Keywords

Definition

Anglo-Catholicism came into wider circulation as an established theological position within the Anglican Communion in large part through the Oxford or Tractarian Movement, initially formed in the late 1820s and early 1830s by a group of scholars and clergy at the University of Oxford. Over the ensuing decades Anglo-Catholicism was promulgated by religious and laity alike, with significant contributions made by women writers, including Cecil Frances Alexander, Dora Greenwell, Maria Francesca Rossetti, Christina Georgina Rossetti, Adelaide Procter, and Charlotte Yonge.

The Anglo-Catholic theological heritage officially dates to the establishment of the Anglican Church by Henry VIII (1509–1547) but the term “Anglo-Catholic” or “High Church” came to be closely associated with the Oxford Movement as a result of its effort to, as Geoffrey Rowell puts it, define and defend the Church of England’s historical and doctrinal continuity with Catholicism, and to clarify Anglican theology’s view of “sacraments, rites, and ceremonies” (The Vision Glorious 13). Victorian Anglo-Catholics emphasized renewed fidelity to liturgical rubrics outlined in the Book of Common Prayer; a return to and revival of pre-Reformation Christian theological sources and devotions; the use of set practices in liturgical worship; and reception of the sacrament of the Eucharist and, to a more limited extent, the practice of confession.

Anglo-Catholicism was as much a literary movement as a theological one. Its literature is characterized by an aesthetic of reserve, consisting of the use of biblical typology and metaphysical conceits; studies of nature and eschatology; and frequent allusions to scripture, the liturgical calendar and cycles of feast days as well as the rites of worship. All of these elements serve to communicate the mystery of God’s simultaneous immanence within and transcendence of history and the world. Isaac Williams articulated the doctrine of reserve in an Oxford Movement Tract, called On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge (1838), which examines how both the Old and New Testament communicate divine revelation through veiled or symbolic speech. Christians are therefore invited, he argues, to adopt a reserved and contemplative way of speaking – one which best models Christ’s habit of teaching “sacred lessons” in an “implied” manner that, to be understood, required “attentive recollection” and a discrete spirit of prayer (“On Reserve in Speaking of Sacred Things” para. 5).

Leading Victorian women writers of the Anglo-Catholic heritage often became established literary figures and theologians, supporting women’s right to education, theological and catechetical formation, the value of the arts for the devotional life, and social reform. Moreover, they wrote and published poetry, hymns, novels and short stories, biblical exegesis, and historical biographies, often also overseeing the publication of periodicals for audiences across class divides and which covered topics on religion, aesthetics, ethics, Church history, the social and domestic roles of women, social welfare, and education. Anglo-Catholic women writers often collaborated with John Keble, John Henry Newman, and other male poets and theologians of the Oxford Movement but they also advanced their own initiatives, developing unique literary voices and theological approaches. As Cynthia Scheinberg observes, Victorian “religious poetry” serves as a “site in which we find evidence of women’s creative and original engagements with religious text and theology” (Women’s Poetry and Religion in Victorian England 3). It is only recently, however, that Victorian women writers are increasingly understood as serious theologians in their own right who contributed to a wide range of fields, including theological aesthetics, practical theology, philosophy of religion, natural sciences, theological anthropology, and ethics. To date, there still remains significant work to be done in this promising but under-examined area of Victorian history and religious culture.

Introduction

In the early stages of the Anglican Church, its theology was systematized by a series of prominent clergy, including Richard Hooker (1554–1600), Bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752), and other seventeenth-century Caroline Divines. They placed special emphasis on the writings of the Church Fathers and aspects of certain doctrines promulgated by Pre-Reformation Church Councils of the Roman Catholic tradition, especially those related to apostolic succession, ecclesiastical polity, the devotional life, biblical exegesis, and rubrics for liturgical worship. The leaders and adherents of the Oxford movement advanced the dogmatic theology of these earlier Anglo-Catholic theologians, promoting and popularizing them in sermons, devotional verse, educational initiatives, public lectures, and the publication of tracts, periodicals, and studies, such as Tracts for the Times (1833–1841), Lyra Apostolica (1836), the Library of the Fathers (1838), the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (1841), and the unfinished anthology, Lives of the English Saints (c.1843).

