Mary Queen of Scots: The First Biography: With the Life and Times of Its Author, George Con (Texts and Sources, 240/14)

In Mary Queen of Scots: The First Biography, Ronald Santangeli has recovered a long-forgotten document of great historiographical, literary and cultural importance. Written in 1624 in Neo-Latin by George Con, a young expatriate Scot in Rome, the Vita Mariae Stuartae is worthy of study, both for its content and its literary dimension. The fully recensed Latin text is presented with a meticulous translation into English and a fully-annotated commentary. The image Con creates of the Scottish Queen has prevailed in European cultural representations from poetry and drama to novels, paintings and opera, while Con's own meteoric career highlights the impact on seventeenth-century Catholic Europe by members of the Scottish diaspora. A significant addition to Marian and Scottish Neo-Latin studies.

Ronald Santangeli, M.A. (Hons) in Classics (Latin and Greek), University of Glasgow 1967. He is retired Head of Classics, St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow and former Principal Examiner for Scotland in classical languages.