Kenelm Henry Digby

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For other people with the same name, see Kenelm Digby (disambiguation).

Kenelm Henry Digby (c. 1797 – 22 March 1880) was an Irish miscellaneous writer and poet, whose reputation among his contemporaries rested chiefly on his earliest publication, The Broad-Stone of Honour (1822), which contains an exhaustive survey of medieval customs.[1] The work was subsequently enlarged and issued (1828–29) in four volumes, entitled Godefridus, Tancredus, Morus and Orlandus. Described by Mordaunt Crook as a "Romantic Tory,"[2] he is better known today for the reconstruction of notions of chivalry in the nineteenth century,[3] alongside such figures as Stacey Grimaldi, Henry Stebbing, Warre-Cornish and Thomas Carlyle.[4]

Life

Kenelm Henry Digby was born at Clonfert in County Galway. He came of an ancient English stock branching, in Elizabeth's reign, into Ireland, by the marriage of Sir Robert Digby, of Coleshill, with Lettice FitzGerald, only daughter and heir of Gerald, Lord Offaly, eldest son of the 11th Earl of Kildare. The eldest son of this Robert and Lettice became the first Lord Digby. Their second son, Essex Digby, Bishop of Dromore, was father of Simon Digby, Bishop successively of Limerick and Elphin whose son John Digby (1690–1786), was father of William Digby, Dean of Clonfert. Kenelm Henry Digby was this latter's youngest son.[5] Thus his early surroundings and associations were strongly Protestant.

His father died in 1812, when his eldest brother, William, was already Archdeacon of Elphin. Unlike these, who had graduated at Dublin University, Kenelm Henry matriculated at the University of Cambridge, entering at Trinity College there.[6][7] His B.A. degree he took in 1819, but he never proceeded M.A. In summer, he travelled across Europe sketching old castles and writing. At Cambridge, he read Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam; his close friends there were George Darby, Julius Hare,[8] William Whewell, and Adam Sedgwick. Amid the many venerable and suggestive monuments of Catholic antiquity which Cambridge shows, he gradually gave his mind more and more to those "Ages of Faith" which he had been taught to despise and afterwards to the scholastic system of theology. Digby's exposure to Walter Scott's Essay on Chivalry (1818) and Ivanhoe (1819) as a youth likewise encouraged him to study the medieval period.[lower-alpha 1] Romantics such as Digby can be said to have rediscovered the Middle Ages insofar as an extensive interest in the period dates from that time.[lower-alpha 2] The result of his deep study of these subjects was his conversion to Catholicism. As there was no Catholic Church at Cambridge, Digby, accompanied by his friend and fellow convert Ambrose Phillipps De Lisle, used to take horse and ride twenty-six miles every Sunday morning for Mass and Holy Communion.

His first book, The Broad-Stone of Honour, he published anonymously in 1822, while still nominally a Protestant, and an enlarged edition, again anonymously, the year following. Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, a massive medieval fortification in Germany, gave him the title Broad-Stone. After his conversion he rewrote the work, dividing it into four volumes, which appeared, each with a separate subtitle, in 1826–27: Godfridus, containing a general introduction (named after Godfrey of Bouillon, a Crusade hero); Tancredus, discussing chivalry’s discipline and applauding Christianity (for Tancred, Prince of Galilee, another crusader); Morus, bashing the Reformation as the death of chivalry and religion (after Sir Thomas More); and Orlandus, which detailed Digby's idea of chivalric behaviour (after Ariosto's Orlando Furioso). Two other editions followed, and lastly an edition de luxe, in five volumes, published by Quaritch (1876–1877). According to its various secondary titles, this work treats of "the Origin, Spirit, and Institutions of Christian Chivalry", or "the True Sense and Practice of Chivalry". Julius Hare, in his Guesses at Truth, says that in this work the author "identifies himself as few have ever done with the good and great and heroic and holy in former times, and ever rejoices in passing out of himself into them".[lower-alpha 3]

