Nicholas Patrick Wiseman

Cardinal, first Archbishop of Westminster; b. at Seville, 2 Aug., 1802; d. in London, 15 Feb., 1865, younger son of James Wiseman, a merchant of Irish family resident in Seville, by his second wife, Xaviera Strange. On his father's death in 1805 he was taken to Ireland by his mother, and after two years at school in Waterford was, with his brother, placed at Ushaw College, Durham, founded seventeen years previously, where the distinguished historian John Lingard, Wiseman's lifelong friend, was then vice-president. At Ushaw Nicholas resolved to embrace the life of a priest, and in 1818 he was chosen as one of the first batch of students for the English College in Rome, which had just been revived after having been closed for twenty years owing to the French occupation. Soon after his arrival he was received in audience, with five other English students, by Pius VII, who made them a kind and encouraging address; and his next six years were devoted to hard and regular study, under the strict discipline of the college. He attained distinction in the natural sciences as well as in dogmatic and scholastic theology, and in July, 1824, took his degree of Doctor of Divinity, after successfully sustaining a public dispuation before a great audience of learned men, including at least one future {ln:Pope} . Eight months later, on 19 March, 1825, he was ordained priest. His particular bent had always been towards Syriac and other Oriental studies, and this was encouraged by his superiors. The learning and research evidenced in his work, "Horae Syriacae", which appeared in 1827, established his reputation as an oriental scholar. Already vice-rector of the English College, and thus enjoying an official status in Rome, he was named by Leo XII, soon after the publication of his book, supernumerary professor of Hebrew and Syro-Chaldaic in the Sapienza University, and soon found himself in communication, by letter or otherwise, with all the great Orientalists of the day, such as Bunsen, Scholz, Ackermann, and Tholuck. +