Neulateinisches Jahrbuch

The English humanist anti-scholastic polemic Hermathena (1522), published under the pseudonym ‘Papyrius Geminus Eleates’, has been attributed to Thomas Elyot (c. 1490–1546), the English prose author and lexicographer. However, comparison of the Latin usage of the Hermathena-author, who also published a letter in commendation of the Propugnaculum aduersus Lutherum of Edward Powell (c. 1478–1540), with that of Elyot, who published Latin letters as well as his Latin-English dictionaries, indicates that Elyot probably did not also write Hermathena. Although both Elyot’s Latin and that of the Hermathena-author are to be affiliated with the late humanist movement known as ‘Apuleianism’, especially in word-choice, the vocabularies are measurably different.

In his essay Specimen Linguae Brasilicae Vulgaris (1778), the Jesuit missionary Anselm Eckart (1721–1809) provides a number of examples from ‘Classical’ Tupí, which was, at colonial times, one of the most important languages of South America. In contrast to the missionary grammars compiled by the Jesuits José de Anchieta (1595) and Luis Figueira (1621), the essay is not written in Portuguese, but in Latin. In translating Tupí, however, Eckart did not use the common Latin language, but a sort of ‘epilinguistic’ Latin that follows the structure of Tupí very closely. This way, he was able to demonstrate not only grammatical features of Tupí, but also cultural peculiarities of the Amerindians mirrored by language. It becomes clear that Eckart’s Specimen is not only an important addition to the grammars of Anchieta and Figueira and to our knowledge of Classical Tupí, but also a document of the flexibility and of the manifold applications of Latin in modern times.

Nathan Chytraeus’ twelve-volume work Fastorum Ecclesiae Christianae Libri duo-decim (Hanau 1594) marks a most exemplary Christian ‘imitatio’ of Ovid’s cal-endar poem in the early modern period. This paper systematically interprets a coherent excerpt from Chytraeus’ Fasti, aiming to instigate and encourage further inquiry into this little-known text. The first sixty-one verses warrant separate analysis due to their programmatic character and their literary-historical reflexivity. Chytraeus understands his work to be in a double relation: once to the Fastorum libri duodecim by ‘alter Vergilius’ Baptista Mantuanus, and once to the projected, but never realized calendar poem of Johannes Stigelius. A commenting reading of the introduction can thus uncover connections not only to classic didactic poetry (Lucretius, Vergil, and Ovid), but also to the ‘Neolatinitas’. The – separately printed – first edition of the liber primus (Leipzig 1573) serves as reference for a philological analysis.

Hieronymus Wolf (1516–1580), rector at the Gymnasium of Augsburg and city librarian, was one of the most prominent Classicists of the 16th century. His work deserves more scholarly attention than it has hitherto received. His editions, accompanied by commentaries and translations, of the Greek orators Isocrates, Demosthenes and Aeschines as well as of Byzantine authors were outstanding. Nicolaus Reusner called him a “philologus incomparabilis”. Laudatory poems on him and his epitaphs are analyzed in this article. He was a student of Melanchthon and a Protestant, his books were placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum, but nevertheless read and esteemed by Catholics, too. Cicero was his favorite author. His voluminous and significant commentary on De officiis, a result of his teaching Latin, is unique among the interpretations of that work. It does not only contain the usual ingredients of a commentary, but is also discussing the truth of its statements. Wolf employed it both to present and to promote a humanist education in his own time.

The Jesuits of Bohemia put together a commemorative volume for the coronation of the Emperor Karl VI as King of Bohemia in 1723. It is the most extensive and complex Latin panegyric known so far, containing 288 pages in folio with various Latin, Greek and Hebrew texts, an engraved title page and 13 emblematic pictures. Despite the volume’s significance, its artistic, historical and literary aspects still await a thorough investigation. The dominant and unifying allegory representing Karl VI is the “Fons inexhaustus” (the title begins with these words), which continously produces life-giving water. The volume consists of thirteen parts, each of a similar structure, for which the thirteen Jesuit colleges of Bohemia seem to have been respectively responsible. Each part opens with engravings, followed by oratorical prose, Inscriptiones lapidariae, lyrics in classical and in new metrical compositions, epics, and “versus cabalistici”, which all receive exemplary interpretations in this article. The epic relating the conquest of Belgrad ends with a prophecy of Karl VI becoming king of the Holy Land and of the House of Austria occupying the throne of Constantinople.

