Milward, Peter, 1925-2017

Peter Milward was born on October 12, 1925 in London, England. Milward was educated at Wimbledon College in southwest London, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1943. He studied Classics and English Literature at Heythrop College, University of London and Campion Hall, Oxford. In 1954, Milward traveled to Japan, where he learned the Japanese language and completed his study of Theology. He was ordained in 1960. In 1962, Milward joined the Department of English Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo. He went on to become vice-chairman of the university’s Renaissance Institute and editor of its Renaissance Monographs. Milward was the first director of Sophia University’s Renaissance Centre, opened in 1984, where he continued to give lectures even after his retirement.

Milward was the author of a series of textbooks for the study of the English language and English Literature. He also published two texts on the study of religion in early modern England: Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age (1977) and Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (1978). Milward wrote for the St. Austin Review, as well as reviewing books for Monumenta Nipponica. After his retirement, he became a leading proponent of the view that Shakespeare was a crypto-Catholic. Milward died on August 16, 2017.