Bishop Herbert Vaughan and the Jesuits: Education and Authority (review)

The editor has brought together from archives in England and Rome, the papers relating to a dispute in 1875 between Bishop Herbert Vaughan, subsequently cardinal archbishop of Westminster, and the English province of the Society of Jesus. The general history of the altercation has been well known for some time and addressed by a number of historians. The dispute centered on the fact that the Jesuits opened a school in Manchester, in the Salford diocese, in defiance of Vaughan’s wishes. The Jesuits claimed that the privileges of the Order enabled them to act in this high-handed fashion, and Vaughn would have none of it. He went to Rome determined that he would have the authority of a diocesan bishop upheld, or he would resign his see. In the end a compromise of sorts was worked out whereby the Jesuits, in the person of Father General Peter Beckx, agreed to close the school and Vaughan agreed not to demand an investigation into the exempt privileges claimed by the Society.

The dispute is of interest for a number of reasons, not least because it occurred within twenty-five years of the restoration of the hierarchy in England. But also because, as Broadley indicates in his introductory essay to the collection of documents, it was one more instance of the struggles between the Jesuits and the diocesan clergy that had been a feature of English Catholicism since the days of Elizabeth I.

In this instance the confrontation between the bishops, all of whom were dragged into the dispute and who collectively petitioned the Holy See on Vaughan’s behalf, and the Jesuits would ultimately lead in 1881 to the pontifical constitution Romanos Pontifices. That document would prove to be the basis for regulating the relationship between bishops and religious orders until the codification of the Canon Law in 1917. One towering figure who, in the 1875 dispute, seemed to play only a minor, if vital, role was Henry Edward Manning, made a cardinal in that very year. Manning was convinced, as he wrote to Vaughan in March 1875, that the English Jesuits were ‘altogether abnormal, dangerous to themselves, mischievous to the Church in England’ (p. 56).

This is a valuable collection and will be of immense use to students of nineteenth-century English church history. The collection is not, however, as comprehensive as might have been expected. The editor, for admittedly cogent reasons, has not included exchanges of letters that are available in three booklets published simultaneously with the dispute. This choice gives an uneven perspective. Thus, for example, we have the letters written from Italy by Father Alfred Weld, the English assistant to the Jesuit General, but none from Father Peter Gallwey, the English Provincial, to Weld. The editor does not always indicate at first mention the role and significance of correspondents. He misidentifies the author of “Appendix ten,” since from internal evidence it cannot be by Weld, but undoubtedly draws on a letter written by Weld. Some pagination is missing from the appendices. There also are a number of misprints. These are, however, minor blemishes in what is an otherwise splendidly produced volume.

Ultimately, as with so many ecclesiastical disputes, none of the protagonists really emerges with their reputations unsullied. The Jesuits tried to besmirch both Vaughan and the Xavieran Brothers who already had a school in Manchester. Weld could say of the brothers that they represented no threat to the Society, since, in his words, “they have not got educated men and are not likely to have them. . .” (p. 116). He had previously asked Gallwey to “get some facts . . . to show how uneducated the Xaverians themselves are” (p. 24). For his part, Vaughan objected to a petition that a number of laymen in Manchester signed in protest against the forced closure of the Jesuit school on the basis of the fact that for the most...