Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851 was an Act of the British Parliament (14 & 15 Vict. C. 60) that was passed in 1851 as an anti-Catholic measure. 20 years later, the law was repealed by the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1871 . The law was requested by Prime Minister Lord John Russell in 1850 in 1850. The reason for this gave him the so-called “no popery” riots, named after their slogan “no popery” (“no papistism”). They were triggered by the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in the same year. Many Protestants felt this was "papal aggression".

The law was the last attempt at repression against the Roman Catholic Church in England. The law was obeyed by the Catholic bishops. The new Catholic cathedral churches did not arise in the old bishopric cities, but in other places (districts), and the dioceses were named after these new cathedral locations. In the case of the Diocese of Hallam , the name Hallamshire, which is no longer used today and which stood for the area in which Sheffield is located, was used. The result of the Act was a strengthened Catholic Church in England, but it felt persecuted and on the defensive.

history

When the Church of England was founded as an independent church in England and Wales in the 16th century, it took over the buildings and hierarchical order of the Roman Catholic Church. There was still an Archbishop of Canterbury and a Bishop of London, and they continued to have jurisdiction over the same believers. In Scotland the situation was more complex due to internal disagreements in the episcopate . In Ireland, although the official bishops and cathedrals became Protestant , the Catholic hierarchy of bishops consecrated to historical titles continued underground and under persecution.

When Pope Pius IX. in response to the emancipation laws re-establishing the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales with the Apostolic Constitution Universalis Ecclesiae , this met with widespread hostility and has been termed an act of papal aggression. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 (Statute 10 of George IV, Chapter 10) prohibited persons outside the Church of England from assuming the old episcopal titles. Therefore the Pope did not re-establish the previous dioceses, but created new dioceses. Instead of the diocese of Bristol, a diocese of Clifton was established , a diocese of Plymouth instead of the diocese of Exeter , the diocese of Southwark instead of the archdiocese of Canterbury and the archbishopric of Westminster instead of an archdiocese called London. The name "Archdiocese of Westminster" arose from the fact that the future cathedral ( Westminster Cathedral ) should be built in the City of Westminster . But even the switch from London to Westminster as the name of the archbishopric was viewed as presumptuous by anti-Catholic Protestants, as "Westminster" is also associated with Westminster Abbey , the spiritual center of the Church of England in London and the coronation church of the British monarchs. They feared that the Catholic Church would “appropriate” the tradition of the Church of England through the names of its dioceses and could thus delegitimize it.

Incited by anti-Catholic circles and the Prime Minister himself, serious anti-Catholic riots broke out in Liverpool and other cities in November 1850. Nearly 900,000 Protestants called on the Queen to stop the "papal aggression". On Guy Fawkes Day in 1850 there were symbolic denunciations and a small number of violence.

In response, the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851 was passed. He made it a criminal offense for anyone who was not a member of the Church of England to use the episcopal title of any city, town, district, or county of the United Kingdom if they already had Anglican episcopal titles, and he explained everything Property that would be given to a person with that title when forfeited to the Crown.

The law fulfilled its purpose insofar as to this day no bishop of the Church of England has a Catholic bishop with the same diocese name next to him - except in cases in which an Anglican diocese was created after a Roman Catholic diocese: Birmingham (1905), Leeds (2013), Leicester (1927), Liverpool (1880), Portsmouth (1927) and Southwark (1905). The Catholic bishops themselves were careful to stay within the law. No one has been prosecuted under the law.

Repeal

The law was repealed in 1871 under the Liberal government of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone in the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1871 (34 and 35 Vict. C. 53).

literature

  • Owen Chadwick : The Victorian church , Vol. 1: 1829-1859. Black, London, 3rd ed. 1971, pp. 271-309.
  • Denis G. Paz: Another Look at Lord John Russell and the Papal Aggression, 1850. In: Historian , Vol. 45 (1982), No. 1, pp. 47-64.
  • John Plowright (Ed.): Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851. In: The Routledge Dictionary of Modern British History , pp. 88-89.
  • Walter Ralls: The papal aggression of 1850. A study in Victorian anti-Catholicism In: Church History , Vol. 43 (1974), pp. 242-256.
  • Herbert Thurston: No popery. Chapters on anti-papal prejudice . Sheed and Ward, London 1930.
  • Frank H. Wallis: Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian Britain. Edwin Mellen Press, 1993.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Owen Chadwick : The Victorian Church . 1966, p. 292-309 .
  2. ^ A b Report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Ecclesiastical Titles and Roman Catholic Relief Acts, August 2, 1867, p. 89
  3. ^ Hansard's Parliamentary Debates . Third Series, Vol. 114, London 1851, sub March 7, 1851: Ecclesiastical Titles , Sp. 1122-1162, here ( Sp. 1145 )
  4. ↑ Report of Select Committee, p. 85
  5. ^ Walter Ralls: The papal aggression of 1850. A study in Victorian anti-Catholicism . In: Church History , 43, 242-256 (1974).
  6. ^ K. Theodore Hoppen: The mid-Victorian generation, 1846-1886 (Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 444-34.
  7. ↑ Chadwick: The Victorian Church, p. 304.
  8. ^ Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1871. Retrieved May 31, 2019 .