Towards a Critical Edition and Modern Translation of Robert Persons' De persecutione Anglicana
Date
2018
Authors
Dircksen, Marianne
De Gianna, Donato
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Abstract
This article introduces a project that aims at providing new authoritative English versions of important (but neglected) documents originating from the Reformation. The translating and editing team consists of both classicists and church historians. The initial text is Robert Persons’ De persecutione Anglicana epistola (1581/2), described by Thomas S. Freeman as the most famous martyrological work produced by an Elizabethan Catholic exemplifying the pseudo-martyr debate of the sixteenth century. De persecutione Anglicana is an original document which gives a first-hand account of the sufferings of Catholics in England under the rule of Elizabeth I; the translation project will make this valuable source accessible to scholars from various disciplines. The specific aim of the article is to illustrate the inadequacy of the existing translation of De persecutione Anglicana. Two selected passages from the Latin text are juxtaposed with the only existing English translation as well as our proposed new translation.
Description
Keywords
Robert Persons , translation , persecution , recusancy
Citation
Marianne Dircksen and Donato De Gianna, 'Towards a Critical Edition and Modern Translation of Robert Persons' De persecutione Anglicana', Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 28 (2018): 25-50