An 18th-century painting of a girl with a Basket of Pamphlets
A pamphlet is a small booklet or leaflet containing information or arguments about a single subject.
A survey conducted in the mid 1950s indicated that there were 181 Catholic publishers of pamphlets in the United States and Canada. In their peak year they distributed 26 million pamphlets.[i] Today, those who publish pamphlets are typically religious organizations like Maryknoll, Kights of Columbus, Our Sunday Visitor, Pontifical Missions Societies, Franciscan Media, and the Evangelization Station.
As religious literature, tracts were used throughout the turbulence of the Protestant Reformation and the various upheavals of the 17th century. They came to such prominence again in the Oxford Movement for reform within the Church of England.
Martin Luther
Luther was singularly successful in goading the German people into rebellion against the tenets of the Catholic Church by the use of tracts and pamphlets.
The Oxford Movement
The movement began in 1833, when a number of Oxford professors tried to start a reform in the established Church of England. Edward Bouverie Pusey and John Henry Newman were the acknowledged leaders, and their Tracts for the Times soon held the attention of the whole country.
The movement was also known as the “Tractarian Movement” after its series of publications, the Tracts for the Times, published from 1833 to 1841.
The Tracts for the Times were a series of 90 theological publications, varying in length from a few pages to book-length, produced by members of the English Oxford Movement, an Anglo-Catholic revival group, from 1833 to 1841. There were about a dozen authors, including Oxford Movement leaders John Keble, John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey. With the wide distribution associated with the tract form, and a price in pennies, the Tracts succeeded in drawing attention to the views of the Oxford Movement on points of doctrine, but also to its overall approach, to the extent that Tractarian became a synonym for supporter of the movement.
Many of the tracts were labeled, indicating their intended audience: Ad Clerum (to the clergy), Ad Populum (to the people), or Ad Scholas (to scholars). The first 20 tracts appeared in 1833, with 30 more in 1834. After that the pace slowed, but the later contributions were more substantive on doctrinal matters.
The Tractarians drew their inspiration from the works of the ancient Fathers, and naturally this led them to Rome. Pusey and his adherents would not hear of union with the Catholic Church, however Newman entered the Catholic Church in 1845. His example was followed by a large number of distinguished people, such as Ward, Faber, Oakley, Manning, etc. Within a very few years the number of converts swelled to many thousands.
One of the principal writers and proponents of the Tractarian Movement was John Henry Newman, a popular Oxford priest who, took the initiative in the series, and made the largest contribution. After writing his final tract, Tract 90, Newman became convinced that the Branch Theory[ii] was inadequate. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845 and was ordained a priest in that church in the same year. He later became a cardinal (but not a bishop). He was one of a number of Anglican clergy who were received into the Roman Catholic Church during the 1840s who were either members of, or were influenced by, the Tractarian Movement.
A few of other major figures influenced by the movement who became Roman Catholics included:
- Thomas William Allies, Church historian and former Anglican priest
- Robert Hugh Benson, son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, novelist and monsignor
- John Chapman OSB, patristic scholar and Roman Catholic priest
- Augusta Theodosia Drane, writer and Dominican prioress
- Frederick William Faber, theologian, hymn writer, Oratorian and Roman Catholic priest
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, poet and Jesuit priest
- Robert Stephen Hawker, poet and Anglican priest (became a Roman Catholic on his deathbed)
- Ronald Knox, Biblical texts translator and formerly an Anglican priest
- Henry Edward Manning, later Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster
- John Brande Morris, Orientalist, eccentric and Roman Catholic priest
- William George Ward, theologian
- Benjamin Williams Whitcher, American Episcopal priest
For more on the history of the Oxford Movement see, A Short History of the Oxford Movement
by Ollard, Sidney Leslie, 1875-1949.
[i] John A. O’Brian, You Too Can Win Souls, MacMillan Company. New York, 1955. P.138.
[ii] The branch theory is a theological hypothesis within Anglicanism, which holds that the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion are the three principal branches of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.