The Van Mildert Professor of Divinity (formerly Professor of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History) is one of the oldest chairs at

Durham University Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by r ...

. The chair is named in honour of Bishop William Van Mildert, one of the founders of the university. The holder of the Van Mildert chair, which is jointly funded by the university and

Durham Cathedral Durham Cathedral, formally the , is a Church of England cathedral in the city of Durham, England. The cathedral is the seat of the bishop of Durham and is the Mother Church#Cathedral, mother church of the diocese of Durham. It also contains the ...

, is also a residentiary

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the material accepted as officially written by an author or an ascribed author * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western canon, th ...

at the

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and member of its Chapter, thus one of the requirements of post holder is to be an Anglican priest or a minister in another church in communion with Church of England. The current Van Mildert Professor of Divinity is Simon Oliver, who took up the appointment in 2015.

History

The professor of divinity was one of the original chairs established at Durham University upon its foundation. The first holder, in 1833, was Hugh James Rose, one of the founders of the

Oxford Movement The Oxford Movement was a theological movement of high-church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the Un ...

and later the second Principal of King's College London, but he resigned the post due to ill health after only a year, with the duties being taken on by Henry Jenkyns, the professor of Greek, with the assistance of Temple Chevallier, professor of mathematics, from 1835. In 1839, the third prebendal stall at

became vacant; this was attached to the chair of divinity (an arrangement made permanent by an

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in 1841), allowing Jenkyns to resign the chair of Greek and take up the canonry and the professorship of divinity. However, when Jenkyns resigned the professorship in 1864 he did not resign the stall, thus Adam Storey Farrar did not take up the canonry until Jenkyns' death in 1878. The chair of divinity was named the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity in 1943, during Michael Ramsey's tenure, when a second chair in divinity, the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, was created.

List of Van Mildert professors

* The Rev Hugh James Rose (1833–1834) * Vacant (1835-1838) * The Rev Canon Professor Henry Jenkyns (1839-1864) * The Rev Canon Professor Adam Storey Farrar (1864 - 1905) * The Rev Canon Professor Richard Knowling (1905-1919) * The Rev Canon Professor D. Dawson-Walker (1919 – 1934); former Principal of St John's College, Durham * The Rev Canon Professor Oliver Chase Quick (1934 - 1939), later Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford * The Rev Canon Professor Michael Ramsey (1940 – 1950), later Archbishop of Canterbury * The Rev Canon Professor Stanley Lawrence Greenslade (1950 – 1958) * The Rev Canon Professor Henry Ernest William 'Hugh' Turner (1958 – 73) * The Rt Rev Professor Stephen Sykes (1974 – 1985) * The Rev Canon Professor Daniel W. Hardy (1986 – 1990) * The Rev Canon Professor David Brown FBA, FRSE (1990 – 2007) * The Rev Canon Mark McIntosh (2009 – 2014) * The Rev Canon Professor Simon Oliver (2015 – present)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Professor of Divinity, Van Mildert Divinity, Van Mildert Divinity, Van Mildert

History

List of Van Mildert professors

See also

References