Non-Jurors ("Non-Giurati")

NON-JURORS ("Non-Giurati"). - When, after the revolution of 1688, the Prince of Orange, husband of Mary, daughter of James II, wished to be recognized as king of England together with his consort (which Parliament granted him in February of the following year), the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign was imposed on all state officials, and therefore also on the Anglican bishops and ministers.

All had already sworn an oath of allegiance to James II, to his heir and legitimate successors. The legitimate heir was not the daughter Mary, but the son of James II, who had withdrawn with his father to the continent. Some bishops and ministers did not believe in conscience that they could take the new oath. When the appointed deadline arrived (1 Aug. 1689), there were seven bishops, among them the archbishop of Canterbury (Sancroft) and that of Bath and Wells (Thomas Ken), with about 400 ministers, who had not sworn, whence they received the name of N.-j. or "Non-Jurors," and were therefore all deposed and deprived of their offices. This schism extended to the Scottish Anglican bishops, partisans of the Stuarts, and lasted throughout the 18th century, since the N.-j., considering themselves the only legitimate bishops, ordained other bishops and ministers until the extinction of the schism, at the beginning of the 19th century. Two important facts occurred within the sphere of the schism of the N.-j.: the relations begun with the Eastern dissidents, which failed with the death of the emperor of Russia Peter the Great (1725); the consecration conferred by the non-juring bishops on Samuel Seabury. The latter, after the independence of the American colonies, had been sent by the American Episcopalians to England to be ordained bishop, and since the archbishop of Canterbury had refused to do so for political reasons, the non-juring bishops of Scotland did so in Nov. 1784. Seabury, together with three other bishops, who some years later (1787) had been ordained without difficulty by the archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated in 1792 John Clagget, who inaugurated the ordained episcopate in the United States.

Camillo Crivelli