Neo-Latin

The article deals with a Latin booklet published in 1914 by the German government. Its author, Matthias Erzberger (1875-1921), aimed to show to the cardinals, who were sitting in conclave in order to choose the successor of pope Pius X,  that Germany was not responsible for the outbreak of the First World War.

We have been told many times that " Renaissance " means rebirth: the rebirth of the Greek and Roman classical values and artistic expressions. Scholars of the day were trained in the Latin language and studied its writers closely. Virgil and Cicero, Latin writers whose prominence is legendary, come to mind in this context. Of equal or greater importance is the influence of the Roman satiric poet Horace, who used language and verse beautifully to express a wry, gentle, sophisticated comprehension of the manifold shortcomings of man. This subtle Roman inspired many different English writers to write his kind of Latin verse. Milton, of course, is forever linked with Virgil for his incomparable epic " Paradise Lost, " but he also wrote Latin poetry in Horatian vein. This paper will examine the links between the Latin poetry of Britain's great epic writer and the wry Roman satirist. Milton's life, like Horace's, spanned a turbulent era in his country's history. Like Horace he enjoyed the confidence of national leaders and managed to stay alive during a violent period which completely changed the existing political structure. For any man to take active part in British public life both during Cromwell's reign and during the restoration of the monarchy was difficult and dangerous. In his home the culture of the Renaissance had been overlaid by a Puritan ideal of the righteous life, and these two concepts struggled within him. Brought home from abroad by civil war to offer his services to his country, he was made Secretary of Latin under Cromwell, and handled the correspondence of the Commonwealth as well as writing thundering Latin prose defending the regicide and rule of Cromwell. Yet he mourned the loss of much that was beautiful which was destroyed by the hands of the Puritan reformers. With the restoration of the Stuart monarchs Smith says that the stern rule of republican virtue ended, and Milton's Paradise Lost was to be the epitaph of Puritanism, a fallen cause which had not managed to bring to earth its clean, bleak Heavenly City. Milton could not, like some of his influential friends, shift with the prevailing political winds. He turned his magnificent writing skills to denouncing monarchy and exhorting Parliament to retain republicanism. Imprisoned, he might well have been executed but for the pleas of well-placed Royalists, the poet Andrew Marvell among them. Throughout his life Milton wrote superbly in several languages, especially English and Latin. His elegies and sonnets are outstanding; his epic poetry is unchallenged as the finest in English. His Latin verse rivals the work of the best poets of every age.

Two letters to Carl von Linné from the German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1794) and his son George Forster (1754-1794) during their participation on the second pacific voyage of James Cook (1772-1775).

Edition of the Latin letters, with translation, glossary and commentary.

Magister thesis in Latin, autumn 2007.

Rafael Landívar is the best known of all the poets from the Americas to write in Latin. In the Rusticatio Mexicana (1782), his masterpiece of didactic poetry, he drew extensively from Greek and Roman literature to describe in vivid epic verse the natural wonders, livelihoods and popular traditions of Mexico and his native Guatemala.
This book begins with a detailed account of Mexico's unique classical heritage, showing how humanists in colonial New Spain applied indigenous forms of knowledge and a multicultural perspective to their reading of ancient authors. Further information about Landívar's life and exile to Italy helps to illuminate the allegorical character of his work - and its important political dimension. This accessible study of 'the American Virgil' will encourage readers to discover for themselves the astonishing quality and sophistication of the Latin literature of Latin America. The present volume incorporates a complete text of the Rusticatio Mexicana (with Regenos' translation). Landívar's shorter works have also been collected and translated into English for the first time.

In his 1877 Storia della letteratura (History of Literature), Luigi Settembrini wrote that Petrarch's fourteenth-century poem, the Africa, 'is forgotten …; very few have read it, and it was judged-I don't know when and by whom-a paltry thing'. Yet, just four decades later, the early Renaissance poet's epic of the Second Punic War, written in Latin hexameters, was being promoted as the national poem of Italy by eminent classical scholar, Nicola Festa, who published the only critical edition of the epic in 1926. This article uncovers the hitherto untold story of the revival of Petrarch's poetic retelling of Scipio's defeat of Hannibal in Fascist Italy, and its role in promoting ideas of nation and empire during the Fascist period in Italy. After briefly outlining the Africa's increasing popularity in the nineteenth century, I consider some key publications that contributed to the revival of the poem under Fascism. I proceed chronologically to show how the Africa was shaped into a poem of the Italian nation, and later, after Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, of Italy's new Roman Empire. I suggest that the contestations over the significance of the Africa during the Fascist period, over whether it was a national poem of Roman revival or a poem of the universal ideal of empire, demonstrate more profound tensions in how Italian Fascism saw itself.

