C. C. Martindale (1879–1963), the History of Religions, and the Theological Imagination of David Jones (1895–1974)

Abstract

Abstract Although the work of his Jesuit contemporaries Ronald Knox and Martin D’Arcy is perhaps better known today, C. C. [Cyril Charlie] Martindale’s (1879–1963) thinking about “the relationship between paganism and Christianity” in the early twentieth-century theological debates surrounding the field of “History of Religions” would have a profound effect on the unique intersection of theological thinking and artistic form in the work of the British Catholic poet and painter David Jones (1895–1974). Jones’s reading of Martindale’s short story collection The Goddess of Ghosts (1915) in 1919 would help to resolve a “religious crisis” Jones experienced in his exposure to the arguments of the skeptical scholar of “History of Religions,” James Frazer. Martindale’s presentation of his ideas in a literary form not only provided Jones with a hermeneutic (derived from the church fathers) for thinking about the relationship between paganism and Christianity, but also suggested an artistic model for exploring theological ideas with literary language.