While it is not a special. anniversary of his birth, he was born in February 221 years ago which provides with an excuse for making him the subject of my reflection for this week.
It was when studying “O” level music some 65 years ago that I first came across John Henry Newman – Cardinal Newman as he was to become. At that time I was studying as a set work part of what was arguably Elgar’s greatest oratorio – The Dream of Gerontius, the words of which were written by Cardinal Newman. Whilst Gerontius was a real person who served as a deacon under Ambrose one of the Early Christian Fathers, the poem of Newman is actually concerned with a hypothetical Christian who just before his death was able to see beyond the veil. It is a very long poem and I will just give an extract from the oratorio but to begin I will give you a very short potted biography of that great Christian. John Henry Newman was born on 21st February, 1801 in London. His mother, being a moderate Calvinist, no doubt influenced his initial religious thought which would be modified during his studies at Trinity College, Oxford. When he was 24 he was ordained – at that time anyone who held a degree of that University could if he so wished become ordained. In 1828 he became Vicar of the University Church of St. Mary’s – a high Anglican Church, an appointment that perhaps began his journey towards Catholicism.
However, it was not his writings on Catholicism that particularly interested me – he is especially well known for a tract arguing that the thirty-nine articles were Catholic in spirit. It is not his catholic writings that interest me but his sermons on Faith and Reason.
In particular he had an understanding of the provisionality of mathematics and physics – an understanding that was rare in his day and is still uncommon even today. His published “Fifteen Sermons preached before the University of Oxford between 1826 and 1843” is an academic tours de force that I find influential even today. Anyway just to complete the biographical note, he became a Catholic in 1845 and, from his base in Birmingham, continued to preach some of the finest sermons in the English language. He always remained a moderate rather than an extremist and possibly for that reason he received the Cardinals hat from Pope Leo XIII in 1879. He died in Edgbaston, a leafy suburb of Birmingham in 1890.
Dr David Greenwood. D.greenwood@uwtsd.ac.uk February 2022
An extract from the Dream of Gerontius:
I went to sleep; and now I am refresh’d,
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself,
And ne’er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes – some one softly said
“He’s gone”; and then a sigh went round the room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry “Subvenite”; and they knelt in prayer.
I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.
Ah! whence is this? What is this severance?
This silence pours a solitariness
Into the very essence of my soul;
And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Hath something too of sternness and of pain.
So much I know, not knowing how I know,
That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
Or I or it is rushing on the wings
Of light or lightning on an onward course,
And we e’en now are million miles apart.
Yet … is this peremptory severance
Wrought out in lengthening measurements of space
Which grow and multiply by speed and time?
Or am I traversing infinity
By endless subdivision, hurrying back
From finite towards infinitesimal,
Thus dying out of the expansive world?
Another marvel: some one has me fast
Within his ample palm; ‘tis not a grasp
Such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being,
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus, a uniform
And gentle pressure tells me I am not
Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth
I cannot of that music rightly say
Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones.
Oh, what a heart-subduing melody!
Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.
Vol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke
From the Website of Bartelby.com
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