Arnold Harris Mathew, self-styled of Thomastown (7 August 1852 – 19 December 1919), was the founder and first bishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain and a noted author on ecclesiastical subjects.
Mathew had been both a Roman Catholic and an Anglican before becoming a bishop in the Union of Utrecht (UU).
Biography
Mathew was born in the French Second Empire in 1852, son of Major Arnold Henry Ochterlony Mathew (originally Matthews, d. 1894; his son later claimed him to have been 3rd Earl Landaff).Who's Who, vol. 61, 1909, A. & C. Black, p. 1090 Major Mathew was son of Major Arnold Nesbit Mathew (originally Matthews), of the Indian Army, and his Italian wife, Contessa Eliza Francesca, daughter of Domenico Povoleri di Nagarole, a Marquis of the Papal State; through this descent the Rev. Arnold Mathew claimed the title of Count Povoleri di Vicenza.Dutch Cemetery of Bengal archive URL= http://dutchcemeterybengal.com/dutch/node/138 Date accessed: 30 September 2018 Major Arnold Nesbit Mathew was allegedly the son- born only five months after his parents' marriage- of the 1st Earl Landaff, sent to live with an uncle in light of the circumstances of his birth. This constituted the basis for the Rev. Arnold Mathew's claim to be 4th Earl Landaff, which would not come to be officially recognised.Dod's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 1904, ed. Charles Roger Dod et al., Sampson Low, Marston & Co., p. 555 Research revealed the contemporary birth of an Arnold Nesbit Matthews to William Richard Matthews and his wife Anne at Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, which in conjunction with the Rev. Arnold Mathew's father and grandfather having originally been named 'Matthews' rather than 'Mathew', has been considered to cast sufficient doubt on the claim to descent from the Earls Landaff as to render it invalid.The Genealogical Magazine, vol. 4, 1901, p. 120Land, Politics and Society in Eighteenth-century Tipperary, T. P. Power, Clarendon Press, 1993
Mathew was educated at Sedbergh School. He was a relative of Theobald Mathew, the noted "Apostle of Temperance".The History and Antiquities of Glamorganshire and Its Families, Thomas Nicholas, Longmans, Green & Co., 1874, p. 120
Mathew was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church. At age two, due to his mother's scruples, he was rebaptised in the Church of England. Mathew "went on oscillating between Rome and Canterbury for the rest of his life."Anson, pp. 156-157. He studied for the ministry in the Scottish Episcopal Church, but sought reconciliation and confirmation in the Church of Rome.
As a Roman Catholic, Mathew was ordained a priest in 1877 in St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland, by Archbishop Charles Eyre, apostolic administrator of the Vicariate Apostolic of the Western District. Mathew received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Pope Pius IX. He became a Dominican in 1878 but only persevered a year, moving around a number of dioceses: Newcastle, Plymouth, Nottingham and Clifton. He had met Hyacinthe Loyson in France, while Mathew was, , a missionary-rector in Bath where he apostatized in 1889 and sent an announcement to his congregation that having ceased to believe in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity he could no longer act as a priest. He lost faith in the biblical inspiration and in the divinity of Christ. After leaving Bath, he went to Paris to consult with people there. Later in 1891 he was persuaded to "trial" the Anglican ministry and went to assist the rector of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, London. He was never officially received into the Church of England, neither did he formally leave the Roman Catholic Church.
In October 1890, he changed his name, by deed poll, from Arnold Jerome Matthews to Arnoldo Girolamo Povoleri. Mathew, under the name Povoleri, married Margaret Florence, fifth daughter of Robert Duncan, at St Marylebone Parish Church, London, on 22 February 1892. He was "described as a clerk in holy orders." They had a son, Francis Arnold Dominic Leo (b. 1900), who in light of his father's claimed title of Earl Landaff used the title 'Viscount Mathew' and served as a second lieutenant in the Indian Cavalry, and two daughters (Margherita Francesca, b. 1895, and Mary Teresa Gertrude, b. 1907).
In 1892, when he had reconciled with the as a layman, he at the same time participated in non-Catholic religious functions and officiated at marriages in a church without a licence from the . He stopped using the name Povoleri in 1894. While his wife was listed in the 1897 Royal Blue Book as la Contessa Povoleri di Vicenza, he stopped using the title of Count in 1894.
In 1897, Mathew had met Father Richard O'Halloran and became curious about the suggestion of an Old Catholic Church in Great Britain. In 1897, O'Halloran was suspended in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster for "reasons of canonical discipline". O'Halloran condemned the censure and created the "Ealing schism". O'Halloran was, according to The Tablet, also suspected of heresy.
Election
Bishops belonging to the International Old Catholic Bishops' Conference (IBC) had corresponded with O'Halloran since 1902. O'Halloran believed that such a movement would interest a large number of disaffected Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. In June 1906 the Royal Commission appointed in 1904 to inquire into "ecclesiastical disorders", afterwards known as the Ritual Commission. The king issued letters of business after the report. It was expected that the Catholic-minded Anglican clergy, with their congregations, might, by Act of Parliament, be forced out of the Anglican Communion. Persuaded by O'Halloran, Mathew joined the movement and was elected the first Regionary Old Catholic Bishop for Great Britain and in 1908 the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands (OKKN) was petitioned to consecrate him to this charge.
