Barbour, John — Azione Romana

BARBOUR, JOHN. - Scottish poet, archdeacon of Aberdeen, b. ca. 1316, d. 1395. He perhaps studied at Oxford and Paris.

In 1375 he wrote the patriotic poem The Brus, in complets, on the Scottish war of independence and the deeds of King Robert and Douglas.

Similarities of meter and style with The Brus, besides the inclusion of two Scottish saints, St. Machar and St. Ninian, seem to confirm the attribution to B. of the other poem The Legend of the Saints drawn from the "Legenda Aurea," which narrates the lives of 50 saints of the Western Church; and of a still unknown work that sets forth the events of the Gospel and the subsequent life of the Virgin Mary. Also controversial is his authorship of a book The Legend of Troy, of which two fragments remain, translated from the Historia Destructionis Troiae of Guido delle Colonne.

B. is a simple, natural writer, often minute, but animated by sincere religious feeling and a spirit of liberty. He has the merit of having fixed the dialect of Northern England.

BIBL.: sources

Works: The Brus, ed. by W. W. Skeat, 5 vols., Oxford 1870-89; C. Horstmann, Barbour... Legendenammlung nebst den Fragmenten seines Trajanerkrieges, Heilbronn 1881-82. Studies: J.T.T. Drown, The Wallace and The Bruce (reted), Bonn 1900; G. Neilson, J. B. Poet and Translator, Cambridge 1900. Francesco Mei

@incollection{ec2_barbour_john, author = {Mei, Francesco}, title = {Barbour, john}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {833--834}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/barbour-john} }

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