Frederic Sandeman De Mattos: Gentle Rogue and Talented Priest: Part One: Ritualist Controversy

Frederic Sandeman de Mattos was born a native of Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1860, the son of Antonio Joaquim de Mattos. His father, a Madeiran who had converted from Roman Catholicism to Presbyterianism, was an ordained minister and served a flock of exiled Portuguese in Jacksonville and Springfield, Illinois.1 Frederic and his brother, James P. de Mattos,2 absorbed the Scottish3 heritage of their mother, Isabella, and there is no evidence that either of them had any familiarity with their Portuguese tradition. De Mattos (always Frederic hereafter unless specifically indicated otherwise) probably suffered from a deep lack of selfesteem, perhaps derived from the short stature he shared with his brother, or perhaps from his mother's death when he was seven and his father's virtual abandonment of him when he was nine. Thereafter, Antonio provided for Frederic's support and educadon in France and Scotland, but Antonio lived in Portugal and Frederic grew up by himself. Later in life, until his personal reformation, Frederic often attempted to do bold deeds, even if based on misrepresentations, that compensated for his own inner feelings of inadequacy. He carried with him great sensitivity to any perceived criticism or slight. If any bubble broke for de Mattos he often reacted by flight or bizarre behavior. De Mattos attended the University of Glasgow for two years, then left when his finances ran out. During this time he rejected the Calvinism of his father and became an Anglican affiliated with the denomination's church wing. De Mattos felt called to the ministry, a move encouraged by his father, and enrolled in Wycliffe Seminary in Toronto, Ontario, which was at that time under the charge of de Mattos's cousin, the Rev. James P. Sheraton. Unfortunately for young de Mattos, Sheraton and his school embraced the evangelical and low church version of Anglicanism, and it was for this reason that de Mattos dropped out of Wycliffe after only a few months-the first of many precipitous moves he would make when he found things not just to his liking. De Mattos read for orders with a tutor and probably followed a course of study designed by a church clergyman, Bishop William E. McLaren of Chicago, who ordained de Mattos as a deacon in 1882. Following his ordination de Mattos served for the next two years as a deacon in two missions and one parish in the Chicago area. His church leanings, however, created controversy. The parish de Mattos served, Grace Church of Hinsdale, was low church; in December 1883 the vestry requested and a month later obtained the bishop's termination of de Mattos's appointment there. In all likelihood its congregation resented de Mattos's church ways. The division in churchmanship to which de Mattos fell prey in Hinsdale had its origins earlier in the nineteenth century. In the early decades of that century, churchmanship was not greatly controversial for the Episcopal Church because all churches were low by the present standards of the early twenty-first century. Almost all services focused on long sermons, and churches typically offered Holy Communion four or five times each year. Episcopal churches had no processions, no colored vestments, no acolytes, no candles except for lighting, and quite obviously no incense.3 However, there was already a division between an evangelical party and a church party, but not in the sense we think of this today. The church party emphasized baptismal regeneration, as distinct from the evangelicals' emphasis on adult renewal, but the church wing obtained its name because it held high the doctrine of apostolic succession.4 The Oxford Movement5 that began in England in the 1830s and became influential in the United States in the 1840s helped strengthen the church party in the Episcopal Church. This movement likewise emphasized apostolic succession, perhaps even more so, and claimed that only priests in the unbroken line of ordinations back to the apostles could validly administer the sacraments. …

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