The Church of the Catacombs

Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman was the first Archbishop of Westminster. Born at Seville, Spain, of an Irish father.

In the 1851 census he is shown as residing at 35 Golden Square, Westminster with Canon Francis Searle who was his secretary, a butler, a footman and three female domestic servants.

The 1861 census shows him living at 8 York Place, Marylebone still with his secretary Canon Francis Searle, together with a housekeeper, a kitchen-maid and a valet.

He died, aged 62 years, on 15 February 1865 and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, North Kensington.

This historical novel is set in Rome in the early 4th century AD, during the time of the cruel persecution of Christians under the Emperor Diocletian.

The heroine of the book is Fabiola, a young pagan beauty from a noble Roman family. Fabiola seems to have everything, including a superior education in the philosophers, yet under the surface, she is not content with her life. One day, in a fit of rage, she attacks and wounds her slave girl Syra, who is a secret Christian. The proud, spoiled Roman girl is humbled by Syra's humility, maturity and devotion to her in this situation, and a slow transformation begins.

Woven into this fictitious story are a number of martyrdom accounts of real-life Christian saints, including Saint Agnes, Saint Tarcisius and Saint Sebastian.

Cardinal Wiseman wrote Fabiola in part as an answer to the vigorously anti-Catholic book Hypatia by Charles Kingsley. The novel was mainly aimed at the embattled Catholic minority in England, who had recently emerged from a half-illegal status.