In sharing certain aesthetic and liturgical aspects of the Roman Catholic tradition, Anglo-Catholicism often received criticism from the Evangelical and Low Church branches of the Anglican Church. The Broad Church (or “Liberal”) tradition of the nineteenth century aimed to mediate tensions caused by High Church (Anglo-Catholic) and Low Church (Evangelical) doctrinal differences. To this day, theological debate exists regarding the extent to which various branches of the Anglican communion are in agreement with aspects of the Anglo-Catholic positions developed by the Tractarians and explored by contemporary Anglican theologians, such as the members of the Radical Orthodoxy school – a system of philosophical theology founded in the 1990s by John Milbank (1952 –), Catherine Pickstock (1970 –), and Graham Ward (1955 –).

The Victorian Anglo-Catholic movement was known for its social conscience, especially with respect to serving slum districts; widening access to education by founding schools across the British Isles, especially in underprivileged areas; establishing conventual sisterhoods; publishing periodicals on religion, politics, and culture; supporting religious initiatives in arts and crafts production; and promoting the education of women. Anglo-Catholic clergy serving poor areas were known as slum ritualists or local missionaries who sought to bring both enriched liturgical practices and social improvement to the poorest areas of Britain’s major industrial cities and rural districts. Anglo-Catholic women often either supported or led these kinds of missional outreach. With the establishment of Anglican conventual sisterhoods, a series of welfare initiatives were established throughout the United Kingdom with many of them originating in or around London. For instance, the Anglican Community of the Sisters of Mercy established a series of educational programs for young children and the Community of the Holy Cross, initially founded by Elizabeth Neale in 1857, helped serve the parish of St. Peter’s, London Docks. The order soon expanded, opening up a series of homes, such as St. Stephen’s Home for Girls in Kennington Park (London), which billeted orphans and children who could not receive adequate care at home (“Community of the Holy Cross”).

In addition to their establishment of conventual sisterhoods, welfare programs, and schools, Anglo-Catholic women turned to writing and publishing projects to promote Anglo-Catholic devotional practices and doctrine. Women’s Anglican periodicals included Friendly Leaves, The Associates Journal and The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Younger Members of the Church of England. Kirstie Blair notes that due to the burgeoning of Victorian Anglo-Catholic social outreach, publications, and missional activity, ecclesiastical affairs in the early Victorian period “attract[ed] considerably more attention than in past decades” (Form and Faith 21). The arrival of Tractarian theology was, as Blair describes it, analogous to “the coming of the railways in its injection of dynamic, fast-working doctrines and ideas into the religious mind of the nation” (21).

The Oxford Movement

While the Anglo-Catholic revival in the Victorian period had lasting theological and aesthetic implications, it first arose in response to significant changes in the relationship between the Anglican Church and British parliament. The Oxford Movement dated its founding to the politically charged month of July 1833 in which John Keble preached his famous Assize Sermon at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. Keble held that a Christian nation such as Britain is “part of Christ’s Church” and therefore “bound” in all matters of policy and legislation to the Church’s “fundamental rules” (“National Apostasy”). He especially protested the mounting tensions between Parliament and the Anglican establishment, which increased throughout the 1820s and 1830s. In 1828, the Test and Corporation Act had been repealed and in 1829 Parliament passed the Emancipation of Roman Catholics Act. These Acts as well as the implementation of the Reform Act of 1832 led many Anglican clergy to express mounting concern that Parliament was no longer aligned with the prerogatives of the Anglican Church. The Oxford Movement therefore aimed to carefully trace and reassert the historical and theological rights of the Anglican Church to authority over ecclesiastical matters and influence in political affairs throughout the British Isles.

In the earliest stages (1833–1845) of the Oxford Movement its growth was characterized by organic as opposed to any formalized or systematic development. Principal leaders of the Movement were a group of clergymen and scholars from the University of Oxford, including John Henry Newman (1801–90), Richard Hurrell Froude (1803–36), John Keble (1792–1866), and Edward Pusey (1800–82). They placed special emphasis on the sacramental life, particularly the Baptismal rite and reception of the Eucharist. Rowell notes that the Oxford Movement’s “theological vision” grew out of the “rediscovery and reinterpretation” of the theology of the Early Church Fathers (The Vision Glorious 9). As John-Henry Newman recalled in Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), Tractarians hoped they would usher in a peaceful “Second Reformation,” in which a Catholic theology distinct from Rome’s could be developed for the Anglican Communion (57). The movement’s principles were chiefly articulated and disseminated through the delivery of sermons and the publication of poetic works as well as theological essays, generally categorized under the title Tracts for the Times (hence, the movement came to be known as “Tractarian”).

