BECKWITH, JOHN CHARLES. - Famous propagator of Waldensianism in Italy, b. in 1782, of an English family, at Halifax, in Nova Scotia (Dominion of Canada), d. in 1862.
The first of 14 children, at the age of 14, according to 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 a leg, which was amputated three months later. In 1827, in the library of the Duke of Wellington, he casually found the Narrative of an Excursion to the Mountains of Piedmont written by the benefactor of the Waldensians, the Anglican canon Dr. Gilly. He immediately bought a copy, and the reading of it impelled him to visit the Waldensian valleys, where he went in October of that same year. He returned there every year until 1834, when he settled there permanently, setting up his own household and marrying, in 1850, a young Waldensian woman. He then dwelt there, with few interruptions, until 1851, the time when he moved to Turin, in order to follow more closely the construction of the first Waldensian temple outside the valleys.
The work that B. carried out among the Waldensians had a most important influence on the development of Waldensianism in Italy. When he arrived in the valleys, there was barely a few elementary schools. With his money and his tireless activity B. succeeded in establishing a complete network of primary schools, arranging that every village should contribute either by ceding the land or by supplying the materials. He obtained from the Waldensian Table, under whose name he always sought to proceed, that the teachers' salaries be increased; he sent some young men to the normal school of Lausanne, in order to obtain certified teachers and to establish secondary education among the Waldensians as well; he built the college of Torre Pellice, endowing it with a library, and gave better organization to that of Pomaretto, founded by Gilly; he rebuilt and erected new churches and houses, for whose service he brought in the deaconesses instituted by the pastor Germond in the canton of Vaud. Seeing that the Waldensians did not understand the French of their liturgical and prayer books, he procured for them the edition in Italian and in dialect of certain parts of Holy Scripture, and finally published a series of books, among which also one on the Apocalypse, very hostile to the Catholic Church.
In the midst of all these efforts and labors, there gradually matured in him the idea of making the Waldensians the evangelizing people of Italy, replacing the Catholic Church with Waldensianism, and, in his Anglican mentality, there arose the twofold ideal: the evangelization of Italy by means of Anglicized Waldensians. And he set his hand to the work. The evangelization of Italy was opposed by the language in use among the Waldensians, that is, the Piedmontese dialect and the French language of their books. He therefore had first the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke translated, and then the entire New Testament with the Psalms, into the Piedmontese language, placing alongside them, however, in parallel columns, the Italian version of Diodati. With the approval of the Table, he sent some young men to Florence to study Italian; he instituted at his own expense special courses for the teachers of the elementary schools, so that all might learn Italian, and he rejoiced with the Table when the lawyer Bonaventura Mazzarella and the apostate priest Luigi Desanctis joined the Waldensian church. He also urged the Table to seize every occasion to spread Waldensianism outside the valleys, making use of the new Italian recruits and of the ministers who had studied in Florence, and thus, under his impulse, the first Waldensian groups were formed in Florence in 1850, in Genoa in 1852, while in Turin, in 1851, the first stone was laid of a temple, which was inaugurated two years later. So deeply rooted was this idea of Italian evangelization by means of the Waldensians in B. that a few days before the promulgation of the Statute of King Charles Albert (1848), by which the Waldensians were admitted to enjoy all civil and political rights, he wrote to the moderator or president of the Table: "From now on you, Waldensians, are either missionaries or nothing." For the Anglicization of the Waldensians, the obstacles were the Calvinist liturgy (by liturgy is meant not only the ritual but also the doctrine) and the presbyterian regime. To change the former he himself composed and had printed, at his own expense, a volume of 438 pages entitled Saggio di liturgia secondo le dottrine della S. Scrittura, which was almost a compendium of the Anglican Prayer Book. Recommending its approval to the Table, he said that the Anglican Church had its ritual, that the Greek Church and the "heterodox Roman Church" had maintained themselves for centuries by virtue of their liturgies, but that in exchange the evangelical Churches "for lack of it 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 proselytes among the Romanists, and I doubt that in the future they can make any. If you, Waldensians, have the energy and the good sense to present a Church to these fugitives from Romanism, it is probable that they will accept it; but if you instead present them only with a Bible, you will make of 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." In order to detach the ministers ever more from the Calvinist liturgy, B. induced the Table to send some students to the Anglican seminary of Durham under the protection of the Anglican canon Dr. Gilly, and to found the seminary of Torre Pellice, where future Waldensian ministers could study theology, without being compelled to go to the theological faculties of France or Switzerland. This happened in 1855, too late, by then, to change the Calvinist tendency of the Waldensian Church. Then, in order to change the presbyterian regime, B., with various articles published in the new review Buona novella in 1851, strove to demonstrate that from the beginning the Waldensians had been episcopal and not presbyterian, that they descended from the first Christians, that one of their principal representatives had been Claudius, the iconoclastic bishop of Turin in the 9th century, an origin which they had disowned by adhering in the 16th century to Calvinist doctrines. Subsequently he proposed a change of government, namely that instead of a temporary "moderator," a "moderator" for life should be elected, who, free from the care of souls, would dedicate himself entirely to the general interests of the Church. It was the somewhat veiled introduction of the Anglican episcopal system. Neither the liturgy nor the institution of a perpetual moderator was accepted by the Table. 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 thus expressed his bitter disappointment to the moderator then in office: "I have never been able to get the Waldensians to understand what their mission was. Dr. Gilly and I have been the only Waldensians; all the others are French-Calvinists. Seven centuries of well-confirmed 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 its consequences. You have denied and disowned your origin. Being legitimate sons of apostolic times, you have disowned this origin and your right as sons of this land in order to adhere to foreigners and innovators. Your battle cry is Calvin, whereas the name of Claudius would have defeated your adversaries and won for your cause the intelligence, the respect and the love of Piedmont."