James Martineau
| James Martineau | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
21 April 1805 Norwich, England |
| Died | 11 January 1900 (aged 94) London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Manchester College, York |
| Notable work |
The Rationale of Religious Inquiry (1836) The Seat of Authority in Religion (1890) |
| Region | British Unitarianism |
| Institutions | Manchester New College |
James Martineau (/ˈmɑːrtənˌoʊ/; 21 April 1805 – 11 January 1900) was an English religious philosopher influential in the history of Unitarianism.
For 45 years he was Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in Manchester New College, the principal training college for British Unitarianism.
Many portraits of Martineau, including one painted by George Frederick Watts, are held at London's National Portrait Gallery. In 2014, the gallery revealed that its patron, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, was related to Martineau. The Duchess' great-great-grandfather, Francis Martineau Lupton, was Dr James Martineau's grandnephew. The gallery also holds written correspondence between Martineau and Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson - who records that he "regarded Martineau as the master mind of all the remarkable company with whom he engaged". Prime Minister Gladstone said of Martineau; "he is beyond question the greatest of living thinkers".
One of his children was the watercolourist Edith Martineau.
The seventh of eight children, James Martineau was born in Norwich, England, where his father Thomas (1764–1826) was a cloth manufacturer and merchant. His mother, Elizabeth Rankin, was the eldest daughter of a sugar refiner and a grocer. The Martineau family were descended from Gaston Martineau, a Huguenot surgeon and refugee, who married Marie Pierre in 1693, and settled in Norwich. His son and grandson—respectively the great-grandfather and grandfather of James Martineau—were surgeons in the same city. Many of the family were active in Unitarian causes, so much so that a room in Essex Hall, the headquarters of British Unitarianism, was eventually named after them. Branches of the Martineau family in both Norwich and Birmingham were socially and politically prominent Unitarians; other elite Unitarian families in Birmingham were the Kenricks, Nettlefolds and the Chamberlains, with much intermarriage between these families taking place. Essex Hall held a statue of Martineau, whose niece, Frances Lupton, had worked to open up educational opportunities for women.
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