In Praise of F. Homes Dudden

I have been re-reading the classic study of Gregory the Great by Frederick Homes Dudden. Few major studies of anything remain standards for long, usually having an undisputed reign of 10-20 years before another bright and enterprising scholar's book elbows it to the side of the shelf. But Homes Dudden's work has remained supreme since its first appearance in 1905. 104 years is not a bad run, and despite great strides in scholarship since, there is no effective challenger yet. Which is all the more impressive as Gregory is the towering figure of his age, the subject of a century's harvest of specialist studies by armies of brilliant scholars.

The study is classic late Victorian. Two thick volumes with multiple indices, comprising three sections: Gregory before he became Pope, Gregory as Pope, and his thought and writings. The book marches at a stately but unimpeded forward pace, chronological in the same way that the Thames flows to the sea -- not in rushing torrents, but steadily, and as it approaches the tidal points, with an occasional backward glance. And like the Thames, it is wide and has many tributaries. Along the way one learns a great deal about Constantinople and its church and imperial politics, about the collapse of Italy in the wake of Justinian's reconquest, about the city of Rome in its pre-Gregorian decline and in its time of collapse, the educational curriculum of the day, the Three Chapters controversy (certainly one of the most intricately confusing episodes in the history of heresy), and quite a lot about the Lombards. And not coincidentally, about the monastic project in the mid and late sixth century. This is your solid, traditional life-and-times narrative.

When I read it first, in graduate school more than 35 years ago, I was put off by the author's use of the first person and his amusing and more than occasionally sarcastic evaluations. But after much study along the way I realize that behind these apparently solipsistic forays lies an immense learning. He's almost always right. If you want to profit from reading the best of old style British history, complete with untranslated Latin and Greek footnotes and the undiluted Oxonian quadrangular attitude, this is the book for you.

I had always thought of Homes Dudden as a middle aged or elderly don who had spent his entire life reading up the sources, chasing down the footnotes, getting all the references right, reading all the secondary literature, including the interminable Germans, and then quietly setting pen to paper in the half-light of the Bodleian Library or over a second or third glass of sherry in lodgings after an agreeable first sherry in the Fellows' Common Room. A lifetime of comfortable academic plodding crowned by The Great Book.

So what a surprise was in store when curiosity led me to the internet for further information. Homes Dudden is a somewhat elusive target, but I tracked him down, and he wasn't what I thought at all. Or rather, the book wasn't what I thought it was in relation to its author.

He was born in 1874 and died in 1957. That puts the publication of the Gregory more or less at age 31. Thirty one! This staggeringly learned book, still on the top of the pile after a century, the work of a man in his mid to late twenties! Because everything I said about it is true. All the references are right, all the research has been done, and what is more, on the whole his judgments are mature and have stood the test of time. 31.

He studied at Bath College and Pembroke College, Oxford, was ordained in the C of E, was lecturer in theology and chaplain of Lincoln College, Oxford at the age of 24, was Vicar of Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, and in 1918 became Master of Pembroke College, a position he held until his death some 39 years later. He held many offices, including Vice Chancellor, at Oxford, greatly increased the endowment of his college, was a colleague of J.R.R. Tolkien. He published at least six volumes of sermons, several in the important genre of consolation over the devastation of the First World War. In 1935 he published a second two volume life and times, this one about Saint Ambrose. The Ambrose is still respectfully referred to if not as dominant as the Gregory. And then in 1955, two years before his death, a third two volume behemoth, this time about Henry Fielding. And from 1929 to 1952 he was Chaplain to Kings George V and VI.

So, if I had a glass of sherry as I write this, I would lift it to you, Dr. Homes Dudden. Your great work endures. Thank you.