Mathew's election was to some extent a precautionary endeavour by those anticipating a precipitate action by the Government regarding the Ritual Commission's findings, there were only a small number of Old Catholics in England. However, the King's Letters of Business dealing with the Report of the Ritual Commission received no further attention and no action was taken. The result was that those who had taken part in Mathew's election were able to remain within the Anglican Communion. Added to the natural differences with their former brethren in the Roman Church was a campaign of persecution directed by certain elements of the . In 1898 Willibald Beyschlag wrote, in The American Journal of Theology, that Old Catholic churches sought "federation with other churches having an" episcopal polity. They sought "recognition that they all belong to the one ecumenical church which rests upon the dogmatic and episcopal foundation of the early church, and can, therefore, practice communion with each other." Those negotiations had "no tangible result" in 1898, according to Beyschlag, who did not "think that such a result would be of any great value," because some Anglicans "emphatically desire to be 'catholic', and are at the same time wholly out of sympathy with the Old Catholics." Beyschlag distinguished that the Ritualist Anglican Catholics "are on the way to Rome; the Old Catholics on the way from Rome."
Consecration
Mathew was consecrated in St. Gertrude's Cathedral, Utrecht, on 28 April 1908, by the Archbishop Gerardus Gul of Utrecht, assisted by two bishops, Jacobus Johannes van Thiel of Haarlem and Nicolaus Bartholomeus Petrus Spit of Deventer, and one Catholic Diocese of the Old Catholics in Germany bishop, Josef Demmel of Bonn.
Soon after the consecration, Mathew and O'Halloran were estranged and O'Halloran, under a pseudonym, questioned if the seventeen priests and the eight congregations did not exist in reality but were only a deception and if "the Old Catholic theology teaches that deception of any kind invalidates the consecration" then was Mathew "a validly consecrated Old Catholic bishop according to the teaching of Old Catholic theology?" Reprinted in Unprepared for the position in which he then found himself, Mathew informed Gul that he was himself a deceived victim and "the information given him by O'Halloran was entirely false" and offered to resign but his resignation was not accepted. Yet weeks earlier, Mathew and O'Halloran traveled to Utrecht where Mathew personally presented him to Gul. Within weeks, van Thiel wrote that the "had no reason to suppose that we were mistaken in complying with" O'Halloran's request and stated that their "confidence in Bishop Mathew remains unshaken, after carefully perusing a large number of the documents bearing upon this matter," and they "earnestly hope that his ministrations will be abundantly blessed by Almighty God, and that he will receive the cordial support of the British people and Church in the trying circumstances in which he has been placed." Also reprinted in various works and online. Brandreth thought that the "exonerated him from personal blame" in this letter. But Anson believed that it "was a polite way of stating that he had been consecrated under false pretenses, though not of his making."
The 1908 Lambeth Conference "deprecate[d] the setting up of a new organised body" and requested that Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, notify the bishops about the resolution. This was a protest against the consecration and although it was not publicized at the time, Gul replied with explanations and promised "that in future they 'would take care not to make trouble by encroaching on the order of a friendly Church'."
Mission in England 1908–1919
Mathew published The Old Catholic Missal & Ritual in 1909, for Old Catholics using the English language. Note that Mathew provided his own nihil obstat with Gul's imprimatur.
In September 1909, he attended the Old Catholic Congress in Vienna, where he sympathized with the Dutch Old Catholics conservative position which opposed the innovations being introduced among the German and Swiss Old Catholics to renounce the Sacrament of Penance (auricular confession), the intercession of saints and alterations to the liturgy, including the omission of the Pope's name from the Canon of the Mass. He proposed the acceptance of the 1673 Synod of Jerusalem's doctrines. Mathew expressed fears that the trend of Continental Old Catholicism was towards Modernism, perhaps because of the growing association with Anglicans and Lutherans, and hoped for a return to the traditional principles of the Church of Utrecht. Moss wrote that Mathew thought they were becoming "steadily more Protestant". The rejected Herford's request to join. "the was uncertain about Herford's credentials" and, only one bishop, i.e. Mathew, was needed for England. Mathew also rejected Herford's applications several times.
Brandreth wrote that for two years Mathew, "with the status of a missionary bishop", remained in full communion with the . In October 1909, Mathew assisted Gul at the consecration of Jan Maria Michał Kowalski as archbishop of the Old Catholic Mariavite Church.
A claimant successor to the Order of Corporate Reunion alleged that Mathew was conditionally consecrated in November 1909 by Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare.
In June 1910, he secretly consecrated, without agreement of the , Beale and Howarth, both of whom did not accept or sign the Convention of Utrecht, Translated in Translation reprinted in and Mathew informed the Holy See of these consecrations. Beale and Howarth were suspended.