Portraits and Miniatures(49)

Then in Discourse IX, quite close to the liberal passage on literature, he suddenly goes much further: ‘If the Catholic faith is true, a University cannot exist externally to the Catholic pale, for it cannot teach Universal Knowledge if it does not teach Catholic theology. That is certain, but still, though it had ever so many theological Chairs, that would not suffice to make it a Catholic University; for theology would be included in its teaching only as a branch of knowledge, only as one of many constituent portions, however important a one, of what I have called Philosophy. Hence a direct and active jurisdiction of the Church over it and in it is necessary, lest it should become the rival of the Church with the community at large in those theological matters which to the Church are exclusively committed …’

Much of the rest of this final Discourse, with the exception of the passage on literature, is Newman at his uneasiest. His words do not flow with their usual spontaneity. There are a great number of ‘Gentlemens’ and ‘that is certains’, the latter in fact a certain sign of Newman’s uncertainty. And then suddenly he escapes from this viscosity by hitting on the idea of bringing the whole thing to an end by throwing everything into a panegyric of St Philip Neri - ‘my own special Father and Patron’ as he refers to him. It is like the finale of an open-air concert I once attended, which brought the 1812 Overture to a conclusion with cymbals banging, cannons pounding, fireworks exploding and the conductor exhausting himself with enthusiasm:


Nay, people came to him, not only from all parts of Italy, but from France, Spain, Germany and all Christendom, and even the infidels and Jews, who had ever any communication with him, revered him as a holy man. The first families of Rome, the Massimi, the Aldobrandini, the Colonnas, the Altieri, the Vitelleschi, were his friends and his penitents. Nobles of Poland, Grandees of Spain, Knights of Malta could not leave Rome without coming to him. Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops were his intimates, Frederigo Borromeo haunted his room and got the name of Father Philip’s soul. The Cardinal-Archbishops of Verona and Bologna wrote books in his honour. Pope Pius IV died in his arms. Lawyers, painters, musicians, physicians, it was the same with them. Baronius, Zazzara, Ricci, left the law at his bidding, and joined his congregation to do its work, to write the annals of the Church, and to die in the odour of sanctity. Palestrina had Father Philip’s ministrations in his last moments. Anninuccia hung about him during life, sent him a message after death, and was conducted by him through Purgatory to Heaven. And who was he, I say all the while, but a humble priest, a stranger in Rome, with no distinction of family or letters, no claim of station or of office, great simply in the attraction with which a Divine Power had gifted him? And yet thus humble, thus unennobled, thus empty-handed, he has achieved the glorious title of Apostle of Rome.

It was a magnificent extravaganza, even if veering at times towards being a Jennifer’s Diary of life in sixteenth-century Rome, but it was hardly a satisfactory synthesis of the competing roles of liberal culture and religious authority in the scheme of an ideal university between which he had veered throughout the nine Discourses. The dust was stardust, but he was frankly throwing it into the eyes of his audience while he escaped under its cover from the dilemma into which he had put himself. When, therefore, the whole series came to an end, and the work to which it led was complete, only one paragraph after the end of this pyrotechnical exhibition, I was left dazzled but intellectually unsatisfied. Newman had mostly held me spellbound in the grip of his prose, but he had convinced me neither that he had a practical plan for an Irish university in the 1850s or that he had left guidelines of great relevance for a university of any nationality or any or no faith today.

This does not mean that he did not shine splendid shafts of light on to particular issues. I greatly enjoyed his attack on Victorian materialist values, where Nassau Senior, the first Professor of Political Economy in this University, is set up with many compliments, both to his own eminence and to the ‘unsordidness’ of Oxford, to be the bull which is felled. ‘… the pursuit of wealth …’ he exposes Nassau as saying, ‘is, to the mass of mankind, the great source of moral improvement.’ Then he says: ‘I really should on every account be sorry, Gentlemen, to exaggerate, but indeed one is taken by surprise, one is startled, on meeting with so very categorical a contradiction of our Lord, St Paul, St Chrystostom, St Leo, and all Saints.’

Equally firm was his rejection in Discourse VII, many years ahead of its time, of the principle of contract funding for universities: ‘Now this is what some great men are very slow to allow; they insist that Education should be confined to some particular and narrow end, and should issue in some definite work, which can be weighed and measured. They argue as if everything, as well as every person, had its price; and that where there has been a great outlay, they have a right to expect a return in kind’.