John McManners; ecclesiastical historian
Hyfler/Rosner
November 8, 2006 Wednesday
HEADLINE: Obituary of The Rev Prof John McManners Miner's
son who became an authority on Church and society in
18th-century France
THE REVEREND PROFESSOR JOHN McMANNERS, who died on Saturday
aged 89, was from 1972 to 1984 Regius Professor of
Ecclesiastical History at Oxford University.
His distinction as an historian of Church and religious life
in 18th-century France was recognised almost as much in the
French-speaking world as in the English. But before reaching
the Oxford chair he had held three professorships of general
history, and he took a broader view of his subject than the
designation "ecclesiastical historian'' might suggest.
After retiring from the Regius chair, McManners became
chaplain and a fellow of All Souls College, and continued
work on his major study of the French church in the
pre-Revolutionary period.
This eminence was reached from a most unexpected and
unpromising background. John McManners ("Jack'' to his
family and friends) was born on Christmas Day 1916 at
Ferryhill, Co Durham, the son of a collier and a
schoolmistress.
His mother was an Anglican, but his father, Joe, was then a
Labour activist and a determined unbeliever. When Jack was
growing up, however, his father experienced a conversion and
trained for the priesthood. Joe McManners became curate and
then vicar of his own village, and eventually a canon of
Durham Cathedral.
Jack attended council schools and then the local grammar
school at Spennymoor. A Wearside lilt remained with him as a
reminder of a background to be proud of in the mining
community of Co Durham. He won an exhibition to St Edmund
Hall, Oxford, in 1936, developed rapidly in that small but
congenial society, and took a First in Modern History in
1939.
No sooner had he started a piece of 17th-century doctoral
research than the war broke out, and he was commissioned in
the Northumberland Fusiliers. He served with the Eighth Army
in the Western Desert, took part in the siege of Tobruk, and
rose by the end of 1943 to be adjutant of the 1st Battalion,
the Northumberlands.
He was transferred as a major to the Greek Mission, based in
Alexandria, with a liaison role of preparing Greece for the
restoration of constitutional government. In 1948 he was
awarded the Order of King George I of the Hellenes for his
services during the war.
The war left a deep impression on McManners. Early in his
military service he had decided to seek ordination, and
pursued this in peacetime by studying Theology at Durham
University. His only parochial ministry, as a curate of
Leeds parish church, lasted barely a year, as his old
college called him back to be its chaplain and a lecturer in
History.
He was at St Edmund Hall, where he was soon appointed a
tutor and fellow, from 1948 to 1956, and was one of the
generation of dons who did so much to improve the academic
standing of a traditionally "hearty'' college.
Not least through his sporting interests (he had become a
highly accomplished tennis player) and as the college Dean
(nicknamed "McHappy''), McManners was a well-liked Hall
figure, apparently with a lifetime's Oxford career ahead of
him. But in 1956, seeking a fresh challenge, and perhaps
stimulated by memories of the Australian colleagues he had
fought alongside at Tobruk, he emigrated with his wife and
young family to take up the chair of History at the
University of Tasmania.
His four years in Hobart were troubled by a prolonged
administrative dispute, and he felt that he had not
succeeded in building up a department as he had wished. By
1960 he had transferred to Sydney where, still remote from
his research sources but with much potential for improving a
large department, he enjoyed great success.
Soon after his move to Sydney, McManners's first major book
appeared, after various well-received essays on the
18th-century nobility. French Ecclesiastical Society under
the Ancien Regime: A Study of Angers in the 18th Century
(1960) was detailed in its documentary research and
attractive in its literary style; above all it was broad in
human sympathy for the provincial clergy it described, and
it was very favourably received, in France as well as in
Britain.
In 1967 - after a year as a senior visiting fellow of All
Souls - he returned to England and took up a professorship
at Leicester University. There he developed the European
coverage of the undergraduate courses, and produced two
books, The French Revolution and the Church (1969) and
Church and State in France 1870-1914 (1972), drawing on his
own lectures.
In 1972, much to the pleasure of both the Theology and the
Modern History faculties at Oxford, he was appointed to the
Regius chair of Ecclesiastical History, recently reprieved
from a formal concentration on the early Church. The
professorship was attached to a canonry at Christ Church,
and this mixture of college, chapter and university cannot
have been without interest to the historian of ancien-régime
ecclesiastical life.
McManners's quietly forceful cathedral sermons were much
admired, and he gave much time to the administration of his
two faculties. He took a relaxed but efficient approach to
university administration. "They worked quite hard in their
fatuous way, like Oxford dons,'' he once remarked in the
course of a lecture about 18th-century French cathedral
chapters.
Death and the Enlightenment (1981) was the major publication
of his Christ Church years. The subject of death had become
modish among French social historians, but McManners brought
novelty and penetration to a study of the 18th-century
French experience of dying. Deathbeds, funerals, graveyards,
suicides and public executions were all brought together in
a book which won the Wolfson Literary Award for History in
1982.
On his retirement in 1984, McManners was invited to take up
the chaplaincy of All Souls, becoming also a fellow of the
college from 1986. He relished the society of this
distinctive institution, and enjoyed his more limited
duties, which gave him the opportunity to continue his
research.
McManners was general editor of the Oxford Illustrated
History of Christianity, which was published in 1990. It was
a best-seller, and the quietly reflective tone of its
introduction provides rare insights into McManners's own
religious and ecclesiastical outlook.
This collaborative volume was, however, a diversion from the
major scholarly enterprise of his years at All Souls: Church
and Society in 18th Century France, which was eventually
published in 1998. This work was on a scale that might have
daunted a much younger scholar. Two volumes, with more than
1,600 pages of text, fulfilled his aim "to appreciate the
beliefs, aspirations, hopes and fears of four generations''
of the people of pre-revolutionary France. He wrote
sympathetically, "adopting the approach of the portrait
painter rather than that of the clinical diagnostician,
aiming for friendly realism rather than morbid analysis''.
When this work was finished, he turned back to his wartime
experiences, refreshing his memory from regimental diaries
to write Fusilier: recollections and reflections 1939-1945,
a lively account of his war service, published in 2002. With
that, and a short but spirited account of an All Souls
scandal of the early 19th century, he brought an end to a
productive retirement.
McManners gave many endowed lectures, including the Birkbeck
(1976) and Trevelyan (1989) series at Cambridge. He was
elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1978, and
received the Ordre des Palmes Academiques in 1991. Within
the Church of England he was a member of the Doctrinal
Commission from 1978 to 1982. He much enjoyed his time as a
trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1970 to 1978.
He was appointed CBE in 2000.
Jack McManners had a natural modesty which forbade any
trumpeting of his achievements, and a diffidence which gave
special force to his quietly stated opinions. His sharp
glance and sly humour readily lit up his face, but he bore
no malice and his appreciation of human foibles was well
developed.
He was throughout his adult life a keen tennis player,
playing a deft game until he was well into his eighties.
He married, in 1951, Sarah Errington. They had two sons and
two daughters.