James Ussher | |
|---|---|
| Archbishop of Armagh Primate of All Ireland | |
 | |
| Church | Church of Ireland |
| See | Armagh |
| Appointed | 21 March 1625 |
| In office | 1625–1656 |
| Predecessor | Christopher Hampton |
| Successor | John Bramhall (from 1661) |
| Other posts | Professor,Trinity College Dublin Chancellor,St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin Prebend of Finglas. |
| Previous post | Bishop of Meath(1621–1625) |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1602 |
| Consecration | 2 December 1621 by Christopher Hampton |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 4 January 1581 Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 21 March 1656(1656-03-21) (aged 75) |
| Buried | Chapel of St Erasmus,Westminster Abbey |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Denomination | Anglican |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Dublin (B.A.,M.A.,B.D.,D.D.) |
| Coat of arms |  |
James Ussher (orUsher; 4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656) was theChurch of IrelandArchbishop of Armagh andPrimate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific Irish scholar and church leader, who today is most famous for his identification of the genuine letters of the church father,Ignatius of Antioch, and forhis chronology that sought to establish the time and date of thecreation as "the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October ... the year before Christ 4004"; that is, around 6 pm on 22 October 4004 BC, per theproleptic Julian calendar.
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Ussher was born inDublin to a well-to-do family. His maternal grandfather,James Stanihurst, had been speaker of theIrish parliament. Ussher's father, Arland Ussher, was a clerk in chancery who married Stanihurst's daughter, Margaret (by his first wife Anne Fitzsimon), who was reportedly a Roman Catholic.[1]
Ussher's younger and only surviving brother,Ambrose, became a distinguished scholar ofArabic andHebrew. According to his chaplain and biographer,Nicholas Bernard, the elder brother was taught to read by two blind, spinster aunts.[2] A giftedpolyglot, he entered Dublin Free School and then the newly founded (1591)Trinity College Dublin on 9 January 1594, at the age of thirteen (not an unusual age at the time). He had received hisBachelor of Arts degree by 1598 and was a fellow andMA by 1600 (though Bernard claims he did not gain his MA till 1601). In May 1602, he was ordained in the Trinity College Chapel as a deacon in theProtestant,established,Church of Ireland (and possibly priest on the same day, while Martin Gorst says that he became a priest on 20 December 1601[3]) by his uncle
Ussher went on to becomeChancellor ofSt Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin in 1605 andPrebend ofFinglas. He became Professor of Theological Controversies at Trinity College and aBachelor of Divinity in 1607,Doctor of Divinity in 1612, and thenVice-Chancellor in 1615 and vice-provost in 1616. In 1613, he married Phoebe, daughter of a previousVice-Provost, Luke Challoner, and published his first work. In 1615, he was closely involved with the drawing up of the firstconfession of faith of the Church of Ireland, theIrish Articles of Religion.
James was born in the parish of St. Nicholas, to Arland Ussher (1545–1598) and Margaret Ussher (née Stanihurst) (1547–1601). It is recorded in Alfred Webb's,A Compendium of Irish Biography (1878) that his father, a clerk in thecourt of Chancery, was said to have been descended from one, Neville, who came over (to Ireland) with King John in the capacity of usher and had changed his name to that of his office. James was taught to read by two aunts who had been blind from infancy, to whom he ever afterward looked back with affection and respect. From eight to thirteen years of age he attended the school kept by Fullerton and Hamilton, private emissaries of James VI of Scotland, sent to keep up his influence in Ireland, in view of the prospect of his succeeding to the throne of England and Ireland."
James's abilities, diligence, and loving disposition from youth are described as "attracting the esteem of all with whom he came in contact." He became one of the first and leading scholars of Trinity College, Dublin (opened 1593).
In the beginning of 1614 he married his cousin, Phoebe, daughter of his maternal uncle Dr Lucas Challanor. Webb tells how Phoebe had been enjoined by her father's will, bequeathing her a considerable property, not to marry any other than Dr. Usher, "should he propose himself."[1]
1619 Ussher travelled to England, where he remained for two years.
His and Phoebe's only child was Elizabeth Ussher (1619–93), who marriedSir Timothy Tyrrell, ofOakley, Buckinghamshire. She was the mother ofJames Tyrrell.
