Henry Aldrich (15 January 1648 – 14 December 1710) was an English theologian, philosopher, and composer.
Henry Aldrich (15 January 1648 – 14 December 1710) was an English theologian, philosopher, and composer.
Aldrich was educated at Westminster School under Dr Richard Busby. In 1662, he entered Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1689 was made Dean in succession to the Roman Catholic John Massey, who had fled to the Continent. [1] [2] In 1692, he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford until 1695. [3] In 1702, he was appointed Rector of Wem in Shropshire, but continued to reside at Oxford, where he died on 14 December 1710. [4] He was buried in Christ Church Cathedral without any memorial, at his own request.
Henry Aldrich was a man of unusually varied gifts. A classical scholar of fair merits, he is best known as the author of a little book on logic (Artis Logicæ Compendium [5] ). Although not innovative in the field of Logic itself (it closely follows Peter of Spain's Summulae Logicales), its insistent use by generations of Oxford students has shown it to be of great synthetic and didactic value: the Compendium continued to be read at Oxford (in Mansel's revised edition) till long past the middle of the 19th century.
Aldrich also composed a number of anthems and church services of high merit, and adapted much of the music of Palestrina and Carissimi to English words with great skill and judgment. To him we owe the well-known catch, "Hark, the bonny Christ Church bells."
Evidence of his skill as an architect may be seen in the church and campanile of All Saints Church, Oxford, and in three sides of the so-called Peckwater Quadrangle of Christ Church, which were erected after his designs. He bore a great reputation for conviviality', and wrote a humorous Latin version of the popular ballad A soldier and a sailor, A tinker and a tailor, etc.
Another specimen of his wit is furnished by the following epigram of the five reasons for drinking:
This epigram is a translation of the following Latin dictum attributed by the Menagiana to Jacques Sirmond:
Aldrich had a large personal library of ca. 3000 books, 8000 pieces of music, and 2000 engravings which he bequeathed to Christ Church upon his death. His engravings constitute one of the earliest surviving English collections in this field. [6]
Johann Heinrich Alsted, "the true parent of all the Encyclopædias", was a German-born Transylvanian Saxon Calvinist minister and academic, known for his varied interests: in Ramism and Lullism, pedagogy and encyclopedias, theology and millenarianism. His contemporaries noted that an anagram of Alstedius was sedulitas, meaning "hard work" in Latin.
William of Ockham, OFM was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and Catholic theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the 14th century. He is commonly known for Occam's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, and also produced significant works on logic, physics and theology. William is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 10 April.
Christ Church is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniquely a joint foundation of the university and the cathedral of the Oxford diocese, Christ Church Cathedral, which both serves as the college chapel and whose dean is ex officio the college head.
Henry Longueville Mansel was an English philosopher and ecclesiastic.
John Fell was an English churchman and influential academic. He served as Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and later concomitantly as Bishop of Oxford.
Francis Atterbury was an English man of letters, politician and bishop. A High Church Tory and Jacobite, he gained patronage under Queen Anne, but was mistrusted by the Hanoverian Whig ministries, and banished for communicating with the Old Pretender in the Atterbury Plot. He was a noted wit and a gifted preacher.
The Regius Professorships of Divinity are amongst the oldest professorships at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. A third chair existed for a period at Trinity College, Dublin.
Gilbert de la Porrée, also known as Gilbert of Poitiers, Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis, was a scholastic logician and theologian and Bishop of Poitiers.
Thomas Ford was an English composer, lutenist, viol player and poet.
Robert Sanderson was an English theologian and casuist.
Walter Burley was an English scholastic philosopher and logician with at least 50 works attributed to him. He studied under Thomas Wilton and received his Master of Arts degree in 1301, and was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford until about 1310. He then spent sixteen years in Paris, becoming a fellow of the Sorbonne by 1324, before spending 17 years as a clerical courtier in England and Avignon. Burley disagreed with William of Ockham on a number of points concerning logic and natural philosophy. He was known as the Doctor Planus and Perspicuus.
Nicolas d'Orbellis was a French Franciscan theologian and philosopher, of the Scotist school.
Paolo da Pergola was an Italian humanist philosopher, mathematician and Occamist logician. He was a pupil of Paul of Venice.
Joseph Trapp (1679–1747) was an English clergyman, academic, poet and pamphleteer. His production as a younger man of occasional verse and dramas led to his appointment as the first Oxford Professor of Poetry in 1708. Later his High Church opinions established him in preferment and position. As a poet, he was not well thought of by contemporaries, with Jonathan Swift refusing a dinner in an unavailing attempt to avoid revising one of Trapp’s poems, and Abel Evans making an epigram on his blank verse translation of the Aeneid with a reminder of the commandment against murder.
The Dow Partbooks are a collection of five partbooks compiled by Robert Dow in Oxford around 1581–88. The collection includes mostly choral but also some instrumental pieces. At the end is an instrumental La gamba and a canon, both a 3 and apparently copied from Vincenzo Ruffo's book printed in Milan in 1564.
George Jeffreys was an English composer during the period that saw the introduction of the Italian seconda pratica to northern Europe.
William Percy (1574–1648), English poet and playwright, was the third son of Henry Percy, 8th Earl of Northumberland (c.1532–1585), and his wife Katharine Neville (1545/6–1596). His elder brother Henry was a significant figure in English cultural and scientific circles in the late 16th - early 17th century.
Richard Murray (1725?–1799) was an Irish mathematician and academic, who spent his whole career Trinity College Dublin (TCD), serving both as Erasmus Smith's Professor of Mathematics (1764-1795) and Provost (1795-1799).
Žygimantas Liauksminas Latin: Sigismundus Lauxminus was a Lithuanian Jesuit theologian, philosopher, theorist of rhetoric and music, founder of Lithuanian musicology, one of the first Lithuanian professors and rectors of the University of Vilnius.
Richard Newton was an English educator and clergyman.
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