God’s ‘Scholer’: The Countess of Pembroke’s Psalmes and Beza’s Psalmorum Davidis … Libri Quinque

WILLIAM RINGLER noted in his commentary on Sir Philip Sidney’s metrical psalms that one of the poet’s sources was Theodore Beza’s Psalmorum Davidis et Aliorum Prophetarum, Libri Quinque. Argumentis et Latina Paraphrasi illustrati, ac etiam vario carminum genere latine expressi, which was published in both the Latin version and an English translation by Anthony Gilbie in London in 1580. ¹ John Rathmell showed that Sidney’s sister, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, used Gilbie’s translation in composing her part of the metrical psalter, Psalms 44–150. ² But there is evidence that she also used the Latin version, as a comparison of the two versions with the texts of her Psalms will prove. ³