An Outsider’s Voice? Dedications and Prefaces to Translations of Niels Hemmingsen in Elizabethan England

Abstract

“Touching the Author himselfe, it is sufficiently knowne amongst the learned, what hee is: as beeinge such a one, which hath not the lowest roome, amongst the best, and moste approoued Christian writers of this our age: brought up from his infancy, in the studies, and exercises of learning, and godlynesse, notably qualified, and furnished aswell with liberall artes, and languages: as principally in the study, & profession of Diuinitie: which profession hée hath woorthely and diligently executed (as by his owne testimony set downe in his Epistle before this booke, is to bée séene) by the space, and continuance of thyrtie years: béeinge therunto called, by the Kinge of Denmarcke, to supply the place of his publique reader, and professour of Diuinitie, in his vniuersitie of Hafnia, where with great fame (as I heare) hee at this day continueth.” This is how Nicolas Denham, a sixteenth-century English translator of Niels Hemmingsen (1513–1600), described the Danish Lutheran theologian, reformer, and university professor, whose career spanned from the early 1540s to his suspension in 1579. Other early modern Englishmen shared his view.