MEILICHA DÔRA Poems and Prose in Greek from Renaissance and Early Modern Europe Societas Scientiarum Fennica
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Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 138 2020 MEILICHA DÔRA Poems and Prose in Greek from Renaissance and Early Modern Europe Edited by Mika Kajava, Tua Korhonen and Jamie Vesterinen Societas Scientiarum Fennica The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters MEILICHA DÔRA Poems and Prose in Greek from Renaissance and Early Modern Europe Societas Scientiarum Fennica The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters Address: Pohjoinen Makasiinikatu 7 A 6, FI – 00130 Helsinki In Swedish: Finska Vetenskaps-Societeten, Norra Magasinsgatan 7 A 6, FI – 00130 Helsingfors In Finnish: Suomen Tiedeseura, Pohjoinen Makasiinikatu 7 A 6, FI – 00130 Helsinki Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum The series, founded in 1923, publishes monographs or other studies on antiquity and its tradition. Editor: Prof. Mika Kajava Address: Department of Languages, P. O. Box 24, FI – 00014 University of Helsinki. Requests for Exchange: Exchange Centre for Scientific Literature, Snellmaninkatu 13, FI – 00170 Helsinki, or at the Secretary of the Society. Distribution and Sale: Tiedekirja, Snellmaninkatu 13, FI – 00170 Helsinki; [email protected], www.tsv.fi. Other series published by the Society: Commentationes Physico-Mathematicae Commentationes Scientiarum Socialium Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands natur och folk The History of Learning and Science in Finland 1828-1918 Årsbok – Vuosikirja (Yearbook), serie A sarja Sphinx (Årsbok – Vuosikirja, serie B sarja) Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 138 2020 MEILICHA DÔRA Poems and Prose in Greek from Renaissance and Early Modern Europe Edited by Mika Kajava, Tua Korhonen and Jamie Vesterinen Societas Scientiarum Fennica The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum is part of the publishing cooperation between the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters This book has received a subsidy granted by the Ministry of Education and Culture distributed by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies ISSN 0069-6587 ISBN 978-951-653-441-4 ISBN 978-951-653-442-1 (PDF) Layout by Vesa Vahtikari Copyright © 2020 by Societas Scientiarum Fennica Printed by Grano Oy, Vaasa 2020 Contents Introduction i Tua Korhonen I. RENAISSANCE GREEK Theodore Gaza’s Translation between Diplomacy and Humanism. 1 A List of European Countries in Pope Nicholas V’s Letter to the Last Byzantine Emperor Grigory Vorobyev Uberto Decembrio’s Epitaph. A Fifteenth-century Greek-Latin Epigraph 29 Angelo de Patto II. GREEK AND KINGS Guillaume Budé’s Greek manifesto. The Introductory Epistles 45 of the Commentarii linguae Graecae (1529) Luigi-Alberto Sanchi Rabelais’ Quart livre and Greek language 61 Martin Steinrück Neo-Latin Texts and Humanist Greek Paratexts. 75 On Two Wittenberg Prints Dedicated to Crown Prince Erik of Sweden Johanna Akujärvi III. GREEK IN PROTESTANT GERMANY Die Griechischstudien in Deutschland und ihre universitäre 107 Institutionalisierung im 16. Jahrhundert. Ein Überblick Stefan Rhein Profilbildung eines Dichterphilologen – Joachim Camerarius d.Ä 149 als Verfasser, Übersetzer und Herausgeber griechischer Epigramme Jochen Schultheiss 6 Griechische Mythologie im Dienste reformatorischer Pädagogik: 185 Zur Epensammlung Argonautica. Thebaica. Troica. Ilias parva von Lorenz Rhodoman (1588) Stefan Weise Jonische Hexameter als Träger der norddeutschen Reformation 217 Thomas Gärtner IV. GREEK POEMS FROM THE “EDGES” OF EUROPE: PRAGUE AND UTRECHT ὴ . Humanist Greek Poetry in the Bohemian Lands 247 Marcela Slavíková Γενε ν Βοίημος Οὐλτραϊεκτείνων μέγα κῦδος πότνια κούρη. 269 Greek Eulogies in Honour of Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678) Pieta van Beek V. GREEK AND THE 18th AND 19th CENTURY NEUHUMANISMUS German Neo-Humanism versus Rising Professionalism. 299 Carmina Hellenica Teutonum by the Braunschweig Physician and Philhellene Karl Friedrich Arend Scheller (1773–1842) Janika Päll Three Greek Poems by the Neohumanist Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949) 333 Elena Ermolaeva Index nominum 349 ’Hνίδε γράμματα γραψάντων εὐγνώμονα δέξαι. Ἐρῖκος ὁ ἐλάχιστος Σίρονεν Comm. Hum. Litt. Vol. 138 7 Introduction Tua Korhonen A startling detail in the history of Greek studies in Germany is Martin Crusius’ thousands and thousands of sermons written in (ancient) Greek. Why did Crusius (1524–1607), a Greek professor in Tübingen, compose Greek sermons – and for what purpose? In fact, Crusius ‘only’ paraphrased or translated the sermons simultaneously as he was listening to them in church three times a week for over a 40-year period. Fortunately, he gave reasons for this practice: translating or paraphrasing German sermons into Greek helped him concentrate on the sermons. In addition, he