Roger Ascham is often classified as 'a great mid-Tudor humanist' and he is perhaps best known for his role as tutor to Elizabeth I. His most famous works, The Scholemaster and Toxophilus, have been extensively quarried and anthologised in studies on prose style and English humanism. By contrast, his Neo-Latin works that engaged with theology and key Reformation concerns have languished in the shadows of modern scholarship. Ascham's Themata Theologica ('Theological Topics') is one of these, and its content has the potential to open up many an investigative avenue into the intellectual and religious culture of the sixteenth century. This is the first volume to offer a corresponding English translation.
The
Themata can be dated to the early to mid- 1540s, and was composed by Ascham while still at Cambridge University and serving as a senior fellow at St John's College. The work mainly comprises a compendium of relatively short commentaries on Scriptural verses (both Old and New Testament), many of which developed into expositions on difficult philosophical concepts, such as the notion of
felix culpa (literally, 'happy fault') and some of the most intractable theological questions of the day, including the nature of sin,
adiaphora ('matters of indifference'), justification and free will. This little-known text offers a rare opportunity to trace the course of Ascham's own religious maturation, but also offers fresh insights into the confessional climate at Cambridge University during one of the most turbulent periods of the Reformation in England.
Barton, William M.: - William Barton is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Classical Philology and Neo-Latin Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria. He is a co-editor of the Bloomsbury Neo-Latin Series.
Harrison, Stephen: - Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, UK. His research interests are in Augustan Poetry, the Ancient Novel, esp. Apuleius, Classical Reception (especially 19th and 20th century UK). Among many books and articles he is author of: Vergil: Aeneid 10 (1991), Homage to Horace (ed., 1995), Apuleius: A Latin Sophist (2000) Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace (2007).
Manuwald, Gesine: - Gesine Manuwald is Professor of Latin at University College London, UK, and President of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies (SNLS). She has published a number of articles on early modern Latin literature and edited the collected volume Neo-Latin Poetry in the British Isles (2012) with Luke Houghton.
Nicholas, Lucy R.: - Lucy Nicholas is a Teaching Fellow in Classics at King's College London and University College London, UK. She has published on Roger Ascham and written on other early modern Latin authors, including Thomas More and Walter Haddon. She co-edited Themes of Polemical Theology Across Early Modern Literary Genres (2016). She is the Treasurer of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies (SNLS).
Xinyue, Bobby: - Bobby Xinyue is Lecturer in Roman Culture at King's College London, UK, and a co-editor of the Bloomsbury Neo-Latin Series.
