Neo-Latin Epigrams on Milton by Peder Winstrup, Bishop of Lund, and the Rothenburg Jurist Georg Christoph Walther

Abstract

This article brings attention to some previously unknown Neo-Latin epigrams on John Milton from the 1650s by Peder Winstrup, the Lutheran bishop of Lund, and the Rothenburg jurist Georg Christoph Walther. Translations of the epigrams and brief commentaries are supplied. Responding principally to Milton’s Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1651), which won its author fame throughout Europe, these epigrams offer new evidence for the early reception of Milton’s Latin prose and further testimony to the impact of the Defensio on the Latin culture of mid-seventeenth-century Europe.