RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Wise Wishart
olic Church (1886), first delivered in the chapel of the Sardinian embassy in London; Hight Lectures on the Body and Blood of Our Lord in the Blessed Hucharist (18386); Four Lectures on the Offices and Ceremonies of Holy Week as Performed in the Papal Chapel (1837); High Church Claims (1841), articles from The Dublin Review relating to the Oxford movement (at its height at the time; Wiseman’s writings had much influence in its development; John Henry Newman and Richard Hurrell Froude [qq.v.] had been in consultation with him in Rome as early as 1833, and from that time he devoted himself to the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church in England), and a public letter to Newman after the appearance of Tract XC.; Three Lectures on the Catholic Hierarchy Delivered in St. George's, Southwark (1851), explanatory of his new position as archbishop of Westminster; Essays on Various Subjects (8 vols., 1853; new ed. with biographical introduction by J. Murphy, 1888), chiefly from The Dublin Review; Fabiola, or the Church of the Catacombs (1854), a story of the third century, widely translated, and a Roman Catholic classic; Recollections of the Last Four Popes (1858); The Hidden Gem (1858), a two-act drama; a volume of sermons, lectures, and addresses delivered on a public tour through Ireland in 1858 (1859); and Sermons on Our Lord Jesus Christ (Dublin, 1864). With Daniel O’Connell and Michael Joseph Quin he founded The Dublin Review in May, 1836.
BisiiocrapHy: W. Ward, Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman, 2 vols., London, 1897; G. White, Memoir of... Cardinal Wiseman, ib. 1865; W. P. Ward, Ten Personal Studies, New York, 1908; DNB, Ixi. 243-246; E. Stock, English Church in the 19th Century, pp. 35-36, 42, London, 1910; F. W. Cornish, English Church in the 19th Century i. 274, 337-342, ib. 1910.
WISHART, GEORGE: notables.
1. Scotch Reformer; b. 1513 (?); burned at the stake at St. Andrews Mar. 1, 1546. He belonged to the family of Wishart of Pittarrow (near Montrose), but little or nothing is known with certainty as to his early history. In 1538, while master of the grammar-school in Montrose, he was summoned by John Hepburn, bishop of Brechin, for teaching his scholars the Greek New Testament (Greek being at this period almost unknown in Scotland), and to save his life was obliged to flee to England. In 1539 he again got into trouble in Bristol for preaching—according to the contemporary testimony of the Mayor of Bristol’s Calendar (Camden Society Publications, new ser., v., p. 55, London, 1872)—that there is no imputation of the “ merit ” of Christ to men. His teaching was pronounced to be heretical by Thomas Cranmer (q.v.) and other prelates, and he made a public recantation at Canterbury. He seems to have lived abroad, chiefly in Germany and Switzerland, from 1539 to 1542. In 1543 he was again in England and a member of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The next year, probably, he ventured back to his native country and began to preach what he regarded as the fundamental doctrines of Christianity in Montrose, Dundee, Ayrshire, Leith, and elsewhere. East Lothian was the scene of his last labors, and the crowning result of his evangelistic work was the
Name of two Scotch
conversion of John Knox, who at the time was still a Roman priest but already prepossessed in favor of the new doctrines, and was tutor to the families of two of the landed gentry of that county.
Early in Jan., 1546, after preaching in Haddington, Wishart, at the instigation of Cardinal David Beaton (q.v.), was apprehended at Ormiston House by the Earl of Bothwell, who, after promising to protect him from violence, surrendered him to the regent, Arran, and to the cardinal. The latter imprisoned him in his castle at St. Andrews. On Feb. 28 Wishart was tried and convicted, and the next day was illegally burned without the sanction of the regent. He died with unflinching courage and with the prayer to his Lord to “ forgive them that have condemned me to death this day ignorantly.”’ His alleged prophecy that “‘ he who feedeth his eyes with my torments [Beaton] shall, within few days, be hanged out at the same window to be seen with as much ignominy as he now leaneth there in pride ”’ is not contained in the earliest account of the martyrdom (1547), in Knox’s History, or in the first edition of Foxe’s Acts. The earliest reference occurs in a reprint of Foxe’s work (1570), which has a marginal note “‘ Mr. George Wishart prophesieth of the death of the cardinal.’”’ George Buchanan (Rerum Scoticarum historia, p. 178, Edinburgh, 1582) expands this alleged prophecy into a saying similar to the traditional utterance, which first occurs in David Buchanan’s edition of Knox’s History (1644), p. 171. The tradition of the prophecy grew, presumably, out of Wishart’s warning to the prelates that if they would not convert themselves from their wicked error there should hastily come upon them the wrath of God (Knox, History, ut sup., p. 170). The unauthenticity of Wishart’s alleged prophecy of Beaton’s death “ within few days’ removes one foundation of the charge that he was implicated in the assassination of the cardinal—a charge first made by Thomas Dempster in the seventeenth century (Hist. eccl. gentis Scotorum, Bannatyne Club ed., 11. 599, Edinburgh, 1829). Other alleged grounds are mere conjectures, and the cardinal can have had no suspicion of Wishart’s complicity or he would have brought it forward to secure the regent’s sanction of the execution. No contemporary writer suggests such complicity, and it is hardly compatible with Wishart’s prayer for the forgiveness of his judges.
2. Bishop of Edinburgh; b. in East Lothian-1599; d. in Edinburgh July 25 (?), 1671. He belonged to the Wisharts of Logie in Forfarshire, and was educated, at least in part, at the University of Edinburgh for the Scottish Church during the period when Presbyterianism was being superseded by episcopacy, to which, both from family connections and personal predilections, he was inclined. He was minister of Monifieth, Forfarshire, 1625-26, whence he was translated to the second charge of St. Andrews. When the general assembly of 1638 renounced episcopacy, deposed the bishops, and imposed the Covenant (see HENDERSON, ALEXAN- DER), Wishart, who would not sign the covenant, withdrew to England and was deposed in 1639 for desertion of his parish. As compensation he was appointed to two lectureships in Newcastle churches,
Witchcraft