Herbert

The Pembroke Hours (Book of Hours for Sarum Use and Gallican Psalter)

Horae Pembrochianae / Book of Hours for Sarum Use and Gallican Psalter with Canticles

One of the largest and most elaborately illuminated Flemish devotional manuscripts made for export to England, created in Bruges c. 1465–1470 by at least six illuminators working in the style of Willem Vrelant. In the mid-sixteenth century it belonged to Sir William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke (the founding earl of the Tudor Pembroke line), who added thirty-six folios of personal prayers to the manuscript and had himself depicted in a large miniature at prayer with his coat of arms—confirming its active use as a private devotional object. The manuscript combines Sarum Use hours with a complete Gallican Psalter and a unique metrical Latin calendar of 365 verses. It is now held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (accession 1945-65-2) and represents the earliest documented devotional manuscript of the Herbert/Pembroke house.

A Discourse of Life and Death

Excellent discours de la vie et de la mort (translated by Mary Sidney Herbert)

Mary Sidney Herbert's English translation of Huguenot theologian Philippe de Mornay's prose meditation on the vanity of earthly life and the blessedness of a Christian death. She signed the translation 'The 13 of May 1590. At Wilton,' making the Pembroke seat the explicit locus of its composition, and published it together with her translation of Garnier's Antonius in 1592. The work reflects the Sidney circle's militant Protestant Calvinism: Mornay argues that 'we find greater civil war within ourselves' and that only trust in Providence reconciles the soul to mortality. Mary used the translation both as personal grief-work after Philip Sidney's death and as a public statement of Protestant literary patronage, establishing herself as heir to her brother's theological and literary politics.

The Sidney Psalter (Psalms of Sir Philip and Mary Sidney)

The Psalmes of David Translated into Divers and Sundry Kindes of Verse

A complete metrical paraphrase of all 150 Psalms in sophisticated English verse, begun by Sir Philip Sidney (Psalms 1–43, completed before his death at Zutphen in 1586) and finished by his sister Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (Psalms 44–150, completed by 1599). Mary employed 128 different verse forms, drawing on the Geneva Bible and commentaries by Calvin and Theodore de Bèze. A presentation copy was prepared for Queen Elizabeth I in 1599 and at least 17 manuscripts survive, one supervised at Penshurst by Mary herself and copied by the poet John Davies of Hereford. John Donne praised it as 'the highest matter in the noblest form' and wrote a dedicatory poem celebrating the siblings as divine instruments; George Herbert's own devotional style shows its direct influence. The psalter was designed for private devotional reading, not congregational singing, and circulated throughout the Sidney–Pembroke court circle at Wilton House.

The Triumph of Death (Trionfo della Morte, translated by Mary Sidney Herbert)

Trionfi: Trionfo della Morte (translated by Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke)

Mary Sidney Herbert's English translation of Petrarch's Trionfo della Morte, the third of the Triumphs, circulated in manuscript at Wilton and among the Sidney–Herbert literary circle. The poem dramatizes the death of Laura and her soul's ascent, functioning as a Christian meditation on mortality, the love of God surpassing earthly love, and preparation for a holy death. Mary's version was never printed in her lifetime but is preserved in several manuscripts, and modern scholars regard it as one of her most accomplished translations. Within the Wilton House devotional culture of the 1590s it served, alongside the Discourse of Life and Death, as a literary vehicle for Christian Stoic reflection on death—especially resonant after Philip Sidney's own death in 1586.

Memoriae Matris Sacrum (To the Memory of My Mother)

Memoriae Matris Sacrum

Nineteen Latin and Greek memorial poems composed by George Herbert immediately after the death of his mother Magdalen Herbert in June 1627, published the following month alongside John Donne's funeral sermon for Magdalen. This is the only work Herbert published during his own lifetime and it demonstrates the Herbert family's integration of classical learning, Anglican piety, and personal devotion. The poems celebrate Magdalen Herbert's prudence, charity, and spiritual formation of her ten children as loyal Anglicans; Herbert credits her directly for the devotional sensibility that would later flower in The Temple. The dual publication with Donne's sermon reflects the close devotional and literary bond between the two families.

