringly up the little winding staircase in the Vatican and through
the humble door which opened into the cabinet of Monsignor Talbot, the
private secretary of the Pope. Monsignor Talbot was a priest who
embodied in a singular manner, if not the highest, at least the most
persistent traditions of the Roman Curia. He was a master of various
arts which the practice of ages has brought to perfection under the
friendly shadow of the triple tiara. He could mingle together astuteness
and holiness without any difficulty; he could make innuendoes as
naturally as an ordinary man makes statements of fact; he could apply
flattery with so unsparing a hand that even Princes of the Church found
it sufficient; and, on occasion, he could ring the changes of torture on
a human soul with a tact which called forth universal approbation. With
such accomplishments, it could hardly be expected that Monsignor Talbot
should be remarkable either for a delicate sense of conscientiousness or
for an extreme refinement of feeling, but then it was not for those
qualities that Manning was in search when he went up the winding stair.
He was looking for the man who had the ear of Pio Nono; and, on the
other side of the low-arched door, he found him. Then he put forth all
his efforts; his success was complete; and an alliance began which was
destined to have the profoundest effect upon Manning's career, and was
only dissolved when, many years later, Monsignor Talbot was
unfortunately obliged to exchange his apartment in the Vatican for a
private lunatic asylum at Passy.
It was determined that the coalition should be ratified by the ruin of
Dr. Errington. When the moment of crisis was seen to be approaching,
Wiseman was summoned to Rome, where he began to draw up an immense
scrittura containing his statement of the case. For months past, the
redoubtable energies of the Archbishop of Trebizond had been absorbed in
a similar task. Folio was being piled upon folio, when a sudden blow
threatened to put an end to the whole proceeding in a summary manner.
The Cardinal was seized by violent illness, and appeared to be upon his
deathbed. Manning thought for a moment that his labours had been in vain
and that all was lost. But the Cardinal recovered; Monsignor Talbot used
his influence as he alone knew how; and a papal decree was issued by
which Dr. Errington was 'liberated' from the Coadjutorship of
Westminster, together with the right of succession to the See.
It was a supreme act of authority--a 'colpo di stato di Dominiddio', as
the Pope himself said--and the blow to the Old Catholics was
correspondingly severe. They found themselves deprived at one fell swoop
both of the influence of their most energetic supporter and of the
certainty of coming into power at Wiseman's death. And in the meantime,
Manning was redoubling his energies at Bayswater. Though his Oblates had
been checked over St. Edmund's, there was still no lack of work for them
to do. There were missions to be carried on, schools to be managed,
funds to be collected. Several new churches were built; a community of
most edifying nuns of the Third Order of St. Francis was established;
and L30,000, raised from Manning's private resources and from those of
his friends, was spent in three years. 'I hate that man,' one of the Old
Catholics exclaimed, 'he is such a forward piece.' The words were
reported to Manning, who shrugged his shoulders.
'Poor man,' he said, 'what is he made of? Does he suppose, in his
foolishness, that after working day and night for twenty years in heresy
and schism, on becoming a Catholic, I should sit in an easy-chair and
fold my hands all the rest of my life?'
But his secret thoughts were of a different caste.
'I am conscious of a desire,' he wrote in his Diary, 'to be in such a
position: (I) as I had in times past; (2) as my present circumstances
imply; (3) as my friends think me fit for; and (4) as I feel my own
faculties tend to.
'But, God being my helper, I will not seek it by the lifting of a finger
or the speaking, of a word.'
So Manning wrote, and thought, and prayed; but what are words, and
thoughts, and even prayers, to the mysterious and relentless powers of
circumstance and character? Cardinal Wiseman was slowly dying; the
tiller of the Church was slipping from his feeble hand; and Manning was
beside him, the one man with the energy, the ability, the courage, and
the conviction to steer the ship upon her course. More than that; there
was the sinister figure of a Dr. Errington crouching close at hand,
ready to seize the helm and make straight--who could doubt it?--for the
rocks. In such a situation the voice of self-abnegation must needs grow
still and small indeed. Yet it spoke on, for it was one of the paradoxes
in Manning's soul that that voice was never silent. Whatever else he
was, he was not unscrupulous. Rather, his scruples deepened with his
desires; and he could satisfy his most exorbitant ambitions in a
profundity of self-abasement. And so now he vowed to Heaven that he
would SEEK nothing--no, not by the lifting of a finger or the speaking
of a word. But, if something came to him--? He had vowed not to seek; he
had not vowed not to take. Might it not be his plain duty to take? Might
it not be the will of God?
