The Cult of St. Alban the Martyr and the Hagiotoponymy of Imperial Anglicanism in Canada, 1865–1921 by Jonathan S
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Volume 88 • September 2019 • Number 3 Contents X Marks The Spot: The Cult of St. Alban the Martyr and the Hagiotoponymy of Imperial Anglicanism in Canada, 1865–1921 By Jonathan S. Lofft 233 Rauschenbusch’s Junior Partner: James Bishop Thomas, Episcopal Radical By Eugene TeSelle 259 Church Reviews Flip-Flops Are Appropriate Here: Pride & Pentecost at St. Thomas’, Dupont Circle By J. Barrington Bates 283 Artwork, Architecture, Fast-Paced Preaching, and a Warm Welcome on the French Riviera By Samuel J. Richards 287 Book Reviews ANGLICAN VIDEO, The Doctrine of Discovery: Stolen Lands, Strong Hearts, by Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook 291 Contents continues XMarks The Spot: The Cult of St. Alban the Martyr and the Hagiotoponymy of Imperial Anglicanism in Canada, 1865–19211 JONATHAN S. LOFFT Inafavorite scene from the Hollywood blockbuster movie In- diana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989), the title character,aswashbuckling treasure hunter who supports himself by slumming it with an academic job in the Ivy League, insists to his class of sleepy undergraduates that: ‘‘ninety percent of an archaeologist’stime is spent in the library. Myths can only be taken at face value. We do not follow maps to buried treasures, and Xnever ever marks the spot.’’Inthe end, of course, it is precisely this prejudice that Indy must overcome in order to gain the advantage. Sensitive to the critical turn in place-name studies, just occasionally,Xdoes,infact, mark the spot. More precisely,the following study examines evidence gener- ated between 1865 and 1921 of an imperialist cult of St. Alban the Martyr active in Victorian Canada, otherwise absent from his dossier.Through an explorationofexpanding High Church 1 Iamgrateful to Professor Carole A. Hough of the University of Glasgow for her helpful suggestions and her encouragement with this paper,especially its subtitle. An earlier version of this paperwas presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of ChurchHistory, Ryerson University,Toronto, 1June 2017. JONATHAN S. LOFFT is an associate of Trinity College in the University of Toronto teaching courses in historyatthe Faculty of Divinity and the affiliated Toronto SchoolofTheology.Aresearch fellow of Huron Col- lege at Western University,heisalso an adjunct memberofthe faculty of Queen’sCollege in the Memorial UniversityofNewfoundland. Anglican andEpiscopal History Volume 88, No. 3, September 2019 233 234 ANGLICAN AND EPISCOPAL HISTORY devotion to his name and fame, his title of protomartyr,and his distinctive heraldic emblem, as well as by tracing the network of his devotees responsible for three of the first dedications of churches to his patronage in Canada, the contours of the figure of St. Alban as apatron saint of the British Empire are discerned. This reinven- tion of his patronage points to the importance of afurther survey- ing of what are termed here imperial hagiotoponyms—simply, colonial place-names derived from canons of metropolitan saints. Stock should be taken of these names, as aspects of intangible cultural heritage, in order to document the true scope, not only of the cult of St. Alban and his intercolonial network throughout the Anglican Communion, but of the fullness of hagiotoponymy as aChristian colonial placemaking practice.2 SPATIALIZED CULTIC PRECEDENTS Across anascentimperial Anglicanworld, aspiritual empire to mirrorBritain’s ascendant hegemony,settler appropriation of space involved the organization of sacred landscapes, despitelingering Protestant disdain forthe cult of thesaints.3 As Robert Bartlett stressed, however,‘‘the influence of theSaints on place names con- tinuedwellafterthe Reformation.’’4 Out of seeming oblivion, the dedications of churches gradually resurfaced. Indeed, therelatively limited number of permissible dedications in theAnglicanreper- toire prior to the Oxford Movement gazettes these select hagiotoponyms—dedications to Saints Alban, Chad, George, and Paul, along with Christchurch, and afew others—as peculiarly Brit- ish. Nor is ‘‘Making places familiar by repeating names, associating 2 Ihave freely adapted this term from the ‘‘imperial toponymy’’described in StephenJ.Hornsby, Imperial Surveyors: Samuel Holland, J. F. W. Des Barres and the Making of the Atlantic Neptune (Montreal and Kingston, 2011), 141. See also JenniferS.H.Brown, ‘‘Intangible Culture on Inland Seas, from Hudson Bay to Canadian Heritage,’’ Ethnologies 36 (2014): 141-59. 3 For aschematic of the main structures represented in settlement names, see Carole Hough, ‘‘Settlement Names’’inCarole Hough,ed., The Oxford Hand- book of Names and Naming (Oxford, 2016), 92-93. 