Until recently, Catholics in America thought they would be faced with the prospect of living out their faith in Hillary Clinton’s America. We got something of a shock in November, and now have to figure out what it means to be a Catholic in the age of Trump. British Catholics today face similar challenges, particularly poignant in election season: how does one live as a Catholic in the Britain of 2017? How do we fruitfully interact with our cultures, our nations, contemporary learning, and our political systems while remaining true to our ancient faith that proclaims a Lord born before all ages? It is very easy to get this wrong – sacrificing the truth for fleeting cultural acceptance, or retreating from and bitterly condemning society on the other. It is perilously difficult to get right.
I wish to introduce some Enlightenment-era English Catholics, the Cisalpines, who sought simultaneously to embrace their culture and political system, contemporary learning, and the fullness of their faith – in sum, to be truly English, truly Enlightened, and truly Catholic in a time of great prejudice and persecution. The Cisalpines are worth retrieving not because they necessarily got it all right (I don’t think they did), but because they provide an example of a valiant attempt at doing so, during a formative and tumultuous age.
The period 1780 to 1830 is often neglected in English Catholic history. It spans, roughly, from the close of the “age of Challoner” to Catholic Emancipation (1829) and the beginning of ultramontane “Second Spring” Catholicism. While the period of Cisalpine activity can boast neither the heroic martyrdoms of the 16th and 17th centuries nor the pious confidence of the growing church of Wiseman, Manning, and Newman, the years 1780–1830 were critical for the cultural, political and theological development of English Catholicism.
In 1780, Catholics made up only about 1 per cent of the population of England (this was before waves of Irish immigration). The surviving pockets of the Old Faith were generally huddled, out of necessity, around Catholic gentry. Priests and believers were financially maintained (and in some ways led) by families such as the Throckmortons of Coughton Court (Midlands), the Welds of Lulworth Castle (Dorset) and the various branches of the blue-blooded Howards.
Sir John Courtenay Throckmorton (1753–1819) and Lord Petre (1742–1801) were two of the most important Cisalpine gentry. The social status and respect these families commanded helped shield their dependants, clerical and lay, and enabled them to worship safe from harassment. The letter of the law was still brutally anti-Catholic, but the worst Penal Laws were rarely enforced.
Many prominent Cisalpine Catholics formed themselves into the Catholic Committee (1782), and later the Cisalpine Club (1792). They met in taverns and homes, formulating strategies to achieve full political emancipation. The name “Cis-alpine” was deliberately provocative: it was the opposite of transalpine or ultramontane (beyond the Alps, in Rome). The Cisalpine intellectual leader, Joseph Berington, summed up this attitude with his characteristic bluntness: “I am no papist, nor is my religion popery. [While] Catholic is an old family name, which we have never forfeited, the word Roman has been given to us to indicate some undue attachment to the See of Rome.” This desire to differentiate between Catholicism and “popery” was neither a rejection of the pope as supreme head of the Church, nor was it a new Enlightenment fad. It was rooted in an old and prominent strain of English Catholicism that sought to combat Protestant prejudice by seeking to clarify (their conservative critics would say downplay) true doctrine.
Although the Catholic Committee and the Cisalpine Club were formed explicitly for political purposes, their agenda rested on consistent theological and philosophical foundations. They wanted to retain essential doctrine while exploring new methods and ideas – an ambition which was shaped byseveral factors: the impact of the Enlightenment, reform currents swirling throughout European Catholicism, and the development of English thought. They were irenic, though they could be fierce in controversy and sometimes reflected an unfortunate haughtiness associated with the Enlightenment.
Above all, the Cisalpines were optimistic about Catholic chances for full inclusion in cultural and political life. At the time, it was still widely assumed that Catholics could not be loyal Englishmen. Central to the debates surrounding the Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791 (and, later, Catholic Emancipation debates) were the drafting of oaths to be taken by Catholics, asserting the denial of such things as the papal power to depose monarchs (a neuralgic issue in the light of Pope Pius V’s infamous attempt to depose Queen Elizabeth); the purported ability of Catholic clergy to absolve the faithful from civil oaths; and the pernicious myths that Catholics could murder excommunicated princes, that they were not bound ‘‘to keep faith with heretics’’ or that they could use equivocation while taking oaths.
