Martin Joseph Routh

Martin Joseph Routh
Daguerrotype of Routh in old age.
President of Magdalen College, Oxford
In office 28 April 1791 – 22 December 1854
Preceded by	George Horne
Succeeded by	Frederic Bulley
Personal details
Born	(1755-09-18)18 September 1755 Rectory of St. Peter's and St. Margaret's, South Elmham, Suffolk
Died	22 December 1854(1854-12-22) (aged 99) Magdalen College
Spouse(s)	Eliza Agnes (1790–1869)
Religion	Anglican

Martin Joseph Routh (18 September 1755 – 22 December 1854) was an English classical scholar and President of Magdalen College, Oxford (1791–1854).

Routh was born at South Elmham, Suffolk, England. Routh matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford, on 31 May 1770 and on 24 July 1771, he was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. He graduated with a BA on 5 February 1774 and was elected on 25 July 1775 to a fellowship at Magdalen College. On 23 October 1776 he took an MA, proceeding BD in 1786, and DD on 6 July 1790. On 21 December 1777 he received deacon's orders from Bishop Yonge of Norwich (Routh did not take priest's orders until 1810). He became a college tutor (where he briefly tutored the nephew of Lord Chancellor Thurlow), a librarian in 1781, a Junior Dean of Arts in 1784–5, and in 1785 served as Junior Proctor of the university. On 28 April 1791 he became the President of Magdalen College, a post he held for the next 63 years until his death in 1854.

Routh did not excel in modern languages but was an excellent classical scholar. In 1784 was published his edition of the Euthydemus and Gorgias of Plato but as time went on his interests turned towards patristics, which he would devote the rest of his life to studying. He was especially interested in the minor ecclesiastics of the second and third centuries, the ante-Nicene fathers. In 1814 he published two volumes of Sacrae reliquiae; in 1818 the third and fourth volumes appeared; in 1848 appeared the fifth volume. Samuel Parr said on 26 March 1814:

I have most carefully perused the two volumes of the Sacrae reliquiae. No such work has appeared in English for a century. I wish Joe Scaliger, Bishop Pearson, Richard Bentley, Bishop Bull, Bishop Stillingfleet, and Doctors Grabe and Whitby were living to read what I have been reading...Martin Routh is of the right stamp, orthodox but not intolerant, profound, not obscure, wary, not sceptical, very, very, very learned, not pedantic at all.