Ñàéò ïîå糿, â³ðø³, ïîçäîðîâëåííÿ ó â³ðøàõ :: Gavin Douglas :: Á³îãðàô³ÿ

Gavin Douglas :: Á³îãðàô³ÿ

Gavin Douglas (c. 1474 – September, 1522) was a Scottish bishop, makar and translator. Gavin (Gawin or Gawane) Douglas was born c. 1474, at Tantallon Castle, East Lothian, the third son of Archibald, 5th Earl of Angus. He was a student at St Andrews, 1489–1494, and thereafter, it is supposed, at Paris. In 1496 he obtained the living of Monymusk, Aberdeenshire, and later he became parson of Lynton (mod. East Linton) and rector of Hauch (mod. Prestonkirk), in East Lothian; and about 1501 was preferred to the deanery or provostship of the collegiate church of St Giles, Edinburgh, which he held with his parochial charges. From this date until the Battle of Flodden, in September 1513, he appears to have been occupied with his ecclesiastical duties and literary work. Indeed all the extant writings by which he has earned his place as a poet and translator belong to this period. After the disaster at Flodden he was completely absorbed in public business. Three weeks after the Battle of Flodden he, still Provost of St Giles, was admitted a burgess of Edinburgh. His father, the "Great Earl," was then the civil provost of the capital. The latter dying soon afterwards (January 1514) in Wigtownshire, where he had gone as justiciar, and his son having been killed at Flodden, the succession fell to Gavin's nephew Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus. His wife, the widowed Queen Margaret, assisted Douglas considerably. He was made bishop of Dunkled but was imprisoned for a time in 1515-1516 and could occupy his see only by making a show of force to dislodge another contender for the office. In 1522 Douglas was stricken by the plague which raged in London, and died at the house of his friend Lord Dacre. Douglas was buried in the church of the Savoy, where a monumental brass (removed from its proper site after the fire in 1864) still records his death and interment. He composed the poetry for which he is now remembered in his earlier years while provost of St Giles in Edinburgh. His principal pioneering achievement was the Eneados, completed in 1513, a full and faithful vernacular translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first successful example of its kind in the British Isles. Other extant poetry includes his King Hart and the Palice of Honour. Douglas is not known to have produced further literary work after the Eneados, even though he was at the height of his artistic powers. He became instead increasingly involved in affairs of state as he sought advantage in the sudden situation of radical political realignment made necessary in Scotland after the Battle of Flodden. Always ambitious for advancement, his ultimate goal was to attain the archbishopric of St Andrews, one of the many sees left vacant in the destructive aftermath of the battle. His involvement in the politics of the moment was deepened when Margaret, the newly widowed Queen, married his nephew less than a year after her bereavement. She strongly petitioned on Douglas's behalf, but he was unsuccessful in his bid for the archbishopric, losing out to Andrew Forman. He did finally attain to the bishopric of Dunkeld in 1516, although only after further struggles with Forman and others. In 1517 Douglas was one of the leading members of the embassy to Francis I which negotiated the Treaty of Rouen, and he may have played a conciliatory role in the infamous Cleanse the Causey episode of April 1520, but his role in the volatile politics of the period, mainly centring around control over the minority of James V, was deeply contentious. By mid-1517 he had managed to earn the enduring hostility of the Queen Mother, and in subsequent years became increasingly involved in manifest political manoeuvring against the Regent Albany. At the same time he remained ambitious for the St Andrews archbishopric, which once again fell vacant in 1521, but his career was cut short when he died suddenly in London, probably of plague, the following Autumn. Because of his powerful family connections and highly visible role in public life, Gavin Douglas is the best-documented of the early Scottish makars. He was educated at St Salvator's College, St Andrews and was a friend and correspondent of many of the internationally renowned men of his age, including Polydore Vergil, John Major, Cardinal Wolsey and Henry, 3rd Lord Sinclair. Of poets in the British Isles before him, only the life of Chaucer is as well documented or understood. His surviving poetry is vernacular work, often aureate in style, composed in Middle Scots.