Neo-Latin
CSNLS 2004-11
Symposia
2005 Symposium: Neo-Latin and the Pastoral.2007 Symposium: Neo-Latin Drama.
2008 Symposium: Allegory.
2010 Symposium: Neo-Latin and Translation in the Renaissance
2011 Symposium: Commentaries
2013 Lent term seminars
Thursday 31 January at 5.30pm at Trinity College, Wolfson Seminar Room (North)For directions to this venue please see http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=290&subid=19
WILLIAM BARTON (King's College London), 'A Changing Mountain Mentality - Geographia, Prospectus, Pictura'.
The paper will address the shift in attitude towards the mountain and mountain landscape, which took place throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern Period. It will begin from the position that Neo-Latin literature played a crucial and as yet overlooked role in the story of the changing mentality towards mountains. This can be demonstrated by examining just one part of the broad and complicated history of the mountain attitude change and focusing on the how the mountain's aesthetic character developed during the period, from being considered an ugly place and barren to one of fertility and beauty. The paper will show how developments in the closely bound disciplines of geography and painting the natural world developed a concept of 'landscape', and then how this concept began to effect a change in the way the mountain was considered as an aesthetic object. In particular, the dual forces of a sharp uptake in interest in geography and mapmaking in German-speaking countries during the sixteenth century and developments in art theory during the fifteenth and into the sixteenth century will provide a background to the appearance of a 'landscape idea'. This 'idea' will then be used to approach and interpret a collection of Swiss mountain texts in Latin, centered around the Zurich humanist Conrad Gesner (1516-1565), whose aesthetic appreciation of the mountain environment represents a radical change from what had gone before.
Thursday 14 February at 5.30pm in the Latimer Room, Old Court, Clare CollegeMICHIEL VERWEIJ (Bibliothèque royale de Belgique), 'Erasmus stuck between Catholics and Lutherans. His correspondence with Pope Adrian VI'.
If anything, Erasmus was taken by surprise at the moment Luther started the series of events which would become known as the Reformation. As other tensions clustered around the religious topics, soon a movement had sprung up that nobody could control. Erasmus hesitated what to do. In fact, he could not choose sides in this climate of polarisation and radicalisation. Moreover, he was attacked by orthodox Catholics and Lutherans alike. Vital for our understanding of Erasmus in this situation is the fact that he needed papal support already before the commotion had begun in order to silence ardent theologians. At the same time, he hoped to be able to reconcile the various positions. All these aspects come to life in the correspondence he kept with Pope Adrian VI, successor to Leo X. Adrian had been an important theologian and university man in Leuven and they had met in the 'Cambridge on the Dijle'. Adrian had his own agenda in trying to keep Erasmus on the Catholic side. The result was a tragic one. 'Between readiness and deeds stand practical difficulties' as a Flemish author once said.
TUESDAY 26 February at 5.30pm in the Godwin Room, D Staircase, Old Court, Clare CollegePAUL BOTLEY (Warwick) and RICHARD SERJEANTSON (Trinity College, Cambridge), Two presentations on the editing of neo-Latin texts.
PAUL BOTLEY will talk about some of the difficulties he encountered, and the decisions he made, in the course of editing the correspondence of Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609). As he contemplates embarking on a comparable project to edit the letters of Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), he would like to think about whether any of these decisions could or should have been made differently. To this end, the group will look at some solutions he and other editors have found to a range of editorial problems.
RICHARD SERJEANTSON
The discovery of a new scribal manuscript of an early draft of René
Descartes's first philosophical work, the Regulae ad directionem ingenii,
raises a number of rather unusual, problematic, but potentially rewarding
questions about the editing of a neo-Latin philosophical treatise. How
should one present the texts in order to show as clearly as possible the
differences - differences that are sometimes striking and philosophically
revealing - between the two versions? More far-reachingly, given that none
of the witnesses of this unfinished treatise have direct authorial
authority, what principles should guide the adjudication of variant
readings? How, in short, may one decide whether variants arise from scribal
corruption or from authorial revision?
2012 Michaelmas term seminars
Thursday 1 NovemberMARK WALKER, 'Ars Gratia Artis? What is the point of new Latin poetry?'
Why bother with neo-Latin, especially poetry? Isn't it all just second-rate imitation of classical originals anyway? In our modern age, when artistic expression is often regarded as synonymous with innovation, and when even English metrical poetry is often thought of as passé, can a genre that employs a dead language written in rigid verse metres ever have anything new to say? In this talk for the CSNLS, editor of Vates: The Journal of New Latin Poetry, Mark Walker points out a few obstacles that would-be Latin poets are likely to encounter, and then suggests - tentatively - a few possible ways to overcome them.
Thursday 22 NovemberJEROEN DE KEYSER (KU Leuven), 'The Poet and the Pope. Francesco Filelfo's common cause with Sixtus IV'
After his election to the Holy See in 1471, Pope Sixtus IV revived the idea of a crusade against Mehmed the Conquerer. The humanist Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481) had by then been aiming at a position at the papal court for many years, and his intense campaign for a crusade against the Turks in the 1470s seems not only a manifestation of a personal obsession, but just as much a way of fashioning himself as an ideal propagandist of the Pope's renewed cause. In my paper I will examine the ups and downs of Filelfo's relationship with Sixtus (the addressee of fifteen of Filelfo's letters), which evolved from all-out courtship over the dedication of an apocryphal pamphlet to accusation of the pontiff as though he were the mastermind behind the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici.
2012 Easter term seminars
Thursday 3 May at 5.30pm in the Godwin Room, D Staircase, Old Court, Clare CollegeELIZABETH SANDIS (Merton College, Oxford): 'Waiting in the wings: St John's College, Oxford presents Tres Sibyllae (1605)'
On Tuesday 27th August 1605, King James rode into the city of Oxford for the first time. His route along St Giles' took him past the gates of St John's College, where he was greeted by a dramatic spectacle, Tres Sibyllae. This little pageant, performed in Latin and then also in English, has made its mark in the history books as a possible source for Shakespeare's Macbeth. Any further significance of the work, however, has long been forgotten: Tres Sibyllae's application of the modes of pageantry to the university setting, St John's interest in theatre as a means to establish its identity within the University, and the College's dramatisation of its relationship with another Oxford college, Christ Church, its richer sibling enjoying the lion's share of limelight during James' visit. The rise of St John's importance over the next thirty years, however, would bring a new dynamic to the balance of power between the two colleges, and Tres Sibyllae (1605) offers us insights into one stage along the way. It is also of interest as an illustration of the diversity of neo-Latin drama in institutional contexts.
