Caesarism and Ultramontanism; By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster
London: Burns and Oates, 1874. X. First edition. Contemporary three-quarter red morocco (7 1/8 inches tall), marbled boards, endpapers and edges, satin ribbon marker. Modest edge-wear to boards, small chip to head of faintly toned spine, faint offsetting to last page of letter. An excellent copy. Item #974
"OBEDIENCE TO THE CHURCH IS LIBERTY; AND IT IS LIBERTY BECAUSE THE CHURCH CANNOT ERR OR MISLEAD EITHER MEN OR NATIONS" First book edition of Henry Edward Manning's ringing defense of Ultramontanism—with an Autographed Letter Signed by Archbishop Manning and bound in contemporary boards.
Manning succeeded Cardinal Wiseman as the second Archbishop of Westminster and served from 1865 until his death in 1892. Caesarism and Ultramontanism, published a year before Manning was created a Cardinal, was a repudiation of Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf which included a campaign to bend the Catholic Church in Germany. Manning had a personal interest in the dispute: "It is not surprising that Henry Edward Manning had strong opinions about the Kulturkampf, Otto von Bismarck's effort in the early 1870’s to bring the Roman Catholic Church in Germany under the control of the State. As head of the Catholic Church in England, it appropriately fell to Manning to condemn what most British Catholics would have seen as the persecution of their Church in the new German Empire. Moreover, Manning knew personally the bishops involved in the conflict with Bismarck from their time together at the Vatican Council. Manning considered these men to have suffered for the cause of religious liberty, and could not understand the indifference of British politicians, especially of liberals like Gladstone, to their fate" (Jeffrey P. von Arx).
Originally an address read before the Academia of the Catholic Religion (Manning's preferred platform for important pronouncements) at Christmas 1873, this important speech describes three "Caesarisms." the Pagan Caesarism of ancient Rome, the Ultramontane Caesarism of the Catholic Church, and the modern State Caesarism, with partcular reference to the Falck (Falk) Laws of Bismarck's Germany and the Vatican Council's definition of infallibility. This printed edition added a lengthy Preface (dated, "January 1, 1874") that sought to reply to "a great many answers and objections [that] have been made to it from various quarters." With a letter February 1874 on the Archbishop's stationery presenting the work to Lord Odo Russell, the first British ambassador to the new Germany—signed with a flourish: "Always very truly yours, / †Henry Archbishop of West." Von Arx. Archbishop Manning and the Kulturkampf. British Catholic History (October 1992).
Price: $300.00