The English prelate Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892) was directly responsible for the efflorescence of English Catholicism in the first half of the 20th century.

Henry Manning was born on July 5, 1808, at Totteridge, Hertfordshire, into a family that belonged to the Anglican High Church. He studied at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, and became president of the Oxford Union in 1829. Graduating with high honors in classics, he entered the Colonial Office in 1830 but returned to Merton College, Oxford, in 1832 to receive Anglican orders. A deacon in 1832, a priest in 1833, an archdeacon in 1840, Manning did not become a Roman Catholic until April 1851.

As a curate at Lavington, Surrey, Manning married a daughter of his rector. When she died, Manning felt profoundly disenchanted and gave himself to a thorough reading of the early Christian Fathers of the Church. At Oxford he had known John Henry Newman, whose Development of Christian Doctrine...