| John Coleridge Patteson | |
|---|---|
John Coleridge Patteson |
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| Bishop and Martyr | |
| Born | 1 April 1827 England |
| Died | 20 September 1871 Nukapu, Solomon Islands |
| Honored in | Anglican Communion |
| Feast | 20 September |
John Coleridge Patteson (1 April 1827 – 20 September 1871) was an Anglican bishop and martyr.
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He was elder son of Sir John Patteson the judge, by his second wife, Frances Duke Coleridge. He was brought up at Feniton Court, where his family resided, so as to be near the home of his mother's relatives at Ottery St. Mary. After three years at The King's School, Ottery St Mary, Patteson was placed in 1838 at Eton College, under his uncle, the Rev. Edward Coleridge, son-in-law of John Keate, once headmaster there. Patteson remained there till 1845. From 1845 to 1848 he was a commoner of Balliol College, Oxford, under Dr. Richard Jenkyns. He was not interested in academic studies, and obtained a second class degree; but he was brought into contact with Benjamin Jowett, Max Müller, John Campbell Shairp, Edwin Palmer. James Riddell, James John Hornby, and Charles Savile Roundell, who became his lifelong friends. After taking his degree in October 1849 he travelled in Switzerland and Italy, learned German at Dresden, and devoted himself to Hebrew and Arabic. Returning to Oxford in 1852, he became Fellow of Merton College, and spent the year 1852–3 in the college, where there had been recent reform.[1]
Patteson was ordained in September 1853 in the Church of England, and took up the curacy of Alphington, a part of Ottery St. Mary. George Augustus Selwyn, the first Bishop of New Zealand, persuaded Patteson on a visit to become a missionary to the South Seas, in the summer of 1854. Patteson left England with the bishop in March 1855, and landed at Auckland in May.[1]
In 1855 Patteson set out to found the Melanesian Mission. He founded a college on Norfolk Island for native boys, toured the islands on the ship Southern Cross, and learned many of the local languages. In 1861 he was made Bishop of Melanesia.
Patteson's aim was to take boys from local communities, educate them in western Christian culture and return them to their communities. Persuading local people to allow their young men to depart – sometimes for years – was his principal problem.
On 20 September 1871 he was murdered on the island of Nukapu in the Solomon Islands, where he had landed alone. The explanation of his death at the time was that natives killed him as revenge for the abduction of some natives by illegal labour recruiters months earlier. These recruiters, known as "blackbirders", were considered to be virtually slave traders by members of the mission, as they enticed or abducted youths to work on plantations.
Two Norwegian historians (Thorgeir Kolshus and Even Hovdhaugen, 2010) who have examined the evidence, say that there were various stories at the time and later about his death. One was that he was killed by a man whose relative had been abducted, others were that the killing was sanctioned by the men in the community. Kolshus and Hovdhaugen argue that the natives may not have completely distinguished between the blackbirders and the missionaries, as both took young people away from the communities.[2]
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica asserts that the death was a tragic error:
The traders engaged in the nefarious traffic in Kanaka labour for Fiji and Queensland had taken to [im]personating missionaries in order to facilitate their kidnapping; Patteson was mistaken for one of these and killed. His murderers evidently found out their mistake and repented of it, for the bishop's body was found at sea floating in a canoe, covered with a palm fibre matting, and a palm-branch in his hand. He is thus represented in the bas-relief erected in Merton College to his memory.
An alternative theory, suggested by Kolshus and Hovdhaugen, was that Patteson had upset the local hierarchy among the natives by giving gifts without due regard for precedence and by cultivating support among women in the community, contrary to patriarchal norms. They saw him as a threat to their social order.[2]
His death became a cause celebre in England and increased interest both in missionary work and in improvement of the working conditions in Melanesia. His life is celebrated in the Church of England as a saintly one, and he is commemorated with a Lesser Festival on 20 September. There is a memorial to him in the chapel of Merton College, Oxford by Thomas Woolner, which depicts his portrait surrounded by fronds, beneath which he is shown lying in the canoe, as described above.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Patteson, John Coleridge". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
| Anglican Communion titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| New diocese | Bishop of Melanesia 1861–1871 |
Succeeded by John Selwyn |
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