Henry Martyn (18 February 1781 – 16 October 1812) was an Anglican priest and missionary to the peoples of India and Persia. Born in Truro, Cornwall, he was educated at Truro Grammar School and St John's College, Cambridge. It read, in part:

On 16 October 1812 he died and was given a Christian burial by Armenian clergy.

Legacy

His devotion to his tasks won him much admiration in Great Britain and he was the hero of a number of literary publications. Thomas Babington Macaulay's Epitaph, composed early in 1813, testified to the impression made by his career:

An institution was established in his name in India, called the Henry Martyn Institute: An Interfaith Centre for Reconciliation and Research, Hyderabad, India. John McManners wrote in his Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity that Martyn was a man remembered for his courage, selflessness and his religious devotion. Henry Martyn is honoured in the Church of England and in the Episcopal Church on 19 October.

In 1881, on the centennial of Martyn's birth, a trust was created in his name for the purpose of constructing a hall for a library and a place for public lecture on missions. The Henry Martyn Library opened in the Hall in 1898, and there it remained as a small collection of missionary biographies and other books until 1995. The evolution of the Henry Martyn Library into the present Henry Martyn Centre began in 1992, when Canon Graham Kings was appointed as the first Henry Martyn Lecturer in Missiology in the Cambridge Theological Federation. In 2014 the Henry Martyn Centre was renamed the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.

See also

  • Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide
  • Henry Martyn Hall, Cambridge, built 1887
  • Saints in Anglicanism
  • Church Missionary Society in India
  • List of Protestant missionaries in India
  • John Gilchrist (linguist)
  • James Hawkes (missionary)
  • Constance E. Padwick (biographer)

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

  • Bentley-Taylor, David. My Love Must Wait: the Story of Henry Martyn, Downers Grove: IVP (1975).
  • Henry, B. V. Forsaking All for Christ: A Biography of Henry Martyn London: Chapter Two, 2003.
  • Sargent, John. Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn B. D., London: Hatchard (1816). Links to editions from 1820 and 1844
  • Kellsye M. Finnie, Beyond the Minarets: A Biography of Henry Martyn Bromley: STL Books, 1988
  • Smith, George. <!-- quote="henry martyn". --> Henry Martyn, Saint and Scholar, London: Religious Tract Society (1892).
  • Isaac, Peter. A history of Evangelical Christianity in Cornwall, Privately published; Polperro, Cornwall (1999) &ndash; contains a chapter about Martyn, who was born in Cornwall.
  • Henry Martyn Institute of India
  • Henry Martyn Centre
  • Martyn, Henry in the Christian Cyclopedia
  • The missionaries - Martyn, Huc, Livingstone, Selwyn - Once a Week.