Thursday 17 May at 5.30pm in the Godwin Room, D Staircase, Old Court, Clare CollegeMAYA FEILE TOMES (Cambridge): 'Neo-Latin America: José Antonio de Villerías y Roelas' Guadalupe (Mexico, 1724)'
Fate has not been kind to Latin American Latinists. Extraordinary industry and enthusiasm for Latin composition in C16th-18th Spanish America - and particularly in Mexico, one of the first territories to be settled by the Spanish - have been rewarded with an equal number of years of neglect and oblivion. One (near-)casualty was Mexican author José Antonio de Villerías y Roelas, whose mini epic Guadalupe languished in manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional de México until it was re-discovered by a Mexican bibliographer in the 1980s. The Guadalupe slots itself seamlessly into the post-Virgilian epic tradition, and yet, in addition to the usual historical remove with which Neolatinists are familiar, we must also factor in a vast geographical one. This is further complicated by the fact that Villerías' poem narrates the advent of the Virgin Mary - believed to have appeared in her guise as the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1531 - thus adding an all-important religious dimension to the poetic melting-pot. I will introduce Villerías' Guadalupe and explore some of the cultural, conceptual and linguistic issues at stake in writing a Latin poem in eighteenth-century Mexico.
2012 Lent term seminars
Please note the different venues at Clare College. Click here for a plan of the College
Thursday 16 February at 5.30pm in the Garden Room, Gillespie CentreROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION: 'Neo-Latin Diction and Issues of Translation' Thursday 23 February at 5.30pm, Old Combination Room, St Catharine's College
GEORGE GOMORI (Cambridge), 'The Polish Swan Triumphant: Sarbiewski's Reception in 17th c. England' Thursday 8 March at 5.30pm in the Godwin Room, D staircase, Old Court
HARRY STEVENSON (Cambridge), 'Redefining the Epigram in Renaissance France: The Case of Gilbert Ducher's Epigrammaton libri duo'
The epigram was enormously popular in the first half of sixteenth-century France, particularly among neo-Latin writers. How is this to be understood? I explore, via the 1538 Epigrammaton libri duo of the Lyon-based poet Gilbert Ducher, the idea that this popularity was a product of the way the epigram allowed writers to compose poems that read as if composed by a specific individual. I also look at how this invites the notion that Renaissance writers understood their epigrams as belonging to the genre of the epigram, but did so on the basis of a conception of the genre that was strikingly non-classical; the epigram of the Renaissance was not the epigram of antiquity.
2011 Michaelmas term seminars
Tuesday 25th OctoberGesine Manuwald (University College London), 'A triangular relationship: classical Latin literature in Thomas Campion's Neo-Latin and English short poetry'.
The Elizabethan poet Thomas Campion (1567-1620) is well known for being one of those versatile literary figures who wrote poetry in both Neo-Latin and English and in a variety of literary genres. In Campion's case in particular, since he also reflects on the use of different languages and of ancient precedents, this raises the questions of the connections between his writings in the two languages and of their respective relationship to classical models. Against this background this paper will look at some paradigmatic examples of Campion's Neo-Latin and English elegies and epigrams. It will become obvious that ancient literature is the basis for those poems and that at the same time Campion continues the classical tradition in both Neo-Latin and English poetry by adapting the traditional structures and motifs to new content.
2011 Easter term seminars
Thursday 28 AprilDavid Porter (Cambridge), 'Writing Neo-Latin Verse Satire at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century'.
The composition of formal verse satire, in Latin, on the models of Horace, Juvenal and Persius was revived in Italy during the fifteenth century. Around the beginning of the sixteenth century, under the influence of the Roman poets as well as the Italian poet, Francesco Filelfo, its practice spread throughout Europe. This paper will show how poets and critics throughout Europe, at the turn of the sixteenth century, understood the nature of Roman satire and how they incorporated that understanding into their own poetry. In particular, it will look at satirical poems by several authors, explore metrical and stylistic practices, and examine how the ancient form was adapted for contemporary concerns.
Thursday 12 May
David Rijser (Amsterdam), 'Ekphrasis at the Vatican: High Renaissance Reception of
Vergilian Prophecy and Synecdoche'.
High Renaissance Reception of Vergilian Prophecy and Synecdoche An extraordinary corpus of ekphrastic epigrams was produced for the sculpture collection of Julius II in the Cortile delle Statue in the Vatican, witness the efforts of curial humanists like Fausto Maria Maddalena Capodiferro, Andrea Fulvio and Antonio Flaminio Siculo, but also more famous authors like Castiglione and, of course, Navagero. In fact, this genre seems to have taken precedence over all others in the Latin poetry of Julius' court. The critical attitude to these productions (to the extent that they have been studied at all) has predominantly been to consider them evidence for a new aesthetic and antiquarian sensibility at this time and place. Yet to explain the prominence of ekphrasis at Julius' court, other paradigms need to be taken into account. The connection of the subject matter of these poems with themes from the Aeneid, although noticed by (art-) historians, has not yet been sufficiently explored in this context, nor has the function of Vergilian ekphrasis in the Aeneid as postulated by recent Vergilian scholarship yet entered into the discussion of the Vatican poetry. This lecture will exemplify Vatican ekphrastic poetry and argue from it that the reception of Vergil is crucial to its understanding, and consequently to an interpretation of the Julian programme in general, connecting as it does Augustan strategies of propaganda and legitimacy in the Aeneid with Julian rule. As the Cortile delle Statue was visible from the Stanza della Segnatura when Julius officiated there, it is reasonable to connect both the sculpture collection and its ecphrastic poetry with the decorations of the Stanza della Segnatura in general, and Raphael's fresco of Parnassus and its Vergilian epigraph in particular. I will pursue this connection, concluding that art and poetry functioned together as prophetic utterance of papal supremacy and proof of the legitimacy of papal claims, to which both the use of the Latin language and the reference to the Aeneid were essential.
