Category Archives: Neo-Latin

Colloquia Scholastica from Stoa.org

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In the years around 2007 a team of graduate students and faculty associated with the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Latin Studies under the direction of Ross Scaife did valiant digitization work on a set of Colloquia Scholastica (Neo-Latin Colloquia), mostly dating to the 16th century. Several of the digitized texts produced by the Institute’s group were encoded in TEI XML and hosted on an instance of the Perseus hopper at Stoa.org. Due to server changes in 2019 those digital files have since fallen off the face of the internet, and are only available via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Middle aged male scholar in a heavy robe

Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam by Hans Holbein the Younger German, ca. 1532. Oil on linden panel. New York, Metropolitan Museum 1975.1.138. Public Domain.

During the summer 2024 Conventiculum Dickinsoniense, Jackson Perry suggested that we at DCC might embark on a salvage project to scrape the files off the cumbersome and slow-loading home on the Wayback Machine and consolidate the pages. The amazing Megan Ayer completed that process recently, thanks to funding from the Roberts Fund for Classical Studies at the Dickinson Department of Classical Studies. The text are now in a publicly viewable Google Docs folder containing all twelve works from Stoa.org.

They represent approximately 457,650 words of digitized Latin not readily available elsewhere. They are free for copying and re-use.

What is the value of colloquia? They are precious guides to Latin as it was in its modern heyday as the main vehicle for the discourse of the scientific community, the scholarly world, and all the main academic disciplines. They deal with many topics and situations not encountered in surviving classical Latin, and so can serve as excellent guides to those who foster Latin as a spoken language today. (Ross Scaife is unfortunately no longer with us, but the University of Kentucky’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Cultures remains a thriving center for active Latin under the leadership of Professors Milena Minkova and Terence Tunberg. And work on the renewed study and enjoyment of neo-Latin colloquia scholastica continues there).

In addition to their obvious pedagogical value, the colloquia are also, as Terence Tunberg points out, precious historical sources:

Colloquia provide historians with a rich mine of information on daily life in the towns and cities of renaissance Europe, as well as academic life in schools and universities. In the Paedologia of Mosellanus, for example, … we learn the Latin authors studied in a given term could include works of contemporary humanists like Erasmus, as well as those of Roman authors like Cicero and Horace. We learn that it was still hard to find courses in Greek at most schools. We learn that better-off students might live off gifts from home, but many had to beg or do sordid jobs in the town to subsist. This was not just true of university students, but even of young boys in grammar schools. We see our student characters dress themselves for a festival, and learn that taking a bath was a special occasion, something one did only three or four times a year! In the colloquia not only of Mosellanus, but of many other authors too, we get a glimpse of the seedy characters, thieves and con-artists, pseudo-doctors who frequented the streets of late medieval towns.

(Terence Tunberg, “The Way Many Aspired to the Eloquence of the Few: The Neo-Latin Colloquium.” [2011]. In Mobs [Vol. 3]. Brill. p. 200)

Google Docs is obviously not a permanent hosting solution. My hope is that other fautores linguae latinae activae will pick them up and preserve them, maybe add macrons, pictures, audio, that sort of thing. If anybody wants to try editing some of this material in full DCC style, please let me know.

Ok, here is the list. Enjoy!

Franciscus Cervantes de Salazar (1514?-1575), Ad Exercitia Linguae Latinae Dialogi

Sebastianus Castalio (1515-1563), Dialogorum Sacrorum Libri Quatuor

Maturinus Corderius (1479-1564), Colloquia scholastica

Laurentius Corvinus (ca. 1465-1527), Latinum Ydeoma

Martinus Duncanus (1505-1590), Praetextata Latine Loquendi Ratio

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), Colloquia familiaria

Ioannes Fontanus (1545-1615), Hortulus puerorum pergratus ac perutilis Latine discentibus

