Chapter 16: Travel in the Mediterranean
CHAPTER 16
TRAVEL IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
IN the spring of 1832, Archdeacon Froude invited New man to accompany him and his son, Richard Hurrell Froude, to Europe, hoping that a stay in Southern Europe would be of benefit to his son’s ailing health. By the fall, Newman agreed to this trip and thought that the journey would expand his mind. He wrote Froude that he would never again have the opportunity of traveling abroad in the company of such a good friend and of Froude’s father, an older person of proven character. The three men began their travel on December 8 aboard a steamship named Hermes, sailing toward Malta and the Greek Isles.
Before leaving England, Newman suggested to Rose that he send a regular contribution of poetry to the British Magazine. The magazine had been founded the year before in response to the influx of liberal theological speculation coming from Germany and to the Whig reform plans. In November, he wrote to Rose: “Our object is, to bring out certain truths and facts, moral and ecclesiastical, and religious, simply and forcibly, with greater freedom, and clearness than in Keble’s Christian Year. I will not go on to say, with greater poetry.”1 In the same letter, he suggested the title Lyra Apostolica. The poems first appeared in the British Magazine, but in 1836, the collection was published in one volume under the proposed title. Keble, Froude, and others contributed to the volume, but the major contribution was Newman’s.
One of the first verses composed on the trip was “The Saint and the Hero,” in which the author addresses a saint unknown to the reader:
O aged Saint! far off I heard
The praises of thy name;—
Thy deed of power, thy prudent word,
Thy zeal’s triumphant flame.2
In the following stanza, the author admits his weakness of heart before this saint and, in the third stanza, expresses his desire to serve Heaven in the “humblest ways” without spurning any extraordinary blessings. “Humblest ways” may refer to Newman’s uncertain future at Oriel.
“Private Judgment,” the next poem he wrote, was addressed to “Poor wanderers,” or the current Church of England. Newman said that these wanderers trusted their own weak will and languished as a blind idol. To the Church, God had granted prophets and a Creed that had been cast aside. He ended this short poem with a summons, which foreshadowed the Oxford Movement:
Wand’rers! come home! obey the call!
A Mother pleads, who ne’er let fall
One grain of Holy Truth;
Warn you and win she shall and must,
For now she lifts her from the dust,
To reign as in her youth.3
By the end of his travels, Newman had written at least 107 poems. This collection is a unique spiritual record of his desires and prayers for the renewal of the Church of England. The tone of the verses, unlike Keble’s gentle verse, was forceful and, at times, tormented. Despite the sadness of some of the verses, overall they express Newman’s firm trust in Divine Providence and his growing sense of a personal vocation at the service of the Anglican Church. For example, in “The Patient Church,” Newman wrote about the sin of schism foreshadowed in the Old Testament by the revolt of ten tribes from the House of David. Newman entreats the Church: “Bide thou thy time!”4 while she waits for “the bright Advent that shall loose thy chain.”5 This was as much an entreaty to himself as to the Church. The young Oxford don was like a compressed spring ready to uncoil; the question was when and how.
In effect, the poems convey the spiritual and doctrinal vision underpinning the Oxford Movement. The poems were soon followed by tracts, written essays in booklet form that stated and developed the theological principles underlying this vision. In a letter to his sisters, Newman explained that, through his verses, he tried to attend to ideas more than to language. He wished to avoid the obscurity of much contemporary poetry. Even though Newman was not pleased with his sonnets, he accomplished his goal of presenting key ideas with rich language, good cadence, and clear expression. Some of these poems were published in the British Magazine and were later compiled with other texts under the title of Verses on Various Occasions.
The scenery along the voyage afforded Newman imagery for his poems. The Hermes crossed the English Channel and sailed around the coast of Portugal and Spain to Gibraltar, where the group was welcomed by English officers stationed there. Newman was impressed by the heavy military fortifications of the English stronghold.6 Struck by the powerful image of English military might, Newman reflected in verse on the character of his country and on its contrasting and precarious spiritual condition. Thus at Gibraltar, he penned “England,” a warning and a plea to his country that, to be spared, it must, like Sodom, show ten good men. It should not vaunt, as Babel did in its high towers, nor find comfort in its military power:
Tyre of the West, and glorying in the name
More than in Faith’s pure fame!
O trust not crafty fort nor rock renown’d
Earn’d upon hostile ground;
Wielding Trade’s master-keys, at thy proud will
To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still.7
After a short stay in the English territory, the three continued on the steam packet to Malta, and along the way, they were able to see at a distance the imposing mountain range of Northern Africa. In Malta, they were confined under quarantine at a Lazaret and were obliged to spend Christmas Day isolated.8 Nevertheless, they were treated well and soon continued their journey to the Greek Isles. As they journeyed on, Newman read Homer’s Odyssey.
From the start of the voyage Newman had given full reign to his descriptive narrative and poetic verses, but the beauty of Corfu (Corcyra) and Sicily stirred his imagination the most and led him to praise these above all other places. Newman’s youthful romanticism, combined with his reading of classical epics and modern novels, elicited his marvel at mountain ranges, harbors and countryside about which he had read.
His imagination was particularly vivid when the Hermes passed the island Ithaca. Upon first seeing the island, he must have remembered patient Penelope, faithful at her loom, waiting for the great Odysseus to punish the cruel suitors. Soon his thoughts returned to his earliest memories as a schoolboy, when he first began to read the Classics, and to Ham and other places associated with his childhood.
Continuing by the Greek Isles, the party stopped in Patras on the coast of the Peloponnesus and then continued to Corfu. The travelers spent a week at Corfu, and with great detail, Newman narrated to his family everything that he saw. He was taken by the sight of the picturesque town, the dress of the population, and local commerce. He described with interest the numerous churches and the piety of the people and clergy. It is no surprise that his thoughts went to theologians of the early Church, in particular the fourth-century Greek Fathers. In a short poem, he praised the attributes of Clement, Dionysius, Origen, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Athanasius, and the Apostle Paul. Another poem composed later in Palermo was dedicated exclusively to Nazianzen, the “PEACE-LOVING man, of humble heart and true.”9
Newman was awestruck with the beauty of Corfu’s harbor and the island’s landscape, composed of tall cypress trees and countless olive and orange trees in full fruit. Most of all, he was struck with the thought of the ancient Greeks whose land he was treading. During this part of the journey, he reread The History of the Peloponnesian Wars; the musings of Thucydides and Homer would not leave his mind.
In a flight of literary enthusiasm, he told Harriet:
If Thucydides were to rise from the dead, he would recognize the spot—he would point at the mountains which dressed in the old fashion; thus I have something in common with him—and knowing his lines, seeing the change, I am in his place, as it were, and see the vision for him. I am Thucydides with the gift of second sight.10
For a scholar of Classics, this visit would hold extraordinary significance; for Newman, it was enrapturing.
Besides his awe at Greek history, Newman found similarities between himself and a biblical figure. Newman compared himself with Melchizedec in the poem titled with this name and penned while at Corfu. It was like a miniature spiritual biography of Newman who, fatherless, and experiencing loneliness far from home and friends, sought God’s presence and will. The beauty of the island made his sorrow keener, yet Newman felt richly blessed by God, of Whom he wrote:
He moulds the vessel of His vast design;
Fatherless, homeless, reft of age and place,
Sever’d from earth, and careless of its wreck,
Born through long woe His rare Melchizedec.11
These verses, which may at first suggest presumption on Newman’s part, are better understood in light of his distress over the situation of the Church in England and his growing awareness of a divine vocation. His deep spiritual sense was, at the same time, mixed with his love for the magnanimous elements of Greek heroes.
Naturally, Newman desired to go on to Athens, which was within a day’s travel, but the fear of bandits kept the group from going farther. Greece was in political turmoil and unsafe for travel; it was awaiting the arrival of its future king, Prince Otto of Bavaria, with his army. Therefore, after an overnight stop at Patras, the party returned to Malta.
