Description | Papers, mostly pastoral and printed letters, from the Vicars Apostolic of the English districts and, later, bishops of the English dioceses, to the clergy and laity. The letters highlight the development of the Roman Catholic Church in the nineteenth century and its response to social, political, and religious issues at the local and national level. These include advice on lenten regulations; plenary indulgences associated with papal Jubilees; regulations for special Masses; appeals for various Catholic educational and charitable institutions (as well as the Irish Famine and other natural disasters); responses to Irish secret societies; and declarations of support for Pope Pius IX during the 1848 Revolutions and the Italian Wars of Independence. |
Admin_History | The Vicars Apostolic were established in 1622 by the Congregation for the Propagation of Faith. Nominated by the Holy See, the Vicars Apostolic possessed ordinary jurisdiction and enjoyed the same rights and faculties as a resident bishop in his diocese. From 1688, England was divided into four districts (London, Midland, Northern, and Western, the last incorporating Wales). The Vicars were also consecrated bishops, but to avoid giving offence to the Anglican establishment they bore the titles of sees in partibus infidelium(sees which had once been part of Christendom, but which were now under Muslim rule). This system lasted into the nineteenth century, when growing numbers made further divisions necessary. In England, the four districts were increased to eight (the new districts being the Eastern District, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Wales). This arrangement was brought to an end by the restoration of a hierarchy of sees in England in 1850, with the existing vicars apostolic all becoming diocesan bishops or metropolitan archbishops. The hierarchy was restored on 29 September, 1850, by Pius IX’s Bull Universalis Ecclesiae, with Westminster its metropolitan see. The suffragan sees were Southwark, Hexham (changed to Hexham and Newcastle in 1861), Beverley, Liverpool, Salford, Shrewsbury, Newport and Menevia, Clifton, Plymouth, Nottingham, Birmingham, and Northampton. Further divisions were made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1878, for example, Beverley was divided into the two new Dioceses of Leeds and Middlesborough. |