James Martineau | |
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| Born | (1805-04-21)21 April 1805 Norwich, England |
| Died | 11 January 1900(1900-01-11) (aged 94) London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Manchester College, York |
| Notable work | The Rationale of Religious Inquiry (1836) The Seat of Authority in Religion (1890) |
| Region | British Unitarianism |
| Institutions | Manchester New College |
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James Martineau (/ˈmɑːrtɪnoʊ/; 21 April 1805 – 11 January 1900)[1] was a Britishreligious philosopher influential in thehistory of Unitarianism.
He was the brother of the atheistsocial theorist,abolitionistHarriet Martineau. James Martineau's children included thePre-Raphaelite watercolouristEdith Martineau, and painter and woodcarverGertrude Martineau.[2]
For 45 years he was Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Economy inManchester New College[3] (nowHarris Manchester College, of the University of Oxford), the principaltraining college forBritish Unitarianism. He also served as its Principal and President.
Many portraits of Martineau, including one painted byGeorge Frederick Watts, are held at London'sNational Portrait Gallery. In 2014, the gallery revealed that its patron,Catherine, Princess of Wales, was related to Martineau. The Princess's great-great-grandfather,Francis Martineau Lupton, was Martineau's grandnephew.[4][5] The gallery also holds written correspondence between Martineau andPoet Laureate,Alfred, Lord Tennyson - who records that he "regarded Martineau as the mastermind of all the remarkable company with whom he engaged". Martineau andLord Tennyson were familiar withQueen Victoria's son,Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany and noted that Leopold, who had often "conversed with the eminent Dr. Martineau, was considered to be a young man of a very thoughtful mind, high aims, and quite remarkable acquirements".[6]William Ewart Gladstone said toFrances Power Cobbe "Dr Martineau is beyond question the greatest of living thinkers".[7]
The seventh of eight children, James Martineau was born inNorwich, England, where his father Thomas (1764–1826) was a cloth manufacturer and merchant. His mother, Elizabeth Rankin, was the eldest daughter of a sugar refiner and grocer. TheMartineau family were descended from Gaston Martineau, aHuguenot surgeon and refugee, who married Marie Pierre in 1693, and settled in Norwich. His son and grandson, respectively the great-grandfather and grandfather of James Martineau, were surgeons in the same city.[3] Many of the family were active inUnitarian causes, so much so that a room inEssex Hall, the headquarters ofBritish Unitarianism, was eventually named after them. Branches of the Martineau family in Norwich, Birmingham and London were socially and politically prominent Unitarians; other elite Unitarian families in Birmingham were the Kenricks, Nettlefolds and the Chamberlains, with much intermarriage between these families taking place.[8][9][10] Essex Hall held a statue of Martineau.[11] His niece,Frances Lupton, who was close to his sisterHarriet, had worked to open upeducational opportunities for women.[12]
James was educated atNorwich Grammar School where he was a school-fellow withGeorge Borrow underEdward Valpy, as good a scholar as his better-known brotherRichard, but proved too sensitive for school.[13] He was sent toBristol to the private academy of Dr.Lant Carpenter, under whom he studied for two years. On leaving he was apprenticed to acivil engineer atDerby, where he acquired "a store of exclusively scientific conceptions," but also began to look to religion for mental stimulation.[3]
Martineau'sconversion followed, and in 1822 he entered thedissenting academyManchester College, then atYork - his unclePeter Finch Martineau was one of its vice-presidents.[14] Here he "woke up to the interest of moral and metaphysical speculations." Of his teachers, one, the Rev.Charles Wellbeloved, was, Martineau said, "a master of the trueLardner type, candid and catholic, simple and thorough, humanly fond indeed of the counsels of peace, but piously serving every bidding of sacred truth." The other, the Rev.John Kenrick, he described as a man so learned as to be placed byDean Stanley "in the same line withBlomfield andThirlwall," and as "so far above the level of either vanity or dogmatism, that cynicism itself could not think of them in his presence." On leaving the college in 1827 Martineau returned toBristol to teach in the school of Lant Carpenter; but in the following year, he was ordained for a Unitarian church inDublin,[15] whose senior minister was a relative of his.[3]
Martineau's ministerial career was suddenly cut short in 1832 by difficulties growing out of the "regium donum", which had on the death of the senior minister fallen to him. He conceived it as "a religious monopoly" to which "the nation at large contributes," while "Presbyterians alone receive," and which placed him in "a relation to the state" so "seriously objectionable" as to be "impossible to hold." The invidious distinction it drew betweenPresbyterians on the one hand, and Catholics, members of theReligious Society of Friends (Quakers), othernonconformists, unbelievers, and Jews on the other, who were compelled to support a ministry they conscientiously disapproved, offended his conscience.[3] His conscience did, however, allow him to attend both theCoronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 andher Golden Jubilee half a century later. A year prior to the coronation, atSt James's Palace, Martineau had "kissed the hand" of the queen at the deputation of British Presbyterian ministers.[16]
From Dublin, he was called toLiverpool. He lodged in a house owned byJoseph Williamson. It was during his 25 years in Liverpool that he published his first work,Rationale of Religious Enquiry, which caught the attention of many religious and philosophical figures.
