Mary Helen Agnes Allies (2 February 1852 – 27 January 1927) was a Catholic historian, writer and translator.
Life
Allies was born on 2 February 1852. She was the eldest daughter of
Thomas William Allies and Eliza (born Hall) Allies. Her father had been a fellow at Oxford and he had risen to be the chaplain to the Bishop of London. He had however made a life-changing move to
Roman Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...
in 1850.
Her father was secretary of the
Catholic Poor School Committee
The Catholic Education Service (CES) is an agency of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW), whose object is the advancement of the Christian religion, primarily through education.
History
The CES has its roots in the ...
. She had five siblings and they lived in St John's Wood in London. The family moved to
Portman Square and Mary boarded at Holy Child College, a Catholic school in
St Leonards-on-Sea
St Leonards-on-Sea (commonly known as St Leonards) is a town and seaside resort in the Borough of Hastings in East Sussex, England. It has been part of the borough since the late 19th century and lies to the west of central Hastings. The origina ...
operated by the
Society of the Holy Child Jesus (later merged into their
Mayfield school), and subsequently the Visitation Convent Paris. Allies gave a lot of respect to her father and in time she would write his biography. She served as his secretary from 1872 to 1890. She said that she fed "on the marrow of his mind" when she was the only child living at home. Her first work, ''The Life of Pius VII'', was published in 1875. It was well researched, but strongly pro-Catholic. The book looked at
a supreme pope in conflict with the Napoleonic French state.
Pius VII's conflict included him being arrested. Allies' biography was based on sources in four languages. This, and the shorter version published in 1897,
as of 2004 was the only available biography of Pius VII in English and is therefore considered a standard work.
[
]
Works
Her next work, ''Three Catholic Reformers'' (1876) was considered too pious and uncritical of her subjects. She wrote about the Dominican friar Saint Vincent Ferrier, Saint Bernardino of Siena and the "Soldier Saint" John of Capistrano.
* ''Leaves from St. Augustine'' (1886) -taken from the works Saint Augustine
* ''Leaves from St. John Chrysostom'' (1887)
* ''Letters of St. Augustine'' (1889)[
She translated an extract of ]John of Damascus
John of Damascus ( ar, يوحنا الدمشقي, Yūḥanna ad-Dimashqī; gr, Ἰωάννης ὁ Δαμασκηνός, Ioánnēs ho Damaskēnós, ; la, Ioannes Damascenus) or John Damascene was a Christian monk, priest, hymnographer, and a ...
's ''De fide Orthoxa'' in 1898. When her mother died in 1902 and her father the following year she occupied herself writing a biography of her father,Allies, Mary Helen. "Thomas William Allies." The Catholic Encyclopedia
Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 11 December 2015 writing articles for journals such as ''Catholic World'' and ''Catholic quarterly; and caring for her brother's children. She died at her home in St John's Wood in 1927.[Rosemary Mitchell]
"Allies, Mary Helen Agnes (1852–1927)"
'' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 11 December 2015
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Allies, Mary Helen Agnes
1852 births
1927 deaths
British biographers
English Roman Catholics
British historians
British translators
British women historians
Contributors to the Catholic Encyclopedia
British women biographers