‘THE COMPLAYNT OFF SANCT CIPRIANE, THE GRETT NIGROMANCER’ A POEM BY ANTHONY ASCHAM

Abstract

ANTHONY ASCHAM, brother of Roger Ascham,I is known to students of the Renaissance as a physician, astrologer, clergyman, and author. Among his writings are Anthonie Ascham His Treatise of Astronomie (I550), A Lytel Herball (I550), A Treatyse of Astronomy Declaring the Leap Year and What Is the Cause Thereof (I552), Treatise Made I547 of the State and Disposition of the Worlde (I558), and various prognostications and almanacs. Only a few facts have been established about his personal life.2 He attended Cambridge University, where he called at least once on his brother Roger for assistance, and received an M.B. degree there in i540. He appears to have married, for there is record of his having a daughter. Edward VI appointed him vicar of St. Lambert's Church in Burneston (Yorkshire) in I552, and later in the year he received a second benefice, the rectorship of Methley, near Leeds. He died in I559. Our knowledge of Anthony Ascham and of his writings is extended in time and increased in substance by a manuscript now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. Beinecke Codex no. 337 contains three separate works, and each is claimed by Anthony Ascham in the manuscript.3 The first and most extensive is 'a boke off astronomy callyd the spere' (ff. Ir-79r), which Ascham says (ff. Ir and 82r) he translated from Latin into English4 in the years