Wiseman, Nicholas Patrick Stephen

Cardinal, and chief of the Roman Catholic Church in England, was- born at Seville, Spain, Aug. 2, 1802, of Irish and Spanish extraction. At an early age he was brought to England, and placed in St. Cuthbert's College, at Ushaw, near Durham. He was thence removed to the English College at Rome, where he was ordained a priest, and made a doctor of divinity. He was a professor for a time in the Roman University, and was then made rector of the English College at Rome. In 1828 he published his tora Syriacae. Dr. Wiseman returned to England in 1835, and in the winter of that year delivered a series of lectures upon the leading doctrines of the Catholic Church at the Sardinian Chapel, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. About the same time he delivered his Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, for which he is best known in Protestant literature. He subsequently repaired to Rome, and is understood to have been instrumental in inducing pope Gregory XVI to increase the vicars-apostolic in England The number was doubled, and Dr. Wiseman came back as coadjutor bishop to Dr. Walsh, of the Midland District. He was also appointed president of St. Mary's College, Oscott. In 1847 he again repaired to Rome on the affairs of the English Catholics,'and prepared the way for the subsequent change resolved on in 1848, which was delayed by the troubles that ensued at Rome. He was now made pro-vicar-apostolic of the London district in place of Dr. Griffiths, ceased. Subsequently he was appointed coadjutor, cum jure successionis to Dr. Walsh, who was translated to London; and in 1849, on the death of Dr. Walsh, he became vicarapostolic of the London district. In August he went again to Rome, "not expecting," as he said, "to return to England again." But in a consistory held on Sept. 30, 1850, he was elected to the dignity of cardinal by the title of St. Pudentiana, and was appointed archbishop of Westminster, a step which raised an angry controversy in the papers, and resulted in the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. He died in London, Feb. 15, 1865. Dr. Wiseman was a moderate polemic, a fine scholar, an elegant orator, and an accomplished critic. He was from the first one of the chief contributors to, and joint editor of, the Dublin Quarterly Review, and is the author of numerous pamphlets bearing more or less directly on the religious controversies of the past quarter of a century. His Essays have been reprinted in three vols. 8vo. He also published, Lectures on the Eucharist Recollections of the Last Four Popes: — Fabiola; or, The Church of the Catacombs, etc. Dr. Wiseman was the seventh English cardinal since the Reformation. The other six were Pole, Allen, Howard, York (a son of the Pretender, who was never in England), Weld, and Acton. Archbishop Wiseman's successor was cardinal Manning, the present incumbent.