HIGH CHURCH (“Chiesa alta”). — This designation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that is, before the “Oxford Movement” (1833), referred to those Anglicans who, faithful to the “non-juror” bishops (v.), remained loyal to the deposed king, James II, and were therefore also called Jacobites; whereas those who recognized the new dynasty formed the so-called “Low Church” Church (v.). During the first thirty years of the nineteenth century, the H. C. had greatly declined in number and importance.
When the “Oxford Movement” arose, the bishops of the H. C. initially showed themselves tolerant toward it; indeed, some realized that by adopting the same methods they could emerge from the religious apathy in which they lived. Later, however, suspicious of the “movement’s” excessively Roman tendency and alarmed by the notable conversions taking place to the Catholic Church, they opposed it, though without condemning it as a whole, and indeed retaining many of its good elements. The present representatives of the “Oxford Movement” are the Anglo-Catholics, and while it may be said that all Anglo-Catholics belong to the H. C., the converse is not true. Here are some points of contact and others of divergence among those who make up the H. C.: 1) All believe, despite Leo XIII’s bull Apostolicae curae (v. ORDINAZIONI ANGLICANE), that their ordinations are valid and that they possess apostolic succession; 2) All are Erastians (v. ERASTO), but the Anglo-Catholics deny the jurisdiction of the king or queen of England in ecclesiastical matters; 3) All have usurped the name of Catholics, but the Anglo-Catholics have adopted all Catholic ceremonies and doctrines, except the primacy and infallibility of the pope; 4) All, but the Anglo-Catholics more than the others, uphold the theory of the three branches (v. ANGLICANESIMO, nei secc. XIX e XX); 5) The Anglo-Catholics hope for corporate union and oppose private conversions; the others give no thought at all to such reunification; 6) All claim to be Catholics and are Protestants;
All these doctrines, whether concordant or discordant, should not be understood in a rigid sense; there are nuances, overlaps, and infiltrations not only between the two groups indicated, but also with the doctrines of the “Low Church” and even of the “Broad Church.”