With the recent digitization of a small number of archives from the Monastery of the Visitation, an interesting collection of items held within are now available related to the Jesuit missionary Father Law, a convert of the Oxford Movement and his tragic expedition up the Zambesi.
As part of my role with the Catholic Archives Society, I routinely monitor the internet for Catholic archival material being offered for sale and work with relevant repositories to ensure its safe acquisition. In 2023 a bound collection of 19 original manuscript letters from Cardinal Henry Edward Manning to the Rev. Thomas Penyngton Kirkman (1806-1895) appeared for sale -- never previously shared in public. In them Manning discusses his views on philosophy and evolution, his views on Herbert Spencer, and even sketches of his ideas for a solution to Pascal’s Theorem.
Our most recent addition to the NINS Digital Collections is a newly publicized collection of items from the community archives of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, including letters from Cardinals Newman, Wiseman, and Manning, and Father Bede Jarrett, the founder of Blackfriars, Oxford.
In the English-speaking world, the Catholic Literary Revival is associated with the work of G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene: novels that chart the solitary figure of a priest or layman in spiritual combat with the world around him. But in fact, the Revival’s most numerous members were women, many of whom have been almost entirely forgotten. When these women are put back in the frame we need to adjust our understanding of the Revival’s nature and scope.
Newman scholars interested in philosophy should take note of Daniel J. Pratt Morris-Chapman’s recent book, Newman in the Story of Philosophy: The Philosophical Legacy of Saint John Henry Newman. While standard histories of philosophy tend to make no mention of Newman as a philosopher, Pratt Morris-Chapman thinks this is a mistake. This is not only because he takes Newman to have a body of philosophical work that is worthy of our attention, but because he takes Newman’s thought to have played an important role in the development and progress of philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Richard Dawson did not write “The Complete History of the Oxford Movement.” Instead, he gives us “The Spirit of the Oxford Movement,” a thoroughgoing account of the relationships and friendships between three of the movement’s figureheads: Keble, Froude, and of course, Newman. By focusing on the relationships between the movement’s pioneers, Dawson can argue for the emotional impetus that underlies the mission of the Oxford Movement, a sense that is perhaps best captured by the men’s poetry rather than their Tractarian works.
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