Erotemata by Manuel Chrysoloras. A Greek grammar for the West.

A research project carried out by classes 3A and 3B from Liceo XXV Aprile in Portogruaro in the 2016-2017 school year

While following the project on Greek studies in Humanism, some questions came to our minds: what was it like to study Greek six centuries ago? Were those students much different from us? As our Greek grammar text, we have decided to use Erotemata by Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine grammarian who was appointed by as a teacher in by the end of the 14th century. Chrysoloras was not only a scholar but also a diplomat: Emperor Manuel II put him in charge of seeking help from the Western countries against the Turks and so he travelled across Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany. His sojourn and teaching activity in Italy were particularly significant, because they inspired a new interest in studying Greek among Italian humanists. Chrysoloras’ text was a didactic grammar meant for foreign students, largely used in the 15th century and many times republished as an abridged version. Among the different editions, the editio princeps, considered the oldest, was printed in in 1471 containing Greek lemmas and a comment in . Also important is another bilingual edition printed in Parma in 1481. Our work starts from the latter version. We were interested in understanding how Greek was taught in that time and how the grammatical lexicon was translated into Latin and from Latin into our language.

We have looked at different versions of the Erotemata and analysed them according to their contents and their conservation: the best editions are those preserved in Barcelona and in the National Library in Florence. The edition printed in Parma in 1481 and preserved in the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek in Munich shows a well-preserved paper cover; the back consists of a fine watermark and a colophon in German. On page 6 the seal of Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis can be found; italics is used for the text. In the final pages of the book the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria and the Greek alphabet and also the colophon are printed (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

The Barcelona version, printed in Vicenza in 1490, has a leather cover bound with a string and wooden or horn beads; the back shows a badly preserved and incomplete watermark; inside the book we can find the seal of the University Library of Barcelona and also some relevant handwritten marginal notes near the Latin column (Fig. 2): preteritum perfectum medium, infinitum primum (first aorist), infinitum secundum (second

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aorist), optativa presens etc. We think they might have served as reminders or marginal notes. Every reader clearly left a mark of his activity thus showing how the book was handed over from one scholar to another.

Fig. 2

Concerning the volume preserved in the Braidense National Library in , printed in Venice in 1471, it does not have a two-column layout but a Latin comment which explains Greek grammatical notes; the alphabet is printed at the end. It does not show remarkable marginal notes.

We have read the 1481 edition in full, comparing it with the Brera or later editions, after which we have pointed out some important aspects. The first of them is the didactic method used: Erotemata, or “questions”. The book was organised as a list of questions and answers, for example: is pòsa diairoùntai tà eìkosi tèssara gràmmata? in quot dividuntur viginti quattour litterae? and so on (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Questions and answers are translated in Latin and this is why the page layout is divided in two columns; the Greek text is accurately reproduced in the translation; the approach to grammar studying is

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enumerative/analytical, similar to the one used nowadays, introducing a grammatical category with its related example. The work begins with the list of every single letter of the alphabet, then it goes on with diphthongs, accents, different parts of the dialogue, articles, nouns, declinations and finally verbs.

The most awkward aspect of the grammar book concerns the complexity of the morphology, which remains troublesome for students of every time and age. Chrysoloras’ grammar was so successful in its time that it became the most popular grammar used both in Greek schools and by intellectuals, because its innovative method made Greek easier to learn for those Western students who were not so familiar with the Greek language and culture. Before that, other grammars were used, but, being explained in Greek, they used to be very difficult. Chrysoloras’ method was intended to simplify the approach to the study of Greek, drastically reducing the categories of nominative case, which used to be fifty-six according to the Byzantine tradition, to ten. As in the Latin schools, Chrysoloras’ grammar was made up by genitive, dative and singular accusative in order to avoid the gathering of nominatives: after years of oblivion his grammar made Greek easier to study. Verb classification in the Erotemata is not much different from its traditional study: thirteen conjugations, nine of which belonging to the verbs in - , divided according to the accents (barytone verbs and perispomenon verbs), and four belonging to the verbs in - .

Another interesting aspect of this book is its Latin translation, a literal translation so carefully connected to its original Greek that typographical devices were used to maintain the alignment. Nevertheless, while reading both versions we have come through some difficulties which came out when the two linguistic systems did not correspond. For this reason, we have noticed that some Greek expressions were translated into Latin using reasonable adjustments in order to maintain the original meaning in the new language. For example, the optative (Fig. 4), in Greek , is translated as optativa, from the verb optare, “wish”, because it expresses wishes and hopes ( , from , means “pray”). Concerning the translations of the verbs, the optative, dismissed in Latin, is rendered with utinam and the corresponding subjunctive, or the desiderative subjunctive.

