National Institute for Newman Studies

Saint John Henry Newman wrote "The Winter Flower" in December 1830, and set it to music for his sister Harriet’s twenty-seventh birthday. A lovely respite in the cold of winter. BLOOM, beloved flower Unknown; - tis no matter Courts glitter brief hour, ... Crowds can but flatter. https://digitalcollections.newmanstudies.org//verses/1903 See more

Professor St George Jackson Mivart was an English Catholic scientist who spent much of his career trying to convince the Church to accept modern scientific thinking on matters such as evolution and astronomy. His writings were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and eventually Cardinal Vaughan arranged his excommunication. Mivart and Cardinal Newman exchanged several letters during the 1880s, you can now view them here https://digitalcollections.newmanstudies.org/search-result

Saint Agnes is commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass and was one of the first women to be venerated by the Roman Catholic Church. She is thought to have died in the time of Diocletian. Martyred for her steadfast Christianity before she became a teenager, Agnes is the patron saint of girls. Grace overcomes nature, and grace only overcomes it. Take that holy child, the blessed St. Agnes, who, at the age of thirteen , resolved to die rather than deny the faith, and stoop enveloped in an atmosphere of purity, and diffused around her a heavenly influence, in the very home of evil spirits into which the heathen brought her. http://newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourses3.html

The Jesuit Rev Gerard Manley Hopkins is today considered one of the key poets of the 19th century, he was influenced by Cardinal Newman and they corresponded periodically up to Hopkins death in 1889. View some of his letters to Newman online now https://digitalcollections.newmanstudies.org/search-result

In 1875 John Baptist Purcell wrote to Newman that some in the United States were opposed to a pamphlet that Newman had published in a Catholic Liverpool paper. Read letter here!

Anthony lived at first in total solitude but later allowed a monastic community to be formed around him. He was famous for his insights into the spiritual life. He is called the Father of monasticism, and the account of his life by Saint Athanasius helped spread monasticism. A letter written by Athanasius to his brother, referencing Anthony, can be found here S. Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, was a friend of St. Anthony’s; to him the Saint on his death, which took place shortly before the following Letter from Athanasius, left one of his sheepskins, leaving the other to S. Athanasius himself. http://www.newmanreader.org//athana/historical/tract6.html