JOHN OASTLER WARD

1940/08/11 – 2023/04/29

John Oastler Ward was a charismatic and inspiring personality, not only as a teacher and researcher in the field of medieval studies, but also as a friend, a colleague and an indefatigable participant in his local community. Educated in Melbourne, he moved to Toronto for his doctorate before joining the History Department at the University of Sydney in 1967. No one who had experienced it could ever forget the blackboards covered in Italian names as he tried to communicate the intricacies of Renaissance Florentine politics. His copious student notes were legendary. As time progressed, these became hefty volumes, always adorned with additional notes scribbled in the margins. In his published work, it was not uncommon for there to be a single line of text to which there would be a footnote extending well into the next page. John was firmly of the opinion that where there was knowledge to be shared, it would be a sin not to share it.

While his central area of expertise was the history of rhetoric (of which he was a superb practitioner), John’s academic interests were as wide and varied as his non-academic pursuits. He was a popular guest at international conferences, always first on his feet to ask a stimulating question and serving as a catalyst for innumerable scholarly connections. He taught by invitation at universities throughout Britain, Europe, the U.S.A. and Canada. He adored travel. Once he was no longer constrained by teaching responsibilities, his feet barely touched the ground. An enthusiastic and talented photographer, the collection he started for teaching purposes provided the material for slide nights which rarely started before 10pm and never concluded until the early hours of the morning. As for his books: many sheds, an additional house, and many more sheds had to be purchased and constructed to house the ever-expanding library. His only regret was that he would never have time to read them all.

A particular passion was, of course, steam trains, and by extension an utter devotion to public transport. This fed into his political involvement with the Labor Party which led to his long career as an alderman for Summer Hill and ultimately to becoming mayor of Ashfield. In this capacity he hosted two mayoral balls – one medieval and the other Renaissance, complete with appropriate food, costumes and musical entertainment. Music, and especially opera, was another of his passions. He would often return on subsequent nights to a performance he had particularly enjoyed.

Nor did John confine his rhetorical and acting talents to the auditorium and the conference room. His alter ego in many amateur stage productions was Pope Innocent III, but he regularly appeared in other roles in the varied theatrical performances which accompanied local conferences and Open Days, as well as the annual plays of the Sydney Medieval and Renaissance Group. John was an enthusiastic member of SMRG from its earliest days and for a lengthy period the editor of its journal, Studium, an enterprise requiring no small measure of work and devotion. It can safely be said that without John it simply wouldn’t have happened.

John was a firm believer in the fundamental importance of the primary source. Many of his student handouts, lavishly adorned with cartoons, were designed to make these sources accessible to the non-Latinist. Studium itself drifted increasingly towards translations of primary sources, culminating in a brief series devoted entirely to this. For many years John conducted a Latin Reading Group with a small coterie of present and past students, assisting people with difficult passages and preparing texts for publication while trying to get closer to the spirit of the medieval scholar by reading what they had read as well as what they had written. He was above all an enthusiast for the collaborative enterprise, seeing a large part of the value of his work in the connections it enabled him to forge with other people.

John was never interested in climbing the academic ladder. He published prolifically across a wide range of medieval topics. It was only well into retirement and under very great pressure from colleagues that he was forced to finally publish his doctoral thesis. There was simply too much else to do, not least being his life with Gail (together since they were undergraduates) and their three children, Hilton, Tara and Kate. He will be greatly missed by a great many people.

Lola Sharon Davidson