Upon reaching Malta, a port of entry to Europe, they were obliged to undergo quarantine for ten days owing to an alarm concerning cholera. On various nights, Newman was awakened by strange noises that he could only explain by attributing them to a visitation by a spirit.12 Though mildly amusing, this incident kept Newman awake and exposed him to cold weather. In such conditions, he developed an upper respiratory infection that confined him to bed for a week after the quarantine. Despite illness, his letters mention a number of times the satisfaction of being on the island where St. Paul had stopped on the way to Rome, and before departing from Malta, he managed to visit by boat the Bay of St. Paul where Paul was once shipwrecked.
Throughout his trip, Newman wrote many detailed letters to his mother and sisters, which serve as a colorful description of the journey. Next to the elaborate narration of events, he playfully summed up the small group’s activity at the Lazaret: “The F.s draw and paint. I have hired a violin and it sounds grand (bad as it is) in such spacious halls.”13 Of course, he did more than play the violin; in addition to prayer and taking Italian lessons, he wrote several long letters to his family, Isaac Williams, and John W. Bowden. In one letter he explained how Catholic clergy were tried in their own courts, and commented: “I mention all this at length, because it exemplifies the admirable system of the Papacy as an instrument of power.”14
After Malta, the group made a short stop in Sicily. They planned to visit the island at length during warmer weather after first traveling to Rome. Newman narrated the quite amusing arrival at Palermo. He and Froude raced a countess and her party from aboard ship to secure the best lodging in the city. After jumping from the ship and trying to outdo the other party that was rowing ashore, they ran through streets thronged with people to the best lodging. The countess, however, arrived before them and “took the whole inn.”15 On top of this, she instantly set off by coach to procure two other inns, sent a servant to a third, and “[t]hus in fact she took the whole town.”16
From Palermo, they traveled by mule to the ancient town of Egesta. There they visited the remains of a Greek temple. For Newman, Sicily represented the repository of Greek culture. Enamored by the past, he wrote to Jemima: “Such was the genius of early Greek worship, grand in the midst of error; simple and unadorned in its architecture, it chose some elevated spot, and fixed its faith as a solitary witness on heights where it could not be hid.”17 After four days, they traveled from Palermo to Naples by ship and from Naples to Rome by land, but Newman was determined to return to Sicily.
The contrast between Newman’s impressions of Naples and Rome could not be more distinct. The former had miserable weather, dirty streets, a frivolous and profligate populace, and, worst of all, a post office that devoured a person’s correspondence. He wrote Thomas Mozley: “wretched Naples keeps all the letters you direct to it—you might as well direct to its bay as to its poste restante.”18 Newman also criticized the clergy of Naples and described the religious worship as pagan. Newman’s humorous yet candid caricature of Naples reflects his frustration with not having received news from home for over two months because of the inefficiency of the post office and, even more, his sensitive nature that would sometimes lead him to harsh and hasty judgments of people.
Newman wrote this biting account of Naples despite a kind welcome by Mr. Bennett, the Anglican chaplain at the English consulate, an evening at the opera, and a trip to the ruins of Pompeii. He did acknowledge that the cathedral and the museum were both worth visiting and noted the beauty of the surrounding town and cleanliness of the people. On his return trip to Sicily, an obliged stay in Naples made him reconsider and soften his earlier description of the city. He even admitted that Naples’ bay was larger than that of Palermo or Corfu and almost as beautiful. Still, he referred to the post office with contempt.
At last came Rome, which was described by Newman as the most beautiful city that he had visited. Rome had large streets with beautiful churches. By comparison to Malta and Naples, he found the clergy moral, methodical, and pious. Newman and the Froudes spent five weeks in Rome visiting different sites every day, with the exception of St. Peter’s Basilica and Square, which they revisited many times despite Newman’s disdain for “popery.” In particular, he was impressed with the dimensions of the basilica, especially from within the dome. He was most struck by the mosaics and the fountains in Rome, including the mosaics of the Transfiguration in St. Peter’s and the two fountains in its square. But the sight of St. Peter’s Basilica on Easter night, with the dome illuminated and men tied by ropes streaming from it, was a most memorable one.
