Claudius Salmasius and the Deadness of Neo-Latin
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CLAUDIUS SALMASIUS AND THE DEADNESS OF NEO-LATIN John Considine 1. “Eratosthenes seculi nostri”: Salmasius’ reputation Claudius Salmasius (1588–1653) is one of those neo-Latin authors whom hardly anybody seems to read: in the two volumes of IJsewijn and Sacré’s Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, he is mentioned only once, in passing.1 No full-scale biography of him has ever been published.2 This is strange when one considers how highly he was praised in his own century. To Hugo Grotius, he was “Vir infinitae lectionis”; to Johannes Fredericus Gronovius, “Varro et Eratosthenes seculi nostri.”3 Salmasius’ reputation has declined: the afterlife of Gronovius’ comparison makes the point. “He certainly deserved his reputation for learning as the Eratosthenes of his time,” remarks Rudolf Pfeiffer, directing the reader in a footnote to the final page of his own earlier account of Eratosthenes.4 There, Eratosthenes is called “one of the greatest scholars of all times,” but his nicknames “beta” (implying “second-best at everything”) and “the pentathlete” (implying “jack of all trades”) are also quoted.5 The paradox by which scholars of exceptionally broad learning are less celebrated than their more limited contemporaries has affected the repu- tations of other philologists. Modern studies of Salmasius concentrate on one aspect or another of his intellectual life, such as his work on language or on classical philology.6 But there are other factors at work in the case of 1 Jozef IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies ed. 2 (second volume with Dirk Sacré) (Leuven, 1990–1998), 2: 286. 2 The fullest biographical treatment in English appears to be Kathryn A. McEuen, “Salmasius: Opponent of Milton,” in Milton, Complete Prose Works (1953–1982), IV part ii, 962–982. 3 Both are quoted in Sir Thomas Pope Blount, Censura celebriorum authorum (London, 1690), 719. 4 Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 1300–1850 (Oxford, 1976), 122. 5 Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford, 1968), 170. 6 On language, see Toon Van Hal, “Moedertalen & taalmoeders”: Methodologie, episte- mologie en ideologie van het taalvergelijkend onderzoek in de renaissance, met bijzondere aandacht voor de bijdrage van de humanisten uit de Lage Landen (Ph.D. diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2008), 323–337; on classical philology, see, e.g., James Hutton, The 296 john considine Salmasius: There is a frustrating quality to Salmasius’ work. Wilamowitz wrote of him that “er vermochte es nicht, seine Kräfte auf eine große Arbeit zu konzentrieren. Eine recht unfranzösische Formlosigkeit schädigt die Wirkung . .” (“he failed to concentrate his energies on a major work. A most un-French formlessness in his writings spoils the effect . .”).7 More succinctly, Queen Christina of Sweden is supposed to have described him in a moment of disfavour as “omnium fatuuorum doctissimum” (“the most learned of fools”).8 In this paper, I would like to explore the pos- sibility of relating Salmasius’ failure as perceived by Pfeiffer and Queen Christina and Wilamowitz to his status as a neo-Latin author, turning first to two controversies in which he discussed, inter alia, the Latinity of his opponents, and then to his thoughts on the Latin language and language death. 2. Controversy with Daniel Heinsius “Nothing was so characteristic of [Daniel] Heinsius as his consistent efforts to understand the language of the New Testament as ‘lingua Hellenistica’ and to provide the Greek words with Hebrew equivalents.”9 It was this fea- ture of Heinsius’ work which gave Salmasius, an enemy of his as well as a colleague, an excuse to attack him. It was shaped in Heinsius’ Aristarchus sacer of 1627, in which the Greek of the New Testament is described as lingua Hellenistica, meaning that it was a language of Greek-speaking Jews who read the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Scriptures, and whose usage was very strongly influenced by Aramaic, so that certain Greek words had their meanings extended to correspond to extensions of meaning in their Aramaic translation-equivalents, and certain Greek phrases were calqued on Aramaic phrases. The argument of the Aristarchus sacer was Greek Anthology in France and in the Latin Writers of the Netherlands to the Year 1800 (Ithaca and New York, 1946), 180–186. 7 Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Geschichte der Philologie ed. 3 (Leipzig, 1927), 31; translation from idem, History of Classical Scholarship, tr. Alan Harris and ed. Hugh Lloyd-Jones (London, 1982), 69. 8 Reported in a letter by Isaac Vossius to Nicolaas Heinsius, dated 28 Fenruary (n.s.), 1653, in Pieter Burman, ed., Sylloge epistolarum a viris illustribus scriptarum (Leiden, 1727), 3.666. 9 H. J. de Jonge, “The Study of the New Testament” in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century: An Exchange of Learning, ed. Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden, 1975), 99..