Thomas Valpy French

Infobox Saint
name= Thomas Valpy French
birth_date = January 1, 1825
death_date = May 14, , 1891
feast_day=
venerated_in= Anglican Communion


Missionary to India, Pakistan and Persia
birth_place = Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England| death_place = Muscat, Oman
titles=Missionary to India and Persia
beatified_date=
beatified_place=
beatified_by=
canonized_date=
canonized_place=
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issues=Indian christianity

Thomas Valpy French (January 1, 1825 - May 14, 1891), was a English Christian Missionary in India and Persia, who became the first Bishop of Lahore, in 1877, and also founded the St. John's College, Agra, in 1853 [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9000269/Thomas-Valpy-French Thomas Valpy French] Britannica.com.] [ [http://www.stjohnsagra.org/The%20Institute.htm History] ] .

After Henry Martyn, he is considered the second most important christian missionary to the Middle East [ [http://www.martynmission.cam.ac.uk/CAvrilpow.htm Legacy of Henry Martyn] Avril A. Powell, University of Lincoln (SOAS)."Thomas Valpy French, just mentioned as the first bishop of Lahore, was certainly one of these, whom Martyn's late nineteenth century biographer, George Smith, considered 'the missionary bishop who most resembled Martyn in character and service'. "]

Biography

Early life and education

Thomas Valpy French was born on New Year's Day on 1825, in Abbey, Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England. His father, Rev. Peter French, was vicar of Holy Trinity Church for forty-seven years, and he grew up in the house, which was once part of the Benedictine Abbey, on the banks of the River Trent [ [http://anglicanhistory.org/india/pk/stock_french/01.html Chapter I. The Man] ] .

He started his schooling at Reading Grammar School, and at age fourteen, he joined the Rugby School. In 1843, he won a scholarship to Oxford and started studying at the University College, Oxford, where he was made a fellow in 1848 . It was at Oxford that he first felt called to mission in India .

Missionary career

On April 16, 1850, he joined the missionary service of Church Missionary Society, and was sent to Agra, India. He set sail to India on East Indian Queen on September 11, 1850 and reached Calcutta on January 2, 1851.

Soon he headed off to Agra, where he was appointed for educational work. He founded the St. John's College at Agra, which formally opened in 1953, though he had started taking classes in small room with ten boys, while the college building was being built. The college was named as St. John's, after the college of another noted missionary, Henry Martyn (1781 -1812) at Cambridge [St John's College, Cambridge] . He also learnt seven languages [http://webarchive.cms-uk.org/news/2007/williams-lauds-cms-hero-04052007.htm CMS hero] ] , including Hindustani, Punjabi, Urdu, Persian, Pashto and Arabic to properly administrate the school, as he also became school's first principal, and a post he held till the end of his seven-year stay at Agra .

Later he married, Miss M. A. Janson, whom he had met at Oxford, and one of his eight children, Ellen Penelope French (1854–1892), went on to marry, Edmund Arbuthnott Knox, fourth Bishop of Manchester, (1903 to 1921) [ [http://anglicanhistory.org/india/pk/stock_french/02.html Chapter II] His First Pioneer Work: The Agra College.] .

1861 saw him, moving to Derajat in central Pakistan, where he started a new Mission, and a first in the area, though bad health forced him to leave for England, by end of 1862, where he reached, on Feb. 7, 1863. [ [http://anglicanhistory.org/india/pk/stock_french/03.html Chapter III] His Second Pioneer Work: The Frontier Mission.]

n 1877, on St. Thomas' Day at Westminister Abbey, London, he was appointed the first Anglican Bishop of a large new diocese of Lahore, which included, all of the Punjab and northwestern India, and remained so until 1887 [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A07E2D6173EE73BBC4B52DFB7668383669FDE Churces and Ministers: Home and Foreign Events] New York Times, January 13, 1878.] [ [http://anglicanhistory.org/india/pk/stock_french/06.html An Heroic Bishop] Chapter VI. His Fourth Pioneer Work: The Lahore Bishopric.] , during the time he founded the Lahore Divinity College, which opened on November 21, 1870 and also remained its Principal for many years [ [http://anglicanhistory.org/india/pk/stock_french/05.html Chapter V] His Third Pioneer Work: The Divinity College.] , he supervised the translation of the Bible and Prayer Book into Hindustani and Pashto [ [http://morgue.anglicansonline.org/050703/new_this_week.html Church History] ] , and also made visits to Kashmir and Iran (1883), where he was the first Episcopal bishop to visit the country [ [http://dioceseofiran.org/?page_id=10 History] Anglican Diocese of Iran.] , before returning to England, due to bad health in 1887 .

He reached Muscat, on his final missionary work, on February 8, 1891, and became the first missionary to visit the region ; he had just started setting up his work there, when his health started failing, and he died on May 14, 1891 in Muscat, Oman, where he was buried in a Christian cemetery [http://anglicanhistory.org/india/stock_beginnings/11.html Chapter XI. The First Divinity Colleges] Beginnings in India By Eugene Stock, D.C.L. 1912. French himself illustrated throughout his career the importance of Beginnings. He was five times a pioneer. He founded the College at Agra; he started a new Mission on the Afghan Frontier; he established the Divinity College; he was the first Bishop of Lahore; he laid down his life in the attempt to penetrate the closed doors of Arabia. His remains lie under the cliffs of that hitherto almost inaccessible Mohammedan preserve.] .

Legacy

In 2007, Rowan Douglas Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, hailed French, a CMS missionary as a personal hero .

Further reading

* "The Life and correspondence of Thomas Valpy French, first bishop of Lahore" by Herbert Alfred Birks. 2 vols, London, J. Murray, 1895. [ [http://library.bahai.org/serv/bw_eng_b.html Bahai library] ]
* "An Heroic Bishop: The Life-Story of French of Lahore", by Eugene Stock. London, New York and Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913. [ [http://anglicanhistory.org/india/pk/stock_french/index.html An Heroic Bishop: The Life-Story of French of Lahore] ]
* "Thomas Valpy French: First Bishop of Lahore" by Vivienne Stacey, Christian Study Centre, (1982) (English and Urdu [ [http://www.mik.org.pk/catalogue/biography.htm Biography] Masihi Isha'at Khana.] ).

References

External links

* [http://www.archive.org/details/anheroicbishopli00stocuoft An Heroic Bishop : the life-story of French of Lahore (1913), Online]
* [http://digilib.bu.edu/dspace/handle/2144/1025 Thomas Valpy French at Boston University digilibrary]