Anglo-Catholicism was influenced by various forms of early Christian and Medieval devotions and art forms as well as the philosophy and aesthetics of Romanticism. As discussed earlier in this article, the Tractarian doctrine of Reserve, defined by Isaac Williams, was closely akin to Romanticism’s assertion that the natural world and subjective experiences are more mysterious than knowable. The Doctrine of Reserve holds that since God is ultimately incomprehensible he can only be known or approached indirectly. Therefore, God reveals himself analogically, through means amenable to the limited capacities of human understanding. John Keble was one of the earliest exemplars of Victorian, Anglo-Catholic devotional poetry, shaped by an aesthetic of Tractarian reserve.

Indeed, some historians of Tractarianism have argued that Keble’s popular volume of devotional verse, The Christian Year (1827), is the real starter of the Oxford Movement, not his Assize Sermon. As GB Tennyson notes, the volume helped revive in mainstream Britain the older Christian understanding of poetry as “almost a devotional exercise” (Tennyson, Victorian Devotional Poetry 29). The “runaway best seller of the Victorian period,” The Christian Year inspired a new genre of devotional writing which counted among its most skilled and inventive inheritors a series of diverse women writers (Gray, “Syren Strains” 63). Christina Rossetti, in particular, would gain a reputation as being one of the most highly skilled poets of Tractarian reserve, adopting and adapting Keble in her inventive applications of the doctrine in her prose and verse.

Anglo-Catholic Women Writers

Cecil Frances Alexander

One of the most prominent Anglo-Catholic poets throughout the Victorian period was Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–1895), an Anglo-Irish writer who shared in the theological, artistic and social aims of the Tractarians. Famous for her hymns (including “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and “Once in Royal David’s City”) Alexander was a pioneer of the Tractarian poetic movement, bringing to it both the lyrical quality of the psalms and her keen abilities as a theologian in her own right, especially with respect to biblical exegesis and the study of the relationship between faith, history and the natural world. She adapted elements of Tractarian doctrine and devotion for younger audiences, and John Keble enthusiastically edited her collection, “Hymns for Little Children” (1826), which had an “immense circulation” as did “Moral Songs” (Great Irish Lives).

In addition to a prolific career as a hymnist, Alexander also published a series of verse meditations on passages of the Hebrew Bible, titled Poems on Old Testament Subjects (1854), and her poetry often centers on biblical themes of exile and redemption. For example, her poem “The Burial of Moses” – which Alfred Lord Tennyson revered, wishing he had written it himself – provides an exegesis of Deuteronomy 34:6, meditating on the relationship between salvation history and Moses’ personal life (Great Irish Lives). Alexander’s verse shared the Romantic tendency to employ locodescription to discuss both psychological and spiritual concerns. “The Burial of Moses” typifies her tendency, as with other Tractarian poets, to intermingle romantic sensibilities with devotional ones, thereby creating a lyric voice with a Psalmic, elegiac quality. For example, the lamentation which opens “The Burial of Moses,” is resolved in the final stanza through a meditation on the mystery of God’s care for creation”; He “hath his mysteries of grace,” Alexander reassures the reader, and “[w]ays we cannot tell” (77–78). Here, Alexander’s poetic comforting of the reader remains reserved, serving as an example of the degree to which Tractarian doctrine and theological aesthetics informed her poetic sensibilities.

Dora Greenwell

As with Alexander, Dora Greenwell (1821–1882) became popular for both her devotional prose and poetry, with critics comparing her to Augustine, in terms of her biblical exegesis, and to George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, William Cowper, and her contemporary, Christina Rossetti, with respect to her verse. She initially gained fame as a hymnist and poet but also became a well-known essayist and biographer, writing on spiritual, philosophical, and contemporary, social themes. In addition to decrying the “iniquitous traffic” of slavery, Greenwell was especially interested in theological anthropology, biblical exegesis, the relationship between the natural world and Christian eschatology, and the value of the arts, especially poetry and music (“The East African Slave Trade” 138). Her political prose – including “Our Single Women” (1866) and “The East African Slave Trade” (1873) – argued for the integration of Christian doctrine with social welfare and the British legal system.

