Evangelical Christianity and the Appeal of the Middle Ages: The Case of Bishop Charles Venn Pilcher

Evangelical Christianity and the Appeal of the Middle Ages: The Case of Bishop Charles Venn Pilcher Graham Barwell and John Kennedy I N T R O D U C T I O N In recent years in studies of the Western Middle Ages, there has been an increasing interest in medievalism itself, rather than simply in the cultures and their cultural products. Such interest has not been confined to the European countries, but has extended to others, the United States or Australia, for example, where the teaching of medieval studies has often been based on a sense of a European cultural inheritance. A s part ofthis shift in direction, specific attention has been paid to the medievalism of a variety of enthusiasts, editors, translators, teachers and scholars. Some of the focus has been on the role medievalism played in the formation of subjects and cultures, especially in the formation of gender 1 This interest is demonstrated in the periodical, Studies in Medievalism, publication in 1979. Several notable monographs relevant to nineteenth-century Britain have appeared since then. Mark Girouard's The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), for instance, focusses on the revival and adaptation of the code of medieval chivalry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Andrew Wawn's 77ie Vikings and the Victorians: Inventin Old North in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000) shows how No medievalism permeated almost all literate sections ofVictorian society. 38 Graham Barwell and John Kennedy and identity - personal, class or national - and in the production and legitimation of socio-political forces like nationalism or colonialism/imperialism. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the great cultural value placed on a perceived connection with the Middle Ages can been seen in many features of nineteenthcentury literary culture, from children's books, especially those for boys, to the output of groups like the Early English Text Society, itself an offshoot of the immense interest in language history which resulted in the production of the Oxford English Dictionary. While major figures have had most of the attention, nineteenth-century medievalism affected some quite minor cultural figures and an examination of those effects is not unrewarding. It can help to account for some otherwise puzzling features of the life and work of such people, and can throw some light on w h y certain attitudes might have been held. In Australia, one such figure is the clergyman and scholar, Charles Venn Pilcher (1879-1961), one time Coadjutor Bishop of Sydney and publisher of thefirstbook of translations from the Icelandic in this country. Pilcher was not a professional medievalist: ordained in the Anglican church and deeply rooted in the Evangelical tradition, he professed theology as his discipline and specialised for most of his long academic career in the study of the Old and N e w Testaments, publishing quite extensively in those fields. Yet during some 30 years he also devoted much time and energy to studying and translating medieval literature, particularly that of Iceland. 2 Chapter 14, 'Knights of the Empire' (pp. 219-30) in Girouard's book examines the links between medievalism and British imperialism, while the collection of essays edited by Donald E. Hall, Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1994), critiques this important Victorian religious, social and literary movement from the point ofview ofcultural and gender studies. Girouard's chapter on the Christian Socialist movement, 'Muscular Chivalry' (pp. 129-44), focussing especially on Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, shows the close connection between i t and Victorian medievalism. 3 The work of the author, R. M. Ballantyne, is briefly discussed below. F. J. Furnivall, the founder of the text society, taught at the Working Men's College, the institution associated with the Christian Socialists (Girouard, 77;e Return to Camelot p. 136). 4 See, for example, the studies of Sir Walter Scott and Sir Frederic Madden by David Matthews, "'Quaint Inglis": Walter Scott and the Rise ofMiddle English Studies', Studie in Medievalism 1 (1995), 33-48 and "The Deadly Poison ofDemocracy": Sir Frederic, Sir Gawain, and the Invention ofMiddle English', ParergonNS 15.2(Jan. 1998) 19^5 Evangelical Christianity: Bishop Charles Venn...