INTRODUCTION

Th e invitation to teach Greek in , extended in 1396 by Coluc- cio Salutati (1331–1406) to the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355–1415), has oft en been taken as the inauguration of Greek stud ies in the West. Th ough earlier instances of Greek instruc- tion can be found, Chrysoloras’ short tenure in Florence and other Italian cities, with students such as (c. 1370–1444) and (1370–1460), lays a convincing claim to the true beginning of Greek studies in the West aft er almost a millennium.1 Th roughout the quattrocento Italy was to dominate the fi eld. Th ough occasional instruction in Greek was available north of the Alps in the fi ft eenth century, it usually lacked institutional permanence and could not compare to that off ered at the great Italian centres of learning. Even late in the day, a devoted humanist such as , who had acquired a basic grounding in Greek in Deventer and further knowledge of the language in England in 1499, was still eager to travel to Italy as late as 1506 to perfect his command of the language.2 Th e fi rst decades of the sixteenth century witnessed a proliferation of Greek studies in the Holy Roman Empire. Without exaggerating the extent to which instruction in Greek was available in the German territories in the early sixteenth century, the fact that Germans like Philipp Melanchthon (born 1497) and Joachim Camerarius (born 1500) could attain an impressive command of the language within the German Latin schools and universities they attended attests not only their talent and dedication but a considerable success in disseminating Greek studies at some of the humanist centres north of the Alps. Later

1 See N. G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renais- sance (London, 1992), pp. 8–12; R. R. Bolgar, Th e Classical Heritage and its Benefi ciaries (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 268f. Bolgar goes as far as claiming that “Pedagogically, the began with Chrysoloras.” (p. 268). See also the account of Chrysoloras’ instruction in Italy in J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, vol. ii (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 19–21. 2 See E. Rummel, Erasmus as Translator of the Classics (Toronto, 1985), pp. 3–19 for Erasmus’ Greek studies. Th is, to a great extent, also applies to Johannes Reuchlin. Both, it should be noted, were no beginners when they arrived in Italy. See also J.-Ch. Saladin, La Bataille du Grec à la Renaissance (Paris, 2000), p. 331. 2 introduction in the sixteenth century a Northern European predominance in Greek studies is traceable. By mid century Basel exceeded as a centre for Greek printing, and Greek instruction of the highest level could be attained in Leipzig, Wittenberg, Heidelberg, and Tübingen, to name but a few universities of the Holy Roman Empire. Th e more one prog- resses along the sixteenth century, the clearer a Northern European and Protestant predominance in the fi eld can be discerned, some notable exceptions notwithstanding. Th us too in a non-German context the great Greek scholars of the later sixteenth century were arguably three francophone Protestants: Henri Estienne (1528–1598), Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609), and Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614).3 All this begs the ques- tion of Protestant attitudes to Greek antiquity. With the growing availability of ancient Greek texts, in the original and in translation, came an opportunity to become acquainted with Greek antiquity and to consider the relevance and utility of its textual remains for sixteenth century readers. Th e present study attempts to understand the nature and role of Greek antiquity in sixteenth century Lutheran historical consciousness. It probes into Lutheran humanists’ opinions about the nature and scope of Greek antiquity and at the same time enquires into the role played, to their minds, by Greek antiquity in history. While modern scholarship has oft en dealt with the ‘victimi- zation’ of humanism in the age of Reformation and Confessionalism, or conversely with the ‘survival’ of certain humanistic outlooks in the period, what follows is a study of a thorough adaptation of a humanist branch of learning to a Lutheran worldview. Th e argument underlying this study is that signifi cant aspects of later humanist interest in antiquity, like so many facets of sixteenth century life, were distinctly confessional in character and motivation. The group of Lutheran humanists studied here, it will be argued, understood signifi cant aspects of Greek antiquity from a Protestant and German perspective. One aspect of these scholarly pursuits, for instance, pertains to Lutheran scholars’ quest for a descent rooted in antiquity. Th e cultural rivalry with Italian humanists and Protestant anti-Roman polemics

3 Cf. A. M. Woodward, “Greek History in the Renaissance” JHS 63 (1949), pp. 1–14, esp. 13; J.-Ch. Saladin “Euripide Luthérien?” Mélange de l’Élcole Française de Rome, Italie et Méditerranée 108(1) (1996), pp. 155–70; W. Ludwig, Hellas in Deutschland: Darstellungen der Gräzistik im deutschsprachigen Raum aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrhun- dert (Hamburg, 1998), p. 81.