Perfect Chastity: Celibacy and Virgin Marriage in Tractarian Poetry

In Lyra Apostolica (1836), a collection of devotional verse by a group of founding and early Tractarians, the poem "Awe" ends thus:

And so albeit His woe is our release, Thought of that woe aye dims our earthly peace; The Life is hidden in a Fount of Blood!—      And this is tidings good, But in the Angel's reckoning, and to those      Who Angel-wise have chose And kept, like Paul, a virgin course, content      To go where Jesus went; But for the many laden with the spot And earthly taint of sin, 'tis written, 'Touch Me not.'

(ll. 9-18)¹

The composer of the poem was John Henry Newman, the main contributor to the volume. He holds that there are two discrete groups: the virgins and the non-virgins. The first is composed of the "Angel-wise," the chaste ones who have "kept, like Paul, a virgin course." The second is comprised of "the many," the ones who have been smeared with "the spot / And earthly taint of sin." Sinners, according to the poem, are denied the atoning blood of Christ. They are instead met with the words, "'Touch Me not,'" the phrase which the resurrected Christ had once uttered to Mary Magdalen. "Awe" therefore concludes with an account of the unbridgeable difference—and distance—between Christ and the sinner.

The incapacity of "the many" to touch Christ is a central argument for Newman. He declares of Christ's inaccessibility in a sermon delivered on May 22, 1831: "[Christ] does not manifest His glory to mortal sense. . . . It is in His mercy that He hides Himself from those who would be overcome by the sensible touch of the Almighty Hand."² Newman likewise argues for the aloofness of sacred scripture. While Christ had verbalized the phrase, "Touch me not," Newman declares in "Awe" that, to the eyes of the contemporary sinner, "'tis written, 'Touch Me not.'" The words of the Word are given in scripture, a text that for Newman is mysterious, opaque, and unyielding to the touch of human discernment. He upholds the idea of its impenetrability in his early criticism of the doctrine of Infallibility:

Roman theology . . . professes to be a complete theology. It arranges, adjusts, explains, exhausts every part of the Divine Economy. . . . That feeling of awe which the mysteriousness of the Gospel should excite, fades away under this fictitious illumination. . . . Not content with what is revealed, they ['these Romanists'] are ever intruding into things not seen as yet, and growing familiar with mysteries; gazing upon the ark of God over boldly and long, till they venture to put out the hand and touch it.³

Newman argues that scripture should incite "awe" and reverential distance. Like sinners in the presence of Christ, the uninitiated must not venture to touch its "mysteriousness." Revelation is and should be given when God wills it: gradually and in part. Even to the privileged few (the "Angel-wise") Newman declares that their contact with Christ "cannot but be awful anyhow" (Sermons, p. 139).

The Tractarian doctrine of reserve informs Newman's views of touch, his emphasis on the sinner's distance from Christ, his reverence for the mysteries of the Gospel, and his praise of the "virgin course." In this essay, reserve is exemplified by deferral, concealment, self-containment, discipline, the veil, and the lack of touch. With these examples I explore the clear connection between reserve, virginity, and celibacy in Tractarian poetry. For this purpose I have chosen to focus on Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Digby Mackworth Dolben, who each identified as Tractarians at some point in their lives. In the case of Newman and Hopkins, I dwell for the most part on their pre-conversion writings. Limitations of space compel me to examine celibacy and virginity within the narrowest category of chastity. Thus, while John Keble's "Christmas Day," from his Christian Year,⁴ suggests that virginity can be ascribed to virtues of the heart and mind, I pursue its designation in "Awe," which links the "virgin course" with Paul's preaching on sexual behaviour in 1 Corinthians. Celibacy is an...