Nicholas Wiseman

Nicholas Wiseman (born August 2, 1802, Sevilla, Spain—died February 15, 1865, London, England) was the first cardinal resident in England since the Reformation and the first archbishop of Westminster. He was one of the chief architects of the 19th-century revival of Roman Catholicism in England.

Wiseman’s Irish parents emigrated to Spain, but after his father died, he and his mother went home to County Waterford. He received his doctorate in 1824 and was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Rome and rector of the English College there in 1828.

When the Oxford Movement was aiming to restore 17th-century church ideals through a return of the Anglo-Catholic church in England, Wiseman successfully preached (1835–36) in London on Roman Catholicism and founded the Roman Catholic quarterly Dublin Review. Thereafter he devoted his life to the Roman Catholic revival in England. Made bishop in 1840, he was appointed vicar apostolic of the Midland district and president of Oscott College, near Birmingham. His sympathy with the Oxford Movement’s doctrine created a rapport with such exponents of it as John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey.

Because the Roman Catholic revival was gaining impetus through numerous conversions and through a vast immigration of Roman Catholic labourers from Ireland, Wiseman was transferred in 1848 to London as vicar apostolic. Pope Pius IX, deciding in 1850 to restore a hierarchy of dioceses in England, summoned Wiseman to Rome and made him cardinal and first archbishop of Westminster. Pius’s creation of English dioceses and Wiseman’s declaration of it were denounced as “papal aggression” by the English, who burned the pope and Wiseman in effigy on November 5, 1850 (Guy Fawkes Day). In reply, Wiseman wrote Appeal to the Reason and Good Feeling of the English People. In 1852 he presided at the first Synod of Westminster.

Wiseman was widely respected for his intellect, humanitarianism, and constructive achievements. His celebrated Horae Syriacae (1827; “Syriac Seasons”) contained important original research on the Syriac version of the Old Testament, and his historical novel Fabiola (1854) was translated into many languages.