Henry Savile (Bible translator)

Sir Henry Savile (30 November 1549 – 19 February 1622)[1] was an English scholar and mathematician, Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and Provost of Eton.

[2] He endowed the Savilian chairs of Astronomy and of Geometry at Oxford University, and was one of the scholars who translated the New Testament from Greek into English.

[4] He established a reputation as a Greek scholar and mathematician by voluntary lectures on Ptolemy's Almagest, and in 1575 became Junior Proctor of the university.

It may have been to his advantage that his elder brother, Sir John Savile (1545–1607), was a high prerogative lawyer and one of the barons of the exchequer, who in 1606 affirmed the right of the King to impose import and export duties on his own authority.

[5] On 30 September 1604 Savile was knighted, and in that year he was named one of the body of scholars appointed to prepare the Authorised Version of the Bible.

[5] In 1596 Savile produced the first printed edition of the first four books of the Gesta Pontificum Anglorum – an ecclesiastical history of England written by William of Malmesbury in the early 12th century.

However, it was the most considerable work of pure learning undertaken in England in his time,[5] as it involved consulting French Chrysostomians and the despatching of young researchers to the Imperial Library in Vienna and the Patriarchal Library at Heybeliada or Halki, (then under the Ottoman Empire) and other leading monasteries and/or collections in his time.

[1][9] Savile was keen to impart his understanding of mathematics to his students at Oxford, and in founding the Geometry chair he gave thirteen preparatory lectures on the original books of Euclid's Elements in 1620.

[15] It was a collection of mathematical works,[16] including the related subjects of optics, harmonics, mechanics, cosmography, the applied sciences of surveying, navigation, and fortification, and a quantity of fine printed books, primarily from the 16th century.

A catalogue of the Savile library appeared in Dr. Edward Bernard's (Astronomy chair, 1673–91) Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum Angliae and Hiberniae.

[19] In the eighteenth century, not much more was added to Savile's collection, but later Stephen Rigaud (Geometry Chair, 1810–27; Astronomy, 1827–39)[16] catalogued and contributed to it further.