BEFORE becoming Archdeacon of Barnstable and then, in retirement, Priest-Vicar at Exeter Cathedral, the author was Team Rector of Colyton in Devon. One of his predecessors at Colyton is the subject of this lovingly researched book, based on archives and wider reading, and dedicated to Bishop Geoffrey Rowell, who once warned him against offering “vague lucubrations on the nature of history”. There is nothing vague about Gunn-Johnson’s writing, which follows the career of a committed Anglo-Catholic clergyman, offering us a fascinating case study in the wake of George Herring’s The Oxford Movement in Practice (OUP, 2016).
Fr Gueritz was a rural Tractarian who “first encountered the Oxford Movement in the dark days following Newman’s departure for Rome and then experienced just about every facet of its growth and change right into the first decade of the twentieth century”. Later Tractarians, such as Henry Liddon, differed from the first generation and from the emergent Ritualists, and yet all worked in the same tradition. Hurrell Froude labelled every party that moved: was the new curate a Z, an X, or a Y, a congregation might have wondered; is the new incumbent high and dry, or a Romaniser? What the Oxford leaders of the 1830s and 1840s shared was a sense of God’s sacramental presence and a call to personal holiness. Gueritz “became the bearer of such fruit”.
As in so many cases, however, this son of a Spanish army officer who escaped to England was first shaped by Evangelicalism, when he was apprenticed to a wine merchant in Plymouth. Supported by a “Protestant Society for helping Candidates for Holy Orders”, he arrived, aged 22, at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1845, just days before Newman’s secession to Rome and when Pusey was still under suspension.
Having once begun to discover the centrality of the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church and the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, he was on his way. His early career was marked by an extraordinary number of curacies. He filled in where needed, and sometimes served as curate-in-charge, all excellent training. Colyton awaited him, where the Liddon family had their HQ, but the Dissenters were active, and particularly the Unitarians, who were critical of “pomp and vanity”.
From the bookMamerto and Anne Gueritz on their golden wedding anniversary in 1899
What follows is the familiar story of opposition to liturgical innovations and the reordering of the church, heavy pastoral commitments, and energetic innovations that reflected national trends in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. In 1872, Colyton hosted the Choral Association Festival. Gueritz was also a member of several national associations. He established a number of societies in his own parish, including a Guild of St Andrew and a Society of the Holy Childhood, while actively encouraging a formally constituted community of Sisters of Mercy. “Pope Gurtz”, as the locals called him, buckled under the stress of conflict, but found new reserves of energy by keeping in touch with developments in London, at All Saints’, Margaret Street, for example, where he had formerly been involved. It is a fascinating story, well told.
It is good to see photographs of Gueritz (in vestments or in everyday wear), his wife, and some of his sons. One quarter of the book is devoted to the next generation of Gueritzes and the “supporting cast”. We are told about plenty of careers in this book, but not about inner lives.
What were these individuals actually like?
Dr Michael Wheeler is a Visiting Professor at the University of Southampton and a former Lay Canon of Winchester Cathedral.
Mamerto Gueritz: A country Catholic 1823-1912
David Gunn-Johnson
Sacristy Press £30
(978-1-78959-310-5)
Church Times Bookshop £27