Book Reviews / CHRC . () –
James Pereiro, ‘Ethos’ and the Oxford Movement. At the Heart of Tractarian- ism. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York , viii + pp. ISBN . .
This book can be read in at least four ways. Firstly, it takes a well-deserved place among contemporary revisionist historical research into the Oxford Move- ment. Pereiro works on the basis of a more differentiated picture of High Churchmanship and Tractarianism (a differentiation for which Peter Nock- les’ study The Oxford Movement in Context is still the point of reference) than the remarkably well-received image that the Oxford fathers themselves propagated—as if, on the one hand, High Churchmanship had become irre- deemably “high and dry,” and as if, on the other, Tractarianism was nothing radical but rather the longed-for revival of classical Anglican High Church principles. Pereiro’s book continues the reflection on the place of Tractarian- ism in relation to the High Church school, but interestingly also in relation to Evangelicalism. Within this historical framework, secondly, Pereiro erects a monument for someone who “was part of a supporting cast of secondary figures in the drama of the Oxford Movement who have remained in relative obscurity” due to the usual, somewhat imbalanced attention to Keble, Pusey, and most of all Newman,aswellasageneral“scholarly neglect of the London Tractarians” (pp. –). This figure is the London lawyer Samuel Francis Wood (– ), brother of Charles Wood, first Viscount Halifax, and consequently an uncle of the second Viscount Halifax who was a leader of the Anglo-Catholics between the s and the s. Samuel Wood was an intimate friend and spiritual companion of, among others, Manning and Newman. Pereiro realised the importance of Wood when he studied the (dispersed) Manning papers (including letters from Wood to Manning) for his acclaimed intellectual biog- raphy of Cardinal Manning (). Letters from Wood to Newman survive because an aged Newman handed them to Lord Halifax, so that they can be found in the Halifax papers now. The appendix to Pereiro’s book includes three of Wood’s letters to Manning and one to Newman (pp. –). Despite the fact that the title of Pereiro’s book does not explicitly refer to Wood, the book is nevertheless at least in part a study on Wood, his relationship to the Oxford Movement, and his contribution to it by way of a theological correspondence with its leaders. An important role in this book is played by a document written by Wood at the request of Newman and Pusey: a history of the Oxford Movement up to . Newman and Pusey approved of Wood’s manuscript and added their comments in the margin. Pereiro appends the
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, DOI: 10.1163/187124110X545326 Book Reviews / CHRC . () – complete document (pp. –) and draws on it throughout the book, especially in his biography of Wood (chapter ) and in an account of the Oxford Movement (chapter ). Thirdly, the book is of course (as the title indicates) an investigation into the concept of ethos (chapter and passim). Ethos is well known as an idea frequently used by the Tractarians, but in theological accounts of the Oxford Movement it is rather neglected as one of its constitutive forces. It is, Pereiro argues, seriously underestimated when equated with no more than feeling, habit, or style. In the minds of particularly Keble, Froude, and Newman, ethos had to do with principle and character, both of a person and of an idea. Pereiro shows that the centrality of ethos with the Tractarians can be traced back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Butler’s Analogy. Ethos,then, refers to a person’s overall composition of holiness and learning, so that the Tractarians could speak of a “Catholic ethos” as the prerequisite for a Christian who wants to be on the right moral and intellectual path. Pereiro shows how not only the principle of “reserve,” but also Newman’s theory of religious knowledge (antecedent probability) derives from the concept of ethos.With these themes Pereiro convincingly supports his claim that ethos has been a formative principle in Tractarian and post-Tractarian intellectual history. The latter theme also leads to the fourth way in which this book (atleast chapters and ) can be read, namely as a contribution to the historiography of the theory of doctrinal development, not only in Newman, but in other Trac- tarians as well. Challenging the received view, exemplarily expressed in Chad- wick’s From Bossuet to Newman (second ed. ), in which Newman’s Essay on Development is seen as the result of a rather quick conversion on the subject, Pereiro sketches the growth of the development theory using correspondence between Wood (who occurs as the author of a half-way development theory as early as ), Manning, and Newman. In this light, the Essay on Devel- opment is read as the outcome of an awareness, gradually growing through interaction with people like Wood, of the untenability of the Via Media,not least because the concept of ethos led Newman to believe that the ethos of the apostolic era and the Early Church was not to be found in Anglicanism but in Roman Catholicism. Pereiro finishes his book by describing the Tractarians’ dislike of the Refor- mation ethos, their reading of the Early Church as possessing an ethos different from the Anglican (even High Church) one, and the reasons why a number of Anglican Catholics seceded to Rome on these grounds. As a result, the struc- ture of Pereiro’s book suggests the consummation of the Tractarian concept of ethos by the Roman Catholic Church or by persons gradually becoming Roman