Petrus Mosellanus (1493-1524), Paedologia

Beraldus Nicolaus (1473-1550), Dialogus quo rationes quaedam explicantur quibus dicendi ex tempore facultas parari possit

Jacobus Pontanus (1542-1626), Progymnasmatum Latinitatis, sive Dialogorum Volumen primum, cum annotationibus

Petrus Popo, Colloquia de Scholis Herbipolensibus

Johannes Ludovicus Vives (1492-1540), Exercitatio Linguae Latinae

 

Kentucky Neo-Latin Symposium 2024

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I am excited to attend my first Kentucky Neo-Latin Conference this week, organized by the amazing Jennifer Tunberg and Laura Manning. The program does not seem to be freely available online, so I reproduce it here.

KLFC Neo-Latin Symposium program screenshot

Thursday, April 18, 2024 – 9:10 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. Via Zoom

Latin and Scientific Discovery in Australia and Peru; Learning Latin in Mexico

Organized by: Jennifer Tunberg, University of Kentucky. Chaired by: Terence Tunberg, University of Kentucky

9:10–9:20 Welcoming Remarks

9:20–9:40

“Flora in the Antipodes: Baron Ferdinand von Mueller’s Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae.” Peter James Dennistoun Bryant. Independent scholar, Conventicula Lexintoniensia

9:40–10:00

“A Medical Thesis by a Peruvian Mulatto Towards the End of the Colonial Period.” Angela Helmer (University of South Dakota)

10:00–10:20

“What if the earliest students of Latin in the Americas were… Aztecs? Indigenous Latin in early colonial Mexico.” Ambra Marzocchi (Brown University; University of Kentucky alumna)

10:20–10:50 Discussion

10:50–1:00 Pause

Thursday, April 18, 2024 – 1:00 p.m. to 3:20 p.m. via Zoom

Translation, Style, Censorship: 4 Neo–Latin Texts, ss. 16–18

Organized by: Laura Manning and Jennifer Tunberg, University of Kentucky. Chaired by: Milena Minkova, University of Kentucky

1:00–1:20

“Moro, Maumethanus, or both? Descriptions of Islamic believers in Archangelus Madrignanus’s Itinerarium.” Shruti Rajgopal (University College Cork, Ireland)

1:20–1:40

“Cleansing the Channels of Expression? The Early Prose Style of Bonaventure Baron (1610–1696)” Jason Harris (University College Cork, Ireland)

1:40–2:00 Discussion

2:00–2:20 Pause

2:20–2:40

“Quanto Elegantius, Tanto Difficilius: on the Latin of Jacobus Trigland III’s Diatribe de Secta Karæorum” Justin Mansfield. Independent Scholar

2:40–3:00

“Timui ne a censoribus italicis prohiberetur: An analysis of pre–publication censorial interventions in Gian Vittorio Rossi’s Pinacotheca” Jennifer Nelson (The Robbins Collection, UC Berkeley School of Law

3:00–3:20 Discussion

Friday, April 19, 2024 – 10:00 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. via Zoom

Empire and Colony in Europe and the New World: Four Neo–Latin Perspectives, ss. 16–18

Organized by: Julia Hernández and Laura Manning. Chaired by: Leni Ribeiro Leite (University of Kentucky)

10:00–10:20

“Luisa Sigea’s Syntra (1553): Framing Feminine Space at the “Hesperian” Margin of Empire.” Julia Hernández (New York University)

10:20–10:40

“Epic emulation of Vergil’s Georgics in Basílio da Gama’s Brasilienses Aurifodinae.” Dreykon Fernandes Nascimento (University of Espírito Santo)

10:40–11:00 Discussion

11:00–11:20 Pause

11:20–11:40

“Translating Anti–Imperial Dissent in Neo–Latin: Antonio de Guevara’s Horologium Principum.”  Matthew Gorey (Wabash College)

11:40–12:00

“Traveling to Lisbon: Maffei’s Historiae Indicae (1588) and the Portuguese Empire.” Christopher Francese (Dickinson College)

12:00–12:20 Discussion

12:20–12:40 Closing Remarks

How consistent is Latin punctuation in PHI?

