Robert Holmes (priest)
Robert Holmes (November 1748 London, England โ 12 November 1805 Oxford, England) was an English churchman and academic, Dean of Winchester and a biblical scholar known for textual studies of the Septuagint.
Life
He was baptised at
He was presented to the college rectory of
In 1788 Holmes commenced his collation of the manuscripts of the Septuagint, and published in Latin an account of the method which he thought should be followed. The task, on which he gave annual bulletins, was not finished by the time of his death, but an edition was finally published in five volumes to 1827 by his collaborator James Parsons.[1]
Nor was Holmes a physically indolent man.[2] He was a keen sportsman who, according to Jan Morris, "walking out from college in full canonicals, used to be met by a servant with a hat, a gun and a dog - and throwing off his cassock and surplice, to reveal shooting clothes below, off he would stride to Stanton Woods for an afternoon's sport."[3] When his old New College friend James Woodforde visited him on 18 October 1793 he discovered that "He had gone out a shooting & did not return till five in the Afternoon".[4] Woodforde had found Dr Holmes's wife to be "a very agreeable Woman, and his Sister is very pleasant, exactly like him."[5]
He became prebendary of Lyme and Halstock in Salisbury Cathedral on 23 May 1790, prebendary of Moreton-with-Whaddon in Hereford Cathedral on 12 August 1791, prebendary of the seventh stall in Christ Church, Oxford, on 28 April 1795, and dean of Winchester on 20 February 1804. On 14 December 1797 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. He died at his house in St. Giles, Oxford, on 12 November 1805. Most of his treatises and discourses were republished with others in 1806.
References
- ^ "Holmes Manuscripts". bodley.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
- ^ Martin Brayne, Two Lives of Robert Holmes, Parson Woodforde Society Quarterly Journal, Vol. XXXI, 3
- ^ J. Morris, Oxford, 1978
- ^ P. Jameson [ed.], The Diary of James Woodforde, Vol. 13, 1791โ1793, Parson Woodforde Society, 2003
- ^ P. Jameson [ed.], op.cit.
- Attribution
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Holmes, Robert (1748-1805)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885โ1900.