4 Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worship- pers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, 2013), 455. ST.ALBAN THE MARTYR 235 one place with another,’’amodernstrategy fortying personal and community identity to toponyms.5 Thepractice of imperialhagio- toponymyentwinedculticand imperialist zeal in theproduction of place, and of translocal geographies, aconcept understood ‘‘as a simultaneous situatednessacross different locales which provide ways of understandingthe overlappingplace-time(s)inmigrants’ everyday lives.’’6 Imperial hagiotoponyms index translocalities, ‘‘virtual neighbourhoods that emergeatthe articulation of mediaand mobilityas...‘deterritorializedimaginings’ of ethno-national identity ...networks of sites ...linkages and interconnections.’’7 By no means did the notionofapatron saint of theBritish Empire originate with St.Alban’s impresarii in Confederation EraCanada. In his considerationofthe fashionably resurgent cult of St. George the Martyr in Victorian Britain, Jonathan Good described atransition in which the romanticmedievalism of this revival shifted emphasis from homely English agrarian concerns, associated with figures like John Ruskin, hisGuild of St. George, and thePre-Raphaelites,to the political programme touted by Lord Baden-Powell and other notable imperialists.8 The waning of Georgian utopianism among an el ite made space for thecontinuedgrowth of thepopular cult of St. George, Good contended, transforming the martyr from mere patriotic symbolinto ‘‘an Imperial icon.’’9 5 Nicole Guenther Discenza, Inhabited Spaces: Anglo-Saxon Constructionsof Place (Toronto, 2017), 73-85. 6 For whichsee KatherineBrickell and Ayona Datta, eds., Translocal Geographies: Spaces, Places, Connections (Farnham, Surrey, 2011), 4. See also Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (Minneapolis, 1987). 7 Michael Peter Smith,‘‘Translocality: ACritical Reflection’’inKatherine Brickell and Ayona Datta, eds., Translocal Geographies,181-83. 8 Jonathan Good, The Cult of St.GeorgeinMedieval England (Woodbridge, Suf- folk,2009), 140-43.For Ruskin andthe Guildsee Mark Frost, TheLostCompanions andJohnRuskin’sGuild of St.George (London,2014). ForBaden-Powell’s devotion to an Imperial St.Georgesee Precious McKenzie, TheRight Sort of Woman: Victorian Travel Writers and the FitnessofanEmpire (NewcastleuponTyne, 2012), 97-98. 9 Good, The Cult of St. George in Medieval England,147. See also AylaLepine, ‘‘Anglican Art and Architecture, c. 1837–1914’’inRowan Strong, ed., The Oxford HistoryofAnglicanism vol. III (Oxford, 2017), 401-15. For the problematic dis- tinction between saints and icons see James F. Hopgood,‘‘Introduction:Saints and Saints’’inthe Making in James F. Hopgood, ed., The Making of Saints: Contesting SacredGround (Tuscaloosa, 2005), xvii-xviii. 236 ANGLICAN AND EPISCOPAL HISTORY In addition to successive Hanoverian monarchs as name- sakes,dedications made to England’snational tutelaryguard- ian can be found the world over:inthe naming of St. George’s Town, Bermuda(1797); thededication of St. George’sChurch, Penang,Malaysia(1819), the oldestAnglican churchinSouth- east Asia,and at St. George’sCathedral, Jerusalem (1899).10 Of the medievalsignificance of hagiotoponymy Karen Jankulak wrotethat the practice ‘‘seems to indicate astrikinglevel of commemoration (more profound than, forexample, that in- dicated by theinclusion of thesaint’sname in aliturgical calendar).’’11 Alongwithhis name and nationality,St. George’s attributed coat of arms, featuring ared cross straddling awhite field, proliferated in an innumerable variety of highly visible repre- sentations as the standard of imperial Anglicanism. Typical of this pattern, thecross of St. George continues to feature prominently in the emblems of both the General Synod of theAnglican Church of Canada and theEpiscopal Church,toname only two examples of immediate relevancetothe context of this paper.12 The crossofSt. Georgealsoforms thebasis of theflagsofamul- tiplicity ofsecular politicalentities, Britain’smany coloniesand their successorstates, as acentral elementofthe BritishUnion Flag (itselfahybrid representation of the heraldic crosses of Saints George,Andrew,and Patrick, thenationalpatronsofEngland, Scotland,and Ireland,respectively). One outspokenimperialist in VictorianCanada boasted in racializiedterms of the vexillological 10 For the ubiquity of Georgian dedications on the eighteenth-centuryIm- perialnamescape see Jeremy Gregory, ‘‘The Hanoverians and the Colonial Churches’’inAndreas Gestrich and Michael Schaich, eds., The Hanoverian Suc- cession: Dynastic Politics and Monarchical Culture (Farnham, Surrey,2015), 115-16. See also David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (Lon- don, 2001), 102-03. 11 Karen Jankulak, The Medieval Cult of St. Petroc (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), 73. 12 Originally designed in 1908byEdward