James Leeke, George Herbert, and the Neo-Latin Contexts of The Church Militant

Abstract

This article situates George Herbert’s poem The Church Militant in new Neo‑Latin contexts. Rather than reading the poem in relation to Herbert’s English poetry, as has often been done before, it argues that it has close generic ties to Anglo‑Latin miniature epics on the Gunpowder Plot. This article first shows how Herbert’s English poem draws on and revises elements of this tradition; it then turns to a little‑known manuscript translation of The Church Militant prepared immediately after its publication. The translation – which significantly revises Herbert’s original text – attempts to pull Herbert’s poem closer to the miniature epic tradition from which it had broken. Taken together, these contexts demonstrate the surprising proximity of this English poem to a Neo‑Latin poetic genre and shed new light on Herbert’s choice of the vernacular as a departure from the politics of the miniature epic tradition