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George Herbert's Country Parson

 

Report on a lecture given at Trinity College, Parkville on the 12th of August and reflections from Philip Harvey, for the pew notes of St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne

 Last Tuesday Susan Bell, Bishop of Niagara, gave the Barry Marshall Lecture in Melbourne on the priest and poet George Herbert (1593-1633). Priest and poet are roles inextricably bound together in the person of Herbert, something she painfully (in the early modern sense of ‘going to pains’) described. She remarked that “all his writing is about vocation to Christianity.” 

Son of one of the leading families of the realm, university orator, courtier and diplomat, he was “a man on the way up when it all came to a screeching halt.” Herbert decided to enter holy orders, possibly due to health. He married Jane Danvers in 1629, went to work in the small parish of Bemerton near Salisbury, where presently he died, probably of consumption. His poetry, Bishop Bell called it “winsome”, is amongst the most famous in English, and sung regularly in church. 

But her attention was primarily on his early pastoral manual, ‘The Country Parson’. She reads him as concerned about how to become a priest. He lives in the time between the English Reformation and Civil War, searching for a priestly model somewhere between the extremes of Rome and Geneva. Defining priesthood for young priests, Herbert tests the existing Calvinist consensus, but nor is he a proto-Anglo-Catholic. In a society where it is risky even to use the word ‘priest’, he opts for the generic Chaucerian term ‘parson’. ‘Priest’ is a word he uses about 3 times in ‘The Country Parson’, though all readers know quite well he’s talking about the clergy. 

George Herbert describes a new kind of clergyman. Professional identity is developed in the document. An eirenic motive, interested in reconciliation and community leadership, is pronounced. His attention is upon the shape of priestly ministry and the shape of the emerging Anglican church. The purpose of the book is educative, raising professional standards. 

Historically, King James VI and I saw the need for holding the middle between the church extremes. The Hampton Court Conference (1604) worked for a future for the clergy. Herbert responds: offering more than mere criticism, he is distinctive. For example, in the book he says a preacher should be “a sermon to himself” before he (or she) ever preaches to anyone else. The question is not about Is Christianity true? (cf. the interests of his brother Edward Herbert of Cherbury, an early Deist) but that Christianity is true and what to do about it?

Today’s world is full of conflict and extreme positions. Bishop Bell contends that George Herbert lived through similar times and speaks directly to our own. She said “Herbert chooses for the mean, for the middle – whether in church or in the world”.  He represents good sense, good sense that we wish to listen to.

 


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