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Latin punctuation is one of those classicist trade-secret things. To understand it fully takes intense study, and most classicists have views, no doubt dogmatically held. I am no purist. The bottom line for me is that Latin punctuation is just not as rule-bound as punctuation in English. Not that that is a bad thing. It’s just a different tradition. School texts have far more punctuation than scholarly critical editions. Some of the I Tatti editions seem almost allergic to punctuation. Editing a Neo-Latin text has made me newly aware of this issue, since I am frequently having to make decisions about where to put commas (trying to keep them to a minimum consistent with clarity), whether to use semi-colons (almost never), and so on. Early modern printed editions are notoriously punctuation happy. It sometimes seems as if the printer loaded a shotgun with commas, colons, and periods and fired at the page. Here is a taste:

Latin text with lots of punctuation

Joannis Petri Maffeii Bergomatis E Societate Jesu Historiarum Indicarum Libri XVI (Vienna: Bernardi, 1752; orig. 1588), p. 6.

A more minimal, modern punctuation might be:

… illud praesertim summo conatu pervestigare num quis ab Atlantico in Eoum Oceanum vel mari vel terra transitus foret. Quippe iam tum, praeter acerrimum propagandae Christianae fidei studium, ad beatas etiam Arabiae gazas et Indici litoris opulenta commercia mentem et cogitationem adiecerat.

Although as a rule I would rather not have commas around prepositional phrases like praeter .. studium, it seems useful for comprehension in this case.

Various authors have explained their practices recently. My main guides are Cynthia Damon, who has an excellent discussion in the preface to her Oxford Classical Text of Caesar’s De bello civili, and Milena Minkova, whose wonderful Neo-Latin anthology I recommend heartily to anyone who wants to sample the best Latin writing in the early modern period. They both recommend a restrained approach, but Minkova insists that ablatives absolute, for example, should almost always be enclosed in commas. Damon (wisely, in my view) reserves semi-cola for independent clauses in indirect discourse. Given the flexibility available to editors, the golden rule is: a well-punctuated text shows that the editor understands the text.

In investigating this issue I have been intrigued to see the degree of variation among the modern edited texts (mostly Teubners and OCTs) reproduced in PHI, and I have never seen any collection of instances of variation or consensus among them. So, for those who might be interested in such things, here is my working list. The second column represents my policy, based on my own intuition and observations from PHI.

non modo …, sed include the comma before sed
partim …, partim include the comma before the second partim
dubium quin no comma before quin in phrases like “neque erat dubium quin”
ea lege ut comma before ut? PHI examples go both ways
non tam X … quam Y usually no comma
adeo … ut
comma before ut? Editors seem to differ a lot on this point. Some religiously include it (e.g. Marshall’s Nepos), others tend not to. In the Livy editions on PHI they tend to leave it out, which I prefer in most circumstances.
  
primum … dein clauses usually separated by comma if short, semi-colon if longer http://latin.packhum.org/search?q=%5BLiv%5D+primum+~+Dein%23
his dictis no comma after this introductory formula
factum est ut comma after est? editors seem to vary on this
eo magis quod comma after magis? Generally not
vel … vel This seems to vary a bit, but generally comma can be omitted before the second vel
introductory ablative absolute These seem to go without a comma if they are only two or three words
x adiuvante no need for commas around this kind of very short ablative absolute
     
primo … ; dein or primo … dein, or primo …. Dein? Check out the examples from Livy
postremo,
make sure to use the comma if a subordinate clause (ubi, cum), or abl. abs., immediately follows.
  
     
ut fit, ut assolet
these parenthetical expressions are normally enclosed in commas, though sometimes ut fit is not in PHI
  
is cum no comma

Maffeius on the effect of incendiary weapons (1546)

