Founding the Fathers - Elizabeth A. Clark Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion

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Where under the sun do you find time to turn off books so fast? And when do you get the patience to accomplish such a job as this?”315 Daniel Gilman of Johns Hopkins deemed Fisher’s History of Christian Doctrine his best book, and wondered how its author had found time to write it, since Fisher had other duties associated with “an important chair.”316 Likewise, A. M. Fairburn of Mansfield College, Oxford wrote that the History of Christian Doctrine was “the best book in English on the subject, and for students altogether suitable”—adding his relief that Fisher had “departed from the bad example set by Harnack.”317

       Ephraim Emerton (1851–1935)

      Ephraim Emerton, the son of a pharmicist,318 was born in 1851 in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College in 1871, and attended Harvard Law School. He served for a time as secretary to the mayor of Boston, Henry L. Pierce, and worked as a reporter for the Boston Advertiser to earn money for study in Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig in 1876. While in Germany, he attended the (senior) Droysen’s “practicecourse” (or seminar) in Berlin on historical method, in which, he later reported, students engaged in “unrestrained criticism” of each other’s papers “to the verge of savagery.”319 Returning from Europe, he was made Instructor of German (1876–1878) and History (1878–1882) in Harvard College. Emerton’s specialization was early medieval history, not then a typical subject at American colleges. In 1882, he was plucked from his duties in the College by President Charles Eliot to be the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School, a post he held until his resignation in 1918.320

      Emerton was a founding member of the American Historical Association; at its organizational meeting in 1884, he was one of only nine men present who held the rank of “Professor of History.”321 A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Emerton also served as President of the American Society of Church History in 1921.322 Since no biography remains of Emerton, many personal details of his life and teaching remain unknown.

      Among Emerton’s writings are an interesting essay on “The Practical Method in Higher Historical Instruction” (1883); a textbook entitled An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (375–814) (1888, 1896); Medieval Europe (1893); Unitarian Thought (1911, a scathing reflection on evangelicals); and a book of essays recounting aspects of his life as a professor of history, Learning and Living: Academic Essays (1921). His medieval and early modern interests came more prominently to the fore in his mature years, with books entitled Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1899); Beginnings of Modern Europe (1250–1450) (1917); the Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua (1920); Humanism and Tyranny (1925); and an edition and translation of the Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII (1932)—works whose subjects indicate that even by the early twentieth century, scholarship on history was not yet strictly regulated by specialization. It is notable that Emerton is the only one of the professors here discussed who did not attend divinity school and who, as a Unitarian, stood outside the evangelical nexus of Presbyterians and Congregationalists.323

      These six professors pioneered the teaching of church history in America. The problems they encountered in developing a field that was new to Americans and that lacked most of the supports that professors today take for granted are the subject of the next chapter, on the material “infrastructure” (more precisely, on the lack of it) that attended the teaching of church history in nineteenth-century America.

       CHAPTER 2

      Infrastructure: Teaching, Textbooks,

      Primary Sources, and Libraries

      What professors actually told students, what students heard professors say (rarely the same thing!), what purposes professors believed their courses served, what methods they used to achieve these goals—the data bearing on such questions remain as pristine as if the archives were in Albania.

      —James Turner (1982)

       Teaching Church Historyin Nineteenth-Century America

      Before exploring the professors’ theoretical approaches to and assumptions about history, I examine the (woefully inadequate) academic “infrastructure”—the material conditions of knowledge production and transmission—that attended the teaching of church history in early and mid-nineteenth-century America. Suitable textbooks seemed nonexistent, let alone anthologies of primary sources in translation. Libraries, conceived as book depositories for (shockingly) small collections, were open only a few hours a week. As the century progressed, new methods of teaching placed greater demands on professors: they could no longer simply listen to students recite from textbooks, but must prepare lectures and guide advanced students in seminars that required independent investigation.1 The challenges facing professors of church history in nineteenth-century America were daunting. In this chapter, I first examine assumptions about and practices of teaching, then turn to examine the textbooks the professors chose, the accessibility of primary sources, and the development of institutional and personal libraries.

       Samuel Miller: The Theological Seminary at Princeton

      Samuel Miller, coming of age before the development of theological seminaries in America, received one year of post-collegiate training via private study with an accomplished minister. When he assumed his professorship of church history at the newly established Theological Seminary at Princeton in 1813–1814, he had had no seminary experience. With no advanced education or access to textbooks he thought appropriate for Presbyterian students,2 Miller was responsible for developing the curriculum in church history at the new Presbyterian Seminary at Princeton.

      At the Seminary’s inception, church history was taught only in the second year;3 later, in the first and third years as well. Some two decades after he began his Princeton career, Miller described his teaching regime: he met the senior class three times a week; middlers, twice; and juniors, once, on Saturday afternoons, each class running about 75 minutes.4 Miller’s teaching notes, even late in his career, give little attention to European scholarship. They also reveal that he never changed his method of teaching or approach to church history in his 36 years as professor. Miller, in any case, deemed church history of less importance than biblical studies and “didactic and polemick [sic] theology.”5

      In 1813, the recitation method of instruction was still commonly used, supplemented by professors’ comments. Miller’s class notes, preserved in the Princeton Seminary archives, suggest that he examined his class on a few points at the beginning of the session, then turned to lecture.6 Relying on the lecture method alone, Miller thought, assumes that students are “an ear”; they hear the lecture only once and have no chance to review it. But recitation alone, on the other hand, does not “awaken and excite the mind.” A combination of both methods works best.7 Miller’s son reports that his father, who claimed that lectures alone make students too dependent on the professor, combined the two methods throughout his teaching career.8

      The professor’s duty, Miller believed, was “to excite [students] to think,” to examine opinions on their own, and “to state leading facts, rather than the minuter items of history.”9 Thinking, to be sure, existed within a Presbyterian framework: it should not lead students to be “corrupted” by “philosophical unbelievers” such as Hobbes, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Byron. In Miller’s view, “a rage for novelty, an ardent love of originality” are among the “most unhappy symptoms” that could afflict a prospective minister.10

      A goodly sample of Miller’s lecture notes, running from 1814 to 1843, for his courses in ecclesiastical history and church government are extant. Dates on some notes indicate that Miller gave the same lecture up to six times. Miller responded to students’ questions in the following class session, allowing himself time to consult his books for appropriate answers:11 this practice suggests both his relative lack of expertise in church history

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