Peter Augustine Baines
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The Right Reverend Peter Augustine Baines O.S.B. |
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|---|---|
| Vicar Apostolic of the Western District | |
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| Appointed | 3 March 1829 |
| Term ended | 6 July 1843 |
| Predecessor | Peter Collingridge |
| Successor | Charles Michael Baggs |
| Other posts | Titular Bishop of Sigus |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 7 April 1810 |
| Consecration | 1 May 1823 by Daniel Murray |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 25 June 1786 or 25 January 1787 Peartree Farm, Kirkby, near Liverpool, England |
| Died | 6 July 1843 Prior Park College, Bath, Somerset, England |
| Buried | Downside Abbey, Stratton-on-the-Fosse, Somerset, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| Previous post | Coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of the Western District (1823–1829) |
Peter Augustine Baines (1786/87–1843) was an English Benedictine, Titular Bishop of Siga and Vicar Apostolic of the Western District of England.
For his early education he was sent to Lamspringe Abbey, near Hildesheim, in the Kingdom of Hanover, where he arrived in 1798. Four years later the monastery was suppressed by the Prussian Government, and the monks and their pupils returned to England. Some of them, including Baines, took refuge at the recently founded monastery at Ampleforth, Yorkshire. He joined the Benedictine Order, and held in succession every post of authority in the monastery, the priorship alone excepted.
In 1817 Baines left Ampleforth and was appointed to Bath, one of the most important Benedictine missions in the country. There he became a well-known figure, his sermons attracting attention not only among Catholics, but also among Protestants. His printed letters in answer to Charles Abel Moysey, Archdeacon of Bath, became known as Baines's Defence.
Bishop Peter Bernardine Collingridge, Vicar Apostolic of the Western District selected Baines as his coadjutor. He received episcopal consecration as Titular Bishop of Siga by Archbishop Daniel Murray at Dublin, 1 May 1823.
Bishop Baines soon began to formulate schemes for the future of the district, on a large scale. It was without a regular seminary for the education of its clergy. The Western District differed from the other three in that the bishop had always been chosen from among the regular clergy, Benedictines or Franciscans, and a large proportion of the missions were in their hands. Baines thought that he saw the solution of his difficulty in utilising the recently opened Downside School, near Bath, under Benedictine management. Baines proposed that the whole community of monks at Downside should be transferred from the Anglo-Benedictine Congregation, and placed under the Bishop of the Western District, but these proposals were not warmly received.
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