Thread by @EcclesHistSoc

It's back to 'Spooky Church History' this morning with @DrFrancisYoung. To kick off the morning of Hallowe'en - who was the spookiest church historian?

Pictured above are the contemporaries Herbert Thurston (1856-1939) and Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), one a Jesuit scholar and the other the father of modern 'Christian archaeology' in Britain

Both Thurston and James were renowned for their scholarship, but they are also known for their interest in the occult - Thurston for his writings on Spiritualism, and M.R. James for his famous ghost stories, of course

Herbert Thurston was an immensely productive scholar and wrote hundreds of articles on historical and liturgical subjects, but he is remembered today for his engagement with the Spiritualist movement which became so popular after WW1. Thurston adopted a very sceptical stance

While Thurston's opposition to Spiritualism is hardly surprising, coming from a Jesuit priest, the character of his opposition was more surprising: Thurston rejected the claims of Spiritualists not because they were demonic or evil, but because they weren't genuine

At the same time, Thurston delved deeply into the Spiritualist movement and was clearly fascinated by it - rather than brushing it off without truly understanding it, like many other religious critics

Thurston managed to combine a humane analysis of the social and spiritual phenomenon of Spiritualism with a rigorous critique of claims that had drawn in many significant intellects over the previous decades

While Thurston is a somewhat forgotten figure, M. R. James suffers (if anything) from the opposite problem. Everyone *thinks* they know who James was, but many people are unaware of what he actually did for a day job

Leading James scholar @jmainpidd is currently working on an edition of James's letters with @unbounders, which will give us a much more detailed and balanced picture of him. You can support the project here: unbound.com/books/casting-…

James is known today primarily for his ghost stories, and portrayed as 'dry as dust' antiquary who worked on recondite and obscure subjects, but the reality is that James was a ground-breaking scholar who effectively carved out a new field of study: 'Christian archaeology'

James's 'Christian archaeology' combined what today we might call archaeology, architectural history, art history, palaeography and bibliography - but James did all of these!

James laid the foundations for the interpretation of medieval church art in England, but he was perhaps at his best when dealing with medieval books and libraries, where he had a savant-like ability to reconstruct collections. His bibliographical scholarship is still relied upon

We can only guess at how James's day job of dealing with the remains of the neglected Middle Ages informed his terrifying fiction - but it is important to remember that James did not see himself, first and foremost, as a ghost story writer, but as a church historian...

And if you enjoy ghost stories written by church historians, I've even had a go myself! lulu.com/en/gb/shop/fra…