Purcell's "Manning" refuted. Life of Cardinal Manning with a critical examination of E. S. Purcell's mistakes

Front matter

Chap. Copyright No.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

I

Part First. Introductory

For the second and third parts of this work, written for a periodical publication,* no other ambition was entertained than to trace, in a necessarily imperfect abridgment, a slight sketch of one of the most exalted and most noble Christian personages that this centnr}^ has presented to us. In reproducing them in a more durable form, without making any change in them, I am no doubt partly obeying too indulgent advice and solicitations too flattering; but I wanted especially not to leave unanswered certain criticisms occasioned by those modest articles.

If I had consulted only my own desire, and, I may add, my own interest, it would have been much better, in all probability, not to have sought to prolong the naturally ephemeral existence of a production altogether incidental. When one has long entertained the hope of one day writing the history of a great religious movement, the best means of furnishing a prelude to the carrying out of this project is not, undoubtedly, to offer

* They appeared originally in the Revue des Deux Mondes of May 1 and May 15, 1896, with the title: "Manning. — I. * Les Annces Protcstantes.' — II. * Les Annees Catholiques.' "

to the public a hasty and incomplete sketch. No one realizes more than I do that defects and omissions disfigure the present study — imperfections perhaps necessarily entailed by the narrow compass or summary character of the narrative — and some also that it would have been easy for me to avoid. I do not pretend to give here a full-length portrait of Cardinal Manning, nor especially a portrait that is worthy in every respect of that great original. Very much less have I entertained the illusion of presenting an account, or even an outline, of the origin and progress of Anglo-Catholicism. In this essay, as in all those of a biographical nature, there is, if I may venture to say so, at the same time more and less than in a chapter of history — less, because there is question only of a single individual and not of a great party or rather of a whole generation; more, nevertheless, because there is nothing like the infinite complexity and inexhaustible wealth of a man's soul, and because that is precisely what it has been proposed to depict. The very kindly feelings that have been aroused by the publication of these pages, and that have encouraged me, perhaps imprudently, to bring them out in a new form, are, I feel certain, due entirely to whatever there is in Cardinal Manning's personality that is human, pathetic, emotional and dramatic. As regards the occasional severe criticisms and bitter rebukes that have been unsparingly heaped upon me, they have been evidently due especially to my ability being too obviously insufficient for me to do full justice to this great subject. I would not dare to assert, however, that there are not in them traces of that narrowness of mind and of heart, and of those sectarian prejudices, which seem to me to be much more out of place here than anywhere else.

Assuredly, in paying a homage that I wanted to make as striking as possible to one of the men who, having gone out from the pale of Protestantism, have contributed most to the restoration of Catholicism as a spiritual power and to the triumph of the doctrines called Ultramontane, I was not ignorant either of what I was doing or of what I ought to expect. Nothing could appear more natural to me, more legitimate even, than the surprise or even irritation of certain minds. I had foreseen certain objections, nay, even certain protests in the name of the principles of the Reformation.

If a Protestant critic, without entering into a detailed examination of the facts on which I thought I could base my admiration, my respect, my veneration for Cardinal Manning, had remained satisfied with asking me, by way of preliminary inquiry, how I thought of reconciling this condition of soul with the profession of Protestantism; if another, giving an interpretation difr ferent from mine to the known documents or app-ealing to new ones, had disputed, with the evidence in hand, my method of relating and passing judgment upon the events of Manning's inner and outer life; if a third, setting the biography aside altogether, had placed side by side the principles that are explicitly or implicitly laid down in these pages, the prejudices that they betray, the sympathies or antipathies that they unveil, the judgments that they pass on the men and things of both denominations, in order to discuss and refute them;

if either, in fine, bringing all these data together, drawing their logical conclusions from these premises, had been pleased to contrast with and oppose to the positive assertions and involuntary avowals that he thought he found in my articles, in regard to my opinions on the most serious subjects, what he thought he knew of my acknowledged convictions or even of my inmost feeling, I might have been able to regret certain acts of injustice, to deplore certain failures in tact, to dispute certain deductions, to combat certain arguments, nay even to disallow certain jurisdictions; it would have been impossible for me to complain of a mode of controversy so respectful of an adversary's conscience.