Dr. Ussher became prominent after meetingJames I. In 1621 James I nominated UssherBishop of Meath. He became a national figure in Ireland, becomingPrivy Councillor in 1623 and an increasingly substantial scholar. A noted collector of Irish manuscripts, he made them available for research to fellow scholars such as his friend,Sir James Ware.
From 1623 until 1626 he was again in England and was excused from his episcopal duties to study church history. He was nominatedPrimate of All Ireland andArchbishop of Armagh in 1625 and succeededChristopher Hampton, who had succeeded Ussher's uncle Henry twelve years earlier.
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After his consecration in 1626, Ussher found himself in turbulent political times. Tension was rising between England and Spain. To secure IrelandCharles I offered Irish Catholics a series of concessions, including religious toleration, known asThe Graces, in exchange for money for the upkeep of the army. Ussher was a convincedCalvinist. He was dismayed thatPapists might obtain power. He called a secret meeting of the Irish bishops in his house in November 1626, the result being the "Judgement of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops of Ireland". This begins:
The religion of the papists is superstitious and idolatrous; their faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical; their church in respect of both, apostatical; to give them, therefore, a toleration, or to consent that they may freely exercise their religion, and profess their faith and doctrine, is a grievous sin.
The Judgement was not published until it was read out at the end of a series of sermons against the Graces given at Dublin in April 1627. FollowingThomas Wentworth's attainder in April 1641, King Charles and thePrivy Council of England instructed the Irish Lords Justices on 3 May 1641 to publish the required Bills to enact the Graces.[4][5] However, the law reforms were not properly implemented before the rebellion in late 1641.
During a four-year interregnum between Lord Deputies from 1629 on, there was an increase in efforts to impose religious conformity on Ireland. In 1633, Ussher wrote to the newArchbishop of Canterbury,William Laud, in an effort to gain support for the imposition ofrecusancy fines on Irish Catholics.Thomas Wentworth, who arrived as the new Lord Deputy in Ireland in 1633, deflected the pressure for conformity by stating that firstly, the Church of Ireland itself would have to be properly resourced, and he set about its re-endowment. He settled the long-running primacy dispute between the sees ofArmagh andDublin in Armagh's favour. The two clashed on the subject of the theatre: Ussher had the usual Puritan antipathy to the stage, whereas Wentworth was a keen theatre-goer: against Ussher's opposition, he oversaw the foundation of Ireland's first theatre, theWerburgh Street Theatre.
Ussher soon found himself at odds with the rise ofArminianism and Wentworth and Laud's desire for conformity between theChurch of England and the more CalvinisticChurch of Ireland. Ussher resisted this pressure at aconvocation in 1634, ensuring that the EnglishArticles of Religion were adopted as well as the Irish articles, not instead of them, and that the Irishcanons had to be redrafted based on the English ones rather than replaced by them. Theologically, he was a Calvinist although on the matter of the atonement he was (somewhat privately) ahypothetical universalist. His most significant influence in this regard wasJohn Davenant, later an English delegate to theSynod of Dort, who managed to significantly soften that Synod's teaching regarding limited atonement.[6]
In 1633, Ussher had supported the appointment ofArchbishop Laud asChancellor of the University of Dublin. He had hoped that Laud would help to impose order on what was, Ussher accepted, a somewhat mismanaged institution. Laud did that, rewriting the charter and statutes to limit the authority of the fellows, and ensure that the appointment of the provost was under royal control. In 1634, he imposed on the college an Arminian provost,William Chappell, whose theological views, and peremptory style of government, were antithetical to everything for which Ussher stood. By 1635, it was apparent that Ussher had lostde facto control of the church toJohn Bramhall, Bishop ofDerry, in everyday matters and to Laud in matters of policy.