Fig. 4

Such process is very interesting because it allows to understand that the teaching of Greek applied the same patterns used for Latin, which in those centuries was still the international language of humanistic studies, whose knowledge in the West, unlike Greek, had never failed. From our point of view of today’s students, this fact partly explains some difficulties we find in the study of grammar, since both languages have different systems, for example in the verbal system. On the other hand, a Latin/Greek comparative didactic system is able to clarify certain phenomena very well: in our case, one of the many meanings of the Latin subjunctive.

Other examples are given by the dual, which in Latin is made with the third plural person of the verb followed by duo (Fig. 5).

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Fig. 5

Here we can also notice other interesting details: the active indicator is called so because it comes from indicatiua actiua, the translation for (“which determines”) (“industrious, active”).

A further example is given by the translation of certain participles (Fig. 6): here, the first and second medium future participle are translated into Latin with the gerund. It is also possible to notice that in the declination of the forms the demonstrative pronoun hic, haec, hoc is used, since Latin has no articles, which in Italian derive from Latin pronouns.

Fig. 6

As for the subjunctive (in Greek from ), it is translated with subiunctiua, from the verb subiungo “subject to the yoke” thus “to subordinate” (Fig. 7). The subjunctive, indeed, is the Latin mood mainly used in dependent or subordinate sentences. In Greek, we have the present subjunctive with value of possibility, introduced by which in Latin becomes cum and imperfect subjunctive.

Fig. 7

Particularly curious it was for us to discover the origin of the specific grammar terms: among all (restored to the original form in modern grammar), translated into Latin with infìnitus, which indicates indefiniteness in space and time, and is a true Greek copy ( is "without limit, indefinite, without fines”).

And so also / declino, and / declinatio, / neuter, / genitivus, / dativus, / mixtio, the latter term having disappeared in modern grammars, where the original "crasis" has been restored. Of course, the Latin nomenclature does not date back to this time, nor to the translator of the Erotemata, but to several centuries before and to the arrangement of ancient, grammarians such as Priscian of Caesarea (5th- 6th cent. AD). It was, however, interesting to find it working here next to its original and understand its meaning.

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In conclusion, the study of Erotemata has been a truly extraordinary experience for those who, like us, now have studied humanities for five years. This for several reasons, which we are going to list briefly.

First of all, it was an opportunity to realize, though not extensively, how the transmission of literary works – grammatical, in our case – came to pass, namely who and how much work was behind the school books we handle every day. Beyond their contents, these volumes are in themselves beautiful objects: we have seen them in photographic reproduction, but in some cases the real books, at the Marciana National Library in Venice.

Secondly, in our specific case, it was curious to see the differences in the planning of grammatical studies between the Greek language course of today's high school and the one practiced in a 15th-century school: however complicated it may seem now, the amount of verbal classes and declinations of the names in use at the time was certainly no less. We did not envy those students!

Then, the comparison between the Greek text and its Latinization has allowed us to think about the concept of translation, on which we have worked so much at school and which is a problem, perhaps the problem, in relation to our classical studies, as it is always the case in communication between different languages. The examples we have shown are, hopefully, demonstrated: as philosophical language in Latin was created anew by and Lucretius in order to translate Greek texts, so it also happened for grammar, and words like infinitum or as subiunctivus or participium are just a few examples. From here we derive the grammatical language we still use, often without questioning why we say subjunctive or participle.

And finally, the 'questioning' method: starting with questions in order to be able to give answers in a form that is at least partly interactive that involves the student in learning. It seems to us a good method for that time and for ours.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. CICCOLELLA, Donati Graeci. Learning Greek in the , Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2008.

ID, Tra Bisanzio e l’Italia. Grammatiche greche e greco-latine in età umanistica, in «Studi Umanistici Piceni» XXIX-2009, Istituto Internazionale di Studi Piceni, Sassoferrato.

ID, De utroque fonte bibere. The use of Latin in the teaching of Greek grammar during the Renaissance, 2017 (in course of publication).

R. MAISANO, A. ROLLO (a cura di), Manuele Crisolora e il ritorno del greco in Occidente, Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Napoli 26-29 giugno 1997), Napoli 2002.

A. ROLLO, Gli Erotemata tra Crisolora e Guarino, Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Umanistici, Messina 2012.

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A research project carried out by B. Battiston, F. Biondo, L. Bottan, G. De Lazzari, A. De Luca, E. Fontanel, B. Geo, S. Lena, C. Pizzato, F. Steccanella, I. Sterlicchio, V. Valentinuzzi, S. Zanin, M.V. Zovatto, N. Mori, M. Padovan.

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