Jacob Balde’s four books of Lyrica constitute, at the formal level, a perfect imitation of Horace’s Carmina. More deeply, however, they can be read as a kind of Christian anti-Horace. To begin with, Balde provides no pendant to Horace’s dedicatory ode to Maecenas and in fact dedicates his odes to nobody at all. Instead, the first three of them, taken together, might appear to be a subtle homage to the ideals of life in religious orders. Lyrica 1,1 presents a nobleman who prefers a modest life gardening to election as king. Lyrica 1,2 addresses obedience to one’s teacher. Lyrica 1,3 celebrates the ‘constantia’ of Thomas More who rejected his wife and daughter out of steadfastness to his ideals. These are precisely the principles of regular religious life: poverty, obedience, and celibacy. Each of them, in Balde’s view, grants freedom from earthly bonds, material needs, obligations to family and subjection to secular power. He who has been freed of these ties has no need for a patron like Maecenas. Despite all this, Balde does provide a dedicatory ode for his Lyrica – but at the end, rather than the beginning, of the first book. There, in the first of his Marian odes (Lyrica 1,43), Balde casts the Virgin herself in the role of the Horatian Maecenas. Nevertheless, through the course of a whole book of more than forty odes, he has acted to this point as a free poet without any patron.

Daniel Heinsius’ didactic epic De contemptu mortis (1621) has prompted several scholars to explore which textual sources could have inspired the author in his writing. The aim of this article is to further consider one of those likely sources, namely Lucretius’ De rerum natura, by carefully juxtaposing the well-known passages on the philosopher Epicurus with Heinsius’ praise of Socrates (chiefly DCM 1.130–230). This Lucretio-Heinsian comparison will lead to a broader understanding of the special relation with Socrates that Heinsius may have had, offering textual interpretations not yet accounted for. Finally, Plato’s Phaedrus will be induced as a possible explanation for the discrepancies that do exist between Heinsius and Lucretius’ DRN. In short, what emerges is a better glimpse into the ways that one of the most prominent early modern Dutch intellectuals engaged with the classics in his own writings.

Pagan deities were a substantial component of early modern Latin epic poetry. As well as pagan gods, the poets of the Quattrocento also drew on auspices, the interpretation of divine signs. In the epic world, auspices could teach people about divine will. They enabled the poets to clearly communicate the exceptional nature of their heroes to the characters in the narrative as well as to the reader. Auspices could serve as a visible testimony to the epic character’s status and legitimize their actions; furthermore, they could increase the power of a character’s human agency by implying divine assistance or a certain sacredness. The poets exercised a huge degree of poetic license in their portrayal of these signs and, in doing so, used their poems to compete intertextually with one another in a constant attempt to create better, more significant auspices and exalt their heroic figures above those that came before. This way, it was possible to establish typological references to ancient heroes in order to predict and confirm the greatness of early modern characters.

The Neo-Latin didactic poem De mentis potu sive de cocolatis opificio, written by the Neapolitan Jesuit Tommaso Strozzi and published in Naples in 1689, deals with the production, consumption, and therapeutic effects of chocolate. The poem combines technical instructions, historical and cultural digressions, and contemporary medical debates with classicizing aetiologies. Strozzi proves that cocoa, despite its Mexican origin, is in fact a genuinely European produce that is deeply rooted in European cultural traditions. Mexico and its inhabitants may seem like a paradise-like counter-world to a morally depraved Europe. Yet, at the same time, the Europeans are shown to be superior to the indigenous peoples. Only they possess the know-how to adequately refine cocoa and make it into a luxury good. The ubiquitous references to classical and NeoLatin traditions in De cocolatis opificio are more than just a learned game. They are striking examples of how, in the early modern period, classical models were adopted and adapted to the purpose of legitimizing Europe’s perceived historical supe-riority over the newly discovered territories.

REINHOLD F. GLEI, Neulateinische Forschungsprojekte

Johannes Freinsheim, Supplementa in Q. Curtium. Supplemente zu Q. Curtius. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und erläutert von Gabriel Siemoneit (NIKLAS GUTT)

Adam Schröter, Regni Poloniae salinarum Vieliciensium descriptio – Das Salzbergwerk von Wieliczka. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und erläu-tert von Siegmar Döpp (HORST SCHNEIDER)

WALTHER LUDWIG, Marquard Gude als Leser und Bearbeiter der Schrift des Francesco Robortello zu Aristoteles und Horaz (1548)

WALTHER LUDWIG, Janus Gruter – der Herausgeber der Delitiae poetarum Germanorum von 1612

JEAN-LOUIS CHARLET, XXXI° Convegno internazionale Istituto Studi Umanistici F. Petrarca