Digby's second literary performance, entitled Mores Catholici, or Ages of Faith, came out in 1831–40 in eleven volumes, in a later edition reduced to three. In this work he collected, mostly from the original sources, a vast mass of information concerning the religious, social, and artistic life of the medieval peoples of Europe. It is, indeed, a kind of encyclopedia of the medieval life, from the viewpoint of an ardently Catholic soul. It has been well said that in it he collected like a truly pious pilgrim the fragrance of ancient times. Various other publications, some in prose, some in verse, dropped from his prolific pen from time to time down to 1876; but these, in comparison with his Broadstone of Honour and Mores Catholici, are but minor performances. The most important of them is a work entitled Compitum, or the Meeting of Ways at the Catholic Church. The complete list of his published works may be seen in Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics.[13]

His long, studious, and retired life closed at Shaftesbury House, Kensington, in his eighty-first year, after a very short illness.

Works

Digby was a prolific writer. There were two periods of his productive literary activity, the prose and the verse period.[14] During the former (1820–1865), appeared The Broad-Stone of Honour (1822–1828), the Mores Catholici (1831–1842);[lower-alpha 4] the Compitum, in seven volumes (1849–1854); between 1856–1864 were published four minor works comprising in all seven volumes. The verse period (1865–1876) includes several volumes, the longest being The Temple of Memory (1874).

The Broad-Stone of Honour contributed to the Young England movement's feudalist ideology[lower-alpha 5] and influenced many of Digby's contemporaries, such as Charles Kingsley and Charlotte Yonge.[17] Denis Florence MacCarthy wrote a sonnet "To Kenelm Henry Digby",[18] "poet and teacher of sublimest lore." Aubrey Thomas de Vere dedicated his Mediæval Records and Sonnets (1898) to Digby,[19] "who nobly asserted and proved the true greatness of the Middle Ages, when recognized by few." In 1910 Sir Charles Bruce named his study of imperial administration The Broad Stone of Empire and began it with an epigraph from Digby's book.

"On a small scale an English Chateaubriand," Charles Whibley said of Digby, he "preached his gospel without insistence," and, "writing for himself and a few friends", Digby was "surprised to find that his quiet voice carried so far as to reach the broadening politics."[20]

"Digby is now, for the most part, forgotten," George Carver stated, "and yet without his work the literature would be the poorer. No one before him or since has managed to pack into his writing such immense erudition as has he. His books must stand as storehouses, to be consulted by anyone who touches upon the subjects of: first, “the origin, spirit, and institution of Christian chivalry”; and second, “the ages of faith.”[21]

Private life

In 1833 Kenelm Digby wedded Jane Mary (c.1816/17–1860), daughter of Thomas Dillon,[22] who bore him six children, alternate boys and girls, who were all brought up at home, Digby educating them himself.

His son Kenelm Thomas Digby was MP for Queen's County.

One of his daughters, Mary Jane Elizabeth Alice,[23] married Hubert Dormer (1837–1913), son of Joseph Dormer, 11th Baron Dormer. Another daughter, Marcella, was elected in Paris mother superior of the congregation of the sisters of the Sacred Heart.[lower-alpha 6]

