Alexander Ross
Alexander Ross was a Scottish writer and priest, born on January 1, 1591, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He completed his education at Marischal College, earning an M.A. in 1615, and later moved to England, where he became the master of the Free Grammar School in Southampton. Ross was known for his diverse writings, which often expressed a reactionary stance against the prevailing ideas of his time, including a defense of the divine right of kings and opposition to the "new learning" that emerged during the Reformation. His early works included analyses of the biblical book of Genesis, and he expanded his theological interests in the 1630s, gaining the patronage of Archbishop William Laud.
As the English Civil War began, Ross's writings took on a more polemical tone, and he became known for his defense of the Aristotelian geocentric model against emerging scientific views, particularly in his work responding to John Wilkins. Despite his controversies, Ross produced notable texts such as *Mystagogus poeticus* and *Arcana microcosmi*, the latter critiquing contemporary understandings of the human body. In his later years, he worked on an encyclopedia of religions, which he completed shortly before his death on February 25, 1654. Ross's legacy is marked by his unique blend of theology, poetry, and classical scholarship, reflecting the complexities of his era and his personal convictions.
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Alexander Ross
Writer
- Born: January 1, 1591
- Birthplace: Aberdeen, Scotland
- Died: February 25, 1654
- Place of death: Bramshill, Hampshire, England
Biography
Alexander Ross was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on January 1, 1591. Little is known of his family, except that he had a brother named George. He completed his education at Marischal College in Aberdeen, obtaining his M.A. in 1615. He then headed south to England, as many Scots did in the Jacobean era. He was appointed master of the Free Grammar School in Southampton, England, in 1616 on the recommendation of the Earl of Hertford, and began publishing tracts in Latin. In 1619, he was ordained a priest and resigned his teaching post to devote himself to writing. His writings offer an image of an eccentric polymath of a reactionary stripe, not content to side with King James I in defending the divine right of kings but also opposing the “new learning” that had begun to take root in England during the reign of King Henry VIII.
Ross’s first three books in English, published in the early years of King Charles I’s reign, were devoted to analysis of the biblical book of Genesis. The books and pamphlets in English and Latin that he published in the 1630’s, when he obtained the patronage of Archbishop of CanterburyWilliam Laud, broadened the range of his theological concerns, and he ventured into epic verse in the style of the Roman poet Virgil in the inspirational Virgilii evangelisantis Christiados (1638). However, his career was interrupted by the troubles leading up to Civil War. In 1641, he married Barbara Bowerman, but she died shortly after the marriage. Ross’s work was now possessed by a new polemical fervor, and its range had begun to broaden. In 1642 he delivered and published two angry sermons on profanations of God’s House by the parliamentarians, but was forced to leave Southampton thereafter.
In 1645, safely settled in London and working as a tutor, Ross began writing profusely again, partly to support himself. In The New Planet No Planet: Or, The Earth No Wandring Star, Except in the Wandring Heads of Galileans . . . (1646) he responded to John Wilkins’s criticisms of Ross’s anti- Copernican views, mounting a fierce defense of the Aristotelian geocentric cosmos, primarily based in scriptural authority. Ross thus became an early practitioner of what would now be called fundamentalism, dismissive of any idea that contradicted the literal text of the Bible, no matter what empirical evidence might be brought to its support.
Ross’s most successful works were Mystagogus poeticus (1647), a compendium of classical mythology expanded from his earlier book Mel heliconium: or, Poeticall Honey, Gathered out of the Weeds of Parnassus (1642), and Arcana microcosmi: Or The Hid Secrets of Man’s Body Disclosed . . . (1652), which attacked modern views of the “microcosm,” or the human body. He also set out to complete and correct Walter Ralegh’s history of the world and to compile an encyclopedia of religions, from which numerous pamphlets were spun off, as well as a translation of passages from the Qur’an. In 1651, Ross retired to Bramshill in Hampshire, the country house of his latest patron, Sir Andrew Henley. He completed his encyclopedia of religions there for publication in 1653, and was preparing an expanded edition when he died on February 25, 1654. He was buried on the Bramshill estate, in Eversley Church, leaving a series of unexpectedly sizeable bequests to his nephew and nieces and various educational establishments.