The Church of England was “established,” in England, and behind the scenes. This was a reminder to me of what I had once been able to admire in that English church, at its best: men animated by a sense of public responsibility, in every dimension of their character. In one of the British obituaries, it was noted that there were remarks by Chadwick in the files for almost every student who passed through Selwyn in his time always concise, and both charitable and pointed. This had much to do with a further gift for verbal clarity and precision.

In his college and in his church, he had a gift for seeing through situations to people again and again he resolved impossible conflicts, into which he had sometimes entered as a minority of one. He wrote dispassionately of matters clouded by passion, yet never in cold blood.Īs a man of practical affairs he was invaluable for certain priestly qualities. His chief interest was our modern world, and how it came to be that way, in light of its deeper history. He calmly pursued the truth, in subjects of vast human complexity. He marshaled evidence, chiefly from the British diplomatic archive, to show that the charges were ludicrous and provided historical context to more than explain the pope’s selective “silences.” His forensic skill, in establishing strict chronology through murky events, was of real service in exposing very malignant lies.Ĭhadwick impressed me for his aloofness in controversy. Roman Catholics may remember his defense of the reputation of Pius XII, during the “Hitler’s pope” controversy of past decades. He embraced “cultural history” in the manner almost of a Christopher Dawson. Then Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge Regius Professor of History and once rugby star Chadwick was a church historian in no way parochial. The ideas and consequences were all of a piece.Ĭhadwick, who died last week at age ninety-nine, was among the most formidable intellects on that Anglican shore. The new, “secular,” atheist and evolutionary quasi-religion could be taken as a by-product, too. That “ideas have consequences” is acceptable as a modern, subtly self-flattering cliché Chadwick also shows that “consequences have ideas.” Man in the nineteenth century was becoming alienated from nature and society alike, by the sweep of industrial innovation. That balance is struck between social and intellectual history.

The book is a magnificently balanced, concise account of something unprecedented in human history. I remember them as fresh and new about the time I was losing my faith in atheism, and steering a course for Christianity that landed me first in his Anglican church. These Gifford Lectures were published in 1975.

I would recommend to anyone Owen Chadwick’s survey, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century.

Owen chadwick the victorian church