2011 Lent term seminars
Thursday 17 February, Junior Parlour, T Staircase, Blue Boar Court, Trinity College
Nick Hardy (Oxford), 'Patrick Young and the study of Greek literature in Britain
and the republic of letters, 1609-1657'
As royal librarian to James and then Charles, Patrick Young devoted most of his career to the study and publication of Greek texts. Many of these were ecclesiastical, and had a clear relevance to contemporary religious affairs. Others, however, were not; and even in his work on early Christianity, Young demonstrated a profound knowledge of and interest in a broader spectrum of Greek literary history, from the pagan classics to the literature of Byzantium.
Young's correspondents and colleagues fell into two categories. Some were renowned theological authors, mostly based in Britain; some were great classical scholars and members of the European republic of letters. The most influential figure in his career was Isaac Casaubon, who occupied both. What, if any, institutional contexts can explain Young's intellectual preoccupations? What did it mean for Young to be a 'Hellenist', rather than an expert on ancient languages in general? And what is the significance of the freedom with which he absorbed and juxtaposed sacred and secular forms of Greek culture?
Thursday 3 March, Junior Parlour, T Staircase, Blue Boar Court, Trinity College
Luke Houghton (Glasgow), 'Some neo-Latin responses to Virgil's fourth Eclogue'.
From antiquity onwards, Virgil's fourth Eclogue, the so-called 'messianic' eclogue, has been endlessly quoted, adapted and transformed for a multitude of different purposes, across a wide variety of literary and artistic media. This presentation provides the opportunity to explore some of the ways in which Virgil's poem has been used by writers of neo-Latin poetry and prose, from papal Rome to Medici Florence to Jacobite Scotland - and beyond. Examination of the spheres of politics, religion and aesthetics reveals how negotiations with the text of the fourth Eclogue can reflect something of the ideals, attitudes and aspirations of the authors who engaged with Virgil's composition, of the patrons for whom they wrote, and of the societies within with they were operating.
Thursday 17 March, Godwin Room, D Staircase, Old Court, Clare College
David Money (Cambridge), 'How to write Latin poetry'.
2010 Michaelmas term seminars
Thursday 21 October, Thirkill Room, F5 Old CourtHANDLING DEMANDING TEXTS:a round-table seminar which will examine the challenges of demanding neo-Latin texts and present various strategies for their interpretation. Please find attached some of the materials for discussion:
- From Poliziano's 'Oratio super Fabio Quintiliano et Statii Sylvis' here:
- From Budé's De asse here:
- Dedication from Turrecremata's Expositio super toto psalterio
(1478): http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0004/bsb00044186/image_5
AND
(1471): http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0004/bsb00044170/image_7 - http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k70791g.image.r=melchior+volmar.f29.langEN
Thursday 4 November, Latimer Room, E Staircase, Old Court, Clare College
PETER MACK (Warburg), 'The Impact of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1620'.
Peter Mack has just completed A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380-1620, concentrating mainly on the Latin tradition from Antonio Loschi to Nicholas Caussin, but including some discussion of vernacular rhetoric textbooks. In this paper he will outline the shape of the book and discuss some of the conclusions he has reached.
Thursday 18 November, Godwin Room, D staircase, Old CourtMICHAEL ALLEN (UCLA), 'The Shade of Hercules: Ficino and Orphic Theology'.
The myth of Orpheus and the musical, magical and even philosophical ideals he represents has had a long and complex history that is indeed still with us. In particular, I am trying to unravel some of the Renaissance interpreters' reactions to the challenging Platonic notion that Orpheus had been weakened by music and had become a failed lover. How was this reconcilable with the Neoplatonic veneration of Orpheus - a veneration that Ficino at least ardently embraced - as the third luminary in the six-link chain of ancient sages that had culminated in Plato? In attempting to account for these opposing views, these opposing Orpheuses, I turn to what the Renaissance Platonists had determined were the basic principles of an Orphic theology.
2010 Easter term seminars
Thursday 2 June, in the LATIMER (not Godwin) RoomProfessor Peter Godman, University of Rome/Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor, 'The Preaching of the Archpoet'.
The Archpoet is the most famous, and least understood, author of the Latin Middle Ages. This paper explores the borderline between irony and blasphemy in his preaching, which is set in its intellectual and political contexts. Thursday 22 April
Pernille Harsting (Copenhagen and Leuven): 'Menandri acutissimi ac sapientissimi Rhetoris De genere demonstrativo libri duo: the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Latin translations of the peri epideiktikon'.
The publication in 1558 of Natale Conti's Latin translation of Menander Rhetor's epideictic treatises, De genere demonstrativo libri duo, marks the end of a series of translations of this Late-Classical work in the Italian Renaissance. Along with the imported Byzantine manuscripts, the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian manuscript copies, and the editio princeps (from 1508) of the Greek text, the translations into Latin and the vernacular ensured the dissemination among scholars, orators, and poets, of Menander Rhetor's precepts for a variety of epideictic subgenres. In this paper I discuss the problems related to determining the extent of the work's dissemination as well as the actual influence of the Late-Classical epideictic precepts on Neo-Latin occasional oratory and poetry. To exemplify my discussion I specifically focus on the dedicatory letter by Natale Conti that opens his 1558 translation of the whole of the Peri epideiktikon. Not only does the letter take the shape of a laudation of Conti's princely dedicatee, it also underlines the high regard that Menander Rhetor's work enjoyed, according to Conti, in the context of the burgeoning sixteenth-century literature: "[the] part of eloquence which deals with praise and vituperation of individual feats has largely come to prevail not only in historical writing but also in other parts of literature - and no one ever wrote more elaborately or copiously on that matter than Menander. Therefore I felt I ought to translate his work into Latin [ ]."
2010 Lent term seminars
Thursday 11 FebruaryBrenda Hosington (Warwick): 'Mary Roper Basset and Elizabeth Cooke Russell, Translators of Neo-Latin Religious Texts'.