During this long stay, made pleasant by good weather, they visited many churches, the catacombs, the city walls, picture galleries in the Vatican and on Capitoline Hill, the Roman palazzi, and surrounding sites in Frascati, Marino, and Albano. On Good Friday, they attended the service at the English Chapel and, in the afternoon, visited the Sistine Chapel, where they heard the Miserere, or Psalm 50, beautifully sung. On the previous day they had heard a version of the Miserere by another composer. Newman was able to write to his Oxford friend, Robert F. Wilson: “Rome is one of the most delightful residences imaginable.”19 The remains of classical and Christian history, the performance of sacred and profane music and the sight of beautiful statues and paintings blended together with devout religious practice and interesting conversations with friends that delighted his mind and gave him ample material for his letters.
In Rome, the travelers met with various friends including Edward Neale, a former student of Newman at Oriel, William Wilberforce, Jr. and his wife, who were living in Rome at the time, as well as Charles Anderson, also from Oriel, and his family. They called twice on Nicholas Wiseman, Rector of the English College in Rome, and had a long conversation with him. They met with Joseph Severn, a painter and later British Consul in Rome. Newman also had several meetings with Abbot Santini, a musicologist, as well as Baron Christian Bunsen, a Prussian diplomat to the Vatican.
Newman’s youthful fascination with Rome was mixed with the difficulty of reconciling the fact that the Roman Church was established at the site of Pagan Rome. His fundamentalist reading of the fourth kingdom mentioned in the Book of Revelation made an appearance in the letters to his friends. For him, it was useless to distinguish between imperial Rome and Christian Rome:
[Y]ou have to view Rome as a place of religion; and here what mingled feelings come upon one—you are in the place of martyrdom and burial of apostles and saints; you have about you the buildings and the sights they saw, and you are in the city to which England owes the blessing of the Gospel. But then, on the other hand, the superstitions, or rather, what is far worse, the solemn reception of them as an essential part of Christianity.20
Newman imagined that there must be good Christians among the Catholics in Rome and observed the appearance of piety in its clergy and churches, yet he insisted that the overall system was corrupt and that Rome was under a curse.21 To Rickards he explained that the city and State were the heirs of Pagan Rome and were still accursed, and that this curse affected God’s Church there. He tried, however, to exonerate the Church by speaking of “a sort of Genius Loci which enthralls the Church which happens to be there.”22 The Church was the instrument and slave of Rome, and one day it would be set free.
Though he had many misgivings about the Roman Church, he felt different about its ancient counterpart. He thought that the Greek Church had less corruption and could move more easily toward the English Church. He wrote to Jemima about the Greek Church: “It does not teach purgatory or the Mass, two chief practical delusions of Romanism.”23 Newman wrote that the Mass and Purgatory were inventions, and “Saint worship,” which he considered polytheism, was a corruption of the faith. He admitted, however, that popular devotion to saints was only sanctioned, not taught by the Church. This popular devotion ran into excesses such as fabulous miraculous tales and superstitions.
Newman judged the Roman Catholic Church harshly on the subject of the Sacrifice of the Mass. However, at Zante, he had entered a Greek Church “at the time the priests were consecrating the elements” and found it to be “most imposing,” even though he believed that Greeks do not hold it to be a sacrifice.24 Even though the Orthodox consider worship as entering into the mystery of Divine life and emphasize the action of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic liturgy, they believe that Christ becomes present when the Holy Spirit descends upon the congregation and Eucharistic bread and wine; this was the consequence of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.
Newman was also mistaken in the claim that Rome had the custom of “forced celibacy” for its clergy.25 Since the early Middle Ages men in the West who wished to be ordained to the priesthood freely chose celibacy as a requirement for ordination. In the East, the practice remained that married men could be ordained to the priesthood, but men, once ordained, could not seek marriage.
