CHAPMAN, JOHN HENRY PALMER. - English Benedictine historian and critic, b. at Ashfield (Suffolk) on 25 April 1865, d. in London on 7 November 1933. Converted from Anglicanism (1890) not without the influence of Oxford, he became a Benedictine in the Beuron Congregation (at Maredsous, 1892), and in 1919 transferred to the English Congregation. He was superior at Erdington (1895–1912) and at Caldey (1913–14), and abbot at Downside (1929–33). He carried on intense literary activity, collaborating with various periodicals and encyclopedias. He distinguished himself for his expertise in ecclesiastical history and patristics: *Bishop Gore and the Catholic Claims* (London 1905); *Studies in the Early Papacy* (ibid. 1928); *St. Benedict and the Sixth Century* (ibid. 1929). His preferred field was the Bible: textual criticism.
In *Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels* (Oxford 1908) he displayed such learned insights that they earned him appointment to the Pontifical Commission for the Revision of the Vulgate (1913). Of his Roman activity, together with H. Quentin (1919–22), should be mentioned *The Families of Vulgate MSS in the Pentateuch* (in *Revue bénédictine*, 37 [1925], pp. 5–46, 365–403). He also dealt with the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel (*John the Presbyter and the Fourth Gospel*, Oxford 1911) and the Synoptic question (posthumous work, London 1937): *Matthew, Mark and Luke. A Study in the Order and Interrelation of the Synoptic Gospels* (priority of Greek Matthew!).
In his later years he turned to problems of spiritual life: *Contemplative Prayer*, in *Pax* of Caldey, 5 (1913), pp. 339–44; *Mysticism (Christian, Roman Catholic)*, in *Enc. of Rel.*, IX, pp. 90–101; *The Spiritual Letters* (London 1935).