LEVERHULME LECTURES 2010
Professor Peter Godman, Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor, gave eight Leverhulme Public Lectures on Tuesdays at 5 p.m., in Lecture Block Room 1, Sidgwick Avenue. The theme of the lectures was The Culture of the Barbarians: The Archpoet and his World, and the programme was as follows:- January 19th: The Cultural Identity of the Barbarians
- January 26th: The Myth of Empire
- February 2nd: The Wandering Court
- February 9th: War, Schism, and Poetry
- February 16th: The Illusion of Rule in Italy
- February 23rd: Why Barbarossa was Boring
- March 2nd: Irony, Blasphemy, and the Limits of Medieval Culture
- March 9th: The Archpoet and the Alternative Culture
2009 Michaelmas term seminars
Thursday 15 OctoberPhilip Ford (Cambridge), 'Obscenity and the lex Catulliana: Uses and Abuses of Catullus 16 in French Renaissance Poetry'.
Thursday 29 October
NEO-LATIN READING SESSION
This meeting will study two or three texts from a linguistic as well as literary point of view. The texts addressed will include Andrew Marvell's 'A Letter to Dr Ingelo' (available in most *Complete Poems*), and modern neo-Latin poetry (which will be circulated next week). The session aims to be of general interest, and useful for those studying neo-Latin writing.
Thursday 12 November
Harry Stevenson (Cambridge), 'Poliziano's Human Poetics: Rewriting Neo-Platonic Theories of Inspiration and Allegory in Renaissance Florence'.
A cursory reading of Politian's Silvae and of his Oratio in expositione Homeri suggests that he subscribed to Ficinian thought on the nature of the poet and of poetry. However, in this paper I will seek to show that Politian was sceptical about the Ficinian notion that poets are divinely inspired, and the related idea that they are the vehicle for god-given truths. To this end, I will propose that the narratives in the Silvae are more intriguing and unusual than is initially apparent; they are perhaps not, after all, examples of hyperbolic epideictic rhetoric, but parables on the nature of poetry and poetic composition. I will also consider the way in which Politian's text renegotiates the status of the poet following his downgrading from a divine figure; from Boccaccio on, the poet qua repository of divine truths was initially a means of justifying the study of pagan poets. The Silvae can thus be read not only as an astounding display of textual erudition, but also as a text that would have unsettled their intended audience.
2009 Easter term seminars
Thursday 30 April5.30pm in the Godwin Room, D staircase, Old Court, Clare College.
Marianne Pade, 'Latin and the Vernacular in Fifteenth-Century Italy'
Was humanist Latin simply a more or less successful imitation of the written language of Antiquity? And did the conscious endeavour to use the language of an earlier culture in fact bring about the end of Latin as a living language? Many scholars would answer these questions in the affirmative and, with regard to the first of them, refer to early modern theoreticians of language who almost inevitably pointed to classical Latin as the linguistic norm. In my paper I shall question these views and try to show 1) that Renaissance theoreticians of language reflected on the relationship between Latin and the contemporary spoken vernaculars, and 2) that post-medieval Latin was a living language, developing in constant interaction with the modern vernaculars.
Thursday 28 May
5.30pm in the Glover Room in Lerner Court, Clare College. (Lerner Court is the new court facing the University Library)
Yasmin Haskell, 'Pleasure-seekers, posers, and prudes: An eighteenth-century Dutch doctor's (Gerhard Nicolaas Heerkens) Latin observations on the Italians, French, and Frisians.'
Almost every aspect of the literary activity of Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens, a cosmopolitan Dutch physician and Latin poet, is characterised by 'note-taking' in one form or another, from memoir to medical mnemonic. The focus of this paper is a Latin prose work, 'Notabilia', in which Heerkens describes his Grand Tour of Italy in the middle of the eighteenth century. It is characterised by detailed observation of places, but also of people. What is the genre of this work? Is it a late flowering of the humanist educational journey? Does it have pretensions to elegance and exemplarity (it is, after all, written in Latin), or are we dealing with something rather more humble? Finally, for whom is Heerkens writing, and why is he writing in Latin? The research for this paper is part of a larger collaborative project, funded by the Australian Research Council, to map the uses of Latin during the Enlightenment in Europe, beginning with Italy and the Netherlands.
2009 Lent term seminars
Thursday 22 JanuarySarah Knight (Leicester), 'Milton's Student Writings'
The Prolusions, a series of Latin prose orations first published in 1674, were composed during the late 1620s and early 1630s, and delivered in College and in the Public Schools while Milton was a student at Christ's College. Critics and historians have often tended to overlook the plays, poems and orations students composed while at the early modern universities, and certainly Milton's Prolusions are among the least known and least read of his works. Yet during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the experience of higher education was crucial in shaping the works that writers produced after graduation. The Prolusions vary widely in tone and subject, and this paper will focus on those orations which contain Milton's fullest representations of university life, Prolusions One, Three and Six. In the first Prolusion, the speaker is supposed to debate whether day is better than night, but spends a considerable amount of time off-course discussing the authority and shortcomings of classical poetry, while in the third Prolusion, he anatomizes the university curriculum, particularly scholastic method; Prolusion Six, by contrast, offers a satirical anatomy of college life and of particular individuals within the academic microcosm.
I will consider how skills developed in the Prolusions - particularly the performance of authoritative, eloquent first-person self-expression, and the creation of distinct rhetorical personae - would prove extremely important for Milton's authorial career. I will also compare Milton�s representations of university life in the Prolusions with the perspectives on the academy he offers elsewhere in his writing, from the glimpses into Stuart Cambridge offered by the English 'Lycidas' and the Latin 'Elegia Prima', to his contemptuous assessment of college amateur dramatics in the Apology for Smectymnuus ('There while they acted and overacted, I was a spectator') to the intellectual temptations represented by the Athenian academy in Book Four of Paradise Regained.