Something, of course, did come to him, though it seemed for a moment
that it would elude his grasp. Wiseman died, and there ensued in Rome a
crisis of extraordinary intensity. 'Since the creation of the
hierarchy,' Monsignor Talbot wrote, it is the greatest moment for the
Church that I have yet seen.' It was the duty of the Chapter of
Westminster to nominate three candidates for succession to the
Archbishopric; they made one last effort, and had the temerity to place
upon the list, besides the names of two Old Catholic bishops, that of
Dr. Errington. It was a fatal blunder. Pius IX was furious; the Chapter
had committed an 'insulta al Papa', he exclaimed, striking his breast
three times in his rage. 'It was the Chapter that did it,' said Manning,
afterwards; but even after the Chapter's indiscretion, the fatal
decision hung in the balance for weeks.
'The great point of anxiety with me, wrote Monsignor Talbot to Manning,
'is whether a Congregation will be held, or whether the Holy Father will
perform a Pontifical act. He himself is doubting. I therefore say mass
and pray every morning that he may have the courage to choose for
himself, instead of submitting the matter to a Congregation. Although
the Cardinals are determined to reject Dr. Errington, nevertheless I am
afraid that they should select one of the others. You know very well
that Congregations are guided by the documents that are placed before
them; it is for this reason that I should prefer the Pope's acting
himself.'
But the Holy Father himself was doubting. In his indecision, he ordered
a month of prayers and masses. The suspense grew and grew. Everything
seemed against Manning. The whole English episcopate was opposed to him;
he had quarrelled with the Chapter; he was a convert of but few years'
standing; even the congregated Cardinals did not venture to suggest the
appointment of such a man. But suddenly, the Holy Father's doubts came
to an end. He heard a voice--a mysterious inward voice--whispering
something in his ear. 'Mettetelo li! Mettetelo li!' the voice repeated,
over and over again. Mettetelo li! It was an inspiration; and Pius IX,
brushing aside the recommendations of the Chapter and the deliberations
of the Cardinals, made Manning, by a Pontifical act, Archbishop of
Westminster.
Monsignor Talbot's felicity was complete; and he took occasion in
conveying his congratulations to his friend, to make some illuminating
reflections upon the great event.
'MY policy throughout,' he wrote, 'was never to propose you DIRECTLY to
the Pope, but, to make others do so, so that both you and I can always
say that it was not I who induced the Holy Father to name you--which
would lessen the weight of your appointment. This I say, because many
have said that your being named was all my doing. I do not say that the
Pope did not know that I thought you the only man eligible--as I took
care to tell him over and over again what was against all the other
candidates--and in consequence, he was almost driven into naming you.
After he had named you, the Holy Father said to me, "What a diplomatist
you are, to make what you wished come to pass!"
'Nevertheless,' concluded Monsignor Talbot, 'I believe your appointment
was specially directed by the Holy Ghost.'
Manning himself was apparently of the same opinion.
'My dear Child,' he wrote to a lady penitent, 'I have in these last
three weeks felt as if our Lord had called me by name. Everything else
has passed out of my mind. The firm belief that I have long had that the
Holy Father is the most supernatural person I have ever seen has given
me this feeling more deeply. 'Still, I feel as if I had been brought,
contrary to all human wills, by the Divine Will, into an immediate
relation to our Divine Lord.'
'If indeed,' he wrote to Lady Herbert, 'it were the will of our Divine
Lord to lay upon me this heavy burden, He could have done it in no way
more strengthening and consoling to me. To receive it from the hands of
His Vicar, and from Pius IX, and after long invocation of the Holy
Ghost, and not only without human influences, but in spite of manifold
aria powerful human opposition, gives me the last strength for such a
cross.'