Henry Hart Milman

1791-1868. Anglican historian. Born in London, son of a noted physician, he was educated at Eton and Oxford and ordained priest in 1816, later becoming a canon of Westminster and dean of St. Paul's. At first he achieved acclaim as a poet and translator from the Sanskrit, and was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1821 to 1831, but his History of the Jews (1830) was hailed by liberal divines as a masterly application of German critical methods of OT study. Next he wrote the life of Gibbon,* whose Decline and Fall he had also edited. In 1855 appeared his History of Latin Christianity, which despite mistakes of fact is a work of immense erudition, candor, and balanced judgment. A member of the Broad Church school, Milman was never as extreme as Dean Stanley,* shunned public controversy, and deplored the writings of the more radical German critics, particularly Strauss.