Page 20 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 3 Spring 2013

evangelical low churchman. When a group of friends
approached Shattuck proposing the formation of a new
church where the principles of “Catholic” practice would
be observed, he responded enthusiastically. Shattuck
persuaded Bishop Manton of the wisdom of establish-
ing a new church in Boston’s rapidly growing west end.
He and his associates also shrewdly drafted corporate
bylaws to protect their enterprise from the bishop’s
interference. Thus the Church of the Advent came into
being, an institution that could be regarded as the spirit-
ual parent of St. Paul’s School.
We have grown used to seeing maps of America colored
in red and blue. By the middle of the 19th century, such
a map could easily have been drawn of dioceses of the
Episcopal Church, illustrating the allegiance of their bishop
to either the low-church evangelical party or the high-
church Catholic party. Shattuck had become one of the
wealthiest and most energetic promoters of the Catholic
party. His extensive travels enabled him to network with
similarly minded bishops and clergy. Shattuck had paid
many visits to St. James College in Hagerstown, Md.,
an Episcopal institution that championed the Catholic
position. He was an avid reader of Newman’s sermons
and a plethora of pamphlets penned by like-minded clergy
throughout the world. During a trip to England in 1849,
he met several figures who promoted the Oxford Move-
ment: John Keble, Henry Manning, and George Moberly,
the headmaster of Winchester College. With the under-
standing of his new faith strengthened, Shattuck had an
opportunity to see how the thinking of Catholic church-
men could be put into practice in schools.
But let us return to the coach plodding westward on
Pleasant Street toward Millville with a clergyman, his
wife, three boys, and a dog. Again, Coit’s building of an
Episcopal school must be examined in a cultural context
very different from the one we know today. In his condem-
nation of “liberalism,” Newman had written: “Now by
liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise
of thought upon matters, in which, from the constitution
of the human mind, thought cannot be brought to any
successful issue, and therefore is out of place” (Apologia,
491). Newman’s words were directed to what he consid-
ered the abuses of freedom of conscience, the legacy of
the Reformation. Shattuck’s views were consistent with
Newman’s. He deeply distrusted “false liberty” achieved
by revolutionary means. As a medical student in Paris
in the 1830s, he was troubled by the fruits of French
republicanism. He was appalled by the sight of women
performing “men’s jobs” and by student political activism.
Fifteen years later, while looking at Jefferson’s Monticello
in the moonlight, his thoughts turned to the dissipation
and degeneracy that he considered the consequences of
Jeffersonian ideas. Although he had witnessed slavery
and detested it, Shattuck was deeply troubled by the words
and actions of the abolitionists. The open challenge to
existing social hierarchies or political systems was com-
pletely alien to his thinking.
Height of the Chapel tower
Interior height of the Chapel
Interior length of the Chapel
Stops on the organ
Organ pipes
Height of the smallest organ
pipe
Bells in the tower
Weight of the largest bell
Alumni clergy names carved
into the plaque in the chantry
Seating capacity of the Chapel
120
FEET
48
FEET
185
FEET
69
3800
¼
INCH
23
2000
LBS.
160
702
Chapel of St. Peter
and St. Paul