In Memoriam: Ioannis Oastler Wardii

Abstract

In MemoriamIoannis Oastler Wardii John Pryor John Oastler Ward was born in Melbourne in 1940 and died in Canberra on 29 April 2023. Into the eighty-three years in between he packed an extraordinary, multifaceted life. As well as for his academic scholarship and teaching he was renowned for his civic commitment, his love of music, especially of opera, of the age of steam locomotives, and of books and photography. At his and Gail’s fiftieth wedding anniversary lunch his son proudly proclaimed that at the latest count John’s library ran to 2200 linear feet of books, probably close to thirty thousand volumes. What on earth his family will do with them defies belief. John gained First Class Honours at Melbourne University (1960), writing his thesis under the supervision of Marion (Molly) Gibbs, by whom he was much influenced and with whom he maintained a close relationship until her death in 1995. In 1963 he went to Canada to the newly established Centre for Medieval Studies, where he gained an MA in 1964 and then proceeded to a PhD under the guidance of fathers J. Reginald O’Donnell and Nicolaus Häring of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. He was awarded a Lectureship in Medieval History at the University of Sydney in 1967, where he remained as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer (from 1973) and eventually Reader (from 2000). Because the History Department already had another John Ward on its staff, John became known universally and affectionately as JOW. His monumental PhD thesis was not completed until 1972: ‘Artificiosa eloquentia in the Middle Ages: A Study of Cicero’s De inventione, the Ad Herennium and Quintilian’s De institutione oratoria from the Early Middle Ages to the Thirteenth Century, with Special Reference to the Schools of Northern France’.1 Much of the thesis consisted of extensive descriptions of texts in a very large number of manuscripts that John had tracked down in collections across Europe and the Americas. Until 1972 the University of Toronto had had no limits on the length of PhD theses, but JOW’s induced it to introduce one. The thesis was not published until 2019,2 but over the years JOW continued to work on it and update it and it became known widely and cited frequently. By the mid-90s JOW had published over ten important articles and papers on the medieval rhetorical tradition and was already a well-known and important scholar in the field.3 This was augmented by the nature of his participation in [End Page 1] conferences, workshops, and symposia. He was invariably among the most active of participants, with much to say about all and sundry, not infrequently with a degree of courteous mischief. The publication in 1995 of a major monograph, Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion and Commentary,4 which incorporated a good deal of material from the still-unpublished thesis, cemented this standing internationally. From then on he became a doyen of the international community of scholars. Even after his retirement he remained actively engaged in collaborative research,5 and was a regular participant in the activities of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre as well as continuing to participate in scholarly activities overseas. JOW had an extraordinary mind: wide-ranging, amazingly quick to master material, and intellectually voracious and omnivorous. On the one hand, perhaps a downside to this was that if he wrote about something he would want to include everything there was to say. That could lead to what some might consider to be a lack of discipline at times.6 But, on the other hand, it led to a teaching commitment that was quite exceptional. Courses which he taught either on his own or in collaboration with others included both generalized courses such as introductions to Medieval History, and more specialized courses. Some of these, such as those on witchcraft, heresy, and gender, reflected his engaged left-leaning politico-civic concerns. Teaching with JOW or participating with him in research seminars could be a daunting experience. He never had a malicious bone in his body, but his prodigious knowledge, rapid mastery of reading, and forthright engagement in dialogue could be interpreted as such...