Making Patristics pertinent : theological echoes and anticipations from John Henry Newman’s 1833 Mediterranean tour

Abstract

Beyond the bare facts, little is popularly known about John Henry Newman’s 1833 Mediterranean tour. While Newman’s biographers describe his journey in lively detail, common knowledge is generally limited to three facts. Firstly, beginning in December of 1832, Newman spent seven months travelling across the Mediterranean Sea. Secondly, during the last leg of his journey, he fell gravely ill with typhoid fever in Sicily, and, thirdly, while sailing to Marseilles en route back to England, he composed his famous poem The Pillar of the Cloud better known by its opening line “Lead, Kindly Light.” The Maltese may themselves be mindful of the unpleasant month that Newman spent in Malta where, at first, he was quarantined for twelve days in the Lazaretto and then afterwards confined to his hotel room for close to a week on account of a severe cough brought on by the cold night air. Thus, initially quarantined and confined, Newman had only a few days remaining in order to see the sights before he departed for Sicily and the Italian peninsula. In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman himself dedicates only three pages to those seven months in southern Europe.2 In those pages, his chief concern is to demonstrate, firstly, what little contact he had with Catholics while abroad and, secondly, how attentively he followed political and ecclesiastical events then unfolding in England. The latter convinced him, that upon his return to England, he had a work to do. In contrast to the Apologia, however, Newman’s Letters and Diaries offer abundant information about his Mediterranean tour.