Alongside her dedication to social welfare, Greenwell was a devout Anglican who believed that poetry had the capacity to awaken and express the spiritual dimensions of human experience and desire. However, unlike Keble and other Tractarians, she often warned her readers that poetry and Christianity “commune together, perhaps only for a moment, and then start upon far-diverging paths” (Liber Humanitatis 139). In her view, the poet is “impatient of the everyday and commonplace,” whereas the Christian is “at home” in the ordinary, seeing God’s presence in everyday events and circumstances (Liber 142). In her most substantial piece of theological and devotional reflection, Liber Humanitatis: A Series of Essays on Various Aspects of Spiritual and Social Life (1875), Greenwell argues for a theological approach to the arts that differs, in part, from the established Tractarian, theological aestheticism promoted by the Oxford Movement.

Whereas Keble, Newman, and others of the Anglo-Catholic school held poetry to be inherently religious, Greenwell argued it is inescapably earth bound, longing for a transcendence which it cannot supply without religion: “[p]oetry exalts, cheers, arouses; it is the inspired, inspiring word; but it does not bring with it like the revealed word, a clear definite message from God. At its highest point it can but lift a mortal to the skies; it cannot bring an angel down. Poetry is life’s needed wine, Christianity brings with it also the balm and oil of heavenly consolation; it holds out to man ‘a hand wherein are some leaves of the tree of life’” (142).

In general, the historical record shows that Tractarian understandings of poetry as the channeled expression of deep feeling, sharpened by intellectual rigor and spiritual discipline, was highly motivating for Victorian women. Anglo-Catholic doctrine and devotional aesthetics invited, and demanded, expression of both faith and reason, of devotion supported by intellectual inventiveness and clarity of expression. Emma Mason observes that Anglo-Catholic theological aesthetics granted women writers a social and theologically justified permission to express themselves in the public square (“Keble’s Female Heirs” 125–130). She also reminds us that, barring some exceptions, Tractarian theologians and clergy often encouraged the intellectual and spiritual formation of women, frequently contesting John Ruskin’s famous assertion that theology was not a task for women (“Keble’s Female Heirs”, Mason 127). As just one prominent example, the personal confessor of Christina Rossetti, Reverend Richard Frederick Littledale, held that it was paramount for women to be educated and trained in theology. He argued that Christian women were “strong, true, liberal, wise and just, no mere foolish virgins with aimable intentions and expiring lamps” and therefore deserved the opportunities for “more exact studies” (qtd. in Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith 54). As noted in the Introduction, a series of schools, educational periodicals and women’s conventual sisterhoods were established by Anglo-Catholic clergy and laity in order to expand doctrinal and intellectual formation for women in particular.

Christina Rossetti and her older sister, Maria, are two prominent examples of Victorian women who supported, and benefitted from, the educational opportunities and theological training provided by the Tractarian establishment of Anglo-Catholic conventual life. Their experiences with Tractarian theology and social teaching serve as useful case studies for identifying key concerns and themes of Anglo-Catholic women writers throughout the Victorian period and into the early twentieth century – as seen, for example, in the devotional poetry of Frances Blogg Chesterton (1869–1938). Moreover, both of the Rossetti sisters represent different tracks within the professional or vocational pathways which opened up for Anglo-Catholic women from the mid-nineteenth century onward.

Maria Francesca Rossetti

In 1860 Maria Francesca Rossetti (1827–1876) joined the Tractarian Convent, All Saints Sisterhood (located on Margaret Street in London), and became a full sister in the order in 1875, undertaking a series of commissioned and personal writing projects. Her wide-ranging output included a translation of a Latin Breviary, which she titled The Day Hours and Other Offices as Used by the Sisters of All Saints (1876), and a series of devotional and pedagogical works as well as literary criticism, such as Exercises in Idiomatic Italian (1867), Aneddoti Italiani (1867), A Shadow of Dante: Being an Essay Towards Studying Himself, His World and His Pilgrimage (1871), and Letters to My Bible Class on Thirty-Nine Sundays (1872).

