Champion of 'history from below' inspires a scholarly tribute

Opening the Scrolls: Essays in Honour of Godfrey Austruther. Edited by Dominic Aidan Bellenger. Downside Abbey, Bath. £15.
LIKE a great white eagle, Fr Godfrey Anstruther hovers over the waking plains of Catholic historical scholarship. There may be no great Anstruther theory or school of eager young academics drawn up to win their spurs in his name. But his four-volume biographical dictionary, recording all the secular priests trained abroad between the reign of Elizabeth and the French Revolution, makes the strongest claim for him to be considered English Catholicism's greatest living research historian.
Quite how remarkable is his achievement can be appreciated by considering the qualifications for undertaking such work. The author must have a working knowledge of at least five languages; the resources of either a millionaire or an international organisation behind him; and no inconsiderable personal reputation to gain access to dusty archives throughout Europe. Finally, he must have stamina, broad perception and rigorous standards of accuracy without which such work would be wasted.
In Opening the Scrolls Dom Aidan Bellenger has brought together a wide variety of admirers to pay tribute to Fr Godfrey, either by dwelling on the historian himself, expanding on his work or labouring in fields to which he has only pointed.
Bishop Brian Foley and Mgr Dan Shanahan recall the history of the work, known simply as Anstruther to historians, which was long fuelled only by hope until a publisher could be found. His fellow Dominican Fr Bede Bailey sketches Fr Godfrey's personal background, giving the flavour of what it is like to live with a man who knows so much of the past that he can be found cogitating availability of meat pies in the Gatehouse prison during the 1580s.
Judith Champ produces a delightful account of the mission priests at Oscott before its opening as a seminary and Dom Geoffrey Scott penetrates a little further into the murky bag of 18th-century Benedictine relations' with vicars apostolic. In two longer essays, Professor Patrick McGrath examines the motives of the "apostate and naughty priests", who defied the papal appointed archpriest at the beginning of James l's reign, while Fr Stewart Foster similarly expands on Fr Godfrey's account of the self-doubting Bengamin Petre whose constant complaints about his promotion to vicar-general seem worthwhile in retrospect since he eventually took on the great Richard Challoner as his coadjutor.
Although Fr Godfrey could no doubt feel satisfaction that nobody does anything to overturn his work significantly, it is more likely that he ill ponder on Dom Aidan's snippet contrasting the effect of the French Revolution on a Baptist minister, a turncoat French priest and an English monk. Undoubtedly, his scholarly instincts will quicken at Sheridan Gilley's account of the attemps to halt or modify Purcell's Life of Manning, the still shrouded cardinal whose papers may offer a juicy plum for a lucky biographer.
It must be said that the proofreading in this handsome volume is not always up to Fr Godfrey'shown high standards, and one sometimes misses his sharp eye for human detail. But there can be no more fitting present for his remarkable scholar of recusancy who last month celebrated his 85th birthday.
David Twiston Da vies.
The reviewer works for The Daily Telegraph.