Arthur Penrhyn Stanley
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, FRS (13 December 1815 – 18 July 1881), known as Dean Stanley, was an English Anglican priest and ecclesiastical historian. He was Dean of Westminster from 1864 to 1881. His position was that of a Broad Churchman and he was the author of a number of works on Church History. He was a co-founder of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley
1864 to 1881
Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History (1856–1863)
Rector of the University of St Andrews (1874–1877)
18 July 1881 (aged 65)
London, England
Early life[edit]
Stanley was born in Alderley Edge, in Cheshire, where his father, Edward Stanley, later Bishop of Norwich, was then rector.[1] A brother was Owen Stanley, and his sister was Mary Stanley. The middle-name 'Penrhyn' suggests Welsh lineage.
He was educated at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold and in 1834 went up to Balliol College, Oxford.[1] He is generally considered to be the source for the character of George Arthur in Thomas Hughes's well-known book Tom Brown's Schooldays, which is based on Rugby. After winning the Ireland scholarship and the Newdigate Prize for an English poem (The Gypsies), he was in 1839 elected a Fellow of University College and the same year took holy orders. In 1840 he travelled in Greece and Italy and on his return settled at Oxford, where for ten years, he was tutor of his college and an influential element in university life. His relationship with his pupils was close and affectionate, and the charm of his character won him friends on all sides. His literary reputation was early established by his Life of Arnold, published in 1844. In 1845 he was appointed select preacher, and published in 1847 a volume of Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age, which not only laid the foundation of his fame as a preacher but also marked his future position as a theologian. In university politics, which at the time wore mainly the form of theological controversy, he was a strong advocate of comprehension and toleration.[1]
Controversies[edit]
As an undergraduate, he had sympathised with Arnold in resenting the agitation led by the High Church Party in 1836 against the appointment of R. D. Hampden to the Regius professorship of divinity. During the long controversy that followed the publication in 1841 of Tract 90 and ended in the withdrawal of John Henry Newman from the Church of England, he used all his influence to protect from formal condemnation the leaders and tenets of the "Tractarian" party.[1]
In 1847, he resisted the movement set on foot at Oxford against Hampden's appointment to the bishopric of Hereford. Finally, in 1850, in an article published in the Edinburgh Review in defence of the Gorham judgment, he asserted two principles that he maintained to the end of his life: first, "that the so-called supremacy of the Crown in religious matters was in reality nothing else than the supremacy of law, and, secondly, that the Church of England, by the very condition of its being, was not High or Low, but Broad, and had always included and been meant to include, opposite and contradictory opinions on points even more important than those at present under discussion".[1]
Chair of ecclesiastical history[edit]
At the close of 1856 Stanley was appointed Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, a post that, with the attached canonry at Christ Church, he held until 1863. He began his treatment of the subject with "the first dawn of the history of the church", the call of Abraham, and published the first two volumes of his History of the Jewish Church in 1863 and 1865. From 1860 to 1864 academic and clerical circles were agitated by the storm which followed the publication of Essays and Reviews, a volume to which two of his most valued friends, Benjamin Jowett and Frederick Temple, had been contributors. Stanley's part in this controversy may be studied in the second and third of his Essays on Church and State (1870). The result of his action was to alienate the leaders of the High Church party, who had endeavoured to procure the formal condemnation of the views advanced in Essays and Reviews. In 1863, he published a Letter to the Bishop of London, advocating a relaxation of the terms of clerical subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. An act amending the Act of Uniformity and carrying out in some degree Stanley's proposals was passed in the year 1865. In 1862, Stanley, at Queen Victoria's wish, accompanied the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) on a tour in Egypt and Palestine.[1] The following year, the Queen appointed him Deputy Clerk of the Closet.[2][3]
In June 1863, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society as The Author of – Life of Doctor Arnold – Historical Memorials of Canterbury – Syria and Palestine in connexion with their History – Lectures on the Eastern Churches – and Lectures on the Jewish Churches[4] The collected Works of Dean Stanley take up 32 bound volumes.
Literary work[edit]
He was untiring in literary work, and though that consisted very largely of occasional papers, lectures, articles in reviews, addresses, and sermons, it included a third volume of his History of the Jewish Church, a volume on the Church of Scotland, another of Addresses and Sermons preached in America, "Essays Chiefly on Questions of Church and State from 1850 to 1870 (1870) and Christian Institutions : Essays on Ecclesiastical Subjects (1881), the last two collections some would consider still very relevant today. He was continually engaged in theological controversy, although courteously, and, by his advocacy of all efforts to promote the social, moral and religious amelioration of the poorer classes and his chivalrous courage in defending those whom he held to be unjustly denounced, undoubtedly incurred opposition from some in influential circles. Among the causes of offence might be enumerated not only his vigorous defence of one from whom he differed to some extent, Bishop Colenso, but his invitation to the Holy Communion of all the revisers of the translation of the Bible, including a Unitarian among other Nonconformists. Still stronger was the feeling caused by his efforts to make the recital of the Athanasian Creed optional instead of imperative in the Church of England. In 1874 he spent part of the winter in Russia, where he went to take part in the marriage of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and the Grand Duchess Marie.[1]
The collected The Works of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley take up 32 bound volumes.