There might have been error on one side or on the other, — perhaps on both at one and the same time; what would have been on neither would be the spirit of contention and quibbling, the implicit assertion of moral superiority, the sickly need of excommunication. God forbid that I be such an ingrate as to pretend that I have met with none but ill-natured disputants. How shall I forget the exquisite delicacy, the discreet solicitude of men in whom I was accustomed to venerate authentic witnesses in favor of living Christianity, and who, compelled by their conscience to point out errors, in their estimation fatal, have done so with a moderation, a patience, a breadth, a charity in a word, for which I am ever grateful to them ? I could name publicists, religious writers, ever so far from approving of my judgments, who, however, have not thought it their duty — or their right — to hurl the thunderbolts of the major excommunication, to condemn in a lump and without appeal, to feign superior intelligence on questions of fact or of persons, in which the elements of an independent opinion were wanting to them; in fine, to give to the public, as news worthy of credence, gratuitous inventions springing from their brain and from it only.

Articles like that of the Journal Religieux de la Suisse Romande show clearly that there is a method of controversy in which fidelity most uncompromising to the principles of Protestantism by no means excludes Christian charit3^ There is, then, a means of speaking one's thoughts frankly, but also with perfect courtesy. It is not necessary, then, that in such a case discussion should degenerate, in its subordinate development, into a pitiful homily or a virulent demand. I know that in this respect there is in him who has signed these lines an hereditary tradition of fairness, civility and justice; we cannot require such generous methods of every one.

Why should it be, however, that I find myself compelled to refer to attacks directed in so different a spirit ? One begins by hiding his face at the mere spectacle of the scandal given by a Protestant by birth speaking sympatheticall}^, admiringly, of a pervert from Protestantism. He is indignant at the effrontery of a writer who dares to find fault with the manner of writing history adopted by Mr. Purcell, who is suddenly promoted to the rank of a serious author drawing upon original sources. According to him, there is intolerable lack of regard for consistency and even of good faith in taking from the book of Cardinal IManning's selfappointed biographer the proofs of the innumerable errors of fact and of the incomparably more gross and more culpable errors of judgment committed by this singular depictor, who seems to have no dearer pleasure than to disfigure the features and to demean the expression of his subject.

Critics who probably have not taken the trouble to read, and especially to study minutely the sixteen hundred pages of Mr. Purcell's massive work, do not admit that one has the right to pass severe judgment on a book in which a systematic malevolence towards one of the great men of modern Catholicism has served with them as a sufficient recommendation. Mr. Purcell's two volumes are full of insinuations, accusations and condemnations against Cardinal Manning; that suffices: they are the work of a master hand; they must be accepted as gospel truth, and to point out gross errors, monstrous contradictions, stupefying evidences of ignoronce, constant falsification of dates, inaccurate quotations, mutilated documents, disorder in thought, vulgarity in style, and, worse than all that, a spirit of disparagement and of calumny that make of this w^ork a sad monument of all that a biography worthy of this name ought not to be, is to expose oneself to being taxed with prejudice in favor of the Church of Rome and with treason against the Pvcformation.

But this is not all. Such a defender of Protestant orthodoxy goes farther. Not satisfied with rummaging with a far from light hand in the most secret and most sacred recesses of a man's conscience, our journalist arrogates to himself the attributes of a prophet. Offici-

INTRODUCTORY. Id

ally, as if he could have no doubt of it, or rather as if he had received an express mandate about it, he announces as an accomplished fact a conversion or an abjuration, which is quite simply the logical conclusion which it has pleased him to draw from the premises that he has laid down. He is so sure of his fact that he himself comments on the news that he has just given, and in which he would have indeed liked, as he declares in no uncertain terms, to place no confidence.

And then it is a little play that begins.

The information thus put in circulation is taken up by the myriad echoes of publicity. After the religious it is the turn of the secular, and then even of the boulevard press. Comments go their way. Each new stage in the flight of this canard gives it an increase of vitahty. Ere long, those even who have taken the liberty of thus playing wdth your name have a grievance against you. Of their certain knowledge and full power it has pleased them to attribute to you an act too important and touching too closely on the domain of conscience for it not to have been necessary to verify its authenticity, twice rather than once, before launching the assertion of it. They have a grudge against you for the silence that you keep. They reproach you with lack of respect for the public if you decline the arbitrary jurisdiction of the third or of the fourth. They summon you to answer questions that they have not the right to put to you. If you do not consent to send back the ball they will do you up handsomely. Should you have the weakness to entertain any out-ofdate prejudice against the violation of a certain modesty of soul; should you positively refuse to bring out into the broad daylight of publicity, not your actions, your words, or your very thoughts, but the innermost conflict and most secret anguish of your soul, they will show you clearly that you are wrong and that the press has the right to learn everything, or rather, to know everything.