John Donne's Sermon on Magdalen Herbert (with George Herbert's Memoriae Matris Sacrum)

A Sermon of Commemoration of the Lady Danvers

John Donne's funeral sermon for Magdalen Herbert (Lady Danvers), mother of George Herbert, published in 1627 with George Herbert's nineteen Latin and Greek memorial poems appended. Donne had been Magdalen's friend and protégé for twenty years, and the sermon describes her household prayer practice and her formation of her ten children in Anglican piety—including the young George—as a model of Protestant domesticity. George Herbert's decision to publish his memorial verse attached to Donne's sermon (his only act of publication in his lifetime) demonstrates how the Herbert family's devotional life was inseparable from its literary identity. The combined volume is a document of the devotional culture at the intersection of the Pembroke and Herbert–Newport family circles.

The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations

George Herbert's complete collection of English devotional poems, entrusted on his deathbed to Nicholas Ferrar with instructions to publish if they might help 'any dejected poor soul.' Herbert was a kinsman of the 3rd Earl of Pembroke (William Herbert), whose patronage secured him the rectory at Bemerton near Wilton House; he also answered Philip Sidney's secular sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella with early sonnets dedicated entirely to God. The Temple went through at least eleven editions by 1695 and immediately became the central text of English Protestant devotional lyricism. Its structure mirrors the Anglican liturgical year, and individual poems such as 'Love (III),' 'Easter Wings,' and 'The Altar' function as meditations on grace, humility, and the soul's encounter with Christ. Richard Baxter wrote that Herbert 'speaks to God like one that really believeth in God.'

The Hundred and Ten Considerations of Signior John Valdesso (with notes by George Herbert)

Las ciento y diez consideraciones (Spanish); Cento e diece divine considerationi (Italian); English trans. by Nicholas Ferrar with notes by George Herbert

Juan de Valdés's spiritual treatise on the interior life, translated into English by Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding and prefaced with a letter from George Herbert—Herbert's 'Briefe Notes on Valdesso's Considerations'—published posthumously in 1638. Herbert reviewed Ferrar's manuscript during his Bemerton years (c. 1632–33) and returned it with detailed theological annotations and the commendatory letter; his endorsement carried the authority of the Pembroke connection. The work reflects the shared devotional culture of the Ferrar–Herbert circle and demonstrates George Herbert's role as a critical reader and devotional guide beyond The Temple. Valdés's Erasmian spirituality of inward transformation rather than external ceremony resonated deeply with Herbert's own poetics of the soul.

A Priest to the Temple, or, The Country Parson

A Priest to the Temple: Or, The Country Parson, His Character, and Rule of Holy Life

Herbert's only prose work, written c. 1632 during his three years as rector of Bemerton near Wilton House, the Pembroke seat, and published posthumously in 1652 edited by Barnabas Oley. It lays out the spiritual formation and daily practice of an ideal Anglican country priest, covering prayer, preaching, catechesis, the administration of sacraments, and pastoral visitation. Herbert insists the parson must pray twice daily with his household and make 'things of ordinary use—ploughs, leaven, dances—serve for lights of heavenly truths,' reflecting the devotional aesthetic also found in The Temple. The text was composed at Bemerton under the patronage of the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, who secured Herbert the living there, and bears the imprint of the Sidney–Herbert tradition of piety expressed through literary excellence.

Musae Responsoriae (Epigrams in Defence of the Discipline of the Church of England)

Musae Responsoriae ad Andreae Melvini Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoriam

A sequence of forty Latin epigrams composed by George Herbert as Public Orator of Cambridge (c. 1620) to rebut Scottish Presbyterian Andrew Melville's attack on the Church of England's liturgy and ceremonies. The poems praise King James I, Prince Charles, and Bishop Lancelot Andrewes as guardians of ordered Anglican worship and argue that the liturgical beauty of the English Church—music, vestments, set prayer—serves genuine devotion rather than idolatry. Published posthumously in 1662, the work reveals the theological convictions that underlie The Temple: Herbert's defence of sacramental, ceremonial religion against both Roman excess and Puritan minimalism. The 3rd Earl of Pembroke, Herbert's kinsman and patron, was himself invested in the Jacobean court culture the poems defend.