This volume offers the first annotated English translation of the first two books of On Celibacy (1473) by the eminent Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro (1454-93); Books 3 and 4 of On Celibacy are presented, along with Barbaro’s On the Duty of the Ambassador, in the companion piece to this first volume. Setting out the historical context that crucially conditions Barbaro’s advocacy of the celibate life in Books 1 and 2, the introduction examines how On Celibacy seeks to justify a contemplative existence that rejects the career path expected of a figure of Barbaro’s standing within the...

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...

Roger Ascham is often classified as ‘a great mid-Tudor humanist’ and he is perhaps best recognised for his role as tutor to Elizabeth I. His most famous works, The Scholemaster and Toxophilus, have been extensively excerpted in studies on prose style and English humanism. By contrast, his Latin works that centred on theology and key Reformation concerns have languished in the shadows of modern scholarship. Ascham’s Themata Theologica (Theological Propositions), composed in the late 1530s and early 1540s, is one of these. This little-known text of eleven ‘themes’ offers a rare...