Jump to content

Barten Holyday

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Barten Holyday
Archdeacon of Oxford
Appointed1626
Personal details
Born1593 (1593)
Died2 October 1661(1661-10-02) (aged 67–68)
Iffley, Oxfordshire, England
EducationChrist Church, Oxford (DDiv)

Barten Holyday or Holiday (1593 – 2 October 1661) was an English clergyman, author and poet.[1]

Life

[edit]

Holyday was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and earned a Doctor of Divinity degree.[2] Holyday travelled with Sir Francis Stewart on Stewart's mission to Spain; he owed his introduction to Stewart to Richard Corbet.[3] Holyday formed part of the escort of Count Gondomar returning to Spain.[1]

In 1619 Holyday was ordained deacon, and in 1621 priest.[4] In 1623 he became vicar of Ashleworth and Brize Norton.[1]

For the 1625 accession day of King James I, Holyday preached at St Paul's Cross a political sermon on unity. It was in marked contrast to a sermon preached at the same period by the royal chaplain Daniel Price that hinted at religious divisions fostered at court.[5] Holyday was appointed Archdeacon of Oxford by King Charles I in 1625.[1]

Holyday died at Iffley on 2 October 1661, "of an Ague, or of the new Epidemical Disease which now raged."[6] He was buried at Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford.[7]

Works

[edit]
Technogamia, title page

Holyday was summed up by Adolphus William Ward as "a good scholar, a shrewd critic, and a fair wit."[8]

  • Published a verse translation of Persius.[1]
  • Technogamia (published 1618) was Holyday's only play. It was given at Christ Church in 1617, without being a success.[1] Possibly after Ben Jonson had revised it, the play was given again at Woodstock for James I.[9] Its less than enthusiastic reception by the King was the subject of a derisory poem called "Whoop Holiday", published in 1625 by Peter Heylin. John Nichols suggested that the title was a play on "Whoop Barnaby", a ballad of the time.[10][11] Holyday wrote commendatory verse for the publisher John Benson for a 1640 edition of Ars Poetica in Jonson's translation.[12] A modern edition of Technogamia was published in 1642.[13]
  • Philosophiae polito-barbarae specimen, in quo De anima & ejus habitibus intellectualibus quaestiones aliquot: libris duobus (1633)[14] The works, relating to Aristotle, date from the period about 1617 to 1620, when Holyday was a college praelector in rhetoric and philosophy.[15]
  • Against Disloyalty: Fower Sermons Preach'd in the Times of the Late Troubles (1661).[16] Includes "On Rebellion" preached on 19 May 1644 in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, just before the siege of Oxford.[17]
  • A Survey of the World, in Verse (1661), in 1000 couplets.[18][19]
  • Decimus Junius Juvenalis, and Aulus Persius Flaccus Translated and Illustrated, as Well with Sculpture as Notes (1673). With a letter of 1618 from his friend Thomas Farnaby.[20] The Juvenal translation dates from 1616.[21]

Holyday also translated the Odes of Horace, and wrote sermons.[22] Of the poets Thomas May, George Sandys and Holyday as translators, Samuel Johnson wrote in The Idler that

[...] they confined themselves to the toil of rendering line for line, not indeed with equal felicity, for May and Sandys were poets, and Holiday only a scholar and a critic.[23]

When Holyday in 1616 wrote of his "moderate paraphrase" as translator, against pedantry, he presaged a later attitude of John Denham.[24]

Family

[edit]

Holyday married, firstly in 1628, Elizabeth Wickham; they had three sons and two daughters. After her death, he married secondly in 1649 the widow Margaret Sheppard, previously married to the Rev. Francis Dewey, a Christ Church graduate; they had a son and a daughter.[1][25]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Burns, F. D. A. "Holyday, Barten (1593–1661)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13625. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ↑ "Hieron-Horridge, British History Online". british-history.ac.uk. Retrieved 13 July 2022.
  3. ↑ Cavanaugh, Sister Mary Jean Carmel (1942). Technogamia by Barten Holyday: A Critical Edition. Catholic University of America Press. p. xv.
  4. ↑ "Holliday, Barton (1619–1641)". The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835. CCEd Person ID 13347.
  5. ↑ Shami, Jeanne (2003). John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit. DS Brewer. pp. 263–265. ISBN 978-0-85991-789-6.
  6. ↑ Kiessling, Nicolas K. (2010). The Life Of Anthony Wood In His Own Words. Bodleian Library. p. 90. ISBN 9781851243082.
  7. ↑ Clark, Andrew, ed. (1891). The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary of Oxford, 1632-1695, Described by Himself. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society. p. 416. Retrieved 9 January 2020.
  8. ↑ Adolphus William Ward, A History of English Drama to the Death of Queen Anne, London, Macmillan, 1899; Vol. 3, pp. 176–8.
  9. ↑ Donaldson, Ian (20 February 2012). Ben Jonson: A Life. OUP Oxford. p. 491. ISBN 978-0-19-163679-0.
  10. ↑ Milton, Anthony. "Heylyn, Peter (1599–1662)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13171. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  11. ↑ Nichols, John (1828). The progresses, processions, and magnificent festivities, of King James the First : his royal consort, family, and court ; collected from original manuscripts, scarce pamphlets, corporation records, parochial registers, &c., &c. Vol. IV. London : Printed by and for J.B. Nichols. p. 715 note 1.
  12. ↑ Donaldson, Ian (20 February 2012). Ben Jonson: A Life. OUP Oxford. pp. 739-740 note 20. ISBN 978-0-19-163679-0.
  13. ↑ Cavanaugh, Sister Mary Jean Carmel, ed. (1942). Technogamia by Barten Holyday: A Critical Edition. Catholic University of America Press.
  14. ↑ Holyday, Barten (1633). Philosophiae polito-barbarae specimen, in quo De anima & ejus habitibus intellectualibus quaestiones aliquot: libris duobus (in Latin). Excudebat Guilielmus Turner.
  15. ↑ Madan, Francis Falconer (1895). Oxford Books : a Bibliography of Printed Works Relating to the University and City of Oxford, Or Printed Or Published There: The early Oxford press, 1468-1640. Vol. I. Clarendon Press. p. 170.
  16. ↑ Holyday, Barten (1661). Against Disloyalty Fower Sermons Preach'd in the Times of the Late Troubles. Oxford.
  17. ↑ Elmer, Peter (14 January 2016). Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England. Oxford University Press. p. 9 note 71. ISBN 978-0-19-102752-9.
  18. ↑ Holyday, Barten (1661). A Survey of the World: In Ten Books by Barten Holyday D.D. and Archdeacon of Oxford. Will. Hall.
  19. ↑ Havely, N. R. (2014). Dante's British Public: Readers and Texts, from the Fourteenth Century to the Present. Oxford University Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-19-921244-6.
  20. ↑ Decimus Junius Juvenalis, and Aulus Persius Flaccus Translated and Illustrated, as Well with Sculpture as Notes. Translated by Holyday, Barten. Oxford: W. Downing. 1673.
  21. ↑ Notes and Queries. Oxford University Press. 1883. p. 76.
  22. ↑ Alexander Chalmers, ed., The General Biographical Dictionary, London, J. Nichols & Son, et al., 1814; Vol. 18, pp. 95–6.
  23. ↑ Johnson, Samuel (1873). Works. Vol. I. New York: Harper & Brothers. pp. 422–423.
  24. ↑ Venuti, Lawrence (25 June 2012). The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation. Routledge. p. 38. ISBN 978-1-136-61724-9.
  25. ↑ "Dabbe-Dirkin, Alumni Oxononienses, British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barten_Holyday&oldid=1372100040"