Thus old-time methods are perpetuated while adapting themselves to the mildness of our present manners. Thank God, there is no longer a tribunal of the Inquisition; but are we quite sure that some of its methods do not survive and that they are not occasionally applied in the name and to the advantage of the religion of free examination, of individualism and of freedom of conscience ? Nor is it amiss to note that there is something rather pointed in seeing oneself excommunicated by Geneva — I mean, put outside the communion of the visible Church by its champions by reason of their office, under the pretext of a too obvious predilection for the visible Church. The paradox would be quite agreeable if there was question here only of making merry over the inconsistencies of one's judges.

Unfortunately, these controversies do not fail to have their echo outside, in many upright hearts and simple minds. An equanimity of soul bordering very closely on the indifference of egoism would be necessary in order to have recourse against all this noise only to absolute silence. By saying nothing one also risks becoming an object of scandal. This is why I thought it my duty to repel here attacks to which, if there was question only of myself, I would not perhaps have thought of answering. Certainly, I have taken no account of those anonymous enthusiasts of a ;pure and spotless religion who, forgetting to attach their signatures, have leveled at me a broadside of pious insults. AVith these anonymous writers I certainly do not confound the champions of the Gospel who arrogate to themselves the right of throwing your most sacred memories in your face and of bringing your filial affection into question because of differences of opinion; but I will be allowed to answer them with some emotion.

In truth, what then do they know of the inheritance of true liberalism, of breadth of view in connection with faith, left to me by my father, Edmond de Pressense — they who are pleased to invoke and to use against me the memory of him who was formerly called the Protestant Montalembert ? Assuredly I know better than they the inviolable and inflexible fidelity that he, until the end, devoted to the Church of his choice — how much that Christianity which upheld him in a cruel agony of eighteen months was thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of individualistic Protestantism — ^to what point, in those last months in which he was called upon to live what he had believed the principles of his preferred master, Alexandre Vinet, assumed in his estimation a degree of fresh evidence — with what severity even he believed he ought to judge certain recent developments of Catholicism.

Never did the idea even occur to me of invoking certain phrases inadvertently improvised by him, which others have not had the same scruples about using and which seemed to tend to predicting the failure of the Reformation in France. I do not dream of recalling the virulent attacks occasioned against the intrepid champion of liberty of conscience by the energy of his attitude in the Senate against anti-clerical tyranny, with its Article 7, its expulsions of the members of religious orders, its brutal suppression of the budget of worship, and its watchword: Let the pastors take bags on their backs ! All the pretension I make — and on this point, I confess, I admit neither dispute nor reply — is that I be indeed allowed to derive my inspiration, if not from some or from all of my father's opinions, at least from their spirit itself, in proportion as I think I understand it. Let me be allowed to invoke one of the noblest and most generous recommendations that he bequeathed to his people, and by which he warned them never to allow a sentiment due to his memory to be used against an idea adopted for sufficient reasons.

As long as I proceed according to the dictates of my conscience; as long as the opinions, whether popular or unpopular, that I embrace are imposed upon me by their apparent conformity with truth and by it only; as long as the voice that I strive to listen to and to follow is that of Christ, it will be impossible for me to attach a tragic importance to divergences of views necessarily of secondary consideration. The agreement that, after all, is alone important, is not perhaps even that which is produced on the fundamental points of thought: it is the harmony of souls, it is the ear inclined and the spirit opened in the direction of Revelation. The rest could not be of capital importance; and a very strange conception of filial devotion is necessary in order to make the duty of thinking in the same way about the seat of authority and about the apostolical succession enter into it.

Truly, these personalities are the fruit of a zeal whose source I know how to respect, just as I could not have a grudge against those good people who have signified to me their displeasure at seeing me pass a favorable judgment on an '' agent of Eome," who have reproached me with my ignorance by revealing to me that Protestant peoples are infinitely more prosperous than Catholic peoples, and who have recommended me to read a book on the conflicts between science and faith, in which Catholicism is directly attacked with arguments taken from the arsenal of popular free-thought and v/hich would leave nothing of Christianity standing. It suffices that upright souls, those consciences in the pure mirror of which is reflected the religion of Christ, have been troubled, disturbed, saddened, so that there be occasion to offer all the explanations compatible with the rights of truth.

Since none of those in whose good faith I sincerely believe have been scandalized at the manner in which I have treated the author of the ' ' Life of Cardinal Manning ' ' and his work, however strange their interest in such a client may seem to be, I owe them a justification of my opinion of Mr. Purcell and his book, more ample than that of my articles. Since others have been astonished at the very choice of this subject and at seeing a writer who, in any case, should not be accused of having been brought up in the sacristy, treat 2

Manning's personality with such tender respect, I wish to state briefly the reasons for this effort.

