Edmund Chilmead: Difference between revisions

 

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==Life==

==Life==

===Oxford career===

===Oxford career===

Chilmead was born in 1610 at [[Stow-on-the-Wold]], [[Gloucestershire]].<ref name=wood/>{{sfn|Gibson|1887}} He studied at [[Magdalen College, Oxford]], where he graduated B.A. in 1628-29 and M.A. in 1631. As one of the clerks he prepared music sheets, some of which have survived.{{sfn|Gibson|1887}} His expertise relating to ancient music is explored in a study of his unpublished treatise ”De Sonis”.<ref name=Feingold/> He became a chaplain (canon) of [[Christ Church College, Oxford]] in 1632. During the later 1630s he produced his catalogue of the [[Codex Baroccianus|Greek manuscripts]] of the [[Bodleian Library]], and his translations of [[Robert Hues|Hues]]’s ”Tractatus de Globis” (from Latin) and of [[Jacques Ferrand|Ferrand]]’s ”Erotomania” (from the French). At Christ Church he was closely contemporary with [[John Gregory (scholar)|John Gregory]], the orientalist, after whose death in March 1646/47 Chilmead came into possession of his translations from Greek into Latin of the ”De Gentibus Indiae, et Brachmanibus” of [[Palladius of Galatia]], the ”De Moribus Brachmanorum” mis-attributed to [[Ambrose|St Ambrosius]], and the anonymous ”De Brachmanibus”, which were eventually put forth by Sir [[Edward Bysshe]], [[Clarenceux]], under his own name in 1665.<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Gregory, John (1607-1646)}}</ref><ref>Edoardus Bissaeus, ”Palladius De Gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus, S. Ambrosius De Moribus Brachmanorum, Anonymus De Bragmanibus” (T. Roycroft, London 1665); Page views at [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_7LhqP9N8U1sC/page/n3/mode/2up Internet Archive].</ref>

Chilmead was born in 1610 at [[Stow-on-the-Wold]], [[Gloucestershire]].<ref name=wood/>{{sfn|Gibson|1887}} He studied at [[Magdalen College, Oxford]], where he graduated B.A. in 1628-29 and M.A. in 1631. As one of the clerks he prepared music sheets, some of which have survived.{{sfn|Gibson|1887}} His is explored in a study of his unpublished treatise ”De Sonis”.<ref name=Feingold/> He became a chaplain (canon) of [[Christ Church College, Oxford]] in 1632. During the later 1630s he produced his catalogue of the [[Codex Baroccianus|Greek manuscripts]] of the [[Bodleian Library]], and his translations of [[Robert Hues|Hues]]’s ”Tractatus de Globis” (from Latin) and of [[Jacques Ferrand|Ferrand]]’s ”Erotomania” (from the French). At Christ Church he was closely contemporary with [[John Gregory (scholar)|John Gregory]], the orientalist, after whose death in March 1646/47 Chilmead came into possession of his translations from Greek into Latin of the ”De Gentibus Indiae, et Brachmanibus” of [[Palladius of Galatia]], the ”De Moribus Brachmanorum” mis-attributed to [[Ambrose|St Ambrosius]], and the anonymous ”De Brachmanibus”, which were eventually put forth by Sir [[Edward Bysshe]], [[Clarenceux]], under his own name in 1665.<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Gregory, John (1607-1646)}}</ref><ref>Edoardus Bissaeus, ”Palladius De Gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus, S. Ambrosius De Moribus Brachmanorum, Anonymus De Bragmanibus” (T. Roycroft, London 1665); Page views at [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_7LhqP9N8U1sC/page/n3/mode/2up Internet Archive].</ref>

===Last years in London===

===Last years in London===

Edmund Chilmead (1610 – 19 February 1654) was an English writer and translator active during the Civil War and early Commonwealth periods. He is remembered mainly for his scholarly works,^[1] including those relating to Byzantine history and to music, and also as a practical musician, a few of his songs surviving in notation.^[3][4]

Chilmead was born in 1610 at Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire.^[5] He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1628-29 and M.A. in 1631. As one of the clerks he prepared music sheets, some of which have survived. His critical interest in the nature of sound is explored in a study of his unpublished treatise De Sonis.^[6] He became a chaplain (canon) of Christ Church College, Oxford in 1632. During the later 1630s he produced his catalogue of the Greek manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, and his translations of Hues‘s Tractatus de Globis (from Latin) and of Ferrand‘s Erotomania (from the French). At Christ Church he was closely contemporary with John Gregory, the orientalist, after whose death in March 1646/47 Chilmead came into possession of his translations from Greek into Latin of the De Gentibus Indiae, et Brachmanibus of Palladius of Galatia, the De Moribus Brachmanorum mis-attributed to St Ambrosius, and the anonymous De Brachmanibus, which were eventually put forth by Sir Edward Bysshe, Clarenceux, under his own name in 1665.^[7][8]

He was ejected in 1648 in the general expulsion of royalist sympathisers following the surrender of Oxford and the parliamentary visitation:^[9] Christ Church College had been the seat of royalist rule during the years preceding. Deprived of his living, Chilmead relocated to London, where he made an income by writing and publishing translations, and by the formation of a musical society which met at the Black Horse in Aldersgate Street, formerly the publishing-house of Thomas East (died 1609).^[5][10] His translations from Leon of Modena‘s work on Jewish customs (from Italian) and of Jacques Gaffarel‘s astrological work Curiositez (from French) were published in 1650. His final edits and corrections to the translation (from Greek) of Procopius‘s History of the Warres of the Emperour Justinian by Sir Henry Holcroft (who had died in 1650) were made before publication in 1653, as the preface to that work makes clear.^[11]

Anthony à Wood attributed the translation of Tommaso Campanella‘s Discourse on the Spanish Monarchy (from Latin), published 1654, to Chilmead. The original work proposed means towards world dominion under a Spanish Catholic imperium: the English translation, made with a view to expose that threatening ambition, was reportedly brought to publication after Chilmead’s death by William Prynne, a virulent Puritan.^[5] A recent study showed that Prynne made use of and distorted this text to foment anti-Catholic feeling,^[12] thereby casting a question over Chilmead’s involvement with it.

