McManners, John 1916-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born December 25, 1916, in Durham, England; died November 4, 2006. Historian, priest, educator, and author. A former Oxford University ecclesiastical history professor, McManners was a noted authority on the history of the Church in France. The son of an Anglican minister, he became enamored of history as a student at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was influenced by medieval historian A.B. Emden. He graduated in 1939, just as World War II broke out. McManners enlisted in the British Army’s Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. He saw action in North Africa, commanding a unit at the battles of Alamein and Tunis, for which service he was awarded the Order of King George II of the Hellenes by the King of Greece. Returning home, he completed his master’s degree at Oxford, then studied theology at the University of Durham. He earned a diploma in theology in 1947 and was ordained a priest in the Church of England the next year. McManners found employment as a fellow and chaplain at St. Edmund Hall, but a long-standing interest in Australia led him to accept a post at the University of Tasmania in 1956. Here, he was chair of the history department. Internal politics, however, made his stay at the university uncomfortable, and McManners moved to the University of Sydney two years later. McManners enjoyed his years in Australia, but in 1967 he returned to England to be closer to his aging parents. The University of Leicester hired him as professor of history in 1968, and five years later he went back to Oxford as Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History; he was also given a canonry at Christ Church. By this time, McManners already had a solid reputation as a scholar of French religious history. Beginning with French Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Regime: A Study of Angers in the Eighteenth Century (1960), the professor had earned the esteem of colleagues and critics alike for his knowledge of the subject. His reputation continued to grow with books such as The French Revolution and the Church (1969), Church and State in France, 1870-1914 (1972), and Death and Enlightenment (1981), which won the Wolfson Literary Award. Mc-Manners retired from Christ Church in 1984 to accept a fellowship and chaplaincy at All Souls. He remained college chaplain until 2001 and was an honorary fellow thereafter. Among his later literary achievements are the comprehensive The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (1990), which he edited, and the works Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France (1998) and All Souls and the Shipley Case, 1808-1810 (2002). He recalled his days in the army in the autobiography Fusilier: Recollections and Reflections, 1939-1945 (2002).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES

PERIODICALS

McManners, John, Fusilier: Recollections and Reflections, 1939-1945, Michael Russell (Wilby, England), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), November 14, 2006, p. 54.