WISEMAN, NICHOLAS PATRICK STEPHEN (1802 1865), English cardinal, was born at Seville on Aug. 2, 1802, the child of Anglo-Irish parents recently settled in Spain for business purposes. On his father's death in 18o5 he was brought to Waterford. He was educated at Ushaw college, near Durham, and at the English college in Rome, of which he became vice rector in 1827, and rector in 1828. He held the rectorship for twelve years. From the first a devoted student and antiquary, he studied the oriental mss. in the Vatican library, and a first volume, entitled Horae Syriacae, published in 1827, gave promise of a great scholar. Leo XII. appointed him curator of the Arabic mss. in the Vatican, and professor of oriental languages in the Roman university. At this date he had close relations, personal and by correspondence, with Mai, Bunsen, Burgess (bishop of Salisbury), Tholuck and Kluge. His student life was, however, broken by the pope's command to preach to the English in Rome ; and he visited England in 1835-1836, and delivered lectures on the prin ciples and main doctrines of Roman Catholicism in the Sardinian Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and in the church at Moorfields, now pulled down. In 1836 he founded the Dublin Review. In the winter of 1838 he was visited in Rome by Macaulay, Manning and Gladstone.
In 1840 he was consecrated bishop, and sent to England as coadjutor to Bishop Walsh, vicar-apostolic of the Central district, and was also appointed president of Oscott College near Birming ham. Oscott, under his presidency, became a centre for English Catholics, where he was also visited by many distinguished men, including foreigners and non-Catholics. The Oxford converts (1845 and later) added considerably to Wiseman's responsibilities. It was by his advice that Newman and his companions spent some time in Rome before undertaking clerical work in England. Shortly after the accession of Pius IX. Wiseman was appointed temporarily vicar-apostolic of the London district, the appoint ment becoming permanent in February 1849. On his arrival from Rome in 1847 he acted as informal diplomatic envoy from the pope, to ascertain from the government what support England was likely to give in carrying out the liberal policy with which Pius inaugurated his reign. In response Lord Minto was sent to Rome as "an authentic organ of the British Government," but the policy in question proved abortive.
Residing in London in Golden Square, Wiseman threw himself into his new duties with many-sided activity, working especially for the reclamation of Catholic criminals and for the restoration of the lapsed poor to the practice of their religion. He was zealous for the establishment of religious communities, both of men and women, and for the holding of retreats and missions. He preached (July 4, 1848) at the opening of St. George's, South wark, an occasion unique in England since the Reformation, bishops and 24o priests being present, and six religious orders of men being represented. The progress of Catholicism was unde niable, but yet Wiseman found himself steadily opposed by a minority among his own clergy, who disliked his Ultramontane ideas, his "Romanizing and innovating zeal." In July 185o he heard of the pope's intention to create him a cardinal, and expected to be permanently recalled to Rome. But on his arrival there he ascertained that a part of the pope's plan for restoring a diocesan hierarchy in England was that he himself should return to England as cardinal and archbishop of West minster. The papal brief establishing the hierarchy was dated
Sept. 29, 185o, and on Oct. 7 Wiseman wrote a pastoral, dated "from out of the Flaminian Gate"—a form diplomatically correct, but of bombastic tone for Protestant ears—in which he spoke enthusiastically, if also a little pompously, of the "restoration of Catholic England to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament." Wiseman travelled slowly to England, via Vienna; and when he reached London (Nov. I 1), the whole country was ablaze with indignation at the "papal aggression," which was misunderstood to imply a new and unjustifiable claim to territorial rule. But Wiseman wrote an admirable Appeal to the English People in which he explained the nature of the pope's action, and argued that the admitted principle of toleration included leave to estab lish a diocesan hierarchy. In July 1852 he presided at Oscott over the first provincial synod of Westminster. In 1854 Wiseman was in Rome when the definition of the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin (Dec. 8), was promulgated. In 1855 he applied for a coadjutor, and George Errington, bishop of Plymouth, his friend since boyhood, was appointed, with the title of archbishop of Trebizond. Two years later Manning was appointed provost of Westminster and he established in Bays water his community of the "Oblates of St. Charles." In the summer of 1858 Wiseman paid a visit to Ireland:where, as a cardinal of Irish race, he was received with enthusiasm. In 1863, addressing the Catholic Congress at Malines, he stated that since 183o the number of priests in England had increased from 434 to 1,242, and of convents of women from 16 to 162, while there were 55 religious houses of men in 1863 and none in 183o. The last two years of his life were troubled by illness and by controversies in which he found himself, under Manning's influ ence, compelled to adopt a policy less liberal than that which had been his in earlier years. Thus he had to condemn the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom, with which he had shown some sympathy in its inception in 1857; and to forbid Catholic parents to send their sons to Oxford or Cambridge, though at an earlier date he had hoped (with New man) that at Oxford at least a college or hall might be assigned to them. He died on Feb. 16, 1865. On Jan. 3o, 1907, his body was removed with great ceremony from Kensal Green and re buried in the crypt of the new cathedral at Westminster.
Wiseman was one of the most learned men of his time. He was the friend and correspondent of many foreigners of distinction, among whom may be named Dellinger, Lamennais, Montalembert and Napoleon III. He combined with the principles known as Ultramontane no little liberality of view in matters ecclesiastical. He insisted on a poetical interpretation of the Church's liturgy; and while strenuously maintaining her Divine commission to teach faith and morals, he regarded the Church as in other respects a learner; and he advocated a policy of conciliation.
See the biography by Wilfrid Ward, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (2 vols., 1897; fifth edition, 190o). (A. W. Hu.; X.)