Maria Rossetti’s writings are characterized by careful attention to philology, scripture, theological method, and an interest in the natural and physical sciences. This is especially apparent in A Shadow of Dante – her most substantive piece of literary criticism – in which she explored the close connections between complicated literary systems of symbology, medieval theology, and medieval methods of scientific observation. For example, in her chapter which maps out “Dante’s Universe” (9), Rossetti argues that the “construction of the Dantesque Universe” is predicated upon “scheme[s] of natural and moral philosophy” which, throughout the Comedia, are interlaced with “complicated” theories of Astrology, Cosmology, and “the action of the Angelic Orders” (12). Rossetti supports her rigorous analyses of Dante’s scientific, philosophical, and theological views via close readings of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. In these readings, based on text analysis and translation from the original Italian, Rossetti highlights the degree to which Dante’s poetic vision terza rima is shaped by his faith in Christian revelation, which he held to be the highest of the sciences.

Rossetti closes her study of Dante with a commentary and translation of the final lines of Dante’s third cantica, Paradiso, noting that Dante professes his intellect “impotent to tell … yet tells as best he may of his consummated grace in the crowning Vision of God Triune, God Incarnate” (284). In her study of Paradiso, Rossetti agrees with Dante’s assertion that the mystery of God serves as an aid to increasing human desire for him: “[w]ell do I see that our intellect can never be fully satisfied, except it be irradiated by that Truth which Itself so includes all truth that aught outside It is not truth, but falsehood […]Therefore at the foot of every ascertained truth there ever springs a shoot of doubt concerning some further truth; such is man’s nature, impelling him from peak to peak even to the summit” (220).

Throughout A Shadow of Dante Rossetti explores the dynamics of desire, the human pursuit of the sciences, and Dante’s theological aesthetics in order to establish a method of devotional literary criticism, one which her sister, Christina, also employed (more on this shortly). In so arguing, Rossetti departed ways with the highly politicized readings of the Comedia championed by her father, Gabriele Rossetti (1783–1854), and the overly romanticized readings favored by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). Overall, Maria Rossetti’s literary criticism is shaped by her view that the study of poetry and the created world is an inherently theological enterprise. Her conventual life of study and social outreach deeply impressed her sister, Christina, often serving as a source of devotional and intellectual support for her.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti never became a professed Anglican nun herself but she went by the name of “Sister Christina” while volunteering for over a decade at St. Mary Magdalen House in Highgate, which supported women who had been exploited by the Victorian sex trade. Her experiences there informed her poetry and shaped the titular poem of her 1867 volume of verse, titled Goblin Market and Other Poems. Throughout Goblin Market Rossetti delivered a series of thinly veiled and biting critiques of contemporary sexual exploitations of women and adolescent girls. Her commitment to social service and critique complemented a series of other Tractarian themes characterizing her writings, especially those related to prayer, the natural world, death, the immortality of the soul, and eschatology. As Michael D. Hurley has observed, Rossetti’s poetry typified the Anglo-Catholic conviction that prosody was a “piously selfless endeavour” and that religious beliefs find their “singular expression in verse” (Faith in Poetry 84).

From her early childhood writings to her later exegetical works – particularly The Face of the Deep (1893) and Time Flies (1897) – Rossetti gradually developed a rich and far-reaching theological aesthetics grounded in a belief that God is personal, compassionate, and invested in his creation – although he often mysteriously hides or manifests himself indirectly (principally through nature and the sacraments). Isaac Williams, Newman, and Keble especially influenced aspects of her intellectual, imaginative, and religious sensibilities, and Rossetti’s adaptations of their thought in her own writing contributed to her rising prominence as an Anglo-Catholic authority. In turn, Rossetti went on to influence a diverse set of Victorian and Modernist poets and writers, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ (1844–1889), Algernon Swinburne (1837–1909), and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941). An important Anglo-Catholic theme in Rossetti’s writings is, as Elizabeth Ludlow describes it, that of the “interface between typology and liturgy,” especially as discernible in the rites of worship, reception of the sacraments, biblical exegesis, medieval Catholic aesthetics, and, as importantly, attention to the lessons nature teaches (Christina Rossetti and the Bible 224–225).