Since several of my critics, in fine, have without circumlocution raised the question of my own religious convictions; since they have striven with all their might either to set me in contradiction with myself or to convince me of some indefinable Catholicizing dilettantism, or to compel me at once and already to complete the evolution whose circuit they have calculated for me and to justify the syllogism that they have constructed in my behalf, by admitting like them the necessity of one of those acts on which one does not go back and by completing my abjuration, I owe it to them, I owe it to myself, to trace as faithfully as possible the condition of soul that gave rise to these articles — and until now to these only.

I

Before touching on any other point, it is proper, then, that I explain myself in regard to the case of Mr. Purcell, the author of the two massive volumes that contain the life of Manning, and that have served as the occasion and the theme of my study. The judgment that I felt myself obliged to pass on him in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and which I think I ought to keep unaltered in this volume, is marked with much severity and at the same time differs so completely from that of ' certain of my critics that I would expose myself to all the severity of the most pitiless judgment if I did not try to give a serious reason for it. In the brief summary to which I have been compelled to confine myself, I was prevented from entering into the details of this examination; I had to remain satisfied with a summary description of Mr. Purcell's manner of writing history, and to proceed on the line of assertions, instead of following the slow course of a regular demonstration.

Several of my censors have shown the greatest illwill against me on this account. They would, I imagine, have been somewhat embarrassed in justifying the symxpathetic, nay, almost tender interest that Mr. Purcell has awakened in them. To men ill-disposed towards Manning it was a real piece of good fortune to find a biographer. Catholic in religion, who announced himself as authorized and almost as official, who had unquestionably drawn upon the most authentic sources, who undoubtedly produced a most formidable array of new documents, and who, while incessantly protesting his love and respect for his hero, poured out floods of discredit and shame upon him, by his narratives, by his judgments, by his accusations, and even by his praises. On the contrary, is it not intolerable that a writer whose antecedents scarcely admit of his discarding impartiality a priori, and who can hardly be accused of obeying preconceived sympathies, should turn up to spoil everything ?

It would have been difficult to make a grievance against me of my not having espoused, with my eyes shut, the assertions of the so-called Catholic historian; of my not wanting either to accept his facts without verification, or to endorse his judgments without reserve. AVhat they have not failed to blame severely was either the effrontery of pretending to point out the way to my master or the indecency of borrowing the chief materials of my study from a book that I treated so rudely. A strange reproach, forsooth, as if there was the least logical contradiction, or the slighest moral indelicacy, in making use of documents that one has previously sifted with criticism, in confronting an author with himself before drawing upon him and of asking himself to supply the means of rectifying or refuting him.

Moreover, by no means is there question of an isolated text. Mr. Purcell's biography has merely had to take its place in the list of the already numerous works, the titles of the chief of which I gave at the head of my first article. Manning himself had already produced a rather copious literature. It is not even one of the slightest grievances to be alleged against this surprising biographer that he has treated with extraordinary disdain as well the authors who had preceded him as the works of Manning himself. An historian who does not find a passage worth borrowing in Mr. Hutton's little volume or in the brief and substantial pamphlet in which Dr. Gasquet has given an admirable sketch of Cardinal Manning's spiritual expression — a writer who does not look for a single point of information in the sermons, prefaces, and innumerable other productions that came from the Archbishop of Westminster's pen during sixty years' activity, betrays a singular lack of preparation for his task.

Fortunate had it been if he had committed only this grave sin of omission! Mr. Purcell will not have contracted a debt of gratitude towards his champions : it is they who compel us to produce the proofs of our accusations and to reveal to the public what is covered by and on what rest the so-called judge's pretended decrees on Cardinal Manning. Let us speak in the first place of the spirit in which Mr. Purcell approached his task. To a biographer, he himself very justly says, his hero ought to be an object of special, of supreme interest, and, we will add, of respectful sj^mpathy. Without this disposition it would be better to leave the carrying out of the mission to some one else than to take it upon oneself. Well! I make bold to assert that that is precisely the feeling in which Mr. Purcell is most obviously lacking.

Whether he entertained an old-time unfavorable prejudice against Manning, or rather belongs to that category of minds that are incapable of feeling for a long time a real admiration for any one whomsoever, and that speedily grow weary, in studying or in relating his life, of calling Aristides the Just, at every instant he betrays an instinctive malevolence, one might almost say a preconceived hostihty which only grows and is embellished at every step, against the Archbishop of Westminster. I cannot think of citing all the passages in which this state of soul breaks out; some typical examples will suffice to give an idea of it.

