Theologian · Modern
Edward Bouverie Pusey
1800–1882 · Oxford Movement; patristic Anglo-Catholicism
An Anglican priest who sought corporate reunion with Rome on the terms of the first councils, was answered by Newman's Letter to Pusey (1866) and by Manning, and died an Anglo-Catholic after Vatican I had defined what he could not accept.
Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford for fifty-four years and, after Newman's conversion in 1845, the leader of the Oxford Movement, Pusey gave his name to the Anglo-Catholic revival (‘Puseyism’). His Tracts on Holy Baptism (1835-1836) taught baptismal regeneration; his 1843 university sermon The Holy Eucharist, a Comfort to the Penitent, for which he was suspended from preaching for two years, taught the real objective presence of Christ; he revived auricular confession, founded the first Anglican sisterhoods, and edited the Library of the Fathers. Daniel the Prophet (1864) defended the book against the critics. His three-part Eirenicon (1865-1870), addressed to Newman and to Rome, sought reunion on the basis of the undivided Church while objecting to popular Marian devotion, the definition of the Immaculate Conception and papal infallibility, whose definition at Vatican I ended his hopes.
Why he matters: He kept the Oxford Movement alive within the Church of England after Newman's departure and built the Anglo-Catholic tradition of sacraments, confession, religious life and patristic learning from which later converts came; Newman's Letter to Pusey is the classic Catholic account of Marian doctrine for an Anglican reader, and the Eirenicon set the agenda that ARCIC resumed a century later.
Where to be careful
He rejected papal infallibility and the universal jurisdiction defined in Pastor Aeternus, objected to the definition of the Immaculate Conception (Ineffabilis Deus, 1854), and held the ‘branch theory’ of a divided Church that the Holy Office rejected in 1864 and Mortalium Animos (1928) excludes. Common ground: baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence, confession, the Fathers, the religious life, and a penitential seriousness the Church's ascetics would own.
Reading
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The Holy Eucharist, a Comfort to the PenitentEdward Bouverie Pusey · The 1843 university sermon on the Real Presence that cost him his pulpit.
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An EireniconEdward Bouverie Pusey · His 1865 case for reunion and his objections to Marian devotion and infallibility.
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A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on His Recent EireniconJohn Henry Newman · Newman's 1866 reply, the best short Catholic account of Mary for an Anglican.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.