Thursday 26 February
Catarina Fouto (St Peter's College, Oxford), 'Iacobus Tevius (c.1514-1569): imitatio and mimesis in the *Epodon sive Iambicorum libri tres* (Lisbon, 1565). Neo-Latin Humanism and Counter-Reformation in Portugal'
Diogo de Teive was a typical scholar of his day: a traveller, who spent most of his formative years abroad, in Europe. He would return to Portugal with George Buchanan, Nicholas de Grouchy, Guillaume de Guérente and João da Costa, thanks to the initiative of King John III, but cultural freedom in Teive's homeland would not last. Buchanan, João da Costa and Diogo de Teive were accused of Protestantism by the Inquisition, and sentenced to imprisonment. Nonetheless, Teive did not leave the country, and he remained close to the Portuguese royal family and to the court until his death, possibly in 1569.
This paper will focus on the hitherto unedited epithalamium written by Diogo de Teive, in 1565, on the occasion of the important marriage of D. Maria (daughter of D. Duarte, granddaughter of King D. Manuel) and Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma (nephew of Philip II of Spain). The poem was dedicated to Cardinal Henry, at the time Regent in Portugal. The study of this particular poem (a post-Tridentine Christian epithalamium that includes a vivid mythological narrative in its mid-section) is challenging.
A preliminary analysis of the text indicates that the author used Paulinus Nolanus' epithalamium (carmen XX) as a model of structural imitatio, by presenting the aetiology of the Christian sacrament of marriage in the opening lines of the poem. The nature of the concept of imitatio adopted by Diogo de Teive will be discussed. The causes and implications of assuming that concept of imitatio will be brought to debate, while trying to evaluate in what way it reflects a particular historical and cultural ambiance in Portugal at the time. The concept of mimesis and the impact of the Council of Trent on the work of the Portuguese humanist will be analysed, bearing in mind the political and social changes in Portugal in the second half of the sixteenth century.
It should not be forgotten that Diogo de Teive was a humanist who lived side by side with the main agents of Counter-Reformation in Portugal. In that sense, Teive's epithalamium witnesses that writers were not always prepared to abandon their humanistic background to adjust to the emergent cultural scene.
Keywords: Iacobus Tevius' (c. 1514 - 1569) Epithalamium in laudem nuptiarum Alexandri et Mariae principum Parmae et Placentiae; imitatio; mimesis; Counter-Reformation in Portugal.
2008 Michaelmas term seminars
strong>Thursday 6 NovemberRobert Forgacs (University of New South Wales), 'Gallus Dressler's *Praecepta musicae poëticae* and musical humanism in 16th century Germany'
This paper will examine one of the most significant treatises on the composition of music written in 16th century Germany. Delivered as a series of lectures at the Lateinschule in Magdeburg between 1563 and 1564 it survives in only one manuscript copy. It was written specifically for an environment sympathetic to the humanist ideals of the time, and its author, Gallus Dressler, was both a humanist and a composer, possessed of a sound classical education. The treatise will be examined in the context of musical humanism in 16th century Germany, while the nature of the unicum will also be considered - the number of scribes involved and the various revisions to the Neo-Latin text. The influence of the treatise and Dressler's achievement as a writer and educator will also be assessed.
Thursday 20 November
Victoria Moul (The Queen's College, Oxford), 'Virgilian Politics and the Royalist Cause: the last book of Abraham Cowley's *Plantarum Libri Sex*'
Abraham Cowley's "Six Books of Plants", only published in complete form in 1668, a year after his death, was widely read, much admired, translated and several times reissued in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Despite its fascinating blend of literary, mythological, scientific and political content, it has however attracted almost no critical attention in modern times. In this paper I aim to give an outline of the work and its significance, and to discuss in particular the Virgilian texture of the climactic final book. By focusing upon this aspect of the work I hope to give a sense of the distinctive interaction in the Plantarum between emergent scientific knowledge and classical literature, and to suggest some of the ways in which Cowley's poem uses genre and allusion to associate this powerful blend with the Royalist cause itself.
2008 Easter term seminars
Thursday 1 May, Godwin Room, D Stair, Old Court, Clare CollegeJonathan Patterson (Selwyn College, Cambridge), ‘Irony and the Representations of the Female in Erasmus's Laus Stultitiae (Praise of Folly)'
In 1511 Erasmus gave the world his famous encomium, the Praise of Folly, perhaps most aptly described as 'humanism on holiday'. But when the great Dutch humanist gets in the holiday spirit, no topic or person is safe from his penetrating, ironic critique. Erasmus gently mocks, pours out stringent ridicule and mystical praise - but in the guise of an allegedly silly woman: his celebrated Stultitia.
I propose a two-fold analysis of Erasmus's text, examining firstly the subversive status of 'Stultitia' as a woman, and secondly, the multiple opportunities for irony this affords her as both subject and object of her discourse.
Thursday 22 May, Latimer Room, Old Court, Clare College
Anthony Ossa-Richardson (Warburg Institute), 'Tau's Revenge: Lucianic Imitation and the Greek Alphabet in Humanist Europe'
This paper examines two humanist imitations of, and responses to, Lucian's Iudicium Vocalium, one in Latin by Celio Calcagnini (1539), the other in Greek by Miguel Jeronimo Ledesma (1545). These two pieces are situated against the labours of Western humanists to learn Greek, its alphabet and its correct pronunciation, during the sixteenth century. Along the way I discuss the history of alphabetic play - from the perspective of sigma and tau - the correct shape of the Christian cross, various ancient sources on the shape and sound of the two letters, and the humanist methods of the use and reuse of classical and contemporary material.
2008 Lent term seminars
Thursday 7 FebruaryDaniel Andersson ((Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftgeschichte, Berlin), ‘Nisi loquitur ανιστορικώς: Marc Antoine Muret and the Past’
The paper starts with a simple-minded attempt to discover the meaning of the ‘NeoGreek’ term ανιστορικώς. to recover the nature of Muret's philological activity and to suggest a more nuanced way of relating him to a shift in the nature of philology's engagement with the ancient past that occured between the middle and the end of the sixteenth century. In particular, I want to uncover the senses, if any, in which different senses of chronology and the construction of a layered history occur differently across the various disciplines with whose texts he concerned himself. The paper also makes, if at a somewhat muted and implicit level, an appeal for a convergence of at least two styles of intellectual history.
