New project to uncover Scotland’s lost Latin past

Work has begun on new research that will shed light on a lost part of Scotland's cultural heritage. The 'Bridging the Continental Divide' project has been awarded over £400,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to translate parts of Scotland's only anthology of neo-Latin renaissance poetry. The study, led by historians and classicists at the University of Glasgow, will investigate exactly what role Latin played in the severe culture of Protestant moral and social discipline in Jacobean Scotland. Academics hope it will lead to new insights into Scottish culture and society in the early seventeenth century. The Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum is a compilation of religious, political and cultural texts from the Jacobean period, and is considered one of the most important Latin books Scotland has ever produced. Published in 1637 in Amsterdam, it represents the highpoint of Scottish neo-Latin renaissance culture and offers a unique view of Scottish politics, religion and society. Scotland was unusual among European nations for the extent to which it continued to use Latin in academic and 'elite' culture well into the eighteenth century.