This doctoral dissertation on Book 4 of the Constantinopolis by Ubertino Posculo represents the first completed English translation of a book in an epic poem that has hitherto been only available in Latin, French, or Italian. The commentary also holds the distinction of being the first to systematically reach beyond historiographical questions with a specific interest in intertext and allusion. This document summarizes the central arguments and observations I make about the poem in the commentary and opening chapter.

In 1611, the Swedish antiquarian and mystic Johannes Thomae Agrivillensis Bureus (1568–1652) (Johan Bure) put up a huge memorial plaque in stone, in memory of his ancesters and family. The plaque is now in the Uppsala Cathedral, Sweden. Although several tried already in the 18th and 19th centuries to interpret the cryptic, heavily abbreviated text, all in Latin, with its many esoteric references, the text and symbolism on the plaque have been considered an unsolvable enigma. After having gone through basically all of Johannes Bureus' manuscripts, I believe I'm able to straighten out all question marks. Here I present my translation with extensive comments.
This article was first published 2014 in my »Johan Bures släktbok«.

In 1452 Lorenzo Valla finished what became the standard translation of Thucydides for the next several hundred years. Identifying the central themes taken up by Valla in the dedicatory letter to Pope Nicholas V, this article will discuss Valla’s letter, as well as his glosses on the translation, in the context of contemporary translation theory. It will also briefly sketch the sixteenth-century reception of Valla’s translation.

The collection of the Elegiarum Aurimpiae Libri by the humanist Elisio Calenzio (Fratte-Ausonia 1430 – Fratte-Ausonia 1502), member of the Academia Neapolitana and friend of G. Pontano, as well as tutor and secretary of Frederick of Aragon, the future king of Naples, is one among the most interesting elegiac works of the italian '400. This essay aims to identify the structural patterns, that underlie this collection of poems. In this regard the humanist seems to mediate between Catullus and the others Latin elegiac poets, but he also takes account of the experience of others erotic poets of his time. The comparison of its two witnesses, i.e. of the Roman posthumous editio princeps of 1503, curated by Monsignore Angelo Colocci, with ms. Vat. Lat. 2833, written by Lucio Calenzio, son of the humanist, and also revised by the curator of the printed edition, allows to detect many problems not only from the point of view of a future critical edition, but also from the point of view of a proper critical judgment on the structure of the collection. In fact, some problems, such as, for example, the one related to the actual number of books of which this collection had to be constituted, can not find a proper solution, because the humanist died before to complete a final revision of his work.

The Prussian Protestant Daniel Hermann is an important Neo-Latin poet. He lived from probably 1543 until 1601. Hermann studied at Königsberg, Straßburg, Basel (probably also Ingolstadt and Heidelberg) and Wittenberg. Afterwards he served as a secretary at the Imperial Court at Vienna, later as a secretary of the city of Danzig and permanent ambassador of Danzig at the Royal Polish court during the wars against Russia. After the war he married and settled down in Riga and became the secretary of the Polish governor Cardinal Radziwil and later of the general Georg Fahrensbach. Besides lots of poems on academical, political and private occasions he wrote letters in poetic form as well as theological, philosophical and political poems.
This paper provides an overview over Hermann’s life and his poetry, especially the poems written and published in Riga, and a short summary of the research on this poet.

Jeremias Drexels SJ ›Iulianus Apostata Tragoedia‹ (1608) erzählt vom Aufstieg und Fall des römischen Kaisers Julian, der für seinen Abfall vom Christentum bereits zeitgenössisch als ›Apostata‹ (›Abtrünniger‹) geschmäht wurde. Während des Renaissance-Humanismus gelangte man jedoch zu einem differenzierteren, teils positiveren Urteil, das v.a. von Julians herausragender Bildung geprägt war. Drexels ›Iulianus‹ setzt sich entsprechend mit der Frage auseinander, wie weit gelehrter Forscherdrang aus christlicher Sicht gehen darf und welche Folgen sich aus einer Grenzüberschreitung ergeben können. Während Julian zu Beginn über seine vom lipsianischen Neustoizismus geprägten intellektuellen Ambitionen noch den Christengott stellt, lehnt er – von eitler Ruhmsucht angestachelt – dies später ab. Er leugnet Gott, verfolgt dessen Anhänger und fällt am Ende der ewigen Verdammnis anheim. Somit wird im ›Iulianus‹ ferner nicht nur die Vereinbarkeit von Christentum und Neustoizismus diskutiert, sondern auch die generelle Absage an letzteren, wie sie sich in Jakob Bidermanns ›Cenodoxus‹ findet, ausdifferenziert. Dieses Buch liefert erstmalig eine Edition des Dramentextes mit Übersetzung sowie einen Kommentar und eine einleitende Analyse des Stücks.

