# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Bigg, Charles

​BIGG, CHARLES (1840–1908), classical scholar and theologian, born on 12 Sept. 1840, at Higher Broughton, near Manchester, was second son of Thomas Bigg, a Manchester merchant, by his wife Sarah, daughter of Charles Elden. Educated at Manchester grammar school, Bigg was elected to a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 26 March 1858. He had a brilliant academical career, obtaining first-class honours in classics in moderations in Michaelmas term, 1859, and in the final schools in Easter term, 1862, and carrying off the Hertford scholarship for Latin in 1860, the Gaisford prize for Greek prose composition, with a Platonic dialogue, in 1861 (printed in that year), and the Ellerton theological essay in 1864. The appointed subject for this essay, 'The Life and Character of St. Chrysostom,' directed him to the field of study which he was to make his own. He graduated B.A. in 1862, M.A. in 1864, and D.D. in 1876, being ordained deacon in 1863 and priest in 1864. Becoming a senior student, and classical tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1863, he acted as one of the classical moderators from 1862 to 1865. In 1866 he left Oxford to become second classical master at Cheltenham College, whence he passed in 1871 to the headmastership of Brighton College. To this period of his life belong school editions of portions of Thucydides, books i. and ii. (1868), and of Xenophon's 'Cyropædeia' (1884, 1888).
Resigning his post at Brighton in 1881, he returned to Oxford to serve as chaplain to his old college, Corpus Christi, and to devote himself to severe study of the early history of the Christian church, and its relations to pagan writers and especially to pagan philosophers. The fruit of these researches appeared in his Bampton lectures on 'The Christian Platonists of Alexandria,' delivered and published in 1 886. These at once won him recognition as an exact scholar and an acute philosopher and theologian.
In 1887, on the presentation of Corpus Christi College, he became rector of Fenny Compton, in Warwickshire. His diocesan, Henry Philpott, bishop of Worcester, made him his examining chaplain in 1889, and honorary canon of Worcester, 1889-1901. In 1891 he became examining chaplain to Mandell Creighton [q. v. Suppl. I], bishop of Peterborough. At Oxford he was a select preacher in 1891, and again in 1900, and a theological examiner in 1891-3 and again in 1897-9. When Dr. Creighton was translated to London in 1897, he asked Dr. Bigg to continue acting as his examining chaplain, and assigned to him, in October 1900, a leading part in the Fulham Palace conference. To this period of his life belong editions, with thoughtful introductions, of various standard devotional works, such as 'The Confessions of St. Augustine' (1898), 'The Imitation of Christ' (1898; new edit. 1905), and William Law's 'Serious Call' (1899; new edit. 1906), and a strongly conservative edition of, and commentary on 'The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude' (1901).
Bigg found his true sphere of work in 1901, when he succeeded Dr. William Bright [q. v. Suppl. II] in the regius professorship of ecclesiastical history at Oxford, with which was associated a canonry of Christ Church. His professorial lectures were exhaustive expositions of historical biography. A frequent preacher in the University church and in the cathedral, he enlisted the attention of widely different classes of hearers (Dr. Francis Paget, bishop of Oxford, in his preface to The Spirit of Christ in Common Life, p. vi). Both as lecturer and preacher he was distinguished by quaint simplicity of thought, originality of expression, and dry humour. He was also proctor for the chapter of Christ Church in the lower house of convocation. He was taken ill suddenly at Christ Church on 13 July 1908, having just sent to press the most important of his works, 'The Origins of Christianity.' He died on 15 July, and was buried in the Christ Church portion of Osney cemetery, near Oxford, Bigg married ​on 2 Jan. 1867, at Kersal Moor, Manchester, Millicent, daughter of William Sale, a Manchester solicitor, and had issue three sons and a daughter.
Besides the works already noticed, Bigg's chief publications were:
* 'Neoplatonism,' 1895, in the popular series of 'Ancient Philosophies.'
* 'The Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles ' (Early Church Classics), 1898.
* 'Wayside Sketches in Ecclesiastical History,' 1906, nine lectures on Latin writers of the fourth and fifth centuries.
* 'The Spirit of Christ in Common Life,' 1909, a collection of addresses and sermons.
* 'The Origins of Christianity,' 1909, a summary of the history and thought of the church in the first three centuries.
[Foster, Oxford Men; Crockford, Clerical Directory; The Times, 16 July 1908; Oxford Mag. xxvii. 7; Guardian, 1908, p. 1230; Oxford Times, 18 and 25 July 1908; appreciation by W. R. Inge, since Dean of St. Paul's, in Journal of Theological Studies, Oct. 1908; Life of Mandell Creighton, 1904, vol. ii.]
A. C.