Hort's secrecy Roby curse for the Cambridge Apostles

Steven Avery

Administrator
PBF - sister threads.

Westcott and Hort occultism - seance and 'communion of saints'
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.987

occultism in textual writers - Hoskier, Ginsburg, Westcott-Hort - also Mark in Latin
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.439

Hort's secrecy Roby curse for the Cambridge Apostles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_John_Roby

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The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life (1998)
W. C. Lubenow
https://books.google.com/books?id=Sy8Ym9N3tgUC&pg=PA46

The case of Henry Roby is the most singular scandal and the greatest failure in the Apostles’ history. ... Fenton Hort and Robert Pomeroy were his sponsors when the Apostles elected Roby in 1855....Roby ... finding the meetings unpromising, he became busy with his other affairs.84 ...85 Misunderstanding the situation, Roby thought he could merely resign. He was stunned to receive, instead of an acknowledgement, ‘a fulmination in the form of a dismissal, drawn up I believe in form by Hort’.86 What he had done was unprecedented. In response, Hort drafted the great curse which has ever since been read out to all embryos warning them that their souls will forever writhe in torment if they reveal the existence of the Society. His name is spelt ‘roby’ in the Apostles’ records.

84 Henry John Roby, Reminiscences of My Life anti Work, for My Family Only (Cambridge, printed for private circulation at the Cambridge University Press: 1911), pp. 34-5.
85 Annan, ‘Et Tu Anthony’
86 Roby, Reminiscences of My Life and Work, pp. 34-6.

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The Cambridge Apostles: The Early Years (2010)
By Peter Allen
https://books.google.com/books?id=EXTxmaWHFU8C&pg=PA230

... I am told there is no oath of secrecy as such, despite the Life of Hort, i, 171, in which Hort’s son credits him with being ‘mainly responsible for the wording of the oath which binds the members to a conspiracy of silence’. What Hort probably helped to write was the curse on Roby, for which see The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1872-1914 (1967), 221.

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The Autobiography of Betrand Russell (1872-1970)
https://books.google.com/books?id=dVBpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA231

Henry John Roby was elected a member of the Society, but wrote to say that he was far too busy to attend the meetings and was therefore ritualistically cursed and his name was spelt thenceforth without capitals. Ever after when a new member was elected the curse was solemnly read out.

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Hort's son acknowledges the silence part, and omits the curse.

Life and Letters of Fenton John Hort - v.1
https://books.google.com/books?id=Rxc3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA171

the 'Apostles".. remained always a grateful and loyal member of the secret Club ... and he was mainly responsible for the wording of the oath which binds the members to a conspiracy of silence.

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What spiritual darkness.
A supposed Christian (?) authoring a secrecy pledge involving a:

"great curse ... warning them that their souls will forever writhe in torment "

 
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