Arthur Geoffrey Dickens attended Hymers College, where he first learned German.
College/University
Gallery of Arthur Dickens
1932
Oxford OX1 4AU, United Kingdom
Arthur Geoffrey Dickens entered Magdalen College on a scholarship in 1929 and studied there until 1932. Here he benefited from two outstanding tutors, the legendary Kenneth Bruce McFarlane in History, and the no less legendary, albeit in a different sphere, Clive Staples Lewis, in Political Thought.
Arthur Geoffrey Dickens entered Magdalen College on a scholarship in 1929 and studied there until 1932. Here he benefited from two outstanding tutors, the legendary Kenneth Bruce McFarlane in History, and the no less legendary, albeit in a different sphere, Clive Staples Lewis, in Political Thought.
(This book presents a classic study of the religious chang...)
This book presents a classic study of the religious changes that transformed England in the sixteenth century. Henry VIII officially brought the Protestant Reformation to England in the 1530s when he severed the English Church from the Papacy. But the seeds of the movement, according to A.G. Dickens, were planted much earlier.
(The reform of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth centur...)
The reform of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century was historically as important as the contemporary Protestant Reformation. Though never committed solely to fighting Protestantism, it inevitably also became a Counter-Reformation, since it soon faces the threat created by Luther and his successors. The century between the career of Ignatius Loyola nad that of Vincent de Paul became a classic age of Catholicism.
(This book is based on the confident belief that Western C...)
This book is based on the confident belief that Western Civilization must be studied in the light of late medieval and early modern history. It demonstrates that the history of the 19th and 20th centuries is not in fact more 'relevant' than earlier periods. Of great value for today's history students, this text displays and clarifies the many interrelated facets of history during this formative period: political, economic, religious, and above all, cultural and scientific.
Arthur Geoffrey Dickens was a British historian of the English Reformation, notable for his early advocacy of social history. Dickens was also a longstanding director of the Institute of Historical Research. He is the author of The English Reformation, The German Nation and Martin Luther, and The Age of Humanism and Reformation.
Background
Arthur Geoffrey Dickens was born on the 6th of July, 1910 in Kingston upon Hull, United Kingdom, the son of Arthur James Dickens, railway clerk, and his wife, Gertrude Helen, née Grasby. From the two sides of his family came two distinct styles. His paternal grandfather was the chief inspector of the Alexandra Docks, an Anglican churchwarden, and a Conservative in politics. His maternal grandfather, one of the tenants of Sir Tatton Sykes, had roots in the Northamptonshire farming community, was a Primitive Methodist local preacher, and a Liberal.
Education
Arthur Geoffrey Dickens attended Hymers College, where he first learned German, later he entered Magdalen College on a scholarship in 1929 and studied until 1932. Here he benefited from two outstanding tutors, the legendary Kenneth Bruce McFarlane in History, and the no less legendary, albeit in a different sphere, Clive Staples Lewis, in Political Thought.
At the beginning of his career in 1933, Arthur Dickens was appointed tutorial fellow at Keble College in Oxford, a position he held, with an interruption for war service, until his return in 1949. He served in the Royal Artillery from 1940 to 1945 as captain in AA Command, brigade intelligence officer and press officer, the experience that provided the material for his first book, Lübeck Diary. The book was written in 1947, recorded postwar problems and tensions and won acclaim within Germany.
Arthur Dickens moved from Keble in 1949 to become G.F. Grant professor of history at Hull University in 1949-62. There he also served as Deputy Principal and Dean of Faculty of Arts in 1950-53 and from 1959 as pro-vice-chancellor until 1962. During this period he taught for a year at the University of Rochester, New York, spending study periods at the Folger Library.
In 1962, Dickens came to London as a professor of History at King's College, and in 1967 went on to become director of the Institute of Historical Research and professor of History at the University of London. There, assisted by Mavis Hawker, he combined administrative duties and encouragement of the scholarship of others with continued research and publication. His Martin Luther And The Reformation, that came out in 1967, was followed by several other works on the European Reformation.
As foreign secretary of the British Academy from 1969 to 1979, Dickens visited and negotiated exchange agreements with nearly all the countries of Europe. After becoming an emeritus professor in 1977, he was also a joint author of a capacious survey of Reformation historiography, The Reformation in Historical Thought in 1985. Dickens's final publication, reflecting his command of the continental Reformation, was Erasmus the Reformer in 1994.
Achievements
Arthur Dickens was an outstanding scholar, covering social and economic, as well as local themes, with outstanding moral force and dedication to his work.
Dickens helped to establish the German Historical Institute in London in 1968 and received the Merit Order of the German Federal Republic in 1980.
The Historical Association recognized his scholarship and also the time he devoted to its activities by Medlicott medal of its medal in 1985.
Arthur Geoffrey considered his roots to be in Methodism, indeed, his first-ever public lecture was at a Primitive Methodist Chapel Anniversary, on the subject of Gardens of the Bible. In his teens, he became a convert to Anglicanism, attracted by a lively local church. Dickens was above all a Christian, whose job was to use his God-given scholarly talents to the best of his ability. His strong faith comes through repeatedly in his work, not in narrow confessionalism, but in a conservative Protestant faith not entirely removed from Erasmus himself. He was a regular member of his local church, preaching occasionally but never becoming churchwarden.
Views
Dickens was concerned neither totally to displace reformation from above, as an act of state, with reformation from below, from the grass-roots, nor to discount the undoubted impact of Luther and other Europeans in favor of an exaggerated emphasis on home-grown Protestantism. While taking full account of anti-clerical elements and of the English Lollard tradition, he was not blind to the positive features of late-medieval religion. Nor did he attribute to events some sort of predestinarian inevitability.
Rather he sought to establish the progress of religious change in 16th-century England within its widest social, political and European context - above all, to depict and understand what took place rather than to speculate about what might have been. In view of the recent cult of revisionism, one may well ponder the justice of his own assertion that our primary task is to examine the history which actually happened, rather than to create cardboard opponents.
Membership
Arthur Dickens was the part of a number of organizations, including the Commonwealth Magistrates & Judges Association, and Ecclesiastical History Society. He was also a member of the Advisory Council on Public Records and an advisor to the Council on the Export of Works of Art. He also was a part of the British National Committee of Historical Sciences, British Academy and British Record Society.
President
Ecclesiastical History Society
,
United Kingdom
1966 - 1996
Member
Advisory Council on Public Records
,
United Kingdom
1968 - 1976
Advisor
Council on the Export of Works of Art
,
United Kingdom
1968 - 1976
Secretary, Chairman and General Secretary
British National Committee of Historical Sciences
,
United Kingdom
1967 - 1979
Foreign Secretary
British Academy
,
United Kingdom
1969 - 1979
Vice-President
British Record Society
,
United Kingdom
1978 - 1980
Personality
Arthur Geoffrey's personality was as balanced as his scholarship, distinguished by quiet good humor, tact, and courtesy. He was a brilliant raconteur with a fund of anecdotes, he enhanced the understanding of colleagues and students alike, yet carried his learning lightly with mischievous humor and engaging charm. Arthur Dickens was puritanical about the drink but loved food, and enjoyed the mild social life of Sunday lunch with good friends, his regular game of chess, and his love of music. He had his London club, the Athenaeum, at times entertaining guests there, in preference to large and amorphous social gatherings.
Interests
Art history, especially English painting 1890-1950
Connections
Geoffrey Dickens was married to Molly Bygott. They had two sons, Peter and Paul.
