Background
John Barclay was born, on the 28th of January 1582, at Pont-a-Mousson, France, where his father William Barclay held the chair of civil law. His mother was a Frenchwoman of good family.
John Barclay was born, on the 28th of January 1582, at Pont-a-Mousson, France, where his father William Barclay held the chair of civil law. His mother was a Frenchwoman of good family.
John Barclay studied at St. Andrews University, later he acted as a preacher in the Church of Scotland before turning his attention to medicine and graduating M. D. at Edinburgh in 1796.
John Barclay was thirtyeight years of age before he began to teach anatomy on his own account, after assisting John Bell in his class. The house in High School Yards, in which he lectured, soon became too small to accommodate the students.
While there, at the age of nineteen, he wrote a commentary on the Thebaid of Statius.
In the following year the second part of the Satyricon appeared in Paris.
Barclay remained on in London till 1616.
In 1609 he edited the De Potestate Papae, an anti-papal treatise by his father, who had died in the preceding year, and in 16 n he issued an Apologia or "third part" of the Satyricon, in answer to the attacks of the Jesuits and others who were probably embittered by the tone of the earlier parts of the satire.
A so-called " fourth part, " with the title of Icon Animorum, appeared in 1614.
He appears to have been on better terms with the Church and notably with Bellarmine; for in 1617 he issued, from a press at Cologne, a Paraenesis ad Sectaries, an attack on the position of Protestantism.
The literary effort of his closing years was his best-known work the Argenis, completed about a fortnight before his death, which has been said to have been hastened by poison.
The Satyricon, a severe satire on the Jesuits, is modelled on Petronius and catches his lightness of touch, though it shows little or nothing of the tone of its model, or of the unhesitating severity and coarseness of the humanistic satire of Barclay's age.
The Argenis is a long romance, with a monitory purpose on the dangers of political intrigue, probably suggested to him by his experiences of the league in France, and by the catholic plot in England after James's accession.
The work has been praised by all parties; and it enjoyed for more than a century after his death a remarkable popularity.
John Barclay wrote his major novel, Argenis, in Rome. It is a political romance, resembling in certain respects the Arcadia of Philip Sidney, and the Utopia of Thomas More. The book was completed about a fortnight before his death,
In his work a Paraenesis ad Sectarios, John Barclay attacked on the position of Protestantism. His departure from England may have been prompted by the threat that his children would be brought up as Protestants, since they had been born in England. To the Catholic Barclay, this was unacceptable.
John Barclay was a member of several learned and literary societies in Rome, including the Accademia dei Lincei.
John Barclay was the husband of a Frenchwoman, Louise Debonaire. His wife outlived him and died in 1652. One son became bishop of Toul in France.
