| Admin_History | At a consistory held on 30 September, Nicholas Wiseman was named a cardinal priest, with the title of St. Pudentiana. The papal Brief re-establishing the hierarchy had been issued on the previous day; and on 7 October the newly-created cardinal Archbishop of Westminster announced the event to English Catholics in his famous pastoral "from outside the Flaminian Gate".
Wiseman made it his business to endeavour to restore amicable relations between Catholics and Protestants. He had many personal friends outside Catholic circles, and his wide range of knowledge on many neutral subjects such as natural science, archaeology, and Oriental studies, made him welcome in general society. Not only by personal intercourse with his fellow-countrymen, but by his frequent appearances on the lecture-platform, he did much to influence public opinion in favour of Catholics. His lectures were at first chiefly on religious subjects, delivered in Catholic chapels in various parts of the country; but as time went on, he was frequently asked to give addresses on topics connected with archaeology, art, and literature, not only in London but in Liverpool, Manchester, and other important centres.
Wiseman himself was regarded, even by some of his brother bishops, as something of an autocrat; and both before and after the first provincial synod held by him at Oscott, there was considerable agitation for the appointment of irremovable parish priests and for the election of bishops by the diocesan clergy. Wiseman went to Rome in the autumn of 1853 to explain matters personally to Pius IX, who showed him every mark of confidence and kindness, and gave full approval to his ecclesiastical policy.
It was during this visit to Rome that Wiseman projected, and commenced to execute, the writing of "Fabiola", which was meant to be the first of a series of tales illustrative of different periods of the Church's life. The book appeared at the end of 1854 and translations of it were published in almost every European language. In the autumn of 1855 he delivered, and afterwards published, four lectures on concordats, in connection with the concordat recently concluded between Austria and the Holy See.
The increasing pressure of episcopal and metropolitan duties, as well as his greatly impaired health, induced Wiseman in 1855 to petition Rome for a coadjutor, and Rt. Rev. George Errington, Bishop of Plymouth, was appointed (with right of succession to the archbishop) in April of that year. He had worked under the cardinal both in Rome and at Oscott, and they were intimate friends; but their differences of character and temperament were so marked that Errington foresaw from the first, if Wiseman did not, that the new relation between them would be one full of difficulty. A rigorous disciplinarian of a somewhat narrow type, the coadjutor was bound, in matters of diocesan administration, to come into collision with a chief who disliked the routine of business, and was apt to decide questions rather as prompted by his own wide and generous impulses than according to the strict letter of the law. Before the year was out Errington had expressed in Rome his dissatisfaction with his position and his readiness to retire from it.
For the moment the difficulties were smoothed over, but they were subsequently accentuated by the rapid rise to prominence in the archdiocese of Henry Edward Manning, who founded in London, in 1856, his congregation of Oblates of St. Charles, and became in the same year provost of the metropolitan chapter. Errington, gravely offended at the charges of anti-Roman spirit brought against him, persistently refused to resign his office; and as it became increasingly manifest that he and the cardinal could not work together with any advantage to the archdiocese, he was removed from the coadjutorship by papal Decree dated 22 July, 1860.
After 1860 Wiseman, realizing that his health was permanently broken, lived chiefly in the country, leaving the conduct of diocesan affairs largely in the hands of Manning. During the next two years he worked to redress Catholic grievances, especially with regard to poor schools, and the position of Catholic soldiers and sailors, as well as the inmates of prisons, reformatories, and workhouses. He attended a great Catholic Congress at Mechlin in June, 1863, and gave an address in French dealing with the progress of the Church in England since the Emancipation Act of 1829. Later in the same year he interested himself warmly in the work undertaken by Herbert (afterwards Cardinal) Vaughan, of founding a college for Foreign Missions in England. One of his last public utterances was an indignant pastoral published in May, 1864, in which, he protested against the enthusiastic welcome of Garibaldi in England, and especially against the adulation paid by Anglican bishops to a man who had openly avowed his sympathy with Atheism. In the following October he assisted at the consecration of the Bishop of Bruges, and on his return home occupied himself with the writing of a lecture on Shakespeare, which he hoped to deliver at the Royal Institution on 27 January 1865. When that date arrived, however, he was already on his death-bed. His last weeks were spent in religious exercises and preparation for death. His funeral took place at Kensal Green. |