The Tractarian Moment: The Incidental Origins of the Oxford Movement

Abstract

Just what were John Henry Newman, Hurrell Froude, and John Keble up to in those hectic months of the summer and autumn of 1833 when the Oxford Movement began? It might seem unnecessary to ask such a question. The standard account portrays the three friends, agreed on common principles, working with substantial continuity (with the addition of E. B. Pusey and the loss of Froude) from 1833 at least to 1841. But the conventional literature has lost sight of the confusion and indecision of the initial moment of 1833.The basis of the standard account, and the reason why it should be distrusted, is that it is based on Newman's own account in the Apologia pro vita sua, the work of a man obsessed by his own major continuities and discontinuities, at once truthful and misleading.