William M. Abbott, Associate Professor of History atFairfield University, argues that he was an effective and politically important bishop and archbishop.[7] TheOxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that he was reactive and sought conciliation rather than confrontation.[8] The story that he successfully opposed attempts to reintroduce theIrish language for use in church services byWilliam Bedell, the Bishop ofKilmore, has been refuted.[9][10]
Ussher certainly preferred to be a scholar when he could be. He engaged in extensive disputations with Roman Catholic theologians, and even as a student he challenged aJesuit relative,Henry Fitzsimon (Ussher's mother was Catholic), to dispute publicly the identification of the Pope with theAntichrist. Ussher had an obsession with "Jesuits disguised as" Covenanters in Scotland, highwaymen when he was robbed, non-conformists in England, it was a remarkable list.[11]
However, Ussher also wrote extensively on theology,[12] patristics and ecclesiastical history, and these subjects gradually displaced his anti-Catholic work. After Convocation in 1634, Ussher left Dublin for his episcopal residence atDrogheda, where he concentrated on his archdiocese and his research. In 1631, he produced a new edition of a work first published in 1622, his "Discourse on the Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish", a ground-breaking study of theearly Irish church, which sought to demonstrate how it differed from Rome and was, instead, much closer to the later Protestant church. This was to prove highly influential, establishing the idea that the Church of Ireland was the true successor of the early Celtic church.
In 1639, he published the most substantial history of Christianity in Britain to that date,Britannicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates – the antiquities of the British churches. It was an astonishing achievement in one respect – in gathering together so many previously unpublished manuscript sources. Ussher was very reluctant to arrive at firm judgements as to the sources' authenticity – hence his devotion of a whole chapter to the imaginative but invented stories ofKing Lucius and the creation of a Christian episcopate in Britain.
In 1640, Ussher left Ireland for England for what turned out to be the last time.[13] In the years before theWars of the Three Kingdoms, his reputation as a scholar and his moderate Calvinism meant that his opinion was sought by both King and Parliament. After Ussher lost his home and income through theIrish uprising of 1641, Parliament voted him a pension of £400 while the King awarded him the income and property of the vacantSee of Carlisle.
Despite their occasional differences, he remained a loyal friend toThomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, and when the latter was sentenced to death by Parliament, pleaded with the King not to allow the execution of the verdict: unlike some of his episcopal colleagues, he insisted that the King was absolutely bound in conscience by his promise to Strafford that whatever happened his life would be spared. The King did not take his advice, but clearly afterwards regretted not doing so, as is shown by his reference on the scaffold to Strafford's death as "that unjust sentence which I suffered to take effect".
In early 1641 Ussher developed a mediatory position on church government, which sought to bridge the gap between the Laudians, who believed in an episcopalian church hierarchy (bishops), and the Presbyterians, who wanted to abolish episcopacy entirely. His proposals, not published until 1656, after his death, as The Reduction of Episcopacy, proposed a compromise where bishops operated in a Presbyteriansynodal system, were initially designed to support a rapprochement between Charles and the parliamentarian leadership in 1641, but were rejected by the King. They did, however, have an afterlife, being published in England and Scotland well into the eighteenth century. In all, he wrote or edited five books relating to episcopacy.
As the middle ground between King and Parliament vanished in 1641–1642, Ussher was forced, reluctantly, to choose between his Calvinist allies in parliament and his instinctive loyalty to the monarchy. Eventually, in January 1642 (having asked parliament's permission), he moved to Oxford, a royalist stronghold. Though Charles severely tested Ussher's loyalty by negotiating with the Catholic Irish, the Primate remained committed to the royal cause, though as the king's fortunes waned Ussher had to move on toBristol,Cardiff, and then toSt Donat's.
In June 1646, he returned to London under the protection of his friend,Elizabeth, Dowager Countess of Peterborough, in whose houses he stayed from then on. He was deprived of the See of Carlisle by Parliament on 9 October 1646, as the English episcopacy was abolished for the duration of theCommonwealth and theProtectorate.[14][15] He became a preacher atLincoln's Inn early in 1647, and despite his royalist loyalties was protected by his friends in Parliament. He watched theexecution of Charles I from the roof of the Countess of Peterborough's home in London but fainted before the axe fell.
