Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700)
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SUPPLEMENTA HUMANISTICA LOVANIENSIA XXXIII NEO-LATIN COMMENTARIES AND THE MANAGEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD (1400-1700) Edited by Karl ENENKEL & Henk NELLEN LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS 2013 Reprint from Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge (1400-1700) - ISBN 978 90 5867 936 9 - © Leuven University Press, 2013 96085_Enenkel&Nellen_vw.indd III 3/07/13 16:37 © 2013 Leuven University Press / Universitaire Pers Leuven / Presses Universitaires de Louvain, Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium). All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated datafile or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. ISBN 978 90 5867 936 9 D/2013/1869/5 NUR: 694 Reprint from Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge (1400-1700) - ISBN 978 90 5867 936 9 - © Leuven University Press, 2013 96085_Enenkel&Nellen_vw.indd IV 3/07/13 16:37 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...................................................................... IX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................ XIII INTRODUCTION. NEO-LATIN COMMENTARIES AND THE MANAGEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE 1. The Neo-Latin Commentary (1400-1700): A Forgotten and Misunderstood Genre ................................................................ 1 2. The Increased Importance of the Commentary and Other Para- texts in the Early Modern Period .............................................. 5 3. The Commentary as an Open Genre. The Early Modern Com- mentary’s Tendency toward Emancipation from the Source Text ............................................................................................ 8 4. The Kaleidoscopic Functions of the Early Modern Commentary 12 a. The Commentary as a Means of Authorization ................. 14 b. The Commentary as an Educational Tool at Schools and Universities ......................................................................... 17 c. Early Modern Commentaries as Encyclopedias of Learning 23 d. Commentaries and Textual Criticism ................................ 29 e. Commentaries and the Cultural History of Antiquity (Ars Antiquitatis) ........................................................................ 32 f. Political Commentary ........................................................ 33 g. Commentaries as Stimuli for Social Cohesion and as Polemical Platforms ........................................................... 35 h. Parafrasis as Literary Exercise ......................................... 37 i. Manuscript Annotations in Printed Books ........................ 38 5. The Layout of the Early Modern Commentary ........................ 39 6. Indexing ..................................................................................... 54 7. Related Genres: Variae Lectiones, Dictionarium (Dictionary) and Encyclopedia ...................................................................... 57 8. The Commentary in Historical Perspective .............................. 59 9. The Present Volume .................................................................. 70 Reprint from Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge (1400-1700) - ISBN 978 90 5867 936 9 - © Leuven University Press, 2013 96085_Enenkel&Nellen_vw.indd V 3/07/13 16:37 VI CONTENTS I. HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE Karl ENENKEL (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster) Kommentare als multivalente Wissenssammlungen: Das ‘Fürsten- spiegel’-Kommentarwerk Antonio Beccadellis (De dictis et factis Alphonsi Regis Aragonum, 1455), Enea Silvio Piccolo- minis (1456) und Jakob Spiegels (1537) .................................. 79 Susanna DE BEER (Leiden University) The World Upside Down: The Geographical Revolution in Human- ist Commentaries on Pliny’s Natural History and Mela’s De situ orbis (1450-1700) ............................................................... 139 II. CLASSICAL POETRY Craig KALLENDORF (Texas A&M University, College Station) Virgil and the Ethical Commentary: Philosophy, Commonplaces, and the Structure of Renaissance Knowledge .......................... 201 Christoph PIEPER (Leiden University) Horatius praeceptor eloquentiae. The Ars Poetica in Cristoforo Landino’s Commentary ............................................................. 221 Marianne PADE (Aarhus University) Niccolò Perotti’s Cornu copiae: The Commentary as a Reposi- tory of Knowledge ..................................................................... 241 Valéry BERLINCOURT (Université de Genève) ‘Going beyond the Author’: Caspar von Barth’s Observations on the Art of Commentary-Writing and his Use of Exegetical Digressions .................................................................................... 263 III. DRAMA Jan BLOEMENDAL (Huygens Institute for the History of the Nether- lands, The Hague) In the Shadow of Donatus: Observations on Terence and Some of his Early Modern Commentators .............................................. 295 Reprint from Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge (1400-1700) - ISBN 978 90 5867 936 9 - © Leuven University Press, 2013 96085_Enenkel&Nellen_vw.indd VI 3/07/13 16:37 CONTENTS VII Volkhard WELS (Berlin) Contempt for Commentators: Transformation of the Commentary Tradition in Daniel Heinsius’ Constitutio tragoediae .............. 325 IV. LAW Willem J. ZWALVE (Leiden University) Text & Commnentary: The Legal Middle Ages and the Roman Law Tradition: Justinian’s Const. Omnem and its Medieval Commentators ............................................................................ 349 Bernard H. STOLTE (University of Groningen) Text and Commentary: Legal Humanism........................................ 387 V. BIBLE Bernd ROLING (Freie Universität Berlin) Animalische Sprache und Intelligenz im Schriftkommentar: Bile- ams Esel in der Bibelkommentierung des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit ....................................................................................... 409 Henk NELLEN (Huygens Institute for the History of the Nether- lands, The Hague) Bible Commentaries as a Platform for Polemical Debate: Abraham Calovius versus Hugo Grotius .................................................. 445 Jetze TOUBER (Utrecht University) Philology and Theology: Commenting the Old Testament in the Dutch Republic, 1650-1700 ...................................................... 473 NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS ........................................................... 511 INDEX ................................................................................................. 515 Reprint from Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge (1400-1700) - ISBN 978 90 5867 936 9 - © Leuven University Press, 2013 96085_Enenkel&Nellen_vw.indd VII 3/07/13 16:37 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The present volume is part of the research programmes directed by Karl Enenkel, The New Management of Knowledge in the Early Modern Period: The Transmission of Classical Latin Literature via Neo-Latin Commentaries, and Henk Nellen (together with Piet Steenbakkers), Bib- lical Criticism and Secularization in the Seventeenth Century, both funded by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The editors of this volume are grateful to NWO for funding both the above- mentioned research programmes and the interdisciplinary conference Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700), which was organized by the editors and took place at the Royal Netherlands Acad- emy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Trippenhuis, Amsterdam, 17-19 June 2010. The papers presented at this conference provided the initial impe- tus for the contributions that are now, in much revised form, published in the present volume. The conference organizers are grateful to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for its hospitality and support, and to NWO and to the Huygens Institute for their generous financial and organizational assistance. Pridie Kal. Mart. MMXII Karl Enenkel (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster) Henk Nellen (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, The Hague) Reprint from Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge (1400-1700) - ISBN 978 90 5867 936 9 - © Leuven University Press, 2013 96085_Enenkel&Nellen_vw.indd XIII 3/07/13 16:37 IN THE SHADOW OF DONATUS Observations on Terence and Some of his Early Modern Commentators Jan BLOEMENDAL Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, The Hague Introduction In the late Middle Ages and the early modern period humanists rediscov- ered (as it were) Latin comedy written in the third and second centuries BC by Plautus and Terence.1 In the Middle Ages, Terence had been known and read as a prose author of dialogues, as can be seen in medi- eval manuscripts (fig. 21), but from 1500 onwards, humanists started to view his plays as dramatic poetry, and they had them performed in schools and universities. This had to do with the rediscovery in the first half of the fifteenth century of a manuscript of his plays with a commen- tary by the fourth-century Alexandrian grammarian Donatus.2 The humanists not only studied these plays themselves, they read them with their students in the classroom, and had them performed by the same students. This gave Terence a special position in education, and as a result of that position, numerous editions were published in the early