In 1840 Martineau was appointed Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Economy inManchester New College, the seminary in which he had been educated, and which had now moved from York back toManchester. This position, and the principalship (1869–1885), he held for 45 years.[17] In 1853 the college moved to London, and four years later he followed it there. In 1858 he combined this work with preaching at the pulpit of Little Portland Street Chapel in London, which for the first two years he shared withJohn James Tayler (who was also his colleague in the college), and then for twelve years as its only minister.[18]
In 1866, the Chair of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic atUniversity College, London, fell vacant when the liberal nonconformistDr John Hoppus retired. Martineau became a candidate, and despite strong support from some quarters, potent opposition was organised by the anti-clericalGeorge Grote, whose refusal to endorse Martineau resulted in the appointment ofGeorge Croom Robertson, then an untried man. Martineau, however, sidestepped Grote's opposition, much as Hoppus had learnt to do during his Professorship, and developed a cordial friendship with Robertson.
Martineau was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1872.[19] He was awarded LL.D. of Harvard in 1872, S.T.D. ofLeiden in 1874, D.D. ofEdinburgh in 1884, D.C.L. ofOxford in 1888 and D.Litt. ofDublin in 1891.[20]
Martineau described some of the changes he underwent; how he had "carried into logical and ethical problems the maxims and postulates of physical knowledge," and had moved within narrow lines "interpreting human phenomena by the analogy of external nature"; and how in a period of "second education" atHumboldt University in Berlin, withFriedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, he experienced "a new intellectual birth".[20] It made him, however, no more of atheist than he had been before, and he developedTranscendentalist views, which became a significant current within Unitarianism.[21]
In his early life he was a preacher. Although he did not believe in the Incarnation, he held deity to be manifest in humanity; man underwent anapotheosis, and all life was touched with the dignity and the grace which it owed to its source. His preaching led to works that built up his reputation:Endeavours after the Christian Life, 1st series, 1843; 2nd series, 1847;Hours of Thought, 1st series, 1876; 2nd series, 1879; the various hymn-books he issued at Dublin in 1831, at Liverpool in 1840, in London in 1873; and theHome Prayers in 1891.[20]
In 1839 Martineau came to the defence of Unitarian doctrine, under attack by Liverpool clergymen includingFielding Ould andHugh Boyd M‘Neile. In the controversy, Martineau published five discourses, in which he discussed "the Bible as the great autobiography of human nature from its infancy to its perfection," "the Deity of Christ," "Vicarious Redemption," "Evil," and "Christianity without Priest and without Ritual."[20]
In Martineau's earliest book,The Rationale of Religious Enquiry, published in 1836, he placed the authority of reason above that of Scripture; and he assessed the New Testament as "uninspired, but truthful; sincere, able, vigorous, but fallible."[22] The book marked him down, among older British Unitarians, as a dangerous radical, and his ideas were the catalyst for a pamphlet war in America betweenGeorge Ripley (who favored Martineau's questioning of the historical accuracy of scripture) and the more conservativeAndrews Norton. Despite his belief that the Bible was fallible, Martineau continued to hold the view that "in no intelligible sense can any one who denies the supernatural origin of the religion of Christ be termed a Christian," which term, he explained, was used not as "a name of praise," but simply as " a designation of belief."[23] He censured the German rationalists "for having preferred, by convulsive efforts of interpretation, to compress the memoirs of Christ and His apostles into the dimensions of ordinary life, rather than admit the operation of miracle on the one hand, or proclaim their abandonment of Christianity on the other".[24][20]
Martineau came to know German philosophy and criticism, especially the criticism ofFerdinand Christian Baur and theTübingen school, which affected his construction of Christian history. French influences wereErnest Renan and the Strassburg theologians. The rise of evolution compelled him to reformulate his theism. He addressed the public, as editor and contributor, in theMonthly Repository, theChristian Reformer, theProspective Review, theWestminster Review and theNational Review. Later he was a frequent contributor to the literary monthlies. More systematic expositions came inTypes of Ethical Theory andThe Study of Religion, and, partly, inThe Seat of Authority in Religion (1885, 1888 and 1890). What did Jesus signify? This was the problem which Martineau attempted to deal with inThe Seat of Authority in Religion.[25][20]
Martineau's theory of religious society, or church, was that of an idealist. He propounded a scheme, which was not taken up, that would have removed the church from the hands of a clerical order, and allowed the coordination of sects or churches under the state. Eclectic by nature, he gathered ideas from any source that appealed.Stopford Brooke once askedA. P. Stanley,Dean of Westminster, "if the Church of England would broaden sufficiently to allow James Martineau to be madeArchbishop of Canterbury".[26]
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Although he had opposed the removal (1889) of Manchester New College to Oxford, Martineau took part in the opening of the new buildings, conducting the communion service (19 October 1893) in the chapel of what is todayHarris Manchester College, University of Oxford.[27]
A wide circle of friends mourned his death on 11 January 1900;Oscar Wilde references him in his prose.[28]
He was buried in a family grave on the eastern side ofHighgate Cemetery. One of his daughters was thewatercolouristEdith Martineau who was interred in the family grave in 1909. The Martineau Memorial Hall in Norwich was built in 1907 and named aftercelebrated members of the family who had long resided in the area and were deacons of thechapel to which the hall was attached. However, unofficially, the hall was named after James who had died within recent years having established the hall'sSunday school some decades earlier.[29]
Note connection of Martineau, Kenrick, Nettleford and Chamberlain families (1862-1945)
(May 1857) My (H. Martineau) niece, Mrs (Frances) Lupton and her husband came for two days
Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Fairbairn, Andrew Martin (1911). "Martineau, James". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 797–800.
Quotations related toJames Martineau at Wikiquote| Presbyterian Church titles | ||
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| Preceded by Philip Taylor Joseph Hutton | Minister ofEustace Street Presbyterian Church, Dublin 1828–1832 With: Philip Taylor, 1828-1831 Joseph Hutton, 1828–1832 | Succeeded by Joseph Hutton |
