Tuesday, October 27, 2026

It is the 27th of October 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Today we head back in time to Elizabethan England… which we could also call “Shakespeare’s England”- it’s the same time period- think late 1500s into the early 1600s. You’d either reference Elizabeth or Shakespeare depending on what aspect of the nation you were highlighting… but to speak of Mary Sidney Herbert is to do both- she was a woman in the court of Elizabeth- Shakespeare’s first printed collection of plays was dedicated to her sons. She was the most significant literary figure of her age- and still, perhaps, is best known as the “sister of Sir Phillip Sidney”.

 

Mary Sidney Herbert was born on this, the 27th of October in 1561. Her father and mother both came from prominent families in Tudor England under Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth. Her uncle, Robert Dudley, was famously a favorite of Queen Elizabeth.

 

Her mother, also Mary, was a nursemaid to the queen when the queen was an infant and contracted smallpox. Mary herself contracted the disease and was left disfigured and spent the rest of her life out of the public eye.

 

Mary was one of seven children; her older brother was Sir Phillip Sidney- the renowned poet and soldier- his “Arcadia” and “Defense of Poesy” being staples of English literature. Mary had a sister, Ambrosia, whose early death occasioned the queen herself inviting Mary to live at the court.

 

She married Henry Herbert- a man decades older and married twice but without any children. Mary and Henry reportedly had a happy marriage that produced 4 children. Henry was also the Count of Pembroke and a wealthy landowner. He permitted Mary to use their properties for salons- literary gatherings and a place to exchange manuscripts. Edmund Spenser (of Fairie Queen fame) would dedicate a work to her, as would Samuel Daniel, who called her “the happy and judicial patroness of the muses”.

 

But everything would change in 1586. Not only had she been formed by the death of her sister and of her own daughter, this year saw the death of both of her parents and, most shockingly, her brother, the soldier-poet Philip.

 

She would respond to his death in particular by dedicating her life to promoting his works. It also affected her own work- she would translate “A Discourse of Life and Death” by the French Protestant Phillipe de Mornay. She coupled that with a translation of Petrarch’s “The Triumph of Death”. She also translated a French play on the life of Marc Antony, which seems to have influenced Shakespeare’s own Antony and Cleopatra.

 

But the promotion and completion of her brother's works is likely for which she is best remembered. She not only promoted his works but published works dedicated to him, a poem, “To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney,” and most importantly completed his magnum opus, a translation of the Psalms.

 

Sir Philip had only made his way through number 43, leaving 107 unfinished. It has been suggested that the two began the project together, but it was going to be published under his name. When he died early, she dedicated over a decade to finish his work. In the preface to them, she compares him to a weaver who sets the warp while she did the weaving. She wasn’t translating from the Hebrew- she was well learned in other languages, but not that one. Instead she used the Geneva Bible, Coverdale’s translation of the Psalms, John Calvin’s commentaries, as well as the popular “metrical psalms” in French by the poet Clement Marot. Her work would help set the tradition of using the Psalms in modern translation and idiom, using the popular meters of secular poetry for religious subjects.

 

Her husband and another daughter died in the early 1600s, and there was a controversy when her son impregnated one of Elizabeth’s Maids of Honor and refused to marry her. This seems to have led her to take a less visible role, though she continued to be a patroness of the arts; the records and her correspondence would all be destroyed by a fire at her estate after her death. Ironically known as “Phillip’s sister,” it was Mary who helped eulogize and popularize her brother. You might read she “completed” his translation of the Psalms- even though she would translate the lion's share.

 

Mary Sidney Herbert- countess and patroness of the arts, one of the first published women in the English language and force behind a literary translation of the Psalms died in 1621. Born on this, the 27th of October in 1561, she was 59 years old.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary, and we have a few stanzas from Psalm 119 (the long acrostic), and I have it here in Mary’s translation:

Frankly, pour, o Lord on me

Saving Grace to set me free

That supported I may see

Promise truly kept by thee

That to them who me defame

Roundly I may answer frame

Who because thy word and name

Are my trust, thus seek my shame

Then will I with either hand,

Clasp the rules of thy command

There my study still shall stand

Striving them to understand

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 27th of October 2026 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who isn’t a fan of Marc Antony in general, but does remember when he was married to JLo… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man with thoughts about Shakespeare which I keep to myself… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.