Thursday 6 March
Hélène Cazes (University of Victoria, British Columbia), 'A Republic of Friends, the Album Amicorum of Bonaventura Vulcanius (1575-1614)'.
Between 1575 and 1614, Bonaventura Vulcanius gathered on his copy of Henri Estienne's Parodiae Morales some 117 inscriptions from 'friends'. The detailed reading of the collection is a biographical sketch of the owner's life as much as the shimmering reflection of self-representations and self-constructions at play with the 'ceremony of the album amicorum'. Without giving a panoramic history of the genre, the presentation will put the album in context, within the practice of academic inscriptions at the end of the 16th century, within the life of Bonaventura Vulcanius, and within the use of classical quotations. Thus, by comparing the album amicorum with the literae amicorum and with other biographical evidence, as well as by reading through the leaves stories of banquets and testimonies of circles, it will set out a case study in intellectual history and its implications: what does 'friend' mean, what is the status of the classical references? and what of the Biblical quotations? Under what conditions can we read it as a historical document? And, what are the circumstances when, paradoxically, poems avoid betraying any personal detail? In these public demonstrations of immortal affections, is there still a trace of a private memory? Last, following the thread of Erasmus's Adages in the album, I propose that the gathering, the exhibition, and the reading of the album perform the recognition of a community amongst humanists: a Republic of friends, where loyalties cross generations, borders, and, often, religious allegiances.
2007 Michaelmas term seminars
Thursday 25 October (Thirkill Room, F5 Old Court)An Introduction to On-Line Resources for Neo-Latin and Early Modern Literature
Thursday 8 November (Godwin Room, D staircase Old Court)
Paul White (Cambridge), 'Badius Ascensius and the Commerce of Learning: Print and Profit in Early Sixteenth-Century France'.
Thursday 22 November (Godwin Room, D staircase Old Court)
Roundtable on Rhetoric
2007 Easter term seminars
Thursday 10 May (Thirkill Room, F5 Old Court)Neo-Latin and the Vernacular
This meeting will consist of two short papers on the relationships between neo-Latin and the vernacular:
- Philip Ford (Clare): 'The Symbiotic Muse: Neo-Latin and Vernacular Exchanges in Renaissance Lyon'.
- Andrew Taylor (Churchill): 'Neo-Latin and the Vernacular in early Tudor Poetry'.
Thursday 24 May (Latimer Room, E staircase Old Court)
Arnould Visser (St Andrew's), 'Will and Grace in the Low Countries: G. J. Vossius and the Theological Encyclopedia as a Political Instrument'.
The relationship between human will, divine grace and predestination was not just a key issue at the start of the Reformation, it long continued to spark controversy in both Protestant and Catholic corners of the Christian world. In the beginning of the seventeenth century the issue deeply divided the young Dutch Republic. What started as a dispute between the theologians Arminius and Gomarus, developed into a political power struggle which nearly ended in civil war.
At the height of this crisis, the humanist Gerardus Johannes Vossius published his History of the Pelagian controversies (1618), an encyclopedic account of patristic debates on predestination and grace. In form and scope it is an exemplary case of late-humanist learning. Yet, unlike some perceptions of this culture, Vossius’ book was not a purely academic study, but a daring political enterprise, meant to direct public opinion. It would cause the author to lose his job at the university of Leiden, and landed him in a church disciplinary case which lasted over six years. By examining the forms, functions and consequences of Vossius’ work this paper aims to illuminate how humanist scholarship was conditioned by patronage, politics and confessional discipline.
2007 Lent term seminars
Thursday 1 February (Thirkill Room)Round-Table on 'Rhetoric and Self-Presentation in Dedicatory Epistles'.
Thursday 15 February (Thirkill Room)
Dirk van Miert (Warburg Institute), 'Propter historiam retinenda: Salmasius, Scaliger and the discovery of the Anthologia Palatina'.
In the winter of 1606-1607, the young Claudius Salmasius discovered the Anthologia Palatina, a manuscript containing a better and more complete version of the Greek Anthology than the fourteenth century version of Maximus Planudes known until then. Salmasius reported his discovery to perhaps the greatest scholars of his time, Joseph Scaliger. As Salmasius' letters were thought to be lost, the event has always been reconstructed from Scaliger's answers. However, last year Salmasius' own letters finally surfaced, allowing a full assessment of their discussion of the newly discovered texts. The discussion reveals that Scaliger is aware of the subjectivity of his own aesthetic standards. He is able to reflect on the distance between subject and historical object, and he judges the new material on the basis of historical, rather than aesthetic value. These opinions illustrate the increasing historicization of classical philology in Northern Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century.
Thursday 8 March (Godwin Room)Michiel Verweij (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België/Bibliothèque royale de Belgique), 'Winnie the Pooh in Latin. How to put delightful English into equally enjoyable Latin'.
20th-century Latin literature is a curious kind of literature and one of its main characteristics is that it is conscientiously curious. Another characteristic is the prominent presence of a totally new kind of literature: translations from popular classics in the vernacular, such as comics and children's books. Among the finest of this latter genre must without any doubt be reckoned Alexander Lenard's translation of Winnie-the-Pooh, under the name, not of Sanders, but of Winnie ille Pu. It is the object of the present paper to see in what way Lenard (1910-1972) realised his tour de force, how he rendered the very British style of A.A. Milne into a very acceptable Latin. I will try to analyse some passages, without, of course, omitting such vital elements as heffalumps and hums. In contrast to many similar efforts, Lenard succeeded in writing good Latin and the result was one of the rare bestsellers in Latin ever. This commercial success, which is another characteristic of 20th-century Latin literature, at least in this genre, stands in marked contrast to the ever diminishing knowledge of Latin with most pupils and students: although a definite explanation can, as yet, not be given, I will try to shed some light on that matter too.
2006 Michaelmas term seminars
Thursday 19 October 2006 (Thirkill Room, Old Court, Clare College)Seminar on Neo-Latin Love Poetry
A series of short presentations with round-table discussion on the influence of classical love poetry on neo-Latin poets.
