ABSTRACT
Kenelm Henry Digby was the chief British religious medievalist of the nineteenth century. His whole medievalist work was an enthusiastic metaphor of the medieval Church, and he venerated the Middle Ages because he believed them holy and Catholic, valuing them as a corrective lesson for the present. The remedy is to turn away from secular materialism to the medieval faith. Materialism also breeds dishonour and the divinization of expediency, preaching “avarice and ambition” instead of love and duty. Political currents are also adversely affected by irreligious modern attitudes, placing man “perpetually between slavery and rebellion”. The movement collapsed in 1845 after only a few active years and lacked large practical issue, although Saintsbury witnesses to its “extraordinary influence on the Universities” while Blake asserts that the influence of Disraeli’s theory of history stretched as far as Belloc and Chesterton both of whom were religious medievalists.
