John Henry Newman - Callista: A Sketch of the Third Century

It is hardly necessary to say that the following Tale is a simple fiction from beginning to end. It has little in it of actual history, and not much claim to antiquarian research; yet it has required more reading than may appear at first sight.

It is an attempt to imagine and express, from a Catholic point of view, the feelings and mutual relations of Christians and heathens at the period to which it belongs, and it has been undertaken as the nearest approach which the Author could make to a more important work suggested to him from a high ecclesiastical quarter.

February 8, 1856. Since the volume has been in print, the Author finds that his name has got abroad. This gives him reason to add, that he wrote great part of Chapters I., IV., and V., and sketched the character [pg viii] and fortunes of Juba, in the early spring of 1848. He did no more till the end of last July, when he suddenly resumed the thread of his tale, and has been successful so far as this, that he has brought it to an end.

Without being able to lay his finger upon instances in point, he has some misgiving lest, from a confusion between ancient histories and modern travels, there should be inaccuracies, antiquarian or geographical, in certain of his minor statements, which carry with them authority when they cease to be anonymous.

February 2, 1881.October, 1888. In a tale such as this, which professes in the very first sentence of its Advertisement to be simple fiction from beginning to end, details may be allowably filled up by the writers imagination and coloured by his personal opinions and beliefs, the only rule binding on him being thisthat he has no right to contravene acknowledged historical facts. Thus it is that Walter Scott exercises a poets licence in drawing his Queen Elizabeth and his Claverhouse, and the author of Romola has no misgivings in even imputing hypothetical motives and intentions to Savonarola. Who, again, would quarrel with Mr. Lockhart, writing in Scotland, for excluding Pope, or Bishops, or sacrificial rites from his interesting Tale of Valerius?

Such was the understanding, as to what I might do and what I might not, with which I wrote this [pg ix] story; and to make it clearer, I added in the later editions of this Advertisement, that it was written from a Catholic point of view; while in the earlier, bearing in mind the interests of historical truth, and the anachronism which I had ventured on at page 82 in the date of Arnobius and Lactantius, I said that I had not admitted any actual interference with known facts without notice, questions of religious controversy, when I said it, not even coming into my thoughts. I did not consider my Tale to be in any sense controversial, but to be specially addressed to Catholic readers, and for their edification.

This being so, it was with no little surprise I found myself lately accused of want of truth, because I have followed great authorities in attributing to Christians of the middle of the third century what is certainly to be found in the fourth,devotions, representations, and doctrines, declaratory of the high dignity of the Blessed Virgin. If I had left out all mention of these, I should have been simply untrue to my idea and apprehension of Primitive Christianity. To what positive and certain facts do I run counter in so doing, even granting that I am indulging my imagination? But I have allowed myself no such indulgence; I gave good reasons long ago, in my Letter to Dr. Pusey (pp. 5376), for what I believe on this matter and for what I have in Callista described.