Thursday 14 November 2006 (Thirkill Room, Old Court, Clare College)Frances Muecke (Sidney), 'Poems on Rome from the circle of Pomponio Leto: history, topography, encomium'
The second Roman academy of Pomponio Leto and Angelo Colocci fostered both antiquarian research and poetic celebration of Rome. Unique among these Roman poems is Fulvio's Antiquaria urbis (1513), essentially a versification of the doctrine found, e.g., in Biondo's Roma Instaurata, bringing up to date the topographical and archaeological content. This paper sets Antiquaria urbis in its context of contemporary poems and scholarship on Rome and tries to grapple with its particular envisioning of the idea of Rome.
2006 Easter term seminars
Thursday 11 May 2006 (Godwin Room, D Old Court, Clare College)John F. McDiarmid, 'Hoc quod in Cicerone excellens est': the Protestant Ciceronianism of Sir John Cheke (1514-1557)
The mid-Tudor Cambridge Protestant Humanists, including John Cheke, Thomas Smith and Roger Ascham, undoubtedly considered Cicero a supreme model of eloquence. The nature of their admiration, however, has been in question ever since Francis Bacon accused them of making verbal imitation of Cicero an end in itself, and caring more for 'words than matter'. In recent decades, Thomas Greene and Alvin Vos sought to refute this charge. This paper aims to define further the dimensions of Cheke's Ciceronianism.
Cheke saw Demosthenes and Cicero as the outstanding, but not the sole exemplars of the 'perfect' ages of Greek and Latin eloquence. Within his sphere Cicero's writings have a role analogous to Scripture's in religion, encapsulating Latin's 'perfect' age as the New Testament does the practice of Christ and the primitive church. 'Perfect' Latin is a 'lingua emancipata', terminology related to the Protestant conception of Christian freedom effected by the gospel.
Cheke believed English could also reach perfection, and sought to achieve Ciceronian 'concinnitas' in his English style, which anticipates Euphuism. Finally, eloquence for Cheke, as for Cicero himself, was not at all an end in itself, but a tool to be used by citizens in public service. Cheke's imitation of Demosthenes and Cicero encompassed not just language, but the 'monarchical republicanism' which informed his active political role at the court of Edward VI.. Cheke's Ciceronianism thus was, in actuality, a broad-ranging, energetic Protestant civic humanism.
Thursday 25 May 2006 (Latimer Room, E Old Court, Clare College)Raphaele Fruet (Trinity), 'Strategies of quoting in Renaissance French Natural Philosophy: forms and functions of quotations in the polemical definition of science'
This paper will try to identify the principles of selection as well as the level of integration of quotations and connect it to argumentative strategies in the scientific debate about the changing object and methods of science during the Renaissance. It will rely on Pontus de Tyard's introduction to his dialogue Le Premier Curieux (printed in 1557), on Jean Bodin's opening exchange of his also dialogical work, Theatrum Naturae (printed in 1596) and his French translation, and on Montaigne's Apologie de Raymond Sebond (written around 1572).
Direct quotations only appear in the Apologie, whereas the three other texts integrate them in different ways. Bodin paraphrases his sources in Latin, and Pontus translates them into the vernacular. The French translation of the Theatrum implies further modifications of the source texts.
Paradoxically, the Apologie is a pessimistic deconstruction of the very possibility of science and utterly empties its ancient sources of their authority, whereas Bodin's and Pontus' more allusive and sometimes subversive uses of these authorites allow them to redefine the aims and modalities of scientific discourse.
2006 Lent term seminars
Tuesday 16 March 2006Dominic Baker-Smith, 'Tranquillitas animi: Humanism and Spiritual Reassurance, 1533-1543'
My talk will be concerned with what might be described as the passing of the Erasmian moment, and I hope in the process to give some definition to that slippery term. The two dates in my title relate to writings that illustrate my argument, Erasmus' De sarcienda ecclesiae Concordia of 1533 and Florens Wilson's De animi tranquillitate dialogus of 1543. As I shall endeavour to show, the two works are connected. In the first part of the talk I will look at Erasmus' strategy of reform as 'reanimation' his insistence on subjective response (affectus) as a necessary validation of religious acts, a consequence of his humanist assumptions. One result of this is the adoption of doctrinal formulations with more concern for their affective force than for their precise theological burden. Justification by faith, taken from one perspective as the corollary of human depravity, might alternatively be seen as the persuasive expression of God's loving initiative. As confessional boundaries harden in the 1530s the ambivalence of such subjective handling of religious themes is increasingly vulnerable. In the second part of my paper I will use the career of Florens Wilson - linking, as it does, London with Paris, Lyons and Lucca - to examine the fate of those in his circle (or circles) who hoped to accommodate the personal urgency of reform within a framework of received tradition. Finally, I will introduce some excerpts from his Commentatio Theologica (1539) and the De animi tranquillitate both published in Lyons by Gryphius and comment on their reception and afterlife. Thursday 16 February 2006
Douglas Paine (Trinity), 'Votum Tragoedia: Politics and Patronage in Christopherson's Jephthah (c. 1544)' John Christopherson's Jephthah (c. 1544) is an unusual play in several respects, not least because it is written in Greek. It is also a notable example of the 'Christian Euripides' tradition, an attempt to partner the language and form of Athenian tragedy with an explicitly Christian moral frame. This paper assesses Christopherson's aims and success in that marriage, particularly in relation to his position as a young humanist fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, and evidence from the surviving manuscripts which suggests that the play was used in a bid for the Regius Chair of Greek. However, I also consider the appeal of the Jephthah episode: why Christopherson should have chosen a story about a rash vow and a sacrificed daughter, and what his play may tell us about oppositional writing, as expressed in university drama of the period.
