he conceived the idea of a union, and after a campaign lasting a quarter of a century the Union of American Hebrew Congregations was founded (1873) in Cincinnati. As a corollary of this he founded in 1875 the “Hebrew Union College” in the same city, and this institution has since trained a large number of the rabbis of America. Wise also organized various general assemblies of rabbis, and in 1889 established the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He was the first to introduce family pews in synagogues, and in many other ways “occidentalized” Jewish worship.
See D. Philipson, The Reform Movement in Judaism (1907). (I. A.)
WISEMAN, NICHOLAS PATRICK STEPHEN (1802–1865), English cardinal, was born at Seville on the 2nd of August 1802, the child of Anglo-Irish parents recently settled in Spain for business purposes. On his father's death in 1805 he was brought to Waterford, and in 1810 he was sent to Ushaw College, near Durham, where he was educated until the age of sixteen, when he proceeded to the English College in Rome, reopened in 1818 after having been closed by the Revolution for twenty years. He graduated doctor of theology with distinction in 1825, and was ordained priest in the following year. He was apppointed vice-rector of the English College in 1827, and rector in 1828 when not yet twenty-six years of age. This office he held until 1840. From the first a devoted student and antiquary, he devoted much time to the examination of 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 a course of his lectures, On the Connexion between Science and Revealed Religion, deservedly attracted much attention, his general thesis being that whereas scientific teaching has repeatedly been thought to disprove Christian doctrine, further investigation has shown that a reconstruction is possible. He visited England in 1835–1836, and delivered lectures on the principles and main doctrines of Roman Catholicism in the Sardinian Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and in the church at Moorfields, now pulled down. Their effect was considerable; and at Pusey's request Newman reviewed them in the British Critic (December 1836), treating them for the most part with sympathy as a triumph over popular Protestantism. To another critic, who had taken occasion to point out the resemblance between Catholic and pagan ceremonies, Wiseman replied, boldly admitting the likeness, and maintaining that it could be shown equally well to exist between Christian and heathen doctrines. In 1836 he founded the Dublin Review, partly to infuse into the lethargic English Catholics higher ideals of their own religion and some enthusiasm for the papacy, and partly to enable him to deal with the progress of the Oxford Movement, in which he was keenly interested. At this date he was already distinguished as an accomplished scholar and critic, able to converse fluently in half-a-dozen languages, and well informed on most questions of scientific, artistic or antiquarian interest. In the winter of 1838 he was visited in Rome by Macaulay, Manning and Gladstone. An article by him on the Donatist schism appearing in the Dublin Review in July 1839 made a great impression in Oxford, Newman and others seeing the force of the analogy between Donatists and Anglicans. Some words he quoted from St Augustine influenced Newman profoundly: “Quapropter securus judicat orbis terrarum bonos non esse qui se dividunt ab orbe terrarum.” And preaching at the opening of St Mary's church, Derby, in the same year, he anticipated Newman's argument on religious development, published six years later. 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 Birmingham. Oscott, under his presidency, became a centre for Englisb 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, as many of them found themselves wholly without means, while the old Catholic body looked on the newcomers with distrust. 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 appointment 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 (4th July 1848) at the opening of St George's, Southwark, an occasion unique in England since the Reformation, 14 bishops and 240 priests being present, and six religious orders of men being represented. The progress of Catholicism was undeniable, but yet Wiseman found himself steadily opposed by a minority among his own clergy, who disliked his Ultramontane ideas, his “Romanizing and innovating zeal,” especially in regard to the introduction of sacred images into the churches and the use of devotions to the Blessed Virgin and the Blessed Sacrament, hitherto unknown among English Catholics. In July 1850 he heard of the pope's intention to create him a cardinal, and he took this to mean that he was 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 Westminster. The papal brief establishing the hierarchy was dated 29th September 1850, and on 7th October 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, round by Vienna; and when he reached London (11th November) the whole country was ablaze with indignation at the “papal aggression,” which was misunderstood to imply a new and unjustifiable claim to territorial rule. Some indeed feared that his life was endangered by the violence of popular feeling. But Wiseman displayed calmness and courage, and immediately penned an admirable Appeal to the English People (a pamphlet of over 30 pages), in which he explained the nature of the pope's action, and argued that the admitted principle of toleration included leave to establish a diocesan hierarchy; and in his concluding paragraphs he effectively contrasted that dominion over Westminster, which he was taunted with claiming, with his duties towards the poor Catholics resident there, with which alone he was really concerned. A course of lectures at St George's, Southwark, further moderated the storm. In July 1852 he presided at Oscott over the first provincial synod of Westminster, at which Newman preached his sermon on the “Second Spring”; and at this date Wiseman's dream of the rapid conversion of England to the ancient faith seemed not incapable of realization. But many difficulties with his own people shortly beset his path, due largely to the suspicions aroused by his evident preference for the ardent Roman zeal of the converts, and especially of Manning, to the dull and cautious formalism of the old Catholics. The year 1854 was marked by his presence in Rome at the definition of the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin (8th December), and by the publication of his historical romance, Fabiola, a tale of the Church of the Catacombs, which had a very wide circulation and was translated into ten languages. In 1855 Wiseman applied for a coadjutor, and