Even before having under consideration, no longer a fully developed boy, but a character already formed, he cannot help attributing the most lamentable pettiness to Manning. At school, he represents him as never speaking of others (in letters or in his diary), but from compensation, ever ready to converse minutely and abundantly of himself (Vol. I, p. 18). At the University, he attributes to him, with a vanity extending even to his toilet, an egotism, an exaggerated consciousness of himself, which, according to our author, was to remain attached to him, like a Nessus tunic, until the end of his life (ib., p. 30). Led to note that at this date Manning is iess concerned with religious questions than with politics, he says amiably that the young man could speak only of the subjects that brought him an audience hanging on his lips (ib., p. 61). He writes, without seeming to suspect the wrong that such an assertion, if it were true, would do to him who is its object, that fortune, that anti-spiritual divinity, in whose presence Manning had assumed the habit of bowing, asked its faithful adorer for one homage, one sacrifice more (ib., p. 195). He speaks, in a passing way, as of the most natural thing in the world, of the habit, partly congenital, partly acquired by Manning, of never committing himself to an unpopular movement and of never taking position on the side of an unfortunate cause (ib., p. 204). Farther on he represents Manning as a man ready to recede from no sacrifice of friendship v/hen there was question of the Church or of his personal interest {ib., p. 244).

In a truly typical passage he paints this new Machiavelli, this Anglican Jesuit, much more concerned with serving his party in the palaces than in the universities ; infinitely less anxious to study the subtleties of theology, -the Fathers of the Church and Catholic antiquity than to follow the intrigues of Parliament and of the Court ; far from deeply absorbed in the publication of ' ' Tract

No. 90, ' ' the storm that it let loose, the reawakening of Anglo-Catholicism of which it was the occasion, but all engrossed in the antechamber rumors of Downing street {ib., p. 265). To him Manning is the adorer of the rising sun^ the enemy of unpopular minorities^ the born deserter of condemned causes.

It seems to me that it suffices to reproduce these monstrous passages in order to place their author in a strange embarrassment. If these references be correct, how did Mr. Purcell come to entertain the idea of writing the life of tliis courtier of fortune, of this ambitious man, of this intriguing ecclesiastic? How especially did he think he could make a hero and a saint of him ? By what marvelous sleight-of-hand did he hoj)e to reconcile these judgments, hurled as he went along, with the final formula of canonization that crowns his work ? I leave to Mr. Purcell the task of reconciling these contradictions. For my part, it suffices for me to place these indescribable calumnies side by side with the facts — I mean those very facts that are stated by our author and in the documents that he had at his disposal and that he has communicated to us. The reader will undoubtedl}'- find the expression not too strong when he vail have followed me into one or two of these proofs.

To begin, let us take Manning's entrance into orders. For telling us of this important event Mr. Purcell had before him a certain number of documents which he has published in the strange manner that is familiar to him, as I will show farther on, but which, in fine, he has laid before our eyes. The materials consisted of three autobiographical notes, drawn up by the Cardinal some fifty years after the date of the facts to which they refer; letters and fragments of letters, some of them, on the contrary, written as early as 1832, especially those to his mother and to Mr. Twistleton, a friend of his when a young man. It is shown as clear as day from these documents that Manning, whether at that very period or half a century later, was absolutely convinced that he ought to obey a vocation from on high, an appeal, as he himself said, from God ad veritatem et ad ipsum. All the testimonies point to this meaning; there is not the shadow of a single one of them with an opposite sense: one might think that Mr. Purcell would feel bound to follow this version, the only authentic one.

This would come from knowing him imperfectly, indeed. He insinuates that Manning's vocation was most probably the fruit of an illusion; that the young clergyman was himself duped if he thought he was obeying any other considerations than purely mundane motives, and that in reality he felt none of the religious emotions whose effect on his soul he pointed out later on. That is clear speaking. One would only like to know on what all this scaffolding of hypotheses rests and where are the documents that entitle our author thus to belie his hero to his face. Documents! there are none. Mr. Purcell has simply judged as improbable and absurd a motive as strange and as extraordinary as a divine vocation. Forgetting the two absolutely contemporary letters that he himself has published and that confirm on every point the later version of the diary, he holds that the Cardinal, in time, had lost the exact recollection of the manner in which things had happened and had somewhat embellished his story. Moreover, if this reasoning does not convince the reader, he has an argument in reserve that he deems irresistible: if Manning, he says, had really heard this appeal, he would without fail have communicated it to his confidant, his daily correspondent, his brother-in-law, Mr, John Anderdon. Now, he did not do so: he did not, then, obey this supernatural impulse.