Robert Darwin Crouse (October 25, 1930 – January 15, 2011) was a Canadian religious philosopher and
Anglican
Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
priest.
Early life and education
Crouse received his primary and secondary education in the village school of Crousetown and at King’s Collegiate School in Windsor. He arrived at
Dalhousie University
Dalhousie University (commonly known as Dal) is a large public research university in Nova Scotia, Canada, with three campuses in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax, a fourth in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, Bible Hill, and a second medical school campus ...
and
King’s College in 1947, the year
James Doull
James Alexander Doull (1918–2001) was a Canadian philosopher and academic who was born and lived most of his life in Nova Scotia. His father was the politician, jurist, and historian John Doull.
Biography
From the late 1940s until the mid-1980s ...
began teaching in the Classics Department. He graduated in Classics in 1951 and then spent a year studying philosophy at Dalhousie and theology at King’s.
Crouse then attended Harvard to study Divinity where he added German to his Greek, Latin, and French. Through work on Dante and after years of teaching in Italy at the Ambrosianum and the Augustinianum he also acquired Italian. Harvard granted him an S.T.B. (cum laude) in 1954 and he was ordained priest by the Anglican Bishop of Nova Scotia. After Harvard, Crouse moved to
Trinity College, Toronto
Trinity College (occasionally referred to as the University of Trinity College) is a University of Toronto#Colleges, federated college of the University of Toronto located at the University of Toronto#St. George campus, St. George campus in Down ...
, where he was a Tutor in Divinity for three years and earned a Master of Theology (First Class Honours) in 1957. In 1970 Crouse completed the PhD at Harvard; his dissertation was a critical edition of the De Neocosmo of Honorius Augustodunensis. Trinity awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Divinity in 1983.
Career
Crouse’s full-time teaching career began with an appointment as Assistant Professor of Church History and Patristics at
Bishop’s University, in the Province of Quebec. When he returned to Nova Scotia in 1963 to join the Classics Department of Dalhousie, several of his former students at Bishop’s followed him; one of them, the Augustinian scholar Dr. Colin Starnes, became Professor of Classics and President of the University of King's College.
At Dalhousie, together with James Doull, Crouse played an essential role in creating a distinctive way of presenting Classics. The scholarly sciences were used, not to enforce historicism, but to break down the barriers between past, present, and future. They also emphasized a vision of the Classics that included Hellenism’s relation to Middle Eastern cultures.
Crouse published more than seventy articles, reviews, and translations. In 1972 he joined other members of the Department of Classics, as well as members of the Departments of German and Sociology, at Dalhousie University, as the first coordinators responsible for the structure and lectures of the Foundation Year Programme at King’s. He served as Chairman of the Department of Classics from 1971 to 1976 and was made full Professor in 1976. Together with Hilary Armstrong and Patrick Atherton, in 1977, Crouse and Doull founded
Dionysius
The name Dionysius (; ''Dionysios'', "of Dionysus"; ) was common in classical and post-classical times. Etymologically it is a nominalized adjective formed with a -ios suffix from the stem Dionys- of the name of the Greek god, Dionysus, parallel ...
. At King’s he was a Carnegie Professor from 1979 and Clerk of Convocation between 1972 and 1994, responsible both for the choice of honorary degree candidates and the conduct of the Encaenia ceremonies; he served as Vice-President for two years and Director of the Foundation Year Programme for one. In 1981 Crouse helped establish St Peter Publications in Charlottetown and the Atlantic Theological Conferences.
He retired as Emeritus Professor in 1996. In 1990 the
Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome named him Visiting Professor of Patrology, a post he took up repeatedly until 2004; he was the first non-Roman Catholic to be given this distinction. King’s awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Divinity in 2007.
References
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External links
The Recollected PastorThe "Works of Robert Crouse" Webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crouse, Robert
1930 births
Academic staff of University of King's College
University of King's College alumni
Dalhousie University alumni
Academic staff of Dalhousie University
People from Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia
20th-century Canadian philosophers
21st-century Canadian philosophers
Augustine scholars
2011 deaths
Harvard Divinity School alumni