For Rossetti, nature was an ontological proof for God’s existence, serving as an exemplar of what humility and right worship should look like(Mason, Christina Rossetti 116, 137–139). Anglo-Catholic poets held that nature spoke of God’s abiding presence in the cosmos, that it revealed (albeit in a reserved or indirect manner)God’s inherence in his creation. Rossetti’s theological aesthetics, rooted in an eschatological sensibility, typifies this belief. Her work is shot through with a sacramental sensibility which held that the created yet fallen world is “holy ground” (“Later Life”10. 1), groaning in longing for a return to God, striving to “flock home to Him by divers ways” (“Later Life”1.10).

Charlotte Yonge

As noted earlier, Tractarian theological and social outreach was significantly advanced through collaborations between clergy and laity, particularly lay women. To give one key example: during his appointment at the Vicarage of Hursley, John Keble effected widespread educational and religious outreach projects by recruiting women and families within his parish. Charlotte Yonge, who would become the most prominent Tractarian novelist of the nineteenth century, took up Keble’s requests for support with enthusiasm, assisting him in raising funds for the vicarage and composing Anglo-Catholic hymns to help educate the laity (Jay, “Charlotte Yonge and Tractarian Aesthetics” 47). While the Rossetti sisters were indirectly influenced by Keble (through his writings), Charlotte Yonge was his parishioner. Throughout her literary career, Yonge was spiritually inspired and formed, in many ways, by Keble, especially through his preaching. However, as Elizabeth Jay points out, Yonge also innovatively developed and extended Tractarian aesthetics, in her own right; this is particularly the case when it came to her advocacy for the value of novels and prose writings in illuminating Anglo-Catholic theology (“Charlotte Mary Yonge” 49).

In addition to a prolific career as a popular novelist, Yonge wrote a number of educational articles aimed at female audiences across social and class divides. She also penned a series of exegetical and historical pieces. From 1851 to 1893 she served as the editor of the Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, a magazine founded by Anglo-Catholics with a view to providing catechetical and doctrinal instruction; reflections on historical and contemporary social questions and concerns; and exegetical or devotional reflections in both prose and verse forms. Articles in the Monthly Packet bore titles such as “Alms and Charity,” “A Plea for the Lonely,” “Biography of a Blackbird,” and “Practical Readings on the Apostles’ Creed”. The magazine also included poems with titles such as “Advent” or “Sonnets from the Collects,” which focused on the liturgical calendar, the Book of Common Prayer, and liturgical worship. The magazine was as interested in intensive theological and philosophical questions as it was with social ones and Yonge ensured the magazine promoted not only the values of education and missionary work but also the value of the imagination for the development of a life of prayer. As importantly, Yonge’s passion for writing, editing and publishing led her to mentor other women who aspired to more publicly active roles and pursuits (Jay 47–51).

Despite her wide-ranging contributions to a variety of different projects, Yonge is best known for her novels. She pioneered an aesthetics of Tractarian novel writing, adapting, transposing, and adding to Keble’s theological views on verse. Her novels— such as her first significant commercial hit, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), as well as The Daisy Chain (1856) and historical works such as Cameos from English History (1868) and History of Christian Names (1863, 1884)—traced how history becomes transformed by divine providence. Overall, her novels and other writing sought to express a Tractarian sacramental vision which, as Bernadette Waterman Ward defines it, holds that history is one of the primary means through which God “interacts and inheres in the world he made” (World as Word 145).

Summary

As discussed throughout this article, Anglo-Catholicism was as much a literary movement as it was a theological one. It offered a series of women writers a unique platform from which they could explore their own theological, aesthetic, and social concerns. Tractarians often best expressed their doctrinal positions and devotional sensibilities in carefully crafted prose and verse. Kirstie Blair reminds us that poetry was not a mere tool for Tractarian dogmatics but, rather, an essential part” of the movement’s “ethos” (Form and Faith 34).Moreover, literature informed by Christian doctrine was understood by Anglo-Catholics to have a moralizing function for society. To them, literature had the ability to console, stir consciences toward the good, motivate social change as well as theological reform, and renew interests in religious experience. Overall, the role of Anglo-Catholicism in the Victorian context was a dynamic and transformative one, opening up new avenues for women to make their voices felt and heard in the public square. As importantly, it worked as an integrative agent, bringing together people from diverse contexts and backgrounds through the shared vision of Christianity’s value for the common good, artistic endeavours, social welfare and educational advancement or reform.

Cross-References