See also

Notes

Footnotes

  1. ↑ French traditionalist authors such as Lamennais,[9] De Maistre and philosophers such as Karl Ludwig von Haller also had a decisive influence on Digby during his formative years, which lasted throughout his life. In his 1874 autobiographical poem The Temple of Memory Digby would praised Haller's work: "Though now another form revered behold/ It is De Haller who so well has told/ The folly of the sophists who o'erthrew/ All ancient rule, and would begin anew/ To leave without a government or law/ All Europe, as their tendencies he saw./ "Of civil science" thus "the restoration"/ He would proclaim to help each wretched nation./ From Berne as a convert he had flown/ Whose senators would Catholics disown/ And so to France and to her king he came,/ Where he enjoyed a truly honour'd name,/ Till Soleure at the last became his home,/ Whence until death he would no longer roam./ Soleure and Fribourg, then alike could boast/ Of having each of French a polish'd host/ Whose sons had with the Jesuits been placed/ When the tenth Charles had their schools effaced./ The Count O'Mahony had salons there/ To which the noblest circles would repair/ Enchanted with his hospitable way/ Receiving both the wise and good and gay./ Such exiles for the sake of education/ Would lustre shed, I think, on any nation."[10]
  2. ↑ British Medievalism manifested itself also in the Gothic churches of the convert architect Augustus Pugin[11] and the liturgical scholarship of Daniel Rock, chaplain to John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, who financed Pugin's work.
  3. ↑ "It was not in him knowingly to extenuate aught or set down aught in malice", Father Rope completed. "His wellstored mind dwelt on the amazing riches of medieval thought and deed so naturally that their shadow-side was sometimes in danger of being forgotten by him and by his readers."[12]
  4. ↑ The Jesuit Andreas Kobler made an extract translation of Mores Catholici into German, published in 4 volumes.[15]
  5. ↑ Young England was a revolt of a group of English youth against religious indifferentism and economic utilitarianism. Intellectually it was influenced by the novels of Walter Scott, by Frederick Faber's Tractarian movement of High Churchmen at Oxford and such works as Digby's The Broad-Stone of Honour (1822)[16] and Robert Southey's Colloquies on Society (1829) — where the Middle Ages were favourably contrasted with contemporary Britain. The group's leader Benjamin Disraeli taught Young England to trace the half-forgotten history of Toryism from its Cavalier and Jacobite origins, through Bolingbroke and Pitt, to what he denounced as its contemptible parody in Peelite Conservatism. The policy of Young England was to unite Crown, Church, gentry and working men — both rural and urban — against the Whig families which had risen through the Reformation and the 1688 Revolution, and their recent allies, the factory owners and profiteering middle class.
  6. ↑ Kenelm Digby's cousin Simon Digby, son of Reverend John Digby, had two sons and four daughters issued of the marriage to Elizabeth Anne Ella Morse, including Mabel Digby (1835–1911), also a superior general of the Society of the Sacred Heart.[24] Simon Digby was an ardent Protestant, who actually separated from his wife when she became a Roman Catholic.