2005 Michaelmas term seminars
Thirkill Room in Old Court, Clare College at 5.30 pm
Thursday 20 October 2005
Jacqueline Glomski (King's College, London), 'Self-Representation in Neo-Latin Writing: Rudolf Agricola Junior's Letters to Joachim Vadian (1511-21)' How did someone go about promoting his academic career in the first third of the sixteenth century? How was his career advancement challenged if he was a follower of the new learning coming from Italy? What was the experience of young scholars with humanist leanings who found themselves on the eastern fringes of Latin Europe? This paper draws on the correspondence of an aspiring poeta with a more established scholar in order to investigate the strategies that the younger man, in his search for stable employment, used in representing himself to his mentor. The paper demonstrates that Rudolf Agricola Junior, a typical wandering poet-scholar of central Europe, was conscious of his occupational identity and of the behaviour required by the patronage system to which his occupation belonged. Thursday 17 November 2005
Seminar: 'The Development of Humanist Latin: Responses to Ann Moss's Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn' Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor will introduce a discussion of Ann Moss's recent work, focusing initially on the Introduction and Chapter 4, 'Composition'. All are welcome. Wine will be served during the discussion.
2005 Easter term seminars
Tuesday 17 May 2005Thirkill Room, F5 Old Court, Clare College
INGRID DE SMET (Warwick), Peace Talks: Books, Scholarship, and the Pursuit of Peace during the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598)
The history of reading and scholarship as socio-intellectual activities has become a burgeoning field of study. For France in the second half of the sixteenth century, when the Wars of Religion tore the country apart, scholarship, reading and the writing associated with it, have been construed, in the most general of terms, as reactions to religious conflict and social turmoil (e.g. by A. Grafton). The present paper proposes to test and concretize this view of reading, writing, and book-collecting as irenist pursuits: it will point to the emergence of an irenist discourse, and analyse the contemporary portrayal of these activities by figures such as Jacques-Auguste de Thou (Jacobus Augustus Thuanus), Florent Chrestien (Florens Christianus) or Theodorus Marcilius. As such the paper seeks to counterbalance a trend in criticism that has underlined (albeit not unreasonably) the outcries of injustice, bloodshed and violence, and to complement, from the perspective of the study of intellectual culture, current work in progress by historians who seek to understand the political peace processes of the French Wars of Religion. 5.30pm on Thursday 9 June 2005
Latimer Room, E Old Court, Clare College
Tania Demetriou (Trinity College, Cambridge), Spenser's Homers Spenser's awareness of the Homeric poems is usually dismissed as vague or at second hand. After a brief sketch of how Spenser may have read his Homer, this paper explores some examples of Spenser's reading of Homer through secondary sources (Roman poetry, Italian epic, mythographical handbooks, proverbial ideas) and argues that Spenser's is possibly the first sustained attempt in Renaissance England to penetrate through this body of ideas to Homer's text --from 'Homer Prince of Poets' to Homer the poet.
2005 Lent term seminars
Thursday, 3 February 2005Eleanor Merchant (Queen Mary), "Voluntarium in Germania exilium" - aspects of exile in the works of Laurence Humphrey.
In the Autumn of 1553 Laurence Humphrey, fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, was granted leave of absence to study abroad. The college provided funds for him, on condition that he did not frequent "those places that are suspected to be heretical". Humphrey subsequently travelled to Zurich and, lodging with other English exiles, used his new found access to sympathetic printers to make known his literary and protestant views. During this period Humphrey published a number of tracts that would provide the means for him to present himself as a heavyweight protestant intellectual with much to offer England under reformation. Humphrey's programme for reform is made explicit in texts which demonstrate a resolute intention to return home. I intend to examine Humphrey's portrayal of his "voluntary exile" in works published during this period and following his return under Elizabethan rule.
Thursday, 3 March 2005
Cristina Neagu (Christ Church, Oxford), Rhetorical Theology, Nicolaus Olahus and the Counter-Reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary
Nicolaus Olahus (1493-1568) was a central figure of Northern humanism. He was a much admired diplomat and man of the church at the courts of Queen Mary of Hungary in Brussels and King Ferdinand in Buda. As Primate of Hungary Olahus did everything in his power to Reclaim Roman Catholicism. He set up huge administrative tasks, such as moving the archbishop's See from Esztergom (conquered by the Turks) to Trnava, and transforming the town into a flourishing cultural centre. He launched a campaign against clerics who abused their titles, invited the Jesuits to Hungary and organized five provincial synods focusing on discussions regarding dogma and discipline as established at the Council of Trent. However, it was not only through his administrative efforts, but also through his doctrinal works that the Primate influenced the course of Counter-Reformation in Hungary. His devotional writings were part of this self-imposed task. They were meant to inspire and to reveal theological inconsistencies among opponents. What makes Olahus's devotional work particularly interesting and valuable is the special type of rhetoric used by the author and the fact that, despite being published between 1558 and 1560 (i.e. before the third period of Trent), it covers many themes dealt with only at the Council's concluding meetings. It therefore may be regarded among the important contributions by individual theologians seeking to reform the Church from within.
2004 Michaelmas term seminars
Thursday, 4 November 2004Niklas Holzberg (University of Munich), A Bit of Both: Autobiography and Intertextuality in Willibald Pirckheimer's Apologia seu Podagrae Laus.
In 1521 the Nuremberg humanist Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530), famous in particular for his translations of Greek texts, published a mock encomium in which the personified gout sings her own praises. There are in this Lady Podagra, who stands in court as defendant, overtones of Pirckheimer himself, who, with his pro-Lutheran stance, was on various occasions required to conduct his own defence in the face of imminent excommunication. In addition, the Apologia is skillfully interwoven with intertextual references to classical texts, above all to Plato's Apology.
Thursday, 25 November 2004
Monique Mund-Dopchie (Louvain-la-Neuve), True History and False History in Dithmar Bkefken's Treatise "Islandia" (first edition 1607).
Dithmar Blefken is a minor, rather unknown geographer, whose treatise was regarded as obsolete since XVIIIth century. Its "Islandia" however was an editorial success in Northern Europe. My paper on this topic looks in fact like a detective enquiry. I shall first add some new elements to the short biographical notices dedicated to Blefken. Then, I intend to analyze the treatise content, mainly its claim to be a true report of a real travel. Thirdly, I shall make some assumptions about its survival by considering the historical, political and economic background of the publication. Finally, as an Hercule Poirot or Maigret, I shall give my own conclusions about this minor episode of Discovery history.
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