MILMAN, HENRY HART:
Historian; born in London Feb. 10, 1791; died there Sept. 24, 1868. His career at Oxford was a brilliant one. He first became known through his dramatic poems "Fazio" (1815), "Fall of Jerusalem," "Martyr of Antioch," and others. In 1830 he published his "History of the Jews," a work which brought down on him the censure of the Church. This history is aggressively rationalistic; it treats the Jews as an Oriental tribe, and all miracles are either eliminated or evaded. He was nevertheless presented with a piece of plate by some representative Jews in recognition of his sympathetic attitude. His history was republished in 1863 and 1867.
Dean Milman was appointed Dean of St. Paul's in 1849. He was the first to translate Sanskrit epics into English. He edited Gibbon in 1838, and Horace in 1849. His ecclesiastical and theological sympathies were very liberal, as is shown by his "History of Latin Christianity" (1855), in which also occur several sympathetic references to the Jews.
- Dictionary of National Biog.