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Maffeius,telling the story of the Second Siege of Diu (1546), describes the effects of the thrown incendiary weapons (ardentia iacula) used by both sides. They did less damage to the Portuguese than to the Gujarati soldiers, he says, because of the cotton clothing they wore, and the closeness of their formations (Historiae Indicae [1588] 13.45):

Quos autem flamma comprehendisset, ii, abiectis armis, cum simul vestimenta proiicere non valerent, ceterosque ab iis adiuvandis exuendisve sui quemque periculi metus averteret, caeci amentesque crebro cum gemitu incerto vestigio extra ordines ferebantur. Hinc deformatos vultus, exusta lumina, pendentem e nudatis artubus cutem ac velut in lora dissectam horrendo spectaculo cerneres.

 

Moreover, those whom the flame had engulfed threw away their weapons and, as they could not remove their clothing and fear of the danger kept the rest of their comrades from helping to strip them, they ran blind and mad beyond their ranks in uncertain wandering, screaming all the while. It was a horrific spectacle: disfigured faces, burned out eyes, skin hanging from naked limbs as if flayed to ribbons.

Maffei had various written sources, and also a live informant who was present. His Latin can be ornate and periodic when discussing complex matters, but also intensely vivid in story telling. Note how he

  • spotlights the unfortunate men (quos … ii),
  • focuses on the emotions and desperation of the Gujaratis (non valerent … metus … caeci amentes)
  • employs the vivid 2nd person singular cerneres, used also  by his beloved Livy, and in a similar context in Apuleius (Met. 4.14, looking at destruction:  passim per plateas plurimas c e r n e r e s iacere semiuiuorum corporum ferina naufragia).

The scene is focalized through the eyes of the Portuguese within the walls, but Maffei takes us close enough to see the haunting, burned out eyes (exusta lumina) of the victims. This phrase might be borrowed from Plautus, Men. 842, minatur mihi oculos exurere, but notice the substitution of the more poetic lumina for oculos. The equally poetic incerto vestigio (as opposed to something like errantes or palantes) is full of pathos. Maffei’s rhetorical virtuosity shows in the climax of the last sentence quoted, with its inconspicuous simile, in the balanced phrasing and the interlaced and chiastic word order throughout.

Maffei uses the grotesque rarely, but in a fuller narration such as this it helps him convey some of the horror of (for him and his readers) modern warfare.

 

Filipe Binh: Latin from 19th century Vietnam

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A catechism in Latin and Vietnamese by Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660)

A catechism in Latin and Vietnamese by Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660)

In The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825 (New York: Knopf, 1969), Charles Boxer mentions the Vietnamese priest Filipe Binh, alias Filipe do Rosario, who wrote extensively in Vietnamese, Portuguese, and Latin. Boxer is discussing the institution of the Portuguese Padroado, by which the Portuguese monarchs exerted direct control over the missions in the Portuguese imperial sphere, and excluded missionaries from Spain, France, Italy, and other countries. The Padroado was initially granted willingly by the Vatican in the 16th century, when Rome was not primarily interested in missionary activity in the new overseas empires. But later competition from other countries and lack of attention by the monarchy led to all kinds of problems, political, financial, and religious. By the late 18th century it was essentially moribund, a liability rather than an asset to the Church, and the Portuguese were having severe trouble staffing the missions.