Chilmead died on 19 February 1653/54 in London, and was buried in the churchyard of St Botolph’s Aldersgate.

The treatise De Sonis, mentioned by Wood, was written in Oxford days and remained in MS.^[6] Two short original works by Chilmead relating to Greek music and prosody were later discovered by Dr Edward Bernard^[5] (who made an abstract of Chilmead’s catalogue of the Barocci manuscripts at the Bodleian),^[13] or by Henry Dodwell,^[14] among the papers of Archbishop Ussher in Ireland, and were published at Oxford in 1672.^[15][5] These included Chilmead’s annotations to the Odes of Dionysius^[16] supplementary to the καταστερισμος (katasterismoi) of Eratosthenes: his Latin translations from the odes were omitted from the edition. His Treatise, which “contains a designation of the ancient genera agreeable to the sentiments of Boetius, with a general enumeration of the modes; …follow[s] the odes, with the Greek musical characters, which Chilmead has rendered in the notes of Guido’s scale…”^[10]

Chilmead’s most important labour, however, was the preparation of the editio princeps of the Byzantine Greek text, with parallel Latin translation, of the Chronological History of John Malala (from the unique codex in the Bodleian Library), which had to wait until 1691 for its publication.^[17] Chilmead’s translation was in the possession of Edward Bysshe in 1654: Bysshe remarked, “that very learned man Edmund Chilmead translated it, whose early death is the more to be lamented, in that it will deprive us of the works so keenly looked for from such a mind”.^[18]

According to Humphrey Hody and Anthony à Wood, Chilmead intended to preface his Malala with a treatise by John Gregory, “Observationes in Loca quaedam excerpta ex Ioh. Malalae Chronographia” (which survived in manuscript in the Oxford Public Library).^[19] However, in the publication of 1691, that was set aside, and Chilmead’s texts appeared with his own annotations, with lengthy prolegomena by Humphrey Hody, and with a celebrated essay by Richard Bentley (in the form of a Letter to John Mill) explaining his own contributions and emendations to the text. All of this apparatus, including Chilmead’s annotations, was included both in Ludwig Dindorf‘s introduction and edition of the text for Niebuhr‘s 1831 Corpus of Authors of Byzantine History,^[20] and together with Dindorf’s introduction and text in Migne‘s Patrologia Graeca (Vol. 97) published in 1863.^[21][14]

• He produced a catalogue of the Greek manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Catalogus Manuscriptorum Graecorum in Bib. Bod. pro Ratione Auctorum Alphabeticus, MS anno 1636.^[5]
• De Musica antiqua Graeca and Annotationes in Odas Dionysii, two short works by Chilmead, were first published at the end of the Oxford 1672 edition of Aratus of Soli^[15]
• De Sonis,^[5] also referred to as An Examination… of the Naturall History, a manuscript treatise comprising twenty inquiries relating to the nature of sound, pertaining to the second and third centuries of experiments in Francis Bacon‘s Sylva Sylvarum of 1626.^[6]

He translated:

• Robert Hues‘s Tractatus de Globis Coelesti et Terrestri et eorum Usu of 1592/94, with the annotations of Pontanus, as A Learned Treatise of Globes, 1639^[23]
• Jacques Ferrand‘s Traité de l’Essence et Guérison de l’Amour ou de la Mélancholie Erotique (of 1610, banned, re-published 1623),^[24] as Erotomania, or A Treatise Discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptomes, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love or Erotique Melancholy, 1640^[25]
• the Historia de’ Riti Hebraici of Leon of Modena of 1637,^[26] as The History of the Rites, Customes, and Manner of Life, of the present Jews, throughout the World, 1650^[27]
• the Curiositez Inouyes of Jacques Gaffarel,^[28][29] as Unheard-of Curiosities Concerning the Talismanical Sculpture of the Persians, 1650^[30] This work shows him as a clerical defender of astrology.^[31]
• the De Monarchia Hispanica, Discursus^[32] of Tommaso Campanella^[33] as A Discourse Touching the Spanish Monarchy, 1654^[34] (attributed by Wood)^[5]

and other works.

In addition,

• He made the final edits and corrections to Sir Henry Holcroft‘s translation of the History of the Wars of Justinian by Procopius, printed 1653.^[11]

Anthony Wood described him as “a choice mathematician, a noted critic, and one that understood several tongues, especially the Greek, very well.”^[5]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gibson, John Westby (1887). “Chilmead, Edmund“. In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 10. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Concise Dictionary of National Biography
• Mordechai Feingold and Penelope M. Gouk, ‘An early critique of Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum: Edmund Chilmead’s treatise on sound’, Annals of Science, 40, Issue 2 (March 1983), pp. 139–157 (Taylor & Francis Online)