Liverpool University Press Life of Richard Waldo Sibthorp: Evangelical, Catholic and Ritual Revivalism in the Nineteenth-Century Church

Richard Sibthorp, youngest son of a celebrated Lincolnshire family, became through his forceful preaching and acknowledged piety, one of the leading Anglican Evangelicals of the 1820s. During the next decade, close study of the Old Testament turned him into a High Churchman who transformed his chapel on the Isle of Wight into a pioneering centre of ritualism. In 1841, at great personal cost, he converted to Rome. More astonishing was his announcement, in October 1843, that he was returning to the Establishment. Eighteen months as a priest had persuaded him that the Protestant Reformers were right: the Papacy was indeed the prophesied Antichrist, the 'great harlot'. That the elderly Sibthorp eventually returned to Rome and ended his days as a respected priest of Nottingham Cathedral appears only to confirm his reputation as an eccentric whose career may amuse but can offer little instruction. This new biography, however, by carefully analyzing Sibthorp's response to the powerful theological movements that swirled around him, challenges this received opinion. He emerges as a man of impressive spirituality, unwilling to compromise in his search for truth, even at the price of misunderstanding and ridicule. Review "Michael Trott describes well Sibthorp's internal tensions, helping the reader to understand the tragedy behind the caricature that Sibthorp's life was for his contemporaries. Trott shows that there is a certain grandeur behind the caricature: ridicule might have been piled upon him, but he did not allow fear of it - or fear of losing influence and position - to divert him from what he considered right. In another respect, the circuitous route of Sibthorp's denominational wanderings offers the reader an interesting perspective into large areas of the religious landscape of nineteenth-century England. Trott has done a good job here, and he should be praised for it." --Recusant History "Michael Trott has spent several years researching the life of Richard Waldo Sibthorp. Richard Sibthorp 'became, through his forceful preaching and acknowledged piety, one of the leading Evangelicals of the 1820s'. During the next decade his Old Testament studies turned him into a High Churchman who transformed his chapel on the Isle of Wight into a pioneering centre of ritualism. In 1841, at great personal cost, he converted to Rome. More astonishing was his announcement, in October 1843, that he was 'returning to the Establishment'. Sheridan Gilley praises Trott for 'offering a sure guide to Sibthorp's part in the Oxford Movement and the Evangelical, Catholic and ritual revivals, [and for throwing] light on some of the wider issues in the pre-history of modern ecumenism and the study of the Victorian Church'." --Theology Digest"Dr Trott is to be congratulated for achieving this with simplicity and economy and an exemplary lucidity, offering a sure guide to Sibthorp's part in the Oxford Movement and the Evangelical, Catholic and ritual revivals. The author has, in short, proved himself as a biographer, a local historian, a family historian, a church historian and an historian of ideas, carrying his narrative beyond the undoubted fascination of its immediate subject to throw a light on some of the wider issues in the pre-history of modem ecumenism and the study of the Victorian Church." --Sheridan Gilley, author, Newman and his Age and A History of Religion in Britain"It is an extraordinary story. Three moments are especially notable. In 1824 he was sufficiently valued in the evangelical Church Missionary Society for the post of Second Secretary to be created for him, but which he did not accept. In the years around 1840 his construction of an enriched pastoral, preaching, and aesthetic ministry at St James, Ryde - including the 'scandalous' innovation of a lectern eagle - was path-breaking. Between 1846 and 1864 Sibthorp conceived, financed, and shaped the St Anne's Bede Houses in Lincoln and served as