BECKWITH, JOHN CHARLES. — A celebrated propagator of Waldensianism in Italy, born in 1782 to an English family at Halifax, Nova Scotia (Dominion of Canada), died in 1862.
The eldest of fourteen children, at the age of fourteen, in accordance with family tradition, B. enlisted in the English army and took part in the wars against Napoleon I. At the Battle of Waterloo he was wounded in one leg, which was amputated three months later. In 1827, in the library of the Duke of Wellington, he happened by chance upon the Account of an Excursion into the Mountains of Piedmont, written by the benefactor of the Waldensians, the Anglican canon Dr. Gilly. He immediately purchased a copy, and its reading prompted him to visit the Waldensian valleys, to which he went in October of that same year. He returned there every year until 1834, when he settled there permanently, establishing his own household and marrying, in 1850, a young Waldensian woman. He then lived there, with few interruptions, until 1851, when he moved to Turin in order to follow more closely the construction of the first Waldensian temple outside the valleys.
The work carried out by B. among the Waldensians had an extremely important influence on the development of Waldensianism in Italy. When he arrived in the valleys, there were scarcely any elementary schools. With his money and his tireless activity, B. succeeded in establishing a complete network of primary schools, arranging for each village to contribute either by providing land or by supplying materials. He obtained from the Waldensian Board, under whose name he always sought to act, an increase in teachers’ salaries; he sent several young men to the teacher-training school in Lausanne in order to obtain qualified teachers and establish secondary education among the Waldensians as well; he built the college at Torre Pellice, furnishing it with a library, and improved the administration of the one at Pomaretto, founded by Gilly; he rebuilt and erected new churches and houses, for whose service he brought in the deaconesses established by Pastor Germond in the canton of Vaud. Seeing that the Waldensians did not understand the French of their liturgical and prayer books, he secured for them Italian and dialect editions of certain portions of Holy Scripture, and finally published a series of books, including one on the Apocalypse, which was highly hostile to the Catholic Church.
Amid all these efforts and labors, the idea gradually matured in him of making the Waldensians the evangelizing people of Italy, replacing the Catholic Church with Waldensianism; and, in his Anglican mentality, the twofold ideal arose of evangelizing Italy through Anglicanized Waldensians. He set to work. The language in use among the Waldensians—the Piedmontese dialect and the French language of their books—stood in the way of evangelizing Italy. He therefore first had the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke translated, and then the entire New Testament with the Psalms, into Piedmontese, placing alongside it in parallel columns the Italian version of Diodati. With the approval of the Board, he sent several young men to Florence to study Italian; at his own expense he established special courses for elementary-school teachers, so that everyone might learn Italian; and he rejoiced with the Board when the lawyer Bonaventura Mazzarella and the apostate priest Luigi Desanctis joined the Waldensian Church. He also urged the Board to seize every opportunity to spread Waldensianism beyond the valleys, making use of the new Italian recruits and of the ministers who had studied in Florence. Thus, under his impetus, the first Waldensian groups were formed in Florence in 1850 and in Genoa in 1852, while in Turin, in 1851, the foundation stone was laid for a temple that was inaugurated two years later. This idea of evangelizing Italy through the Waldensians was so deeply rooted in B. that a few days before the promulgation of the Statute of King Carlo Alberto (1848), by which the Waldensians were admitted to enjoy all civil and political rights, he wrote to the moderator, or president, of the Board: “From now on, you Waldensians, are either missionaries or nothing.” The Calvinist liturgy (by liturgy is meant not only the ritual but also the doctrine) and the Presbyterian system stood in the way of Anglicanizing the Waldensians. To change the former, he himself composed and printed, at his own expense, a 438-page volume entitled Essay on Liturgy According to the Doctrines of Holy Scripture, which was almost a com-
pendium of the Anglican Prayer Book. Recommending its approval to the Board, he said that the Anglican Church had its own ritual, that the Greek Church and the “heterodox Roman Church” had maintained themselves for centuries by virtue of their liturgies, whereas the Evangelical Churches, “for lack of one, are in a deplorable state of weakness.” And, indicating his purpose, the conversion of the Italians, he wrote: “The Protestant Churches of Europe, after the Reformation, have scarcely made any converts among Romanists, and I doubt that they will be able to do so in the future. If you, Waldensians, have the energy and good sense to present a Church to these fugitives from Romanism, it is probable that they will accept it; but if instead you present them only with a Bible, you will make them Christians but not members of a church, and these Christians will seek refuge elsewhere. The practical way to retain them is to present them with the Bible and a liturgy that shows them what the Waldensian Church is.” To detach the ministers ever further from Calvinist liturgy, B. induced the Board to send several students to the Anglican seminary at Durham under the protection of the Anglican canon Dr. Gilly, and to found the seminary at Torre Pellice, where future Waldensian ministers could study theology without being compelled to attend the theological faculties of France or Switzerland. This took place in 1855, by which time it was too late to change the Calvinist tendency of the Waldensian Church. To alter the Presbyterian system, B., through various articles published in the new journal Buona novella in 1851, sought to demonstrate that from the beginning the Waldensians had been episcopal rather than Presbyterian, that they descended from the first Christians, and that one of their principal representatives had been Claudio, the iconoclast bishop of Turin in the ninth century—an origin that they had repudiated by adhering to Calvinist doctrines in the sixteenth century. Subsequently he proposed a change of government: instead of a temporary “moderator,” a “moderator” for life would be elected, one who, freed from pastoral care, would devote himself entirely to the general interests of the Church. This was the somewhat veiled introduction of the Anglican episcopal system. Neither the liturgy nor the institution of a perpetual moderator was accepted by the Board. This refusal greatly displeased B., who withdrew from the Waldensians, while still maintaining courteous relations with them; indeed, in 1861 he returned to the valleys, where he remained until his death.
In a letter of 1857 he expressed his bitter disappointment to the moderator then in office as follows: “I have never been able to make the Waldensians understand what their mission was. Dr. Gilly and I have been the only Waldensians; all the others are French Calvinists. Seven centuries of well-established traditions have had not the slightest effect on your minds. Geneva was the word written in large letters on the moral banner that you unfurled in Piedmont, and therefore you must bear all the consequences. You have denied and repudiated your origin. Being the legitimate children of apostolic times, you have denied this origin and your right as children of this land in order to adhere to foreigners and innovators. Your battle cry is Calvin, whereas the name of Claudio would have defeated your adversaries and won for your cause the intelligence, respect, and love of Piedmont.”