John Charles Beckwith

Born on 2 October 1789 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, John Charles Beckwith was the grandson of Major-General John Beckwith and the nephew of Generals Sir George and Sir Thomas Sydney Beckwith. Beckwith entered the military at the age of fourteen, obtaining (on the representation of his uncle) an ensigncy in the 50th regiment in 1803 before exchanging into the 95th (Rifle Brigade) in 1804. His service during the Napoleonic Wars was extensive; he participated in the expedition to Hanover (1805), the retreat to Corunna (1808), and the Walcheren expedition (1809). Between 1810 and 1814, he served with distinction in the Peninsular War under the Duke of Wellington, fighting at Pombal, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, and Vitoria. His military career culminated at the Battle of Waterloo (1815), where he had four horses killed under him and lost his left leg. Promoted to lieutenant-colonel and made a Companion of the Bath (CB), he retired on half-pay in 1820 at the young age of twenty-six.

The 'turning crisis' of Beckwith's life occurred in 1827 while he was waiting for the Duke of Wellington in the library of Wellesley's city home, Apsley House. To pass the time, he randomly selected Dr William Stephen Gilly’s book on the Waldenses, a Protestant minority in northern Italy. Deeply moved by Gilly's account of their historical suffering and isolation, Beckwith visited the Waldensian valleys that same summer. By 1828, he had decided to dedicate his life and fortune to their welfare, eventually establishing a permanent home at Torre Pellice. Most importantly, he brought a driving personality which, despite his conservative gradualist convictions, 'would often play a superior role to that of the mediocre indigenous ruling class' which had been formed in the failing light of late eighteenth century rationalism: 'Without making a fuss, Beckwith's work resulted in a gradual erosion of the old oligarchy, both in men and in ideas.' (Spini 1988: 171-2).

Beckwith viewed education as the 'daily bread' necessary for the Waldenses to transition from a "ghetto Church" to a modern evangelical body. Over three decades, he financed the opening or restoration of no fewer than 120 district schools (which locals wrily referred to as 'les universités des chèvres'), replacing dilapidated stables with functional buildings. In addition to sending future teachers to Switzerland for training, 1837, he established a High School for Girls (Pensionnat) at Torre Pellice to train the female teachers who would expand his growing popular education network. His architectural legacy includes the construction of several "temples" (churches) in Rodoretto (1845), Rorà (1846), Torre Pellice (1852), and Turin (1853), as well as the modernisation of the Waldensian Hospital. In 1830, having met Thomas Sims in the valleys, he assisted in proofreading Pierre Bert’s translations of the Gospels into the local Occitan patois. The next year he would solicit the Bible Society for a reprint of 2,000 patois Gospels and began planning a Piedmontese translation of the New Testament to facilitate proselytism among Catholics in the plains. He would go on to do the same with of the Gospels of Luke and John, versions of the whole New Testament, the Psalms, and a dialectal version of Osterwald’s Catechism. The latter 1830s, however, were a difficult time when Catholic activists -- Clemente Solaro, Count della Margherita and Andrea Charvaz, Bishop of Pinerolo -- managed to roll back many of the gains of Protestant diplomats (such as Foster and Waldburg-Truchsess) with the Sardinian King. In 1840, the Vatican placed Beckwith's Piedmontese scriptural works on the Index of Prohibited Books, and in 1842 the government of Piedmont-Sardinia prohibited Beckwith (and other foreigners) from attending the Waldensian synods. In 1846, his shipment of patois Scriptures was seized by Sardinian officials. 

With the rise of Piedmont and aspirations for reunification, a central tenet of Beckwith's work became the 'nationalisation' of the Waldensian Church. His international status and connections enabled him to reinforce the diplomatic pressure which Protestant countries had been placing on the Italian states for generations. (Spini notes, for example, the importance of the rise of Cavour and the connections he shared with Beckwith among Protestants in Geneva, and Beckwith's representation of 'the Protestant dream' of a converted Italy. Spini 1988: 138, 140) Since 1620, however, the Church had relied on French for its liturgy and instruction; Beckwith pushed for a shift to Italian to better integrate the Church into the burgeoning Risorgimento. He famously challenged the community in 1848: “O sarete missionari o non sarete nulla” (“Either you will be missionaries or you will be nothing”). To support this, beginning with Bartolomeo Malan, he financed the travel of pastors and professors to Florence to master the 'pure' Tuscan dialect which would become the language of the Kingdom of Italy. The products of this new generation would come to replace the old Waldensian elite on the Tavola and Committee of Evangelization, as part of a pivot from an isolated French people-Church towards a pro-Risorgimento national Italian church. With the Statuto Albertino, he also helped fund the building of a Waldensian temple in Turin (though he would refuse to attend its inauguration in protest against the Church's rejection of his liturgical and episcopal reforms). His contributions were recognised by King Charles Albert, who made him a Knight of the Order of St Maurice and St Lazarus in 1848. 

Despite his generosity, Beckwith’s Anglican background occasionally clashed with the Church’s Presbyterian structure. He proposed that the Church's Moderator should hold the position for life—effectively acting as a bishop—and that they adopt a uniform liturgy similar to the Book of Common Prayer. These proposals were largely ignored or rejected by the Waldensian Synods of 1839 and 1851, causing Beckwith significant bitterness. In 1852 he became embroiled in a conflict with Amedeo Bert over church administration, accusing him of lacking evangelical zeal. On 20 June 1850, he married a local Waldensian woman, Caroline Valle (or Volle), with whom he had one daughter, Charlotte. Charlotte would continue to work with Waldensian causes, including the Sezione Italiana della Società Internazionale per la Pace e l'Arbitrato.

Beckwith died at Torre Pellice on 19 July 1862. His funeral was attended by thousands of the peasants whose lives he had transformed through education and charity. Known affectionately as the "General with the wooden leg," he is remembered for his unwearied constancy in regenerating a community that had been forgotten by much of Europe.

Sources

Annual Register, Deaths: John Charles Beckwith, in The Annual Register, or a view of the History and Politics of the year 1862, (1863).

Associazione F. Lo Bue, “O sarete missionari o non sarete nulla": Charles Beckwith 1789 – 1989. Atti del Convegno promosso dall'Associazione F. Lo Bue a Torre Pellice, 22 July 1989 (Torre Pellice, Tipografia Subalpina, 1989).

Comba, A., Gilly e Beckwith tra i valdesi, Monografie edite in occasione del XVII febbraio, Società di Studi Valdesi, 1990.

Gentleman's Magazine, Obituary. Major-General Beckwith, in The Gentleman's Magazine 213 (July-Dec 1862).

Jalla, J., 'Le général Beckwith', Monografie edite in occasione del XVII febbraio, Società di Studi Valdesi, 1927.

Meille, J. P., Le général Beckwith: sa vie et ses travaux parmi les vaudois du Piémont (Lausanne: G. Bridel, 1872.

Spini, G., Risorgimento e Protestanti, (Torino: Claudiana 1988; 2nd ed)

Stephens, H. M.  and James Lunt (rev.), 'Beckwith, John Charles  (1789–1862)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 24 May 2008,  https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1912