wanted to practise his ad hoc writing in Greek. Exactly 6588 sermons have survived among Crusius’ enormous manuscript collection, which has been published by Thomas Wilhelmi.1 These sermons were not the only texts Crusius wrote in Greek. His Germanograecia came out in 1585 containing some of his own Greek texts as well as poems and prose by his students and acquaintances whom he had encouraged and stirred by his own example to express themselves in Greek. The explicit function of Germanograecia was, as Crusius states in his preface, to ‘hellenize’ the German peoples because Greece itself had been ‘barbarized’.2 One of the causes that inspired the writing of poetry and prose in Greek, alongside pedagogical purposes, was to perpetuate Greek literature. Although Crusius was exceptionally prolific, many humanists not only in central Europe but also at its periphery – like in Sweden – showed quite amazing active skills in Greek. Nowadays, these Greek texts composed by humanists have been overshadowed by the vast amount of Neo-Latin texts. After all, Latin was the language of letters, the means of communication, the ‘eternal’ language by which to make oneself heard. Neo-Latin Studies have an established place among humanities nowadays, with journals, handbooks and international conferences. Greek, which was used by 1 Wilhelmi, Thomas (ed.) 2002. Die griechischen Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen. Sonderband Martin Crusius: Handschriftenverzeichnis und Bibiliographie. Wiesbaden. See also, Grafton, Anthony. 2002. “Martin Crusius Read his Homer”, Princeton University Library Chronicle 64:1, 64–65. 2 Crusius, Martin. 1585. Germanograecia libri sex. Basel, 2v (dedicatory letter). See also Ludwig, Walter. 1998. Hellas in Deutschland. Darstellung der Gräzistik im deutschsprachigen Raum aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Berichte aus den Sitzungen der Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften E.V. Jahrgang 16, Heft 1). Hamburg, 29–31. 8ii KORHONEN, Introduction Renaissance and early modern humanists and which imitated ancient Greek, has aroused interest only recently, over the past twenty years of time. The articles in this volume are based on the papers presented at the conference “Humanist Greek (HUG) – Perspectives for a New Field of Studies” that was arranged by the Finnish members (Tua Korhonen and Erkki Sironen) of the project Helleno-Nordica in Helsinki, August 2018.3 In a way, the Helsinki conference was a continuation of the ‘HUG’ conference in Tartu that was organised within the framework of Janika Päll’s research project in 2014. In her preface to the Tartu conference’s acta (Hellenostephanos, published in 2018), Päll presents the much- discussed terminological problem for this field of studies: what should we call this form or register of Greek that is a kind of equivalent to Neo-Latin? For example, Émile Legrand used the term la nouvelle Grèce for the Greek literature that the Byzantine scholars created in the West. In English, Neo-Greek would easily be terminologically mixed with modern Greek.4 In German, the term Neualtgriechisch captures the meaning very well, but the term would seem like an oxymoron in English (‘New ancient Greek’). One option is Humanist Greek, which Dieter Harlfinger used in a catalogue for the exhibition ‘Graecogermania’ (an obvious pun on Crusius’ Germanograecia) on Greek studies and the editorial work by German and Italian humanists. The exhibition was arranged at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel in 1987.5 Many scholars have managed, however, to refer to this form of language just as ‘Greek’. 3 In organizing the conference, the Finnish members of the project were aided by students Jamie Vesterinen, Minna Vesa and Katja Sivonen. This preface and the editorial work for Meilicha Dôra was done under the auspices of the Helleno-Nordica, directed by Johanna Akujärvi; Swedish Research Council, grant 2016-01881. 4 Päll, Janika. 2018. “Editor’s Preface”, in Päll, Janika & Ivo Volt (eds.) Hellenostephanos: Humanist Greek in Early Modern Europe: Learned Communities between Antiquity and Contemporary Culture, Tartu, 9–10. On the terminological problem, see also Korhonen, Tua. 2004. Ateena Auran rannoilla. Helsinki, 9–10 (http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/hum/klass/vk/korhonen2/).Recent studies on Humanist Greek, see for instance: Stefan Weise (ed.) 2020. HELLENISTI! Altgriechisch als Literatursprache im neuzeitlichen Europa. Stuttgart, and Weise’s and Päll’s articles in Constantinidou, Natascha & Lamers, Han (eds.) (2020). Receptions of Hellenism in Early Modern Europe: 15th–17th Centuries. Turnhout. 5 Harlfinger, Dieter et al. (Hrsg.) 1989. Graecogermania. Griechischstudien deutscher Humanisten. Die Editionstätigkeit der Griechen in der italienischen Renaissance (1469–1523). Ausstellung im Zeughaus der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel vom 22. April bis 9. Juli