John Coleridge Patteson (1 April 1827 – 20 September 1871) was an English Anglican bishop, missionary to the South Sea Islands, and an accomplished linguist, learning 23 of the islands' more than 1,000 languages.
In 1861, Patteson was selected as the first Bishop of the Anglican Church of Melanesia. He was killed on Nukapu, one of the easternmost islands of the Solomon Islands, on 20 September 1871. Consequently, he is commemorated in the Church of England calendar on 20 September.
Early life
He was the elder son of Sir John Patteson by his second wife, Frances Duke Coleridge who was a niece of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Patteson continued his involvement with cricket at Oxford, playing for the Oxford University Cricket Club. In 1849, he appeared in the annual University Match against Cambridge University, which had first-class status. In that match, he scored 25 runs in the first innings but only two in the second, with Oxford going on to lose by three wickets after being bowled out for 69 in its second innings.
After taking his degree in October 1849, Patteson travelled in Switzerland and Italy, learned German at Dresden, and devoted himself to the study of Hebrew and Arabic. Languages were to be a lifelong interest.
Ordination
On 25 September 1853, he was ordained as deacon and curate of Alfington, Devon, and on 24 September 1854 was ordained priest at Exeter Cathedral. On a visit in the summer of 1854, George Augustus Selwyn, the first Bishop of New Zealand, recruited Patteson as a missionary to the South Seas. Patteson left England with the bishop in March 1855, and landed at Auckland in May. He ran the Melanesian Mission's summer school at Kohimarama, Auckland. He also founded St Barnabas College on Norfolk Island, as a training centre for missionaries.
On 24 February 1861, at Auckland, he was consecrated the first Bishop of Melanesia. It was not an easy calling: the islands were scattered over of ocean. He was not always welcomed, particularly since the native peoples were subject to abuses at the hands of blackbirders. These essentially stole men as labourers, transporting them away under harsh conditions. Usually Patteson's gentle, quiet manner reassured the indigenous peoples, but not always. Once when he and his assistants were about to leave Santa Cruz, they were shot at with arrows. Patteson's assistants were wounded, and the arrows turned out to be poisoned, since both ultimately died from the wounds.
A brilliant linguist, Patteson eventually spoke 23 of the more than 1,000 Melanesian languages. He printed grammars and vocabularies and translated some gospels into the Mota language.
Patteson's goal was to take boys from local communities, educate them in western Christian culture at his mission school, and return them to their villages to help lead the next generation. He had difficulty persuading local people to allow their young men to depart, sometimes for years, for this purpose. Patteson never tried to make the Melanesians British but thought he was equipping them for the contemporary world. His most brilliant scholar, Edward Wogala, wrote of him: "He did not live apart, he was always friends with us and did not despise in the least a single one of us." Well liked by many, his name is still handed down from father to son, and in 1961, young Melanesians were still being named for him at baptism. His task was made harder when traders from Australia began to visit the islands, keen to get men to go and work on their sugar plantations. Usually they kept the law and agreed proper terms of employment: but some simply kidnapped the islanders and carried them off in what became known as "snatch-snatch" boats.
Two Norwegian historians (Thorgeir Kolshus and Even Hovdhaugen, 2010) have examined the evidence in light of current interpretations related to agency and meanings given by the indigenous people. They have reviewed mission documents, as well as oral histories collected by ethnographers. They suggest that women, especially Niuvai, the wife of the paramount chief, played a more prominent role in the events. They led resistance to having their sons taken away to the distant mission school. Kolshus and Hovdhaugen argue that the natives may not have completely distinguished between the blackbirders and the missionaries, as both took young people away from the communities.
Alternatively, Kolshus and Hovdhaugen also suggest that Patteson had upset the local hierarchy by giving gifts without due regard for precedence, and by cultivating support among women in the community. This was contrary to patriarchal norms. The men considered him a threat to their social order and killed him.
Patteson is celebrated in Anglican churches for his saintly life and as a martyr; he is commemorated with a Lesser Festival on 20 September, in the calendar of saints and other Anglican churches. A bas-relief memorial by Thomas Woolner was installed in the Merton College Chapel. The portrait portrays him surrounded by palm leaves, with an image below of him lying in the canoe, as described above.
On Norfolk Island in 1882, the church of St Barnabas was erected to Patteson's memory, with windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones and executed by William Morris. In 1920, the Melanesian Mission was relocated from the island to the Solomon Islands to be closer to its target population. Port Patteson on Vanua Lava and Bishop Patteson Theological College in the Solomon Islands are both named after him. The Martyrs' Pulpit in the nave of Exeter Cathedral was erected in memory of Bishop Patteson who was ordained in the cathedral. It was designed by George Gilbert Scott in the 1870s. In 1873, a memorial for Patteson was erected by Sir John Coleridge at Fairmile Cross near Feniton, Devon.
Bishop Patteson is commemorated as the central figure in the stained glass window of the Seaman's Chapel of Lincoln Cathedral. He is also commemorated as the central figure of a stained glass window in St Mark's Church, Bromley, flanked by Bishops Samuel Ajayi Crowther and Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah.