Gerald Bonner
Gerald Bonner FSA (18 June 1926 – 22 May 2013) was a conservative Anglican Early Church historian and scholar of religion, who lectured at the Department of Theology of Durham University from 1964 to 1988.
[2][3] Constance was left to raise five-year-old Gerald and his three-year-old brother, Nigel Bonner, on a schoolteacher's salary.
Nigel became a zoologist, heading the Life Sciences Division of the British Antarctic Survey from 1974 to 1986, and retired as deputy director (1986 to 1988).
[3] In a continuation of his earlier interest, while in Tripoli, Bonner purchased a 1930 Turin reprint of St. Augustine's Confessions, which included notes by a seventeen-century German Jesuit, Heinrich Wangnereck.
[3] After demobilization and a year of civilian employment, Bonner received an ex-serviceman's university grant making it possible for him to attend Wadham College, Oxford, where he studied modern history with Pat Thompson from 1949 to 1952 .
Bonner worked with the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum, from 1953 until 1964, serving under Bertram Schofield and Theodore Cressy Skeat.
[8][9] Some of his more interesting cataloging responsibilities included a tenth century Greek manuscript of the orations of the Cappadocian Father, St. Gregory Nazianzen, a 4th-century Archbishop of Constantinople, and theologian.
[17] While attending the Oxford Patristic Conference of 1963, Bonner chanced to meet Hugh Turner, an Anglican priest, theologian, and academic.
[23] Within the outward grandeur of the cathedral, are housed the mortal remains of two figures who were highly influential in the development of Christianity in the North of England.
[24] Bonner's work on St. Bede (buried in the Galilee Chapel of the cathedral) reflected the fact that in 1964, early Northumbrian history was taught only by an archaeologist, Rosemary Cramp.
Building on the work of the Durham antiquarian Bertram Colgrave, Bonner undertook to promote greater understanding beginning with his 1966 Jarrow Lecture, entitled St. Bede in the Tradition of Western Apocalyptic Commentary.
[6] Bonner also originated courses on St. Cuthbert,[6] the most important medieval saint of Northern England, with a cult centred on his tomb at Durham Cathedral.
[3] Bonner served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Early Christian Studies at the Catholic University of America, located in Washington, D.C., from 1990-1994.
At the end of his stay at CUA, he was presented with the Johannes Quasten Prize for leadership and excellence, an award named for a patristic scholar.
[3] During his time at Durham University, Bonner also worked to support the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius (founded in 1928),[29] and built connections with prominent Anglican and Orthodox churchmen.
[6] In 1970, when the Fellowship was obliged at short notice to discontinue its annual summer conference at Broadstairs, a coastal town on the Isle of Thanet, he arranged for it to meet in Durham.
During the conference, the Orthodox Liturgy of the Dormition was celebrated in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral, and Bonner delivered a paper on 'The Christian life of the Venerable Bede.
[32] Jenkins' selection as Bishop of Durham was controversial due to allegations that he held heterodox beliefs, particularly regarding the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection.
[35] After reluctantly agreeing to stand for the General Synod of the Church of England in 1990, Bonner resigned his seat following his appointment to the CUA professorship.
In the letter, he said that "most disturbing aspect of the affair", in his opinion was that: "...in Britain at the end of the 20th century, not to own a television receiver automatically makes an individual an object of suspicion and subject to investigation.
In 2016, in accordance with his wishes, Bonner's entire patristic book collection, amassed for more than fifty years, was donated to the University of Sofia, in Bulgaria.
Jane was a philologist educated at Bedford College, London and taught Early and Middle High German at the University of Sheffield.
