John Cornwell’s biography of John Henry Newman, Newman’s Unquiet Grave, appeared just in time for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain in September, during which he beatified the cardinal.[1] Early reviews seized on the allusion, in its rather catchpenny title, to the exhumation of Newman’s body (which turned out to have decomposed) in 2008, and on the possible homoerotic implications of his wish to be buried alongside a fellow-priest and close friend, Father Ambrose St. John. The strident headlines (“Was Newman Gay?”) merely testified to a failure to understand either the rule of celibacy—to which Newman vowed himself at the age of sixteen—or the nineteenth-century cult of intense masculine friendship which could, but need not, involve homosexual feeling. Cornwell himself avoids...

 

A Message from the Editors

Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.

Popular Right Now