Musae Responsoriae (Epigrams in Defence of the Discipline of the Church of England)
Musae Responsoriae ad Andreae Melvini Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoriam
A verified public-domain excerpt for this text is still being set. The folio is catalogued and linked below; an original Sub Rosa rendering will follow.
What it is
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.
Why it still matters
Musae Responsoriae articulates a classical Anglican via media between bare Puritan worship and high ceremonialism; readers interested in the theology of liturgy and worship aesthetics will find it a compact and witty apologia for ordered prayer and beauty in worship.
Kept alongside
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.
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.
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.