| Resumo: | <p>This study is an account of Mark Pattison's religious experience up to the year 1850. It tells the story of Pattison's intellectual and personal development during the most crucial period of his life, of his close connection with Newman and the leaders of the Oxford Movement and, finally, of his rejection of religious orthodoxy and the growth in him of a religious agnosticism and intellectual scepticism.</p><p>Pattison attempted to tell this story himself in his <em>Memoirs</em>, published posthumously in 1885. But the story he tells is by no means complete. Besides, it is frequently inaccurate in matters of fact and often seriously misinterprets events. Further, he has great difficulty (as he readily admits) in understanding the exact state of his mind at important stages in his development, and his account is tinged not a little with anger and bitterness. Finally, the impression conveyed by the <em>Memoirs</em> (as John Sparrow remarks in the Clark Lectures of 1965) is that they are being dictated by a "disembodied intellect".</p><p>The present study attempts to reincarnate Mark Pattison. He is seen as a man of flesh and blood participating actively in the great movement of his day at Oxford. The inaccuracies and misinterpretations of the <em>Memoirs</em> are corrected. The story, based on the collections of Pattison manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in other libraries and in private hands at Oxford, is filled out and given a perspective. It is told not from the point of view of a disappointed and frustrated man on his deathbed, but from the diaries, notebooks, and letters of the young Pattison, contemporaneous with the events. The most significant information and much of the rest is entirely new. It brings to light an unusual perspective on the personalities, events, and influence of the Oxford Movement. Finally it throws new light on Pattison himself. For, instead of an embittered old man, we discover a much younger Pattison, a man who is shy but, at the same time, eager, passionate, enthusiastic, and hopeful, and a complete and thorough idealist.</p>
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