| Intro | British saint |
| A.K.A. | Bachelor of divinity, |
| Was |
Linguist Educator |
| From | United Kingdom |
| Type |
Academia Literature Social science |
| Gender | male |
| Birth | 22 August 1800, Pusey, Oxfordshire |
| Death |
16 September 1882, Oxford (aged 82 years) |
Edward Bouverie Pusey (/ˈpjuːzi/; 22 August 1800 – 16 September 1882) was an English churchman, for more than fifty years Regius Professor of Hebrew at Christ Church, Oxford. He was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement.
Early years
He was born in the village of Pusey in Berkshire. His father was Philip Bouverie (d. 1828), a younger son of the 1st Viscount Folkestone, and took the name of Pusey on succeeding to the manorial estates there. Philip Pusey was his brother; his sister Charlotte married Richard Lynch Cotton.
For preparatory education, Pusey went to the school of the Rev. Richard Roberts in Mitcham. He then attended Eton College, where he was taught by Thomas Carter, father of Thomas Thellusson Carter. For university entrance he was tutored for a period by Edward Maltby.
Pusey became in 1819 a commoner of Christ Church, where Thomas Vowler Short was his tutor. He graduated in 1822 with a first.
Fellow and professor
In 1823 Pusey was elected by competition to a fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford. John Henry Newman and John Keble were already there as fellows.
Between 1825 and 1827, Pusey studied Oriental languages and German theology at the University of Göttingen. A claim that, during the 1820s, only two Oxford academics knew German, one being Edward Cardwell, was advanced by Henry Liddon; but was not well founded, given that Alexander Nicoll, ignored by Liddon, corresponded in German.
In 1828 Pusey took holy orders, and married shortly afterwards. His views had been influenced by German trends in theology. That year, also, the Duke of Wellington as Prime Minister appointed Pusey as Oxford Regius Professor of Hebrew, with the attached canonry of Christ Church.
Oxford Movement
By the end of 1833, Pusey began sympathizing with the authors of the Tracts for the Times. He published Tract XVIII, on fasting, at the end of 1833, adding his initials (so far the tracts had been unsigned). “He was not, however, fully associated in the movement till 1835 and 1836, when he published his tract on baptism and started the Library of the Fathers“.
When John Henry Newman left the Church of England around 1841, Pusey emerged as the leader of the shaken Oxford Movement, as better placed than John Keble in his rural parsonage. But Pusey himself was a widower, having lost his wife in 1839, and much affected by personal grief. The Oxford movement was popularly known as Puseyism and its adherents as Puseyites. Some occasions when Pusey preached before his university marked distinct stages for the High Church party he led. The practice of confession in the Church of England practically dates from his two sermons on The Entire Absolution of the Penitent, in 1846, which both revived high sacramental doctrine and advocated revival of the penitential system which medieval theologians had appended to it. The 1853 sermon on The Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, first formulated the doctrine round which almost all his followers’ theology later revolved, and revolutionized the practices of Anglican worship.
Controversialist
Pusey studied the Church Fathers, and the Caroline Divines who revived traditions of pre-Reformation teaching. His sermon before the university in May 1843, The Holy Eucharist, a Comfort to the Penitent caused him to be suspended for two years from preaching. The condemned sermon nearly immediately sold 18,000 copies.
Pusey was behind the scenes in theological and academic controversies, occupied with articles, letters, treatises and sermons. He was involved in the Gorham controversy of 1850, in the question of Oxford reform in 1854, in the prosecution of some of the writers of Essays and Reviews, especially of Benjamin Jowett, in 1863, and in the question as to the reform of the marriage laws from 1849 to the end of his life.
In reviving the doctrine of the Real Presence, Pusey contributed to the rise of ritualism in the Church of England. He had little sympathy with ritualists, however, and protested in a university sermon of 1859. He came to defend those who were accused of breaking the law in their practice of ritual; but the Ritualists sidelined the Puseyites.
Later life and legacy
Pusey edited the Library of the Fathers, a series of translations of the work of the Church fathers. Among the translators was his contemporary at Christ Church, Charles Dodgson. He also befriended and assisted Dodgson’s son “Lewis Carroll” when he came to Christ Church. When Carroll faced the death of his wife, Pusey wrote to him:
I have often thought, since I had to think of this, how, in all adversity, what God takes away He may give us back with increase. One cannot think that any holy earthly love will cease, when we shall “be like the Angels of God in Heaven.” Love here must shadow our love there, deeper because spiritual, without any alloy from our sinful nature, and in the fulness of the love of God. But as we grow here by God’s grace will be our capacity for endless love.
Not an orator, Pusey compelled attention by his earnestness. His major influence was as a preacher and spiritual adviser, where his correspondence was enormous. In private life his habits were simple almost to austerity. He had few personal friends, and rarely mingled in general society; though bitter to opponents, he was gentle to those who knew him, and gave freely to charities. His main characteristic was a capacity for painstaking work.
From 1880 Pusey was seen by only a few persons. His strength gradually declined, and he died on 16 September 1882, after a short illness. He was buried at Oxford in the cathedral of which he had been for fifty-four years a canon. In his memory his friends purchased his library, and bought for it a house in Oxford, now Pusey House. It was endowed with funds to support librarians, who were to perpetuate in the university Pusey’s principles.
Works
Pusey’s first work, An Historical Enquiry Into the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character Lately Predominant in the Theology of Germany of 1828, was an answer to Hugh James Rose’s Cambridge lectures on rationalist tendencies in German theology. Rose’s State of Protestantism in Germany Described has been called “over-simplified and polemical”, and Pusey had been encouraged by German friends to reply. Pusey showed sympathy with the Pietists; misunderstood, he was himself accused of holding rationalist views. In 1830 he published a second part of the Historical Enquiry.
Other major works by Pusey were:
- two books on the Eucharist, The Doctrine of the Real Presence (1855) and The Real Presence … the Doctrine of the English Church (1857));
- Daniel the Prophet, supporting the traditional historical dating of that book);
- The Minor Prophets, with Commentary, his main contribution as Professor of Hebrew; and
- the Eirenicon, an endeavour to find a basis of union between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church).
- What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment: In Reply to Dr. Farrar’s Challenge in His “Eternal Hope”, 1879 (1881), in the controversy over everlasting punishment on Eternal Hope (1878) by Frederic William Farrar
Christus consolator (1883) was published after his death, edited by his godson and friend George Edward Jelf.
Veneration
The Church of England remembers Pusey annually with a feast day on the anniversary of his death; the Episcopal Church translates his memorial on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) to September 18.
Family
Pusey married in 1828 Maria Catherine Barker (1801–1839), daughter of Raymond Barker of Fairford Park; they had a son and three daughters. His son, Philip Edward (1830–1880), edited an edition of Saint Cyril the Philosopher’s commentary on the minor prophets.