The importance of translation across centuries and throughout the world cannot be over emphasised, a fact of which Neo-Latin authors and translators were well aware. Not surprisingly, their contribution to the understanding and practice of translation is significant. It takes four forms, which are discussed in this article: theoretical treatises on translation;  copious commentary in letters and paratextual materials accompanying editions and translations; educational tracts promoting Latin; a corpus of translations into and out of Latin.

[Postprint] The present paper constitutes a guide through the complex history of the word διάλεκτος/dialectus/dialect from Greek antiquity up to the early modern era with a focus on the latter period and on its fate as a (Neo-)Latin word. It demonstrates that the term evolved from a highly polysemous word in Ancient Greek to a (Neo-)Latin (and, later on, vernacular) term expressing various linguistic meanings, among which the interpretation 'regional variety of a language' rose to prominence. The contribution moreover argues that the Renaissance Latinization of the word is largely due to a twist of fate in the textual transmission of QUINT., Inst. 1.5.29 and sketches how the term dialectus, mistakenly regarded as an 'approved' ancient Latin word, spread across the Republic of Letters. In addition, I discuss the learned and polysemous status of Latin dialectus (and its vernacular counterparts) throughout the early modern era. To conclude, I spell out the history of a number of key early modern derivations and compositions in which the word figures, principally dialectologia and subdialectus.

In the early modern period thousands of people whose mother tongue was Dutch came to the English county of Norfolk. Whilst some of them only stayed for a short while, others settled and established communities in the towns of King's Lynn, Thetford, and Great Yarmouth and the city of Norwich. Whilst the communities in the fi rst two lasted only for a short period, those in Yarmouth and Norwich lasted for over one hundred years. In this article I consider the extent to which Dutch was both written and spoken in these towns and in other parts of the county such as the Fens. The principal domain in which Dutch was used was the church, but it was also used in the workplace, at home, and in other domains such as education and the administration of the communities. I conclude by considering how this use of Dutch has left its mark on the Norfolk dialect and its toponyms.

2021-10-15: fixed some typos

Relics of the Székely script from between the 15th and 18th centuries contain some Latin terms whose meanings are different from the meanings we are most familiar with. This presentation is an attempt to interpret those terms as they were understood when those relics containing them were written.

This article aims to offer an overview of Neo-Latin literature between 1914 and 1920. The authors of Latin writings about the Great War – young people just out of high school, university students, priests, professors and politicians – described famous battles as well as more private episodes. Elegies are predominant, but there are also short epigrams, songs, epistles, jokes and encyclicals. These works are transnational, since authors from different countries wrote in the same language, using the same metrical structures, figures of speech and literary models. Therefore, the picture of the conflict which emerges from their writings resembles not a clash of civilizations, but rather a long and bitter civil war.

An examination of the context surrounding an oration given in 1620 in Paris by the newly appointed bishop of Ossory, David Rothe, and of the religious and scholarly feuds that fuelled the debate between Irish and Scottish Catholics about the identity of medieval saints.

Chapter on the dramas written and represented in Latin in the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin America from the end of the 15th century until the middle of the 17th century. First of all I pay special attention to certain works of humanists of Catalonia (Satorres), Valencia (Anyès), Burgos (Maldonado), Alcalá de Henares (Petreius), Portugal (Tevius) and Mexico (Cervantes de Salazar). I explain how the dramatic activity of the Jesuits (Venegas, Crucius, Acevedus, Bonifacius) replaced the humanists In the second half of the sixteenth century. I analyze the influence of the poetics of Aristotle and Horace and of the ancient drama on certain characteristics of these works (structure, number of acts, characters, use of prose and verse, genres); as well as the influence of this theater in the Spanish and Portuguese theater of the time. I deal with aspects such as the use of theater for the active learning of Latin; its ideological, religious and political implications; the biblical and allegorical themes among others; the scenic art and the occasions of representation. I include bibliography (pp. 616-618), an appendix on the main studies and editions (pp. 619-620), and a catalog with the life, works and basic bibliography of the 16 main authors (pp. 621-631).