While there was plenty of Protestant prejudice surrounding ‘‘superstitious’’ Catholic worship and false doctrine, Parliament was mainly concerned with ensuring Catholics could be truly loyal to king and country. In the face of this suspicion, these prominent laymen and priests took the lead in the political battle for Catholic rights.
While full emancipation had to wait until 1829 (and Wellington and O’Connell were probably the main protagonists there), the Cisalpines had their share of success in advancing Catholic interests in the preceding decades. Although a complicated affair, Cisalpine correspondence with William Pitt, including the drafting and re-drafting of the oaths, helped smooth the way to the 1791 Relief Act. This legislation removed the teeth of the Penal Laws – the practice of the faith, including hearing Mass, was now legal. Catholics could practise law, propertied gentlemen had the vote, and building faith schools was possible in some circumstances.
The Cisalpines were an ambitious and motley bunch. At the radical limit was the acerbic, eccentric and brilliant Scottish priest Alexander Geddes (1737–1802), a noted biblical critic. He mocked rosaries, medals and indulgences, praised radical anti-papal Jansenists, and ended up (unsurprisingly) losing permission to say Mass. Eamon Duffy said Geddes’s writings were ‘‘unrepresentative of anyone but the author’’, and indeed, most of the Cisalpines were more measured. Charles Butler (1750–1832), the nephew of Alban Butler (of Lives of the Saints fame) was the first Catholic lawyer in Britain since 1688, and his vigorous, fair-minded involvement in public life and achievements as an author earned him the high regard of both Catholics and Protestants.
Joseph Berington was theologically the most significant of the early Cisalpines. A brilliant man in tune with Enlightenment developments, he thought Catholicism could withstand the criticisms of Protestants and sceptics. However, he erred dangerously close to sacrificing important doctrinal truths to the zeitgeist. While he affirmed that the pope was head of the Church, he sometimes implied in apologetic tracts that the power of the pope came from the people rather than directly from Christ. This ecclesiology, while understandably trying to nip allegations of papal despotism in the bud, often borrowed too liberally from Enlightenment political language.
At the other extreme from Geddes was the orthodox and moderate John Lingard (1771–1851), a pioneering historian, resolute defender of Catholicism, and author of the beloved English hymn Hail, Queen of Heaven. Lingard’s career represents a later, more moderate strain of Cisalpinism. However, the Lancashire priest and one-time president of Ushaw College was no less passionate. Lingard was irenic and even proto-ecumenical in how he tried to represent Catholicism to curious Protestants, but he was also stalwart when the faith was attacked, engaging in a long controversy with Shute Barrington, the Anglican Bishop of Durham. Lingard’s monumental six-volume History of England employed rigorous archival work and source-criticism to combat some of the lazy anti-Catholicism in the (admittedly riveting) histories of Enlightened figures such as Hume and Gibbon.
While Lingard was not afraid to admit Catholic crimes and failures, he forced his readers to re-examine what everybody thought they knew about the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre, the rot of the pre-Reformation English Church, the character of Tudor reforms, and so on. (For anyone interested in learning more about the Cisalpines, and Lingard in particular, I highly recommend English Catholic Enlightenment by Joseph Chinnici.)
In several ways, the Cisalpines strikingly anticipated the agenda of Vatican II. They emphasised the study of Scripture and the early Fathers. Liturgically and devotionally they stressed Christocentrism and core Christian doctrines. They were strong advocates of lay Bible reading and of lay participation in the liturgy, and even the use of the vernacular in all or part of the liturgy (Joseph Berington had some very interesting exchanges about this with John Carroll, the first American Catholic bishop). Lingard in particular was proto-ecumenical in his attitude towards Protestants, and incorporated the vernacular in parts of the liturgy at his parish in Lancashire.
The Cisalpines were not without their faults, but they represent a valiant attempt to create (or recover) a truly English form of Catholicism, faithful to English political and cultural developments, and to the philosophical and devotional mood of the English mind. Their successes and their missteps can inspire us, guide us, or serve as warnings during our own day, a period of polarisation in the Church and Anglo-American political and cultural upheaval.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.