Henry Wentworth Monk - Biography

Biography

Monk was born on April 6, 1827, in March Township, Ontario a tiny and remote agricultural community along the Ottawa River. He showed an inclination towards reading and writing at a young age, and when he was seven years old, his father scraped together enough funds to send him to Christ's Hospital in England to be formally educated. Monk found life there unbearable, and would often take refuge in escapist fantasies as a means of coping with reality. After leaving Christ's Hospital, he studied divinity for a while in London, but returned to Canada in the 1840s.

It was in London that Monk was first exposed to Zionist thought. An early incident that had tremendous impact on his young mind was when he heard speech by Lord Shafesbury in 1839 or 1840. Shafesbury, at the time, showed great interest in establishing a British protectorate in Palestine, and restoring the Jews to their "rightful home." Monk was apparently very moved by the speech and began reading whatever he could find on the subject of proto-Zionism and the Jewish diaspora. He would later come into contact with Edward Cazalet, a British Jew, who wanted to establish a Jewish state in Palestine as a safe haven for the oppressed Jews of the world. He was also profoundly affected by the Damascus affair of 1840, and wrote that the anti-Jewish violence perpetrated there deeply disturbed and saddened him.

Upon returning to Canada, he began corresponding with Christian proto-Zionists in the United States (mostly mystics and millenarians). A pivotal moment would come, when, in 1852, he decided he had discovered the "correct" interpretation of the Book of Revelation, after which he took a vow of poverty and left for Palestine as soon as his meager funds would allow. It was during this first stay in Palestine (which lasted just under two years) that he finished his interpretation of Revelation, formed the majority of the ideas he would stand by for the remainder of his life, and formed some friendships that would last that duration as well, most notably with the painter William Holman Hunt. Hunt painted his portrait, in which he is posed holding a copy of the New Testament and a recent issue of The Times newspaper, referring to his attempt to link Revelation to recent events. Behind him is an opaque glass window, referring to St. Paul's words that believers can only see the truth "through a glass, darkly". Hunt was also to help secure the funding of Monk's book on Revelation, thanks to a donation from John Ruskin.

For the next two decades, he split his time between Canada, the United States, Palestine, and Europe, trying to raise funds and lobbying for his cause. He proposed marriage to a woman from March Settlement named Anna Greene, but was rejected (prompting his second extended trip to Palestine). Eventually, in the 1870s, Monk settled in Ottawa, where he would become something of a public figure. He would lobby Parliament, stand for the House of Commons once (in 1887), produce most of his surviving written works, and launch the Palestine Restoration Fund (in 1875), which he would work on until his death. He died on August 24, 1896. His passing was mentioned in newspapers in Ottawa and Montreal, and he was eulogized as a philosopher, a moralist, and a crusader for justice. Today, he is almost completely forgotten.