Translation of Katherine Parr's Prayers and Meditations from English into French, Italian and Latin : Translation; Religious writing 30 December 1545.

Format:

Other

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prayer.

Religious literature--Authorship.

Religious literature.

Title pages.

Hertford (England).

Spain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

1545

Notes:

AMDigital Reference:MS Royal 7 D. X

This manuscript, Elizabeth I's translation of her stepmother Katherine Parr's Prayers and Meditations into French, Italian and Latin, is uniform with National Archives of Scotland MS NAS RH 13/78, Elizabeth's contemporaneous English translation of the first chapter of Calvin's Institution de la vie chrestienne. The two manuscripts, which have very similar bindings, were presented to Elizabeth's father and stepmother as New Year's gifts for 1545/6, the Parr translation being given to Henry, the Calvin translation to Katherine. William Grindal had recently become Elizabeth'stutor, and probably collaborated with her on the composition of the Latin dedication to Henry in this manuscript(Perry 1990, 19). Katherine Parr's Prayers or Meditations, an adaptation of Book Threeof Richard Whytford's translation of Thomas a Kempis's Imitatio Christi (C. 1772; G.A. 1790; Hoffman 1959-60), was first published in 1545. (A facsimile is printed in Parr 1996.) A manuscript text of the Prayers or Meditations is in Kendal Town Hall (no reference number). Commentary on this translation has generally praised Elizabeth's choiceof text, assuming that Henry would have been pleased to have seen his daughter pay tribute to his wife's book. Recently, however,David Starkey has taken a radically different view, raising the possibility that the presentation of this manuscript to Henry contributed towards the King's hostility towards the evangelicals in 1546. Henry, Starkey thinks, would not have bothered to read Katherine's English book. Looking through Elizabeth's foreign-language translations, he would not have been pleased with the evangelicalism of the text (Starkey 2003, 256-8). Frances Teague has sketched out another possible context for the manuscript, suggesting that it was designed to show off Elizabeth's suitability as a bride and that it was linked with the proposal, made in Autumn 1546, that Elizabeth should marry the future Philip II of Spain (Teague 2000). A second manuscript translation of Parr's text, into Latin only, was made some time after 1548 by John Radcliffe (afterwards Sir John), son of Robert Radcliffe, 1st Earl of Sussex, and dedicated as a New Year's gift to Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, who had married (in 1545) the writer's step-mother (British Library MS Royal 7 D.ix).