Richard Challoner

From Textus Receptus

Richard Challoner (1691-1781), was an English Roman Catholic bishop, a leading figure of English Catholicism during the greater part of the eighteenth century.

Challoner was born in the Protestant town of Lewes, Sussex, England on September 29, 1691. His father, also Richard Challoner, was married by licence granted on January 17 1690/1 to his wife Grace Willard at Ringmer, Sussex on February 10. After the death of his father, who was a Presbyterian winecooper (i.e. he made wine-barrels), his mother, now reduced to poverty, became housekeeper to the Catholic Gage family, at Firle in Sussex. It is not known for sure whether she was originally a Roman Catholic, or whether she subsequently became one under the influence of Roman Catholic surroundings. Most probably she was a lapsed Roman Catholic. In any case, thus it came about that Richard was brought up as a Catholic, though he was not baptized a Catholic until he was about thirteen years old. This was at Warkworth, Northamptonshire, the seat of another well-known Roman Catholic family, that of George Holman, whose wife, Lady Anastasia Holman, was a daughter of Blessed William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, a Roman Catholic unjustly condemned and beheaded in the Titus Oates hysteria of 1678. In this house the chaplain was the Rev. John Gother, a celebrated controversialist. In 1705 young Richard was sent to the English College at Douai on a sort of scholarship, entering the English College on July 29.

He was to spend the next twenty-five years there, first as student, then as professor, and as vice-president. At the age of twenty-one he was chosen to teach the classes of rhetoric and poetry, which were the two senior classes in the humanities. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in divinity from the University of Douai in 1719, and was appointed professor of philosophy, a post which he held for eight years. At this period, though it was not necessary to have aliases, he was known by his mother's surname of Willard. His nickname was "Book". Ordained a priest at Tournai on March 28, 1716, in 1720 he was chosen by the president, Robert Witham, to be his vice-president, an office which involved the supervision of both professors and students. At the same time he was appointed professor of theology and prefect of studies, so that he had the direction of the whole course of studies. Though in 1727 he defended his public thesis and obtained a doctorate in divinity, Challoner's success as a teacher was probably due rather to his untiring industry and devotion to this work than to any extraordinary mental gifts. He was not considered an original thinker, but his gift lay in enforcing the spiritual reality of the doctrines he was expounding.

Another work to which Challoner devoted much energy and time was revision of the English Catholic Bible. He had long perceived a need to update the language of the Douay Rheims Bible that had appeared over the years 1582-1610. While still at Douay, he was one of the approving prelates for a revision of the Rheims New Testament published in 1730 by the college president, Robert Witham. After returning to England, he and Francis Blyth published in 1738 another revision of Rheims in an attractive large folio edition. His more important work would appear over the years 1749 through 1752. An edition of the New Testament appeared in 1749, and another, together with the first edition of the Old Testament, in 1750. Between the two editions of the New Testament there are few differences, but the next edition, published in 1752, had important changes both in text and notes, the variations numbering over two thousand.

All revisions attributed to Challoner were published anonymously. It is unclear to what extent he was personally involved in, or even approved of, the various changes. Curiously, a book he published in 1762, Morality of the Bible, quotes Scriptural citations from the 1749 and 1752 revisions in different places. Challoner is believed to have had the assistance of Robert Pinkard (alias Typper), the London agent for Douay College, in preparing the 1749 and 1750 revisions. The chief points to note in these revisions are the elimination of the obscure and literal translations from the Latin in which the original version abounds, the alteration of obsolete terms and spelling, a closer approximation in some respects to the Anglican Authorised Version (for instance, the substitution of "the Lord" for "our Lord"), and finally the printing of the verses separately. For the next 200 years Challoner's revisions were the groundwork for nearly all English Catholic Bibles, including those published in America, beginning with a Philadelphia edition in 1790. Rather than use any particular revision, later editors tended to pick and choose from the several versions available. This means that many of the Douai-Rheims Bibles available differed from each other in the texts they contained. Significantly, the American editions tended towards the later, more natural, revisions, while the English ones tended towards the earlier, more conservative versions (which were closer to the Latin).