The convert cardinals - David Newsome

The Victorian Age seems peopled by a race of giants, often - as is the way with giants - given to falling out among themselves. This is the story of two English princes of the Church of Rome who, in spite of their shared Anglican background, came increasingly to find themselves in conflict, once both were within the Catholic fold. Born and raised in the heartland of the Church of England, they were also children of that European-wide reaction to the godless excesses of the French Revolution. Their search for authority and authenticity drove them into the arms of a reinvigorated Papacy, Newman in 1845 and Manning in 1851.;In his brilliantly harnessed double biography, David Newsome alternately uses the strengths and faults of one of his subjects to illuminate the contrasting qualities of the other. We see Manning swiftly enthroned as Archbishop of Westminster, relishing power because he knows how to bring it to bear on the issues that consume him, whether educating the poorest among his London flock or pushing through the doctrine of papal infallibility at the first Vatican Council. Newman on the other hand is the thinker, influencing rather than doing, on the periphery as Superior of the Birmingham Oratory, a supreme apologist for the church of his adoption yet not prepared to back unreservedly Manning's drive for infallibility. -;David Newsome displays that mastery of Victorian social and church history for which he is renowned, as well as the elegant and eloquent style that helped him win the Whitbread Biography Prize. Any thought that there is nothing new left to say about Newman is rapidly dispelled, whilst Manning escapes from Lytton Strachey's 'elegant libels' and a gross miscasting as villain of the piece. The author's final conclusion is that if Newman's claim to canonization is the stronger, this does not necessarily mean that he was the greater man.;David Newsome retired from the Mastership of Wellington College in 1989. Until 1979 he was Headmaster of Christ's Hospital and prior to that he was a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History. In 1980, he won the Whitbread Prize for his biography On the Edge of Paradise, about A.C. Benson. He lives in Cumbria.