# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Maturin, Basil William

​MATURIN, BASIL WILLIAM (1847–1915), Catholic preacher and writer, son of the Rev. William Maturin, by his wife, Jane Cooke Beatty, was born at All Saints' vicarage, Grangegorman, Dublin, 15 February 1847, the third in a family of ten children. The Maturins were old-fashioned ‘Tractarians’: three of the sons became clergymen, two of the daughters, nuns. Educated at home, at a day-school, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree in 1870, Basil (or Willie as he was called at home) intended to join the Royal Engineers; but a severe illness about 1868 and the death of his brother Arthur altered his mind and he decided to take orders. He was ordained deacon in 1870 and went in that year as curate to Peterstow, Herefordshire, of which place Dr. John Jebb, an old friend of his father, was rector. In 1873 he joined the Society of St. John the Evangelist, founded in 1866 at Cowley St. John, Oxford, by the Rev. Richard Meux Benson [q.v.]. In 1876 he was sent to America in order to begin a mission in Philadelphia. He was first an assistant priest and in 1881 became rector of St. Clement's church there and gained much popularity, until, in 1888, doubts as to his position in the Anglican Church occasioned his recall. After a six months' visit (1889–1890) to the society's house at Cape Town, he spent the next seven years in preaching, conducting retreats, and holding missions. At length, in 1897, after much mental stress, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church at Beaumont, near Windsor.
Having studied theology at the Canadian College, Rome, Maturin was ordained in 1898 and returned to England, where he lived at first with Cardinal Vaughan at Archbishop's House, Westminster. After serving for a time at St. Mary's, Cadogan Street, he joined the new society of Westminster diocesan missionaries under Fr. Chase in 1905, and became parish priest of Pimlico, where his influence began to extend widely. Maturin, however, had always longed for a monastic life, and in 1910 he tried his vocation with the Benedictines at Downside, near Bath; but he was ​too old for such a strain, and he returned to London, where he worked partly at St. James's, Spanish Place, but spent most of his time in preaching at different places. He visited America again in 1913. In 1914 he was offered simultaneously the parish of the Holy Redeemer in Chelsea, and the chaplaincy of the Catholics in the university of Oxford. Maturin accepted the latter task, but had hardly taken it up when the War broke out and the university was left empty of undergraduates. He went once more to the United States, preached there during the Lent of 1915, and then, in May, sailed for England on the Lusitania. The vessel was torpedoed and sunk on 7 May. Fr. Maturin was observed standing to give absolution to the passengers, and then lowering a child into a boat, saying, ‘Find its mother’. His body had no life-belt on it when it was washed ashore, and it was generally supposed that he refused one, as there were not enough to go round.
Maturin's chief works were: Some Principles and Practices of the Spiritual Life (1896), Practical Studies on the Parables of Our Lord (1897), Self-Knowledge and Self-Discipline (1905), Laws of the Spiritual Life (1907), and The Price of Unity (1912); the last gives some idea of the mental course which he followed on the way to the Church of Rome. After his death a volume of Sermons and Sermon Notes was edited and arranged (1916) by his friend Wilfrid Philip Ward. His books reveal a deep spirituality and an active imagination. But it was the vehemence of his sermons, combined with the acute psychological insight displayed in them and in his direction of penitents, that accounted for the profound influence which he exercised and of which he remained almost unaware. Depression and exaltation alternated in his Irish soul; but he applied to himself the discipline which he so well supplied to others.
[M. Ward, Father Maturin. A Memoir, 1920; Works cited above.]
C. C. M.