Seven Lectures on Medieval Missions by Thomas Smith D.D.

These seven lectures on medieval missions include within their scope material on Clovis and Clotilda, Paternus, Columba, Augustine of Canterbury, Aidan, Columbanus, Brunehilde, Boniface, Willebrord, Anskar and Ramon Llull. They appear on-line thanks to Redcliffe College, who recently asked me to digitise 1,000 mission books from their library. This book is in the Public Domain.

Thomas Smith, Medieval Missions. Duff Missionary Lectures – First Series. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1880. Hbk. pp.279. [Click to download in PDF]

Preface

The Duff Missionary Lectureship has been instituted under the provisions of the will of the late Dr. Alexander Duff. In arranging for its foundation, his son has complied with the dying instructions of his father, deviating from these instructions only to the extent of designating the lectureship by his father’s name,-a deviation which, I venture to think, will be universally approved.

In terms of a trust-deed executed by Mr. Duff, a course of lectures, not fewer than six in number, ‘On some department of Foreign Missions or cognate subjects,’ is to be delivered once in every four years, each lecturer to give only one course. They are to be delivered in Edinburgh and repeated in Glasgow, or delivered in Glasgow and repeated in Edinburgh, or delivered and repeated in such other places as the trustees may direct. The lectures are then to be published, and copies are to be presented to certain libraries in this country, continental Europe, America, India, Africa, and Australia. The trustees are men belonging to different denominations, and the lecturer is to be ‘ a minister, professor, or godly layman of any Evangelical Church.’

In the introduction to the first lecture I have sufficiently explained the circumstances in/ which I was appointed as the first holder of the lectureship, as having been long associated with Dr. Duff in mission work in Bengal, and afterwards in the home-management of the missions of the Free Church of Scotland. While I venture to entertain a humble hope that the present volume may communicate to its readers a considerable portion of information, and may stimulate their interest in the great work of missions, I desire that it may be regarded also as a tribute to the memory of one for whom, during forty years of uninterrupted friendship and constant intercourse, I cherished feelings of tenderest affection, while I shared with the universal church the sentiment of admiration of his gifts and veneration of his graces. [Continue reading]