Ussher wrote two treatises on the epistles ofIgnatius of Antioch while doing his work on church hierarchy. They were scholarly achievements that modern experts largely concur with. In Ussher's time, the only collection of Ignatius's writing easily available was the Long Recension, a set of 16 epistles. Ussher closely examined it and found problems that had gone uncommented on for centuries: differences in tone, theology, and apparent anachronistic references to theological disputes and structures that did not exist during Ignatius's time. Additionally, medieval authors commenting on Ignatius did not appear to be reading the same letters of the Long Recension. Ussher researched and found a shorter set, usually called the Middle Recension, and argued that only the letters contained in it were authentically Ignatius's. The unknown compiler of the Long Recension edited Ignatius's work and included some of his own, and seems to have hadArian tendencies. He published this Latin edition of the genuine Ignatian works in 1644. The only major difference between Ussher's stance and modern scholars is that Ussher thought that theEpistle of Ignatius to Polycarp was also inauthentic; most modern scholars believe it to be a genuine production of Ignatius, however.[16][17]
Ussher now concentrated on his research and writing and returned to the study of chronology and theChurch Fathers. After a 1647 work on the origin of theCreeds, Ussher published a treatise on the calendar in 1648. This was a warm-up for his most famous work, theAnnales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world"), which appeared in 1650, and its continuation,Annalium pars posterior, published in 1654. In this work, he calculated the date of theCreation to have been nightfall on 22 October 4004 BC. (Other scholars, such as theCambridge academicJohn Lightfoot, calculated their own dates for the Creation.) The time of theUssher chronology is frequently misquoted as being 9 a.m., noon or 9 p.m. on 23 October. See therelated article on the chronology for a discussion of its claims and methodology.
While calculating the date of the Creation is today considered a fringe activity, in Ussher's time such a calculation was still regarded as an important task, one also attempted by many Post-Reformation scholars, such asJoseph Justus Scaliger andIsaac Newton. Ussher's work is now used to supportYoung Earth Creationism, which holds that the universe was created thousands of years ago (rather than billions).
Ussher's chronology represented a considerable feat of scholarship: it demanded great depth of learning in what was then known of ancient history, including the rise of the Persians, Greeks and Romans, as well as expertise in the Bible, biblical languages, astronomy, ancient calendars and chronology. Ussher's account of historical events for which he had multiple sources other than the Bible is usually in close agreement with modern accounts – for example, he placed the death ofAlexander in 323 BC and that ofJulius Caesar in 44 BC. Ussher's last biblical co-ordinate was the Babylonian kingNebuchadnezzar II, and beyond this point, he had to rely on other considerations. Faced with inconsistent texts of theTorah, each with a different number of years between theGenesis flood narrative and Creation, Ussher chose theMasoretic version, which claims an unbroken history of careful transcription stretching back centuries – but his choice was confirmed for him by the fact that it placed Creation exactly four thousand years before 4 BC, the generally accepted date for theNativity of Jesus; moreover, he calculated thatSolomon's Temple was completed in the year 3000 from creation, so that there were exactly 1,000 years from the temple to Jesus, who was thought to be the 'fulfilment' of the Temple.[18]
In 1655, Ussher published his last book,De Graeca Septuaginta Interpretum Versione, the first serious examination of theSeptuagint, discussing its accuracy as compared with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. In 1656, he went to stay in the Countess of Peterborough's house inReigate, Surrey. On 19 March, he felt a sharp pain in his side after supper and took to his bed. His symptoms seem to have been those of a severe internal haemorrhage. Two days later he died, aged 75. His last words were reported as: "O Lord, forgive me, especially my sins of omission". His body was embalmed and was to have been buried in Reigate, but atOliver Cromwell's insistence he was given astate funeral on 17 April and was buried in the chapel of St Erasmus inWestminster Abbey.[19]
| Church of England titles | ||
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| Preceded by | Bishop of Carlisle 1642–1646 in commendam | Succeeded by |