This peculiar institution [the Padroado] was, moreover, capable of inspiring a devoted loyalty in some of the native clergy who served it, even in its darkest days. Among them is the rather pathetic figure of the Vietnamese priest Filipe Binh, alias Filipe do Rosario. Born and bred in the Jesuits’ Tongking mission, he arrived at Lisbon with three companions in 1796, as an envoy from his people to ask for some Portuguese missionaries under the auspices of the Padroado. The times of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were singularly unpropitious for any such project, and he died in 1833 without seeing his native land again. He was the last defender of the Padroado in Indochina, and he left twenty-three volumes of manuscript works in Vietnamese, Portuguese and Latin as proof of his attachment to this lost cause. (p. 247)

Now, where could one find father Binh’s Latin writings? The only evidence of Binh’s work in Worldcat is a microfilm of manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Vaticana, of which Cornell University owns a copy. The catalogue entry mentions Orationes (reel 5), Historica chronolologica dos Pontifices (reel 4). Reel 2 has an intriguing entry for a Dictionarium Annamiticum, seu Tunkinese Lusitana, & Latina declaratione,  evidently a Vietnamese dictionary with Portuguese and Latin definitions. It is unclear how that would relate to Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum by Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660), which appeared in 1651.

I would be most curious to know if anybody has more information about Binh and his Latin writings. He sounds like an interesting figure, and his works seem never to have been printed.

Dickinson Latin Workshop 2018: Maffeius, Historiae Indicae

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Dickinson Latin Workshop 2018: Maffeius, Historiae Indicae

July 12–17, 2018

The Dickinson Summer Latin Workshop is intended for teachers of Latin, as a way to refresh the mind through study of an extended Latin text, and to share experiences and ideas with Latinists and teachers. Sometimes those who are not currently engaged in teaching have participated as well, including retired teachers and those working towards teacher certification.

Moderators:
Christopher Francese (Dickinson College)
Leni Ribeiro Leite (Federal University of Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil)

The text for 2018 will be taken from the Historiae Indicae of Giovanni Pietro Maffei (1536–1604, Latin name Maffeius). This 16-book history tells the story of the Portuguese voyages of conquest and discovery in the sixteenth century around the coast of Africa, to the Malabar Coast of India, on to Malacca, China, and Japan. It was widely read and admired all over Europe in its time, and draws on a variety of sources, some of which are now lost. We plan to read the sections of the work that describe the wonders of China, Brazil, and the Indian Ocean.

Jacques de Sève, “Le Pangolin,” illustration from Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi (1749–1804). Source: Gallica http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105279332/f1.item

Jacques de Sève, “Le Pangolin,” illustration from Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi (1749–1804). Source: Gallica http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105279332/f1.item

Maffei’s Latin is elegant, but not difficult. Contemporaries compared his style to that of Caesar. Yet he is no humble imitator, and the hallmarks of his writing are clarity and variety. In the words of fellow historian Faminio Strada, “nothing anywhere unkempt or careless; indeed, elegant perfection from beginning to end—unless his only fault is that he has no faults.” His vocabulary is strictly classical, except when he needs terms for unfamiliar items, such as “tea” (chia) or “pangolin” (cabim); even so, for “chopstick” he manages to find an appropriate word in Varro and Pliny the Elder, paxillus (“small stake, peg”). Though no full commentary exists, the moderators will supply notes on such special usages.

The participation fee for each participant will $400. The fee covers lodging, breakfast, lunch and dinner in the Dickinson cafeteria, the facilities fee, which allows access to the gym, fitness center, and the library, as well as wireless and wired internet access while on campus. The fee does not cover the costs of books or travel. Please keep in mind that the participation fee, once it has been received by the seminar’s organizers, is not refundable. This is an administrative necessity.

Lodging: accommodations will be in a student residence hall near the site of the sessions. The building features suite-style configurations of two double rooms sharing a private bathroom, or one double and one single room sharing a private bathroom.

The first event will be an introductory dinner at 6:00 p.m., July 12. The final session ends at noon on July 17, with lunch to follow. Sessions will meet from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. each day, with the afternoons left free for preparation.

Application deadline: May 1, 2018.

Fee deadline: June 1, 2018.

TO APPLY: please contact Mrs. Terri Blumenthal, blumentt@dickinson.edu by the application deadline. The fee is due in a check made out to Dickinson College, by the fee deadline.

For more information please contact Prof. Chris Francese (francese@dickinson.edu).