Pope Leo XII appointed him curator of the Arabic manuscripts in the Vatican, and professor of Oriental languages in the Roman University. His academic life was, however, broken by the pope's command to preach to English residents of Rome. A course of his lectures, "On the Connexion between Science and Revealed Religion", attracted much attention. His general thesis was that whereas scientific teaching had repeatedly been thought to disprove Christian doctrine, further investigation has shown that a reconciliation is possible. It is much to Wiseman's credit that his lectures on the relationship between religion and science received the stamp of approval from a critic as stern as Andrew Dickson White. In his extremely influential "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom", whose primary contention was the conflict thesis, White wrote that "it is a duty and a pleasure to state here that one great Christian scholar did honour to religion and to himself by quietly accepting the claims of science and making the best of them... That man was Nicholas Wiseman, better known afterward as Cardinal Wiseman. The conduct of this pillar of the Roman Church contrasts admirably with that of timid Protestants, who were filling England with shrieks and denunciations."