Citations

  1. ↑ Gleason, Philip (1971). "Mass and Maypole Revisited: American Catholics and the Middle Ages," The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. LVII, No. 2, pp. 249–74.
  2. ↑ Crook, J. Mordaunt (September 25, 1981). "Honour and Its Enemies," The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4095, p. 1102.
  3. ↑ Chapman, Raymond (1986). The Sense of the Past in Victorian Literature. London: Croom Helm, pp. 46–48.
  4. ↑ Frantzen, Allen J. (2003). Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  5. ↑ "Kenelm Henry Digby," The Peerage.
  6. ↑ Robson, Robert (1967). "Trinity College in the Age of Peel." In: Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in Honour of George Kitson Clark. London: G. Bell & Sons.
  7. ↑ Ashworth, William J. (2021). "Trinity in the Early Nineteenth Century." In: The Trinity Circle: Anxiety, Intelligence, and Knowledge Creation in Nineteenth-Century England. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 18–50.
  8. ↑ Distad, N. Merrill (1979). Guessing at Truth: The Life of Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855). Shepherdstown: Patmos Press.
  9. ↑ Roe, W. G. (1966). Lamennais and England: The Reception of Lamennais's Religious Ideas in England in the Nineteenth Century. London: Oxford University Press.
  10. ↑ Digby, Kenelm Henry (1874). The Temple of Memory. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, p. 108.
  11. ↑ Stanton, Phoebe (1968). "The Sources of Pugin's Contrasts." In: John Summerson, ed., Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing Presented to Nikolaus Pevsner. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.
  12. ↑ Rope, H. E. G. (1934). "A Word for the Middle Ages," The Catholic World, Vol. CXL, No. 836, p. 159.
  13. ↑ Gillow, Joseph (1885). A Literary and Biographical History, or Bibliographical Dictionary, of the English Catholics from the Breach with Rome, in 1534, to the Present Time, Vol. 2. London: Burns & Oates, pp. 81–83.
  14. ↑ The Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. LXI, No. 3 (1919), p. 346.
  15. ↑ Digby, Kenelm Henry (1887–1889). Katholisches Leben im Mittelalter. Innsbruck: Vereinsbuchhandlung und Buchdruckerei.
  16. ↑ Fay, Elizabeth (2002). "Grace Aguilar: Rewriting Scott Rewriting History." In: Sheila A. Spector, ed., British Romanticism and the Jews: History, Culture, Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  17. ↑ Bourrier, Karen (2015). "Charles Kingsley’s and Charlotte Yonge's Christian Chivalry." In: The Measure of Manliness: Disability and Masculinity in the Mid-Victorian Novel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 26–51.
  18. ↑ MacCarthy, Denis Florence (1884). Poems. Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, pp. 175–56.
  19. ↑ Reilly, Paraclita (1953). Aubrey De Vere, Victorian Observer. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p. 153.
  20. ↑ Whibley, Charles (1919). "Musings without Method," Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. CCVI, No. 1246, p. 290.
  21. ↑ Carver, George (1926). The Catholic Tradition in English Literature. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, p. 204.
  22. ↑ "Jane Mary Dillon," The Peerage.
  23. ↑ "Mary Jane Elizabeth Digby," The Peerage.
  24. ↑ Pollen, Anne (1914). Mother Mabel Digby: A Biography of the Superior General of the Society of the Sacred Heart, 1835-1911. London: John Murray.

References

Barry, William Francis (1920). "Kenelm Digby," The Dublin Review, Vol. CLXVI, No. 332, pp. 31–50.
Chesterton, G. K. (1935). The Well and the Shallows. New York: Sheed and Ward.
Couve de Murville, Maurice; Philip Jenkins (1983). Catholic Cambridge. London: Catholic Truth Society.
Girouard, Mark (1981). The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Holland, Bernard (1919). Memoir of Kenelm Henry Digby. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Lappin, Henry A. (1919). "Kenelm Henry Digby," The Catholic World, Vol. CX, No. 655, pp. 1–13.
More, Paul Elmer (1920). "An English Montaigne," The Unpartizan Review, Vol. XIV, No. 27, pp. 157–59.
Morris, Kevin L. (1984). The Image of the Middle Ages in Romantic and Victorian Literature. London: Croom Helm.
Morris, Kevin L. (1985). "The Cambridge Converts and the Oxford Movement," Recusant History, Vol. XVII, No. 3, pp. 386–98.
Morris, Kevin L. (1991). "Kenelm Henry Digby and English Catholicism," Recusant History, Vol. XX, No. 3, pp. 361–70.
Pawley, Margaret (1993). Faith and Family: The Life and Circle of Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle. Norwich: Canterbury Press.
Pawley, Margaret (2004). "Digby, Kenelm Henry." In: H. C. G. Matthew & Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 16. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, p. 160.
Purcell, Edmund Sheridan (1900). Life and Letters of Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle. London: Macmillan and Co.
Reville, John C. (1917). "The Meeting of the Ways," America, Vol. XVI, No. 25, pp. 601–602.
Rope, H. E. G. (1926). "A Memory of Saulston Hall: A Hundred Years Since," The Month, Vol. CXLVII, No. 743, pp. 395–400.
Toole, Helan Maree (1928). "Thoughts on Sir Kenelm Digby," America, Vol. XXXIX, No. 14, pp. 322–23.
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