The Latin poetry of Pavao Ritter Vitezović (Paulus Ritter; Paulus Eques, 1652–1713)
contains a number of technopaegnia, compositions in which part of the meaning is
generated
by means of transposition of the linguistic material (letters, words, phonemes)
and mathematical operations (adding up letters with numerical value). Occasionally, it
also includes a visual component (as pictograms or geometrical shapes). Vitezović’s
pattern poetry and technopaegnia include anagrams, chronograms (mostly in verses),
acrostic (often combined with mesostic and telestic, sometimes with a figural intext),
two rebuses (hieroglyphus), abecedarian verses and rhymed hexameters and elegiac
couplets.
In Ritter’s opus examples of pattern poetry appear mostly in elaborate collections of
Latin occasional poetry, such as Nova musa sive Pars artificiosa operum poeticorum
anni M.DC.LXXXII which includes occasional verses to the prince Joseph (later emperor
Joseph I), Sacer chorus seu applausus metricus a Phoebo et musis celebratus.
Another complex collection, Corona lauro-palmaris a Phoebo et musis connexa was
dedicated to the poet’s friend, J. K. Portner, the vice-captain of Senj and Nova equestris
imago is a birthday greeting to one of the poet’s patrons, the archbishop Leopold
Kolonić. All three collections were printed in Vienna in 1682. More than 900 of Ritter’s
anagrams were published in separate booklets and later reprinted in Fata et vota, sive
opera anagrammaton (Vienna 1699), and many of his pattern and combinatorial poems,
including the above mentioned collections, were republished or rebound together
with his manuscript poems, like in Otia metrica manuscripta et impressa (National and
University Library in Zagreb, Manuscripts and Old Books Collection, R 3461).
Ritter’s pattern poetry is to be evaluated in the context of the contemporary pattern
poetry which flourished in late 17th century Habsburg lands and should be regarded
as a part of his general interest in other »learned magic« and astrology genres, such as
horoscope or calendar.

**** Članak se bavi tehnopegnijima u Vitezovićevoj latinskoj poeziji, formalnim ekspe-rimentima kombinatoričke i enigmatičke naravi čija je svrha preslagivanjem ili gra-fičkim organiziranjem označitelja (slova, riječi) postići poseban estetski učinak i/ili u tekstu 'otkriti' dodatno značenje. U Ritterovu se tiskanom i rukopisnom latinskom pjesničkom opusu identificiraju, definiraju i opisuju anagram, kronogram (kronostih), akrostih (mezostih, telestih), abecedna pjesma, rima u kvantitativnim stihovima i rebus te ih se pokušava smjestiti u širi kulturni konteks

Several works in the Mexican language of Nahuatl were produced in the early colonial period as a direct result of European influence: they range from psalms and sermons to indigenous chronicles and compilations of riddles and adages. Among them is a collection of Aesop’s Fables which may well be the first classical text to be translated into a non-European language other than Arabic. The appraisal of the Mexican Aesop to follow will conclusively identify its Latin source in the light of the history of print circulation and close comparison between the Nahuatl versions of the fables and their models. There are no testimonies to throw light on the context or purpose of these anonymous translations, but the present discussion will show that this collection of fables foregrounds the art of government in order to appeal to native rulers of Mexican principalities. That observation will prompt some closing conjectures about who the translator might have been.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, Norwich received a large number of immigrants from the Continent whose mother tongue was Dutch or French. Whilst the use of these languages in the city, along with English, has received some academic attention, notably from the sociolinguist, Peter Trudgill, to date the use of a fourth language, Latin, has not. In this article consideration is given to the social domains in which Latin was used and the manner in which it was used in these domains. In relation to the former, it was used in education, the church, the law and the public sphere. In relation to the latter, it was used to a limited extent orally, but more commonly as a written language, being found in correspondence, official documents and monumental inscriptions. Furthermore, it was often used in code switching with vernacular languages. This analysis will allow us to identify the distinctive role that Latin played in the life of early modern Norwich, and to argue and to assess whether Peter Trudgill is right to describe early modern Norwich as a ‘trilingual city’, a reference to the three vernacular languages, English, Dutch and French.