One of the most important turning points in John Henry Newman's life involved contracting an illness (probably typhoid fever) while on a trip to Sicily in 1833. Newman was accompanied on the trip by his best friend, Hurrell Froude, and Froude's father, Robert.
Eamon Duffy's recently published, John Henry Newman: A Very Brief History, provides a concise and well-articulated introduction to who Newman was and who Newman was perceived to be in scholarship.
Fr. Michael Collins, a priest of the Archdiocese of Dublin and graduate of University College of Dublin, which developed from John Henry Newman’s Catholic University, has composed an excellent short introduction to the life of John Henry Newman.
Newman was not a mere tourist or pilgrim during his Mediterranean voyage, rather he was a curious Anglican looking for an "enlargement of mind" and benefit of health. In fact, by tracing the footsteps of the apostles, fathers, and the great saints of Christianity, he sought a personal ecclesial enlargement.
Newman was interested in the events happening back home and added that the church in England might console herself with the knowledge of having partners in misfortune in Sicily and Italy. Years later, in his Apologia, he recalled what he truly felt: "England was in my thoughts solely, and the news from England came rarely and imperfectly.
In a letter to his mother, Newman not only described how the Mediterranean was the seat of the most celebrated empires and events, but also how it had become the center of the lives of the church fathers.
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