Chapter 17: Illness in Sicily
CHAPTER 17
ILLNESS IN SICILY
THE beauty of the countryside in his native England delighted Newman, and so it is no wonder that the scenery of the Greek Islands and Sicily likewise moved him. He wrote to his friend, Frederic Rogers: “I can only say that I did not know before nature could be so beautiful … It passes belief. It is like a garden of Eden, and though it ran in the line of my anticipations (as I say), it far exceeded them.”1 Anyone who has seen the wild flowers of the hillsides of Sicily would share Newman’s rapture and see in these landscapes the goodness and beauty of the Creator. The young Oxford Fellow anticipated the second visit to this ancient Greek colony because of its association with ancient civilization. However, as it turned out, all of this would take second place to a life-threatening illness, which became a powerful source of spiritual direction for his changing life.
After a delay at Naples occasioned by bad weather, Newman journeyed to Messina by a sailing ship and arrived on April 21. From there, he set off to climb Mt. Etna, traveling with a servant, two mules, and several muleteers. He dressed in gray trousers, a straw hat, and a flannel jacket with a black neck cloth, which was the only black he wore. He felt embarrassed by his external appearance and by such a poor cavalcade. The first day’s twenty-mile journey, without the companionship of a friend, was rewarded by a visit to the ruins of Taormina, ancient Tauromenion.
Taormina was a place that enchanted Newman. From the site of an ancient theater, he took in the beautiful scenery. He wrote:
The theatre is situated in a hollow hill, and the scena forms a screen—through it you see magnificent steeps, falling down and down—and above all, Etna towers —at the bottom you see the sea, and the coast circling into a bay and then jutting out into a point, where formerly stood Naxos, the first Greek settlement.2
Later, some miles from Taormina he was able to see Mt. Etna, which was “magnificent beyond description.”3 The following day he traveled to a grove of chestnuts at Mt. Etna’s base, hoping to climb it, but since the mountain was covered with snow, he gave up his plans.
Newman then traveled on a 35-foot sailing vessel from Catania to Syracuse, carrying with him Virgil’s Aeneid and reading Thucydides. Aside from some beautiful sights along the way and a visit to the ruins of a Temple to Minerva, once off the coast of Syracuse pouring rain vexed the travelers, who had almost no food provisions and slept poorly on board.
These dangerous sailing conditions forced Newman to make a portion of the return trip to Catania over land with mules. Following an exhausting trek in which the guide lost his way, they made it to their destination close to midnight. After a day’s rest in Catania, and after seeing the amphitheater, Newman set off on a rainy day for Aderno, a town located twenty miles away on the road to Palermo. The next day, May 2, a very ill Newman reached the town of Leonforte. After a few days of bed rest there, he set off again, but he became so weak that he collapsed along the road. As he lay in a roadside cabin, a physician who passed by attended to him. Newman was taken to Castro San Giovanni, a nearby town, where he was bled as a treatment.
Newman had developed a debilitating febrile illness, possibly typhoid fever. He suffered with high fevers and delirium for eleven days and came close to death.4 When the crisis of the fever passed, Newman still remained in bed for a week. His subsequent letters described many details of the illness and the diligent care of a local physician at Castro San Giovanni. He also wrote about the honesty of his hosts and the thoughts of his future that had crossed his mind while he lay sick.
For Newman, who bore illness well, this would be his only life-threatening illness, and through it, he saw the hand of God’s Providence. As when he succumbed to mental exhaustion while examiner at Oriel, he understood that everything is part of God’s plan and an indication of God’s care. Newman earnestly believed that God guides the lives of men, in sickness and in health; he thought God was sparing him for a mission.
In all, he spent seven weeks in Sicily; the last two weeks were spent in Palermo, where he continued his convalescence while awaiting a sailing vessel for Marseilles, on which he finally set sail on June 13th. Even more than the memory of the beautiful landscape and churches, the dangerous fever and the nearness to death remained etched in his mind. This illness marked a decisive moment in Newman’s life, comparable to the Crossing of the Rubicon for Julius Caesar. Heading home to England, Newman knew that he must fight in defense of the Anglican Church’s doctrinal, spiritual, and ecclesiastical prerogatives. In his mind, Newman had declared a war against what he termed “liberalism in religion.”
Prior to this watershed experience, Newman had been speaking with his friends at Oxford for some years about the Church’s urgent need for good leaders, especially celibate men from the university. On his voyage, he had put into writing many of the ideals that he and his friends had about the renewal of the English Church. Newman’s poems inspired adherence to doctrinal truths, holiness of life, devout sacramental practice, and continuity with the Church’s Tradition. His recovery made it clear to him the leading role that he would play in this renewal. He did not conceive a specific plan of action, but he felt God protecting him and preserving him for this important mission. He wrote to Rogers that, though he had given his servant instructions of how to convey news of his death to England, he had had the firm conviction of recovery: “I thought God had work for me.”5
In Palermo, he at last received news from home. With great joy, he read in a newspaper about Rogers’s election as Oriel Fellow. Newman had been worried about being away from Oxford for that election of his pupil and friend and at once wrote to him a congratulatory letter.
Homesick and awaiting a ship for the return home, Newman continued to pour his spiritual convictions into verse. At this point, the principal subject of the verses was the attack on the Church, which he calls by the reverent and pious name of Mother. In “Day-Labourers,” he urges the Christian warrior to rid his mother of her present chain. In “Liberalism,” he disdains the comforts of tranquility and the doubting character of statesmen and Churchmen.
In this frame of mind, and finally at sea on his way home, Newman wrote the now celebrated poem “Lead Kindly Light” on June 16, 1833, almost seven months after the departure from England. The poem was more like a prayer, a recapitulation of the state of his soul:
LEAD, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead Thou me on!6
Amid the darkness of the moment, the poem was a prayer of faith in God’s power and hope in His goodness. In this poem, Newman admitted to a prideful way of life and overconfidence in his youth. Now with humility he was determined to pursue the doctrinal and spiritual renewal of the Church of England, even though he did not know the specific path to follow. Only a few weeks from the “beginning” of the Oxford Movement, he entrusted the future of this daunting work to God’s power.
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1LD, Vol. III, JHN to Frederic Rogers (June 5, 1833), 312-15; 315.
2LD, Vol. III, JHN to Harriet Newman (April 25, 1833), 301-05, 303.
3Ibid., 304.
4LD, Vol. III, Diary entries, 311; AW, 121-38.
5LD, Vol. III, JHN to Frederic Rogers (June 5, 1833), 312-15; 314.
6“The Pillar of the Cloud,” in VV (At Sea, June 16, 1833), 156-58; 156.