In Rome, Newman and his friends parted company. The Froudes traveled to France, wishing to visit religious sites in Southern France associated with the life of St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was martyred by King Henry II in 1170. From Rome, Newman set off for Naples, planning to travel from there by steamer to Messina in Sicily. Bad sailing weather delayed him in Naples for a few days, and as a result, he had time to go on a very difficult excursion up Vesuvius and down into its steep crater that emanated sulfur fumes and was lined with hot ashes. On other days during this stay, Newman visited Virgil’s tomb, St. Elmo Castle on a hill overlooking the beautiful Bay of Naples, a library, and a museum.
This young, adventurous thirty-two-year-old Newman made fast judgments about people and institutions that resulted in harsh comments or trite generalizations. Nevertheless, he sometimes later changed his mind or qualified earlier statements. Regarding Naples, for example, he wrote his mother: “I think the popular and exoteric religion as nearly pagan as you can fancy—but I really have found the people very civil and good-natured, tho knaves; and very clever and humorous. They are complete punches.”26 He also described the tricks of boys who played a tune when unsuccessful at begging, and concluded: “so altogether I think we were hard on this poor place, which I begin to like if it were only out of remorse at having been so violent against it.”27
Newman’s Mediterranean voyage had two memorable high points: the visits to Corfu and to Rome. In Corfu and the other Greek Isles the young traveler recalled Homer’s heroes and thought often about the Greek Church Fathers. In Rome he was impressed by the grandeur of the monuments of Ancient Rome, and the beauty of Christian churches, especially the Vatican Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The visit to the Eternal City mitigated his bias against Roman Catholicism. From Naples, Newman embarked on the last leg of his trip, which was an extended stay in Sicily. This was to prove decisive for the years immediately following.
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1LD, Vol. III, JHN to Hugh James Rose (November 26, 1832), 119-20; 120.
2“The Saint and the Hero,” in VV (Bay of Biscay, December 10, 1832), 77.
3“Private Judgment,” in VV (Off Cape Ortegal, December 11, 1832), 78-79.
4“The Patient Church,” in VV (Off Algiers, December 20, 1832), 92-93; 92.
5Ibid.
6LD, Vol. III, JHN to Jemima Newman (December 18, 1832), 151-54.
7“England,” in VV (At Sea, December 18, 1832), 89-90.
8LD, Vol. III (Entries for December 24 and 25, 1832), 162.
9“St. Gregory Nazianzen,” in VV (Palermo, June 12, 1833), 151-52; 151.
10LD, Vol. X, JHN to Harriet Newman (January 2, 1833), 176-85; 177.
11“Melchizedec,” in VV (Corfu, January 5, 1833), 108.
12LD, Vol. III, JHN to Jemima Newman (January 15, 1833), 187-92; 191.
13LD, Vol. III, JHN to Jemima Newman (January 15, 1833), 187-92; 188-89.
14Ibid., 190.
15Ibid., 190.
16Ibid., 190.
17LD, Vol. III, JHN to Jemima Newman (February 19, 1833), 215-21; 219.
18LD, Vol. III, JHN to Thomas Mozley (Rome, March 9, 1833), 241-44; 243.
19LD, Vol. III, JHN to R. F. Wilson (March 18, 1833), 255-58; 258.
20LD, Vol. III, JHN to J. F. Christie (March 7, 1833), 240.
21LD, Vol. III, JHN to R. F. Wilson (March 18, 1833), 255-58; 258; LD, Vol. III, JHN to Jemima Newman (March 20, 1833), 262-66; 265.
22LD, Vol. III, JHN to Samuel Rickards (April 14, 1833), 287-90; 288.
23LD, Vol. III, JHN to Jemima Newman (March 20, 1833), 262-66; 265.
24LD, Vol. III, JHN to Jemima Newman (January 15, 1833), 187-92; 192.
25LD, Vol. III, JHN to Samuel Rickards (April 14, 1833), 287-90; 289.
26LD, Vol. III, JHN to Mrs. Newman (April 17, 1833), 293-97; 294.
27Ibid., 295.